The Ares Decision (10 page)

T
HE GLOOM WAS DISPELLED
by a slide projecting an elegant line of stone buildings against a mountain backdrop. Brandon Gazenga zoomed in on three people standing at the top of a set of stairs.

“Starting at the far right, we have Lt. Colonel Jon Smith, a medical doctor and microbiologist attached to USAMRIID. He—”

“Brandon,” Lawrence Drake said, not bothering to hide his impatience. “Dave and I have a meeting in ten minutes. What’s so important about this that it couldn’t wait?”

“Yes, sir, I understand. But we have reports that a week before this photo was taken, Dr. Smith was at Camp Lejeune talking to the surviving SEAL from the Uganda operation. Apparently, he was there when he committed suicide.”

Drake leaned forward, feeling the muscles around his stomach tighten. “Okay, Brandon. You have my attention. Who’s the woman?”

“Sarie van Keuren, a name I think you’re familiar with.”

“The parasitologist. Are the Iranians still watching her?”

“Yes, sir. They have roughly the same photo you’re looking at.”

“And the man she’s shaking hands with?”

“That wasn’t as easy to figure out—he’s traveling on an Argentine passport under the name Peter Jourgan. His real name, though, is Peter Howell. Former SAS, former MI6, now retired and living in California.”

“If he’s retired,” Dave Collen said, “what the hell is he doing in Cape Town talking to van Keuren?”

“I should have said
semi
retired. He still does some consulting work, but the details aren’t clear.”

“I assume you’ve accessed the army’s records,” Drake said. “What are Smith’s orders?”

“He doesn’t have any. He’s officially on a leave of absence.”

“Bull. Is he military intelligence?”

“He’s been attached to Military Intelligence in the past,” Gazenga responded. “But there’s no evidence that he’s associated with them now.”

“And if he
was
still working for them, he wouldn’t be over there with a British freelancer,” Collen added.

“I agree,” Gazenga said. “You probably remember that Smith was involved in the Hades disaster through his job at USAMRIID. After that, though, he starts turning up in a lot of places that can’t be as easily explained.”

“Someone recruited him after he brought down Tremont,” Drake said.

“I think it’s a safe assumption, sir.”

“Who?”

“I can’t find anything that would even indicate a direction to look. If he is working off the books for someone, they’re incredibly good at staying in the shadows.”

Drake settled back in his chair and examined the stark blue of Smith’s eyes. Who had the juice to recruit and operate an asset like Smith? And who had an undue interest in Caleb Bahame? The answer to those questions had the potential to lead in a very dangerous direction.

“Where are they now?”

“On their way to Uganda.”

Collen turned his chair toward his boss and spoke under his breath. “Jesus, Larry…”

Drake nodded silently. “I want them followed, Brandon. I want to know everywhere they go, everyone they talk to, and everything they learn. And I want to know it in real time. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I also want to know who the hell they’re working for.”

Gazenga nodded obediently but seemed increasingly uncomfortable.

“Do you have something else to say, Brandon?”

“No, sir.”

“Yes, you do. Speak up.”

He hesitated, shifting back and forth in the glare of the projector. “Sir, what we’ve done so far is…”

“Legal?”

“All due respect, I was going to say
plausible
. Everything we’ve said about Bahame’s methods and the Iranians’ interest has been completely reasonable and defensible from an analysis standpoint.”

“But?”

“While we don’t know specifically who Smith’s working for, it stands to reason that it’s someone on our side…”

“Are you making a recommendation or just stating the obvious?” Drake said.

Brandon stood a little straighter for the first time in their relationship. Defiance?

“In a way, this could have a silver lining for us, sir. The Iranians have been cautious up until now. An American virus hunter poking around could force their hand and give us corroboration of what Khamenei is doing.”

“So you think we should throw a year of meticulous planning out the window and rely on two foreign nationals and an army doctor with no apparent orders?”

Brandon didn’t back down. “I think we have to consider op—”

“The Iranians continue their nuclear weapons program,” Drake said, cutting him off, “and we slap them on the wrist. Now their country is destabilizing and could very easily fall into the hands of Farrokh, who has the confidence of the Iranian scientific community. What do we do? We stand by. And that’s what we’ll still be doing when they have nuclear warheads that can reach our shores and OPEC is controlled from Tehran.”

