Lethal Misconduct Read Free Page A

bickering.
    “Fair enough. How are things going?”
    “Somehow we’re ahead of schedule. It probably has to do with the way Jonas pays his people. I don’t think the city of Charlottesville had ever approved any renovation this quickly.”
    “He knows what he’s doing.”
    “You’ve got that right.”
    “Good. Is there anything I can do to help?”
    Cal bit back another smart remark. “I don’t think so. Daniel, can you think of anything?”
    Daniel shook his head.
    “I think we’re good,” said Cal. “How’s my cousin behaving?”
    “You know Trav, steamrolling the assholes with a bulldozer.”
    It was Cal’s turn to laugh. Although his cousin’s disdain for politicians was more tempered than his own, Travis was still a no BS kinda guy. In the short time he’d been in the White House, the former SEAL had purged the non-performers and constructed what even the media considered a strong presidential team.
    “Tell him I said hi.”
    “I will, and don’t hesitate to call if you need anything. I mean that, Cal.”
    “I will. Thanks.”
    The call ended and Cal looked at Daniel. “Would you have thought two years ago that we could call the president of the United States whenever we wanted?”
    Daniel shook his head. “No way.”
     

    Chapter 3
    National Institutes of Health (NIH) Headquarters
    Bethesda, Maryland
    9:51am, April 4 th
     
    The muted walls of the corner office were plastered with black picture frames. Not the typical “I Love Me” items of a military veteran, but the remnants of death. A picture of a mass grave in Rwanda, bodies stacked like cords of wood outside a mill house. Numerous shots of victims of disease, wounds still seeping with puss, gashes oozing dark blood. Dead eyes everywhere.
    New visitors to the space left either appalled or disgusted. There was no other way to respond. No one thought to ask its owner why he had such a grisly collection displayed so prominently.
    There was a reason. Not unlike the gruesome images collected and hung precisely on his walls, the face of Army Colonel Gormon Cromwell spoke of pain and disease. The left side of his face sagged grotesquely, the after effects of some unknown bacteria he’d contracted while on assignment as a young captain in the jungles of central Africa. He’d been left for dead when he failed to check in with his team. It was only by sheer will and the aid of a nomadic huntsman that the Army Green Beret had stumbled back into camp a full week after disappearing.
    His face swollen from infection, feet aching from immersion foot, and body racked with malaria, the local doctor had written him off. He said he’d seen the disease before, something the locals called ‘the nodding disease.’ The prognosis? Death. That was until Cromwell had pressed his always present pistol into the doctor’s forehead and croaked, “You cure me or I’ll kill you and all your people.”
    Whether it was the wild determination in the emaciated soldier’s eyes, or the leveled rifle of the African huntsman who’d stayed on Gormon’s side on promise of payment, the doctor relented, quickly calling in a team of Red Cross physicians.
    He’d spent a month in that mosquito-infested clinic, finally attaining the needed stability to be transported back to Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
    How had his superiors thanked him? They’d kicked him out of the green berets. They said he was in no shape to continue his career. More than one senior officer had suggested he medically retire, take his disability, and try to build a new life outside the military.
    Cromwell would have none of it. He told them all. He forged a new career on his own. Instead of running from the diseases that had almost killed him, he embraced them. While recovering from his ailments, Cromwell pulled some strings and was accepted into Johns Hopkin’s School of Public Health, earning a PhD in Global Disease Epidemiology and Control in half the time as prescribed.
    Over the next fifteen