No One’s Coming: The Rogue Heroes Our Government Turns to When There’s Nowhere Else to Turn

Could an airplane evacuate two American medical professionals with Ebola from West Africa without infecting the crew? That’s the dire question at the heart of this gripping real-life thriller from journalist and former paramedic Hazzard (American Sirens). The saga beings with an unexpected 2014 phone call from the State Department to Phoenix Air’s COO, inquiring if the company’s untested biocontainment tent could be used to fly a critically ill doctor, Kent Brantly, and a volunteer, Nancy Writebol, from the “epicenter of the deadliest Ebola outbreak in human history.” Despite the “huge, almost incalculable” risk, Phoenix Air, which first made its name flying explosives, including Muammar Gadhafi’s “suitcase nuke,” fulfilled its reputation of “saying yes when everybody else said no.” The author documents the astonishing week-and-a-half mission with tense velocity, as Phoenix Air rapidly develops and tests a protocol to prevent “the scariest death imaginable” using mostly PPE from Home Depot. Numerous roadblocks occur during the two rescue flights themselves, from the plane’s cabin not pressurizing to airports turning the jets away. Hazzard also spotlights the heroism of the doctors and volunteers in Liberia who found themselves caring for their own colleagues and the Emory University hospital staff who received the patients, juxtaposing this selfless determination to “save the saviors” with the concurrent “media shitstorm” that led to public hysteria and protests outside Emory. It’s an absolute nail-biter. (Mar.)