Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller: Book 3 (25 page)

After burning through three magazines, Austin pushed his last into the receiver. 

Thirty rounds left.

Austin panted, as much from nerves and floods of adrenaline as from exertion.

With ninety bullets spent on the diversion, he decided another thirty wouldn’t make a difference.  It was time to conserve.  It was time to kill if he could get a terrorist in view.

He squatted by a tree and looked through the darkness, listening.

The car alarm had stopped.  The truck horn was no longer beeping.

The wind in the palms was the loudest sound, not counting the pounding of Austin’s heart.  He smelled the heat of the barrel and the burned powder.  He smelled his sour sweat and the sweetness of the flowers around him.  He felt the texture of the concrete on which he knelt.  Everything was intense.  No detail in the world was too small to notice. 

Rocks rolled against one another under the weight of feet stepping slowly between the shrubs.  That was the sound of danger as certain as a child’s scream.

Using instinct to home in on the sound, Austin fired three shots across a lateral pattern as he swung his rifle barrel.  He immediately dropped to his hands and knees and started to crawl away as gunshots ripped through the shrubs.

The rocks rolled again and a gun fired from the same direction.  Muzzle flashes illuminated the palms over the shooter’s head.  Austin got back to a knee and fired six more shots in that direction.

He dropped to his belly and rolled along the sidewalk as more gunfire came.  He got up to his hands and knees and scrambled along the concrete sidewalk until it took a hard turn at the wall that bordered the property.

Austin listened again.  He looked. 

He wasn’t trapped, but he almost was.  He couldn’t go back any farther.  Somewhere on his left, a gunman had been moving over the rocks between the shrubs.  He’d earned nearly a third of Austin’s remaining bullets for the mistake.

To Austin’s right, a quieter, smarter adversary was stalking.

Two?

That was Austin’s count unless some very smart, very silent terrorists were out there in the darkness.

Austin needed to move.  Fast feet had served him well so far.  He’d been in one spot for enough seconds to make him nervous.  Right was a guy who made sounds only when he fired.  Left was a guy who’d made noise walking in the rocks.  He seemed more real and more dangerous because of it.  As Austin leaned into a step to run right, he stopped, hollering silently in his head. 
Don’t follow your fear.  Use your intellect. 

Silence is deadly.

Austin turned, crouched, and ran.  He followed a sidewalk that bordered the wall, brushing a palmetto as he passed.  The big fan-like palmetto leaves were rigid enough to sound like a shout when they rubbed against one another in the relative silence. 

A handful of shots pierced the clattering leaves and hit the wall.

Repressing an urge to panic, Austin dropped to a knee beside a palm and heard a single shot.  He didn’t hear it hit the wall where the others had.  He looked into the deep shadows in front of him, trying to see movement.  The terrorist with the noisy feet was somewhere ahead.  But the shots Austin fired at him taught him a lesson.  He’d gone silent.

Austin came to a path that led back into the garden and away from the wall.  Hearing nothing around him, Austin figured he’d take the chance to go back to where he had a chance to evade in any direction. 

He crawled slowly on hands and knees, stopping every five or six feet to listen.

He was probably thirty feet from the wall and around a curve with sight of nothing but shrubs, grasses, and trees when he heard something and froze.

Somebody nearby was breathing.  Or trying to breathe.

It wasn’t loud.  But it was labored.

Austin turned his head and listened, turned it another way and listened again.  It was hard to tell the exact direction.  Soft sounds got diffused bouncing among the big tropical leaves.

He snuck closer to the direction he’d chosen as the source.

He stopped.

Louder.  Definitely louder.

Austin crawled some more, froze, and realized he was too focused.  He could be crawling into an ambush.

He looked around.  He ignored the labored breaths for a moment and listened.

Somewhere in the direction of the truck—Austin couldn’t tell how far—something was moving.  Not walking.  Not in a hurry.  It sounded heavy and slow.  Then it stopped.

No other sounds came to Austin except the fronds moving in the wind high above.

He crawled forward.

The labored breathing was louder.  He continued toward it and then froze.

Two feet were lying on the path, heels up, toes down.

Austin raised up on his knees and slowly, quietly brought his weapon around. 

He only saw the feet and lower legs sticking out of the shrubs, but it was easy enough to tell where the rest of the owner lay.  Austin pointed at the spot he guessed was the center of the man’s chest, and fired three quick shots.

