Genocide of One: A Thriller (20 page)

Yeager pressed the button once to respond with the yes signal, then studied Pierce
through his binoculars.

“Nobody here is infected with a virus! Operation Guardian is a sham! You’re going
to be killed! All of you will be killed by the president’s administration!”

Stunned, Meyers looked up at Yeager from the base of the tree.

“You know what I’m talking about, Garrett! Your disloyalty has been exposed! There’s
nowhere to run!”

What was Pierce talking about? And how had Garrett been disloyal? Yeager, totally
confused, tried to sort it all out, but now it was his name being yelled out.

“Yeager, listen to me! Your son can be saved! There’s a way to treat that disease!
We’re preparing a method to treat Justin!”

Yeager felt like he’d been punched in the head. He understood Pierce’s message loud
and clear.

Justin’s life could be saved.

Jolted by this unforeseen development, Yeager waited for the next words. But Pierce
stopped yelling, and, just as he did when he’d first appeared, he gazed at the jungle
around him and then went back inside the hut, which was about chest-high for him.

Yeager and Meyers stayed still, unmoving. An hour passed, and when the entire camp
was swallowed up in darkness Yeager pushed the radio call button five times to signal
the team to withdraw.

Garrett and Mick were already waiting at the rendezvous point. When Yeager and Meyers
arrived Mick said in a low voice, “All clear.”

The members, night vision gear in place, turned toward Yeager. They were silent, waiting
for their leader to speak. Yeager was pondering whether he should order Garrett, their
communications specialist, to contact their employer, Zeta Security, for instructions.
But what if what Nigel Pierce said was true—that they’d fallen into a trap set by
the White House? And it was true what he said about Justin?

Growing impatient at Yeager’s silence, Mick spoke up, his voice angry. “Who told about
our operation?”

“How can we know that?” Meyers said. “We’re just at the tip of the operation. There’re
lots of other people involved.”

“No. Pierce was clear. He said Garrett had been disloyal.”

Garrett spun toward Mick. “You’re saying I betrayed the operation?”

“That’s right.”

Garrett snorted. “You’ve got quite an imagination.”

“Don’t play dumb. You’re a liar. I know you never were in the marines. You’re hiding
something.”

“Hold on! All of you!” Yeager broke in. “Everybody put your rifles down.”

The three of them didn’t follow his order, so Yeager slowly laid his rifle on the
ground. Meyers soon followed suit, and then Garrett and Mick reluctantly let go of
their rifles.

“Let’s think things through here,” Yeager said. “Nigel Pierce has caught on to our
operation. He said Operation Guardian is a sham. There’s no viral infection, and we’re
all going to be killed. According to him.”

“But that can’t be true, can it?” Mick said. “He’s trying to confuse us so we stop
the mission. Cause if he doesn’t do something, he’ll be killed.”

“But his information is correct. And he knows our real names, not our aliases. And
also he…” Yeager hesitated. “He knows I have a sick child.”

“So what? So you believe him? Tell me you’re not thinking of halting the mission.”

“Take it easy, Mick,” Meyers said. “We have to think this through carefully, or else
it could cost us our lives.”

Yeager was upset. Pierce had said there was a way to save his son. It was like he
was taking Justin hostage.

Garrett suddenly broke in. “I think what Pierce is saying must be true.”

The other three turned to face him.

“At least there’s a reason for someone to want to take my life.”

“Who’s trying to take your life?”

“The White House,” Garrett replied, and held up a hand to cut off Mick, who was about
to interrupt. “Can we talk alone?” he asked Yeager.

“Okay.”

“We have a right to hear this, too,” Mick said, pressing closer, and Meyers grabbed
him by the shoulders and pulled him back.

“Knock it off. This is a military operation. We follow what our leader tells us.”

Mick was about to argue, but when he saw Meyers’s hand go to his leg holster he stepped
back. “All right. I get it.”

Yeager picked up his rifle, and he and Garrett went off into a grove of trees.

