Viral (35 page)

“Unfortunately, some bad news. One of our liaisons was killed.”

Instead of explaining, Chaplin handed Charles Mallory two sheets of paper. One was a copy of a photo showing Honi Gandera. It was grainy, but clear enough.

Mallory winced. “Hassan.”

“Yes.
Il Macellaio
.”

“Trent, too.”
Another mistake
.

Chaplin didn’t respond. Charles Mallory knew he could not afford to think about that now, although of course he would later. If the past became an enemy, you beat it by not thinking about it. He had to process information in the most effective manner possible now. Not haphazardly. “Okay,” he said, closing the folder. “What have we got?”

“Everything points to the next few days,” Chaplin said. “Contractors have been pouring in for a week. Some of them don’t seem to have specific tasks yet. Makes things somewhat easier for us.”

“Less conspicuous, you mean.”

“Yes. There are bunkhouses in half a dozen locations in the city. Some of the contractors are renting apartments. Medicines have been distributed for the past several weeks, at health clinics along the border and to many of the contractors here in the city.”

“Vaccines.”

“Yes.”

Chaplin handed him a second folder, containing color print-outs of aerial photos. “Okoro’s produced a good set of aerials of the whole country. We’ve been able to trace the movement of vehicles and isolate the location of what we believe is the viral property. Here’s the setup, as near as we can tell.” He pointed at the aerial on top of the stack. “The suspected air fields are all marked. The main one is here, northwest of the city. A clearing in the woods about seven kilometers from the city limits. Planes have been taking off from there just about every evening.”

“Planes. Plural.”

“Yes. Spray planes with a range of chemicals known as pyrethroids.” He shuffled two more aerials from the stack. “This shows a delivery truck going in there yesterday.”

“Delivering four-hundred-gallon spray tanks?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

Mallory shrugged. “That’s it, then, isn’t it?”

“We think that’s the viral property, yes. What they’re going to use to depopulate the capital and the surrounding regions. As I say, we’ve traced it very precisely through satellite images. We believe the tanks are here in this hangar. So that’ll be your target.”

“What kind of planes?”

“They’re similar to the NEDS planes your government used to spray drug crops in South America. Combat crop-dusters, they called them.” NEDS: Narcotics Eradication Delivery System. “Bigger than regular crop-dusters. Capable of staying airborne for up to seven hours. The biggest difference, though, is that these appear to be auto-piloted.”

“Drones?”

“Yes. Also, as you’ll see, there are lots of military and police vehicles all over the city. And armed security contractors roaming the streets. There’s also an outlaw contingent that’s supposedly been coming into town at night and kidnapping people off the streets.”

“Oh? Who are they?”

“We’re not sure. Origin unknown, at this point.” Chaplin’s brow wrinkled. As head of operations, he tried to anticipate every question; clearly, he didn’t have a good answer for this one. “City police seem afraid of them, give them a wide berth. Be careful.”

“Who do you think they are?”

“Don’t know. It’s possible they might be connected with the Hassan Network.”

“Really.”

“Possible.” Mallory heard a sound and looked up. Took a deep breath. Relaxed again. It was just the wind.

“We have weapons?”

“Yes. And a dozen IEDs. Wells will meet with you in the morning, at the Blue Star Café at 8:30. He’ll let you know what happened on the border tonight. Only one group meeting tomorrow, 1:40 in the afternoon.”

“Okay.” Only one group meet
scheduled
, Charlie thought. “And what about Isaak Priest? Any sign of him?”

“No. We hear the name. He’s sort of a phantom presence. He’s made some big deals with the government, evidently. Deals which, in effect, have allowed this to happen.”

“Do we know that he actually exists?

“What?”

“My father thought he maybe wasn’t a real person. That he was an invention of some sort.”

Chaplin frowned. “No, he exists. He moves through the city to the airfields and other contact points the way the heads of the big contracting firms do, in armored vehicles. He has a lieutenant, name of John Ramesh, who’s very visible.”

“Who is protecting Priest, exactly?”

“Private security. He’s escorted in cars with half-foot-thick armored doors, flat-run tires, bulletproof glass. It’s like Cadillac One, your president’s car. There’s an old mansion on the river south of here known informally as ‘the Palace.’ ” Chaplin straightened the papers in front of him. “We think he might be based there. About twenty-five kilometers from the capital. Thickly forested. There’s only one road in, and it’s closed. We haven’t been able to get good pictures of it.

