Payback

by J. Robert Kennedy

  “Yes, ma’am. Are you Mrs. Buhari?”

  She nodded, hesitantly, turning slightly, placing her shoulder between McKinnon and her child. “Why? What has happened? Why are you here?”

  “We’re looking for your husband, ma’am. Do you have any idea where he is?”

  Her eyes narrowed, but Red could see almost every muscle in her body tense up.

  She knows why we’re here.

  “No, I don’t know.”

  “Shouldn’t he be at work?”

  She hesitated, realizing she had been caught in a lie. “Well, yes, I mean, of course he’s at work.”

  McKinnon held out his hand, inviting her inside. “Why don’t you come inside, ma’am, so we can do this in private. Your neighbors don’t need to hear this.”

  She looked over her shoulder and Red suppressed a smile as several doors could be heard slamming shut. Mrs. Buhari stepped inside and McKinnon motioned at one of his men.

  “Why don’t you get Mrs. Buhari a glass of water?” he said as he motioned toward a threadbare chair that would have looked at home on the set of Archie Bunker. She sat down, still trying to direct her child’s face away from the gathered strangers. Remarkably the little girl hadn’t made a sound.

  McKinnon sat on a vinyl couch, the wheeze of air squeezing from the cushion an almost comic relief to the tension in the room.

  “Now, ma’am, we need to find your husband as quickly as possible. We believe he may be in serious trouble.”

  “Wh-why? What has he done?”

  Interesting choice of words.

  “As far as we know he’s done nothing, yet.” McKinnon motioned for the letter to be brought over. “He wrote you this.” He showed her the letter and Buhari quickly read it, tears rolling down her face by the time she finished. “Do you know what he’s referring to?”

  She shook her head, quickly. A little too quickly.

  McKinnon caught it.

  “I think you do, Mrs. Buhari. If we find him before he does anything serious, he’ll be in a lot less trouble than after.”

  Buhari looked about the room, most eyes on her, clearly making her discomfort nearly unbearable. It was a tactic that could work, but it could also backfire. She might spill her guts under the pressure, or she might fight back by clamming up if she supported her husband’s actions in any way.

  And her quick head shake seemed to suggest there was at least tacit support there.

  Red turned to Spock. “Wait outside,” he said quietly, hoping McKinnon would take the hint.

  He did.

  McKinnon made a slight motion with his head and most of the room emptied out into the hallway, Red taking up the rear, staying near the door so he could hear what was being said.

  “Now, ma’am, it’s clear you love your husband, and I’m sure you don’t want anything bad to happen to him, especially with such a pretty little girl depending on him so much.” There was a murmured reply he couldn’t hear. “Good, then I need you to help me. Do you have any idea where he might be?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know who he might be with?”

  There was a pause. Red leaned into the apartment, trying to hear if there was no reply, or just a quiet reply.

  “He might be at the drop-in center.”

  “We were just there, he wasn’t.”

  “Mommy, he’s with Uncle Bai!”

  Out of the mouths of babes!

  “Who’s Uncle Bai?”

  This time there definitely wasn’t a response.

  “Listen, we’ll find out eventually, and then it might be too late to save your husband and a lot of innocent lives. If your husband is involved in this, he’s already partly responsible for over a dozen deaths. As far as we know he hasn’t pulled the trigger on a single person yet. If we get to him in time, he’ll get a slap on the wrist, especially if he cooperates.”

  Slap on the wrist, my ass.

  “What was the name the kid said?” whispered one of McKinnon’s agents.

  “Uncle Bai,” said Red.

  The agent held out a tablet computer with phone records obviously from their suspect’s phone. He pointed at one. Bai Gondor. “That’s a pretty unique name if you ask me. Could be him.”

  Bai could be like John in Sierra Leone for all we know.

  But it was something.

  Red nodded. “Better tell him.”

  The agent stepped into the apartment, disappearing around the corner, returning a moment later without the tablet.

  “Your husband seems to have made a lot of phone calls with a Bai Gondor. Is that ‘Uncle Bai’?”

  Again no reply.

  “I think it is, and now that we know your husband thinks he’s going to die, we’ll have to treat it as a terrorist situation, meaning your husband will most likely die long before he achieves whatever it is he felt was worth dying for. Do you want that?”

  There was a long pause, then finally Buhari replied, a hint of defiance in her voice. “Of course I don’t want my husband to die. But do you know how many of my family have died back home? Do you know how many of my countrymen have died? All for the lack of money? Thousands! And thousands more will die! It should never have happened and yet it did, all because your country did nothing to stop it.”

  Funny, I thought this was your country now, too.

  “So this is about the Ebola epidemic.”

  “Of course it is you stupid, stupid man. Your very words show how stupid your country is, how ignorant it is. How you can go about your daily lives while tens of thousands are dying on the other side of the ocean sickens me. I wish I had never come to this country! I wish I never knew how horrible America is! I thought this was a land of dreams, of possibilities, of people who cared for their fellow man! I never knew that they only cared about their own, and that they don’t even do well. Look at how many poor people there are, how many homeless, and yet you do nothing. As long as they don’t interfere with your day, you pay them no mind. And if the disease is thousands of miles away, you don’t care about them either. Yet one man is infected in America and the news coverage is constant, the money flows freely without thought.” There was a spitting sound. “You all disgust me!”

