Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller: Book 2 Read online

  Ebola K

  Book Two

  of the Ebola K Trilogy

  By

  Bobby Adair

  http://www.bobbyadair.com

  http://www.facebook.com/BobbyAdairAuthor

  Cover Design & Layout

  Alex Saskalidis, a.k.a. 187designz

  Editing & Proofreading

  Kat Kramer Cathy Moeschet

  Linda Tooch Rob Melich

  Margaret Ferguson

  Technical Consultants & Research

  John Cummings: Military

  Kat Kramer: Construction, Geography

  eBook & Print Layout

  Kat Kramer – www.katkramer.com/publishing

  Preface

  Wow. Ebola K, Book 2 is finally done. For all of you who waited patiently, I appreciate that more than you know. It has been an emotional journey, and I’ve learned a great deal.

  Before I get into the blah, blah part of this preface, let me first say as emphatically as I can, some of the characters make some REALLY BAD CHOICES that might seem like well-reasoned, even good choices, as they explain their choice in the story. DO NOT try these at home.

  The characters that I hire to exist in my books don’t tend to make good choices in general. It’s kind of a prerequisite. After all, who wants to read a story about some guy who does everything right, never gets in trouble, drives a Porsche, and lives a happy suburban life. The most interesting thing that will ever happen to that guy is when his neighbors knock him off and run his body parts down the garbage disposal.

  Ebola K, Book 2 took a bit longer to write than I expected. I did a LOT of research, reading books about epidemics, watching documentaries, and even talking a bit with a few medical professionals. I’m not going to say I got all the details right. I hope so.

  Ebola and infectious diseases have consumed a lot of my waking hours for the past few months, and I can say it makes for stimulating conversation over the dinner table. “Hey, babe, thanks for making this wonderful meal. Wanna watch this documentary on typhoid over supper?”

  Armed with that insight into the history of diseases, I tried to educate readers as well. One of the things I found interesting as my editors were going through the book was when one of them called “BS” on the plausibility of a certain situation in the book. It was interesting because the circumstance was a modern version of something that did happen during an epidemic a long time ago. I’d like to pretend that I’m insanely imaginative and I made all this crap up—that’s true about most of it—but when you come across pretty much anything about how a government or culture deals with the stress of an epidemic, I’ve drawn almost every bit of that from historical events.

  Scary stuff.

  Another interesting concept I found intriguing to explore was the erroneous idea that rational people—when looking at the same information—will behave in the same way. This point is explored in depth in the relationship between Paul and Heidi, but the idea runs throughout the book at all levels. Businesses behave differently, cities take different approaches, as do countries, and cultures. Again, all proven out in history to make a dynamic mess for the book’s characters to navigate. And with that I paint a picture of what the world might look like as it deals with possible realities to come.

  I think that’s the intellectual exercise that drew me into this story—the imaginative exploration of how societies manage change, especially when the change comes fast, violent, and ugly.

  Thank your for picking up a copy of Ebola K, Book 2. I sincerely hope you enjoy it.

  – Bobby Adair

  Previously, in Ebola K Book 1…

  Austin Cooper, an American teenager, has traveled to Uganda as a volunteer in a school for street kids, just as Ebola breaks out in Africa. He becomes stranded in a small town—Kapchorwa—while watching his friends and others become sick and die.

  Back in Denver, his father (Paul) and stepmother (Heidi) are worried and dealing with their own Ebola fears. Paul stocks up with supplies, and they ready themselves for the inevitable. Eventually, contact with Austin becomes difficult, and Heidi sets out to track Austin down, pestering Mitch Peterson, a CIA operative in Uganda, housed at the US Embassy in Kampala.

  Unbeknownst to the world, Najid Almasi has arranged to infect his jihadists with what’s now recognized as an airborne Ebola strain, sending them around the globe to infect others.

