Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller: Book 2

by Bobby Adair

  “How does he contact the families?” Austin asked.

  “The General sends one of his men to Kampala. In a couple of days, the man comes back and tells The General what he knows. Nothing ever happens quickly. The General wants to feel out your family to see how much he can get. He stalls. He dickers. In the end, they pay. He sends you on your way.”

  Austin pointed at the groaning man. “What about that? Is that normal?”

  “No,” Sander shook his head. “We get beaten. We get fed shit and not enough of it. Sometimes The General cuts off finger or ear to mail to your family. Mostly, fellows leave with all their parts.”

  Chapter 57

  The hospital had converted six rooms at the end of the hall on the fourth floor into an isolated recovery ward for Ebola patients. The stairwell door had been welded shut, most certainly a fire code violation. Extraordinary exceptions were being made for Ebola quarantine. Sheets of plastic were taped in layers inside the door. Paul assumed the other side of the door was similarly shielded.

  In the hall itself, an elaborate anteroom had been constructed of thick sheets of plastic, which provided the doctors and nurses a means of entry and egress, and a safe area to don or shed their protective gear. If Paul had taken any live virus into the isolation recovery area, they planned for it to stay there.

  Paul was the only current resident, though the nurses promised him company soon.

  Every day, somebody came to interview Paul. First it was a detective Curtis, along with a contact tracer from the CDC. Then it was a pair from the FBI. The Colorado State Police stopped by. Each day he sat in a chair on one side of a double plastic wall and talked to officials who sat on the other side. He’d answer the same questions over and over and over again. At first, Paul was sympathetic. The police, the FBI, the CDC, were dredging his memory for any clue that might help them find Colorado’s patient zero.

  As days passed, activity in the quarantine rooms up the hall grew frenzied with the influx of patients from around Denver. Soon their questioning took on the tone of an interrogation. The investigators reviewed Paul’s story for the tiniest inconsistencies, making Paul nervous. He masked it with anger that he finally vented on Detective Curtis. Not quite yelling, but far from civil, Paul asked, “Do I need a lawyer, here?”

  “I don’t know,” Detective Curtis answered. “Do you?”

  The interview ended shortly thereafter. Paul went to his room, sat in the chair by the window, and tried to recall any mistakes he might have made in the telling and retelling of his lies.

  By then, the news channels had ridden his Good Samaritan story for all the mileage they could get out of it. He was out of mortal danger now so the story had lost its appeal. More interesting was the projection released by the CDC that Dallas would top a thousand Ebola cases by the end of the week. Two hundred were already dead. The hospital dedicated to Ebola looked like it was under siege. It was protected by uniformed men, all wearing some level of protection—either a surgical mask and gloves, or gas masks and chemical warfare gear. Protestors camped outside wanted the patients moved far from the city. They didn’t seem to realize that the hospital was not the source of the Dallas epidemic. Ebola was already on their streets and in their houses. The hospital was simply where the sick went to die.

  Atlanta was becoming a big story on the Ebola front as well, and that worried Paul. Olivia lived near Fort Gordon, a few hours east. One of the news channels was projecting that Atlanta would soon overtake Dallas as the most infected city in the country. At least a few dozen other cities had outbreaks in the range of twenty to a hundred cases. Denver was up to forty-three, including Paul. Every time one of the channels discussed Ebola numbers, it was always followed with assurances that government agencies—both locally and nationally—were doing all that could be done, and that the public should take precautions listed on the channel’s website, but shouldn’t panic. “Go to work. Go to school. Avoid physical contact. Don’t let the terrorists win.”

  Terrorists? Paul wondered. That was a new addition to the news blurbs. He wondered if he’d missed something while he was out of it. He needed a computer and an Internet connection, neither of which were available to him.

  A rustling of plastic sheeting from out in the hall alerted Paul that someone was coming through the makeshift anteroom. Paul looked toward the door and waited. Any distraction was welcome.

  A few moments later, Nancy, his day shift nurse came in, wearing her protective gear, carrying no syringe, no medication, and no tablet for notes.

