Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller: Book 2 (21 page)

Where Salim’s clothing had gone, he could only guess, and his guess was an incinerator. He assumed his passport was in the hands of his interrogators, along with his billfold and the last of his cash. While not imprisoned formally, he was in effect, trapped in the hospital, completely dependent on the staff to feed him, even to carry out his waste.

Salim appreciated what the hospital staff had done for him. He had his health back. But he had no plans to remain in a hospital-shaped prison.

On his last full night in the hospital, he went through the corridors doing his best to look like a janitor, though most everyone looked alike in head-to-toe plastic. Salim pushed a hamper through the halls, collecting soiled garments from rooms, going through pockets when no one was around.

When he’d found a set of clothes that looked like it would fit, along with enough loose cash to sustain him for a while, he took what he had to a restroom and rinsed the clothes in a sink, cleaning them as best he could. After they were close enough to dry, he put his items in a small, blue, slightly worn duffel bag he’d come across, donned his off-blue scrubs—his doctor disguise—and suited up in his hazmat suit. Salim headed down to the first floor to make his exit through the decontamination tent erected at the hospital’s front entrance, hoping he wouldn’t be scrutinized too closely.  After all he’d been through he hoped luck was still on his side. 

“Who is this?”

Olivia couldn’t believe it. She’d dialed the number for the CIA satellite telephone as part of her daily routine, not expecting anyone to answer. “Um, I don’t know if I should say, exactly.”

“Then we have nothing to talk about. Don’t call again.”

“Wait. Wait,” said Olivia, weighing her options. Could she get in worse trouble by identifying herself? Maybe? With everything else going on in the world, would anybody care? “I’m Olivia Cooper. I’m a data analyst for the Department of Homeland Security.” The phone didn’t disconnect. She took a little bit of a gamble on the next part. “I found the information about the jihadists with Western passports that was likely the impetus for your trip to Kapchorwa.”

Only the hint of breathing on the other end of the phone gave Olivia hope.

Mitch finally said, “I’ve dealt with a lot of Coopers lately.”

Olivia was barely able to contain her excitement when she blurted out, “Austin Cooper?”

Cautiously, Mitch said. “I take it this is not a coincidence. Your real name isn’t Heidi, is it?”

“No,” Olivia said, “that’s my stepmother’s name!”

“Good. Because if you’d said yes, I would have hung up. She’s the most relentless woman I’ve ever spoken to.”

“You spoke with my stepmother?” Olivia smiled. She
was
relentless.

“It seems. I’ll be crystal clear on this point. If you give this phone number to Heidi Cooper and she calls me, I’ll destroy this telephone.”

“You know about Austin, then.”

“She made me aware.”

Olivia asked, “Did you find him in Kapchorwa?”

“I’m not allowed—” Mitch paused. “I’ll tell you what I can.” He let out an exasperated sigh. “Oh, why not? You’re the first American I’ve talked to in two weeks. Yes, I saw Austin Cooper in Kapchorwa, but that was a month ago, and he was in sad shape. I apologize for my tactlessness, but if somebody told me he died five minutes after I left, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“But he was alive?  When you saw him, right?” Olivia went on to drill Mitch for everything he could disclose about his encounter with her brother. Through it, they developed a rapport. “You said you hadn’t talked to anyone in the States in two weeks. I don’t have any doubts that you—” Olivia paused as she thought of the best way to say what she wanted to say. “I’m convinced you are the person I had hoped to contact when I dialed your number. I’m also going to make the educated guess that your security clearance is higher than mine. Do you have any questions for me?”

“I can’t tell you where I am, but—”

“I should tell you,” said Olivia, “I found your number through searching for satellite calls coming from Africa that coincided with some information on record in a report. “I could find out where you’re calling from now, but if you ask me not to, I won’t.”

“What the hell,” said Mitch. “I’m in Nairobi.”

“Are things there as bad as they say?” Olivia asked.

“However bad they say, it’s much worse,” said Mitch.

“Honestly, there’s nothing coming out of Nairobi anymore. The reports and pictures I’ve seen are out of date but they paint a bleak picture.”

“It’s bad. It seems like everybody’s got Ebola here.”

Olivia asked, “How are you keeping yourself safe?”

“Lucky so far, I guess. Now I’m holed up in a third-floor apartment. I’ve got food and water enough to last another week. I don’t have to go out and expose myself. When the stuff runs out, who knows?”

“The last number I heard out of Nairobi was a hundred thousand cases.”

Mitch laughed. “Do you know what the population of Nairobi is?”

“Three million?” It wasn’t a guess. Olivia had seen the number in a report a week or so earlier.