  One of those jihadists is Salim Pitafi, an Pakistani American teenager from south Denver, who finds himself in over his head, and having second thoughts about his involvement with Najid’s sinister plan.

  Chapter 1

  Mitch Peterson didn’t need to listen long to Austin Cooper’s semi-coherent story. He got the gist of what happened to Kapchorwa—the city was completely torched by Najid Almasi’s men. At first what seemed like the most frightening piece of news—that Ebola was airborne—turned out to be the least of his worries. Some number of jihadists had been in the village with no goggles, no masks, no protective suits—they had to be infected. Had Kapchorwa been immolated for the sake of secrecy? For the sake of satisfying Najid Almasi’s ambitions?

  Mitch brushed his knee with a gloved hand as he stood up. Chunks of dirt damp with vomit, diarrhea, and blood fell to the ground, leaving contagious stains on his knees. Mitch shuddered at the thought of Ebola virions worming through the denim, burrowing into his skin.

  But did it matter?

  If the virus was airborne—as Austin had said it was—was Mitch already past the point where any measure of precaution would protect him? He stepped involuntarily away from Austin Cooper’s exhaled miasma of deadly microbes. He touched a comforting, double-checking finger to the mask that covered his mouth, another finger touched bare skin across his cheekbone, reminding him of a choice that might have already cost him his life: he wore no goggles.

  It was at that moment he thought about the state of his skin in a way he’d never considered it before—in exactly the biological terms of its nature, a defensive membrane—a compromised defensive membrane. In a firefight not forty-eight hours ago, with guns popping and bullets sizzling the air, Mitch had scraped his knees and cut an elbow. Trivial injuries, not worth a thought at the time.

  Ebola had a way of amplifying trivialities into calamitous, grotesque agony.

  With the realization that his fears were snowballing, Mitch breathed deeply, sucking the flimsy surgical mask back against his lips. Never one to fall victim to panic, he knew fear was an emotion that conflated all the worst parts of risk and imagination into irrational certainties. Mitch Peterson hated irrationality. He hated fear.

  He put his mind to work thinking through the problems he faced, the ones whose outcomes he could affect.

  It still stood to reason that Mitch was likely contracting Ebola as he stood there. A simple calculation on bad odds would determine whether or not he would eventually die of the disease. The only way to increase his odds of surviving would be to seek out a modern hospital and convince the doctors there to do all they could to save him.

  Of course, that might still be nearly nothing.

  If Austin’s semi-delirious story was legit, an ill-intentioned Almasi had escaped down the eastern road with an unknown number of Ebola-infected jihadists, and the world was in trouble.

  No, not trouble. Mortal danger.

  Airborne Ebola unleashed on the planet would devastate humanity. Sixty to ninety percent would die from the disease straight away. More would meet their end through starvation and consequences of the inevitable chaos to follow.

  Mitch knew enough about the nature of men to know that the dark-hearted, predatory ones would thrive in a world of disorder left in the wake of an annihilating
pestilence. Those kinds of men would bring suffering to the few good people who survived. Mitch knew—as he stood in the sun, turning to look down the slope at the ashen mounds of crumbled houses—that he was looking at a preview of what Almasi had planned for the rest of the world.

  When it was over, seven billion people might be dead. The scant few left alive would find themselves standing in the ruins, asking what had gone wrong, asking what they could have done to prevent it.

  For most, the answer to that question would be nothing.

  Mitch could do something. He weighed the value of his own life against the value of seven billion. No choice between two options had ever been so obvious.

  Najid Almasi needed to be stopped.

  Chapter 2

  Dr. Mills hurried after Mitch as he briskly skirted his way around the burned-out hospital. Mitch called to his men as he went.

  “You’re leaving?” Dr. Mills asked, surprise covering her anger. “What are we supposed to do?”

  “You’re here.” Mitch waved a hand at the building, doing his best to maintain a rigid guise while he worked to control emotions that were none too happy with his fatal choice. “This is what you came to find. Didn’t you plan to stay if you found an outbreak?”

