The Chimera Sequence (29 page)

“I figured as much.”

“The journalist? Is she here too?”

Olsson shook his head. “Silly girl thought she could escape and got shot down by one of these boy soldiers.”

“Here at the camp?”

“No, outside Goma. We were making a run for the border—trying to get those samples to you—when they found us. Guess that means her body hasn’t turned up?”

“Not as of yesterday morning, at least. Only news out of Goma was the ongoing disaster at your hospital.”

Olsson looked up. “Disaster?”

“According to a blurry mobile phone video being played on repeat by CNN, the disease is spreading like wildfire through patients and staff. I’m sorry.”

Olsson closed his eyes and bowed his head. “I should be there.” He pounded a fist into the dirt floor. “But instead? I am a prisoner, helpless doctor to a few dying rebels.”

“You’re helping me,” Cole said. “And what about my friend, a tall black man named Innocence? Have you seen him?”

The anger left Olsson’s face as quickly as it had arrived. “Yes, he is just across the camp, held like you overnight but unharmed. He told me about your capture and his brother’s death.”

Cole felt his heart rate speed up, a curtain of anger dropping over his burning eyes. What had Proper done to deserve such an end? Nothing. He was one of the best—kind, strong, thoughtful. And now he was gone too, one more body added to the ever-growing pile of corpses littering the graveyard of Cole’s mind.

The doctor moved behind him again and loosened the rope a little more. An overwhelming sensation of pins and needles flooded both hands.

“Can you move your fingers?”

Cole tried to send the message down his arms. “Can’t tell yet. Any motion back there?”

“Barely, but that’s all we need. You should be fine.”

“Thanks.” Cole felt his hands drop to his side. Freedom.

“Assuming you don’t get killed in the interim, that is.”

The doctor rotated him onto his back and placed his arms along both sides. They were coming back to life more quickly now, and Cole could feel the blood pumping all the way down to his fingertips.
Thank God.
It would have been tough to be much of a vet without them.

“And you think that’s a possibility?” Cole said.

“Oh definitely. Something’s going on here that’s making this Lukwiya character go crazy. And it’s not just the disease that’s killing off his army, either.”

“Hang on,” Cole said, sitting up. “They’ve got it here too?”

“Doctor!” The harsh shout was accompanied by a low moan.

Cole looked to the tent’s opening, and Olsson jumped to his feet. They had been talking for close to an hour.

“This man is sick.” Cole recognized the voice of his overnight tormentor and watched the tall man push into the tent. So this was the guy Olsson called Lukwiya, some kind of high-level officer sitting just below Kony himself. He was surprisingly well dressed in jeans and leather jacket—not exactly the faux-military getup Cole was expecting—and sported an expensive-looking watch. Yes, Olsson was right about new money. Lukwiya yanked on a rope, bringing a much shorter captive sprawling across the floor. The man sobbed for a moment and then lay silent.

“Sick, or wounded?” Olsson knelt down beside him.

“Just don’t let him die,” Lukwiya said, backing out of the tent. He stopped in the opening and looked up, dark eyes meeting Cole’s own. “Take a good look at this man, Mr. Animal Doctor. There are ways to make you talk.”

Cole held his gaze.
One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand
. He watched as Lukwiya violently cleared his throat, positioned the resulting mucous, and sent it flying. Cole felt it land on his cheek, warm and wet. The resulting stench of rotten mouth and chewing tobacco was almost overpowering. But still, he didn’t look away. Finally, the tall man shook his head, turned around, and was gone.

“Good to see you two hit it off well last night.” Olsson handed him a dirty rag.

“Thanks.” Cole wiped his face and threw the cloth into a corner. “Yeah, he seems to think there’s more to my story than just the dying gorillas.”

“And is there?” The doctor looked at him, eyebrows raised.

“Maybe,” Cole said. “It’s not that I don’t think you should know. Just better, for your own sake, that you don’t have any extra information to get beaten out of you.” He crouched down beside their new companion. “That what happened to this guy?”

“Yes,” Olsson replied. He had a hand on the man’s forehead. “I saw it, yesterday morning. I’d be surprised if this fever is related to his wounds, though.”

