The Ares Decision (12 page)

M
EHRAK OMIDI SLOWED WHEN
the young man in front of him broke into an elaborate karate pantomime, kicking at bushes and the humid air, spinning unsteadily, and making noises like a strangled bird. He nearly fell over a rotting log and shouted angrily at it before grabbing one of a number of beers stuffed into the pockets of his fatigues.

Omidi had landed in Uganda nine hours ago and immediately driven to the remote rendezvous point dictated by Caleb Bahame. He’d expected to be picked up by the man himself and taken to camp, but instead spent three hours riding blindfolded in the back of a rickety military vehicle. And now this.

They’d been walking through the wet, insect-infested jungle for long enough that he began to question whether the men around him had any idea where they were going. Most were drunk, and no fewer than three fights had broken out—one of which he’d been forced to break up when knives materialized.

“How much longer?”

The man in front squinted back at him and said something in his native language before forging on.

Omidi followed, keeping up easily despite the unfamiliar humidity and terrain. He hated sub-Saharan Africa and everything in it—the air, the disease, the worthless inhabitants. It would have given him great satisfaction to have sent one of his men in his place, but it was impossible. No one else could be trusted with a task so vast and historically important.

When he actually allowed himself to consider what, with God’s blessing, he would accomplish, it made the breath catch in his chest. Centuries of dominance by America and the West would come to an end. Their arrogant citizens would finally understand that everything they thought they had was an illusion. They would watch in horror as the power and money they had so greedily amassed failed to protect them. And when it was finally over, they would shrink away like beaten dogs.

The sun touched the horizon, stoking his anger and frustration. Soon, they would have to stop. While his guides were well equipped with alcohol and pornography, none seemed to have thought to bring a flashlight or night-vision equipment.

He quickened his pace and reached for the man in front of him again but then heard a distant voice reverberating through the jungle. The men around him heard it, too, whooping in excitement and pumping their rusting assault rifles in the air.

Bahame.

As they closed on the amplified voice, the scent of human habitation assaulted him—open latrines, garbage, and the distinctive rot of death. They passed crated weapons and food, as well as a few light military vehicles that may or may not have been in operating condition. All were piled with tree limbs and vines so as to be invisible from the air.

They broke out into a clearing and Omidi spotted a man pacing across a makeshift stage speaking into a megaphone. He was dressed in worn fatigues accented by a large amulet made of what appeared to be human teeth and bones.

No fewer than a hundred people were packed into the clearing, transfixed by the graying figure looking down on them. Most were teens or younger, clad in tattered civilian clothing and holding weapons as sophisticated as AK-47s and as primitive as feather-adorned spears. At least a quarter were girls, some unashamedly shirtless, displaying budding breasts wet with perspiration. A disgusting display by a disgusting race.

The man on the log-and-stone podium spotted him and pointed, speaking unintelligibly as his audience parted.

Close up, Caleb Bahame was almost regal, with strong features and skin unblemished by his years of living in camps like these. His movements were strangely exaggerated, choreographed to give his every word its own sense of gravity. Seeing Bahame standing there, feeling the oppressiveness of his presence, explained a great deal about how the African had gained so much power so quickly.

Bahame had started bringing his clapped-together religion to the tiny villages of northern Uganda almost a quarter century ago. Not long after, he armed a group of disciples large enough to begin converting the region’s farmers, whether they were persuaded by his dogma or not. He burned and raped and kidnapped, learning to manipulate the pliable minds of children and turning them into a fighting force unbounded by any moral or religious sensibility that didn’t flow directly from him.

As time went on, the religion he’d created became more political and more about him. He had portrayed himself as everything from Muhammad to Jesus to the reincarnation of Karl Marx—fanning the flames of tribal animosity and promising a utopian society of milk and honey without work or effort. Now, thousands of followers later, Bahame no longer knew where he stopped and God started.

Omidi climbed onto the podium and Bahame threw down the megaphone to greet him. When their hands clasped, a loud cheer rose up.

“Mehrak, my good friend,” Bahame said in English better than his own. “God told me you would be delivered safely to me.”

“May his name be praised.”

Bahame smiled and turned, using a claw hammer to break open a crate of whiskey. The exaltation of his congregation grew in volume as he tossed the bottles out to them, reserving one for himself.

“My magic has given us many victories and has made them love me,” he said, breaking the neck off the bottle. His eyes were clear, but it was impossible to know what they saw. Unquestionably, a man to be very carefully handled.

“You’re a great leader.”

“Yes, but Uganda is a large country, full of evil. It will require more than magic to take it. Even my magic.”

Omidi nodded gravely. “All great generals—all great men—face the same problem. You cannot do everything yourself. And to rely on others is…unpredictable.”

“What you say is true, Mehrak.”

“I’d like to see your magic. To see if you can teach us to wield it without your power.”

He seemed pleased by that and took a long pull on the bottle before holding it out to Omidi.