He dropped to the ground and rolled, pointing his rifle roughly at the terrorist he’d just shot in the back.

A whispered voice.  “Austin?”

Austin froze.  “Mitch?”

“Don’t shoot.” It was definitely Mitch.

Austin got up on a knee, keeping his rifle at his shoulder but keeping the barrel pointed in the direction of the man he’d just shot.

“I’m coming.  Don’t shoot me.”

Austin looked left toward a curve in the path.  “I can’t see you.”

A second later, Mitch came around on the sidewalk.  He knelt beside Austin.  “I don’t know how many are inside, none I think, but we got all the ones out here.”

“You’re kidding.” Austin grinned, but nerves turned it back to darting eyes and quick glances. 

Mitch pointed in the direction of the house.  “We need to hurry.  If Najid Almasi is in there, we lost the element of surprise.  He knows somebody out here means him harm.”

They stood, leaning against a wall on a small patio off the side of the house.  Surrounded by the garden, a fountain burbled.  Mitch reached over and checked the glass door.  He looked at Austin and whispered, “It’s open.” He breathed deeply.  “You have any ammo left?”

“Half a mag.” Austin shrugged.  “I’m pretty sure.”

“Eject the magazine.  Show me.”

Austin removed his magazine and passed it to Mitch.  Mitch examined it as Austin looked at the dark bushes and trees around them, not wanting to be surprised if any more of Najid Almasi’s men were still out there. 

Mitch clicked the magazine back into Austin’s rifle.  “I’m going in first.  You stay well behind.  We’ll check each room.  I’ll shoot anyone I see.  If I get shot, unload on the bastard.  You make sure he’s dead.  Got me?”

Austin nodded. 

“Stay back far enough that if I get shot, you don’t get it too.”

Austin nodded again.

Mitch slid the glass door open and stepped inside, rifle up, panning across the dark room.  Austin waited a few seconds and then followed Mitch in.  He looked around.  The room was in order.  It was beautifully decorated and expansive.  No one was inside.

Mitch peeked into a kitchenette.  He looked inside an enormous armoire.  He looked into a bathroom, all while Austin stood with his back to the patio door, rifle at the ready.

When Mitch finished, he gave Austin a little wave of his hand and Austin followed Mitch into the hall.  Austin didn’t need to be told to be quiet.

They searched a few large rooms that seemed to have no purpose other than to look beautiful with art, furniture, and views of the beach.  They came to an office that looked to have been used recently.  A laptop sat on a desk.  Items were out of place.  Cushions on the couch were misarranged.

Mitch nodded to Austin.  He saw it too.

They proceeded up the hall.  They checked two more living areas, a dining room that had a long, long table and thirty chairs, a kitchen that looked like it belonged in a restaurant, a library, and the garage.  No Najid Almasi.

Mitch pointed up the stairs, leaned in close to Austin and said, “Don’t come up until you see me at the top.  I’ll wait for you.”

Austin tried his best to meld with a shadow in an alcove as he stared into the shadows up there, looking for movement.

Once Mitch was on a knee, beside a column, pointing his rifle down a hall, he motioned for Austin to come up.

Austin stepped quietly, looking around at the expansive space below, looking for any shadow they hadn’t checked, any spot that might be a hiding place for Almasi.

Halfway up, movement caught Austin’s eye—something outside, across the lawn, across the beach, on a long pier sticking out into the water.  A man was carrying a weapon, carrying a bag in one hand, and struggling as he limped toward an empty cigarette boat.

Najid Almasi!

It had to be.

Austin looked up, pointing out through the glass.  “Najid!” He bounded down the stairs.

Mitch ran down behind him.

Austin ran through a door slamming it against the wall as it swung. 

Almasi looked over his shoulder and tried to hurry his pace.

Austin sprinted.  When he was halfway across the lawn, he heard Mitch come through the door just as noisily as he had.

Najid was nearing the end of the dock just as Austin was crossing the sand.  Even as slow as Najid was going, Austin saw that Najid was going to get to the boat well ahead of him.

Austin slid down to a knee as he raised his M-16 to his shoulder, fired two rounds he knew were going to miss, and yelled, “Stop, Najid!”

Najid spun around much faster than expected for a hobbled man.  His rifle spewed rounds as he brought it to bear back down the dock.

Austin dove for the sand out of instinct. 

Bullets sizzled the air around him.

Three quick shots fired from behind.  Mitch.

