Lethal Agent Read online

  “But you’ve stopped the spread, right? You’ve got it under control.”

  “We’ve got the last few identified victims quarantined and for now we’ve convinced the villagers to steer clear of the local bat population,” she admitted. “But it’s incredibly contagious, Ken. Not like anything I’ve seen in my lifetime. Even casual contact with someone who’s sick comes with over a fifty percent infection rate. But the worst thing is how long the virus seems to be able to survive on surfaces. We have credible evidence of people getting sick after touching things handled by a victim seventy-two hours before. What if someone infected with this went through an airport? They could push a button on an elevator or touch the check-in counter and have people carry it all over the world. How could we stop it?”

  “We stopped it last time,” he said in an obvious reference to the SARS outbreak in the early 2000s.

  “It’s not the same thing and you know it! SARS is an order of magnitude less contagious and it broke out in Asia. We had time to mount a worldwide response in countries with modern medical systems. This is Yemen. They don’t have the resources to do anything but stand back and pray. We could be talking about a pandemic that could kill a hundred million people. Are you a doctor or a politician, Ken? We—”

  “Shut up, Vicky! Just shut your mouth for one minute if that’s possible.”

  She fell silent at the man’s uncharacteristic outburst.

  “Do you have any idea what’s happening in the rest of Yemen? Outside your little world? We’re dealing with a cholera outbreak that’s now officially the worst in modern history. NGOs are backing out because of the bombing and growing violence. Local medical personnel are either sick themselves or haven’t been paid in months and are moving on to figure out how to feed themselves.”

  “Ken—”

  “I’m not done! About a third of the country is slowly starving. We’re seeing infections that none of our antibiotics work on. And there are rumors that there’s going to be a major attack on Al Hudaydah. If that port closes, most of the imports into the country are going to dry up. No more humanitarian aid. No more food or medicine. No more fuel. On top of everything else, the country’s going to slip into famine.”

  “But—” she tried to interject.

  “Shut it!” he said and then continued. “All this and I can barely get governments or private donors to take my calls. Why? Because no one gives a crap about Yemen. They can’t find it on a map and they’re bone tired of pouring money into Middle East projects that get blown up before they’re even finished. And that’s leaving aside the U.S. presidential election that’s already consuming every media outlet in the world. If an alien spaceship landed in Yemen tomorrow, it’d be lucky to make page nine in the Times.”

  “Ken—”

  “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” he said. “Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. So, after all that’s said, you want me to divert my almost nonexistent resources from the thousands of people dying in the cities to a little village of fifty people surrounded by an impassable sea of desert?”

  “Screw you, Ken.”

  When he spoke again, his voice had softened. “Look. I really do understand what you’re saying to me. Remember that before I sat down behind this desk I spent years doing exactly what you’re doing. I want to help you. What you’re dealing with terrifies me—”

  “But you’re going to do nothing.”

  “Oh, ye of little faith.”

  She perked up. “What does that mean?”

  “I wish I could take credit for this, but in truth I had nothing to do with it. A couple weeks ago, a Saudi businessman I’ve never heard of contacted me. He said he’d seen something about you in a university newspaper and wanted to help. It kind of took me by surprise, so I just threw a number out there.”

  “What number?”

  “Two hundred and fifty grand.”

  “And?”

  “Long story, but he said yes.”

  “What?” Victoria stammered, unable to process what she was hearing after months of fighting for castoffs and pocket change. “I . . . I don’t even understand what that means.”

  “It means that I’ve got a team putting together a drop for you. Equipment, food, medicine. I might even have someone from the University of Wyoming who’s willing to look at your bats. We’ll lower the supplies down to you from a cargo chopper so we don’t have to get anywhere near your patients. I’m working on permission from the Saudis now.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this when we started talking?”

  “Because I wanted you to make an ass out of yourself. Now, listen to me. This isn’t a bottomless well. I don’t even know how to get in touch with this donor. He wanted to be anonymous and he’s doing a good job of it. Get that village healthy and figure out a way to keep them that way.”

  “Ken. I’m sorry about—”

  The line went dead and she dropped the phone, leaning against the rock behind her.

  It was hard to remember everything that had happened to get her to that particular place at that particular time. Her childhood outside of Seattle had been unremarkable. She’d never traveled much and she’d stayed in Washington through her early career as a physician. It wasn’t until she was in her early thirties that she’d felt the pull of the outside world and the billions of desperate people who inhabited it.

  Schaefer scooted away from the approaching rays of sun and focused on the village below. The door to their improvised clinic opened and a man in protective clothing appeared, shading his faceplate-covered eyes as he emerged. Otto Vogel was her no-nonsense German pillar of steel. They’d met in Ghana seven years ago and had been working together ever since. Not only was he the best nurse she’d ever met, but he was perhaps the most reliable person on the planet. There was no situation that he couldn’t deal with, no disaster that could ruffle him, no objective danger that could scare him. They’d been through Haiti, Nigeria, and Laos together, to name only a few. And now here they were in Yemen. The world’s forgotten humanitarian disaster.

