Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller (15 page)

A few times when they were in some deserted
part of the road, the van pulled over. The men relieved themselves
in the bushes and walked around to stretch. Among them, there were
a few whispers between men who seemed to know one another. Beyond
that, there was no talking.

Late in the morning, they were fed a simple
meal of sun-dried fruits and nuts. But never a word was said about
where they were going, how long it would take, or what they would
do when they got there. The men were all heading into ambiguity,
based on nothing more than faith in their god and their
masters.

It was when they were driving north, with the
big mountain’s thickly-jungled slopes on the left, that the van
took a sudden turn onto a narrow path of a road squeezed between
the trees and bushes. For five or six miles the van lumbered over
rough rocks and large holes, while branches screeched across the
paint.

When they’d zigzagged five hundred or a
thousand feet up the slope, the van came to the end of the road.
Three other safari vans were already parked there, all empty.
Waiting in the shade by the vehicles were two menacing men armed
with the very familiar AK-47s.

Everybody got out of the safari van. The
driver and his partner removed their own AK-47s from luggage bins.
Instructions were passed.
Drink if you need it. Relieve yourself
if you need to. Prepare to hike.

Salim wandered around the clearing, getting
the knots out of his muscles after so many hours spent sitting
numbly, drooling in his sleep, with his head banging against the
side window. He breathed deeply of the cool thin mountain air and
found himself walking up next to Jalal, who’d perched himself on
the edge of a drop off with a view between the crowns of trees.
Twenty, or fifty, or maybe a hundred miles across the plain, a
mountain of clouds was building, stretching to the horizon while
pouring rain and lightening into the black shadow below.

Absently, Jalal said, “It’s beautiful.”

Though Jalal wasn’t looking, Salim nodded.
“It reminds me of home.”

After a moment, Jalal asked, “The forests in
Colorado are this lush?”

“The trees are different, but the mountains
are the same. Whenever I stand on one and look down on the world,
it takes my breath away.”

Jalal turned with a smile. “I never thought
of you as the poetic type.”

Salim shrugged. “I’m in a weird mood.”

Other men shuffled in the dirt and the weeds
around the vans. A few found places far enough away for private
conversation but with a view of the storm over the plain far to the
east.

Salim asked, “Do you ever feel like you’re a
pawn?”

“A pawn? You slipped pretty quickly from
poetic to trite.” Jalal smiled at Salim.

“You know what I mean.”

“I’ve felt that way my whole life,” Jalal
agreed.

Nodding for emphasis, Salim said, “I thought
all this would be different.”

“How so?”

“I thought maybe I’d feel like somebody.
Maybe I thought I’d feel like I was doing something important,
making choices, maybe even changing the world.”

Jalal laughed. “That’s what we’re doing,
mate. We’re going to change the world.”

“Into what?”

That confused Jalal. “Into what? What do you
mean?”

Salim looked around to make sure no one could
hear what he was about to say. “What if it’s the same thing?”

“How do you mean?”

“What if we’re still powerless, invisible,
disposable people, making greedy men more powerful?”

Jalal shook his head and watched the clouds
grow and change. “You think too much, mate.”

One of the men in charge called to get
everyone’s attention, pointed at a trailhead, and told them to get
going. Everyone moved in that direction. Salim fell in line as they
all headed out on foot along a trail that ran across the slope.

Emmanuel Muhangi was surprised when he saw
Austin stumble, then fall in his coffee field. Not being an
excitable type, he squatted in front of his small house and watched
for a moment, but Austin never got back up.

It wasn’t until his seven-year-old son—who
recognized Austin from previous visits—asked why Austin had fallen.
It was then that Emmanuel decided to get up and investigate.

After crossing his coffee field, he found
Austin—not just fallen, but fainted. Emmanuel shook him but was
unable to wake Austin. Upon turning Austin over, he felt his skin,
which was burning hot with fever. He’d vomited on himself.

