by Bobby Adair
Could he be wrong about that? Sure.
He’d been in a firefight with terrorists on the road north of Mbale. He’d threatened and bribed his way through two countries. He’d walked the streets of Nairobi where the disease had exterminated most of the population while mountains of corpses burned in the market squares, fueled by an endless procession of the bereaved dragging the bodies of their family members to the fires.
But Mitch had his confidence.
He didn’t have contact with anyone in his chain of command at Langley. Compartmentalization had left him all but invisible. He was unable to find a living person who knew his name still answering a phone at the State Department. The best he got was a low-level HR employee who assured him his payroll deposits would continue. As for the embassy in Kampala, as far as he could deduce, it was deserted.
What else was Mitch to do but fulfill a promise he’d made to Olivia Cooper—to see if he could locate her brother, last seen alive but half-sick and hiking out of Kapchorwa to get help for the infected people still there?
Heroic little punk.
The one time Mitch had seen Austin Cooper he’d have bet a thousand dollars that Austin wouldn’t live.
When Mitch learned from Dr. Littlefield that Austin had trekked out of Kapchorwa, he made another bet with himself. He hoped to lose that one as well.
Mitch spent a few days in Mbale after listening to everything Dr. Littlefield could tell him about Austin Cooper. Since no one at the hospital had seen or talked to Austin, it stood to reason that Austin had never made it to Mbale. A worried Dr. Littlefield speculated that Austin had fallen ill while on the road from Kapchorwa. Or worse, he’d been the victim of ignorant hostility. Things had been violent for a time.
With the idea that he’d have to retrace the road from Mbale to Kapchorwa to find evidence that Austin had passed through, he started where he was. Mitch spent a good deal of time searching for residents in Mbale who were both well enough and willing—at a distance of several paces—to answer questions. Thankfully, blue-eyed mzungu boys with wavy brown hair were an uncommon sight on the streets of Mbale by then. Mitch didn’t need to add the description that Austin was probably sick and weak. Who wasn’t?
To his surprise, Mitch found two people who’d seen the boy in town during the riots. Searching further, Mitch came across a witness at the morgue who’d seen the boy being chased by the members of an outlaw militia group. At least that was the witness’ speculation.
From there it was a case of determining the identity of the militia to figure out whether Austin had been killed or kidnapped. Questions, questions, and more questions. That took the good part of another day.
As a result, Mitch found himself following rumors through the hamlets and goat trails on Mt. Elgon’s southern slopes. Finding one rebel group’s camp on the mountain’s south face turned out to be much more difficult than he’d guessed it would be. He’d even employed Olivia in the task. She found her way into a stash of satellite photos of the region. Unfortunately, with a canopy of tall trees and dense forest, it was impossible to see the roads, let alone a camp of insurgents deliberately trying to hide.
It was when Mitch came to a sprawling checkerboard of coffee fields high up on the southwest side of Mt. Elgon that he found his first clue since leaving Mbale. A farmer who kept Mitch at yelling distance described how he’d seen a ghost walking along the edge of the field early one morning while the fields were still in the shadow cast by the mountain. Ghosts, especially the restless ones who’d been shot, didn’t always settle down at first light.
“Shot?” Mitch asked.
The farmer explained how the sinewy apparition had been carrying a machine gun. He was probably the white ghost of a rebel who had lived in a camp not far away. Those guys get shot, and they die. The ghost probably wasn’t a mzungu boy. Mzungus were too buttery fat and soft. But the farmer allowed that Mitch could believe whatever fantasy he chose. The farmer knew what he saw. He pointed Mitch north, the direction he’d seen the apparition going.
North?
As Mitch searched for a road on which to head that direction, he came to the conclusion that Austin might be going back to Kapchorwa. Though Kapchorwa had been the epicenter of the airborne Ebola outbreak and the scene of terrible suffering, it was the last safe place Austin had been. At least it was the last safe place Mitch knew Austin had been. Perhaps Austin would go back. That, and he realized it was the last place Austin had seen Dr. Littlefield, and as far as Austin knew, the doctor was still there, expecting Austin to return one day with help.