  Dr. Mills started to say something, but didn’t.

  Mitch rounded the corner. Two of his men stood by their vehicles. He ordered them to unload all of the doctor’s supplies. He turned back to her. “Where do you want your stuff?”

  “What?” Shock got the best of Dr. Mills. She pointed at the hospital. “Look.” She pointed at the burned-out school buildings. “Look. There’s nothing left except blackened walls and falling roofs.”

  Mitch’s voice softened to a human level. “I’m sorry. Please understand. I have to leave just as soon as I can get your equipment out of my trucks and get my men loaded back up.”

  Dr. Mills stepped back and looked him up and down. She glanced over at the men already unloading. Deducing, she asked, “Is there another outbreak?”

  “No.”

  She looked down the road going west. “You’re going back to Kampala?” Venomously, she added, “You think you can run away from this?”

  Mitch chose not to rise to the fight. “I’m not going to Kampala.” He nodded toward the eastern road. “I’m going that way.”

  “To Kenya?”

  Mitch turned back to his men and gestured toward the hospital’s front porch. It was clear of debris. “Put it all up there.” Looking back at Dr. Mills, he said, “The roof over the porch is still in good shape. It’ll keep your equipment dry when it rains.”

  “Why are you going to Kenya?” Dr. Mills asked. “You should stay here.” She cut her eyes in the direction of the small town’s center. “Everybody should stay. What you should be doing is calling the ambassador and mobilizing every US government resource to contain this.”

  Mitch put a hand in his pocket and took out his phone. “You believed Austin Cooper. You believed all that stuff he said about Ebola being airborne. You believed what he said about Najid Almasi.”

  Dr. Mills was taken aback by the change in direction.

  Mitch continued, “I was watching you and Dr. Simmons when Austin was trying to tell us what happened. You looked like you believed him.”

  “About Ebola being airborne?” Dr. Mills asked. “I don’t have to believe him. If there’s the smallest chance he’s right, the risk is too great for inaction.” Dr. Mills was overwhelmed by her thoughts and she gritted her teeth. “Don’t you see that?”

  “I see exactly that.”

  Dr. Mills looked slowly around at the destruction. She looked up through the door of the hospital and at the charred bodies inside. As she turned back toward Mitch, her eyes went glassy with tears. “I do believe it is airborne. How else does any of this make any sense? How else could all these people have gotten so sick so fast?”

  “Your phone is a satellite phone?” Mitch asked.

  “Uh—of course it is.” Dr. Mills shook her head and drilled Mitch with a harsh gaze. “I don’t understand what’s going on here.”

  “Listen,” Mitch said. “I need your phone number. My boss will be calling you a little while after I leave.”

  “The ambassador?” Dr. Mills asked.

  “His name is Jerry Hamilton.”

  “That’s not the ambassador,” said Dr. Mills.

  “No, it’s not.”

  “You’re not the cultural attaché, are you?”

  Mitch focused his attention on his boot, cast a sideways glance down the road, and then turned back to Dr. Mills. “You’re a smart woman. You can put the pieces together.”

  Dr. Mills didn’t say anything for a moment as she thought about it. “You’re CIA?”

  “When Jerry calls, he’ll have lots of questions. He’ll be able to get the ball rolling to get you whatever resources you need here, you understand? Please, tell him everything. The things you know, your doubts, and your opinions. Don’t leave out any details.”

  “I will,” Dr. Mills nodded. “Where are you going?”

  Mitch glanced briefly down the eastern road again. “I’m going after the men who did this.”

  “You have to stop them.”

  “I have to try,” Mitch confirmed.

  Dr. Mills sniffled. The tears that had been threatening to pour down her cheeks were gone. In their place was a seething fury. “The men who did this—”

  Nothing else needed to be said. Mitch understood that she wanted them dead as badly as he.

  “There’s something else you need to know.”

