The Zombie Game (12 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Beach at Léogâne

Haiti

9:01 p.m.

KEYES GUIDED THE SAILBOAT
toward the beach. In the quiet of the night, I heard loud boat engines roaring nearby. It was a boat leaving the Port-au-Prince harbor.

Jakjak pointed to the markings on the boat: a foot-wide blue slash, a foot-wide red slash, and some words that I couldn’t read in the darkness.

“Haiti’s new forty-foot Coast Guard ship,
Doktè
,” Jakjak said. “See the men up front carrying machine guns? I wouldn’t want to tangle with those guys.”

“Where are they going?”

“To the
Ana Brigette
,” he said.

“Did you call them?” I asked Keyes.

“No way,” Keyes said.

“If they board that ship, our troubles are over,” I said.

“If they’re not on the payroll,” Keyes said in low voice.

The Coast Guard boat slowed as it approached the hospital ship. I felt so relieved to see that the Coast Guard was boarding the
Ana Brigette
. The whole mess would get cleaned up.

“We’ll call the Coast Guard after a while to find out if Lars is alive,”
I said.

We were nearing the shore in four feet of water when I heard the roar of the Coast Guard vessel running toward us. Suddenly there was the distant report of a machine gun.

Oh no. This is why they didn’t bother to chase us.

“Get out of the boat!” Jakjak shouted.

Jakjak and I grabbed our injured man and lifted him over the side of the boat. As we dragged him through the shallows and up to the beach, machine gun spray ripped through the water. The Coast Guard boat kept coming at us. We all fell flat on the sand as bullets whistled over our heads.

Just then I remembered the abandoned sailboat on the sandbar. I stood, turned on Jakjak’s flashlight, and threw it as hard as I could at the boat wreck. As I flattened myself on the sand, the flashlight landed in the boat.

The Coast Guard saw it, too, and turned their boat quickly toward the light.
Ka-bang!
The sound was so loud that at first I thought they were throwing grenades at us. But when I saw the attacking ship shoot up ten feet in the air and crash back down on the water, I realized it had hit the sandbar. It came down not thirty feet from us, smacking the water, sending a wall of sea spray all over us. The boat had capsized.

Jakjak and I jumped up and pointed our guns at the Coast Guard boat. The engine sputtered a few seconds as the back of the boat sank into the sand of the shallow water. We heard men swimming, cursing, gathering together their survivors.

We ran for the waiting cars. Emmanuel met us halfway down the beach. “When the Coast Guard chases a boat ashore, the cops are soon here to take prisoners,” he warned. “You all must come now. Fast.”

Right as we got to the vehicles, I leaned over to Keyes and whispered in her ear, “Lars said plans are being made around the Pope’s schedule. Check that out when you get a chance.” She nodded.

Sanfia was there. I got in her VW bus beside the wounded sailor, while the rest of my crew piled into the other cars. The VW was the last to leave.

I told Sanfia about Jean-Pierre kicking the drunken man to awaken him.

Her face twisted into a scowl. “You are very wrong about that. Jean-Pierre is one of my best men.”

Emmanuel was frowning, too.

Turning to him, I said, “Some of our men were killed because of—”

“Shut up!” he screamed. “You’re upsetting Sanfia!”

I was angry. I was sure Jean-Pierre had kicked and awakened that man deliberately. It had cost us the ten minutes it would have taken to complete our mission. And it had probably cost Lars and the others in the second boat their lives.

Sanfia’s Safe House

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

9:20 p.m.

We had to go through another cemetery to get to Sanfia’s new hideout. There seemed to be a lot of graveyards in Port-au-Prince. Unlike the serene, orderly, colorless burial sites in North Carolina with their simple tombstones projecting up from the ground, these were mostly above-ground vaults, many painted with pink, pastel blue, or pastel green. Black painted signs scrawled over some of the crypts looked more like graffiti than reverent messages about the deceased.

As we dodged around the tombs and gravestones, I noticed a simple cement cross that stood about five feet high and was centered on a block of concrete. The cross was blackened, most likely from the many fires that had emanated from the piles of charred wood covering the concrete pad. Beside the cross were several blackened bones. In the dim light, I couldn’t tell if they were animal or human.

We approached an old, black iron fence that had been bent and twisted in the earthquake. It was waist-high and seemed to circle the graveyard. There was no gate. Emmanuel led us through a broken section of the fence and to a row of houses that had been mostly flattened in the quake. We went to a small stucco house with walls that had imploded on to the foundation, and entered through the intact rear-entry door.

