Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller: Book 3 (17 page)

Late in the day, the flight out of Djibouti put them over the Gulf of Aden almost immediately.  The straits that divided Djibouti from Yemen and Africa from Asia ran north of them to the Red Sea.  Three hundred miles up the coast on the Saudi shore of the Red Sea, the remains of Najid Almasi’s bombed-out compound sat empty of gold and silver but scattered with broken bodies decomposing in the sand.

The V-22 Osprey stayed over the water well south of Yemen for a few hours.  Conversation in the rear of the aircraft was near pointless though some of the Marines spoke from time to time in raised voices.  Mitch napped.  Austin kept to himself resting an arm on the cooler of samples strapped into what passed for a seat next to his.  His new M-16 bounced on his knees when the turbulence buffeted the aircraft.  Austin wasn’t concerned that the weapon might go off.  It was empty, as was his pistol.  All ammunition for both was in Mitch’s backpack.  The Marines didn’t mind that Austin carried loaded weapons when he was on the ground.  They weren’t going to tolerate it in the air.  Austin felt emasculated but understood.  With a seat facing one of the few windows on the aircraft’s port side, Austin was able to see outside.  It gave him something to look at to take his mind off of his empty weapons.

Two Royal Air Force of Oman F-16s came into view when the Osprey veered north toward the coast.  They kept a respectable distance and circled above when the Osprey landed in Salalah to refuel.  Nobody was allowed to get off, not even to walk around on the tarmac while they waited to take off again.  The Marines on board grumbled and peeked out the windows, but not one exited the craft.  As Mitch explained, that was one of the rules the Omanis insisted upon. 

Soldiers in a Humvee-style vehicle were parked halfway down the runway, but they seemed satisfied to keep their distance and observe.  Austin guessed more military vehicles were out there where he couldn’t see.  A fuel truck came up close to the V-22 and handled the task of pumping the Osprey full for the next leg of the trip.

After takeoff the pilot kept the aircraft over the water again as they traced the southern coast of Oman, slowly veering north. 

After a few hours back in the air the Osprey leaned into a turn to the northwest.  Mitch told Austin they were over the Gulf of Oman and were getting close to Muscat. 

Tired of sitting in noisy boredom, Austin took up a position standing in front of the window and looking out.  He hoped to see the destroyer waiting on the Ebola samples steaming below, but the sun was already behind the mountains.  The ocean was an empty, deep blue, turning darker with the coming night.  Pearls of light sparkled along the coast, some in clumps, some alone in the shadow.  Muscat’s lights were clusters of stars in patches of gray grid, buildings, apartments, roundabouts, and roads, evidence of a million souls who’d once looked out their windows at the morning sun rising out of the sea.  Muscat was a dying city sprinkled with little hopes of light.

With no permission yet to board the destroyer, Austin didn’t know what to think about the situation.  As the temptation to get back to the US dangled just out of his reach, he grew to want it more.  He grew to think of home in terms of what it had been like when he’d left—safe, tidy, comfortable.  But that was all in his heart.  In his head, he knew that was an expired truth. 

The Osprey started its descent. 

An ashen stink crept into the aircraft.  Austin recalled the pyre he’d seen in Mbale the day he’d arrived looking to get help for the Ebola victims still in Kapchorwa.  He thought about Mitch’s stories of the devastation in Nairobi. 

Fires burned in the desert mountains behind Muscat.  Oman was still burning its dead. 

The Osprey leveled off at a few hundred feet and closed in on the coast.  Austin saw the pair of F-16s pass overhead as he stepped away from the window and seated himself.  He figured the Osprey would land within minutes.

Mitch was having a conversation with Marty, the other man from the CIA.  As soon as Mitch saw Austin was in his seat, he came over and grabbed a piece of framework to steady himself as the aircraft bucked.  He leaned in close and yelled, “Change of plans.”

“How’s that?”

“We’re not offloading in Muscat.  We’ll fuel up.  The Omanis have given permission for us to offload about fifty miles up the coast in a little town near the border.  Maybe an hour’s drive from Dubai.”

Austin understood.

“You’ll get out here with the samples.”

Austin’s first thought was that he needed to get his ammunition from Mitch’s backpack.

“The new airport here is still under construction but it’s right on the coast.  A highway and a golf course separate it from the water.  We’ll be setting down at the end of a runway near all of the construction buildings, at the end closest to the highway.”

Austin nodded again.

“I’m not going with you,” said Mitch.  “I don’t know if Olivia managed to convince the Navy to take you on board.  Don’t get your hopes up.  The destroyer sent a launch to meet you on the beach.  If they take you,” Mitch extended a hand to shake Austin’s, “maybe we’ll get together for a beer back in the States one day.  If not, you’ll come back to the Osprey.” Mitch pointed at two Marines sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the other side of the aircraft.  “Those two will accompany you and the samples.  The Omanis have a car waiting.  No driver.  Whether you get on the boat or come back, there’ll be plenty of time before we finish refueling.”

