by A. G. Riddle
“We need that sat telemetry right now, you understand?” he said. “I’m going to hang up now and call State and people way above your pay grade. I’m going to mention your name. If telemetry isn’t available by the time I call you back, it will go badly for you.”
He wasn’t bluffing; he called the State Department next, and right after, his contact at the CIA.
The moment he hung up, his office phone rang. It was the director of the CDC. Elliott had instructed Millen to call the EOC and update them immediately after their call; apparently word of the crisis had now reached the top of the food chain.
“Did you call State, Elliott?”
“Yeah.” Elliott was typing on his computer, sending an email to Joe Ruto, head of CDC in Kenya, urging him to contact the Kenyans about any assets they had in the area.
“Did you threaten them, Elliott?”
“Uh, yeah. Maybe, I don’t know. Why?”
Elliott shifted the phone to his other shoulder so he could type faster.
“Because they just called me. They’re not happy.”
“Uh-huh. Is the White House going to approve the RDF?”
Elliott believed a Rapid Deployment Force scouring the area for Peyton and the other hostages was their best shot at getting them back; he had been working to make that exact scenario happen.
“They don’t even have a target yet,” the director said.
“Sure they do: the al-Shabaab camps in Somalia.”
“Be realistic, Elliott.”
“I am. Realistically, who do you think did this? There’s one terror network in the region: al-Shabaab. They hate America. We’ve got extremely high-value targets in the area. It’s them. They’ve got her.”
“Her?”
“Our people.”
The director exhaled. “Our people could be at any number of camps.”
“I agree. We hit them all at the same time. It’s the only way.”
“Jesus, Elliott. You want to start a ground war in southern Somalia?”
“I want to raid known terrorist camps in search of American hostages. Since when did this become a tough sell?”
A pause, then the director said, “Hang on a second.” Elliott heard mouse clicks. “All right, there’s a White House conference call in fifteen minutes—”
“I want to be on the call—”
“No, Elliott. It’s invite-only. The president and national security advisor are going to be there. Please don’t make any more calls. I know you’re worried. I am too. I’ll call you as soon as the conference ends, okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
Elliott slammed the phone down and sat, listening to his breathing for a long moment. A text popped up on his cell phone, which lay on his desk:
From: Rose
Message: Thinking of switching from Miller Union to Kyma. Okay with you?
Elliott tapped the phone and dialed his wife.
“We’re going to have to cancel dinner.”
Rose instantly read the tone of his voice. “What’s happened?”
“It’s Peyton.”
“Oh my God.”
Elliott avoided giving his wife all the details; he merely told her that Peyton and her team were out of contact, and they were trying to determine if it was a technical problem or something else. White lies had become a routine part of his job, especially during his time in the field, but they had been less common since his promotion and years at CDC HQ. He far preferred being honest with Rose, but now wasn’t the time for it.
Ten minutes later, an email appeared in Elliott’s inbox. The NRO had made the sat footage available.
Elliott clicked the link and watched as black-suited soldiers attacked the camp at dusk. The footage ended with soldiers hauling two women out of the back of an overturned SUV. They placed black bags over their heads and dragged them to a clearing, where a helicopter landed and took them away.
Elliott grabbed his office phone and dialed the NRO analyst, defying the CDC director’s order. “Where’d the helicopter go?”
“We don’t know. The area’s huge; we don’t have coverage over the whole thing.”
“Does the helicopter show up again—on another sat?”
“We don’t know—”
“What the hell do you mean, you don’t know?”
“It’s an unmarked Sikorsky. We can’t be sure it’s the same helicopter.”
“Do you have satellites over the al-Shabaab terror camps?”
The analyst hesitated.
“Do you?”
“That’s… classified, sir.”
“Classified? You’re seriously not going to tell me if you can see a similar helicopter landing at a terrorist base?”
“I could lose my job, sir.”
“Lose your job? Let me tell you something. Right now, some terrorist thug is torturing and possibly sexually assaulting American citizens—government employees serving our nation, just like you and me, men and women who put themselves in harm’s way to protect our families and our friends so we can go home tonight and sleep in safety. If you care about that at all, I want you to pull that footage from all those terror bases, and if you see that helicopter or anything else going on, please make a call. Let the national security advisor know, or whoever the hell you guys call. Will you do that?”
“Yes, sir, I will.”
Another text appeared on Elliott’s phone.
From: Rose
Message: Any news?
Elliott texted back.
Not yet. Everything will be fine. Don’t worry.
At six p.m., Elliott’s office phone rang. He snatched it up and listened, surprised at the voice on the other end: the head of watch at the EOC.
“Elliott, we just got a flood of signals in; this respiratory disease is amplifying. Millions more cases—”
“Uh-huh, uh-huh,” Elliott said, interrupting. “Keep an eye on it. I’ll call you back.”
“But I think—”
“I’ll call you back.”
He hung up the phone and briefly considered calling the director to see if he had tried calling him.
He stood and paced across the room. His blood pressure had to be through the roof. He was glad Rose couldn’t see him. He took a pill bottle from his top desk drawer and swallowed a blood pressure pill.