Emmanuel gestured for us to follow him down the steps leading to the basement. At the bottom, another door blocked our entry. Emmanuel knocked three times, and the door opened. A man armed with a machete closed the door behind us. We entered the solitary room of the basement. Rows of folding chairs faced a wooden podium that covered half the room.

Elizabeth Keyes sat at a card table similar to the one in Sanfia’s sanctuary on the day before, and began working on her computer and waved without looking up. “Reception’s great here.”

Two of my “army” helped the wounded sailor to an old army cot against one wall.

I probably should have attended to all the problems that confronted me rather than to the wounded man. But I was a doctor, and to me that always took priority over everything else. I fell to my knees beside him and appraised the wounds. One bullet had entered his right side and another his outer thigh. Both of those wounds had ragged edges, but neither was bleeding. The bullet entering the thigh had narrowly missed the femur and gone into the abdomen.

Surgical gloves were an unthinkable luxury. “Can I have some clairin? That’ll sterilize my hands well enough to feel inside the wound.”

Emmanuel smiled sheepishly. “No clairin, but will grain alcohol do?” He held out a half-full bottle.

I frowned as I saw the USP ethyl alcohol label, just like the bottles on the
Ana Brigette.

“Henrique took it for Sanfia.”

“And you forgot to give it to her?” I smiled.

Stretching my bare hands toward Emmanuel, I rubbed them together as he poured the alcohol over them.

I was happy that the gash on the man’s side was superficial and that the thigh injury was well away from the femur and the large femoral blood vessels. But the abdominal wound looked nasty. I put my index finger into the wound and felt the extent of the damage.

I looked my patient in the eye. “I’m going to wash the wounds with alcohol, and it’ll hurt like a son of a bitch. Understand?”

He nodded.

I instructed Emmanuel, and he poured the alcohol as I scrubbed the edges of the wounds with my fingers. The man never moaned or complained. Fortunately, the big bullets had passed through without fragmenting and without penetrating the peritoneum into the abdominal cavity. With the thorough cleansing and some wound drains, he’d be okay. Of course, Jakjak would have to share his antibiotics.

I asked Emmanuel for a pair of scissors and the type of drain I needed. “A plastic raincoat, a thin boot, a shower cap—”

“I know just the thing,” he said and dashed off.

Two minutes later he returned with a small piece of thin rubber. “From the neighbor’s roof.”

I looked at the black sheet of rubber, which the Haitian government must have distributed to the people for making waterproof coverings for their cardboard and tin houses. I cut two small pieces, washed them in alcohol, and placed them carefully in the wounds. Then, I tore up one of Sanfia’s sheets and made bulky bandages.

I reached down to snap off my surgical gloves like I did after every operation and laughed at myself when I saw my gloveless hands dripping with alcohol.

Emmanuel held up the almost-empty bottle of grain alcohol. I thought he would cry.

Sanfia had left a large thermos of coffee. I poured two cups, and then took Keyes to a corner of the room away from the others.

“We should never have left that ship without Lars. I just hope he’s alive.”

“You know and I know that we’d all be dead now if we’d gone back to save him. Forget that. Let’s move on,” she said. “Speaking of which, I just checked on the Pope. He’s in America.”

My heart jumped a beat. “Where?”

“He gave Mass in Miami this morning.”

“Then, you were right about Miami. And the Pope. Taking out the Pope along with thousands of his followers on US soil would be a huge coup for ISIS. That has to be the terrorists’ plan.”

“Not so fast,” Keyes said. “You said they’re planning the hit for Saturday. Are you sure?”

“I’m positive. The emir said that directly to me when he was on the
Ana Brigette
Monday.”

“But the news reports say the Pope leaves Miami today and will be giving Mass in Atlanta at 6:30 Saturday morning.”

“Then, I stand corrected: The target is Atlanta. And now we know what time the strike is planned for on Saturday—6:30 a.m.”

“I’ll go along with that.”

“Okay, what do we know? The men who hijacked the
Ana Brigette
plan to use the ship to kill the Pope and a lot of innocent people at a six-thirty Mass on Saturday morning, somewhere in Atlanta,” I summarized. “But we still don’t know how they plan to do it. Any ideas?”

“My guess is they’re using Haiti’s money to buy the nukes and firing them from the
Ana Brigette
.”

“What about the rocketry?”