Chapter 8
Mitch drove into Kapchorwa on a road so slick with red mud the vehicle spent as much time skidding sideways as rolling forward. He passed the ashen mounds of burned huts and blackened cinderblock walls surrounding the scorched jumble of villagers’ bones and possessions. Gnawed bones and corpses ripped by the teeth of scavenging animals lay in the ruins, the roads, and the yards.
Mitch followed the curve of the main road through town and up the hill as it climbed to a hairpin turn near the old hospital.
He slowed, not believing what he saw in the muddy street—standing, but making no move to wave or to get out of the way. The muzungu ghost, just as the farmer had described, wiry thin with an AK-47 hanging at his waist, hands ready to use it.
Mitch stopped the truck and swung the door open. He got out, carefully and slowly.
The kid didn’t move. He watched with a hardness on his face that had replaced the youthfulness. Austin Cooper was no longer a weak wraith on the verge of Ebola death; he was a hard-eyed phoenix in the shape of a man.
“Hello,” said Mitch. “Do you remember me?”
Austin shook his head, almost smiled, and then pulled an unreadable mask over his emotions.
Mitch stepped forward. “You’re Austin Cooper, right?”
Austin stood silent, ready to spring. He nodded but was untrusting.
“I’m Mitch Peterson. I was with Dr. Mills when we found you behind the hospital.” Mitch pointed unnecessarily. “We talked. You weren’t in good shape. I’m not surprised you don’t remember.”
Austin looked at the truck. He looked at Mitch. “What happened to Dr. Mills?”
“Mbale.” Mitch gestured back down the muddy road. “I spoke with her and Dr. Littlefield three days ago.”
“In Mbale?” Austin asked, a glaze in his eyes, betraying the hard face.
“They’re both there in the hospital.”
“They made it?” Austin relaxed by a degree. His eyes lingered on the truck as though it was a dog that might bite. “Can you take me there?”
Mitch nodded. “Yes.” He made a quick turn back to the truck, and Austin took a step away. Mitch stopped. “You’re nervous.”
“Careful would be a better word.” Austin’s eyes were again without emotion. “How did you know to find me here?”
“I’ve been searching.” Mitch laughed. “It wasn’t as easy as you’re implying.”
“Why?”
“Olivia asked me to.”
“Olivia?” Austin didn’t believe, but his eyes glassed again with the hint of tears. “My sister?”
“I have a satellite phone in the truck.” Mitch smiled. “I have some idea what you’ve been through. So does she. I know why you’re nervous—ah—careful. I’m going to get my phone, all right?”
Austin gripped his weapon a little more firmly. “Of course.”
Mitch retrieved the phone from the passenger seat. He checked the charge and dialed Olivia’s number as he walked over to Austin, stopping an arm’s length away. Once the phone started ringing, he held it out.
Austin looked at the phone as though it were bait in a trap.
After the second ring, a plastic voice said, “Hello? Hello, Mitch?”
All the hardness left Austin’s face as he reached over and took the phone. He put it to his ear. “Olivia?” Tears threatened to pour but didn’t.
Chapter 9
“You’re star
ing,” said Barry.
Olivia looked up to see Barry standing in the doorway of her cubicle.
Barry was nodding as if to reaffirm what he’d just said. “It still bothers me too.”
“What bothers you?” Olivia’s mind had been somewhere else entirely.
“Whoever isn’t dying isn’t coming to work. Another week or two, it might just be you and me left.” Barry glanced at the empty, glass-walled office at the end of the aisle. “Eric.” Barry turned away. “His wife. The kids.”
Olivia looked in the direction of Eric’s office, with some sadness on her face that she wasn’t feeling at the moment. “Mitch found Austin.” She feebly smiled. She hadn’t slept at all since receiving the call from Austin the night before.
Barry’s mouth fell open. “You’re kidding.”
Olivia shook her head.
