Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller: Book 2 (8 page)

Austin Cooper stood in the center of a red dirt intersection, looking east and waiting for the sun to rise. After a night of fitful sleep, spending a good deal of it watching the moon and stars through the holes in the roof, he’d finally gotten out of bed and decided to walk out to Kapchorwa’s main intersection. One of the monkeys who’d taken over the hospital’s roof and exposed beams as their new playground squatted at the peak of the roof, as motionless as a furry gargoyle, watching Austin watch the sky.

From inside the hospital, he heard Kristin cough. She’d come down with the fever the day before. Sadly, as Austin’s strength grew, hers faded. Now she was on a mat, lying on the floor among the remaining soldiers. One of them had already died.

When someone brushed past a fragment of burned door still attached to a creaky hinge, Austin looked over at the hospital. Dr. Littlefield came out. Austin turned back to watch the sky.

“Waiting for the sun?” the doctor asked, as he walked up.

Austin nodded. “I never appreciated the beauty of the dawn before. I was always rushing off to school or trying to get to Starbucks while the line was still short.”

Dr. Littlefield took up a spot beside Austin and turned to watch the dawn come. “Too many neon distractions back in the States.”

Austin chuckled. “That sounds like a line from one of those eighties hair band songs.”

Dr. Littlefield smiled. “My roots coming out.”

Austin drew a big breath of the morning air. “Now that Kristin is down, do you worry?”

“About?”

Austin looked at the doctor. “You’ve been exposed longer than any of us.”

“I was at first.” Dr. Littlefield didn’t turn away from the sky. “I wonder now if I’m a miracle of immunity.”

Austin didn’t know what to say in response.

“I was in Gulu in 2000.”

“That doesn’t mean anything to me.” Austin forced a smile. “I’ve never heard of Gulu.”

Dr. Littlefield pointed northwest. “It’s a town a couple hundred miles that way. A little bigger than Mbale. There was an Ebola outbreak there in 2000. It was my first year in Uganda.” His face darkened. “I contracted Ebola.”

Austin was speechless.

“Obviously, I survived.” Dr. Littlefield put a hand on Austin’s shoulder. “All this changes you, but you know that, don’t you?”

Austin felt the truth of those changes, but was at a loss for putting into words what the differences were.

“After I got better, I wasn’t in any hurry to go back to the States. I just stayed on in Africa.”

With a question on his face, Austin looked at the doctor.

Dr. Littlefield shrugged. “The money wasn’t an issue for me.” He looked back at the sky. “Now, when I go back to the States, I feel like I don’t belong. Returning to Africa feels like coming home.”

Austin changed the subject. “You’ll be immune from Ebola forever?”

“No,” Dr. Littlefield answered. “Ebola isn’t like the measles or polio. Immunity from a previous infection hasn’t been shown to last any more than ten years. With different strains—and the Kapchorwa strain is obviously a new Ebola strain—antigens shift and immunity disappears.”

“So you could get it?” Austin asked.

“I honestly don’t know.”

“Is it safe to assume I won’t get it again?”

Dr. Littlefield nodded.

“Am I still contagious?”

“You were only contagious while you were symptomatic. However, that could have changed with this new strain. You’re probably not a danger to public safety. Except—”

“Except for what?” Austin asked.

“Studies have shown live virions in the semen of Ebola survivors last for as long as three months after recovery.”

“I need to avoid sex?” Austin grinned. “Somehow I think that’ll be easy. Not that I want to, but you know...lack of opportunity.”

Austin set about rooting through the remains of Kapchorwa, looking for anything that might be of use on a hike to Mbale. With all the road signs listed in kilometers, and kilometers holding no intuitive meaning for him, Austin did the conversion in his head. Sixty kilometers converted to something like forty miles. If Austin was healthy, he figured it was a two-day hike. In his weakened state, just a few days resurrected from his deathbed, he thought it might take four.

It would have been nice to wait another week before heading out, but he didn’t have the luxury. He needed to get into contact with his parents. He needed to get help for the few sick still in Kapchorwa. Despite the wispy memory of Mitch Peterson and what Kristin said he’d done, Austin felt a duty to make sure the world knew about Najid Almasi.

Early in his search, he found some empty plastic bottles lying in the grass beside what was left of a house. Those he recycled into canteens. He found a canvas bag, singed but usable. It wouldn’t be as comfortable as his lost backpack, but in it he could carry water, food, a blanket, and a sleeping mat, assuming he could find any of that to take along.

Searching through the remains of another house, he used a thick stick to push ashen debris away from a pile against the backside wall, hoping to find an unburned, useful
something
underneath. What he found instead when he shoved over a wide piece of tin was the charred body of a parent, clutching a small child with blackened nubs where its arms should have been, a pained scream crisped permanently into what remained of its face. Austin’s hate for Najid Almasi flamed hot. He hoped that Najid’s stupid plastic suit had failed and that Najid was, even at this moment, lying somewhere in a pool of his own bloody feces, feeling his organs dissolve in his belly. Austin hoped Najid’s suffering would last a long, long time while he slipped slowly into death.