Gazenga’s resolve began to waver and he moved out of the beam of the projector in an obvious attempt to hide the fact. “If we—”

“That’ll be all, Brandon,” Dave Collen said.

“But…Yes, sir. Thank you.”

Drake reflected on how quickly and violently the world was changing as the young man hustled through the door. Russia and China were more easily controlled than people suspected—both countries had large, sophisticated bureaucracies, populations with predictable long-term goals, and an arsenal of economic and military weapons that remained inferior to America’s. Iran was different.

In direct opposition to Castilla’s policy of noninterference, Drake had been waging a silent war against the Iranians. The two nuclear scientists recently killed by car bombs and the Stuxnet computer worm that had damaged their centrifuges were all off-the-books agency operations. But he was just delaying the inevitable. The threat posed by the Islamic Republic needed to be made clear and, more important, the American military’s ability to deal with that threat had to be demonstrated. This time there would be no endless street skirmishes, no corrupt local politicians, no buried IEDs. Iran would be quickly and completely obliterated from the air.

The Muslim world had begun to mistake America’s obsession with preventing civilian casualties for weakness. It was a misconception that would be quickly dispelled as the world stood by and watched Iran’s few survivors scramble to eke out an existence in a land literally returned to the Stone Age.

Worldwide order would be restored and a clear message would be sent to the Pakistanis, the Afghans, and all the others: If you keep your fundamentalists under control, America will stay on the sidelines. But if you let them become a threat, you will be next.

All he needed was a catalyst, and Caleb Bahame’s parasite was perfect. Even by biological weapon standards, it was so visceral and terrifying that virtually every government on the planet would turn their backs on a country that used it.

If he allowed Smith and his team to confirm the parasite’s existence and learn of the Iranians’ interest as Gazenga was suggesting, their plan would be stillborn. The politicians would move in, rattling empty sabers while Iran issued denial after denial. Castilla and the UN would debate, demand more evidence, make pointless resolutions. And the war-weary, financially strapped American people would resist a call to arms over yet another unseen and unproven WMD program.

No, in order for the United States to regain the determination to retaliate with overwhelming force, the threat couldn’t exist solely in the mouths of newscasters and government spokesmen. The Iranians would have to be allowed to
use
Bahame’s parasite. The soft and increasingly self-absorbed American people would have to
experience
the consequences of their apathy.

“Larry?” Collen said, breaking the silence in the still, shadowy office. “What are we going to do? We didn’t anticipate any of these complications. And Brandon’s starting to waver.”

Drake let out a long breath as he forced himself back into the present. Gazenga’s knowledge of central Africa had been critical to their operation thus far, but it had always been understood that he’d eventually have to be dealt with—that he wouldn’t have the courage to go as far as was necessary. Losing him now, though, would be a minor disaster.

“I take it you’ve been learning fast, Dave?”

“Everything I can. But my level of expertise is nowhere near his. And neither are my contacts on the ground.”

Drake nodded his understanding. “We’re going to have to move up the timetable and go to full surveillance on him. I want it in place by tonight. Maybe he’ll show more backbone than we expect.”

“And Smith?”

“For now, we’ll just track him—see if he tips his hand as to how much he knows and who he’s working for. The moment it looks like they’re going to come up with anything useful, though, they’re going to have to disappear.”

B
RANDON GAZENGA SMILED
blankly at the people moving through the hallway, trying to keep his gait natural as he slipped into his office and closed the door behind him.

How the hell had he gotten himself into this?

It was a depressingly easy question to answer. Drake had come to him personally and he’d swooned at the personal attention from the DCI. Given a chance to advance his career and play with the big boys, he’d just closed his eyes and jumped.

A world that seemed so black-and-white in college turned hopelessly gray inside the walls of CIA headquarters. A little spin here, a little data selection there, and you could make a report say anything you wanted. But now things had been turned completely upside down. There was no doubt in his mind that Drake was going to eventually want Smith and his people dead. Of course the CIA’s involvement would be as indirect as it always was—a quick cash payment to an intermediary, a passing along of information to bandits in the area, maybe a word to one of Bahame’s people. It was a cardinal rule that he had learned well over the past year: deniability must always be maintained.