“You’re not kidding?”
“No.” Olivia waved Barry to come into the cubicle and sit on the desk. “Mitch found him in Kapchorwa yesterday morning, this morning—whatever. He called me in the middle of the night to tell me.”
“Jesus, that’s fantastic.” The desk creaked under Barry’s weight as he sat down. “I honestly didn’t think there was a chance anybody would find him. Did you actually talk to Austin?”
“Yeah.” For the first time, Olivia admitted to herself that she didn’t believe it either. She’d kept searching, kept pushing, because that was how she dealt with the insurmountable in her life. Push until the wall comes down. Tears welled up. Again.
Barry reached over and put a hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”
“I’m happy…I’m tired.” Olivia slid a side drawer open and rustled through the contents to find a purse-sized plastic package of tissues. “It was a long night.” She gave up on the tissues and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “I guess all I’m thinking about now is how to get Austin back from Africa.”
“That will be a trick. International travel has all but stopped. You know that.” Barry slid off the desk and exited the cube. From the hall between the cubicles, he asked, “Is he someplace safe? Is he staying in Kapchorwa with Mitch?”
“They’re driving into Mbale today.”
Barry came back into Olivia’s cube with a box of tissues. “Melanie’s.” He sat the box on the desk in front of Olivia as he exaggerated a look over his shoulder. “I think I just broke some federal and state laws. I should have sterilized those first.” He grinned.
Olivia laughed and took a tissue.
“Is it safe in Mbale now?” Barry sat himself back on the desk. “I thought Mbale had gone Dark Ages on us.”
Olivia nodded and looked at her keyboard as images of corpses paraded through her mind. “It did. Now, I don’t think so. Maybe when enough people die, the rest lose their will to fight and kill for no good reason at all. I’ve been in contact with some doctors in Mbale who last saw Austin alive in Kapchorwa. They cared for him until he got well. Then when one of the doctors got sick, Austin left Kapchorwa on foot.” Olivia started to cry again. Through the tears she managed to tell Barry, “He wasn’t healthy yet. Dr. Littlefield told him not to go. But he wanted to help them and the other sick people. He went to get medicine or whatever he could in Mbale.”
Olivia sat back in her chair and blew her nose. “Sorry.”
“No, no. Completely understandable.” Barry scooted back on the desk and leaned against the cubicle wall. He was going to be staying awhile. “The pictures and video we’ve seen, especially from Nairobi, make everything look pretty bad over there.”
“Mbale was just as bad.” Olivia touched her cellphone, not giving a second thought to a now unenforced policy prohibiting them in the building. “Dr. Littlefield has been sending me pictures. Lots of burned-out buildings. Bodies still in the street. He guesses at least half the houses contain corpses. Most everybody in the city died. At least the hospital is open again and people are surviving.”
“Why didn’t Austin stay in Mbale,” asked Barry. “Sounds like it stabilized.”
“I didn’t get the whole story, but Austin was kidnapped by a group of rebels when he got to Mbale.”
“Kidnapped?” Barry’s eyes went wide. “Like for ransom?”
Olivia nodded.
“Boy, is he going to have some stories for his grandkids.” Barry laughed.
Olivia laughed too. “Thanks for that, Barry.” She blew her nose again. “He’s going to call later this morning after they get to Mbale. He’ll tell me more then. I guess last night I was in shock, you know. I just wanted to know he was okay and that he was safe.”
“He’s with Mitch, that CIA guy.” Barry nodded with the confidence of someone with special knowledge. “I think that guy is indestructible. All he’s been through without a scratch.”
Olivia couldn’t disagree.
“What’s the plan, then?”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead.”
“Oh, gimme a break.” Barry smiled again. “I know you. You’ve been up all night thinking about this.”
That was true. She hadn’t slept a wink since she got off the phone with Austin. She first thing she did was try again to call her father’s phone. She’d emailed him and texted. Paul Cooper had disappeared. All she knew for sure about him was that he hadn’t died of Ebola. He’d miraculously gotten over that, with a huge boost from the medical community. With the way things were, nearly any on a long list of bad outcomes was possible.
