The Andromeda Strain: Michael Crichton

An unmanned satellite returns to Earth mysteriously and lethally contaminated. Immediately, Project Wildfire, the crash mobilisation of America's highest scientific crash resources, begins at Wildfire's secret laboratory five storeys below the Nevada desert. There, surrounded by banks of the most sophisticated computer-assisted equipment and under conditions of total secrecy, four scientists work against the threat of a world-wide epidemic. They seek the antidote to a deadly micro-organism and their hunt leads to a terrifying climax.