Najid’s body jerked with the impact of the bullets.  His muzzle flashed as he continued to fire into the water, into the air, wild as he fell.  Najid’s rifle silenced.

Mitch ran past Austin and sprinted up the dock.

Austin got to his feet and ran after.  Seconds later, he came upon Almasi, gasping in fast pants as he lay on his back, eyes on the stars above.  He was bleeding from three wounds in his chest.

Mitch asked, “Almasi?”

“That’s Najid.”

“That’s what I figured.” Mitch took a step forward, put the barrel of his rifle six inches from Najid’s forehead and fired three more times.  He looked at Austin.  He looked around.  “Now we’ve got to go.  We don’t want to be here if anybody comes to investigate all the shooting.  Check the boat for keys.  Check Almasi for the keys.” Mitch started back up the dock.

“Where are you going?”

Mitch spun around and ran backward toward the house while continuing his instructions to Austin.  “Laptops.  Cellphones.  Anything I can find.  Get that boat started.  We’re leaving in three minutes.  And get Almasi’s bag.” Mitch turned and sprinted.

Austin looked down at Najid.  Three bullets had pierced his skull and left his dead eyes staring at the sky.  Austin’s only thought was that Najid deserved so much worse than he received.  He leaned over and picked up the soft leather briefcase that lay by Najid’s body.  Austin ran to the boat, leapt over the gunwale and landed on the deck.  He dropped Najid’s bag in a seat and stepped over to the captain’s chair.  Keys dangled in the ignition.  Austin didn’t wait.  He turned the key, and a pair of powerful engines rumbled to life.

Austin buckled himself into the captain’s chair and waited for Mitch.

Paul looked around as though help might come to his rescue, but nothing was on the grassy plateau nearby.  Behind him stood the barracks full of the sick.  The silos full of plasma cattle sank deep into the earth.  Other people walked to wherever in camp their business took them.  None gave a care that Paul was being taken outside the fence.  He turned a pleading eye at the MPs, neither of whom changed their hard facial expressions. 

At that moment, Paul decided to stop looking for a rescue, stop hoping for a reprieve.  He looked up at the blue sky, thought about Heidi, Austin, and Olivia.  He decided that he hated what his life had become, who he had turned into.  Like Salim, he decided to accept his fate.  It was time to pay the price for his sins.  He was going to die under a crisp blue sky, not unlike the one that watched over Heidi’s funeral that day on the soccer field with all of those broken people carrying the bodies of their loved children and cherished spouses. 

A tear found its way to creep down Paul’s cheek.  He clenched hard on his teeth to control a sob, not for what was to come for him, but for the expectation, the hope that something might be up there in the ether, a life beyond this one, a life where suffering might not exist, a place where mistakes might be forgiven.

The chilly bite of the wind felt exhilarating.  Paul would miss it. 

He stepped through the hole in the fence and walked.  Colonel Holloway was already a dozen paces on and turning to wait. 

Paul wiped his eyes, cleared his throat, stood tall, and took confident steps.  He was ready.

“You okay?”

Paul nodded.

The Colonel continued to walk in the direction of the distant mountains.  “It’s beautiful out here.  In a desolate way.”

“It is,” Paul agreed.

“I love the first snows when they come in October or November.” The Colonel looked over at Paul to see that he was listening.  “I used to go outside with my daughter.  We’d stand on the porch and listen.  You can hear the snowflakes when you stop and just let yourself.  They settle onto the leaves and onto your clothes with the faintest crunch.  Hundreds and thousands of them all around you.”

Paul thought about the snow and the beautiful white blanket it put on the world when it came down at night, untouched by tire tracks, snow shovels, and booted feet.

“My daughter, she was four last fall when it snowed.  She had long, curly red hair.  We were out on the porch, and the snow was catching in her hair as she spun around, sticking her tongue out to catch the flakes.” Holloway sniffled through the cold wind.  “She looked like an angel with the sparkle of the porch light hitting the snow in her hair.  She didn’t know what was going on in the world.  She wouldn’t have understood anyway.  She was happy.”

They walked for several steps without a word between them. 

Paul was confused.  “Your daughter, why are you telling me about her?”

“To remember.” Colonel Holloway nodded a few too many times.  “To remember.  She died a few days before my wife.  The weatherman says we have snow coming tonight.  Late.”

“Will you go outside and stand in the snow and listen?” Paul asked.

