The Ares Decision (11 page)

T
HERE SHE WAS.

Brandon examined the woman waiting for the elevator and, when he was satisfied that she wasn’t on speaking terms with any of the people around her, moved in.

As his discomfort with the Uganda operation had grown, he’d begun quietly researching people he could go to if he decided he was in over his head. His work with Drake allowed him access to the CIA’s database well beyond his pay grade and he’d managed to come up with a short list of tough operatives with extensive experience and reputations for unshakable integrity.

Despite looking like she was still in her midthirties, the woman in front of him was a minor legend at the agency. He’d initially disregarded her because she was posted in Afghanistan but then heard she was back stateside sitting out the backlash over the death of a Taliban leader she’d tracked into the Hindu Kush. Maybe his luck was finally changing.

The elevator door opened and he shuffled in, staying close enough to her that he could smell the shampoo in her short blond hair. The athletic body, full lips, and tanned skin were undoubtedly significant assets in her work but a clear liability to him. The surreptitious glances of the men in the elevator weren’t going to make what he’d come to do any easier.

Gazenga fought for a position beside her in the crowded space, watching in his peripheral vision as she fixed her dark eyes on the floor numbers counting down.

The elevator stopped with a jerk and he used it as an excuse to bump into her, slipping a note into the pocket of her jacket as he did so.

She turned slightly, black eyes wandering along the side of his face and giving him a sudden overwhelming sense of claustrophobia. At the last moment, he pushed through the people in front of him and out the closing doors. The hallway was nearly empty and he concentrated on controlling his breathing as a duct overhead blew cool air across his sweaty skin.

He hadn’t lost his nerve. He’d done it. But for some reason the sense of relief he’d anticipated didn’t materialize. If anything, the sensation of being trapped continued to tighten around his chest.

With that note, he’d irretrievably stepped off the diving board. All he could do now was hope the pool had water in it.

P
ETER HOWELL SMILED CASUALLY
at a group of comically overarmed men staring dumbfounded at them as they cruised by. Ahead, an elaborate archway led through the stone wall they’d been paralleling for the last few minutes. By the time they stopped in front of it, there were at least three mounted machine guns and no fewer than thirty small arms trained on the aging taxi. A man in fatigues came cautiously toward them, looking over the sights of an Israeli-made Tavor assault rifle and screaming unintelligible instructions.

They were forced from the vehicle, and Smith grabbed Sarie’s arm to keep her from being dragged away, trying to position himself so that she was shielded between him and the car.

“Is there a plan here?” Smith shouted over the hood, not sure if he was more angry with Howell or himself. “Or did you just pick today to commit suicide?”

“A bit of shopping,” came the Brit’s enigmatic answer.

A young man in a tattered Smurfs T-shirt gave Smith a hard shove and he pushed back, sending the man to the ground. “Back the hell off!”

The African jumped to his feet, clawing for the machine gun hanging across his chest, and Smith lunged for him. Someone to his left threw an elbow and he ducked around it, keeping his eyes locked on the compact Heckler & Koch lining up on him.

Then it all stopped. There was a brief shout from the direction of the archway and the young man backed away, careful to keep his hands well away from his weapon.

The crowd began to disperse and the guards lost interest in them, going back to surveying the people moving back and forth in the dusty road.

“Peter! My good friend,” came a heavily accented voice. What remained of the mob scurried out of the way of a tall African striding toward Howell.

“It warms my heart to see you again,” he said, pumping the Brit’s hand. “I never dreamed I would.”

“Good to see you, too, Janani. I’d like to introduce you to my friends Sarie and Jon.”

The African motioned toward them. “Come. We must get out of this horrible sun.”

Smith looked over at Sarie and shrugged, taking her arm before following the two chatting men through the arch.

“You’ve gotten fat,” Howell said.

“And you’ve gotten old, my brother. I live a good life. I have many wives and children. How many sons do you have?”

“None.”

Janani shook his head sympathetically as they turned down a narrow alley lined with storefronts dedicated to merchandise built around the theme “Things that can kill you.” There were numerous gun dealers, specialists in various types of explosives, and a shop with a canary-yellow awning advertising Africa’s best selection of handheld SAMs.

Janani led them through an unmarked door that opened into a surprisingly large and well-equipped machine shop.

“Janani makes custom guns,” Howell explained, waving a hand around him but not looking back. “The best in the world.”

“You flatter me, Peter. Do you still have the pistol I made you so many years ago?”

“I’m afraid I lost it.”

“But not before it killed many men.”

Howell nodded, his voice suddenly sounding a bit distant. “Many men.”