“Anyway, here’s the key to your apartment for the first night. The key to your apartment for the next night will be there, in the kitchen drawer.”

“All right.” Charles Mallory stuck the folders in his bag and left. It was dark now, the streets crowded with pedestrians, rickshaws, bicycles, and mini-buses. He walked among the vendors until he
found one selling clothes, bought a used long-sleeve collarless black shirt and dark corduroy trousers, and carried them into a café. White-skinned contractors sat at tables along the sidewalk, drinking beer, talking in loud voices. Charlie took a seat in the back and ordered a beer, along with a plate of red beans and rice and a cup of coconut bean soup.

“Where you from?” the waitress asked, pouring. She had a nice smile.

“Canada.”

“Not America?”

“No.”

“What sort of work you here for?”

“Water projects.”

She nodded. When she came back with his food, she smiled again. “So why are so many people like you coming to our country now?”

Charlie didn’t say anything. The fan stirred the warm aroma of curry spices. She wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Something’s going to happen, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Charlie looked out, at the starry sky above the whitewashed walls and tin roofs. Wondered how many people thought that way. “What do you
think
is going to happen?”

“I don’t know.” She glanced behind her and said, quietly, “People are talking about medicines. People are selling it.”

“Are they? Where?”

“At the health clinics, in the country. Some on the street. They say we’re going to need them. That something bad is coming.”

“What do they think it is?”

“I don’t know. They say it’s much worse than AIDS. Everyone will get it and everyone will die.”

“I don’t think so,” Charlie said. She was trying to get him to agree with her, but he didn’t want to do that.

“You don’t?”

“No.”

After she walked away, Charles Mallory finished quickly. He left a hundred and twenty Mancalan shillings on the table and headed back out into the streets toward the rented apartment.

IT WAS A SINGLE
room in a musty two-story building with plaster lathe walls. Charlie washed in the sink and then lay on the bed, his feet and ankles extending over the edge. He listened to the sounds outside. Figuring the next day, October 4.

Finally, he closed his eyes and slept, for nearly seven hours. In the morning, he washed his face again, pulled on new clothes, and went out, taking his bag and the key to the next night’s apartment. Already the streets were busy, and he began seeing the security vehicles Chaplin had mentioned—pick-ups with recoilless rifles mounted on the back; Jeeps manned with machine guns. Occasionally, an APC—armored personnel carrier—with smoked-glass windows. Most of the contractors traveled in groups of two or more, Charlie noticed, meaning it probably wasn’t wise to be seen alone.

The Blue Star Café was a couple of blocks from the heart of the city center. Charlie picked out the angular features of Jason Wells’ face from the street. He was sitting against a side wall by a dirt-coated spinning fan. The air in the café smelled of fried dough from the
mandazis
.

Wells wore a dark green, short-sleeved shirt and khaki pants. He was a solidly built man of medium height who rarely smiled, with wide cheeks, a broken nose, and great dark eyes that conveyed the calm of a deeply planted self-confidence. He was one of the smartest soldiers Mallory had ever known.

They shook hands and Charlie sat.

“Get in yesterday?”

“Late.”

“Fourth day,” Wells said. He touched the handle of his coffee cup.

“How did it go last night?”

“We got it. Propellant launcher, two aerosol spray tanks of plasmids. Stored with the vaccine. Sandra Oku laid everything out and we just walked in. It was clean.”

“So we’re in business.”

“If it works.”

Charlie studied him. Wells could be a bold strategist, but he was also a realist. He had grown up in the Midwest and served in Special Forces for nine years before joining DMA four years ago. “What’s the prognosis overall?”

“Hard to say,” he said. “We’re late to the party. At this point, psychology’s going to be a big part of it.”

The waitress came over and Charlie ordered coffee, black, and a raisin muffin. After it arrived, he asked Wells his plan.

“My recommendation is two operations. One precision, the other diversion. Do the diversion al Qaeda style. Hit half a dozen targets, simultaneously. Starting tonight. Maximum impact. Both strategically and psychologically. Go for targets that are actually part of their operation: train line, communications tower, air fields. I’ve got them mapped out.”