“Yeah,” Mitch agreed. “I can look out my window right now and see at least a hundred dead on the sidewalks or in the street. That doesn’t count the number they’ve burned. There’s a pyre at the intersection down below me. The fire has been burning nonstop for a week.”

“For a week?” Olivia asked, not wanting to believe her projections were true.

“The locals add the bodies of the dead. Every day. Every night. It doesn’t stop. Fires are burning all over the city. The smoke hangs in the air all the time. The place reeks. If somebody told me right now that half the population had Ebola, or had died from it already, I wouldn’t doubt it.”

“My God.” She wondered how much of Mitch’s assessment was involuntarily exaggerated by a visceral reaction to being immersed in it. Still, the last official number of a hundred thousand had to be low, if Mitch’s account was even remotely correct. An irony occurred to Olivia—at the moment, she was a cog in a government machine tasked with repressing the bad news. Were other nations keeping their dirty laundry hidden from the global community? Probably.

Nairobi might have over a million cases.

“I need you to tell me something now,” said Mitch.

“Anything,” Olivia told him.

“Please tell me we stopped Almasi in time. Please tell me what I’m seeing is just happening in Africa.”

“I don’t have the full picture,” Olivia said. “My clearance was suspended after my brother turned up in Kapchorwa with Najid Almasi.”

“They thought he was involved?” Mitch asked, laughing derisively as he did.

“In a nutshell.”

“I can tell you one thing for sure,” said Mitch. “He wasn’t.”

“I know,” said Olivia. “The good news is, the Navy took out Almasi.”

“Fantastic.”

“But it happened yesterday.”

“Shit,” Mitch sounded suddenly despondent. “And his little messenger boys?”

“I don’t think they’ve apprehended all of them yet.”

It was Mitch’s turn to be shocked. “My God. How bad is it?”

“I think most of the terrorists flew from Nairobi to Frankfurt for connecting flights. Frankfurt topped forty-thousand cases this morning, though they aren’t reporting nearly that many. I can’t think of a major European or Asian city that isn’t dealing with outbreaks of several hundred. In lots of cities the total is measured in thousands.”

“How are we doing?”

Olivia knew he meant the United States. “The numbers will seem better, but I believe our numbers are smaller because the terrorists arrived here later, so our outbreak was delayed. Dallas rocketed up from a thousand cases five days ago to over eight thousand this morning. Atlanta is in the same boat. It’s everywhere here. Washington seems to be swimming in it, but it’s hard to get numbers, even for anybody in this department. We’ve been actively censoring stories about Congress. Somehow, they got a jump on the population, statistically speaking. The whisper number is sixty-three senators and three hundred and thirty-six representatives ill or dead.”

“Well that’s a silver lining.”

“Yeah.” Olivia said flatly. “The serious rumor mill says Congress pulled some strings to get hold of an untested vaccine that backfired—”

Mitch guffawed. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“It could be speculation. The second most popular rumor is that a bunch of them were on a fact-finding mission in Kenya—translate that as ‘safari’—on some pharma company’s dime, about the same time Almasi’s boys were flying out of Nairobi. One thing leads to another.”

Mitch said, “That sounds plausible.”

“The president has been put someplace secure,” said Olivia. “The cabinet—or what’s left of it—is with him. At least that’s the guess.”

“I guess that explains why nobody back at the office has time to call me anymore.”

“I hate to guess that they’re probably dead, but...”

“You know,” Mitch paused. “I don’t suppose it makes any difference anymore—my name is Mitch, Mitch Peterson. You may as well know who you’re talking to, since you may be the last person I ever talk to. In English, anyway.”

“What do you think you’ll do, Mitch?”

“I don’t know.” He sighed. “Staying here is a losing proposition.”

“The airlines shut down weeks ago. Most commerce across borders has stopped. I’d be surprised if any ships outside of the Navy are still at sea. Or maybe they all are. You know, people looking to escape the epidemic.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you have a way to keep your phone charged?” Olivia asked.

“Yes.”

“I owe you a favor. Why don’t I do some research on my end and see if I can find a way to get you home?”

“Probably won’t be much better there than here by the time I get home, but—”

“What?”

“Just thinking.”

“About?”

“I’ll tell you what, you do your research. You keep in touch. I’ll find a vehicle and work my way back to Kapchorwa. If your brother is still there, I’ll find him for you.”

Austin stood against the wall, feeling the dirty stiffness of muddy, blood-encrusted clothes.  He wondered if he was getting used to his own stink, or if the smell was diminishing on its own. He squirmed at the chafing under his arms and where his pants—getting baggier by the day—rubbed his legs when he walked. He didn’t want to think about the rash on his lower legs.