They passed through an open door at the back and came out onto a covered patio containing a dizzying assortment of guns lined up in racks. A lush butte started about twenty-five yards beyond, sloping gently upward, with targets spaced at measured intervals.

“Jon,” Janani said, spinning to face him. “What do you normally carry?”

“A Sig Sauer. Sometimes a Beretta.”

An unimpressed frown crossed the African’s face and he pulled a pistol from a neat foam display.

Smith accepted it but barely had his hand around it before Janani snatched it back with a disgusted scowl.

“Completely wrong,” he muttered, selecting one with a slightly thicker grip. “Tell me how this one feels.”

He had to admit that it felt good—the same confidence-inspiring solidness of the Sig Sauer without the weight.

“Do you mind?” Smith said, pointing to the range.

“Please.”

He fired a round at the fifty-meter target, putting it dead center in the human silhouette.

“It seems to agree with you,” Janani said, a craftsman’s pride audible in his voice.

“Fits good, shoots nice. But will it stop anything? The recoil feels light.”

“You’re firing a 170-grain ten-millimeter round with a thirteen-hundred-foot-per-second muzzle velocity.”

“Come on…Really?”

The African dipped his head respectfully.

“So what’s the verdict, mate?” Howell said.

“If it’s reliable, it’s the best thing I ever shot.”

“Of course it’s reliable!” Janani whined. “Certainly more so than anything the
Italians
are involved in.”

“All right,” Howell said. “We’ll take it and another one like it for me. Then I’ll need a couple assault rifles. Something maneuverable along the lines of a SCAR-L, but I’ll leave the final decision to you. No point in traveling light, so say a thousand rounds for the rifles and a hundred each for the handguns. Three spare clips apiece.”

“Of course. We can have them ready by morning. Can I interest you in anything else? Perhaps a portable rocket launcher? I have a prototype that I think you’d find very compelling.”

“Tempting, but we’re trying to keep a low profile. You wouldn’t happen to know anybody in the car business, would yo—”

“Excuse me!”

They all turned toward Sarie, who was waving a hand irritably. “Are we forgetting someone?”

The African was clearly confused. “I’m sorry. Are you making a joke?”

“I think she’s serious,” Smith said.

Janani shook his head miserably. “Women have become so…What is the word you use? Uppity. It’s this new feminism.”

He walked over to a chest of drawers and pulled out a minuscule chrome .32. “This looks very nice with a handbag.”

Even Howell managed a laugh, less at Janani’s joke than at Sarie’s deadly expression.

“I was thinking of something more like this,” she said, walking up to a row of scoped semiautomatic rifles. She grabbed one and pulled the bolt back, confirming that it was loaded before starting for a table piled with sandbags.

“That’s not a toy,” Janani said as she laid the gun down and knelt behind it.

When she didn’t acknowledge his warning, he turned back to Howell and Smith. “My first wife behaves like this. I blame Oprah. We get—”

All three of them ducked in unison as an explosion rattled the rickety thatched roof above them. There were shouts from inside the building and a number of armed men ran out, only to find Sarie joyfully clapping her hands. “You put dynamite behind them? I love that!”

The African frowned, looking at what was left of his plywood target cartwheeling through a distant cloud of dirt and shattered rock. “Only the ones at eight hundred meters.”

“Do you mind if I shoot another?”

Janani walked over and snatched away the rifle. “Out of the question, madam. This weapon is far too heavy for you and the stock is all wrong. I’ll have something more suitable when you and your friends return.”

N
O PROBLEM. HOTEL.”

Sarie chuckled quietly in the backseat as Jon Smith’s head sank into his hands. They’d found their driver a few miles from the arms market hoofing it back to Kampala. He’d seemed a little shocked to see them alive but gratefully climbed back behind the wheel after checking his rust bucket of a cab for damage.

“No,” Smith said for the fifth time. “
Hospital.
We want to go to the
hospital
first.”

Howell’s detour, while admittedly productive, left them no time to stop at the hotel before their appointment with the director of Kampala’s main medical facility.

“No problem. Hotel.”

Smith groaned and fell back into his seat.

“I think he’s missing the subtlety between the words ‘hospital’ and ‘hotel,’” Sarie offered. “What’s it actually called?”

He must have been more tired than he thought not to come up with that himself. Sixty hours of travel took a hell of a lot more out of him than it had when he was thirty.

“Mulago,” he said, enunciating carefully. “Not hotel. Mulago Hospital.”

The driver’s eyes widened with understanding. “Mulago? You sick?”

“Yes! You’ve got it! I’m sick. Very, very sick.”

“Mulago. No problem.”

Fifteen minutes later they pulled up to an enormous crate of a building surrounded by a railing painted an unfortunate baby blue.

