The Ares Decision Read online

  From his vantage point, he could look down on a bar strung with Christmas lights and the sparsely populated area by the pool. Howell and Sarie were sitting at a dim table near the hedge bordering the property, both with drinks that rated multiple paper umbrellas. Some of Howell’s strange malaise seemed to have lifted, and he smiled as Sarie lifted her hands to mimic the horns of an animal she was telling an extremely animated story about.

  Smith was going to start down immediately but then thought better of it. The breeze was perfect, his beer was frosty, and the distant lights of Kampala twinkled through the humidity. The calm before the storm.

  * * *

  MIND IF I join you?”

  “Jon!” Sarie said. “Look at you. You clean up so nice!”

  “I was about to say the same about you.”

  She was wearing a loose-fitting floral skirt and a sleeveless top that hugged her athletic torso. The hair he’d only seen tied back was now free to dance across her shoulders.

  The bartender came up as he grabbed a seat, sliding some concoction in a coconut shell onto the table along with a place setting that included a knife large enough to field dress a rhino.

  “Did we order?”

  “Sarie took the liberty,” Howell said. “You’re having…Was it the zebra roulade?”

  “Ja. Don’t worry. You’ll love it.”

  “I was just thinking how long it’s been since I’ve had a nice piece of zebra,” he joked, scanning the tables around them. It was nearly ten p.m. and most of the guests had drifted off to their rooms. A few people were left at the bar, and there was a young Scandinavian couple drinking beers with their legs dangling in the pool, but no one was within earshot.

  “What’s the plan for tomorrow morning?” Sarie said.

  “We slink out of town and try to get out from under the neon sign we’ve got flashing over our heads.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean our detour to see Peter’s old friend and our meeting with Dr. Lwanga weren’t exactly the most anonymous way to start the trip.”

  She leaned toward him over the table. “I have to say all this cloak-and-dagger is kind of exciting. I feel almost like a secret agent.”

  Howell let out a snort that almost caused him to spit out the drink he’d raised to his lips.

  “What?” Sarie said.

  Smith continued before the Brit could conjure up a response. “We’ll pick up our gear first thing and then head out to the farm of the doctor who was looking into this back in the fifties. Maybe his family is still there.”

  Sarie nodded. “If not, we’ll visit the villages in the area and ask the elders if they’d ever heard of anything like this before that bastard Bahame showed up. If this is a parasitic infection, it’s possible that it’s been popping up and disappearing for thousands of years.”

  “Why not just deal with the problem directly and go after Bahame?” Howell interjected.

  “No one goes after Caleb Bahame,” Sarie said. “He goes after you. He’s a psychopath and a murderer.”

  “We’ll try to steer clear of him for now,” Smith said. “We don’t even know what we’re dealing with here—all we have is a few sketchy reports. If it is a biological agent, though, we need to get as much information as we can on its pathology and try to find out where it’s hiding.”

  “Maybe look for an area that people have only recently started traveling in,” Sarie said. “Contact with unusual animals. Things like that.”

  A figure appeared on the walkway next to the pool, and Jon watched him as Sarie began gleefully speculating on the selective pressures that could create a parasite like the one they were looking for.

  The man moved casually, not focused on anything in particular, but stood out just the same. He was probably six foot three, with the look of an aging weight lifter whose muscle had started to migrate downward and whose fair skin had spent a lifetime being brutalized by the African sun.

  His path to a table partially shadowed by flowering vines took him right by them, and as he passed behind Howell, his trajectory suddenly changed. Before Smith could react, he had dropped into the empty chair between him and Sarie.

  At first, Smith thought he might be the hotel’s manager, but then he saw the glint of a pistol as it disappeared beneath the table.

  “Peter,” the man said in a thick Dutch accent. “Here you are in town and you didn’t even call. I thought you Brits were supposed to be polite.”

  Howell’s expression was placid, but Sarie’s most definitely wasn’t. It was impossible to know if she’d seen the pistol or if she just knew men like this from her travels. Up close, he had the distinct look of a mercenary—one of many who had cut their teeth on the war in Angola and then spent the rest of their lives fighting bloody skirmishes all over the continent.

  “You’ll have to accept my apologies, Sabastiaan. I’m afraid I thought you were dead.”

  “I’ll bet you did. I was bleeding pretty bad when you left me. But I managed to get out.”

  “I’m terribly embarrassed. I could have sworn I hit an artery.”

  Sabastiaan smiled cruelly and reached for Sarie’s drink, draining it in less than a second. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?”

  “Of course. Drs. van Keuren and Smith. I’m taking them into the field to find specimens.”

  Howell was obviously calculating, but there wasn’t much he could do. The guy was a pro, and he was smart enough to be extremely cautious around the former SAS man.

  “You hired this British son of a bitch? How much are you paying? You could do better.”

  Smith feigned the fear that would be expected of an American academic in this situation. “What’s this all about? We…we don’t want any trouble.”

  His acting skills must have been more impressive than he thought. Sabastiaan dismissed him as trivial. A significant error on the mercenary’s part. Perhaps a fatal one.

  “And what about you, sweetheart?”

