Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller (14 page)

Dr. Gonzalez seated himself on the same side
of the table as Olivia, but left an empty chair between them,
fussily arranging his computer bag on the conference table.
“Uganda. Where?”

“Um,” Olivia thought about it for a minute.
“A little farming town. It’s…uh…Kapchorwa?”

“Never heard of it,” said Gonzalez. “Wheeler,
open up a map of Africa on your computer.”

Wheeler rolled his eyes and winked at
Olivia.

“I saw that,” Gonzalez said. “I’m eccentric,
not oblivious.”

“Right.” Wheeler manipulated the mouse and
typed. A few seconds later, he turned the computer sideways on the
conference table so that everyone could see the screen.

Olivia leaned forward.

Gonzalez leaned back.

“Zoom in over here.” Olivia pointed.

Wheeler did as instructed and zoomed the map
in on the eastern half of the country.

Olivia leaned in a little further and pointed
to a spot just above a big blob of green. “That’s it there, just
north of that park.” She sat back.

Gonzalez leaned forward. “Zoom out,
Wheeler.”

Dr. Wheeler fiddled with the wheel on his
mouse. “That’s Mt. Elgon National Park.”

Dr. Gonzalez sighed.

Olivia looked at Dr. Gonzalez, who said
nothing to elaborate. She looked at Wheeler. He was wearing his
poker face. Olivia frowned and looked back at Gonzalez. “What?”

The doctor opened his mouth to speak as Dr.
Wheeler cut him off. “Olivia, before you listen to him, you need to
know a quarter million people—maybe more—live within a dozen miles
of the base of that mountain.”

She looked at Gonzalez. “What? You sighed
dramatically like Austin’s in Godzilla’s backyard.”

Dr. Gonzalez pulled a face. “I thought Austin
was in Texas.”

With a dramatic eye roll, Olivia said, “My
brother’s name is Austin, Austin Cooper. Now tell me what’s wrong?
Why the sigh?”

Dr. Gonzalez seemed to think about Olivia’s
request for a moment as his face went through changes of
expression. “You’ve heard of the Marburg virus?”

“Yes,” she answered, using information she’d
gleaned from Dr. Wheeler’s presentation. “It’s similar to Ebola.
The first Filovirus discovered. Named for Marburg, the city in
Germany where factory workers at a company making polio vaccines
got sick, I think. Thirty-something infected? Seven or eight
died?”

“Good memory,” Dr. Gonzalez was impressed.
“Not to put too much of a scare into you, but the monkeys that
carried the virus to Marburg were imported from Uganda.”

“That’s enough, Steve.”

Olivia shot Dr. Wheeler a disapproving look,
then shifted attention back to Dr. Gonzalez. “No, it’s not. So, the
monkeys came from Uganda? That’s not necessarily insignificant.
Tell me what else.”

“In 1980 and again in 1987, Mt. Elgon was
connected to outbreaks of the Marburg virus.”

“I didn’t know that,” Olivia replied. “How
many died?”

Dr. Gonzalez continued, “Only one in each
case. It’s not clear how either patient was infected, but both
spent time on Mt. Elgon prior to turning symptomatic.”

“So there might be a species there that
carries the virus, but isn’t affected by it.” Olivia looked at Dr.
Wheeler. “What did you call it? Something of a Typhoid Mary
species…a reservoir species.”

Dr. Gonzalez paused. “What do you do here,
again?”

“Analysis,” Olivia answered.

Dr. Gonzalez looked at Dr. Wheeler. “You
must
give a riveting Filovirus presentation.”

Dr. Wheeler said, “She’s a worrier, but she’s
a smart one.”

Olivia shot Dr. Wheeler a harsh glare with a
little smile.

“Is your brother the adventurous type?” Dr.
Gonzalez asked. “Is he likely to climb the mountain and go
spelunking?”

Olivia’s face lost its color. She fumbled
around in her purse for a moment then remembered she left her cell
phone in her car. Cell phones weren’t allowed inside the building.
She looked up at Dr. Wheeler and then at Dr. Gonzalez. “He sent me
some pictures a few weeks ago of him hiking up the mountain and
standing in front of Sipi Falls.