The time Austin spent rummaging through the ruins of Kapchorwa took much more of his strength than he’d imagined. By early afternoon, he’d exhausted himself and spent most of the rest of the day in the hospital being of little help, mostly watching Dr. Mills and the soldiers struggle through an all-too-familiar set of worsening symptoms.

When dawn broke the next day, Austin was up again, standing on the hospital porch, waiting for the light in the sky to become bright enough that he’d be comfortable walking up the dirt road toward Mbale. With little surprise, Dr. Littlefield woke early and joined him. “You need to sleep more,” the doctor said. “You’ll make yourself sick if you don’t. You don’t need to leave yet.”

“I need to get help for you guys.” Austin looked back through the hospital door. “I need to find a phone that works and call my dad. At some point—soon, I hope—I need to get back to Denver. That’s my home.”

“Do you have what you need?”

Austin patted a hand on his bag. He had half a dozen plastic bottles of well water, enough fruit to get him through a couple of meals, and most of a blanket with burned edges. “If I make it to Chebonet today, I’ll feel good.”

Dr. Littlefield sat down on the porch near Austin and leaned against the wall, his favorite spot. “I think that’s good. Chebonet is only seven or eight miles. It doesn’t sound like much but—”

Nothing more needed to be said. Two days prior, Austin had come to coherence, surprised to be alive, surprised to be feeling better—not good, but better. His fever was gone. Through some fortunate combination of antibodies and a robust immune system, he’d survived Ebola. Its viciousness took a toll that would require some recovery time.

“Try to walk in the morning or the late afternoon,” said Dr. Littlefield. “Rest through midday in the shade. Drink lots of water.”

“I crashed pretty hard yesterday,” said Austin. “I know I’m weak.” Austin pointed at a half-burned cinderblock building out past the northeastern edge of town. “There might be a couple hundred pineapples still in there, plenty of bananas, and some other stuff. I found them when I was searching yesterday.”

“Thanks.” Dr. Littlefield tilted his head at the ward behind them. “They aren’t eating much. Mostly they need water. And who knows, some help might come.”

“With any luck, I can find somebody in Chebonet to give me a ride back to Mbale, and I’ll be back here tomorrow night.”

Dr. Littlefield laughed out loud for a good long time and finished with an apology.

“What?” Austin asked.

“Rural Africa is half of the dichotomy of Africa.”

Austin frowned out of the frustration of not knowing what Dr. Littlefield was talking about.

“Some of Africa is modern,” said Dr. Littlefield. “Much of rural Africa isn’t much different than it was a hundred years ago, and some of it no different than it was a thousand years ago.”

“With a lot in between,” Austin added, still having no idea what Dr. Littlefield had found amusing.

“It’s hard coming here from America,” said the doctor, “and shedding the preconceptions developed in a modern country, that there’ll always be something to drink, something to eat, even getting someone to give you a ride—when you really need it—will take little more effort than walking to the nearest house or small town.”

Austin frowned again.

Dr. Littlefield smiled widely. “I’m not making fun of you, Austin.” Dr. Littlefield lazily waved a hand at a few of the burned houses down the road. “I’m happy that even after all this, your optimism isn’t dead. You think— beyond any evidence and almost beyond hope—that you might be able to get a ride from someone in Chebonet.”

Sheepishly, Austin said, “There’s a chance.”

“Going back for a moment to what made me laugh, it’s that I’ve never seen a running car or truck or anything in Chebonet. I don’t think anyone there has the money to buy one. That’s the funny thing. Back in the States, everybody has a car. Here it’s an exception. More so in the rural parts of the country than the cities.”

Austin nodded. That was true. “But still—”

“It’s a tiny little huddle of twenty or thirty houses.”

Austin nodded.

“I applaud your optimism. Be careful when you get there. People will be frightened. Rumors of Ebola and what happened here are halfway to Kampala by now. You’ll be walking into that. People won’t open their doors for you. You’ll be shunned at the least, maybe worse.”

“I understand.” Austin looked up the road. The morning light was bright enough. He stood up and stretched his muscles, still sore from yesterday’s short walk through town. “I’ll be back. Probably not tomorrow, but in a few days.”

The doctor stood up and patted Austin on the back. “I know you will. And thank you for doing it.”

Olivia was frustrated. She was on her fourth day in bureaucratic limbo. She still had not been added to the team assigned to track down the jihadists out of Pakistan, and still did not have full access to data she’d had before her absence. Eric had explained to her at least once a day that it was the CIA’s call to make, and the odd coincidence of her brother in Kapchorwa in the company of terrorists was causing them to balk. It seemed that it was only through Eric’s tenacious loyalty to her that she was still being allowed into the building.

She’d spoken with Mathew Wheeler earlier that morning. Countless monkeys were being infected around the world with the new Ebola strain. All of the reported cases in Western countries were being confirmed to match the new strain. The world needed to gain an understanding of Ebola K in a hurry.

More telling than what Mathew actually said was his mood. His humor seemed all but absent, and that had Olivia worried over how dangerous this new strain of Ebola might be.

She was staring at her monitor absently, thinking about everything that was going on, deciding what else to look at before lunch, leaning toward leaving the office early and maybe going for a run. Who would miss her if she did?