  “What’s that?” Mitch asked.

  “You’ve got some time before things get out of hand,” she said, “Ebola isn’t contagious until the symptoms start. The elevated temperature, the vomiting, the diarrhea, the bleeding.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Cautiously, Mitch asked, “How long after infection do we have before these guys turn contagious?”

  “Three days to three weeks.”

  “From what the kid said,” Mitch asked, “could you tell when Almasi and his men arrived or when they left? He seemed pretty confused on that point.”

  “In the state he’s in, I’m surprised we got as much as we did,” she replied. “I got the impression Najid left a day or two ago.”

  “That’s my guess, too.”

  More of Mitch’s men came to help unload the trucks.

  “You’re on a tight deadline, Mitch. Good luck.”

  “Good luck to both of us.”

  Chapter 3

  A quick transaction of cash from one hand to another expedited the border crossing into Kenya for Mitch and his hired guns. More bills proved useless in shaking loose information about any Arab men who might have crossed the border on prior days. Nevertheless, only one road led east out of Kapchorwa. With no other leads, Mitch stayed the course.

  Eventually, dirt turned to pavement, and the pavement led into a town, Kitale. Mitch followed his instincts and asked directions to the airport, a single runway in front of a moldering little terminal building covered in layers of flaked, chalky paint. It was not much bigger than his office back in Kampala.

  Mitch walked past a wall of louvered windows and through the open door. A man with small, weak shoulders wearing an airline baseball cap much too large for his head stopped shuffling papers. From behind his authoritative counter he smiled. “Good afternoon.”

  “Hello,” Mitch responded.

  “The flight to Nairobi arrives at eight a.m. and leaves at eight thirty-four.” The man nodded to a clock on the wall and smiled again. Both unnecessary gestures; it was late in the day.

  “The flight?” Mitch asked. “Just the one?”

  “Yes, sir.” The clerk showed his set of bright white teeth again. “I am locking up the doors in a few minutes. If you need to purchase a ticket—”

  Shaking his head and cutting the man off, Mitch said, “I don’t need a ticket.” He looked out at the vacant tarmac. “What I need is
information.”

  “About?” the man behind the counter replied.

  Mitch laid his diplomatic passport on the counter and said, “I’m Mitch Peterson. I’m the United States cultural attaché to Uganda.”

  “Uganda?” the man muttered, looking down at the passport.

  “I work at the embassy in Kampala. And your name?”

  “Wycliffe.”

  Mitch extended a hand across the counter. “It’s good to meet you, Wycliffe. I’m looking for a group of tourists that wandered off.”

  Wycliffe took Mitch’s hand and shook. “Wandered off?”

  Mitch smiled broadly. “There was some confusion with a tour company. It’s a long story. The group would be mostly Arab men.”

  “How many?”

  Mitch made a pained face to sell the lie. “I’m not sure. A few dozen. Maybe more.”

  “How many are you missing?” Wycliffe asked as though helping a child work his way through a simple problem.

  “We don’t know if they all went off in the same direction,” Mitch continued with the lie. “You understand, right? We’re still trying to assess the situation.”

  “What would I know about this?” Wycliffe asked.

  “Have any groups of Arab men flown out of Kitale this morning or yesterday?”

  The ticket agent’s hands dropped to the counter. He shot a furtive glance out the window.

  Seeing that Wycliffe was uncomfortable, Mitch reached into his pocket, snatched four twenties, and laid them on the counter. He scooted them across toward Wycliffe and without looking down at the money said, “I’d be very thankful for any help you could offer.”

  Wycliffe looked down at the money. He wanted it, but he was nervous about taking it, and that made Mitch suspicious. Bribery was usually easy.

  Wycliffe looked back out through the windows. Mitch turned and looked through the glass slats to see what had Wycliffe’s interest. All he saw was an expanse of green grass and the tarmac. Mitch asked, “What are you looking for?”