Austin looked around at Marty, Mitch, and the Marines.  “Good luck to you guys, too.  If I were Najid Almasi and knew all you guys were coming to get me, I’d be pissing my pants.”

Mitch grinned and chuckled.  “Let’s hope he doesn’t find out.”

“How far to the beach?” Austin asked.

“Quarter mile as the crow flies.  Maybe a mile by the time you work you way across the highway and through the golf course.”

“Okay.  Will I get my ammunition?”

Mitch smiled.  “I’ll get off with you and load you up before you head out.  You can return the magazines to me if you come back on board.”

The Omanis were friendly with Western countries.  No trouble was expected.  Still, Ebola had changed the world.  Austin was stepping off an aircraft into a strange country in the dark with no knowledge of what might be nearby.  Austin’s stomach fluttered.  He was glad he’d have loaded magazines for his M-16 and pistol.

“You’ll be fine,” said Mitch. 

Austin put on a tense grin.  “You can tell?

“You look a little nervous.”

“Just putting my game face on.”

“With any luck, you’ll be motoring across the Gulf of Oman on the way to a steak dinner before we get back in the air.  One more thing—”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t physically contact anybody for any reason.  You’re not carrying Ebola right now.  If the Navy decides to pick you up, don’t bring any extra risk with you, you know what I mean?”

“They do know that is exactly what we’re doing, right?” Austin patted the cooler containing the samples. 

“You know what I mean.” Mitch smiled again.  He looked like he was feeling good.  He looked like he was in his element.

Austin fell buoyed by Mitch’s attitude.

On the bright side, Paul went through a full day with no deaths in his clinic.  He’d drained the plasma required by the base commander to meet the production quota, and he’d doubled down on every volunteer to pump out what Captain Willard required.  Silo K3 residents were going to be donating four bags of plasma every week until further notice. 

None of that was on Paul’s mind, though.  His anger was simmering as he spun up scenarios of how he would like to make Larry suffer.  He imagined all the things he’d do to wrench a confession out of Larry because Paul knew in his heart that Larry and whoever the hell this Jimmy scumbag was, they’d been responsible for Heidi’s death.

In the rational part of Paul’s mind he knew that probably wasn’t true.  The odds of it being true were ridiculously high.  When his head and his heart compared notes, it didn’t matter.  Heidi had been murdered by blood-sucking shits like Larry and Jimmy.  Them, people they knew, maybe their competitors.  Killing those two might be the closest thing to justice Paul might ever get out of this life, and he was determined to take a big bite of that justice, savor it, and then choke it down.

When all of Paul’s duties for the day were finished, including making the drop at the warehouse, picking up payment from another trucker and taking all of that to Captain Willard’s hooch, Paul was free.  It was around midnight.  He didn’t take any time to linger in the grass outside the hatch that opened to the subterranean missile complex.  He didn’t go down the rusty ladder to settle in for a handful of hours trying to sleep on a worn mattress with a thin blanket.

With a special list of supplies in his backpack, a dozen empty plasma bags, plenty of gauze, tape, tubing, and needles, Paul crossed the complex.  He passed the giant slabs of reinforced concrete, the roofs of the silos.  He passed stacks of modular apartments, each the size of a dumpster.  Most of the soldiers slept there, as did the contractors and doctors.  Plasma techs like Paul lived underground in the silos not far from the drainees they were in charge of exploiting.

No soldier Paul passed paid him much attention.  He wasn’t wearing an orange jumpsuit.  His dirty lab coat marked him as one of the medical personnel in camp.  Paul was heading toward the infirmary building where he’d been told Larry was occupying a bed.

When Paul tried to enter the building he knew Larry was in, a guard surprisingly did stop him.  He asked questions.  He looked in Paul’s bag. 

Paul was good at telling big lies by then.  He’d practiced plenty after stumbling through the pitfalls after getting himself infected.

The lies worked and Paul found himself standing in a long, dimly lit building with three rows of fifty cots.  Most of the beds were full.  Patients groaned.  Some snored.  Plenty wheezed through bubbles of blood.  The ward was more than the camp infirmary.  Like every ward in every hospital in every city it served Ebola patients.  Its primary purpose, like all the others in row upon row across the northern end of the camp, was to treat Ebola patients. 

Its stink told stories of death.