  Red could just imagine what McKinnon was thinking right now. How do you respond to a tirade grounded in reality? It was true to a certain extent. Little had been done. Much was being done now, but she was right, it wasn’t until the epidemic threatened to spread beyond the borders of the poorest of African nations that the West took action.

  He did find it disheartening though that a woman who had been a citizen for almost ten years, lived in the country for fifteen, hated her new home so much and felt a complete disconnect with her fellow citizens and countrymen.

  It’s the new multicultural reality.

  Encouraging people to hold on to their old ways was already destroying the European nations, the multicultural doctrine that all cultures are equal and all cultures are equally good was bullshit, but it was politically incorrect to say so.

  “Your reaction tells me that this is the man we’re looking for. We’ll have someone from Child Services come to take your daughter unless you’ve got someone she can stay with. You’ll have to come with us to the Field Office for further questioning.”

  A burst of Krio erupted, the little girl finally crying aloud.

  He felt sorry for the woman, she clearly not involved. He understood her desire to support her husband, and even understood the anger. It was the killing of innocent people he couldn’t condone, and with this effort so well coordinated thus far, he could only imagine what horror they had planned next for his country, her new and hated country.

  Off the coast of Guinea

  Koroma lifted the wide-brimmed hat covering his face while he lay down in his cabin, the gentle sway of the ship on the waves and the constant drone of the engines about as peaceful an experience as he could recall having in a long time.

  The knock was repeated.

  “Yes?”r />
  The door opened and the ship’s captain entered, cigar clamped between his teeth, a thick curly gray beard stained yellow from a habit formed years ago. Koroma had never met the man before today, but Mustapha had arranged passage several days before for a non-trivial amount of money with one condition.

  No questions asked.

  Koroma had boarded in Conakry, Guinea, only hours after leaving his village, his travel greased by a diplomatic passport provided when the motorcade had arrived. It had been an uneventful yet stressful journey, this the most difficult part of his plan, it being almost completely out of his control.

  He just hoped bad news wasn’t about to be delivered.

  Pushing himself up on his elbows, he swung his legs out of the bed, the captain waving him off before he could stand. Instead, the man, at least twenty years his senior, plunked himself down in the tiny cabin’s single chair.

  “I’ve got news.”

  Koroma felt his heart hammer out a few extra beats. “What?”

  “Your men are dead. Apparently the Americans and British raided your village and killed them all.”

  “That’s unfortunate. And the hostages?”

  “What hostages?”

  “Never mind.”

  The captain tapped the ashes from his cigar into an ashtray Koroma would never make use of, smoking a nasty habit he had never started—mostly because he had been too poor to. “You seem unaffected by this news of your men dying.”

  “They died for a cause they believed in. A cause I believe in.”

  “And just what is that cause?”

  Koroma wagged a finger at the man, a slight smile creeping across his face. “Remember, no questions asked.”

  The captain shrugged, pushing himself to his feet. “No matter. It’s none of my business as long as it doesn’t affect the operation of my ship. Once I’ve offloaded you in Senegal I’m done with you and we’ll never see each other again.”

  “Of that you can be certain.”

  The captain frowned. “You’re not a terrorist, are you?”

  “Are you asking if I’m a Muslim terrorist?”

  The captain waved his hands back and forth in front of him, turning away and closing his eyes. “No, no, no, I don’t want to know. Your business is your business and none of mine. That was the agreement.” He opened the door then turned back toward Koroma. “Oh, there was one other thing they wanted me to tell you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They’ve arrived.”

  Koroma smiled. “Thank you, Captain.”

  The door was closed and he lay back down in his rack, placing the hat once again over his face, blocking out the light coming through the small porthole window, the thin curtain covering it doing little beyond changing the colors splashed around the room.

  And as the events he knew would take place over the coming hours played out in his mind, his smile turned into a sneer as hatred filled his heart.

  America will pay for what it has done to my country.

  He drew in a deep breath, wondering if Mustapha had executed his final orders. Part of him hoped he hadn’t, the doctors the best hope his daughter had of surviving, then again, if the Americans had arrived in the village, surely they would provide care for the sick which would save her regardless.

  If she can be saved.

  He felt a tightness in his chest as he thought of her all alone. She was so young she’d forget about him quickly, and in time, she’d have no memory of her father or beloved mother, just the legacy of his actions, which he hoped would go down in the history of his people as a heroic action, rather than the demonic actions of a crazed man.

  It would all depend on who she listened to.

  Her people, or the Western press.

  Her grandmother will tell her the truth.

  He was sure of it.

  He thought of the brave doctor and how she had fought him every step of the way. In another time, another place, perhaps they could have been friends.

  But she instead was a pawn, a means to an end, her father signing her death warrant the day he had cast that vote, and today, Vice President Henderson would begin the long, painful journey to his own death. But not before Koroma delivered a dead daughter’s final message while he rotted away from the very disease he and his government had done nothing about until it was too late.