“Chaplin said you have a dozen explosives.”

“Fourteen. Nadra and I made six IEDs. Twenty-pound ammonium nitrate bombs. Nadra purchased a dozen blocks of M112 C-4 military issue explosives. Everything’s in the trunk of her car right now.”

Mallory nodded. Both he and Jason Wells had spent time in Afghanistan and knew how easy it was to make an ammonium nitrate fertilizer bomb—and the devastating damage it could cause. Ninety percent of the bombs that had exploded in Afghanistan since 2001 were made of fertilizer and fuel oil.

“Advantages? Disadvantages?”

“The weather is the big factor in our favor. They’re not going to go up unless the wind is blowing right. And not if it’s raining. And not, I, uh—”

Jason suddenly gestured strangely and laughed, thrusting his index finger at Charlie. “Just play along with me right now, okay? Don’t look,” he said. “Nod your head a couple of times and smile. Laugh if you can.”

Charles Mallory did.

“Okay?” he said. He continued to gesture animatedly, making karate chops in the air and urging Mallory to do so, too. “Just play
along, okay? Okay. Now, look to your left.” Mallory did. “See that man? That’s John Ramesh. He was looking at us. At you, I think. He gets a wild hair when he sees contractors acting too serious. Makes him very nervous.”

“Okay. Good to know.” Charlie caught a glimpse of Ramesh again through the crowd at the front of the restaurant. Short, muscle-bound, with a gray ponytail, wearing a white, sleeveless T-shirt, green khaki pants. A pistol strapped to his belt.

“He’s kind of the enforcer here. Wild West kind of character. Isaak Priest’s main sentry. Be wary of him.”

“I will.” Mallory cradled his coffee cup. “Does he have anything to do with the outlaw contingent I was told about?”

Wells looked away. “No. That’s a whole other thing. We don’t quite understand that yet. Maybe Hassan Network.”

“Interesting.”

“Maybe. There’s an old abandoned prison down there, about nine kilometers southwest of the city. They have a barracks and what looks like a training camp. I don’t know that it has anything to do with what we’re working on. It’s an assessment we haven’t looked at closely. Not a priority.”

“Okay.” Mallory scanned the street for Ramesh again, didn’t see him. “What do you see when you go inside Isaak Priest’s head?” he asked. “How’s it going to happen?”

“Quickly.” Jason looked at him with his serious eyes. “One night.”

“Tomorrow, supposedly.”

“Yeah.”

“Then what?”

“Then they’re going to have to start burying people. That’s what all the contractors are here for. Millions of people.”

“Eight point six. How are they going to do that?”

“It’s our job not to find out.”

THERE WERE FIVE
motels on Sycamore Street south of the city center. The Bombay was a three-story, concrete-block building with a small lobby and outside entrances to all of the rooms. Chaplin had rented one on the second floor and arranged for separate arrival times.

When Charles Mallory opened the door, the other four were
already there: Chaplin was seated at a circular wooden table, along with Wells and Nadra Nkosi. Chidi Okoro was in a folding chair across the room. The shades were drawn.

Okoro was the anomaly in this group, conveying an aloof and slightly aristocratic presence. He had grown up in Nigeria, where his father was a banker, but had attended private schools in London. He was unsettlingly calm, a computer wizard who knew things Charlie would never understand.

Nadra was an ex-soldier, thirty years old, small but scrappy, dressed in her usual camouflage pants and tight black T-shirt, which showed a taut upper body and well-buffed arms. Nadra was the only one of his team who had grown up in Mancala. She’d served in the military here, then moved to the States where she studied at the Naval Academy and wound up as a State Department analyst on sub-Saharan African policy. But she didn’t like working behind a desk. Charlie understood that. Her first name meant “unusual” in Swahili, which seemed appropriate to him. These were the best four employees he could imagine. They reminded him sometimes of a championship sports team.

When Charlie came in, they were studying sets of aerial print-outs. The aerials had small numbers stamped on them: 1 through 10. Each number indicated a potential target, with No. 1 being the most valuable, Wells was explaining. Okoro handed a set to Charles Mallory, who sat on the plastic-cushioned sofa.