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    Uncharted Country, Uncertain Future: News Channel Superstar to International Virus Fighter
    Uncharted Country, Uncertain Future: News Channel Superstar to International Virus Fighter
    Uncharted Country, Uncertain Future: News Channel Superstar to International Virus Fighter
    Ebook116 pages1 hour

    Uncharted Country, Uncertain Future: News Channel Superstar to International Virus Fighter

    By Carl Douglass

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    About this ebook

    Sybil Norcroft, M.D., Ph.D, F.A.C.S. leaves California under a cloud. She has been found innocent of a murder charge there but cannot be certain that she will succeed in her new profession as a Wolf News Medical Consultant. The health news story of the century falls into her lap, and the novice commentator runs with the story of weaponized Marburg virus, murdered pygmy slaves, and a world-wide manhunt for the perpetrators. Sybil succeeds beyond anyone's prediction, gains a new daughter in the Congo, and a host of serious friends and enemies who will be part of the rest of her life. She becomes a media darling and an accidental CIA operative. Sybil has to learn like never before how to keep secrets in the new and uncharted country where she now lives.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPublication Consultants
    Release dateNov 10, 2015
    ISBN9781594334719
    Uncharted Country, Uncertain Future: News Channel Superstar to International Virus Fighter
    Author

    Carl Douglass

    Author Carl Douglass desires to live to the century mark and to be still writing; his wife not so much. No matter whose desire wins out, they plan an entire life together and not go quietly into the night. Other than writing, their careers are in the past. Their lives focus on their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

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      Book preview

      Uncharted Country, Uncertain Future - Carl Douglass

      Thirteen

      Chapter One

      The Wolf News main studio was in a state of controlled pandemonium—not the usual beehive of activity at the change of shifts, but an all-out effort to capitalize on breaking news that would give them some one-upmanship over the arch-rival WWN. The latest war in the DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo] had taken a particularly ugly turn in the form of a medical and humanitarian disaster somewhat similar to that of the Rwanda genocide of two decades previously. WWN had the upper-hand among news crews in the western provinces of the DRC where large-scale battles were raging and upon which the world’s attention was focused. Wolf News was relegated to playing second-fiddle and had to get most of its news footage from friendly—but expensive—Reuters News Service teams.

      Wolf got wind of another compelling story—one occurring far away from the main western offensives—which was taking place in the eastern Congolese province of North-Kivu. The information came from a disgruntled former WWN reporter, Jules Renier, who was witness to unspeakable atrocities being perpetrated by the Mayi-Mavi Cheka and M23 [March 23 Movement] rebels in the jungle border country area of the DRC, Uganda, Burundi, and Rwanda. Because of the wars, atrocities, and neglect by the country’s government, the unfortunate civilians of the region were experiencing an unprecedented scourge of combined and serial epidemics of sleeping sickness, yaws, malaria, and cholera which compounded the already second highest infant mortality rate in the world. The most compelling aspect of Renier’s report was that pygmy people of the area were being subjected to medical experimentations using highly infectious disease agents. Renier was adamant about secrecy. He did not want to see Raja Patel and the WWN news hordes descending into his village and taking all of the credit.

      The executives were caught up in a frenzied effort to get there first and with the most. Into this maelstrom stepped the newest Wolf reporter, a woman hired to counter the engaging and hugely successful WWN medical reportage featuring their star, Raja Patel, M.D., part-time neurosurgeon and researcher at Cornell University and media darling. The new reporter—more accurately, medical consultant—was Sybil Norcroft, M.D., Ph.D., F.A.C.S., associate professor of neurosurgery at Georgetown University School of Medicine and former highly prominent neurosurgeon in California. Much of her notoriety stemmed from her highly touted and well-publicized work with LGBT groups, Latino organizations, the National Women-in-Medicine Organization, American College of Surgeons, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, and the Congress of Neurosurgeons. If the truth were fully known, her stardom really stemmed from a recent case in which she had been tried and dramatically acquitted for the murder of a malpractice attorney who had tormented her for years. The impression all over the United States was that she had been the victim of sexism, and she had become the face of the ongoing fight against gender bias. It did not hurt that she was a photogenic, beautiful, statuesque, blond, genius with remarkable stage presence.

