by Mark Donovan
“I think she is being held by two male captors,” said Dave. “I am sure I heard a second man’s voice whisper to Dana before she spoke to me. The voice had a slightly familiar sound to it, but I could not place it. Also, the second voice did not have the same Persian sounding accent.”
“There are a number of different sounding Persian accents,” commented Bates.
“Based on my limited linguistic knowledge of the Middle Eastern area, I could have sworn the man who did almost all of the talking had a Farsi ring to it.”
“Farsi! Then possibly he is of Iranian decent,” interjected Bates.
“In light of the fact that Iran is a petri dish for growing fanatical Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups, you are probably accurate with your assessment.”
The two men paused for a minute. Dave saw the secret U.S. military base in the distance, while Bates was contemplating a plan of action on finding Dana.
“There is another facet to Dana’s kidnapping,” said Dave into the phone. “It appears this terrorist group is working to a timetable. The man said he would free her in two weeks if I followed their directive.”
“Do you believe they will release her in two weeks?” asked Bates.
“I’m no fool,” replied Dave icily. “They will kill her, but not until they accomplish their mission.”
“Which is apparently soon,” finished Bates.
“So we don’t have a lot of time John. I need to find Dana, and I’m hoping her trail will lead to whoever is behind this bioterrorism plot.”
“Agreed, we need to move fast. I’ll start by having the CIA Communication Division recover your recorded phone conversations. I’ll also have them check Dana’s as well.”
“I already have Ron Blackwell doing that,” responded Dave, “but a second set of ears won’t hurt.”
“We may also be able to use our voice-print database to identify her captors, or at least the main guy you spoke to. If he has been working as a terrorist for a while, then chances are we have his voice previously recorded with a name and picture of his face beside it. At least that would give us a start on where to look for Dana.”
“Sounds like a plan, however, I’d like to go to Eberswalde, Germany since that is where she was probably abducted. Maybe someone saw or heard something. I will also test the town’s public water supply while I am there.”
“I will have the pilots contacted who are flying you out of Yemen to take you directly to Germany,” responded Bates.
“Also John, I wanted to let you know that we did run two water tests on the community well in the small Yemenis village. Both tests came back positive for trace amounts of a modified strain of cholera bacteria. I suspect we will find the same cholera bacteria strain in Eberswalde.”
“After departing Yemen, send me a detailed report on the water test results,” responded Bates. “Also, leave the water samples on the aircraft when you get to Germany. The aircraft will continue on to Washington after dropping you off. Once we get the samples back here, I will have them sent over to USAMRIID for further analysis and to be compared with what they find in the metal canister that you and Ron recovered in Alaska.”
“Will do,” said Dave. “I will also need some special items sent to me when I stop in Germany. From there, I plan to work independently on finding Dana and her captors.”
“Whatever you need Dave. Just email me a list of what you require when you’re in flight, and I will make sure it gets to Germany by the time you arrive there. However, are you sure you want to go after Dana alone? I could have a small team flown in to help rescue her.”
“Thanks John, but I have to do this alone. I suspect the CIA or your organization has a leak in it and if her captors find out about a CIA team coming in after them, then Dana is as good as dead.”
Dave saw that they were coming up to the first of three base check points. “I need to let you go John. We are entering the base now.”
“Okay, I understand your concern and will let you go. Thank Harper for me, and I will make sure the pilots flying your bird out of there are immediately apprised of your flight plan changes.”
Dave clicked off the SAT phone and looked at the approaching base. It was in the middle of nowhere in the armpit of the world. Void of nearly any vegetation, it was as if he was looking at a picture from Mars. No wonder this region of the world grew so many disenchanted fanatics he thought to himself.
Chapter 21 (April 16, Saturday 7:00pm, Southeastern Europe)
Dana woke up from the dazed sleep she had been in for the past thirty minutes. She was lying face down in the back seat of the Mercedes with a blanket placed over her. The lower half of her legs were bent at the knees and her feet were facing upwards due to the narrowness of the vehicle. Her hands were still tied behind her back and her shoulders ached from it. But her shoulders did not hurt nearly as bad as her bound hands and wrists. She could feel sticky wet blood on her wrists from where the tie wraps had cut into them.
Dana could tell from the road noise and the slight swaying of the vehicle that they were still moving at a fast rate. Though she could not see her watch, she knew they had been driving for nearly twenty-four hours. As she turned her head slightly she could see that the sunlight was beginning to fade. They had crossed a few borders already. Just prior to each crossing the man named Abdul covered her entire body and face with the blanket and had thrown the two knapsacks they had been carrying on top of her. From what little she had been able to understand from her two captors’ conversation, since they were not speaking in English, she guessed they were in Austria.
Dana’s eyes drifted back down to the floor of the vehicle. She noticed the handle of what looked to be an ice scraper sticking out from underneath the front passenger’s seat. The handle was only a foot or so away from her head. She leaned her head down and forward a bit more to get a better look, being careful not to attract the attention of Abdul who she knew periodically looked back at her while Spencer drove.
Though the sunlight was fading, she could see when she bent her head down towards the back of the passenger front seat that indeed the handle was part of an ice scraper. In fact, it was one of those short acrylic clear ice scrapers, where the scraper and handle were one solid piece, maybe six inches total in length. Dana immediately saw it as a potential weapon and began to formulate a plan on how to get ahold of it and make an escape using it.