  “Hello, Nancy,” said Paul, curiously.

  “Paul.” Nancy smiled behind her mask. “How are you feeling?”

  “Okay. I don’t think I could run a mile, but I could walk it.” Paul grinned. “I’m assuming I’m still Ebola-free?”

  “Yesterday’s test came back negative.”

  Paul exaggerated a look at Nancy’s empty hands. “No blood test today?”

  Nancy’s expression changed to seriousness. “Have you seen the news today?”

  “I’m tired of watching TV.” Paul glanced back out the window at the rain falling from the gray sky. “I’ve been reading a book that Katrina, the night nurse, recommended it’s—”

  Nancy was ignoring Paul and fumbling with the television’s remote control, but getting no result. She stopped and looked at him. “They’re saying things that you should be aware of.”

  “Saying things?” Paul asked, worried. “What are you talking about?”

  Nancy shook her head, and looked at Paul with eyes that he couldn’t read. She handed him the remote. “I know you’re tired of the news. We all are. You should watch.”

  Paul accepted the device and laid it in his lap.

  Nancy turned and walked to the door, where she paused and looked back. “I’ll be in to check on you later.”

  Paul nodded. He looked down at the remote. He looked up at the television with uneasiness. Could it be something about Heidi? Austin? No, surely if something had happened to either of them, the police would come and tell him in person. He turned up the volume.

  Chapter 58

  It was Maggie’s face Paul saw when the television screen flickered to life. The neighbor Maggie, whom Heidi had told about Paul’s prepper stash that day after his first trip to Costco all those weeks ago. It was Maggie who Paul was worried would tell everyone in the neighborhood about his fifty-pound bags of rice and other goodies.

  Paul got a sinking feeling as though the world had slipped into slow motion, and he watched Maggie’s face. She’d been listening to a question from the reporter and in response, her bushy eyebrows wriggled into a pained plea for validation as the rest of her face tried hard to hide the orgasmic joy she felt by tattling on the neighbors.

  On the television screen, Paul saw the headline in white text, outlined in yellow on a stylish background of cobalt blue with black pinstripes. Quotes surrounded the words, “Paul Cooper lied.”

  The guilty weight of all of Paul’s choices crashed down on him. Embarrassed pain ripped away the curtain of his self-esteem and sucked the breath out of his chest.

  “She likes to talk,” Maggie said in answer to the question asked before Paul’s television came to life.

  The screen split in two with Maggie’s face in a window on one side and the anchor’s face on the other. The anchor asked, “She likes to talk? She just came out and told you that Paul Cooper was going to infect himself with Ebola on purpose?”

  There it was, the paralyzing truth.

  “That’s right,” Maggie nodded. “I usually keep to myself, but Heidi can’t. She’s always talking to everyone in the neighborhood, just telling them any old thing.”

  “And what did you do when she told you this?” The anchor asked.

  Maggie was put off by the implication that perhaps she should have done something when she’d heard the news. “I didn’t think anything of it. His son just died, you know.”

  “What happened to his son?” the anchor asked, wi
th the appropriate sympathy in her tone.

  “He died of Ebola in Africa,” answered Maggie. “He was one of those kids wasting their parents’ money trying to find himself by vacationing around the world. You know the type.

  “Fuck you!” Paul screamed.

  Getting the interview back to the pertinent points, the anchor asked, “Did you have any idea that Paul Cooper would carry through with a plan to infect himself?”

  “No,” Maggie put on a sad face. “He lost his son. He was depressed, I imagine. People don’t think straight when they lose a loved one, especially a child.”

  The television screen dropped the image of Maggie and filled with the news anchor’s sad, but pretty, plasticine face. “Loss of a loved one is indeed difficult.” Her face changed back to mannequin neutrality, with the hint of a smile. “After the break, we’ve got a video from the dashcam of a Texas Highway Patrol car that allegedly shows Paul Cooper on a routine traffic stop, at a time when he claimed to be on that much talked-about trip to Lake Granby, where he met the infected Liberian man.”

