The Pilgrim Strain

by Edgar, C. P.

Rainer let out a low sigh as he collected his thoughts. He wanted to be absolutely truthful with his old friend but he still needed to be guarded. “We had a contract go bad.”

  “Yeah, that happens.”

  “Not like this it doesn’t. We had a contract with Brewster and he turned on us. He used us to promote a terrorist plot, we walked right into it…” Rainer stated noticing Ed’s change in demeanor.

  “Brewster’s dead Rainer.”

  “Yes, I know, I was there.”

  “To hell you were! I was there Rainer, I held his hand when he died in those mountains. What the hell are you talking about?”

  Rainer could tell that Ed was agitated. He had postured up slightly and looked to be scanning using his peripheral sight. Rainer knew he was looking for trouble, and was processing his fight options.

  “Easy buddy, I’m not fucking with you. What do you mean you were there? I just left Brewster’s dead body in Africa.”

  “Rainer, Brewster died eighteen months ago in the mountains east of FOB Rooster in Afghanistan. We were coming back from a cross-border raid. Our CH-47 took rounds and we went down in a valley near Garga. Brewster was hit by a piece of shrapnel coming through the fuselage in his neck and died on the ground outside the bird after I dragged him out of the wreckage and he bled out. So, you’ll have to excuse me if I seem a little confused by your statement.” Ed shifted himself in his seat to face Rainer directly.

  Rainer’s head was swimming. How could that be? He tried to think back to when he was introduced to Brewster. He and Ed were having a beer after a long night out in Kirkuk. They had been working a search and destroy mission looking for one of the master bomb makers supplying suicide bombers in Baghdad. They had hit several villas and had come up short.

  Rainer remembered how exhausted he felt then and that he had been coming to the end of his run in the uniformed services. He had confided in Ed over that beer that he was thinking of making the switch to the private side.

  “You remember that night that I told you I was going to go private?”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “You told me you were going to set me up with a guy who you had worked with before. That was Brewster.” Rainer said searching for an answer.

  “Yes. When you left Kirkuk later that month, I rolled out of Iraq and started working East Afghanistan again. I ran into Brewster up there and told him you were looking for some private work. He and I talked about your background and I passed him your number. That first time he called you, I was standing there with him.”

  “What the fuck Ed? Something isn’t adding up. I worked a few contracts with Brewster on my own in 2010 after I retired. Nothing big, mostly just collection missions and some black bag jobs. In 2011, he started sending me some people and slowly I put together a team. We started conducting direct action missions later that year and had continued picking up those contracts right up until this last one when he turned on us.”

  “When did you first meet him personally?” Ed asked knowing the answer.

  “Shit,” Rainer stated making the connection. “We were working remotely through dead drops and cyber systems up until last year, when we finally began meeting personally. The direct action missions resulted in materials or physical intelligence that needed to be delivered by hand. Brewster had requested face-to-face transfers as opposed to dead drops. I met him for the first time in February.” Rainer stopped.

  “He was already dead by then Chris,” Ed stated shaking his head and looking back out onto the sea.

  Rainer sank for a moment. The bench grabbed at him and began to swallow him into its depths. He and the team had been used. Most likely, they had been taking orders from another agency or a hostile government. He had allowed them to be doubled.

  “You had mentioned a moment ago that you were connected to a terrorist plot. What did you mean by that Rainer?”

  “Ed. The guys on my team are squared away. You know Daggan and Kef already. The others are cut from the same cloth. They are all good dudes and I would do anything for them. I want to tell you what happened but not if it ends up burying them. This mistake is my responsibility. You have to give me your word that if anyone has to go down for this it is me and me only.”

  “I set you up with Brewster. I’m just as responsible for setting this into motion, whatever this may be. I can’t help if you hold back. Give me the briefing and we’ll take it from there.”

  “Ok, but not here. Are you alone or are we being countered?”

  “I came alone actually. Based upon what I just heard, I kind of regret that. No worries though, I haven’t written off my trust in you just yet. But if you were doubled by another agency we need to assume they are on us right now. Is the whole team here?”

  “Yes. We have a safe house nearby.”

  “Ok, I’ll take your lead, get me there.”

  Rainer placed a hand over his mouth to cover his words so they could not be observed by forces unknown. “Follow me loosely out of here. I’m going to stop in at a hotel not far from here. Meet me in the men’s room and I’ll pass you the address to the safe house. Memorize it and then destroy it. It will be up to you to get there without a tail. Good?”

  “That works.” Ed as he said and stood, immediately walking away toward one of the boutique shops lining the road along the boardwalk. He began window shopping as Rainer walked off in the opposite direction.

  Hours later after Ed had received the address and then conducted several maneuvers in order to throw someone following him, he stood in front of a non-descript co-op apartment building. It was located in the Al-Firdous section of the city south of Fifth Ring Road. There were no vehicles located out front and the windows were dark.

  Ed looked at the house number again and although it was written in Arabic he confirmed it matched the one he had committed to memory. Walking up the stairs, he noticed that the front door was cracked open slightly. He stopped his approach and waited. From within he heard, “Come on Ed, get the hell in here.”