Emmanuel turned to his son and told him to
quickly go back to the house and get Emmanuel’s wife. Emmanuel,
wire-thin but strong from hoisting heavy bags of coffee onto his
shoulders, lifted Austin in much the same fashion. He carried
Austin to the shed where he and the other mzungu kids slept during
their visits.

Emmanuel’s wife came in with a bucket of
water and some cloths. His daughter was right behind her. They both
went to work dabbing the cold water on Austin’s skin with the
cloths and squeezing dribbles into his mouth.

It was obvious to Emmanuel that Austin was
very sick. Sick beyond his wife’s abilities to nurse him back to
health. After much discussion, Emmanuel left his wife and children
with the sick young man and took off at a run down the path that
led to Kapchorwa and the closest hospital.

The trailhead was deceptive. It started out
running on a level path across the slope of the mountain. Around a
bend it turned upward and forced the group of Pakistani-trained
jihadists to hike uphill through the middle of the day. By the time
the troop of hikers crested a rise and started to head back down in
earnest, they were sweating, thirsty, and spread over a quarter of
a mile of the trail.

Salim, walking beside Jalal, could see a
group of three about forty or fifty meters ahead. The pair behind
was at least that far back.

“What do you think?” Jalal asked.

Salim looked around. “About?”

“This bloody hike through the mountains.”

“I’m tired.”

“No, mate.” Jalal shoved Salim playfully.
“You’re so morose. Do you think they’re going to hide us up
here?”

Salim thought for a moment. “They could have
put us in any one of those thousand isolated houses we saw on the
way out here. Why hide us on the mountain in the forest?”

“It doesn’t make any sense to me,” Jalal
admitted.

“And why did we leave the buses? Why are we
walking?” Salim’s doubts were overtaking him again. He looked over
his shoulder to see how close the nearest followers were. “For as
long as we drove this morning, I wonder if we’re crossing the
border.”

“Which border?”

“I’m guessing Uganda,” replied Salim.

“Why smuggle ourselves across? We have our
passports.”

“It makes no sense to me.” Salim lowered his
voice. “If our passports show that we’ve entered Kenya, they’ll
look suspicious if we leave Africa from another country without a
stamp for entering that country.”

“Unless they’re planning an operation in
Uganda.”

Salim shook his head. “That doesn’t make any
sense either.”

“Why not?”

“If they wanted to hit something in Uganda,
why bring us?”

Jalal looked around. “Mate, I don’t know how
special you think we are, but you do know what we signed up for,
right?”

“They could send anybody to Uganda. It’s easy
to get fighters here. I’ll bet they even have training camps in
Africa.” Salim pointed to the group of three ahead of them. “Those
ones are German.”

“Germans? How do you know?”

“I heard them speaking German this morning
when we first stopped. I heard some other guy speaking
English.”

“British or American?”

“American,” Salim said in a low voice. “I
think we all hold Western passports. If that’s the case, why send
us to Africa? We’d be so much more valuable to the movement if they
sent us back to our countries.”

“That’s what I figured they were planning all
along. To send us back.”

“Right? So why drag us through the jungle
into Uganda? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Jalal looked around as though there might be
some answer in the trees that wasn’t readily apparent. “No, mate.
It doesn’t make any sense.”

As the troop made their way down the slope,
they eventually closed ranks. They came to a dirt road where a big
Isuzu farm truck was waiting for them to load themselves up before
heading west once again.

In the late afternoon sun, Salim leaned over
the side of the truck and saw tin roofs and a widening in the dirt
road up ahead. A town, a small town. The truck rolled past several
men with automatic weapons standing in the bushes. More men were in
a position in the trees on the opposite side of the road, looking
in the direction from which they’d come. They were guarding the
road against anyone coming into town. Salim looked at Jalal with a
question on his face, but Jalal was bored and staring at the floor.
He never even saw the men guarding the road.

Whatever was happening, they were close to
finding out something. Salim was sure of that.

