by Vince Flynn
They locked eyes for a moment, but then Chism looked away. The other two were already descending the ladder.
“Will we see each other again?” Chism asked.
“Of course. But I hope not too soon.”
* * *
Odongo was shoved from behind but didn’t stumble. The two guerrillas ushering him toward the front of the building were both in their early teens and lacked the weight to move him. What they did possess, though, was the thoughtless sadism that was unique to child soldiers.
The facility’s main doors loomed ahead, and he passed through them into the rain. The group waiting was as ragtag as he expected—clothed in everything from surplus combat gear to jeans and sandals. All, of course, carried the cheap AK-47s favored by terrorists the world over. A few also wielded machetes.
He counted twenty-five people in total. Nineteen of Auma’s guerrillas, four captured hospital workers, and two unconscious patients lying in stretchers that were slowly sinking into the mud. Everyone was soaked to the bone and most were starting to shiver.
It was a good sign. When Auma sent his troops on one of his infamous genocidal raids, they were generally high on a drug locally known as ajali. Under its influence, they felt no fear, no pain, no doubt, and certainly no cold. The dull messianic glow around Auma became blinding and they would do anything for him: Run until their hearts exploded. Kill their own families. Fight until well beyond the time their brains should have told them they were dead.
Not tonight, though. Tonight’s raid wasn’t about wanton violence, theft, or the acquisition of new disciples. Auma wanted something else.
The crowd in front of him parted and the man himself appeared. His form was hidden by a hooded rain poncho, but his eyes shone in the security lights.
“Gideon,” Odongo said by way of greeting.
“Mukisa.”
Odongo never spoke of the fact that he’d known Auma at university. Before the man’s psychoses had reached such a pitched level. Before he’d left to pursue his career as God’s avenging angel.
Auma looked over at his six hostages, absorbing the terror and despair in the faces of the ones capable of understanding what was happening.
“I was going to torture them in front of the director of this hospital. But now that I know it’s you, there’s no point, is there? What would you care? Your heart has always been empty. You live only by your calculations.”
Auma motioned toward the hostages and a few of his men fired on full automatic. They threw their arms instinctively in front of their faces as they were mowed down. The screams that were their last act in this world went unheard—drowned out by the guns and rain.
“See?” Auma said, pointing at Odongo. “Not even a flinch. You’ve already forgotten them, haven’t you? You’ve already sifted through how their deaths affect your position. Scenarios. Strategies. Tactics. You can’t comprehend anything beyond that, can you? The smell of their fear. The warmth of their blood on the ground. The sorrow of their families.”
“I’m not one of your disciples, Gideon. Your oratory bores me as much now as it did when we were children. What do you want?”
The cult leader’s expression was still in shadow, but his eyes sharpened. “David Chism.”
“He’s gone.”
“Do you remember me as being stupid?”
“No. I remember you as being insane.”
Auma’s followers continued to look at him with the expected awe but, in a few of them, that awe was marred by confusion. It was unlikely that they’d ever heard anyone speak to their messiah as an equal. As a human being like the other seven billion on the planet. Well, perhaps not like the other seven billion. But also, not a celestial creature in danger of sprouting wings and ascending into heaven.
“Give him to me and I’ll make this easy on you, Mukisa. You have my word as God’s representative on earth.”
Odongo just smiled at that. He remembered the school-age Auma in terms somewhat less grand.
But in one thing he was right. Quick would be better.
Odongo reached for the knife hidden down the back of his pants. The one that Auma’s children had sloppily missed.
He charged and, as expected, the sound of gunfire erupted from behind. The impacts of the rounds in his back produced no pain but had the unintended consequence of propelling him forward. Auma jerked unnaturally and Odongo would have laughed if he’d had the time. The man’s untrained troops had panicked and shot him.
His blade penetrated the rain hood, getting tangled in the material before it could reach Auma’s throat. More gunfire, more disorienting flashes. More impacts.
Odongo’s body had gone numb by the time it landed unceremoniously in the mud. He could no longer breathe, but he wasn’t sure if it was because his mouth had sunk into the wet earth or because his lungs had been destroyed by the gunfire.
Not that it mattered anymore. He’d done what he could.
* * *
Gideon Auma scooted away from the knife in Mukisa Odongo’s lifeless fingers. He looked down at his own arm and saw the blood streaming from where a bullet had grazed him. The pain was sharp—that of a trivial wound and not the deep ache of a mortal one.
Someone lifted him to his feet and he found himself able to stand without difficulty. A further examination of the wound would have to wait. Concern over the flesh-and-blood shell that contained his spirit would be unseemly under the adoring gaze of his disciples.
“Bullets can’t harm me,” he shouted through the beat of the rain and wail of the alarm reverberating through the hospital doors.
His men broke from their stunned silence and cheered as he took a machete from one of them, wielding it with his uninjured arm. Auma didn’t recognize the boy who had shot him, but he recognized the panic in his eyes. He recognized the power of it and how it turned the rest against him. They shouted demands for the blood of the boy who only moments ago had been their comrade.