“I might.” Nodding again, Colonel Holloway said, “I will.”

“You should.” A few more steps passed.  “I buried my wife on a day like this.  Last fall.  The sky was blue like it is today, so blue it didn’t seem real.  The grass on the soccer fields was still green.  The trees hadn’t yet lost their leaves.  They were covered in brilliant yellows and reds.  The wind blew the leaves on the ground and they looked like fire running across the grass.” Tears were on Paul’s cheeks again.  “The mass graves…”

“I know.” The Colonel had eyes glassy with tears as well.  “Don’t think about that.  Ugly necessities.  Remember the beauty of your loved ones’ lives.”

The Colonel stopped. 

Paul looked around for the machine gun emplacements.  He saw none.  He and the Colonel were far from the fence and standing on the edge of the plateau.  Below them, the ground sloped gently away and undulated into a deep, wide valley.  Far away between the hills and the western mountains, the tall buildings in downtown Denver marked the center of the metropolitan sprawl.  “Why are we out here?”

“Why did you kill Larry Dean?”

Paul thought about a lie, another lie, but he didn’t tell it.  He decided lies were part of the Paul he didn’t like.  He decided that they were part of his past.  “He killed my wife.”

“How do you know that?” The Colonel’s face showed his confusion.

“Coincidence.  Luck if you could call it that.” Paul looked back toward the camp, the scene of his last crimes.  “I didn’t know when I went into the infirmary that he killed Heidi, but I knew—or strongly suspected—that he and his partner had killed people like Heidi for blood they thought might contain antibodies.  When I went there to convince him to talk, I think I just wanted a guilty man to punish.  A stand-in for whoever murdered my wife.  I didn’t expect that Larry and his partner Jimmy had done it.”

“The staph infection? Was that part of your plan?”

“Bad luck for Larry.” Paul wiped his face.  “I filled him full of Ebola blood.  I wanted to overwhelm his immune system.  I wanted him to suffer.”

“That staph was good luck for him, then.”

Nodding, Paul admitted, “I suppose it was.”

“What about this Jimmy guy?”

Paul looked at the dirt, ashamed, but only for a second.  He looked back at the mountains and the blue sky beyond.  “I freed a prisoner.”

“Rafael?”

“You knew?”

“Captain Willard lied to you.  All of those cameras in the warehouse work.”

“I freed Rafael so he’d kill Jimmy.” Paul looked up at the sky again and then back at the Colonel.  “I never expected to leave here alive.  Not really.  I think I hoped I might one day but I didn’t really believe I would.  But I…I loved my wife.  I had to do something.”

The Colonel took a moment to think about what Paul had said.  “Larry and Jimmy won’t be missed.”

Paul looked around again.  He and the Colonel were alone.  Paul wasn’t going to be killed.  Probably.

“I have to ask, you know, because of the way news channels are these days with all their bullshit.  Did you really drive to Dallas and infect yourself on purpose?”

“Yeah.”

“God, that was a ballsy move.”

“Heidi told me I was depressed over my son’s death and that I wasn’t acting rationally.”

“Is that true?”

Paul nodded.  “Who really understands why they do what they do when what they’ve done wasn’t the best decision.”

“But you’re alive.”

“And Heidi is dead.” Paul clenched his jaw again.  He had an impulse to curse himself, but he didn’t.  He accepted that he was a fool, a selfish idiot.  “I took that trip to Dallas, and because of that, stupid men reasoned that my immunity magically transferred to her.”

“My daughter and my wife died,” said Colonel Holloway, “and we did everything we were supposed to do.” The Colonel put a hand on Paul’s shoulder.  “Life.  It works that way.  It’s hard enough shouldering the guilt for things you did.  You can’t carry the guilt for other people’s choices too.  Larry and Jimmy killed your wife, not you.”

Paul didn’t know about that.  Well, he did.  The Colonel was right.  It was just hard to change his mind even in the face of blue-sky epiphanies.

“You know, what you did isn’t all that different than what people are doing now with the plasma they smuggle out of here.”

Paul did his best to keep the judgment out of his tone.  “And you know about all that? The smuggling, I mean.”

“Not at first.”

Paul looked over his shoulder to see if the MPs were coming.  They weren’t.

“It started early.  We weren’t hitting our production numbers.”

“That makes it sound like you were managing a factory.”