When they were far enough away, Garrett said, “It’s no secret anymore that I never
was in the marines. I’m an active duty Blue Badger.”

A CIA operative. “So you’re with the Agency?”

“Yes. Paramilitary personnel. The Agency sent me to observe Operation Guardian.”

“Sort of like guard duty over us?”

“Exactly. I’m sorry I had to lie to all of you.”

“Is that what he meant by you being disloyal?”

After a moment of hesitation Garrett said, “No. That’s something else. Pierce is referring
to extraordinary renditions. The administration is torturing Islamic extremists. I’m
not talking about obvious things like waterboarding or sexual abuse. They secretly
send detainees to third-party countries like Syria and have them undergo even more
horrible forms of torture. Nobody comes back alive. As we speak someone is strapped
down to a folding steel bed frame somewhere and being bent in two until he dies.”
Garrett became emotional as he went on, which was unusual for him. “These are war
crimes. Plain and simple. I secretly got in touch with an NGO, a human rights watchdog
organization, and became a double agent. The goal was to gather enough proof to bring
Burns in front of an international tribunal for war crimes.”

“The president of the United States?” Yeager asked in disbelief. “That’ll never happen.”

“I know. It’s impossible. But it will intimidate him. If a suit is actually taken
up by the International Criminal Court, at least it’ll put a stop to US-led torture.”
Garrett was calm again and seemed resigned. “What I’m saying is, I became a traitor
to save my country’s honor. If the Burns administration wants to kill me, there’s
not much I can do about it.”

Yeager looked down, wondering how much of Garrett’s story to believe. “But why would
Nigel Pierce know all this?”

“That I don’t know.”

“One more question. If they just want to kill you, then what’s the need for a complicated
operation like this?”

“I think Operation Guardian came first, with the plan to kill all the operatives.
And then they just included me in it.”

“But why kill the other operatives—the three of us?”

“To silence you? Because we’re going to slaughter these innocent Pygmies.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense. If you believe Pierce, there’s no lethal virus.
So there’s no reason to kill the Mbuti.”

The two of them exchanged a meaningful glance.

“But consider our highest-priority target,” Garrett said. “This ‘creature’ we’ve never
seen before.”

What had been the butt of jokes up until now suddenly threw a dark shadow over Yeager’s
mind. “You have any idea what this creature is all about?”

“Not a clue,” Garrett said, shaking his head and looking straight at Yeager. “I’ve
told you everything I know. It’s up to you whether you believe me or not.”

Yeager sat in silence for a time, and then made his decision. “Okay, we’re going to
change part of the plan. Follow me.”

The two of them went back to the rendezvous point. Mick, obviously irritated, asked,
“So have you come to a conclusion?”

“Yeah. Tonight we’re going to attack the Kanga band. But our goal isn’t annihilating
the Mbuti. We’ll kidnap Nigel Pierce and interrogate him. We’ll hear straight from
him what this is all about. Any objection?”

Meyers and Mick shook their heads. For the time being they seemed convinced.

“What do we do about contacting Zeta?” Garrett, in charge of communications, asked.
“Should we send the call sign that we’re starting the attack?”

“Forget about them.”

“What if we get ambushed?” Mick asked. “The Pygmies know we’re nearby.”

“Then we defend ourselves. But try not to kill anybody. If we threaten them with our
guns we should be able to keep them under control. Then we take Pierce away and interrogate
him. Get your gear ready. We move out in fifteen minutes. Understood?”

The others nodded and picked up the AK-47s at their feet.

The magazine specialty library was in the middle of a residential area in the Setagaya
district of Tokyo. It was a smallish, two-story cement building, and it was hard to
believe that it housed seven hundred thousand magazines.

When Kento arrived a little before 9:00 a.m. there were already five people waiting
outside for the place to open. He’d read on the Internet that most of the people who
used the facility worked in the media, and he figured these people must be journalists.