  He scanned the terrain, finally finding her hidden among the rocks. She’d told him that she was calling Ken Dinh and it wouldn’t be hard for him to guess that she’d do it from the shade of her favorite boulder.

  Vogel made an exaggerated motion toward his wrist. He wasn’t actually wearing a watch, but she understood that it was a reference to the tardiness of their third musketeer. A man who was less a pillar of steel and more a pile of shit softened by the heat.

  When Vogel disappeared around the corner to begin removing his contaminated clothing, she stood and reluctantly started toward a building at the opposite edge of the village.

  When she finally pushed through the door of the stone structure she found a lone man scribbling in a notebook. He was only partially visible behind the battered lab equipment she’d borrowed from fleeing NGOs. Usually while wearing a black turtleneck and driving a van with the headlights turned off.

  “You were supposed to relieve Otto more than a half an hour ago,” she said.

  The initial reaction was an irritated frown—intimidating to the grad students who hung on his every word, but not as weighty in Yemen.

  “I’m in the middle of something,” he said. His English was grammatically perfect, but he took pride in maintaining a thick French accent. “I need to work through it while my mind is fresh.”

  Gabriel Bertrand was a world-class prick but unquestionably a brilliant one. He’d started his career as a physician, but after discovering that he didn’t like being around sick people, he’d moved into research and teaching.

  “I appreciate that,” she said, her good mood managing to hold. “But we’ve got people dying in that building. Otto and I can’t handle—”

  “Then let me help them, Victoria! You know perfectly well that we don’t know how to save those people. What I’m doing here could prevent future victims. It could—”

  “Get you a big prize and invitations to all the right Paris cocktail parties?
”

  That condescending frown again. This time aimed over his reading glasses. “If this disease ever defeats our containment measures, it’s going to be my work that’s important. Not what’s being done in your little infirmary.”

  “Tell that to the people in the little infirmary.”

  “There’s a bigger picture here. In fact, I’m guessing that a few minutes ago, you were trying to impress that very fact on Ken Dinh.”

  He stood from behind his improvised desk and moved a little too close, rubbing a hand over her bare shoulder. She was quite a bit older than the coeds he normally hit on, but she was still trim, with long blond hair and the tan that she’d always aspired to while growing up in the Pacific Northwest. More important, she was the only game in town.

  “Your narrative can be featured prominently in my work. It would come off as very heroic. That wouldn’t be bad for your career.”

  In her youth, she’d have probably gone for him. The brilliant, distinguished ones had always gotten to her. But not anymore. She’d seen way too much.

  “Ten minutes, Bert,” she said using the shortened version of his name that he despised. “After that, I’m going to have Otto drag you out of here.”

  CHAPTER 5

  AL HUDAYDAH

  YEMEN

  “TWO orders of saltah,” Shamir Karman shouted through the open door of the restaurant. “And do we still have any bottled cola?”

  Rapp was sitting alone at one of the tables outside, drinking coffee and working through the pack of cigarettes he always traveled with in this part of the world. It was still early and the sun was at a steep enough angle to shade the improvised terrace. Around him, about a quarter of the tables were occupied by men sipping from steaming cups, gossiping, and shooting occasional jealous glances at Rapp’s smokes.

  If he ignored the bomb crater behind him and the collapsed buildings in front, it all seemed pretty normal. Not much different than a thousand other cafes Rapp had eaten in over the last twenty years of his life. According to Karman, though, the illusion of business as usual would disappear sometime around lunch.

  Apparently, his restaurant—along with all the other struggling businesses in the area—was being shaken down by an organized crime outfit made up of former ISIS fighters. The gang had their hands in just about every dirty enterprise going on in Al Hudaydah, but that wasn’t what had attracted Rapp’s attention. No, his interest was in the whispers that they were still connected to Sayid Halabi.

  The question was whether those rumors were true or just marketing. Staying in the glow of the ISIS leader’s legend would be good for the images of men who were now nothing more than unusually sadistic criminals. Anything they could do to amplify the fear of the desperate people they preyed upon worked in their favor.

  If it was true that Halabi was trying to build a smarter, more agile organization, it was possible that he’d completely severed his ties with the morons terrorizing Al Hudaydah. On the other hand, men willing to martyr themselves could be extremely powerful weapons. Maybe too powerful for Halabi to give up.

  After four more hours, all the tables were full and the conversations had turned into an indecipherable roar. Waiters weaved skillfully through the customers, serving coffee, tea, and dishes prepared by Karman’s harried kitchen staff. Tattered umbrellas had gone up and people huddled beneath them, trying to escape the increasingly powerful sun.

  Rapp was almost through his bowl of marak temani when the buzz of conversation began to falter. He glanced behind him and quickly picked out the cause of the interruption: two hard-looking young men approaching. They were armed with AKs like just about every other Yemeni male, but these weren’t fashion accessories. They were slung at the ready across their torsos with fingers on the trigger guards. That, combined with their sweeping eyes and cruel expressions, suggested they weren’t there for the food.

  Rapp waited for them to enter the restaurant before following. The sparsely populated interior had gone dead silent except for Karman, who was standing in the kitchen door inviting the men inside.

