Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller: Book 3 (13 page)

“Where are you guys?”

“In the mountains just south of Ethiopia, I’m pretty sure.” Austin looked at the scrubby little trees in the headlights on both sides of the dirt road up ahead.  “I’m not sure.  We could be in Ethiopia for all I know.”

“Should I talk to Mitch?” Olivia asked.

Austin took the phone away from his ear.  “She wants to talk to you.”

Mitch shook his head.  “Not on these roads.”

Austin put the phone back to his ear.  “He’s driving.”

“He doesn’t know where you are?”

“No.” He looked at Mitch.  “He’s just as lost as I am.”

“Don’t tell me that.”

“We’re lost,” said Mitch, loud enough to be heard over the phone.

Austin said, “We’re past Gumi, that little town by the border that—”

“I know where Gumi is,” Olivia told him.  “How long ago?”

“The first time?”

Mitch laughed.  “Ask her if there’s more than one Gumi?”

“There’s only one Gumi,” she told Austin.

“I know.  It was a joke,” said Austin.  “The thing is, all these little dirt roads look alike.  The map isn’t helping much.  Some of these roads end.  They just end.  Some come to dry riverbeds that are too rough to cross.”

“Okay.  That’s okay.  It’s just that it’s been two days and you’re still in Kenya.”

“Maybe.” Austin smiled.  “Like I said, we might be in Ethiopia.”

“Austin, I can’t delay that plane forever.  You don’t know what I’m going through to put all this together.  I can’t just call in a plane and have it show up whenever you and Mitch find your way through Ethiopia.  Is there a village nearby, somebody you can stop and ask directions?”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“I’m sorry.  I’m frustrated and I’m worried.”

“I know,” said Austin.  “It’s late here, like two or three a.m.”

“I know.”

“We’re wanting to cross the border at night, just in case.  But if we can’t get it sorted out in the next hour or so we might hide the truck under a tree or something and sleep.  Try again when we have some light in the morning.”

“That might not be a bad idea,” said Olivia.

“Yeah, I think all we’re doing is burning gas and driving in circles.  Maybe we’re both so tired from sitting in this damn truck that we need some real rest.”

“You should do that,” said Olivia.  “I’ll do what I can on this end.  Don’t push too hard to get to Lemonnier.  I don’t want one of you to fall asleep at the wheel and get in an accident.  Get some rest, okay?”

“I’ll talk to Mitch.  We’ll give you a call again in the morning.”

Angry again.  Two days had passed since Jimmy promised the SPAM.  Despite Larry’s initial ambivalence, the more he thought about that salty, greasy, pink meat, the more he craved it.  Anything but the small portions of crap they served him from the camp kitchen. 

But two days had passed.  Larry had packed and shipped plasma just as he was supposed to do.  And no SPAM.  Jimmy’s promise got emptier each day.  Larry wanted to believe Jimmy’s lies and the dreams.  He wanted to believe in that mansion on a cliff overlooking the ocean. 

He opened the side door to leave the warehouse.

“Hey.”

Larry jumped back a step, startled by the voice in the dark.  A flashlight blinded him.  He covered his eyes.  “What? Who?”

The light angled away from Larry’s face and pointed at the ground.  All Larry could see were spots.

“It’s me.”

“Captain Willard?”

“Yep.”

Larry glanced over his shoulder into the darkness of the warehouse interior.  “You already checked everything, right?”

“Yep.”

Larry’s heart skipped a beat as his hands clenched the heavy box of books he carried in front of him, another beneficial trade from Millie, not Jimmy.  Still, the books were there in his hand.  He needed to lie.  “I—”

“Whatcha got there?”

Larry looked down as he panicked.  He shook his head as if to deny the box’s existence.

Captain Willard stepped up close to Larry and flipped open the box’s flaps.  “Books?”

Larry nodded, unable to produce an intelligible word as panic froze his brain.

Willard fingered his way through the books on the top layer.  “New?”

Larry nodded again.

“We didn’t check these in.”

“No.  Um.” Larry struggled.  “We missed these.  I—”

“You what?”

Good question.  Larry didn’t have an answer.  He couldn’t come up with a lie fast enough.  He looked at the books again. 

“Contraband?” Willard stepped back and shined the light into Larry’s eyes.  “You smuggling?”