A staff member appeared at the glass front doors and opened them right on time. Kento
followed the others to the counter, staying at the back of the line, and filled out
the form to use the library.

“Please write your name and address here,” Kento was told as a staff member held out
the form to him, and he hesitated for a moment. Finally he wrote in an alias, Daisuke
Tamura, and a phony address. Probably breaking the law again, he thought.

He paid the five-hundred-yen entrance fee and went over to the reference corner. There
all you needed to do was type in the keyword you were searching for in one of the
computers and it would list all the magazines that had articles containing the term.
Kento sat down at an open computer and typed in “Heisman Report.”

The screen listed twenty-five magazines, most of them published in 1975. Just as Sugai
had told him, these were articles from thirty years ago.

It had been all too easy, and Kento felt a bit deflated. He went ahead and filled
in a reading request form for all the magazines and took it to the counter.

They told him he could read the magazines on the second floor, and he walked upstairs
to the reading room. The room was a bright sunny space surrounded by glass picture
windows and furnished with oversized reading tables. Several of the people he’d entered
the library with at the same time were already seated, combing through various journals.

“Mr. Tamura, please come to the loan counter,” the PA announced, and it took Kento
a moment to realize they meant him. He hurried off to collect the magazines.

Twenty-five magazines made quite a stack. He made two trips over to a reading table
and sat down, wondering where he should start. The magazines were of all types, from
raunchy men’s magazines to heavy political journals. He decided to begin with the
lighter type of magazine and picked up the copy of
Heibon Pinch
.

The nude photos from thirty years ago amused him, with their whited-out genital areas.
Kento reflexively grinned, then, worried about the impression he was making on others
around him, cautioned himself that he should look more serious. He scanned the table
of contents and soon found the article about the Heisman Report.

It was a five-page special report, and Kento read every word.

The story detailed what would happen to the world in the event of a nuclear war. The
number of nuclear warheads the United States and the Soviet Union had contained enough
destructive power to wipe out mankind twenty times over. Fifty thousand nuclear missiles
were aimed at fifteen thousand targets, so there was no place on earth to run. The
article said that the average missile was two megatons, equivalent to the entire amount
of bombs dropped in all the air raids in World War II. The silos housing the nuclear
missiles were designed to be impervious to nuclear attack, so even after the first
wave of attacks, when all mankind had been wiped out, an automatic retaliation system
would continue to operate, and tens of thousands of missiles would continue to fly
over the deserted planet. Even if some people survived in fallout shelters, their
food stores would soon be depleted and they’d die, because the soil of the entire
earth would be contaminated with radiation and most animals and plants would go extinct.
Any living thing that happened to survive would suffer mutations from the radiation
and become monstrously deformed.

The report clearly underscored the incredible stupidity of the human race. Kento was
shocked to learn what idiotic beings humans really are. Maybe not all mankind—but
at least those countries that possessed nuclear weapons. The number of missiles listed
in the report was from thirty years ago, and he wondered how many missiles existed
today and how many times the present-day nuclear countries would be able to destroy
the human race.

The report was fascinating, but it had nothing to do with the research his father
had entrusted him with. The Heisman Report was supposed to discuss several possible
reasons for the extinction of mankind, but this article dealt solely with the threat
of nuclear war. It didn’t touch at all on any of the other sections of the original
report.

Kento picked up the second magazine, the June 1975 issue of
GORON
.

This one was also about the terror of a nuclear war. As Mr. Sugai had told him, in
the last half of the twentieth century the extinction of mankind by nuclear war was
a hot topic. I get it, I really get it, Kento thought, eyeing the heap of magazines.

It looked like it would be quite a task to unearth some useful information.

More than six hours had passed since they’d reassembled at their observation post,
as Yeager and the others waited for the right opportunity to put the kidnapping plan
into operation.

The Pygmy hunting camp was enveloped in darkness. People’s faces flitted into view
in the campfires before each hut, moving in and out of the shadows.