  Ed chuckled and walked the remaining flights of stairs until he was inside the door and within the inner hall. Daggan was standing to the left of the door with a standard Colt M4 in his hands, looking menacing and wearing an outlaw motorcycle T-shirt. Rainer shut the door behind them and turned on Ed.

  “Phone please.”

  “Really?”

  “Standard procedures today Ed. I do trust you, but we’re going by the book for the time being.”

  Ed handed over his phone and Rainer pulled the battery from the unit. He placed both the phone and the battery in his jacket pocket.

  “Anything else?”

  “Negative. I know Daggan would love to check my asshole for a bug but unfortunately for that bastard I’m not packing in there today.” He gave Daggan a wink.

  “Good to see you Ed,” Daggan stated with his big grin shining through his massive beard.

  “Yeah man, good seeing you too. I hear you boys are underwater.”

  “Yeah mate, we’re fucked. You’ll hear about it when we bring you to the back. We’re going to hold tight here for a few minutes and see if you were followed first though. If I have to put a bullet in your head I’d rather do it here, the furniture in the back is brand new.” Daggan gave Ed a wink back, and then proceeded to wand him with a metal detector to see if he was concealing any other items. Ed stood motionsless as if it wasn’t even occurring until Daggan hit him in the balls with it.

  “My bad.” Daggan winked.

  Ed didn’t respond, but waited for a few moments patiently looking at the worn Linoleum flooring in front of his boots. Rainer had walked into the back of the residence with Ed’s phone and disappeared into the inner rooms. Ed knew the drill and was accustomed to the boredom of protocol, so he patiently stood by knowing he wasn’t tailed.

  Ed sensed some motion in the backroom and looked down the long hallway that terminated into a large open room. A woman quickly passed the threshold of the room. He realized immediately that he k
new that woman.

  “Merissa?” He asked seeking an answer from the room beyond.

  Merissa poked her head around the corner at the sound of her name. Her face contorted from the sight of him, completely stunned.

  After a moment spent trying to comprehend the situation, she replied, “Ed? Are you kidding me, Ed is that you?” Merissa ran down the hall and embraced Ed. The team looked on in utter disbelief.

  Rainer provided the ice breaker, “I take it you two know each other?”

  Ed separated himself from Merissa and looked at Rainer who was standing in the doorway at the end of the hall watching on.

  Pointing to Merissa he said, “This is my brother’s girlfriend, who was supposed to be in Africa but as of a couple of seconds ago was missing. I believe now is the time to start with that briefing Rainer, before I lose my fucking temper.”

  “Let’s go,” Rainer said leading the way to the main room of the bottom floor apartment. He pointed to a chair at a large table and took up his seat on the opposite side.

  Ed noticed when he entered the room that the other members of Rainer’s team were positioned throughout the apartment. All were armed with standard Colt M4 carbines and were conducting counter-surveillance of the areas surrounding the building using the windows. Ed moved to the chair that Rainer had indicated was his but not until he had observed the layout of the apartment to include the entry and exit options.

  Merissa sat next to Ed and grasped his hand in hers, “It’s good to see you Ed. Have you spoken to David?”

  “Yes, I talked to him earlier today. He had called concerned about you and asked me to reach out to my contacts in Africa to assist in finding you. How, I mean, why are you here?”

  Rainer chimed in before Merissa could explain, “She was our last target Ed.”

  Ed gave Rainer a grim look in response. “Your target?”

  “Yeah, Brewster or whoever he was gave us a targeting packet for a simple observation mission. We were supposed to watch Doctor Manzak for a few days to write up a pattern of life and then hand it off before we bugged out of Africa. It didn’t exactly go as planned.”

  “Go on.”

  Rainer proceeded to back brief Ed on the mission in Papua New Guinea and then the handoff of the stolen goods in Africa. He described seeing Brewster make a delivery of goods to Merissa while she was under surveillance.

  “So, you think that whatever you swiped from the lab in PNG was what this fuck handed over to Merissa as a vaccination?”

  “It seems to match up to what he told us during his interrogation,” Merissa added.

  “His interrogation?” Ed asked, looking bewildered that Merissa would be knowledgeable of that aspect of the business.

  Merissa laughed slightly at Ed’s look of concern. “Relax Ed, I’m a big girl. I’m not naive to what goes on in the world.”

  “No, it’s not that. I’m just surprised you captured the guy.”

  “We had a tracking unit on him and took him before he could escape the area. We put the water to him and got a confession of sorts out of him. By then, we were fully aware that he was burning us, and that he was using different cover names, but from our perspective he was still the same Brewster we had been previously dealing with. It’s a mess really.”

  “Where is he now?” Ed asked suddenly realizing the answer already.

  “He’s dead. Died of an apparent heart attack during the interrogation. Nothing we could do about it because we were attacked right away.” Rainer continued.

  “Attacked? By his people?” Ed was starting to realize that the situation was fast moving and multi-layered.

  “Screamers,” Einberg called out from his perch.

  “Screamers? You’re fucking kidding me, right?” Ed asked looking to Rainer for confirmation.

  “Yeah, screamers.”