“My God doesn’t permit it,” the Iranian said.

“He gives you his permission.”

Omidi smiled politely, making sure his eyes portrayed only serenity. Was Bahame saying that he had spoken to God on his behalf ? Or that he
was
God?

A murmur went through Bahame’s people, and Omidi used it as an excuse to turn and see what had distracted them from fighting over the liquor.

A group similar to the one that had brought him there burst into the clearing dragging a badly injured African man along with them. Behind, a Caucasian in his late sixties appeared, terrified and exhausted.

Bahame jumped to the ground and Omidi followed at a distance that would allow him to be an observer of what was going to happen without risking becoming a participant.

“Where is the woman?” Bahame demanded.

One of the men pushed their injured comrade to the ground at his feet. “Dembe let her escape.”

The prone man’s right pant leg had been cut away and there was a bloody bandage wound around his thigh. He tried to crawl away but was stopped by the impenetrable ring of armed children that had formed around them.

Bahame pointed to the white man. “Who is he?”

“A doctor we found to keep this pig alive so he could face you.”

The cult leader’s eyes widened to the point of bulging, and his stare fixed on the man begging pathetically at his feet.

He dropped the bottle in his hand and picked up a rock the size of an apple, falling to his knees and bringing it down with horrifying force between the man’s shoulder blades. An anguished scream erupted from him, though it was quickly drowned out by the laughter of the crowd.

“No, stop!” the doctor shouted. He made a lunge to protect his patient but was slammed to the ground before he could reach him.

Bahame continued to work with the rock, studiously avoiding the man’s head and neck—attacking his arms, his torso, his legs. Sweat dripped from him and his breathing turned ragged as the dull thud of rock on flesh was joined by the sound of snapping bones and blood gurgling in his victim’s throat.

The skill of it was admirable—turning a man’s body into a broken bag of parts while keeping him not only alive, but conscious.

Eventually, Bahame began to tire, and he stood, still refusing to deliver the man into death. He picked up the whiskey he’d dropped, now spattered with blood, and drank from it before holding it out.

Omidi hesitated for a moment, looking down at the man twitching in the damp soil. Finally, he approached and accepted it, using the bottle to salute his host before bringing it to his lips.

J
ON SMITH PUT HIS
face directly into the lukewarm water, letting the shower wash away the sweat and dust. The hotel had turned out to be perfect—quiet, mostly empty, and out of the way enough that they would attract minimal attention.

More important, though, the water pressure was good, the bed looked comfortable, and the restaurant served alcohol. It might be awhile before he got to enjoy those particular luxuries again, and he intended to take full advantage while they were at hand.

He stood there until the water turned cold, then toweled off and walked out into the main part of the room, where he’d left the glass doors open to a private deck. The moon was visible through the gauzy curtains, and he dressed in its light before grabbing a beer from a trash can he’d filled with ice and heading out into the night air.

From his vantage point, he could look down on a bar strung with Christmas lights and the sparsely populated area by the pool. Howell and Sarie were sitting at a dim table near the hedge bordering the property, both with drinks that rated multiple paper umbrellas. Some of Howell’s strange malaise seemed to have lifted, and he smiled as Sarie lifted her hands to mimic the horns of an animal she was telling an extremely animated story about.

Smith was going to start down immediately but then thought better of it. The breeze was perfect, his beer was frosty, and the distant lights of Kampala twinkled through the humidity. The calm before the storm.

M
IND IF I
join you?”

“Jon!” Sarie said. “Look at you. You clean up so nice!”

“I was about to say the same about you.”

She was wearing a loose-fitting floral skirt and a sleeveless top that hugged her athletic torso. The hair he’d only seen tied back was now free to dance across her shoulders.

The bartender came up as he grabbed a seat, sliding some concoction in a coconut shell onto the table along with a place setting that included a knife large enough to field dress a rhino.

“Did we order?”

“Sarie took the liberty,” Howell said. “You’re having…Was it the zebra roulade?”

“
Ja
. Don’t worry. You’ll love it.”

“I was just thinking how long it’s been since I’ve had a nice piece of zebra,” he joked, scanning the tables around them. It was nearly ten p.m. and most of the guests had drifted off to their rooms. A few people were left at the bar, and there was a young Scandinavian couple drinking beers with their legs dangling in the pool, but no one was within earshot.

“What’s the plan for tomorrow morning?” Sarie said.

“We slink out of town and try to get out from under the neon sign we’ve got flashing over our heads.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean our detour to see Peter’s old friend and our meeting with Dr. Lwanga weren’t exactly the most anonymous way to start the trip.”

She leaned toward him over the table. “I have to say all this cloak-and-dagger is kind of exciting. I feel almost like a secret agent.”

Howell let out a snort that almost caused him to spit out the drink he’d raised to his lips.

“What?” Sarie said.

Smith continued before the Brit could conjure up a response. “We’ll pick up our gear first thing and then head out to the farm of the doctor who was looking into this back in the fifties. Maybe his family is still there.”

