Page 55 of Soul on Fire
Chapter Twenty-One
Outside Lubutu
The Congo Forest
“Admiral,we found him. We captured his cell number with a portable CellKit and listened in to a phone call. He referenced the trade of ‘the sickness’ and a meeting taking place tomorrow to take possession of what was promised in exchange.”
The satellite connection whined, the signal boosted from his cell tower. He had five minutes of battery left on his Cell-Kit. The mobile cell tower was a fun tool and a way to eavesdrop on phone calls in an area if you knew who you were searching for. Otherwise, it was a needle in a hurricane, and the battery power only lasted twelve minutes. He’d taken it from Sake as a Hail Mary.
“I’ve got a thousand people on my side waiting to hear that news.” Kline pulled the phone away and shouted orders, then called a name: “Haig! Over here!” A pause, and then muffled voices. “Lieutenant, I’ve got Haig here. As soon as this call ends, we’ll be calling the president and the National Security Council. Tell me what you know.”
He summarized the rest of the call, ran Kline through the back and forth of references to the deal, delivery of a final package, and a test followed by a final mission. A meeting the next day. “Based on the conversation, our guy was calling his boss.”
“Mr. Idrissa Okafur.They are the number one and two in the ADF,”Kline said. “CIA will be all over this. They’ll get a tap on Majambu’s cell number and start tracking every call he makes.”
“Might not be much. He was told not to make any more calls. They’re disciplined.”
“Disciplined other than this. Why did he call Idrissa?”
“It felt like goodbye. Majambu sounded tired and run down. He’s frustrated. But he’s also looking forward to the ‘final mission,’ one that will bring him glory and have him ‘remembered for a thousand years.’ Something the world will respect.”
“That sounds like a suicide mission.Where is our target now?”
“The range on my network was no more than fifty miles. He’s somewhere in a circle around my location, no farther than that.” He read off his coordinates, and Kline and Haig pulled up the GPS, the satellite overheads, every map of the region.
“Looks like that’s thick jungle a ways outside Kisangani, not far from the Congo River. We’ve got no imagery of the ground there other than jungle canopy. We’re blind.”
Ikolo leaned in and touched his arm. He could hear everything Kline said in the silence of the forest. In the darkness, their voices seemed to shout into an endless void, too loud for their own ears even in whispers. “Elliot, remember he said it was getting harder and that he needed to rest?”
“Who is that?”
He stumbled, choked on what to say. “This is Doctor Ikolo Ngondu. He’s my… guide.” He held the phone out and pushed the speaker button. “I’m putting Doctor Ngondu on the line. He has invaluable information and perspectives that can help us.”
“I suspect Majambu is infected with Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever,” Ikolo said. “When he says he doesn’t have long and that it is getting harder to travel, I believe he’s speaking about his infection and is feeling the effects on his body.”
Silence. “We’re not certain of that, correct? There are other diseases out there with similar symptoms.”
“I cannot make a diagnosis based on comments over the phone. And yes, malaria begins with fatigue, headache, and vomiting, as do other illnesses. But so does Ebola, and we know for certain Majambu has been in close contact with the virus.” Ikolo paused. “If heisinfected, he’s trailed the virus through the forest from the ADF lines to now, and will continue to spread the disease wherever he goes.”
The fighter with the red eyes. The young girl in Matenda. Us, in his wake.
The thought sucker-punched Elliot, came at him like a wild haymaker. No, he couldn’t think it, couldn’t consider it, not now.The mission has priority.“What’s the current thought on this guy, Admiral? Do we take him out?”
“There have been some developments since your last check-in.” A new tension had crept into Kline’s voice, a wariness that hadn’t been there before. The background noise was quieter. He’d moved out of the CDC and into a secured location. “Syria’s still dark. Their government isn’t responding to diplomatic contact or to backdoor communications. Aid groups on the ground are reporting dozens of new Ebola cases by the hour. It’s spreading like wildfire. CIA is convinced the Syrians took possession of the Ebola package and are actively weaponizing it. There’s even talk that the outbreak in Damascus is not an accident, but that it’s a weapons test.
“As such, Washington is weighing its options. If the Ebola virus has been weaponized, what are Syria’s targets? Israel? Saudi Arabia? American interests? Both Israel and Saudi Arabia are pushing for aggressive action. There’s serious discussion in DC about bombing Damascus.”
Elliot closed his eyes. Trading lives. Bombing an entire city to stop an outbreak. Saving lives by ending others, many of them innocent. Maybe in Washington it made sense, in a distant, removed way, a distilled and sterile decision to move numbers and lives from column to column and label that an acceptable loss. When the scale of murder became squares of thousands, did anyone feel it anymore?
Burned-black hands had reached out from beneath the destroyed and charred hut. They were small hands, and delicate. A child’s hands.
“CIA’s been running the scenarios. Their analysis says Syria would have had to pay for the virus with something of equivalent destructive potential. They think Majambu is going to take possession of either a chemical or nuclear weapon from his contact. Wecannotlet that happen.”
“Elliot, this is Haig.” A new voice on the line, the snobby CIA officer who’d kick-started this entire mission. “Majambu says he’s ‘near’ his destination and that he’ll make the meeting tomorrow.”
“Correct.”
“Based on that, what’s your thinking on where he’s going?”