“Really?” Cole was staring at the side of the man’s head. The ear was completely gone, its former position marked by a gaping mess of oozing flesh surrounded by blistering skin. “That thing looks ripe for a nasty localized infection.”

“Of course, yes. And I have antibiotics for that.” The doctor was pulling an odd assortment of medications out of a large box. “My pharmacy. Everything under the sun except those missing antivirals and the exhausted anti-inflammatory drugs.”

“And the fever?”

“Seems too hot, too soon, to be the secondary bacterial infection that’s brewing in that wound. I’m guessing he’s coming down with your pox virus. Less than twenty-four hours since he would have been first exposed by the sick LRA here in camp.”

“Which is exactly what happened with my colleague, Marna. Have you ever seen something with an incubation period this quick?”

“Not in thirty years of tropical medicine.” Olsson shook his head. “That’s the scariest part of this whole thing. Even if the smallpox vaccine really is protective, the virus is spreading too fast for any public health response.”

“Any idea what kind of vaccine stocks they have here in central Africa?”

Olsson laughed. “If only there were such a thing. You might have enough for a few million Americans hidden away under some mountain in the U.S., but it will take months to ramp up supply for the rest of the world.”

“We don’t have months,” Cole said. “For us or the gorillas.”

A flash of white from the wounded man’s newly open eyes caught Cole’s attention.

“Gorillas?” The man’s faint voice was slow but clear. “You know about sick gorillas?”

“You speak English?” Cole was surprised.

“A little.”

“Well yes,” Cole continued. “My teammates and I found the sick gorillas here in Virunga. Do you know something also?”

The man grimaced as Olsson smoothed some white cream over his wound. “Give me medicine for the pain, and I will tell you more.”

A softening around the man’s eyes let Cole know the drugs were beginning to work. Maybe now he was ready to talk.

“So about the gorillas?” Cole didn’t want to push too hard. He thought back to the basic instruction on interrogation techniques he’d received early on with 10th Group. Broad, leading questions. Active listening. It was simple stuff, but it worked.

“Yes, I like the mountain gorilla.” The man looked almost comfortable, leaning against the side of the tent. “Never hurt one myself, no.”

“That’s good.”
Don’t push him too fast.

“I take many tourists to see the gorillas. Cheaper for them to come with us, no need to pay for official permits. And still plenty of money for me.”

“Where was that, only in Virunga?” This was interesting, but not a surprise. Cole knew that several of the rebel groups had been providing illegal gorilla tours to penny-pinching backpackers and the unscrupulous wealthy for years.

“Yes, only Virunga. Too many rangers on the other side.”

“Okay, that makes sense.” And it did. Economic development and relative stability in Rwanda and Uganda had enabled those countries to build up the security presence in their most valuable national parks to the point where this sort of illegitimate activity was almost impossible.

“Last week, my friends take some tourists into the park. They want to see big gorilla family, up close.”

“You were not with them?” Olsson asked.

“No, I was in Goma. I set the tour up. But a good woman, she needed my attention.” One corner of his mouth turned up in a slight smile. This was good—he was relaxing. “So I sent them with my friends this time.”

“Tell me about the tourists,” Cole said.

“There were two of them, young men like you.”

“Like me? You mean in age, or race, or language?”

“Yes, they were young like you. And fair-skinned, but not white.”

“Not white?”

“Darker, with short black beards.” The man brought a hand to his own face, then pulled it away quickly when his fingers reached the heavy layer of cream now protecting the wound. “And they spoke French, like me, but also something else to each other. Maybe Arabic, I do not know.”

Ding ding ding, we have a winner.
The addition of young Arab men made any twenty-first century story that much more interesting. Cole caught Olsson’s eye and saw he was thinking the exact same thing.
Don’t press the point yet, though.

“Okay,” Olsson said. “But what do they have to do with the gorillas getting sick?”

Cole tried to get the doctor’s attention again and gave a little shake of his head.
Not yet.

“And why should I tell you this?” The man sat up straight, his face hardening. “You think we need more white people interfering here? This is our country, our business. You have no place here.”

Shit.
It was textbook. Push too hard, and you would lose any chance of obtaining actionable intelligence. Time for the salvage attempt.

“Sir,” Cole started. Show respect, establish camaraderie. “We don’t even know your name yet. I am Cole McBride, and this is Lars Olsson. We are both captives here, like you.” He could see the suspicion in the man’s eyes, but he tried to maintain a kind and interested expression in his own.