Colonel Holloway looked at the camp far behind them.  “You have to separate the emotions of what’s being done to human lives from the process if you want to make the sacrifices worth it.  Yes.  I run it like a factory.  It’s the most efficient model.  If the model is efficient, we achieve the goal sooner.  We save more lives.”

Paul nodded.  That made perfect, callous sense.  But what else was there to do with it, run a shoddy operation and wring your hands over the moral ambiguity of it all? “What did you do about the smuggling?”

“We didn’t think it was smuggling at first.  Not really.  It was suggested at our first meeting on the subject.  By Captain Willard if you can believe it.”

“He’s been a bit of an ass.”

“Doing his job.” Colonel Holloway tucked his hands in his pockets and shivered.  “We eventually came to run two systems, the legitimate one where I maximized output and quality.  The ‘factory.’ And Captain Willard’s system was that of managing the smuggling rings that he took control of.  When we had control, we were able to make sure all plasma ran the through the process before it was smuggled out.  Processed serum is much safer for the recipients than raw plasma.”

“Rings?” Paul hadn’t considered that there’d been more than one.

“There was a time when nearly half our production was being stolen, rerouted into the black market.”

“Wait.” Paul was confused again.  “But Captain Willard didn’t stop the smuggling rings.  He took control of them, and that means you have control.  Why not just shut them down?”

“The question has a much more complicated answer than you’ll guess.”

“I won’t guess, but I’d like to hear the answer.”

Colonel Holloway said, “I don’t make any guesses about what happens to the serum after it leaves the camp and enters the government system.  But after seeing the corruption at this level, I’m certain it’s not being allocated with any degree of equity to the American people.”

“I heard a similar speculation recently,” said Paul.

“In a way, I viewed the smugglers and black marketers as only marginally worse than the government system.  Nevertheless, I had my orders like everyone else, and I had an efficient camp to run.  There was no room for thievery as far as I was concerned.  At first.  So, we cracked down with tighter inventory control for one.  That’s when a funny thing happened.”

“What’s that?”

“We made our numbers, but the smuggling didn’t stop.  Somehow our production went up enough to feed both systems.”

“Because of the increased amount we take out of the volunteers.” Paul knew the answer to that.

“Yes.  But not just from the prisoners in the silos.  Actual volunteers in the recovering population that elected to stay on.  The smugglers, unable to get their hands on tightly controlled inventory found a way to increase production at the source, the immune.”

“But it’s not healthy,” Paul protested.  “It’s not sustainable.”

“No, it’s not.  But it doesn’t need to be.”

Paul didn’t like what he was hearing.  It all sounded like a rationalization for illegal profit.

“You don’t understand yet, but be patient.”

Paul nodded.

“By doubling production, we save more lives.  To a sick person, it doesn’t matter how the serum came to them.  The more lives we save, the closer we get to the goal of a one-hundred-percent healthy population.”

“But you know half that black market serum isn’t being given to people who are sick with Ebola, right?” Paul thought it was a valid point.  “People are taking it as a preventive.  They all get sick, and not all of them get better.”

“Pretty much what you did, right?” The Colonel drilled Paul with a hard stare.  “Only their odds are much better than yours were.”

Reluctantly, Paul agreed.

“So maybe five percent die if they take the Ebola serum.  They catch the virus and their immune system, despite having the antibodies to fight Ebola, can’t react in time.  They die.  But five percent mortality, those odds are far better than the sixty to eighty percent who die if they get the disease and don’t get treatment.”

“But only the folks who can afford that option get that choice.” It was the next argument on Paul’s list.

“At first,” Colonel Holloway agreed.  “But all the camps have produced more than enough serum to service every person of means in the country if that’s true.  The black market for serum is crashing in the sense that there’s more and more serum available and the money—or trade goods people have available—grows smaller and smaller.  Anybody out there who can get on the Internet and has an engagement ring or a handful of silver coins from grandpa’s collection can buy a bag of serum now.”

Paul didn’t want to admit it, but he was starting to see the Colonel’s point.

“It’s not just this camp where this is happening.  Similar things are going on everywhere and at the rate we’re moving, every person in the country will be Ebola-free in three or four months.”

“Ebola-free?” Paul couldn’t believe it.

“We’ll have saved nearly forty percent of the population, and we won’t need this camp anymore.  We won’t need the volunteers or the prisoners to double dip.  They only need to stay alive until then.”

“And you’re double dipping too?” Paul made the guess.  That had to be the reason the Colonel’s health appeared to be waning.”