“I didn’t get that far into it before you pulled me off. If I would’ve had five more minutes, I could have deactivated it.”

“I’m positive that Jean-Pierre kicked the sailor to wake him up. I suspect he’s one of the terrorists, but Sanfia and Emmanuel were insistent he was clean,” I said. “He spoke French but nothing like the French Creole the Haitians speak. It was an educated French, like college professors and scholars use. He’s certainly out of place with Sanfia’s group, and he’s been with them only a couple of months. Could he have been placed there by Farok?”

“It’s possible.”

“Maybe Jean-Pierre was a mole, planted to sniff things out.”

Keyes shrugged.

“Too bad you weren’t able to get to the ship’s computer while we were on board.”

“I may have something that’s just as good,” she said, her head still down. “I’ve hacked into the Haitian Police website. Someone from the ship called the cops, and the police notified the Coast Guard. I’ve looked at their email traffic and their texts and bulletin boards. It’s as if nothing has happened here. No mention of terrorists or hijacking or even of the placement of missiles on a hospital ship. The communications between the ship, the police, and the Coast Guard say the
Ana Brigette
will motor to Saint-Marc. There, the Haitian government will give the ship enough sailors to return it to Denmark.”

“Saint-Marc is where Farok has men waiting to do whatever he’s planning to do. And there are two big missiles on the
Ana Brigette
.”

“Farok thinks big: Nukes and big targets.” Keyes’ frown deepened. “So we’re going to Saint-Marc?”

“Do you have a better idea? We sure aren’t going out in those toy sailboats to face the Haitian Coast Guard.”

Keyes took a deep breath. “What’s our plan?”

“We found Minister Duran’s dead associates on the
Ana Brigette.
That tells us that the ship’s hijacking is somehow connected with whatever is going on with the Durans.”

She nodded. “You’re absolutely right about that.”

“And with so many terrorists aboard, it’ll be impossible for us to commandeer the
Ana Brigette
. A more reasonable goal would be to get to Saint-Marc and disrupt their loading of the warheads for those missiles. If Lars is alive and has been captured, we’ll rescue him. Although I’m not optimistic,” I said. “But we’ll need help.”

I looked at Emmanuel. I just didn’t trust him. He wouldn’t listen when I’d tried to describe what had happened on that ship, and both he and Sanfia had condoned Jean-Pierre’s actions.

Keyes returned to her computer.

I walked over to Jakjak. He had been a loyal friend, but he was also loyal to Sanfia and afraid of her.
Can I really trust him?

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Sanfia’s Safe House

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

9:32 p.m.

JAKJAK, HOW DO YOU
feel?”

“Good,
Doktè
. Good.” This time, judging from the energy he displayed, I believed him. He stood tall, had his usual impish grin, and was breathing normally.

“You’re taking the antibiotics?” I asked.

“
O wi.
And just gave two of my pills to our friend who was shot in his boat.”

“Jakjak, the Coast Guard seems to be helping the terrorists. They’re taking the ship to Saint-Marc, probably to arm those two rockets on board with bombs. They’ll meet up with a terrorist group and use the rockets to kill innocent people. We must intercept the ship and block them. Do you know Saint-Marc?”

“
Wi.
Like the back of my hand. I was born and raised there.”

“Are there docks for loading, or will they anchor offshore?”

“Saint-Marc has one big dock, but it hasn’t been active since the earthquake.”

Keyes chimed in. “If it’s a nuke, it’ll be tricky from a boat. They’re heavy. My guess is they’ll tie up at the dock for that. Here, let me Google it.”

Her fingers flew across her keyboard. Within half a minute she had a satellite image of the Saint-Marc harbor on the screen. I looked over her shoulder at what looked like a square-shaped cement wharf. It was twice as long as the freighter that was anchored a few hundred yards away.

“Scott, look at the color contrasts of the water. The water is deep at the dock’s end and only gets shallow next to the shore. The
Ana Brigette
could easily load there.”

I raised my eyebrows and stared at her for a moment, my mind whirling. “Have you ever seen Farok transport a nuclear weapon? You sound knowledgeable about that.”

“Never, but from my reading, the packaging for the warhead is big and bulky. And expensive, judging from the money exchanged between Farok and his contact in Kazakhstan.”

I nodded. “I agree. And we’re not so much interested in killing the terrorists as we are in intercepting the bomb before it’s loaded. We’ll have to get there early. Our best option would be to capture the truck hauling the bomb.”