But
he
would know the truth. The fact that the blood didn’t splash directly on him didn’t absolve him of responsibility.

The entire operation was an incredibly delicate balancing act—let the Iranians go far enough for the evidence to be irrefutable, but not so far that they would be in a position to actually deploy the parasite.

As his vision cleared, though, Gazenga began to see just how subjective that balance point was. How far were Drake and Collen willing to allow Iran to run? How much risk were they willing to take that this could spin out of control?

“Welcome to the big leagues,” he said to the empty office.

It was funny how different the reality was from the fantasy. Who would have ever thought he’d want nothing more than to join his brothers running the family restaurant chain? That standing elbow-deep in spiced beef and dishwater would be something he dreamed about?

Gazenga walked unsteadily to his desk and sat in the leather chair his father had presented him as a graduation gift. This was getting way too big for him to handle. He needed to talk to someone who knew what the hell they were doing. Someone he could trust.

S
ARIE VAN KEUREN TOSSED
a bungee cord over the crate of field equipment and Smith caught it, securing the hook to a hole rusted in the top of the cab.

“I think that’ll get us to Kampala,” he said, and the driver leaned through the open window, head bobbing in an energetic nod.

“No problem.”

Those seemed to be his only two words of English, but with the right inflection and expression, they could communicate just about any point.

Smith climbed into the front passenger’s seat, pulling his pack onto his lap before repeatedly slamming the tiny car’s door in an effort to get it to stay closed. “Peter! Let’s roll.”

Howell was standing on the sidewalk staring up at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport, hands jammed in the pockets of his faded jeans despite the heat and humidity. The original terminal building was gone now, but the airport was still something of a shrine for the men who served in the world’s special forces.

In 1976, Palestinian terrorists hijacked a plane ferrying 250 passengers from Tel Aviv to Paris, forcing the pilot to land in Idi Amin–controlled Uganda. After releasing some of the passengers, they’d threatened to kill their remaining hostages if a number of their imprisoned compatriots weren’t set free.

When it became clear that peaceful negotiations were going nowhere—due in no small part to Amin’s support of the hijackers—the Israelis began planning a rescue mission.

Operation Thunderbolt was carried out by one hundred elite commandos and took only an hour and a half to complete. When the dust settled, all but three of the hostages had been rescued and all the hijackers, as well as forty-five Ugandan troops, were dead.

It had been a very public demonstration of what a well-trained force could accomplish and had made that little airport a household name all over the world.

“Peter!” Sarie called, wrestling her pack into the backseat and then squeezing in next to it. “What are you looking at? Meter’s running!”

Her voice snapped him out of his trance and he slipped in next to her.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Of course I am, my dear. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Smith shot a quick glance back but then just settled into the vinyl-and-duct-tape seat as the cab shot into traffic. He watched the verdant hills dotted with houses pass by for a few minutes but found it more and more difficult to keep his eyes open. The drive to their hotel in the capital city wouldn’t take much more than a half hour, but he might as well put the time to good use. Unless he missed his guess, opportunities for sleep were going to be scarce over the next couple of weeks.

Sarie’s phone rang and he half monitored her circumspect questioning of the German parasitologist she’d left a message for earlier that day. When the inevitable disappointment became audible in her voice, he shifted his attention back to the monotonous drone of the engine. It seemed that Star had once again been right—whatever this phenomenon turned out to be, the two lousy pages she turned up were the entire body of knowledge on it.

Despite his exhaustion, Smith’s mind refused to shut down, instead churning through an ever-lengthening list of problems and unknowns.

Dealing with deadly diseases in the field was dangerous enough when you had iron-fisted control over every variable. Normally, he’d know more or less what pathogen he was dealing with, his patients would be grateful for his presence, and he would be leading a large team of highly trained specialists wielding multimillion-dollar equipment.