After what felt like hours, Elliott’s phone rang again.
“All right,” the CDC director said. “They’re putting two RDFs on standby and dispatching an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Aden. The CIA special ops teams at the Mogadishu airport are also on alert. As soon as they have reliable intel about the hostages’ location, they’ll move in.”
“That’s it?”
“It’s all we can do until we know where they are.”
“So, what, we’re going to wait for these kidnappers to webcast their demands? Or maybe force our people to read a statement? Or are we just going to wait and hope somebody gets drunk in a Mogadishu dive bar and mentions some American hostages?”
“What do you want, Elliott?”
“I want special ops raiding those camps in Somalia. We ought to be turning that place upside down.”
“What if they’re not there? What if they’re in Ethiopia, or still in Kenya? Raiding the camps could get American soldiers killed. And it could provoke the kidnappers to kill our people in retribution.”
“First, those soldiers signed up for that,” Elliott said. “Special operatives know the risk, they know they’re putting themselves in harm’s way to save American lives. That’s their job. And when our people deploy, they go out there with a simple assumption: if they get in trouble, the United States of America will come for them. We’re not keeping our promise. How are we going to ask the next class of EIS agents to put themselves in harm’s way if we aren’t willing to protect this class? Huh?”
“I’ll keep you posted, Elliott. Go home. Try to relax.”
The line went dead. Elliott threw the phone across the room. The gray Ethernet
cord that connected it to the wall yanked it back like a yo-yo and slammed it into the desk.
His door flew open, and Josh, his assistant, peered in. The younger man always stayed until Elliott left for the day. He looked down at the broken IP phone. “I’ll… call IT.”
When the door closed, Elliott took out his cell phone and dialed an old friend.
“I’ve got a story for you.”
“On the record?”
“Strictly off.”
“Related to the Kenya outbreak, or this new thing?”
“Kenya. CDC employees have been abducted. The White House knows. They’re not doing anything.”
Chapter 37
When Elliott got home, he poured himself a drink and downed it quickly. Then he had another, and sat in the large chair in the corner of his mahogany-paneled office, staring at nothing in particular. His eyes settled on a picture taken seven years ago, in Haiti. He and Peyton were facing the camera, his arm around her. It had been taken the day they found out there were no new cases in the cholera outbreak. That had been a happy day—one of the few during that grueling deployment.
He picked up the remote and turned on the flat-screen TV.
CNN has learned that the abduction took place in eastern Kenya, near the border with Somalia…
Elliott watched the rest of the segment. It ended with: The White House has issued a statement saying they are “following the situation and considering all options for the safe return of American and Kenyan personnel.”
He walked to the kitchen, looking for Rose, but instead found a whole, uncooked chicken in a glass dish on the center island, beside a few chopped vegetables. Rose had texted him to tell him she would cook, and he wondered if something had gone wrong.
Rose had retired from teaching when their first son was born. She had been a wonderful mother. After the death of their youngest son in the pool, she had dedicated much of her time to tending the garden they had created in its place—and to cooking the vegetables she grew there.
The oven was on. Elliott squatted down and hit the light. It was pre-heated but empty.
“Rose?” he called.
No response.
He walked to her office off the kitchen. The day’s mail lay on her desk, unopened.
He found her in their bedroom, lying on top of the comforter, her clothes still on, the lights off. The curtains were open. The setting sun shone through the French doors that led to the patio.
“Rose?”
She didn’t move.
Elliott sat on the edge of the bed and gripped her hand, feeling her pulse with his finger. She was burning up, her heartbeat rapid. He held the back of his hand to her forehead. Definitely running a fever.
She opened her eyes and, upon seeing Elliott, instantly grew worried. She glanced at the clock on the bedside table.
“Oh, no, I must’ve fallen asleep.”
She pushed up on trembling arms, coughed, and fell back to the bed, reaching for the tissue box on the nightstand. Elliott heard the congestion in her chest as she coughed violently into a tissue. There were plenty more used tissues in the wastebasket beside the bed.
“When did you start feeling sick?” he asked.
“Shortly after you left this morning. It’s nothing. I’ve got to get dinner ready.”
Elliott felt her neck. Her lymph nodes were swollen; her body was fighting an infection.
She sneezed into the tissue, then sneezed again. Elliott brought the box closer, leaving it next to her in the bed.
“No, Rose. You’re going to stay in bed, and I’m going to fix dinner.”
She studied him skeptically.
“Okay. I’m going to pick up dinner.”
She smiled and squeezed his hand.
He helped her out of her clothes and under the covers, then went into the bathroom to search the medicine cabinet. All the cold and flu tablets had long since expired. He found a bag of zinc lozenges and returned to the bedside with them.
“Stay in bed, honey. Try these—they’ll help. I’ll go get dinner and some cold medicine. Be back soon.”
Elliott ate a small snack to soak up some of the alcohol, then turned the oven off and moved the uncooked food to the refrigerator. Completing Rose’s cooking was above his pay grade; a few hot trays from Whole Foods were his usual fare when she was out of town. That would have to do for tonight.