  Again, Rapp followed, slipping into the hectic kitchen in time to see his old friend lead one of the men to his office. The other stood near the open door, chewing khat and scanning for threats.

  Not ready to be identified as yet, Rapp angled toward an employee bathroom at the far end of the kitchen. After pretending to test the door and find it locked, he pressed his back against the wall and lit another cigarette.

  It was hard to see into the office but there was just enough light for Rapp to make out Karman opening a small lockbox. The Yemeni started calmly counting bills onto the table as the other man speculated loudly about the success of the restaurant and whether he was being paid fairly. In the end, the calculations proved too taxing and he just snatched a little extra from the box before scooping up the stack Karman had dealt out. A hard shove sent the CIA informant stumbling backward into his chair with enough force that it almost flipped.

  The kitchen staff bowed their heads as the two men left, careful to not make eye contact. Rapp didn’t follow suit, instead staring intently at them. Neither noticed. They were too busy arguing about how they were going to split the unexpected bonus cash.

  After they disappeared back out into the dining room, Rapp tossed his half-smoked cigarette on the floor and started after them. By the time he stepped into the blinding sun, the men had a twenty-yard lead. He let that extend a bit as he swung by his table and slammed back the rest of what might have been the best cup of coffee he’d ever had.

  They led him through the sparsely populated maze of streets, finally arriving at a bustling market. The stench of sweat and raw sewage filled Rapp’s nostrils as he watched the men work their way through the stands, extorting money from each of their cowering proprietors.

  The sun was sinking low on the horizon by the time the men finished their rounds through the business district and started toward a more desperate area of town. Rapp was getting hungry and thirsty, but the occasional corpse of a cholera victim awaiting removal kept him from doing anything about it.

  The dust caked in his throat and the empty stomach just added to the anger that had been building in him all day. Watching these men steal from people who had virtually nothing was something he’d seen before, but it never got any more pleasant. Rapp had dedicated his life to eradicating this kind of scum from the earth, but there seemed to be an endless supply.

  They finally stopped at a house that had been repaired with tarps and other scrounged materials. Rapp assumed they were done for the day and had led him to their base of operations, but he turned out to be wrong.

  A halfhearted kick from one of the men knocked in what was left of a wooden door and they disappeared inside. Weak shouts and the screams of children flowed through the empty window frames as Rapp moved into a shadowed position that still gave him a solid line of sight.

  The ISIS men reappeared a few minutes later with a girl of about fourteen in tow. She was struggling and screaming, trying futilely to break free and retreat back into the house. A moment later a man Rapp assumed was her father came after her, grabbing one of the men, but then collapsing to the ground. The remaining glow from the sun glistened off his sweat-soaked skin, highlighting its pallor and dark, sunken eyes. Another victim of Al Hudaydah’s nonfunctional sanitation system and lack of medicine. The ISIS men just laughed and continued dragging his daughter up the street.

  What followed was easily predicted: the journey to a somewhat more affluent part of town. The dull stares of the people along the route, their lives too close to the edge to interfere. The delivery to a man who paid in cash. Her screams penetrating the walls of the house and echoing up the street.

  Rapp followed the men, trying to block out the girl’s cries for help. He’d been in a similar situation in Iraq and it was one of the few episodes in his life that wouldn’t leave him alone. His stride faltered and he considered going back, but knew that it was impossible. She was one of thousan
ds. The mission wasn’t one girl. It couldn’t be.

  The night was starting to get cold when the two men led him to a block of commercial buildings that had been spared from bombing. They disappeared into a small warehouse and Rapp came to a stop, staring blankly at the stone structure. What he wanted to do was walk in there and execute every son of a bitch inside.

  It would be so easy. Men like that had no real skill or training and they became accustomed to everyone being too afraid or weak to move against them. While they expected to die one day in a battle or a drone strike, the idea of one man acting against them was unfathomable. If Rapp’s experience was any indicator, they’d just sit there like a bunch of idiots while he emptied his Glock into their skulls.

  A beautiful fantasy, but like the empty heroism of saving the girl, an impossible one. This was the real world—a dirty, violent place, where wins came at a high price. Even capturing and interrogating them would be of limited value. Far more useful would be figuring out how many men were in there, getting photos that the CIA might be able to connect with names, and compromising their communications.

  Halabi was out there and he was going to hunt that bastard down and stick a knife in his eye socket—even if it meant he had to do the thing he hated most in life.

  Wait.

  CHAPTER 6

  CENTRAL YEMEN

  THE late afternoon sun cast virtually no shadows because there was little to create them. The terrain here consisted of nothing but blunt ridges, rocky desert soil, and a single, poorly defined road disappearing over the slope ahead. Mullah Sayid Halabi didn’t see any of it, though. Instead, he focused on the sky. The Americans were up there. As were the Saudis. Watching. Analyzing. Waiting for an opportunity to strike.

  Normally he didn’t emerge during the day. His life was lived almost entirely underground now, an existence of darkness broken by dim, artificial light, and the occasional transfer beneath the stars. The risk he was running now was unacceptably high and taken for what seemed to be the most absurd reason imaginable. One of his young disciples had said that this was the time of day that the light was most attractive.