  Sarie responded in Afrikaans, the distaste audible in her voice. Whatever she said obviously wasn’t complimentary, and Sabastiaan responded angrily in the same language. His eyes locked on her in an attempt to get her to back down. Another mistake.

  In one smooth motion, Smith picked up his steak knife and swung it up beneath the man’s chin. Sabastiaan was startled for a moment, but then a thin smile spread across his face. “The professor has spirit.”

  Smith leaned forward a bit, confirming in his peripheral vision that the people at the bar still had their backs to them. “Look closely, Sabastiaan. Do you really think I’m a professor?”

  The mercenary’s smile faltered. Being able to accurately size up your opponent was one of the most important qualities a man in his position could possess, and he was beginning to understand the extent of his miscalculation.

  “I have a gun on your friend,” he said hesitantly. “All I have to do is pull the trigger.”

  “That would be inconvenient. I’d have to find another guide, and since I plan to shove this knife so far that it breaks off in the top of your skull, you won’t be available.”

  Smith heard the door leading to the hotel burst open but didn’t dare take his eyes off Sabastiaan even when the clack of running boots sounded behind him.

  “Put down the knife!” an accented voice demanded.

  “He has a gun,” Smith said. “He—”

  “Put it down now!”

  “Do it,” Sarie said. “But do it slowly.”

  Howell nodded his agreement and Smith eased the knife to the table. A moment later, he was yanked from his chair and the table was surrounded by armed soldiers.

  “Give me a second to explain,” Smith said as his arms were wrenched behind him and secured with a zip tie. “We’re—”

  “Shut up!” someone behind him said and then hit him in the back of the head hard enough to blur his view of everyone else at the table being similarly bound.

  They were led out to the street and s
eparated from Sabastiaan before being shoved into the back of a black SUV. Smith struggled into a sitting position as they sped away, finally managing to prop himself up far enough to see out the windows.

  In the dim street behind, the old merc was trying to protect himself from the clubs raining down on him. At the rate he was taking punishment, he’d be dead in less than a minute. The question was, would he turn out to be the lucky one?

  30

  Langley, Virginia, USA

  November 21—1602 Hours GMT–5

  WHAT’S SO IMPORTANT THAT it couldn’t wait?”

  Dave Collen closed the door behind him, giving it a solid push to make sure it was sealed. “We have a problem with Brandon, Larry.”

  “What kind of a problem?”

  Collen slid his laptop onto Drake’s desk and brought up a security video depicting an elevator full of people. “Watch him.”

  Drake leaned into the screen, squinting as the doors opened and five more people crammed themselves into the already crowded space. One of those people was Gazenga, and he wrestled his way to the back, taking a position next to a beautiful blonde.

  The elevator descended three floors and Gazenga pushed his way back to the front. After he exited, the video ended.

  “So, he doesn’t like taking stairs?” Drake said. “I don’t see that as a life-or-death issue.”

  “Watch more carefully,” Collen said, restarting the video. He paused it at the point where Gazenga settled in next to the woman and proceeded frame by frame. “Look at his right arm.”

  Everything below the elbow was obscured, but Drake saw Gazenga’s shoulder come up a bit and then drop back down when the elevator stopped. The woman glanced up at him and then watched incuriously as he got off.

  “The elevator jerked, he bumped the woman next to him, and then he left. What are you driving at, Dave?”

  “He put something in her pocket. Watch it again.”

  Drake frowned skeptically as it rolled for a third time. It was possible to interpret the movement of his arm as lifting his hand level with the pocket in her jacket, but it was a hell of a lot easier to interpret it as nothing.

  “I appreciate your thoroughness, Dave, and I think a little paranoia is probably warranted at this point, but—”

  “Do you know who she is?”

  “No.”

  “Randi Russell.”

  Drake knew the name—everyone with sufficient clearance did—but they’d never met personally. “Last I heard she was chasing some Taliban explosives expert through the Hindu Kush.”

  “Yeah. Apparently he met with an accident.”

  “What kind of accident?”

  “He got in the way of one of Randi’s bullets and then fell off a six-hundred-foot cliff. She’s back at headquarters for a couple months while things in Afghanistan cool off.”

  “Okay, but she and Brandon would have no way of knowing each other, and as far as I can remember, she’s worked on every continent on the planet except Africa. If you’re right and he’s getting cold feet, why would he go to her?”

  Collen fell into one of the chairs facing Drake’s desk. “Smith had a fiancée awhile back—she died from being infected by the Hades virus.”

  “So?”

  “Her name was Sophia Russell.”

  Drake felt the knot that had been tied in his stomach since he’d started this operation tighten. “They’re related?”

  “Sisters. And to the degree that Russell and Smith are close to anyone, they’re close to each other.”

  Drake stared down at the frozen image on the laptop for a moment. “Still, it could be a coincidence.”

  “There’s more security footage of what Brandon did after he got off the elevator. He had no business on that floor and just went straight for the stairs and back to his office.”

  The tightness in Drake’s stomach began to spread to his chest. “Have we checked her out?”

  “As soon as I got this, I had her called into a meeting. We turned the heat up and she took off her jacket. When they broke for coffee I checked her pocket. Nothing.”