  Paul turned off the television and turned his chair around so that he could look out the window again at the rain and the gray clouds. He was screwed.

  Chapter 59

  “All I’m saying, butt-wipe, is I got things to do today. I don’t know why we’re driving all the way to this part of town just so you can show me some surprise.”

  Jimmy made a left turn off the highway exit ramp and then looked over at Larry, asking himself for the thousandth time why he didn’t find a new partner. The answer was always the same. Well, the answer became the same through the years, after Jimmy developed the capacity to be honest with himself on the subject. Jimmy was too lazy to find somebody else. Larry was loyal enough, productive enough, predictable, and easily manipulated. “It’ll be just a few more minutes.”

  Larry huffed and looked out the window. “All these people down here got their big-ass cracker box houses. Bunch of soccer-mom stickers on the windows of their SUVs. They make me sick.”

  “Uh-huh,” Jimmy agreed, though he didn’t care.

  “Look around man,” Larry pointed down a side street. “Every lawn is mowed and the bushes are all trimmed. You don’t see no brown grass. Nobody’s got a car up on blocks anywhere. Rich fucks. Dentists and lawyers, all of ‘em, I’ll bet.”

  “Probably.” Jimmy stopped at a red light.

  “No potholes,” Larry groused. “That’s why we got potholes in our streets. All the tax money goes here to make sure their streets are perfect.” Larry pointed at the road ahead of the truck as his anger grew. “Look, man, you see?”

  Jimmy nodded as they passed the second road repair crew in just as many blocks.

  “Perfectly smooth roads. This place makes me sick.”

  “Then you’ll be happy in a minute,” Jimmy told Larry when the light changed.

  Larry looked out his side window and said nothing. Jimmy, happy for a respite from the complaining, said nothing more as he drove the truck through two more stoplights. The wide street climbed a hill, and just past the crest, Jimmy took a left turn into a complex of expensive-looking townhouses with perfectly manicured landscaping.

  “What’s this?” Larry asked as they drove onto a street between rows of new-looking townhouses sided in old-looking bricks.

  Jimmy looked at the map on his phone and slowed the truck as he did so. He looked up at a street sign, then back down at his phone.

  Larry asked, “What road you lookin’ for?”

  “This is it.” Jimmy took a left turn. A block down, Jimmy made another left turn and slowed to look at the numbers on the sides of the buildings.

  “Whose house we lookin’ for?” Larry asked.

  At a curve in the road, Jimmy pulled over and parked, but left the engine running. Jimmy looked at the buildings again and pointed to a townhouse on the end of a building. “Paul Cooper.”

  Larry looked at Jimmy while he tried to make the mental connection. His face turned to anger, but he said nothing.

  “The guy in the news,” Jimmy hinted.

  Larry looked back at the building. “The guy in—the guy who infected himself with Ebola?”

  “That guy,” Jimmy confirmed.

  “He’s in there?” Larry asked.

  Jimmy shrugged. “I doubt it. Last I saw on TV, he was still in the hospital. If the police don’t toss him in jail when he gets out of the hospital, he’ll be back here soon enough.”

  “You think—” Larry paused as he put his thoughts together, “since he got better, he’s the guy we can get our first batch of blood from.”

  Jimmy smiled, but it looked more like a snarl. “He’s the guy.”

  Larry rubbed the whiskers on his chin. “I know you’ve been thinking about this, but I’ve got questions.”

  “Okay.”

  “I never paid much attention in school.” Larry put his fingers to his lips as if smoking an invisible joint. “Too much of that. Know what I mean?”

  Jimmy laughed and nodded. “Yeah.”

  “But I know if we take the blood out, it’ll con—, congranu—”

  “It’ll coagulate,” said Jimmy, knowing Larry would never come up with the word.

  “Right,” said Larry. “What do we do about that?”

  “I got a buddy who works as a plasmapheresis tech down at the donation center.”

  Larry was confused.