The East Denver Internment Camp was the end of the line in nearly every imaginable sense.  Patients transported there weren’t expected to live.  The secret of its location having gotten out, many drove themselves to the gates or as near to the gates as they could get.  Cars were stretched for miles along the roads.  They were parked in the pastures on the rolling hills.  People came to the gates and begged for a bed.  When beds were available, the people were let in for treatment.  When no beds were available, people frequently died, bleeding out while leaning against the fence.  Their bodies were collected and burned with all the camp’s other daily failures.

Paul wondered how many of the people he saw in the beds would be ash by the end of the week.

Paul walked up one aisle from the front to the back of the barracks.  He looped around the end and came back down the other aisle.  He found Larry about a third of the way back with a bed against an outside wall.  Paul went to work.

Using straps he’d taken from the beds in his clinic, he secured the unconscious Larry to his bed, even going to the trouble to tie down Larry’s broken arm and leg.  He stuffed one of Larry’s socks into his mouth.  He hooked Larry up to an IV and started to drain his blood.

Paul searched next through the ward, looking for the Ebola victims who appeared to be closest to death who also happened to match Larry’s blood type.  Each of those could spare a pint of virion-filled blood to trade for a pint of Larry’s antibody-rich blood.  And who knew, maybe an extra serving of antibodies might save one or two of those lives.

The Osprey set down on the runway.  The engines kept the rotors spinning. 

Mitch got to his feet as did the two Marines, weapons at the ready.

Austin stood as the back door of the Osprey folded down into a ramp.  As anxious as Austin was to move, he still felt nervous.

Mitch went down the ramp first, with the Marines on his heels, all with weapons at their shoulders.

Once they were all on the concrete runway, Austin started after, but a hand reached up and grabbed his arm.  He looked down at a Marine, who was nodding his head toward the cooler with the samples still in the seat.

Austin silently cursed himself.  No wonder the Marines didn’t trust him with a loaded weapon in their aircraft.

He hastily fumbled with the straps across the cooler, picked it up, and ran down the ramp under the Osprey’s tail.

The rotor wash buffeted him as he hurried over to where Mitch was standing in front of the two Marines, pointing.  A car sat on the tarmac a hundred yards away just as promised. 

A fuel truck pulled up beside the Osprey.

Austin nudged Mitch.  “My ammunition?”

“Come on.” Mitch started jogging toward the car as he looked around in the darkness.

Austin jogged and followed Mitch’s example as he looked at the rows of storage containers full of construction equipment and materials off the runway to their right.  Tractors, forklifts, trucks, and other machinery were parked in the construction yard among piles of materials and temporary buildings.

The Marines ahead were in the car and driving it toward them.  They came to a stop in front of Mitch, who opened a back door.  Austin sat the cooler on the seat and strapped it in with a seatbelt.

Reaching out as he slid his pack off his shoulder, Mitch said, “Give me your pistol.”

Reluctantly, Austin surrendered it.

Mitch took a magazine out of his bag and slipped it into Austin’s gun, clicking it in place.  He turned the pistol and checked the safety before handing it back.  “Keep the safety on unless you need to shoot it.  Understand?”

Austin nodded and said nothing, though he didn’t like being treated like the novice he was.  As much as he inflated his confidence for having escaped from the rebels, walking through the jungle for a week with the weapons and a day of target practice at Camp Lemonnier wasn’t the same as competence.

“Let me have the M-16.”

Austin unslung it from his shoulder and passed it over.

“You know where the safety is on this one?”

“Of course.”

Austin turned to watch as two Marines, unexpectedly outside the aircraft, went to work.  One connected a static line and then raised his weapon to his shoulder to watch the darkness around them.  The other connected a large fuel hose to the fuselage above the rear wheels. 

A fiery streak whooshed out of the distance.

As Austin opened his mouth and pointed, ready to ask what it was he was seeing, he realized something terrible.

The fiery streak of light stabbed the fuel truck.  The flash of an explosion silhouetted the truck for a fraction of a second.

Voices yelled.

The fuel truck burst into a giant fireball that engulfed the Osprey.

The shockwave knocked Austin and Mitch off their feet.

A Marine cursed.  Shots followed.

“Go!”

Austin looked up.

“Go!” Mitch yelled at him.  “Get in the car.”

Austin got onto his hands and knees, feeling a little dazed, and saw another streak of fire coming.  Instinctively, he dove away from the car.  Before he hit the concrete, the car exploded, and another shockwave punched him as he fell. 

When Austin looked up, the car was on fire.  Burning Marines were running out of the back of the Osprey.  An explosion rocked the aircraft, and one of the engines broke away, spinning into the air and angling away.

Machine gun fire rattled out of the distance. 

A hand grabbed Austin under the arm and pulled him to his feet.

Mitch was shouting and dragging him.  “Run!”

Austin stumbled, got his feet beneath him, and ran across the runway.