He swung the blade into the boy’s arm in roughly the same place he himself had been wounded.
“Pick him up!” he shouted when his victim’s knees buckled.
Two men obeyed and Auma continued his work with the machete. It was poorly maintained, making the effort greater than it should have been. Eventually, though, he was rewarded with a severed arm lying in the mud.
“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And an arm for an arm.”
This time he spoke quietly enough that only those closest to him would hear. But his words would be repeated to the others. And not only the ones who had accompanied him on this raid. To ones who had been left at the encampment. It would become part of his legend. Part of his canon.
“Find the white man!”
* * *
Auma’s fighters averted their eyes as he strode through the hallway. They’d found nothing, but there was no way that Chism had escaped. The facility was surrounded. Every road and path was being watched. Every village where he could take refuge had been infiltrated. He was there. Of that, Auma was certain. God had whispered it in his ear.
But time was running out. Dawn was bearing down on them and the rain was starting to abate. With the sunrise would come the Ugandan authorities.
“Burn it,” he told his second-in-command—a nineteen-year-old who had proved eminently loyal in the seven years since Auma had captured him. “Start at the back. We’ll drive him to us like an animal.”
Auma turned and started for the front of the building. It was hard to imagine what this would mean for his movement. Chism’s benefactor would pay virtually anything to get him back. And with that money, he could buy the weapons necessary to take Uganda. After that, Congo and beyond. The ranks of his disciples would grow from a few hundred men huddled in the forest to millions living out in the open in cities and rural areas. Paying tribute to him. Spreading his message throughout the continent and the world.
The Word of God. The Word of Gideon Auma.
* * *
“Smoke! I smell smoke
.”
David Chism tried to find a more comfortable position on the hard floor but there was none. Odongo had done his customary impeccable job of camouflaging the safe room but hadn’t given much thought to creature comforts. Basically, a six-foot cube with no furniture or lights.
“Can you smell it?” Liu repeated in the darkness. “The smoke?”
“I don’t smell anything,” Ricci said.
“It’s because of your cigarettes,” she responded in a harsh whisper. “Your nose doesn’t work now!”
“Shhh!” Chism said. “I think it’s just your imagination, Jing. This is a really stressful…”
His voice faltered when he realized that she was right.
A moment later, a second alarm joined the one that had been wailing relentlessly since before Odongo had sequestered them in that hole. The pitch of it was familiar from the regular fire drills he’d insisted on.
“They’re going to burn us to death!” she said.
Shit.
“All right,” Chism said. “You two stay put. I’m going to go have a look.”
No one spoke as he climbed the ladder, felt around for the latch, and then opened the hatch a crack. Odongo had replaced the bucket and mop, and Chism let them slide slowly back before crawling out. The door leading into the cafeteria was open a couple of inches—left that way by the brief search they’d heard earlier. He peered out at the lines of empty tables. Smoke was just barely visible, creating a haze that hung beneath a sprinkler system that must have been disabled.
Not ideal.
Chism stood and returned to the hatch, pulling it fully open. “Come up. We’ve got to get out of here.”
By the time they slipped into the cafeteria, the main lights were out and the smoke was thick enough to burn his eyes. From now on, they’d be navigating by the red glow of emergency illumination.
A quick peek into the hallway confirmed that it was empty and that the fire was at the back of the facility.
“What?” Ricci said. “What do you see?”
“Too much,” Chism responded.
“What does that mean?”
He pulled back and pressed himself against the wall, looking into the tearing eyes of his two companions.
“There’s no reason for Auma to come all this way to attack a hospital. And he set the back on fire. The front looks clear.”
“What are you saying?”
“That the only thing of value in this place is us. He makes his money stealing, drug dealing, and kidnapping locals. I figure he’s going for the big score.”
“What are we going to do?”
“There aren’t many choices,” Chism admitted. “I figure he set the fire to try to flush us into the parking lot.”
“Where he’s waiting,” Ricci said.
“Yeah.”
“Maybe we should go,” Liu said. “He will ask for money. Mr. Ward will pay and he will let us go.”
“No,” Matteo Ricci said with surprising firmness. “You’re the only thing here that’s valuable, David. I will die a horrible death. And, as a woman, Jing’s will be… unimaginable.”
“Agreed,” Chism said. “So that leaves only one option. We go through the fire and out the back. They won’t expect it and they won’t be waiting for us there.”
“We’ll be burned to death,” Liu said.
“Nah. We’ll be fine.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because I’m super lucky.”
1
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, DC
USA
CIA director Irene Kennedy stepped into the president’s outer office and paused to take in her surroundings. The changes had continued in earnest since the last time she was there. The décor and artwork were even more modern and now the carpet had been replaced with a wood floor that bounced sound around the room.
The desk of the president’s secretary—a barely controlled disaster over the last two administrations—was now the picture of minimalist, high-tech efficiency. As was the woman sitting behind it.