Sarie nodded. “If not, we’ll visit the villages in the area and ask the elders if they’d ever heard of anything like this before that bastard Bahame showed up. If this is a parasitic infection, it’s possible that it’s been popping up and disappearing for thousands of years.”

“Why not just deal with the problem directly and go after Bahame?” Howell interjected.

“No one goes after Caleb Bahame,” Sarie said. “He goes after you. He’s a psychopath and a murderer.”

“We’ll try to steer clear of him for now,” Smith said. “We don’t even know what we’re dealing with here—all we have is a few sketchy reports. If it
is
a biological agent, though, we need to get as much information as we can on its pathology and try to find out where it’s hiding.”

“Maybe look for an area that people have only recently started traveling in,” Sarie said. “Contact with unusual animals. Things like that.”

A figure appeared on the walkway next to the pool, and Jon watched him as Sarie began gleefully speculating on the selective pressures that could create a parasite like the one they were looking for.

The man moved casually, not focused on anything in particular, but stood out just the same. He was probably six foot three, with the look of an aging weight lifter whose muscle had started to migrate downward and whose fair skin had spent a lifetime being brutalized by the African sun.

His path to a table partially shadowed by flowering vines took him right by them, and as he passed behind Howell, his trajectory suddenly changed. Before Smith could react, he had dropped into the empty chair between him and Sarie.

At first, Smith thought he might be the hotel’s manager, but then he saw the glint of a pistol as it disappeared beneath the table.

“Peter,” the man said in a thick Dutch accent. “Here you are in town and you didn’t even call. I thought you Brits were supposed to be polite.”

Howell’s expression was placid, but Sarie’s most definitely wasn’t. It was impossible to know if she’d seen the pistol or if she just knew men like this from her travels. Up close, he had the distinct look of a mercenary—one of many who had cut their teeth on the war in Angola and then spent the rest of their lives fighting bloody skirmishes all over the continent.

“You’ll have to accept my apologies, Sabastiaan. I’m afraid I thought you were dead.”

“I’ll bet you did. I was bleeding pretty bad when you left me. But I managed to get out.”

“I’m terribly embarrassed. I could have sworn I hit an artery.”

Sabastiaan smiled cruelly and reached for Sarie’s drink, draining it in less than a second. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?”

“Of course. Drs. van Keuren and Smith. I’m taking them into the field to find specimens.”

Howell was obviously calculating, but there wasn’t much he could do. The guy was a pro, and he was smart enough to be extremely cautious around the former SAS man.

“You hired this British son of a bitch? How much are you paying? You could do better.”

Smith feigned the fear that would be expected of an American academic in this situation. “What’s this all about? We…we don’t want any trouble.”

His acting skills must have been more impressive than he thought. Sabastiaan dismissed him as trivial. A significant error on the mercenary’s part. Perhaps a fatal one.

“And what about you, sweetheart?”

Sarie responded in Afrikaans, the distaste audible in her voice. Whatever she said obviously wasn’t complimentary, and Sabastiaan responded angrily in the same language. His eyes locked on her in an attempt to get her to back down. Another mistake.

In one smooth motion, Smith picked up his steak knife and swung it up beneath the man’s chin. Sabastiaan was startled for a moment, but then a thin smile spread across his face. “The professor has spirit.”

Smith leaned forward a bit, confirming in his peripheral vision that the people at the bar still had their backs to them. “Look closely, Sabastiaan. Do you really think I’m a professor?”

The mercenary’s smile faltered. Being able to accurately size up your opponent was one of the most important qualities a man in his position could possess, and he was beginning to understand the extent of his miscalculation.

“I have a gun on your friend,” he said hesitantly. “All I have to do is pull the trigger.”

“That would be inconvenient. I’d have to find another guide, and since I plan to shove this knife so far that it breaks off in the top of your skull, you won’t be available.”

Smith heard the door leading to the hotel burst open but didn’t dare take his eyes off Sabastiaan even when the clack of running boots sounded behind him.

“Put down the knife!” an accented voice demanded.

“He has a gun,” Smith said. “He—”

“Put it down now!”

“Do it,” Sarie said. “But do it slowly.”

Howell nodded his agreement and Smith eased the knife to the table. A moment later, he was yanked from his chair and the table was surrounded by armed soldiers.

“Give me a second to explain,” Smith said as his arms were wrenched behind him and secured with a zip tie. “We’re—”

“Shut up!” someone behind him said and then hit him in the back of the head hard enough to blur his view of everyone else at the table being similarly bound.

They were led out to the street and separated from Sabastiaan before being shoved into the back of a black SUV. Smith struggled into a sitting position as they sped away, finally managing to prop himself up far enough to see out the windows.

In the dim street behind, the old merc was trying to protect himself from the clubs raining down on him. At the rate he was taking punishment, he’d be dead in less than a minute. The question was, would he turn out to be the lucky one?