The seconds passed. Waiting. Until finally, the man spoke. “You do not need to know my name. But yes, we all hate the same man.”

Cole tried to pick up where they had left off. “So you sent these tourists out of Goma with your friends?”

There was another pause as the man looked from Cole to Olsson and back to Cole again. “Yes, they went into the park with two other FDLR, men who also know the gorillas and make money in this way.”

“And when did you see them next?”

The man raised a hand again, held it in the air beside his missing ear, and then let it drop to his side. “I did not. I did not see them again, except for one, three days later.”

“Which one?” Cole was whispering now.

“My friend, one of the guides. I found him near Rumangabo, shot many times through his body and almost dead.”

Cole saw Olsson’s eyebrows go up.
Just give him time.

“I’m sorry,” Cole said. Was that neutral enough? It was hard not to look as desperate for the rest of the story as he actually felt.

“I put him in a truck, for the big white hospital in Goma.” The man shook his head slowly. “I do not know if he made it there alive.”

“Again, I am so sorry. I have also lost many friends this week.” Cole put a hand on the man’s leg. He wouldn’t have done it to another American, but African men were different, more tactile in their expressions of brotherly concern and affection. “But he must have told you something about what happened, yes?” Another gamble.

“It is a strange story,” the man said. He looked up at Cole again. “I do not know what to believe.”

“And we won’t either. But give us a chance. Maybe it can help us get out of here, together.”

“My friend, he tell me the tourists try to spray the gorillas.”

What in the world? “Spray them? What do you mean?”

“Yes, I asked him also. He said they use spray bottles, like for cleaning. They spray something at many gorilla faces until the animals run away.”

Cole felt a sharp pain and saw that his fingers had turned up a tiny shard of broken glass in the dirt floor. Spraying the gorilla’s faces. Arab men. Unusual pox virus outbreak. He wiped the hand against his beige hiking pants, leaving a streak of blood along with the dark African soil.

“Then they took guns and shot my friends. Left them for dead in the forest.”

“But one of them didn’t die.” Cole’s heart was racing. “The killers messed up.”

The man leaned back against the side of the tent.

“Yes.” He placed a rough hand on top of Cole’s own. “And now you know the story.”

The soothing tones of a solo cello broke into Travis Grinley’s disjointed dreams.

Leila has the virus. She’s sick.

He half-opened one eye as the slow melody continued.

She needs me.

Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1, the Prelude. It was the best ring tone his old flip phone could manage, and as beautiful as those familiar notes were, Travis hated alarms. He reached blindly for the phone and started pressing buttons.

Silent relief, and the darkness enveloped him again.

Where is she? I left her for one minute, and now she’s gone. Iran.

He was running through the Atlanta airport.

Leila!

The melody started again, louder now, and he reached for the phone again.

One more snooze?

No. He opened both eyes this time. The faint glow from a computer screen illuminated the room just enough for him to remember where he was. He sat up straight. Five and a half hours weren’t enough for a good night’s sleep, but that was all the HiSeq 2500 needed.

The sequencing results were ready.

Travis rolled over and pulled himself up off the floor. It wasn’t the first time he’d spent the night, and he knew it wouldn’t be the last. He sat down at his desk and popped an ID card into the keyboard. The wonders of technology. No need to go through the hassle of getting back into BSL-4 anymore, only to stand there for hours reading results and running reports on the genome sequencer itself. He could do it all remotely, from the comfort of his own windowless basement office. He looked around at the bare walls as the desktop loaded up. At least it was better than the cubicle farm he’d toiled away in for the first couple of years.

It always took forever for his computer to establish a secure connection and then load the data from the sequencing machine. What was Leila up to? Probably landed in Amsterdam already, waiting for the next flight on to Tehran. Schiphol International. Flower shops. That’s all he remembered—bulbs and kits and fresh tulips in every color under the sun. He’d been through a couple of times, traveling to and from Africa on quick missions like the one they missed out on earlier in the week. They would have been there now, braving the horrors of the hospital outbreak in Goma, maybe squeezing in a quick safari on the side. But no, stupid hurricane had to come along and screw him out of the adventure.