The fact that so much effort was being put into something as trivial as redecorating suggested a return to what passed for normalcy in Washington. Six months ago, a terrorist group had managed to take down the entire US power grid and keep it down for more than a month. The consequences had been dire, with hundreds of thousands of Americans dead of cold, violence, and lack of medical care. Countless devastating fires caused by exploding electrical substations, sagging power lines, and desperate people trying to stay warm had raged throughout the country. And, finally, the world’s economy had collapsed in reaction to its most powerful engine being taken off-line.
The effects would reverberate for years, but the worst was over. Power had been restored to all but a few rural outposts in the Northwest, critical manufacturing and agriculture were fully back online, and areas wiped out by fires were being rebuilt. After months of world governments being too focused on the crises in front of them to create new ones, moves were once again being made on the geopolitical chessboard. Moves that it was her job to neutralize.
“Dr. Kennedy?” the president’s secretary said, glancing up from her monitor. “You can go in. He’s expecting you.”
She entered an Oval Office that was all but unrecognizable. The wallpaper was gone, as were the traditional pleated curtains. Furniture had been updated to something that leaned toward midcentury modern, and artwork had slipped into the abstract. Only the Resolute Desk and flags remained.
The man walking toward her seemed to fit perfectly with the environment he’d created. At forty-four, Anthony Cook was one of the youngest presidents in US history. He’d managed to rise from the turmoil created by the suicide of his party’s front-runner, crushing the more conventional replacement candidates endorsed by the establishment. The American people had been fed up with business as usual for a long time and that, combined with the hardship brought about by the electrical grid failure, had sent them on a search for someone different.
Anthony Cook, for better or worse, was it.
“Irene,” he said, taking her hand. “It’s good to see you.”
She wasn’t sure that was entirely true. Her relationship with his predecessor had been one of mutual respect and occasionally even warmth. Cook seemed to be incapable of either. He was a ruthless man, though one with an admittedly impressive grasp of history and America’s challenges going forward. A born politician who had spent his life immersed in that world but who still managed to portray himself as an outsider. A common man who had infiltrated the political elite and was now positioned to transform it.
None of this was necessarily bad. Politics was theater and a fair amount of melodrama was necessary to get people to the polls. But what was behind the persona Cook had created? Where was he going? What did he want? Due to his understandable focus since he took office on putting America back on track, they hadn’t interacted enough for Kennedy to get a true measure of the man.
He pointed her toward a conversation area, and she made note of his broad shoulders, narrow waist, and full head of hair. In his years as a political strategist, he’d been very different—a scrawny intellectual with fiery charisma, a gift for picking winners, and an icy, realpolitik view of the average American.
By the time he’d thrown his own hat into the ring, though, he’d reinvented himself. President Cook was good looking, physically imposing, and impeccably dressed. He oozed concern for every one of the three hundred and thirty million people under his care. He was the man with the answers. The man who would lead America into a future so bright it was blinding.
“I’m not sure you know our guest, Irene.”
From behind, the man sitting on one of the sofas looked very much like everyone else in Washington—blue suit, nice posture, expensive haircut with a little gray at the temples. But when he put down his coffee cup and stood, he proved to be much more than one of the political operatives that infested the beltway.
As t
he world’s first trillionaire, Nicholas Ward needed little introduction. He was a genius in every sense of the word who had stepped back from controlling his business empire to run a massive foundation that he’d charged with nothing less ambitious than solving the problems of humanity. Health care, renewable energy, employment, violence, poverty—if something had plagued society since the dawn of time, Ward figured he could fix it in the next twenty years.
A bit optimistic in her estimation, but he was a hard man to dismiss. Impossible, really.
“You look good, Nick. Africa seems to agree with you.”
“Don’t be fooled. It’s all biting insects and sunburn.”
She leaned in and he kissed her on the cheek.
“I take it you do know each other,” the president said, failing to hide a hint of irritation that Kennedy found a bit worrying. She hadn’t been told what this meeting was about or that the most powerful private citizen in the world would be in attendance. Had it been an attempt at a subtle power play that had now backfired?
Not yet sure how to navigate the environment that Cook had created, she was grateful when Ward answered.
“Irene and I are in the same business—we both want to keep people safe and healthy. That’s landed us at a few of the same conferences and participating on the same panels.” He flashed the everyman smile that he was known for. “I figure the fact that she hasn’t had me killed yet makes us friends.”
Fairly close friends, in fact. Their relationship had been cemented by a recent bioterrorism event that she’d had no choice but to bring him in on. The long days, long nights, and logistical nightmares they’d faced had given her a healthy respect and personal affection for the man. He was one of the most impressive people she had ever met and seemed to honestly have the good of mankind at heart. The fact that some of his views were a bit naïve was more than overcome by his enthusiasm and almost supernatural competence.
“I heard what happened in Uganda, but the details that have reached my desk are still sketchy. We have limited resources in that area and I’m not sure the local government’s fully on top of things.”