Two metallic taps behind her startled Olivia out of her thoughts. She turned to see Barry standing in her cubicle doorway, looking anxious. She pointed to the extra chair in her workspace and in a hushed voice asked, “What?”

Barry stepped over beside her, reached down by her keyboard, and pressed a yellow Post-it note onto her desk. As he silently moved away and sat himself in the extra chair, Olivia looked at the note. On it was written a phone number and nothing else.

She turned to Barry and asked, “Is this...?”

He gave her the slightest of nods.

She mouthed a silent “Thank you.”

In a normal voice, Barry asked, “Any word from Eric yet on putting you on the team?”

Olivia shook her head. “I’m reading about this scary crap every day, and I feel helpless. Please tell me you guys are making progress, at least.”

Barry nodded, but seemed disheartened at the same time. He leaned out into the cubicle aisle, looked up and down the row, and then pulled himself back into the safety of Olivia’s cube.

“What?” she whispered.

He scooted forward in the chair and leaned close to Olivia so that he could talk quietly. “You’ve seen the news.”

“Of course,” Olivia shot a frustrated look at her computer monitor. She’d been doing little else.

“You know the cities with reported cases of Ebola, right?” Barry rubbed his hands over his face. He looked very tired.

“How many hours have you been working lately?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” he replied. He spent a moment thinking about what he was going to say next. “You know, we tracked all those guys from Pakistan, then to Dubai, and on to Nairobi.”

Olivia nodded.

“You don’t have access to the data now to track those guys anymore, do you?”

“Barry, you know I don’t.” Olivia let her frustration into her tone.

“You don’t need it.”

A little bit excited, she asked, “Why?”

“I’m not gonna say what you might or might not learn from looking at it, but if you were to look at a map of the world, and then create a time series showing the location of new Ebola cases reported—”

Olivia interrupted, “That might take me the rest of the day to put together.”

Nodding, Barry continued, “If you had knowledge of major air hubs, you’d make the interesting connection between the hubs and what might appear to be a spider web of Ebola cases growing outward. First, you might see our old friend, Nairobi.”

“Nairobi is going to be in trouble,” Olivia confirmed. One news story claimed tens of thousands of cases in Nairobi alone.

Nodding again. “And that surprised no one, really. After all, it
is
in Africa. In the context of what we know already, our Pakistani friends all visited Nairobi.”

Olivia gulped.

“Going back to the map we’re discussing, you might see something growing out of Frankfurt—”

“A major European hub,” Olivia said, mostly to herself.

“Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore, London.” Barry shrugged. “You see where I’m going with this?”

“I know you’re not telling me this, exactly,” she replied. “If I were to map the Ebola cases, would I find that the major airports are the local epicenters, and might I deduce that our Pakistani friends flew through each of those airports prior to the outbreaks?”

Barry nodded. “If you weren’t already under a black cloud because of your brother, this morning might be a great time to go short on airline stocks.”

“Germany closed their airports last night,” said Olivia. “Is something else going to happen?”

Looking back over his shoulder again. “Just something that should have happened already.”

“We’re closing down our airports?” Olivia asked.

Barry’s face remained blank for a moment before he asked, “Have you talked to your friend at the CDC?”

“Dr. Wheeler?”

He nodded. “Then you’re probably hearing the same thing Congress is hearing. People are afraid and rightfully so.”

“Oh, my God. The markets are going to crash.” Shaking her head as the weight of the human and economic toll became clearer in her mind, her tone turned caustic. “We
had
these guys. We had all of them on a list. What went wrong?”

Barry sat back in his chair and rubbed his face again, then shook his head. He looked like a beaten man. “Did I ever tell you about a friend of mine name Marco Vasquez?”

Confused about the change in direction, Olivia shook her head.

“My friend Marco was in sales for this computer company, B2B type stuff.”

“Business to business?” Olivia asked.

“Yeah,” Barry confirmed. “He had to travel to Europe to see his customers, maybe once or twice a month. About half the time when he traveled, he’d get pulled out of line and hassled by customs, coming and going, here and in Europe.”

“Why?”

“That’s what he asked,” said Barry. “After missing some flights and dealing with a ton of frustration, it turned out that he had the same name as some fugitive from a Mexican drug cartel.”

“What?”

Nodding, Barry said, “Marco jumped through all kinds of hoops to prove he wasn’t this other guy, but the hassling never stopped. Eventually, he had to move his family to Europe to be close to his customers. He was missing too many flights and too many meetings.”

“Are our systems really that bad?” Olivia asked. “Surely Marco Vasquez had other identifying data—social security number or its Mexican equivalent, passport number, things like that.”

Barry nodded. “Yes, yes, and yes.”

She shook her head in disbelief.

“Do you remember our friend Salim Pitafi, one of the original members of our list?”

Olivia nodded.

Barry leaned in close again and in a hushed voice said, “Three Salim Pitafis have been detained, two here in the US.”

“But we had more than just his name,” she replied. “We have
all
of his identifying information.”

He shrugged. “We’ve got three, and none of them are the one we’re looking for.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

He shook his head.

“Please tell me he’s the exception.”

Barry looked at Olivia with a blank face.