“Mulago!” the driver announced as Smith threw open the door and slid out from beneath his pack.

He crouched and leaned back in to look at Howell. After his hour of normality at the arms market, he’d turned melancholy again—something worryingly at odds with his personality. “Can you stay with the car, Peter? We won’t be long.”

The Brit leaned his head back and stared up at the mildewed headliner. “I don’t have anything else on my calendar.”

H
ELLO, I’M DR.
Jon Smith and this is Dr. Sarie van Keuren. We have an appointment with Dr. Lwanga.”

The woman stood with surprising nimbleness from behind a desk about half her size. The stern expression she’d worn when they approached transformed into a toothy smile. “Of course,” she said in lightly accented English. “I have your appointment right here. If you will just follow me, please.”

She led them less than ten feet to an open office door and then stepped ceremoniously aside so they could enter.

“Dr. Lwanga?” Smith said, approaching a bespectacled man standing at an odd angle that suggested childhood polio. He closed the book in his hand with a snap and limped toward them. “Drs. Smith and van Keuren. It is a great honor.”

“Likewise,” Sarie said. “You have a beautiful facility here.”

“There isn’t much money,” he responded. “But one does what one can.”

“We know you’re busy, Doctor, and we don’t want to take up too much of your valuable time…,” Smith started.

“Of course. What is it I can do for you?”

Smith fell silent, letting Sarie take the lead as they had agreed. She was a minor celebrity across the continent for her work on malaria and knew better what questions to ask. He’d just stand by and make sure she didn’t get overexcited and reveal too much.

“Jon and I are heading north on a brief expedition to find a parasitic worm that affects ants. But while we were doing our research, we found a mention of another parasite that caught our attention.”

“I’m afraid this isn’t really my area,” Lwanga said apologetically.

“We came to you because there are reports that it may victimize humans, causing rabies-like symptoms and possibly bleeding from the hair follicles. Also, it seems to affect only the North, which is where you grew up, isn’t it?”

Lwanga’s expression seemed strangely frozen as Sarie continued.

“We couldn’t find any information on what animals might host the parasite or really any corroboration that it even exists. Does it ring a bell by any chance?”

The African suddenly came back to life. “I’m afraid not. I’ve never heard of anything like what you’re describing.”

“Would you know someone we could talk to—maybe a doctor working in the rural areas to the north? Someone who could help us ask the right people the right questions?”

“It’s been a long time since I left my village and I’ve been very remiss about staying in touch.” He stuck out a hand in what was clearly a dismissal. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help. Now, you’ll have to excuse me. I have rounds.”

“That was a very strange meeting,” Sarie said as they came back out into the heat of the afternoon sun. “I don’t want to seem negative, but I’m not sure that he was being completely honest with us.”

It was obvious that she was having a hard time coming right out and calling the aging physician a liar, but Smith had no such qualms. In the world of professional liars he lived in, Lwanga was a rank amateur.

“He knew exactly what you were talking about, Sarie. Did you see the tea service next to his desk?”

“
Ja
.”

“How many cups were on it?”

“How many cups? I don’t know.”

“Ah,” Smith said. “You see, but you do not observe.”

“Sherlock Holmes,” she said with a grin. “Does that mean I get to be Watson?”

“Not yet. But I see potential. There were
three
cups and steam coming from the pot’s spout. You know better than me that Africans are nothing if not polite.”

She nodded slowly. “He intended for us to stay on a bit.”

“Until you brought up crazy people bleeding from the hair.”

“The stuff about him losing touch with his village is nonsense, too, Jon. African politeness is nothing compared to African devotion to family.”

They crossed onto the sidewalk and Smith reached for their taxi’s door. “And so the plot thickens.”

D
R. OUME LWANGA
stood at the edge of the window, peering down into the street below. The phone in his hand was slick with sweat, and he had to grip it tightly to keep the smooth plastic from sliding through his fingers.

“They said that
specifically
,” President Charles Sembutu’s voice on the other end said.

“Yes, sir. They didn’t give details of which rabies symptoms, though madness seemed implied. They did distinctly say bleeding from the hair.”

“That’s all?”

“They were interested in a possible animal host but said their main objective was a worm affecting ants—that this other parasite was just something that came up in their research. They didn’t seem certain it even existed.”

“Where are they now?”

“Getting into a brown taxi with a box on the roof.”

“Is there anyone else in it besides the driver?”

“I think there’s someone in the backseat. From my position it’s hard to tell. Do you want me to—”

The connection went dead and Lwanga watched the cab pull away from the curb, feeling a pang of guilt. Their fate was in God’s hands now.