The Ares Decision (16 page)

C
ALEB BAHAME SLOWED THE
jeep, increasing the distance between it and the lumbering truck turning twenty meters ahead. The terrified faces of the villagers they’d captured peered at Omidi through the holes cut in the trailer, fighting for air and trying to understand what had happened to them and their families.

All were injured, but only superficially. The seriously wounded villagers had been executed where they lay and their bodies burned. The few who had managed to avoid contact with the infected had been allowed to escape in order to spread word of Bahame’s sorcery and power.

It was the slightly injured villagers who were the unlucky ones. They had been herded into the truck to replace the infected who had disappeared into the jungle and would eventually die there, lost and bleeding.

Bahame had calculated the time to death after infection took hold and the range of one of his demons on foot—making sure to attack only villages remote enough to not allow a chain of infection.

Details, however, were not of great concern to the African. Could animals spread the parasite? Was there variation in the way it attacked the brain? Could it mutate? What if one of the infected came upon and attacked a herdsman or traveler who then returned to their village?

All these important questions were answered the same way: with assurances that his network of spies would recognize and kill anyone infected by the parasite who managed to escape his makeshift quarantine.

It was a system that would work for a time in Africa but that would be completely unscalable. No, to use the parasite in Europe or America, a good deal more sophistication was needed.

It took another half hour to reach camp, and when they finally pulled in, it was to the deafening cheers of Bahame’s soldiers. They surrounded the jeep, falling silent only when their shaman stood on his seat and raised his arms. He recounted his tale of victory, the rich baritone of his voice rising over the buzz of the jungle and the pleas of the people packed into the sweltering truck.

Omidi slipped out of the jeep and weaved through Bahame’s mesmerized troops. A quick glance behind him confirmed that it wasn’t only the ragged children who were captivated—Bahame himself seemed completely lost in his own delusions. A perfect time to exercise a bit of curiosity.

The Iranian made his way to a cave glowing with electric lights. There were two guards at its entrance, one no older than twelve and the other looking a bit queasy from the cloud of diesel fumes spewing from the generator next to him.

Omidi carefully ignored them as he approached and scowled dismissively when they started speaking to him in their native language. Both had undoubtedly noted his favored position with Bahame, leaving them wide-eyed and unsure whether to try to stop him.

The benefit of being a psychotic messianic leader was that your terrified followers were desperate to succumb to your will. The drawback was that they sometimes couldn’t be sure what exactly your will was. If they challenged Bahame’s honored guest in error, they would almost certainly be slowly and horribly put to death. On the other hand, if this wasn’t an authorized visit and they didn’t intervene, their deaths were equally assured and would be equally unpleasant.

In the end, they were swayed by his calculated confidence and let him pass into a natural corridor narrow enough that he had to occasionally turn sideways to get through. Bare bulbs hung from cables secured to the cave’s low roof, and he followed them, ignoring branches leading into the darkness. The temperature and humidity diminished as he penetrated deeper, but the stench of blood, excrement, and sweat became increasingly oppressive. Finally, the passageway opened into a broad chamber and Omidi stopped a few meters short, examining it unnoticed.

He recognized the elderly white man as the one who had arrived with the man Bahame beat to death. He was wearing a stained canvas apron and goggles as he leaned over a partially dissected corpse. At the back of the chamber was a wall of blood-spattered plastic set up in front of a hollowed-out section of stone fitted with steel bars. Inside, an infected man lay on the dirt floor, panting like an animal and watching an outwardly healthy woman sobbing in a similar cage some three meters away.

When Omidi finally stepped into the chamber, the infected man let out a high-pitched scream and rammed an arm through the bars with enough force that the sound of crunching bone was clearly audible.

The old man looked up and took a few hesitant steps back, holding the scalpel he’d been using out in front of him.

“Be calm,” Omidi said in English. “I’m a friend.”

“A friend?” the man stammered. “My name is Thomas De Vries. I was kidnapped from my home in Cape Town. I was taken—”

The Iranian held up a hand for silence as he scanned the equipment around him. It was in poor condition and a bit haphazard, but most seemed functional—including a modern microscope and small refrigerator. “What have you learned?”