Dr. Wheeler searched for Sipi Falls in
another browser window. After a moment, the map showed the location
up on the side of Mt. Elgon.

Dr. Gonzalez frowned. “Oh, my.”

Dr. Wheeler stood up and walked around the
conference table, moved a chair, and leaned against the table
beside Olivia. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Listen, the world is
full of infectious diseases. We talked about those before Eeyore
showed up.” Dr. Wheeler glanced at Dr. Gonzalez for emphasis. He
then looked back at Olivia. “You know as well as I do, the chances
of Austin catching anything like this in Africa are almost zero.”
He turned to Gonzalez. “That was two deaths in—what, five
cases—since 1980, right?”

“Right,” Gonzalez confirmed.

Looking back at Olivia, Dr. Wheeler asked,
“Do you have any idea how many people go up that mountain for
camping and whatnot? Do you know how many coffee farmers or goat
herders or whatever live on that mountain?”

“No.”

“Neither do I, but I’ll bet it’s a bunch. And
if you think about all the people who go up there every year for
all these years, and only two of them came down with Marburg, I’d
say the odds are way in your favor that nothing bad will happen to
your brother. Hell, there’s never been any proof they got infected
with a rare Filovirus on that mountain. At this point, Mt. Elgon is
only a coincidence in those two men’s lives.”

Olivia looked up at Dr. Wheeler. “I’m sure
you’re right.”

Everything ached. Austin didn’t know if it
was the Ebola, the work, or both. He stepped around Nurse
Mary-Margaret’s blood-soaked body with a bucket in each hand. She’d
been lying there all night. They could’ve had Austin and
Littlefield carry the body out but leaving the body there sent a
strong unspoken message.

Austin went out through the back door. One of
the yellow HAZMAT guys with one hand lazily resting on his weapon
stood about ten paces behind the building and watched Austin.
Austin breathed in deeply through his surgical mask. There was a
time when it had smelled fresh, but so much stink had coated the
mask that every breath, whether inside or outside, smelled and
tasted the same.

Austin nodded a greeting at the yellow clad
Arab, a way to silently say,
I’m friendly. Please don’t shoot
me
. Not that it mattered. The more Austin saw the people inside
suffer, the less he wanted any part of it. Perhaps a bullet was the
merciful path to whatever came next.

The guard didn’t react to Austin’s nod. No
surprise. He hadn’t responded to Austin, even once, through the
course of the night. Austin suspected the guard didn’t see him as
human, or didn’t
want
to see him that way. Seeing him as
human would make it harder to kill him. In a way, Austin’s nod was
a lottery ticket of hope in case the disease didn’t do him in. Each
nod was a purchase. Maybe one would pay off.

Austin rounded the corner of the building and
walked over to the pit, which was situated far enough from the back
of the building that the contents could be burned. At least that
was Dr. Littlefield’s plan. Austin doubted that was going to
happen. He dumped the buckets one at a time, careful to do it
slowly, lest coagulating lumps drop into the muddy liquid and
splash up in his face. When he turned around to head back, he saw
the second guard—the one whose job it was to keep an eye on the pit
and anyone who came out to dump a body or other waste.

But the guard wasn’t standing. He was sitting
with his back to the wall and his AK-47 across his lap, resting
beneath limp hands.

Austin’s first thought was that the guard was
dead, but that made no sense at all. How would that have happened?
Austin looked to his left. The first guard was out of sight. He
looked back at the second. Was the guard asleep?

That was more than possible. It was probable.
Austin felt sure that if he sat down, it would only be a matter of
seconds before unconsciousness set in. Could it be that much
different for the guard? How many hours had they all been on their
feet?

But what to do? Walk over to the guard? Say
something to see if he was asleep and chance waking him? Put all
his chips on the guess that the guard might be sleeping and run for
the tree line?

Austin looked left again. The longer he
stayed out back, the more likely it was that the other guard would
come around the corner to see what was going on.

Austin thought about what he knew and what he
didn’t know, and it all came down to one thing. His odds of
surviving Ebola were maybe as low as ten percent. He recalled what
Najid’s man had done to Nurse Mary-Margaret, and though he had no
idea why Najid hadn’t just killed them all—driven by whatever was
driving him—he felt sure that his odds of living past his
usefulness to Najid were zero.