  And that was only the beginning.

  Massachusetts Apartments, Washington, DC

  “A little nicer place than the last one.”

  Red nodded at Spock’s comment, looking up at the apartment building “Uncle” Bai Gondor lived in. A quick records check and they had his address but had been waiting for a warrant to search the premises, a warrant that had just arrived. Special Agent-in-Charge McKinnon was standing beside them as an FBI SWAT team entered the building, Gondor’s unit on the third floor. It didn’t take long before they had the all clear, and word the apartment was empty.

  Spock cursed. “Why am I not surprised? It seems these guys are always one step ahead.”

  Red followed McKinnon into the building, Spock at his side. “In-theatre they had an inside man, here I think it’s just dumb luck. They’re ahead of us in their plan, and we’re still playing catchup.”

  “Assuming this isn’t a dead end.”

  They followed McKinnon onto an elevator, Red’s phone vibrating as his comm activated. “Bravo Zero-Two, Control. We just sent you intel on Gondor. He works for the Sierra Leonean embassy, over.”

  The doors opened as Red repeated what he had just been told, opening the file.

  “Why are you hearing about this first?” asked McKinnon as Red held up a photo of their suspect.

  “Our Kung-Fu is stronger than yours?” suggested Spock with a cocked eyebrow.

  McKinnon wasn’t amused.

  Lighten up buddy, it’s not like you’re under fire.

  “It doesn’t matter,” saved Red as they entered the apartment. “What does matter is this guy has inside connections. We know there was a security breech in Freetown, and this might prove it extends to their government reps here.”

  “Or this guy could just be Uncle Bai.”

  McKinnon looked at Spock and nodded. “Let’s hope not, otherwise our trail goes cold until the next person dies.”

  “Got something!”

  They all turned toward the voice coming from a room down the hall and to the right. One of the FBI agents stepped into sight, holding a bag with a cellphone in it.

  “I assume that’s his?” asked McKinnon.

  “Yup. There’s packaging in here for a burner, so he’s gone off the grid. This one’s been stomped on. Explains why we couldn’t pick it up. SIM card’s gone too.”

  “Shit,” muttered McKinnon, pointing at the phone. “Get our lab guys on that ASAP.”

  “Will do.” The agent stepped past them, hurrying out of the apartment as they stepped into the kitchen.

  Spock whistled. “Either this guy’s planning on running against Vice President Henderson in the next election, or he’s got a man-crush on him.”

  Red pursed his lips as he slowly walked around the kitchen table, surveying the piles of papers, photographs and newspaper clippings. Headlines about Ebola, CDC warnings, lack of funding, the response to cases here at home and in Europe certainly indicated the direction of the man’s obsession.

  But it was the photos of Vice President Henderson, some of which looked like surveillance photos, that had him more worried, especially when they seemed to include Henderson’s top aides and members of his security detail.

  “I think he’s planning a hit,” he finally said.

  McKinnon nodded. “But when?”

  “I don’t know,” said Red, pointing at one of the headlines. “But I think I know why.”

  The room gathered around the large headline across the Washington Post’s front page from months ago.

  VP VOTES AGAINST INCREASED EBOLA FUNDING IN SPLIT SENATE

  “Jesus,” muttered Spock.
“This has been about Henderson the entire time.”

  Red stepped out of the room, activating his comm.

  “Control, I think we found our motive.”

  Samaia, Sierra Leone

  “Hi, honey, it’s mommy, how are you?”

  Tears poured down Sarah’s face as she heard her son’s voice, the poor kid crying uncontrollably. According to her husband they had tried to shield him from the news of what was happening but the cruelty of youth with the anonymity of the Internet had conspired against them and word had reached him.

  They had been forced to tell him the truth.

  Since then he’d been inconsolable.

  “I th-thought you we-were d-dead!”

  “Oh, honey, I’m not dead, I’m perfectly safe, perfectly fine. You know that now, don’t you?”

  “A-are you s-safe?”

  “I’m surrounded by American soldiers. All the bad guys are gone.”

  She looked over at the four Americans standing in front of the community center, one of them taking photos of the bodies, apparently sending them to someone for identification purposes.

  “This one’s Koroma,” said an Asian looking soldier, pointing at one of the bodies.

  Sarah’s eyes narrowed as she turned toward them, trying to listen to what was being said while her son continued to talk, telling her everything that had happened, excitement replacing fear as he finally spoke to his mother after days of torment.

  “Mommy?”

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Are you listening?”

  “Of course I am, honey. Listen, I’m going to have to let you go. Tell your daddy that I will be home soon and I can’t wait to see you both and hug and kiss you until you’re sick of me.”

  “I’ll never be sick of you, mommy.”

  She gasped as she tried to stifle a cry, her heart hurting from the innocence of youth.

  “I love you, honey. Good bye.”

  “Bye, Mommy.”

  She walked over to who she assumed was the head of the American team. He had identified himself as some sort of agent, but she could tell just by the way they carried themselves they were soldiers, and now that she had had time to think about it, their appearance suggested Special Forces.