To say that his current situation wasn’t optimal would be the understatement of the century. His protective equipment consisted of some surgical gloves and masks raided from Sarie’s basement. He had virtually no knowledge of the pathogen they were after or, frankly, if it even existed. He had only guesses as to how it spread and no clue how it attacked its victims. And his patients, far from offering their thanks with donations of farm animals like they had last time he’d worked in Africa, were likely to try to tear him apart.

Then there was Caleb Bahame—a man who had brought the technological innovation of the jeep to the old tradition of drawing and quartering. A man who wasn’t going to be happy about three white people wandering around in his backyard asking questions…

The sudden blast of a car horn caused Smith to jerk upright in his seat. He squinted into the powerful sun, confused for a moment as to where he was. Ahead, tall concrete buildings broke up the outline of green hills, creating a vaguely Soviet skyline that overpowered the red roofs and whitewashed walls of colonial-era structures.

Kampala was a tidy and surprisingly attractive city at odds with its history of political turmoil, military dictatorships, and now Caleb Bahame. It was a deeply unfair but common story in this part of the world: just when the populace was about to get out from under—just when hope began to dispel fear and desperation—someone rose with a ragtag force and some murky motivation for destroying it all.

“Take your next left,” Howell said, reaching up between the seats and tapping their driver on the shoulder.

The Ugandan seemed confused and pointed through the cracked windshield at the approaching city. “No problem. Hotel.”

“Not the bloody hotel,” Howell said more forcefully. “Do it. Turn there.”

“No! Problem! Bad place.”

Smith twisted around in his seat but was grateful when Sarie spoke first. “What’s going on, Peter? I thought you’d never been to Uganda.”

Her naïve openness was not only engaging but useful. Smith really couldn’t ask questions—particularly in light of the fact that he had Howell on a mission for an organization the Brit didn’t even know existed.

“I said here!” Howell said, pulling himself between the seats and grabbing the wheel. The taxi careened onto a dirt side road violently enough to slam Smith into the poorly latched door. He grabbed for the dash and barely managed to keep from falling out.

“What the hell, Peter?” he said, starting the process of trying to get the door closed again.

“I thought we’d take in the sights.”

Howell passed three one-hundred-dollar bills to the driver, who didn’t seem to know whether to be more afraid of the man in the backseat or what lay ahead. The cash broke the tie.

Smith managed to get the door latched again and twisted around to the degree the pack on his lap would allow. The fact that Howell hadn’t told him about his history in Uganda didn’t particularly bother him—their entire relationship was built on secrets. What did bother him, though, was that the normally squared-away SAS man had turned erratic and moody.

He’d never had reason to question Howell’s judgment before and he wasn’t anxious to start, but there was something wrong here. How much rope should he give his old friend before he yanked back?

As they approached a ramshackle township, the driver began talking irritably in his native language, obviously trying to convince himself of something. They’d closed to within about two hundred yards of the first building, a leaning shack built from corrugated tin and wire, when the African slammed on the brakes. “We go no more!”

Howell stepped calmly from the car and yanked the driver’s door open, pulling the frightened man out into the road.

“Back in a jif,” he said, sliding behind the wheel and launching the car forward again.

“Peter,” Sarie said as they wound through the dense shacks, eliciting perplexed stares from the pedestrians hurrying out of the way. “I’m from this part of the world and I’m telling you we shouldn’t be here. We aren’t welcome.”

He didn’t respond, and Smith felt her hand light on his shoulder, a clear signal that she wanted him to intervene. But for one of the first times in his life, he wasn’t sure what to do. He’d be dead five times over if it weren’t for Peter Howell.

The farther they penetrated, the more the township changed in character. Women and children evident at the outer edges were gone now, replaced by increasingly well-armed men. A pickup with a mounted machine gun crossed in front of them and the shirtless man standing in the bed swung the gun in their direction but didn’t have time to decide whether or not to pull the trigger before he disappeared around a corner.

“Okay, that’s far enough, Peter,” Smith said, grabbing the shifter and pulling it into neutral. “Either you tell us what we’re doing, or we turn around and get the hell out of here.”

The Brit just thumbed into the backseat, where Sarie was on her knees watching the crowd close in behind them. Unlike the machine gunner, they’d had time to think about the strangers in their midst and were well on their way to a decision that wasn’t going to go well for anyone.