  “Where you donate your plasma when you can’t make rent. They give you thirty bucks and some cookies.”

  Larry thumped two fingers on the crook of his elbow. “Been there.”

  Jimmy reached into his pocket and took out a vial of clear liquid. “I got a whole box of this shit from my buddy.” Jimmy handed the small bottle to Larry.

  Larry took the bottle and held it up to read the label. “Heparin?”

  “And Coumadin,” said Jimmy, nodding. “It keeps the blood from clotting, so you can run it through the machine.”

  Larry rubbed his whiskers again and said, “Those machines are big and heavy.” He pointed at Paul Cooper’s townhouse. “Where do we get one, and how do we get it in there?”

  “We don’t,” said Jimmy, shaking his head. “Like you said, they’re big and heavy. We don’t know how to work it. If we went that route, we’d have to get my buddy, the plasmapheresis guy, in on the deal for a share. I don’t know if he’d be down for this kind of work. He doesn’t mind stealing a box of Heparin to make a few bucks, but I don’t think he’d approve of what we’re gonna be doing with it.”

  Larry put on a confident face as he agreed with Jimmy’s conclusion.

  “Most people are too afraid of the law to break it by much.” Jimmy laughed.

  Larry laughed. “That’s the truth.”

  “That’s why we just take the blood.” Jimmy reached over and took the vial of Heparin back from Larry. “We use this to keep the blood from clotting. I got bags and needles and stuff. My buddy got us everything we need. By the way, that stuff wasn’t cheap. I covered the cost, but I’m repaying myself before we divvy up the profits.”

  “Yeah, man,” Larry nodded. “Of course.”

  “Oh.” Jimmy laughed again. “I almost forgot about the best part.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Nobody’s gonna give a shit.”

  “How’s that?” Larry asked.

  “You’ve seen the news, man,” said Jimmy. “Everybody hates Paul Cooper.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Man, you don’t play the sympathy thing all over TV, and then have it come out that you lied about everything. People hate that shit. Especially with Ebola in Denver now.”

  “Over a hundred,” Larry cut in. “Maybe two hundred. I heard it on the radio this morning.”

  “All potential customers.” Jimmy laughed. “And they all blame Paul Cooper. If he turns up dead, everybody in Denver will be a suspect. It’s the perfect crime. When it comes out in the news that somebody stole all of Paul’s blood, it’ll make it ea
sier for us to sell our stock. It’ll be like the news channels will do our advertising. People will believe we have what we say we have, and they’ll pay us top dollar for it.”

  Chapter 60

  Firas Hakimi was dead. That was the news Hadi had just passed along to Najid as he walked in the shade of the date trees just inside the northern wall. After imparting the news, Najid instructed Hadi to find out who Hakimi’s successor would be. With every member of Hakimi’s inner circle either dead or sick, Najid would be surprised if Hadi came back with any name at all. Hakimi’s organization would likely fall apart. If any of his low-level zealots survived the epidemic in Syria, Najid decided he might try to recruit them at a future date. He’d put Hadi on collecting a list, if he could.

  But those thoughts were for another day.

  This day was for joy.

  Najid Almasi, recent heir to the Almasi fortune, had already tripled his wealth. He laughed out loud into the solitude of the grove. The servants knew he liked to walk in the date grove to find his peace, find time to think. They left him alone, except when urgency demanded otherwise.

  The wealth was mostly paper wealth. That, and the skyrocketing value of the gold and silver stored in the bunkers beneath the compound. When the international monetary system collapsed, as it surely appeared to be on its way to doing, all of that paper would be worthless. Until then, Najid Almasi—rich already—was in the upper echelons of the list of wealthiest men in the world.

  Short-lived though it would be, it felt good.

  The morning’s best news was that of the Ebola counts. Hadi no longer presented graphs of infection projections. He presented numbers of reported cases. The most infected city in the world was Nairobi, an unfortunate result of its containing an international airport relatively close to Kapchorwa. All of Najid’s jihadists had passed through Nairobi.