Larry shook his head with all the vigor required to confirm the lie.

“Yeah.  Go back inside.”

Larry didn’t move.  Inside the warehouse, right in the middle of the floor, he knew lay a box of empty plasma bags—those untracked plasma bags.  The box was sitting in the open, near the door where Millie’s truck had unloaded.  Larry cursed himself for not hiding it before hauling the books out.  He cursed himself for a long list of mistakes.  He glanced toward the east fence where the orange light of the day’s burning bodies glowed against smoke rising into the night, and his panic rose again on a wave of imagined punishments.

Captain Willard followed Larry back into the warehouse.  He put Larry in a spot on the floor about a dozen feet from the box that contained the untracked and empty plasma bags.  In his straining fingers, the box of books grew heavy but Willard hadn’t given Larry permission to put it down.

Willard walked over to the box of empty plasma bags still on the floor.  With a hand on the butt of his sidearm, he knelt down, opened the box, and peeked inside.

“What do you suppose these are doing here?”

Captain Willard already knew the answer to that question.  Larry saw that clear enough on his face, heard it clear enough in his tone.  No lie Larry could come up with could explain that box, at least not one that would last past the first scan.  Once Captain Willard compared the barcode on any of those bags with the inventory, he’d see a discrepancy.

Then it occurred to Larry.  Somebody had ratted him out. 

Who?

Larry’s brain strained as he sorted through all the insults, all the bad deals, all the people inside who might despise him.  It had to be someone inside.  Nobody on the outside had a reason to turn him in.  Not even his crooked partner, Jimmy.  Not Millie.  Everybody on the outside was profiting from his position in the camp.

The rat had to be inside.

But why now?

Things had been fine for months.  What had changed?

Shit!

Only one thing had changed.

Larry had told that fucker Paul about the sick kids.  The lie had worked on the other plasmapheresis techs.  It was a dependable, well-rehearsed lie. 

But it wasn’t the lie that was at fault.  It had to be that Paul guy.  He’d turned greedy.  Or maybe he was greedy all along.  He was productive.  He turned out more product than nearly all of Larry’s other techs combined.  Obviously Paul wanted a better deal and he’d decided to make it on his own with the help of Captain Willard.

Paul, that two-faced bastard, had put Larry in this position.  Paul, that piece of shit, had screwed Larry. 

Larry’s anger simmered and then boiled away the fear that had been threatening to wet his pants while he watched Willard look through the evidence of his guilt while he thought about the punishment that awaited after the humiliating was over. 

With his elbow cocked out and his hand gripping his pistol in a show of just how anxious he was to use it, Captain Willard stood up and walked over to Larry.  “Here’s how this is going to go.  I know what all this is.  You know what all this is.  Judging by how many empty bags you have in the box there you’ve got a pretty good little operation running here.  How many times a week do you get a box that size?”

Larry looked at the box.  “I…uh.”

Willard slapped Larry so hard across the face that the box of books dropped to the floor and broke open.  Larry stumbled back and fell down with stinging in his cheek, a tear in his eye, and ringing in his ear.

“Don’t lie to me.  You want me to toss your ass in a cage with the other volunteers and have one of the techs drain you dry? Is that it, Larry? You got a death wish?”

Larry shook his head.

“Lie to me one more time and that’s what you’ll get.  One more victim.  One more body burned with the trash.  Nobody’s ever going to miss a piece of shit like you.”

Larry glared at Captain Willard as he got back to his feet.  He wanted to spit in the Captain’s face.  He wanted to punch him in the gut and stomp on his chest.  He wanted to shove a knife up that pinched ass.

Willard slapped Larry again, knocking him back to the ground.  “You put that stink eye on me one more time and I’ll gouge it out and shove it up your ass.  You need to decide how this is going to go you skinny shit and you need to decide right now.

Larry’s eyes were on the floor and his head was spinning as he watched a rivulet of blood drain from his mouth and onto the concrete.  “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry what?”

Larry felt the weight of his wiry muscles sagging on his brittle bones.  He felt shame.  His defiance was gone.  Stolen by a few slaps.  Why did the meatheads with authority up their asses run the world? Larry hated Captain Willard just as he’d always hated his teachers and his principal and his guidance counselors and his probation officers, the guards in the jails, the cops always giving him tickets and hauling him off, the whores who turned away and sniggered even when he waved his money in their syphilitic smiles.  He hated Paul what’s-his-fuck.  He hated Millie and he hated Jimmy.  “I’m sorry,
sir
.”

