Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller: Book 2 (16 page)

Looking left and right for a place to hide, Austin knew he couldn’t stay on the street. He knew the men coming after him had seen the narrow road he’d run down, and they’d be rounding the corner behind him at any moment. He ran past a well-maintained house and saw a row of trees and bushes separating that house from a collection of shanties.

Good enough.

He cut a hard turn and ran into the bushes, bending over at the waist to keep his head down and out of sight. He inched forward at the corner of one of the corrugated-metal shanties. He dropped behind a wall of rotting wood and turned to watch the road.

From inside the shanty he heard the labored breathing of a man with liquid in his lungs. The man’s chest rattled through a series of weak coughs. Austin knew the sound. He’d heard it from so many of the dying in Kapchorwa. Ebola would take that man’s life within a day.

Austin put the dying man out of his thoughts. He looked between the bushes. He watched the road, seeing nothing, hoping he’d misinterpreted what he saw in the street, that they weren’t following him.

Hoping.

It was not to be. A group of men ran by, shouting with frustration and pointing.

They were the same men he’d seen around the corner, the same bunch he’d seen near the park. All doubt was gone
. They were after him.

Austin crouched and held his breath, afraid his loud breathing would give him away.

Could he hide-and-seek his way to the river? Could he evade them? How many were they, altogether? A dozen? Maybe twenty?

Animal viciousness—angry white eyes and big white teeth—beasts.

Austin was panicking. He was prey.

Why were they chasing him?

I didn’t do anything
, Austin pleaded silently to himself.

When the shouts and the thump of feet trampling the dirt road faded into the clamor of a city falling apart, Austin straightened back up. He crept along a row of shrubs, going away from the road.

Austin came upon two expansive, rust-colored brick buildings. Each had rows of small, long windows just under the eaves, too high to see either in or out. An alley ran up between them. Austin figured to cut up the alley and start toward the river again. Keeping a cautious eye over his shoulder as he rounded the corner of the first building, Austin wasn’t watching where he stepped. His foot slipped and he fell. Involuntarily reaching a hand out to catch himself, his hand hit something slick and went out from under him. Knobby knees and elbows bruised him when he hit.

Urged by dread, he scrambled quickly to get his hands and knees under him as he rolled over. Something was very wrong. He wasn’t on dirt. He was slipping on plastic, slick with beads of moisture.

He caught his breath and stopped moving for a moment. No knees were kicking him. No fists were punching him. No red dirt was beneath him.

Austin looked up the alley, and it took a moment for him to understand what he was kneeling on—what was lined up solid along the walls of both buildings—leaving only a narrow, muddy path in between.

Body bags.

Thick, white, plastic body bags, each with the vague form of a human inside, some wet with bleach solution puddled in the folds. There had to be a hundred. Down at the end of the alley, four men in yellow suits entered and tiredly dropped another body at the end of a row. A fifth man with what looked like a pesticide sprayer sprinkled the body bag in bleach solution.

Austin realized that his left hand was pressing down on a face through the plastic beneath him and his right hand on a torso. He jumped off, landing on the muddy trail between the feet of the corpses. His feet slipped out from under him again and he went down in the mud.

I should have stayed in Kapchorwa.

Austin was in real danger. His pursuers could be anywhere. Everywhere.

Inspiration sparked, morbid and disgusting.

He looked up the alley, saw no one, got back to his feet and jogged about half way up the length of the alley, spotted a gap between two of the tightly packed bodies, and dove between them.

The body bags were rectangular in design, much wider than necessary to hold the thin bodies within, leaving large flaps of excess plastic running the length on either side of the corpse. Austin snuggled up to the body on his right until he was partially concealed under the bag’s excess plastic. He reached out and pulled on the body bag to his left until the plastic overlapped above, leaving him fully covered, arches to ears. No one looking down the alley would see him. Any armed hoodlum dedicated enough to walk the muddy path between the corpses in search of him wouldn’t find him. Only his own movement and breathing could give him away.

Time to think through the next steps.

It was just past midday. Darkness wouldn’t fall over Mbale for another six or seven hours. When night came, Austin knew he could make his way out of the city unseen. He resolved to lie between the corpses until the sun went down.

Twenty minutes passed, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. What at first felt like his skin crawling in tiny tickles turned suddenly into painful pricks of flame, everywhere across his body.

Ants!

Austin jumped to his feet brushing and swatting at his clothes and exposed skin. The ants were all over him. The biting worsened. Ants brushed from his clothes clung to his hands and dug their mandibles into his skin. Cursing and looking for a way to get them off, Austin dropped down on the muddy path between the body bags and rolled. He mashed his hands into the mud to cake them solid. He used the mud as a shield for his hands and as glue to capture the ants still alive and attacking.

He mashed ants against his legs and under his jeans, on his neck, and in his hair. His skin was on fire. He needed to get to the river. That was his only hope of getting rid of them.

Austin ran up the alley, looking left as he passed into the street, then right—a street crossing habit learned in childhood. What he saw when he looked right wasn’t an oncoming car. It was two of the men in military fatigues looking up from their conversation with one of the body-carrying men in yellow Tyvek. They were as surprised to see Austin as he was to see them. They recovered quickly from their astonishment and began shouting. Austin was already halfway across the street.

Austin mustered all the speed in his muscles and ran, not looking back. He didn’t dare. He heard them coming. He crossed into another alley, his legs getting wobblier with each step. His lungs burned. Desperation pushed him through his body’s pleas to stop.

