Page 70 of Soul on Fire
“Are you all right?” Ikolo asked, leaning in.
“Yeah. Just a headache.” He shook his head and pushed the pain away. There was an icepick trying to root around in the base of his skull, but he didn’t have time for that. He smiled instead, rubbed the back of his hand against Ikolo’s. “You good?”
“I’m fine.” Ikolo wrapped one finger around his pinky and squeezed before they started down the plane’s steps.
A middle-aged white woman in a khaki officer’s uniform, her brown hair flecked with gray streaks and pulled back in a twist, strode up to Elliot, Bai, and Ikolo as they came down to the tarmac. She had the triple stars on her collar of a Vice Admiral.
“You’re Lieutenant Davis?”
“Yes ma’am.” He came to a crisp salute. “Vice Admiral Mallory?”
She nodded and returned his salute quickly. “A platoon of Marines will stay and secure this plane. We have no time to lose. Follow me, gentlemen.”
They joined her in the rear of a blacked-out SUV in the middle of the column of Humvees. As soon as the door closed behind them, their driver peeled out, flicking the sirens on the Humvee to full blast. In seconds, the entire column blazed past the open gates of Muharraq Airfield, the military side of Bahrain’s international airport, and screamed down Prince Khalifa bin Salman Causeway.
“I’ve locked the base to all nonessential military personnel and have called in additional military police units for backup. All civilian contractors and base employees have been escorted off base to a holding facility while we verify their identity documents. It’s taking a long time.”
“How many are there?” Elliot asked.
“Over three thousand.” Vice Admiral Mallory’s expression hardened. Her face was severe, downturned lips and a furrowed brow. “We weren’t told of the threat until noon local time. The base had already filled up with civilian personnel. Most report in for their on-base employment starting at zero-seven-hundred local. Depending on when he arrived in-country, he had a five hour window where he could have planted his nuclear device. There is a possibility he never made it to the base this morning. Bahraini Public Security Forces are sweeping the country. They found a Russian cargo plane with two dead pilots inside at the airport. They were shot in the head and the chest. The flight plan said they came in from South Africa.”
“That must be Rhee Dae-sung,” Bai said. “He never leaves anyone alive to follow his tracks.”
Mallory stared, her lips tightening.
“Have the CBRN guys had any luck?” Elliot asked. Chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defense teams specially trained to investigate, detect, and mitigate all such threats. Vice Admiral Mallory most likely gave two simultaneous orders as soon as she’d heard the news: get all non-military personnel off the base and get every CBRN tech onboard.
“Every Marine CBRN defense unit in theatre is on base scanning every square inch. It’s slow going. They’ve managed to check twenty percent of the base so far. Based on the description you gave us—” she nodded to Bai “—we’re looking for a portable tactical nuclear device, less than three feet cubed, and heavily shielded. To find something that small and that well shielded, the CBRN guys say they have to be almost right on top of it. Which means our scans have to be thorough. We’re concentrating right now on high priority targets that a civilian employee could conceivably gain access to.”
Mallory turned to Ikolo. “Doctor Ngondu, I understand there’s some concern about whether our target is infected with Ebola virus?”
“I believe he is infected with Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever, Admiral.” Ikolo leaned into Elliot’s side, as if he was slumping, exhausted. His breath came quickly, a soft rasp in his throat. “He was in close contact with the virus and the symptoms he has reported line up with a rough timeline backtracking his activities and his potential exposure date.”
“Could he have infected himself on purpose? To increase the human cost of his attack?”
“He could have,” Ikolo said. “His ADF forces recovered body parts from deceased or dying victims. To do such a thing would put them in extremely close contact with staggeringly high infectious loads. But if he’d been infected when harvesting body parts, he most likely wouldn’t be alive today. His viral load at infection would have completely overwhelmed his systems and he would have died within days.”
“Meaning?” Mallory snapped.
“Meaning it’s very likely that he infected himself purposefully with a small dose of virus before beginning his journey out of ADF territory in order to maximize the incubation time and increase the lethality of his operation. By trailing virus behind him, he can leave a path of death in his wake that will grow exponentially as the virus amplifies in the population.”
Mallory nodded. “My team war-gamed that scenario this afternoon. We’re preparing for an outbreak of Ebola virus on base within the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours. The Centers of Disease Control and USAMRID are flying in antibiotics and their new experimental vaccine.”
“How can we help, Admiral?” Elliot asked as the column of Humvees raced through the gate and onto the base. They didn’t slow, kept speeding through the dark and deserted streets, making rubber-squealing turns until they came to a stop outside the base’s headquarters building.
“Lieutenant, I want you with me coming up with scenarios. You’ve been in this guy’s footsteps. You know more about how his mind works than anyone else we’ve got. CIA gave me a paragraph on the guy, and it’s mostly guesswork on his height and weight. We have one photo of him from a motion activated camera the CIA planted in the Congo jungle. We’re running that through our facial recognition system and linking that with the base CCTV, but it’s producing a lot of false positives. The quality of the CIA’s photo is too poor for meaningful results.”
She shifted her attention to Bai. “I’d like you to work with my executive officer and intelligence officer. I’d like you to describeexactlywhat bug was exploited in our software. How would the North Koreans infiltrate our civilian on-base personnel access database and insert a new record? What footprints does that leave behind? How can we track what they did? Are you authorized to provide that kind of support?”
Bai nodded. “I have been tasked by Beijing to provide you with any assistance you may require that I am able to provide.”
“Good. Then I don’t have to put you in a holding cell until this is over.” Her attention shifted to Ikolo. “Doctor Ngondu, I’d like you to work with my chief medical officer. What do we need to do to prepare for an Ebola outbreak on base? Best case to worst case scenarios. I want everything.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
The Humvee doors opened and Mallory led the way out, striding up the steps of the crisp white headquarters building and past the snapping United States, US Navy, and US Marine Corps flags to the double glass doors.
Base security had been beefed up to maximum levels. Navy military police, masters-at-arms, roamed the building’s perimeter, outfitted in body armor and carrying M4 carbines low and ready, fingers resting above the trigger guard. Two MPs held the door for Mallory, popping to a salute as she passed.