  “Then either there was nothing there to begin with…”

  “Or she got the message.”

  Drake opened a drawer and pulled out two Excedrins, downing them without a drink to stave off the headache he knew was coming. “If he did pass her something, it could have been anything—an invitation to a private chat room or to an e-mail account with a damn treatise on everything we’ve done.”

  “I’ve gone through all his computer usage,” Collen said. “He’s a clever little bastard, but I found the footprints of his search for someone to contact. I’m pretty confident that we have a handle on everything he’s done electronically.”

  “Then a time and place. A meeting.”

  Collen nodded.

  “If you’re wrong and she has something on us…”

  “The minute I saw the video I put heavy surveillance on her. If she knows something, we’ll eventually find out about it.”

  “Eventually isn’t good enough, Dave. Randi Russell is the last person we need getting her teeth into this thing. If she…” Drake’s voice lost its strength for a moment, fading under the weight of the disaster scenarios playing out in his mind. He stood and paced across his expansive office for a few moments before stopping on a rug that bore the CIA seal. “Are we prepared to move against Gazenga?”

  “We’ve been ready since the day we brought him in. Should we go?”

  “Can we afford to?”

  “The short answer is no,” Collen said. “We think Omidi is in Uganda, and Brandon’s using his contacts to try to confirm—contacts I don’t have a relationship with. On the other hand, can we afford not to?”

  “Damn Castilla and his ops team! This should have never gotten this complicated. Do it. Get rid of him. And I expect you to pick up the slack, Dave. No excuses.”

  “What about Russell?”

  “It’s the same story, isn’t it? Killing her is dangerous. But leaving her alive is potentially suicidal.”

  “Then we’re considering dealing with her?”

  Drake gave a short nod.

  “I’ll start laying the groundwork, but it’s going to take time. When it comes to walking away when she should be dead, Randi Russell is a witch. This has to be planned to the very last detail.”

  “We don’t have time to play around, Dave. I want to see a summary of possible options by tomorrow afternoon.”

  31

  Outside Kampala, Uganda

  November 22—0653 Hours GMT+3

  ANY HOPE THAT THEIR arrest had been a simple matter of the army’s coincidentally showing up at the worst possible moment could now be safely discarded. The situation they found themselves in exceeded even the worst-case scenarios Smith had come up with on the ride there. And he was a man whose life could pretty much be summed up as one worst-case scenario after another.

  There had been no calls to the embassy, no lawyers, and no questions asked or answered. The windowless room they were in was made entirely of crumbling concrete, with a rusty steel door that looked like it had been salvaged from a battleship. The air was hot and increasingly unsuitable for breathing as the carbon dioxide from their breath slowly built up.

  Furniture consisted of three chairs, each bolted down and each equipped with sturdy leather straps on the arms and legs. Much worse, though, were the streams of dried blood leading from beneath them to a drain in the floor.

  Sarie was feeling around the jamb, slipping her shaking fingers into the gaps and pulling futilely when she managed to get a grip. Howell had nodded off on the floor shortly after he’d satisfied himself that there was no way they were getting through the door, past the guards posted outside, and out of the dilapidated military base beyond. Saving energy and air to fight another day.

  Smith crossed the room and put a hand on Sarie’s shoulder. They’d been trapped there for eight hours, and probably half of that she’d spent pacing like a trapped
animal.

  “Why don’t you take a piece of floor next to Peter and get some rest. Let me work on the door for a while.”

  She looked back at him, obviously trying to control her fear but still looking a little wild-eyed. “We have to get out of here, Jon. This isn’t America. The government can do whatever it wants to you. They can—”

  A quiet grinding became audible, and he grabbed her arm, pulling her behind him as he backed away. Howell was immediately on his feet and skirting the wall to take a position in a corner to the side of the door that was now slowly opening.

  Five heavily armed soldiers poured in, taking up positions that made any thought of escape impossible. Howell folded his arms casually in front of his chest with no fewer than three guns lined up on him.

  The next man who entered was easily recognizable. He was well over six feet, with spindly legs that didn’t look sturdy enough to support his bulky torso or the countless medals splashed across his uniform.

  Charles Sembutu. The president of Uganda.

  He’d enjoyed iron-fisted control over the country for years now, but that control was slipping. It was widely believed that he’d tolerated Bahame’s rise, using the man’s brutality to drum up fear that allowed him to consolidate ever-more power in order to “fight terrorism.” But he’d gotten greedy and given Bahame too long a leash, leaving Kampala in danger of being overrun from the north.

  A leather-backed chair and a desk with the presidential seal laid into it were rolled in, and Sembutu sat, spreading their passports out on the blotter. “Dr. van Keuren’s reputation precedes her,” he said, appraising Smith coolly. “And despite his fake passport, I’m sorry to say that Mr. Howell’s does as well. But you…You are a mystery.”

  “My name is Dr. Jon Smith. I’m a microbiologist with—”

  “The American army,” Sembutu said, finishing his sentence. “With a fairly varied background, yes? Special forces, Military Intelligence. And I’m told you’re quite capable with a knife.”