The truck came to a stop and a cloud of red
dust billowed around, dropping another layer on them as they
coughed. The driver killed the engine, got out, and closed the
door. The driver and his passenger came to the back of the truck.
The passenger—the man in charge—held up a hand as some of the men
in the truck started to get up. “Wait here,” he said.

Salim slumped back against the side of the
truck. A few of the dust-covered men shared a look. They weren’t
pleased. Salim wasn’t the only one whose curiosity was grating at
his patience. The rest of the men kept their feelings more
hidden.

Another half-hour passed with the men
waiting. They shuffled in their seats. They looked around. They
passed silent questions with their eyes.

“Assalamu alaykum.”

Salim looked toward the voice, a new man was
standing on the ground at the back of the truck.

He said, “Each of you has completed your
training.”

The speaker’s face was covered, whether to
keep his identity secret or the road dust off, Salim could only
guess.

“You will return to your home countries in
the West. You will receive instructions on the way.”

Salim looked quickly to the sky and thanked
Allah.

“Before you return, you need a cover story.
You may be required to explain your absence from your Western
lives. Your story will be that you lent humanitarian assistance to
the people in this village who are in the midst of a typhoid
epidemic. Do not drink the local water.”

The speaking man held up a plastic water
bottle, the kind that Salim hadn’t seen since before boarding the
last plane to Lahore a few months prior. “Drink only from the
bottles provided, or you will get sick. You will see men in
protective suits. Do not speak to them. They are from international
aid agencies. They are afraid of typhoid. You should not be. You
will be photographed helping these people so that evidence exists
of your work here. When you return to your countries, the pictures
will be provided to you. You will need to post them on your social
media pages to build your story. You will be notified when to start
doing this.”

Salim smiled inside. Helping sick people in
Africa was a great cover to explain his absence over the past
months. He might be able to make his escape back into American
society without having to go to the FBI. Perhaps an anonymous life
somewhere far away from his family in Denver, maybe under a new
name, would be the key to getting his freedom back and putting this
mistake behind him.

“Each of you will be assigned to a squad,”
the man behind the truck said. “Your squad leader will tell you
what to do. Listen. Do
exactly
as he instructs. One last
thing—typhoid can successfully be treated for those who will accept
medical treatment early. These people have gone without treatment
for several weeks. Many of them are dying. Typhoid is an ugly
disease at its end. Some of these people can be saved, but for the
rest, your help will make their passing easier.”

The speaker pointed at the four men nearest
the back of the truck. “You four, come with me.”

The man who had been a passenger in the truck
selected four other men from the truck to follow him. Soon Salim
and Jalal were included in a group of four and following a gruff
man with a smelly, matted beard into the village.

When Austin woke, he heard men’s voices
nearby and felt the most wonderful cold water on his skin. He was
lying on a bed of something soft and looking up at a familiar dark
ceiling, though he couldn’t quite figure out where he was.

Two kids were speaking in a language he was
familiar with, but didn’t understand. He noticed his friend
Emmanuel’s wife looking down over him, pressing a wet cloth against
his face.

She said, “Drink.”

Austin tried to lift himself up on an elbow,
and she leaned over to assist. One of the children brought a cup to
his mouth. He drank. When the cup was empty, Austin asked for more,
but his stomach roiled. He rolled away from Emmanuel’s wife and
threw up most of the water onto the dirt floor.

The boy made a noise to express his disgust
and his feet shuffled away as Austin laid back. Austin weakly said,
“Sorry.”

The children both ran outside.

Emmanuel’s wife urged him to sit back up.
Austin scolded himself for not remembering her name, but it was an
African name and had too many syllables and way too many
consonants. “Take water again. A little.” She held the cup to his
mouth. Austin sipped and laid back.

He felt dizzy. He felt confused. He stank
badly enough to smell himself. Every part of him ached—his joints,
his back, and mostly his head. He lolled his head over to the side
to look at Emmanuel’s wife on her knees beside him. “Thanks.”