The drugstore parking lot was filled to capacity; Elliott actually had to wait for a spot. The scene inside took him aback. People filled the aisles and argued at the checkout line.
What’s happening here?
He went to the aisle that held the cold and flu medicine, but the shelves were utterly bare. Every last box and bottle of medicine was gone.
There was a commotion at the back of the drugstore, near the pharmacy desk.
“My kid is sick—”
“When will you get more—”
A pharmacy tech strode past the dropoff window and met Elliott’s eyes.
“Excuse me,” Elliott said. “Do you have any cold medicine left?”
The young woman shook her head as if she’d gotten that question a lot. “No, and we don’t know when we’ll get more.”
If this was happening in Atlanta, it was likely happening across the country. Things were worse than the stats had revealed—much worse. Elliott needed to get back to work. They needed to get more aggressive, and fast. And it was now urgent that they get the virus sequenced so they could compare it with the samples from Mandera. If the viruses were the same… He didn’t want to even think about the possibility. The US wasn’t prepared for that. No country was.
He considered calling Rose, but that might wake her. She needed her rest, and she probably wouldn’t have eaten much anyway. There were still leftovers from last night in the fridge if she did get hungry.
On the way to the CDC, Elliott dialed his son, Ryan, in Austin. Ryan and his wife and son were scheduled to fly to Atlanta that night to spend Thanksgiving at Elliott’s home. He answered on the first ring.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Hi. I was hoping to catch you before the flight.” Elliott could hear cars honking in the background.
“Why? Is everything all right?”
“Yeah,” Elliott lied. “Of course. Just checking on you. There’s a bug going around here.”
“Here, too. Feels like half the city is sick,” Ryan said.
“Adam? Samantha?” Elliott asked.
“They’re fine. We’ve all been lucky—dodged it so far. But Adam’s day care sent all the kids home yesterday.” He paused. “We’re almost to the airport. You sure we should still come?”
Elliott had been pondering that very question. If things went south, he would rather have his family close. And he didn’t want to worry them. “Definitely. We’re looking forward to it.”
“Okay. We’ll see you later tonight.”
“Be safe. I love you.”
“Love you too, Dad.”
At the front desk of the main CDC building on Clifton Road, Elliott swiped his access card. A red beep. He tried it again. The security guard at the desk walked over.
“I think something’s wrong with my card,” Elliott said.
“It’s not your card, Dr. Shapiro. Your access to the campus has been revoked.”
“What? By whose order?” In his peripheral vision, Elliott saw two more security guards walking to the turnstile.
“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know.”
Elliott took a few steps back from the entrance, allowing other staff to make their way past. They glanced back at him. He took out his cell phone and dialed the director.
“Steven, I’m having a problem getting into the building.”
“Get used to it. You won’t ever get back in the building if I have anything to do with it.”
Elliott considered playing dumb, but figured appealing to the director’s sense of duty was the stronger play. “Look, whatever you think of what I did, it’s done now. We’ve go
t a serious outbreak going on. We need all hands on deck—for the sake of the American people—”
“Save it, Elliott. We’re well aware of the situation. Go home. And don’t you dare say another word to the press.”
Day 5
50,000,000 infected
12,000 dead
Chapter 38
Desmond awoke with a new, more intense pain. The welt covering the left side of his chest was like a bee sting—from a Volkswagen-sized bee.
While he had been unconscious, they had moved him from the barn. His new cell was quite different. He was indoors, in a very new and sophisticated facility. Metal walls painted white surrounded him on three sides, and a thick glass barrier looked out onto a wide corridor. He lay on a narrow bed with a simple mattress and no sheets. This was a proper prison—and a high-tech one at that. There was a speaker in the ceiling, and a pass-through slot on the wall opposite the glass, presumably for food.
The tranquilizer dart the soldier in the barn had shot him with had been powerful; Desmond sensed that he had been out for quite some time. And much had happened: they had taken his clothes, replaced them with green scrubs, and seen to all his wounds. He pulled up his shirt and inspected the cotton bandage on his side. It covered the shallow rut he had carved.
His hands and feet were unbound. It felt good to be at least that free again.
He wasn’t sure exactly how he knew, but he sensed that he was on a ship. Perhaps it was the slight movement, or simply the proportions of the space and the fact that the walls, floor, and ceiling were all metal.
He sat on the bed and waited, for how long he didn’t know. The hum of the fluorescent lights slowly became annoying, then deafening.
Footsteps: boots on the metal floor, marching with purpose. A man stopped in front of the glass divider and stared for a moment. Desmond recognized him instantly: the scar-faced man from his memories. His hair was longer now. The blond locks hung across his face, partially obscuring the scars. The mottled, burned flesh stretched up from his chest, across his neck, chin and cheeks, and stopped at his forehead. He wore a scruffy sandy-blond beard that grew in uneven patches. It did little to hide the healed wounds, which must have once been excruciating. He looked almost inhuman.