      David Kilcannon, vice-president of Wolf News production for the channel, met Sybil as she walked into the lobby of Wolf News headquarters on the Avenue of the Americas in New York. He was a little breathless from the hectic start of his day. Sybil—on the other hand—was the very picture of poise and calm. She was dressed in a beautiful pearl-grey Italian Valentino pantsuit, Gucci high heels, and was carrying a Fendi handbag from Paris. She was perfectly coiffed; and—all-in-all—was the picture of cool worldly haute couture.

      David rushed up to Sybil and extended his hand.

      I’m David Kilcannon, vice-president of news coverage here, Sybil. Okay if I call you Sybil?

      Certainly, the vision in grey replied and favored him with a fulsome smile.

      Sorry, Sybil, but we don’t have any time for formalities and certainly not for niceties. I know you came to prepare our introductory interview with Barbara Welhelme for welcome to Wolf, but something has come up that trumps that. We need you to go to work today. In the Congo…

      Are you serious!? she asked. I don’t think I came dressed for the Congo.

      Indeed you’re not. We’ll get you over to the REI and outfitted. It is a jungle there—no joke intended—and you need the right stuff. I want to send you and a photographer and two staffers to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to do an exclusive story. You won’t have a script or make-up people. You have a great reputation for thinking on your feet, and this will be your baptism by fire in that regard. You up to a new life of adventure?

      Without the slightest hesitation, Sybil answered, I am. Let’s get started.

      David grinned partly in satisfaction and partly in relief.

      Okay, I’ll go with you and fill you in on the details as we go.

      He was altogether true to his word, continuing his patter as the elegant and sophisticated beauty shed her haute couture for tough camouflage BDUs, jungle boots, and an assortment of sunscreens and bug repellents. She bought ballistic nylon duffle bags and a large carry-on messenger bag. She made even that combat attire look fetching. She laughed at herself in the mirror. She called her husband, Charles Daniels, in his Georgetown satellite office of his international agri-business of which he was the CEO and filled him in. He sighed and wished her fair winds and a following sea and demanded that she come back to him in one piece.

      The last preparation of the morning was to get her a Glock .30 handgun and ammunition, SWAT team quality pepper spray, and a combat knife—all of which were ensconced in her check-in luggage. The Wolf team had thought of just about everything. Sybil had a suite of rooms in the Marriott Marque; and, with her full consent, they fetched her passport and other necessaries that she kept in the hotel room’s safe. David gave her $100,000 in small denomination bills, a black credit card with no limit, and the latest, greatest in satellite phones. He and several assistants put her and her team on a first-class flight to Kinshaha—with stops in London and Pretoria—at two o’clock New York time. She had reading material to bring her fully up to speed on the developing situation in the eastern DRC. Aside from being on her way to what she could only regard as uncharted country and an uncertain future, Sybil Norcroft could hardly contain her excitement at the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that had just fallen into her lap.

      She and her team landed at N’Djili and Kinshasa International Airport for their last layover and then flew in a Hewa Bora Airways DC-9 puddle-jumper to Goma, the capital of North Kivu province—a city with a million inhabitants plunked squarely in the heart of the rain forest. They were numb with exhaustion and had to sleep for 18 hours in their Ihusi Hotel suite to recuperate enough to function. While sitting down for breakfast—their first real meal in 56 hours—they met Jules Renier. He ate with them and studiously avoided talking news business until they could find an empty conference room where he brought them up-to-date as of the present hour.

      Glad you’re here and that you’re young and healthy, unlike me. I am not up to this whole thing. Good you’re a doctor, Sybil, the uninitiated would not be able to handle what you’re going to see.

      Sybil and her team listened raptly and worked to hide their reactions to Renier’s shocking revelations.

      To say that there are unimaginable atrocities going on by the rebels is the mastery of understatement, he said. I’m going to take you to a little town in North-Kivu called Rutshuru located between Lakes Edward and Kivu. It is deep in the jungle only a few miles either way from Uganda and Rwanda and was the scene of horrors during the Rwandan massacres of the nineties. There is all of that again, but that is only part of the story. The main thing—and I don’t think any western news agency knows about—is what has been happening to the pygmies.

      He showed them photographs he had taken that would have turned the stomachs of less experienced viewers. The clincher—and one which he was not certain of the cause—was of bloated corpses of tiny pygmies—men, women, and children—covered with bleeding sores and obviously grossly enlarged lymph nodes.

      It’s anybody’s guess what this is, but I am almost certain that the Fabrique Pharmaceutique DRC is responsible.

      Sybil said quietly, I think I know what it is. Ebola.

      Renier

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