She’d called the neighbor who had a key to her dad’s townhouse. No answer there. She’d even called the police to see whether they’d stop by. Again, they told her they hadn’t the manpower.
“Is Austin going to stay in Mbale this time?”
Olivia shrugged.
“I know that look. You want to get him home.”
“Wouldn’t you, if he was your brother?”
“Of course.” Barry put on a thoughtful face. “Even if air travel wasn’t all but shut down, the nearest international airport is what, Kampala?”
Olivia nodded.
Barry grimaced. “Kampala these days looks like Nairobi did when we were still getting pictures.”
“Kampala is out. It might be worse than Nairobi was. At least in Nairobi the violence didn’t get that bad. Some factions in Kampala are fighting for the scraps.”
Barry cocked his head. “Not an uncommon story these days.”
“You know,” said Olivia, “I used to think we were lucky in this job. We saw things here nobody else saw. We had a window to the world that was real, not filtered to present a point of view.” Olivia sighed. “Now, I’ve seen so much through that window I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep without nightmares again. And all I’ve seen are pictures. Can you imagine what it’s like to live through it?”
“Go outside,” Barry countered. “It’s not Kampala bad here, but you’ve seen it.”
“I don’t go off the base anymore. Fort Gordon is my home until the base commander kicks me out.”
“Yeah, I moved onto the base last week, too.” Barry shook his head and stared absently. “It doesn’t make sense to go home anymore. You can’t drive the streets now without seeing a body either on the road or in a stalled car.”
“At least we still have order. Mostly.”
“Law and order,” Barry shrugged. “I used to take that for granted. You know what?”
“What?”
“I know what you could do with Austin.”
“I’m listening.”
“Camp Lemonnier.”
“In Djibouti?”
“Marine base. They fly drones out of there to screw with the jihadists in Yemen and such places. Why not have Austin go there? He’d be safe. Did I say it was a Marine base? You know, I’d be surprised if every American stranded in Africa wasn’t on his way there right now. If I was, that’s where I’d go. Sounds like safety to me.”
“Djibouti?” Olivia let her skepticism glow through the tone of her question. “How far is that from Kampala?”
Bar
ry shrugged. “Google it. I don’t know. Five hundred miles, a thousand?”
Olivia sat up and typed. A moment later the screen provided the information. “Close to seventeen hundred miles driving,” she groaned. “They’d have to cross Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia. None of that sounds safe to me.”
Chapter 10
Feeling strange to be sitting in a moving vehicle maneuvering around water-filled holes in the muddy road, Austin asked, “How do you know Olivia?”
Mitch laughed. “The jealous brother thing?” Mitch showed Austin a smile.
“Just curious. She asked about you on the phone. She wanted to know how you were doing.”
Glancing down at himself, Mitch asked, “What’d you tell her?”
“I told her you looked like Indiana Jones. Like you’re in your element here.” Austin’s grin slipped away. “Seriously, is she worried about something? Are you infected?”
“No.” The truck caught a slick patch of mud and slid sideways as the engine revved on loose wheels. Mitch spun the steering wheel first in one direction and then the other, and then got control. “I’ve been lucky so far.”
Austin looked through the gaps in the jungle and saw cultivated fields overrun with tall weeds between the rows of crops. “Me too, I guess.”
“You guess?” Mitch asked. “My bet was that you’d be dead. Based on what you looked like last time I saw you.”
“Yeah. I suppose.”
“Now look at you. Strong. Lean.”
“Starved is a better description.” Austin looked into the back of the truck. “You got any food in here?”
“Yeah.” Mitch pointed at a cooler pushed against the doors in the back. “Bottled water back there, too. You want to climb over the seat or you want me to stop?”
Austin looked at the trees and fields outside and didn’t see any people at any distance. Still, to stop was to open them to risk. “I’ll climb over. Watch the bumps, if you don’t mind.”