“Learned? I’m not a biologist. I’m a retired general practitioner. You—”

“Be silent!” Omidi said. There wasn’t much time. Bahame’s speeches were characterized not only by their intensity, but also by their brevity.

“Help me and I’ll take you with me when I leave this place.” He pointed to the corpse the elderly physician had been hovering over when he arrived. “You must know something.”

“Yes,” De Vries said, looking around him nervously. “It’s a parasitic infection similar in some ways to malaria, but after it gets into the bloodstream it concentrates in the head—bursting the capillaries around the hair follicles and attacking the brain.”

“Is that how it spreads?” Omidi said. “Through the bleeding?”

“Yes…Yes, I think so. There are high concentrations in the blood and it enters through breaks in the skin and possibly the eyes; I’m not sure.”

“How long?”

“What?”

“How long until it takes effect?”

“Will you take me back to Cape Town? Back to my home?”

“I will put you on a commercial flight at Entebbe,” Omidi said, straining to hide his disdain for this descendant of the Christian conquerors who had subjugated Africa and the world.

De Vries nodded. “It’s a difficult question to answer. The only victim I’ve had an opportunity to observe began to experience agitation and confusion at around ten hours. My understanding is that there is significant variation, though. I would guess a range of seven to fifteen hours to the beginning of identifiable disorientation. After that, the disease appears to be very fast and consistent. Growing agitation until bleeding starts around three hours after initial symptoms and violent behavior follows almost immediately.”

“Death?”

“About forty-eight hours after full symptoms, though I’m told that most die of injuries or what is probably heart failure.”

The healthy woman in the cage sprang suddenly to her feet and started talking, wrapping her hands around the bars, unashamed by her own nakedness.

The doctor looked back at her, compassion visible in his expression despite the fact that his situation wasn’t much better. “Bahame always keeps one infected person imprisoned in here so that there’s no chance of the parasite dying out. When that one looks like he’s going to die, the woman will be infected to carry on the line.”

Omidi nodded. Again, workable in Africa but not practical for a large-scale attack on a modern country. He looked behind him to confirm they were alone and then pointed to the refrigerator. “Can a sample be frozen for transport?”

“No. It can’t live outside the body for more than a few minutes and is extremely temperature sensitive—every sample I’ve tried to refrigerate dies almost immediately.”

Footsteps became audible in the corridor, and they both fell silent. A moment later Bahame appeared at the entrance to the chamber.

Omidi tensed, uncertain how to act. Should he try to explain or just remain silent? There was no telling from one minute to the next what would cause the African to explode.

Fortunately, Bahame made the decision for him. “Get out.”

Omidi nodded respectfully and ducked back into the narrow passage, keeping an even gait as the cries of the doctor and the crash of toppling equipment echoed around him. Hopefully, Bahame would kill the old man. It was more likely that he would create unwanted complications than additional useful information.

Let him rot.

B
RANDON WOULDN’T HAVE WANTED
all this fuss, but as his friend I’m really happy to see it,” the man said, shifting uncomfortably behind the lectern.

Dave Collen tuned him out, unable to remember his name and completely uninterested in what he had to say.

The small auditorium was jammed with people, and he scanned the faces, wondering how many had actually known Brandon Gazenga and how many had come out of curiosity and the promise of free pastries. There were a few expressions of real emotion, but most of the people just looked on with grave detachment.

“I’m sure everyone here knows what a talented analyst Brandon was, but with the way the agency works, a lot of people never had the time to find out what a great guy he was,” the man continued, his throat constricting with sadness. “I had the privilege of working closely with him for the past few years…”

Collen continued surveying the crowd, still not finding what he was looking for.

The ramifications of having to kill Gazenga so soon were still evolving, but
how
he had died made matters even worse. Who would have thought he’d wait until he was suffocating on his filthy carpet to grow a backbone? After admitting to contacting Russell, he’d finally fessed up to the time and place of their meeting, and Collen had lived up to his end of the bargain, holding out the phony antidote.