“We’ll drive it to the US Embassy. Hijacking the truck would be easier than attacking the ship again. But there’ll be a lot of soldiers around that vehicle. That may not be possible,” Keyes said.

I thought a second. “Then, we’ll sabotage the loading process. If we can destroy the lift they need to transfer it to the ship, it would delay them quite a bit.”

“If we can’t take out the lift, just dumping the nuke in the sea should do the trick. And that should be easier than anything else.”

“Won’t that contaminate the entire Caribbean?” I asked.

“It’ll take months before the packaging corrodes and leaks. We’ll report it as soon as we’re out of this mess, and international groups will be there immediately, so there’ll be little harm done. The alternative is worse.”

Nodding, I said, “Those are the only options I can think of. Let’s go with it.”

I turned to Jakjak. They’d already attempted to kill him, so he was as vulnerable as the rest of us. I trusted him. “Jakjak, I need to know, can we rely on Emmanuel?”

“I know Emmanuel well. He’s been Sanfia’s right-hand man for more than ten years.”

“How much do you know about him?”

Jakjak thought for a moment before answering. “We’re in the same ...” He looked around before continuing. “
...
the same, uh, group. We go to meetings every couple weeks.”

Recalling the society Sanfia had chided Jakjak for mentioning a few days before, I asked, “Your
sanpwel
?”

Jakjak cringed. “Sanfia will kill us both for talking about this.”

“But she’s a frail old lady. How can she hurt us?”

He began to tremble and tears sprung to his eyes. “
Doktè
, you just don’t understand. Sanfia has more power in Haiti than the president of the country. And she uses magic on people. Strong magic.”

I checked myself from laughing, out of respect for Jakjak. I didn’t understand how a frail old woman could exercise any power, even though she had intimidated me on our first meeting. But I decided to let it go for the time being.

“Could Emmanuel be a mole placed as a spy in your group?”

“I don’t know,
Doktè
. Sanfia has the power of the spirits with her. They would have told her if he was bad.”

I still wasn’t sure about Emmanuel. But I knew Keyes, Jakjak, and I could not accomplish our mission alone. Maybe Jean-Pierre was just one bad apple; maybe Sanfia and Emmanuel were loyal to us. Keyes, Jakjak, and I discussed this further and concluded that we needed Emmanuel and Sanfia’s army.

I had no other choice. I called Emmanuel over to us.

“Get our army back together. And have Sanfia send me all the men she promised earlier. Every one of them, even the kooky ones.”

“Okay. Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

Emmanuel stammered. “Uh, too late to make contacts tonight. We, I, I’ll deliver all the men to you tomorrow.” Quickly regaining his composure, he added, “Why don’t you and your friends get some sleep so you’ll be rested?”

I looked at my watch.

With that, Emmanuel took all his men, including the one with the bullet wounds, and marched out the door. Keyes and I looked at each other.

Jakjak pulled out three cots. “I could use a little sleep. And so could the two of you.” Then, to give Keyes and me a little privacy, he carried his cot to the first floor, where he cleared enough rubble to sleep.

I pulled the two cots side by side. I undressed and lay beside Keyes, happy to find she was naked, too. I turned on my side, wrapped my arm around her, and kissed motionless lips. She was already asleep.

Private Landing Strip

Aleppo, Syria

9:32 p.m.

The beautiful lines of the Piaggio Avanti aircraft looked awkward with its silver and white body painted camouflage black and brown. In the past, Farok had used this aircraft for transporting heavy cargo from short landing strips. It needed only a 3,200-foot landing strip, while his Learjet 60s needed 5,000 feet and his 747s required 6,000 feet.

The Piaggio’s pilot circled to gauge the length of the runway. The air terminal had been damaged by fighting during the past month, and potholes pocked the longer runways. A Syrian military plane surrounded by twenty of Farok’s soldiers was in position at the end of the runway. As the Piaggio approached, flares were lit to outline the landing zone. The plane landed with plenty of runway to spare.

The back of the Syrian cargo plane lowered, and a forklift transferred the two lead-lined boxes to Farok’s plane. Farok’s soldiers circled the plane until it was ready for takeoff.

The Piaggio revved its engines to gain full power and then taxied down the runway. The heavy load strained the plane’s abilities, and the pilots struggled to get the Piaggio airborne. With the end of the runway only twenty-five feet away, the wheels finally left the asphalt. But there were still several fifty-foot trees to fly over. The pilot sighed as the plane cleared this last obstacle with only inches to spare.