“That’s right.  Sir.  Don’t forget it.”

Larry nodded.  “Yes, sir.”

“Stand up.  Explain to me what you’ve got going on here.  Tell me every detail.  When you’re done, if you’re a good boy, I’ll decide how much of your little enterprise you get to keep and how much you’ll pay to me.  It’ll be your tax and I’m the tax collector.”

Larry made a promise to himself: if he got out of the shit he was in with Captain Willard, Paul was going to pay.

Hadi rode in the first truck, leading the other four through the desert.  They avoided cities and most small towns.  They used roads where they could to gain time.  But time wasn’t a problem.  They’d crossed the border from Saudi Arabia into Iraq an hour before and were ahead of schedule.  If they had no major setbacks, Hadi and his convoy would arrive on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea three days before his appointment with the Russians.

All was going well.

It was time to give Najid an update.  Hadi made the call.

Mitch was behind the wheel. 

Austin was taking a turn in the passenger seat, losing track of how many days and nights they’d been in the truck.  He rubbed his sleepy eyes.

“Morning,” said Mitch.

“What time is it?” asked Austin.

“Six local time.  Or a little after.”

The truck rumbled over some rough pavement, and Austin looked at the tumbledown shacks of a ghetto just east of the road.  Nothing moved there except a dog scavenging through a mound of garbage by a wall.  Then he noticed pillars of black smoke to the northeast.  “What’s that?”

Mitch looked at Austin, said nothing, and then glanced at the smoke.  “Olivia called earlier.”

“Earlier?” Austin looked east.  The sun was just over the horizon.  “It’s the middle of the night in Atlanta.  How long ago?”

“An hour.”

Austin looked on the floor for a bottle of water he’d left there before falling asleep.  He got a bad feeling.  “What’s the smoke over there have to do with Olivia? Is Djibouti burning?”

“Not the whole country.  We’re in Djibouti, by the way.  We crossed the border a little while ago.” Mitch pointed a little north of where the smoke was rising.  “The city’s that way.”

Austin looked northwest at buildings in the distance and clusters of smaller structures closer to the road.

“That’s Balbala over there.  A suburb.” Mitch glanced back at the smoke.  “That’s Camp Lemonnier.”

Austin straightened up in his seat and stared at what he was guessing was the destruction of their destination.  “What happened?”

“One of the Somali warlords crossed the border last night.  He brought a pretty big militia with him.  A couple of thousand men and heavy weapons.”

Austin shook his head.  “With Ebola killing everybody they can still come up with a force that big?”

“Yeah,” said Mitch.  “They hooked up with a jihadi outfit from Djibouti and coordinated the attack on the base.  Nobody was expecting it.”

“How bad?”

Mitch looked at the smoke.  “Don’t know.”

“Is the base still there?”

“The Somalis retreated but did a lot of damage.  The jihadists don’t have any trouble recruiting suicide bombers these days.  Any zealot with symptoms can take a shortcut to paradise by strapping a bomb across his chest.”

Austin looked at the smoke. 

Mitch said, “The base got hit pretty hard with Ebola already.  They were down to twenty-percent strength.”

“Twenty percent?” That seemed like a silver lining.  “All Ebola survivors?”

“I doubt it,” said Mitch.  “Olivia’s information wasn’t that detailed.  My guess is they’ve got some survivors and a lot of guys who haven’t caught it yet.”

“How big is the base? How many soldiers?”

“Marines mostly.  Three or four thousand I think.  At least before, you know.”

“So, six or eight hundred.”

“Some Air Force guys too, I guess.  Contractors.  CIA.”

“Busy place.” Austin turned around in his seat to reach back for the cooler that contained their diminishing supply of food.  “You hungry?”

“Grab me something.”

“Why the CIA?” asked Austin.  “Is that normal in this part of the world?”

“They fly drones out of Lemonnier.”

“Drones?” Austin scooted around in his seat and handed Mitch a granola bar.  “Like the stuff you see in the news? Those kinds of drones?”

Mitch shrugged.  “Is there another kind?”