He’d expected Gazenga to snatch the bottle and shake the useless pills desperately into his mouth. Instead, he accepted them calmly, slowly swallowing them and then letting his head settle to the floor. Collen hadn’t left until the analyst’s gaze became fixed and unseeing.

They’d sent their team to the rendezvous point, but it quickly became clear that Gazenga had known he was a dead man and lied. The tracker they’d put on Russell’s car showed her heading into Pennsylvania—something they discovered too late to set up another ambush.

Collen perked up when the door at the rear of the room opened and Randi Russell slipped through. He nudged Larry Drake and gave a nearly imperceptible nod. It wasn’t proof that she’d known Gazenga was the one who slipped her a note, but it was a strong indication. She was hardly the type to show up to a memorial—particularly one for a person she didn’t know.

“When am I going to see a final?” the DCI whispered, referring to the revised plan for Russell’s elimination.

“Soon. We have a few more details to work out. She’s living alone in a friend’s cabin while she’s stateside. It couldn’t be more perfect for us—no security system, no neighbors for miles, and only one lightly traveled rural road in.”

“Then why isn’t it done?”

“The contractor I want to use is difficult to contact in a way that doesn’t leave a trail.”

“No mistakes, Dave. Do you understand me? We can’t afford any more.”

Collen nodded, wondering if it was an overly optimistic assessment of the situation. He’d completed an exhaustive survey of Gazenga’s computer use, uncovering his carefully hidden search for someone to help him, but otherwise coming up empty. Russell appeared to be similarly clean.

Just because he hadn’t found anything, though, didn’t mean there was nothing to find. Most likely, Gazenga had been telling the truth when he said that he’d given Russell only a time and place. But it was far from certain.

Finally, the loss of their eyes in Uganda had been a disaster. They were left tracking Smith with marginal satellite images and a single unreliable man on the ground. As of an hour ago, they could pinpoint the team’s location with only a thirty-mile margin of error.

The fact that they couldn’t afford another mistake was certain. The question was whether they’d already made too many.

Randi Russell slid along the wall, joining in on the subdued laughter as the speaker told a story about a rafting trip he’d taken with Gazenga. She finally stopped at a table and lifted the tinfoil on one of the plates lined up on it.

Doughnuts.

She pulled one out and began gnawing at its edge as she made her way to an unoccupied corner of the room. The size of the crowd made her wonder how many people would show up on the day her own luck inevitably ran out. Living a life doing things that couldn’t be talked about in countries most people couldn’t find on a map hadn’t left her with a particularly large circle of friends. And the few she did have tended to be a little skittish about showing their faces or admitting they knew her.

No, there would be no brightly lit, pastry-fueled eulogies celebrating her life and service. She’d have to settle for a few toasts by anonymous men and women sitting in dusty third world bars scattered across the globe. And truthfully, she’d have it no other way.

The speaker wrapped up his story and indicated to his right. “Director Drake had the privilege of knowing Brandon personally and wanted to say a few words, so I’ll shut up now. Are you ready, sir?”

Randi watched Drake stride to the lectern amid respectful applause. This seemed to confirm the rumor that Gazenga was working on something high-level. What it was, though, she still had no idea. His focus was on central Africa, and there was nothing she could find going on there that couldn’t be explained by the continent’s normal state of barely controlled chaos.

Of course, the digging she’d done had been fairly superficial thus far. The fact that he’d died of a perfectly credible accident so soon after passing her that note suggested two possibilities. One, he should clean out his fridge more often. Or, two, someone very slick and very powerful had wanted him dead. Assuming the latter was true, it had made sense to be as discrete as possible.

Unfortunately, there was only so much you could learn from the shadows. There was still no response to the message she’d left Jon, and all she’d been able to determine was that he was on leave from his job at Fort Detrick. Why he’d requested the leave or what he was doing with it was still a mystery.

She had a friend at TSA checking into whether or not he’d taken a commercial flight anywhere, but the answer was taking longer than she felt comfortable with. If Jon was in trouble, she needed to find him and bail his stupid ass out.

So there she was, making an appearance at Brandon Gazenga’s wake. It’d be interesting to see who noticed.