Ten percent seemed huge compared to zero. So,
with buckets in hand, Austin shuffled toward the tree line. He
hoped that a shuffle would earn him a warning from the guard
instead of a bullet, if it turned out the guard was awake. The
guard didn’t move, not in the slightest. Austin shuffled
faster.

When the trees were just a step or two to his
right, Austin quietly sat the empty buckets on the ground. The
guard did not react, so Austin ran for the trees, crashed past some
bushes, and nothing happened. No gunshots followed him.

Out of breath and weak—whatever he was
infected with stole his stamina—he tore off his mask so he could
breathe. After a moment, he ran.

With the fever and the fatigue, Austin
couldn’t sustain a running pace. Within a few hundred yards, he was
jogging and feeling enough pain with each step that he might have
stopped had he not been sure that angry men with machine guns would
soon be on his heels.

He came to a fork in the trail. The path to
the right led down the hill and eventually to a speck of a village
called Chebonet. The left led up the mountain. There was one thing
he could be sure of. Once the guys in yellow Tyvek suits realized
he was gone, he wouldn’t be able to outrun them. He’d have to
outsmart them.

Putting himself in their shoes, he guessed
they’d follow the downward path, thinking that he’d do the same.
After all, no one in Austin’s condition, even acclimated to an
elevation of six thousand feet, would make the choice to head up a
path toward Mt. Elgon’s crater, fourteen thousand feet up from sea
level.

Austin trudged on, thinking of alerting the
authorities and trying to figure out how he was going to do that.
His phone was crushed. If only he still had that. From up on the
mountain he could have picked up a signal from one of the cell
towers down in Mbale. He realized he was walking and dragging the
toes of his shoes with each step. Setting thoughts of alerting
anyone aside, he breathed deeply, painfully, and focused on moving
forward, escaping.

He’d been off the path for a few hours.
Running, by that time, was an activity he only aspired to. Even
walking fast was too much of an effort. He managed to work his way
through the dense forest slowly, the only speed at which it could
be transited. That took the running advantage away from his
pursuers. So, doing his best to keep quiet, he kept going up,
driving himself on through the power of a single hope, that he was
outsmarting Najid’s HAZMAT guys.

Austin became confused as he climbed the
forested slope, working his way around trees as tall as buildings,
with trunks as wide as cars, brushing away nettles that stung his
skin, staying off the game trails that always looked like the
easier path. He was sweating. He was dizzy. No matter how rapidly
he breathed, he couldn’t get enough air.

Thankfully, he came to a place where the
trees grew sparse and the ground leveled. He found himself walking
down a row of cultivated plants, waist-high on both sides. The sun
was up in the late morning sky, and though a cold breeze was
blowing, sweat was rolling down his face and stinging his eyes.

Austin tripped and landed face first in the
dirt. In his mind he knew he had to keep going. But when he stood,
the mountain was gone. Instead, he looked down a long lush slope
and out onto a plain far below, checkered with cultivated fields,
speckled with green copses, and veined with rivers.

Where did the mountain go?

In his confusion, he slowly spun around and
saw the mountain again. He pushed himself to move, only making it a
few more steps before everything went black.

Eight men—men just like himself, Salim
assumed—were in the van already. By the time the van had stopped at
two more corners and picked up four more men, Salim dozed off,
hypnotized by the hum of the engine beneath his seat.

When he awoke again, they were so far out of
the city that the paved highway had turned to dirt. The sun was up
and shining brightly through the van. Salim’s head bounced against
his window as he thought about the map of Kenya he’d seen on the
airplane. Nairobi was in the south central part of the country. To
the east and north of the capital was the Rift Valley. He didn’t
know much of anything else about Kenya, except for the fact that it
was a popular place for safaris, mostly of the photographic type.
He’d seen countless allusions to the Rift Valley and its abundant
wildlife while channel surfing late at night back when finding
something to watch among a few hundred cable television channels
had been his biggest problem.

As the morning wore on, the van passed
through ever-shrinking towns, over rougher and rougher roads. Great
swaths of farmland spread out in all directions. And eventually a
lone mountain rose up out of the horizon until it dominated the
western view.