Unfortunately, the mind can only push the body so far.

Austin collapsed and rolled into the rough, musty dirt. He gasped for air and tried to get his feet back under him, but he was pushed roughly back to the ground. One of the paramilitary men pressed a large-barreled pistol against his head and said, “You’re mine now, mzungu boy.”

With hands bound behind his back, Austin sat in the center back seat of a ratty, white Toyota compact. A semi-camouflaged thug pressed in on each side. The man with the pistol—the guy apparently in charge—sat in front. A kid who looked too young for a license, drove. They followed behind two other cars, both packed with men and headed east across town.

They crossed the Mbale-Soroti Road, with the Islamic University still burning a mile to the north, and the flaming pyre of bodies at the base of the clock tower to the south. The convoy stopped and a boda driver puttered past with a woman, two children, and their baggage all balanced on top. They passed a barricaded neighborhood and a mango farm bordered on two sides by rows of shanties.

The man in the front seat rifled through Austin’s bag, passing his last pieces of mango to the men in the back. He found the stash of cash and pushed it into his pocket, then held up a credit card and examined it. It was one of Dr. Littlefield’s cards. “Dwayne R. Littlefield. That is you?”

Austin didn’t answer, choosing instead to glare at the man in the front seat.

“You are a fierce boy,” the man said with a mocking grin. “What is your pin number?”

Austin ignored the question. “What’s going on here? Why have you taken me?”

“You know why.” The man laughed. “Your people call it kidnapping.”

Austin asked, “Why are you kidnapping
me
?”

“Money.” The man laughed, and so did everyone else in the car.

“I don’t have any money,” said Austin. “My father is not wealthy.”

The man flashed the credit card and showed it to Austin. “You are rich.”

“Everybody has credit cards. That doesn’t make me rich.”

“Nobody in Mbale has one.” The man smiled. “But now I have one.” He put the credit card in his shirt pocket. “Tell me, Dwayne, are you a student, an evangelist, a lost American trying to find himself?” He laughed as though that was the funniest thing he’d said all day and then dug around in the bag looking for more.

“I’m a teacher,” Austin answered.

“A teacher?” The man was impressed or at least pretended to be. “At the Catholic University?”

“No. In Kapchorwa.”

“Dwayne Littlefield, the teacher from Kapchorwa.”

“My name’s not Dwayne.”

“No?”

“It’s Austin.”

“Austin?”

“Austin Cooper.”

The man in the front seat fished out the credit card. “What of this, then?”

“My things were burned in a fire.” Austin paused as he thought about what to say next. “I found the credit card and the money on the body of a dead doctor.”

The man scrutinized Austin for a moment and then said, “I do not believe you. I shall call you ‘Ransom.’”

The men on each side of Austin laughed.

The man in the front seat put the card back into his pocket. “You will call me ‘General.’”

Austin said nothing.

“You will call me General,” the man repeated as his smile seeped away.

The man to Austin’s left punched him in the arm and nodded at The General.

Austin understood. “Yes, General.”

The General’s grin returned. “You understand, Ransom, that I have taken you in order to make some of your father’s American dollars into my American dollars. We are at war, and we need money to fight.”

Shaking his head, Austin said, “You want money for terrorism.”

The General’s smile instantly disappeared. He said something, and the driver hit the brakes. Tires skidded on the dirt road. The General nodded at the men in the backseat, and they wasted not a second in opening a door and roughly shoving Austin out onto the gravelly dirt.

The other two cars came to a stop. Men got out, some looking at The General, some looking up the road, back down the road, or out across the open fields. The General pointed at the burning Catholic University. “You see that, Ransom?”

Austin looked at the burning buildings, looking for something distinct in the smoke, flame, and brick. He shook his head.

“You see that building there? The long one, with the terracotta roof?”

Austin nodded.

“Terracotta,” The General grinned. “Big word for a black man, don’t you think?” He pointed. “I lived in that dormitory when I went to university here.”

Austin was surprised.

“You see, Ransom. Americans aren’t the only educated people.” The General shook his finger at the burning building. “Do you know what happened here?”

Austin shrugged. He could guess.

“Your enemies burned it. America’s enemies.”

Shaking his head, Austin said, “I don’t have any enemies. Except maybe for you.”

“You and I have the same enemies,” said The General. “The Muslims burned this school.”

“The Muslims?”

The General pointed at the smoke rising from the fires to the north. “A band of students from the Islamic University came here and did this. You see, they hate us as much as they hate you Americans.”

“Muslims don’t hate Americans,” Austin muttered. “Not all of them.”

The General laughed. “You are naïve, Ransom. That is no matter. Your father’s money will help us do what must be done.” He looked at his men and nodded at the cars. They pushed Austin roughly into the backseat. Once everyone was loaded, they headed back down the road out of town.

With the smoke from the Catholic University receding behind, Austin asked, “If they burned the Catholic University, who burned their school?”

“There is only one God, and he doesn’t love them.” The General burst out laughing. The other men in the car chuckled.

The car drove out of town. They came to a stop a quarter mile down the road from an army roadblock. One of the men got out and walked toward it, no rifle in hand. After a brief conversation, the vehicles were waved forward. The convoy of three cars picked up their man as they passed and proceeded through.

Once past, Austin asked The General, “Did you bribe them to let us pass?”

“No, Ransom, some of our soldiers wear a government uniform. Some of my people are government functionaries. Some even run the towns. The shirt they wear at their job is not important. We all work together to do God’s work.”