  Ed turned his attention to Merissa to see if she would indicate that this statement was some kind of joke. He wouldn’t put it past his brother David to somehow put together a prank of this magnitude.

  Merissa solemnly explained, “The vaccination I administered was some form of a biological weapon Ed. It affected the refugees in the camp who were exposed in violent ways. They turned on each other and attacked everything that moved. Often, they screamed out when they attacked, like some form of involuntary communication mechanism.”

  “They were like wolves announcing to the pack that they had found some prey. It was haunting and you would recognize it immediately if you heard it.” She had begun to tear up thinking about the refugees who had trusted her to help them.

  Rainer cut her off, seeing her becoming upset, “Ed, it was spreading across Sudan rapidly. We were holed up in a safe house at least fifty kilometers away from the refugee camp during the interrogation but were quickly overrun by the infected. They either ran all the way there, or the infection spread there.”

  Einberg jumped in, “I can tell you from what we experienced and the types of people that were attacking us that we believe it was the latter. Regular men, women, and children were popping up and out of every shadow with the intent of tearing us apart.”

  Rainer continued, “We hopped a plane out of Africa as fast as we could, but if you ask me, the entire area is probably swarming with infected by now. Maybe the entire continent. I wanted to get in touch with you because of what we learned during the interrogation. We trust you Ed, and we know that you have the contacts. We need to get this information back to the States so that they can start working on a cure.”

  “And we need to alert the CDC and DOD when we get there so that quarantine procedures are put into place,” Merissa said having recovered from her earlier episode.

  Ed sat there quietly listening to all of them.

  She continued, “Ed, we are running out of time. If the contagion jumps continents to say Europe or North America than the results will be catastrophic. The population density of Africa could contain this, but Europe would be like throwing jet fuel on a small fire.”

  “Have you told anyone about this at the WHO?” Ed asked Merissa.

  “No, Rainer won’t let me use a phone or email right now.”

  Ed looked at Rainer who just shrugged, “Would you have let her?”

  “No, probably not.”

  Ed took a long moment to digest what he had just heard. He pulled at a small splinter working itself away from the corner of the table while he contemplated the information. He couldn’t believe he was sitting across a table in Kuwait from his brother’s girlfriend who was supposed to be missing and his old friend who he hadn’t seen or talked to in years. And here they were talking about infected people eating each other.

  There were a lot of young soldiers that he had contact with that he saw reading books about zombies and playing video games blasting the living dead. He made fun of them all of the time, and they made fun of him back for being an “old timer.”

  “Fucking zombies?”

  “No Ed, zombies are fiction. These are infected people who didn't deserve this. They are victims,” Merissa clarified, obviously renewed with some new form of purpose. “Real people, not fictional characters in some perverted storyline.”

  Ed had effectively retired from the front lines years ago, and had moved into the mission planning and target prioritization team within the Combat Application Group. Now he was dealing with a real-world situation. He imagined every single one of those young, hard-charging soldiers would be yelling “hell yeah” after hearing what he was just briefed on. He chuckled, shaking his head in bewilderment.

  “Ok, this is crazy but I get it. Here’s what I’m thinking. If I tell anyone about this while you guys are here, you can bet you’ll never step foot back in the U.S. again. You will be labeled terrorists and hunted down.”

  Everyone in the room took a moment to think about that last statement. These men had fought to the death over the years in faraway places while bearing the flag on their bodies. They all had friends who had been killed in action. They had watche
d those caskets loaded onto the C-17s draped in the American flags. The thought of banishment from their homeland was overwhelming and the strong emotions palpable within the boundaries of the room.

  Rainer spent time looking directly at each of his men, searching their eyes. They shared volumes of understanding with each locked stare. He knew it was his responsibility to see each of them through this moment. They may have been unwittingly responsible for this outbreak, but he would see that they found a way to make it right.

  He turned to Ed, “We’ll do whatever it takes to make this right Ed. We had the bag pulled over our heads and we need your help dude. You lead and we’ll follow you to the end of the world.”

  “Hopefully the end is not on the horizon my friend. That would be bad for us all,” Ed said placing his hand on Rainer’s arm. The significance of the embrace was apparent to the team. They were now in this together.

  ***

  Ginger Island, British Virgin Islands

  James watched his children running down the pathway which led away from the lanai pool down to the main house’s private beach. There was a caregiver on the beach already waiting for them. He felt tightness envelop his chest as his son and daughter tossed themselves into the caregiver’s arms. He couldn’t recall them doing that with him for some time. Have they ever loved me? They more or less avoided him these days.

  He stood and slipped on a pair of sandals and walked in from the lanai to the main study. James ripped off his aviator sunglasses and tossed them onto a decorative table nestled next to the open door. Scratching at his facial growth he moved like a spirit across the room.

  Inside the study, he flopped into his plush leather chair behind the granite and bamboo desk and logged onto the computer terminal by swiping his right index finger across the biometric adapter.

  It wasn’t so much a terminal but simply a wireless keyboard that accessed the compound’s server systems and rendered the display onto a sixty inch flat screen LCD built into the wall. The servers themselves were maintained on the other side of the island in an underground bunker.