The General looked up from where he sat in his chair next to his window. He put a big piece of dripping meat in his mouth and chewed.

Austin didn’t look away. Some days his hate overpowered his subservient sense of self-preservation.

Through his chewing, The General said, “Don’t glare at me while I eat.”

Austin looked for a moment longer, nodded, and looked toward the open door instead.

“I like defiance,” said The General. “I don’t like petulance.”

Austin nodded.

The General grinned and said, “You didn’t think I knew that word, I’ll bet.”

No, Austin didn’t, but he kept that to himself.

The General waved Austin over. “Stand against that wall in front of me. I don’t like turning my head to look at you while I’m eating.”

Austin did as instructed.

“You’re educated, no?”

“I’m a college student,” Austin answered.

“In what year?”

“Fourth.”

The General sat back in his wooden chair. He looked out his window at the camp and pointed. “Most of them are bushmen. Most have no education. With them, I can speak of devotion and God. We talk of military matters. We talk of hunting in the forest. We talk of our common experiences. As a boy, I was not unlike most of them, but my parents were able to pay for school. I finished at the Catholic University. Most of them farmed or hunted.”

Because The General paused, Austin nodded. Acknowledgement of the conversation’s ebbs and flows seemed like the polite, safe thing to do.

“Let’s be pragmatic, you and I,” The General said.

“How so?” Austin asked.

“You know this word, pragmatic?”

“Of course,” Austin answered.

The General nodded. He pointed at the chair opposite his. “Sit.”

Austin did.

“I can’t understand the Chinese accent.” The General took another greasy bite of meat. “Sander is a simple man with simple thoughts, not much better than my soldiers. He’s been in Africa too long, chasing monkeys to sell to your pharmaceutical companies.”

Austin nodded agreement because it seemed like the correct response.

“Sander has no education, no interests beyond finding the company of a woman.”

Austin nodded.

“You speak American English. The accent is easy for me to bear.” The General sat up and leaned over the table. “But you have an American attitude.”

Immediately on the defensive, Austin shook his head. “I...I don’t know what you mean.”

The General grinned. “Like the English. You think anyone with an accent other than yours is stupid.”

“No,” Austin shook his head, trying to sell the lie. “I don’t.”

“You are here because I will make money on you when I sell you back to your rich parents.”

“I don’t have rich parents,” Austin protested.

The General held up a hand to silence him. “You have value to me. I don’t hate you. I don’t look down on you. I require that you do things while you are in my custody, as a way to maximize your value to me. Do you understand?”

“Sure,” Austin replied.

“Hate me if you will,” said The General. “Or see the situation as pragmatically as I, and talk to me like one educated man to another.”

Austin didn’t know what to say.

“I enjoy intelligent conversation,” said The General. “I don’t get that here.”

Austin thought for a moment. “And if you don’t like what I say? Then what?”

The General laughed. “I don’t need a pretense to beat you, or maim you, or kill you. I do what I want here, Ransom. You choose. Be an adult. Talk if you can accept your situation for what it is, a business transaction—unfortunate for you, fortunate for me. You will be gone in a month or two. If your family cooperates, you will leave with all of your body parts and I will have my money.” The General smiled and shrugged. “If you cannot be a man about it, then go back to your wall and glare at me in quiet petulance. You choose. Do it soon.” The General looked down at his plate. “I am nearly finished.”

Austin looked at the plate, looked back up at The General, and decided,
why not?
“Why don’t you feed your hostages more?”

The General laughed. “I had hoped for a better subject for our first conversation.” He laid his hands on the table and scrutinized Austin. “Westerners eat too much already. You won’t starve on what I give you.”

Austin started to argue but stopped himself. He was hungry. He felt like he was starving.

“Think of it this way,” said The General. “In this camp, I am the Westerner. You and the other ransoms are the rest of the world. I eat all I want.” He patted his belly. “I may even fatten myself needlessly. You?” The General laughed. “You get the scraps from my table. Now you complain, as does the rest of the world. The analogy is perfect, don’t you think?”

Austin, without an argument he could put together said, “That’s not true.”

“I’ve angered you into sullenness already,” The General observed. “I will leave it up to you, Ransom. I will give you a plate as full as mine if you wish. You may eat what I eat.”

Austin eyed The General cautiously. “I only require that you eat it in front of your fellow hostages. Their rations will remain the same. Perhaps then, you will understand my point.”

Austin looked at the remains of The General’s meal.

“You’re hungry, right? You want more food, don’t you?”

Austin nodded.

“What will you do, then?”

Reluctantly, Austin said, “I’ll eat what the others eat.”

The General laughed again.