Regardless of what Spencer had said to her, she had already come to the conclusion that her captors would never let her go, at least not alive. And though she knew Dave would make every effort to find her, she also understood that he would have nearly an impossible task of doing so. He would probably guess roughly where she was captured, and from their conversation earlier on her smartphone he would know where they called from. But, he would have no idea where they were headed or be able to track her. She had watched Abdul power down her phone after he had hung up on Dave. Without the phone powered on, the phone’s GPS system was inoperable. So she would continue to hope for the best that Dave would rescue her, but she would also have to plan for the worst and figure a way to escape on her own. The ice scraper was becoming an integral part of the plan she was formulating in her head.
First, she needed to convince her captors to switch her tied hands to the front of her body. If she could convince them to do that, she could then eventually reach down for the ice scraper and stow it on her person, possibly under her pant leg and sock. They would have to stop the Mercedes to re-tie her hands. They had let her out of the vehicle once already to relieve herself. She was sure she could convince them again to stop for her. They had stopped the car on a section of road that had thick woods bordering it. Abdul had walked her out into the adjacent woods and waited near her while she squatted. She would have to appeal to Spencer’s slight weakness towards her to convince him to have Abdul switch the position of her tied hands. She felt confident that she would be able to do so, once he saw her bloody wrists. Spencer’s mind was corrupted, but she
could tell he still exhibited some normal humanitarian tendencies.
With her hands tied in front of her, she would hide away the ice scrapper and wait several hours, or for the next opportunity that presented itself, to request another restroom break. It would be on this second break that she would attempt to make her escape.
The car jolted abruptly as it rolled over a section of uneven pavement. When it did so, it tossed Dana around in the backseat forcing her hands and wrists to slam up against the back seat and causing a jolt of pain to race to her brain. She took advantage of the moment to scream out in pain.
“Spencer, my wrists and hands are killing me,” she cried out loudly from the backseat. “Please, please tie them in front of me.”
Abdul turned his head around to face her and told her to shut up with a menacing glare. Spencer said nothing.
Giving him a defiant look she ignored Abdul and begged again to have her hands repositioned in front of her. “Spencer, my wrists are a bloody mess and I am losing feeling in my fingers.”
Abdul raised his right fist to punch her in the face. As she cringed to avoid getting hit Ahmad spoke. “Don’t touch her Abdul. We will pull over and you will re-tie her wrists in front of her. Aref will not be pleased if we bring her to him injured.”
Abdul slowly put down his fist, but continued to scowl at her. “As you wish,” he said to Ahmad.
Ten minutes later Dana was lying on her side in the back seat of the car with her hands tied in front of her. She had also gotten the chance to relieve herself which enabled her to think more clearly. It was not until an hour later, after she had fully formulated her escape plan, that she shifted her knees up to her chest and then slowly moved her hands down and forward in the direction of the ice scrapper. She then waited until Abdul swiveled his head around briefly to see if she was still there.
Once he had rotated his head back to the front of the car, Dana made her move. Though it was dark in the vehicle she reached out with her bounded hands and found the handle of the ice scrapper. After grabbing onto the ice scrapper, she immediately slid her hands underneath the blanket that had been placed again on top of her, and slipped her hands down to her ankles. Slowly and silently she slid her right pant leg up and slipped the ice scrapper into her sock. The scraper had initially snagged on her sock, but a second attempt had been successful. As she pulled her pant leg back down over the ice scrapper and sock she smiled briefly to herself and thought, now it’s time to get a little rest. She closed her eyes for what she thought would be a couple of hours of much needed sleep. She was wrong.
Chapter 22 (April 16, Saturday 7:30am, Germany)
Dave drove into Eberswalde, Germany just as the sun was rising over the town. He was driving an Audi S4 sedan that had been waiting for him when he landed at the Dresden, Germany airport. Normally it would have been a two and a half hour drive, but he had done it in less than two hours. Partially because of how fast he drove, but also due to the fact that the roads had been empty. Besides the car, he had also picked up a knapsack and a rigid shipping container the size of a small suitcase that Ron had shipped to him from Idaho. Suffice it to say, he was loaded for bear. Both for tracking and for bringing one down.
It was obvious as Dave drove slowly through the town that Eberswalde was still in a state of epidemic and disaster. The German military was in strong presence, as well as a number of government agencies. There was a large circus size tent in the garden park area just across the street from what looked to be the town’s government offices. Numerous smaller tents sat clustered around the large one. Even at this early hour there were many people, mostly military or government agency personnel, milling around the tents. More disturbing to him, however, was the site of soldiers in full hazmat gear carrying body bags into the large tent. Body bags that were filled with corpses. The circus size tent was a makeshift morgue Dave realized.
He turned down a side street away from the apocalyptic scene, toward the town’s water treatment facility. He had received a full briefing from the CIA while in flight from Yemen to Germany on the situation in Eberswalde. Like the community well in Yemen, the water treatment center was most likely the source of the epidemic in Eberswalde. Besides confirming that it was ground-zero for the Eberswalde epidemic, he also figured it was the best place to start tracking down Dana and her captors.
He pulled into the parking lot next to the water treatment plant, turned off the ignition and stepped out of the car. As he took a minute to stretch his legs he did a three hundred and sixty degree scan of the surrounding area. It was a bucolic fresh spring morning. He could hear birds chirping, and could see the trees that hugged the river bank were in the early stages of sprouting new leaves. He thought to himself how the scene and sounds looked so ironically peaceful and enchanting, compared to what he had just observed up in the center of the village.
Dave opened up the car’s trunk and pulled out the knapsack that contained a couple of the specialized NSurv water test kits. Just as he did, a German non-descript government sedan pulled up beside him and two German officers stepped out of the car.
“Hello. Are you Doctor Henson?” asked the driver in English with a heavy German accent.
“Yes I am.” Dave extended his right hand to shake the man’s hand.
The man looked at him hesitantly, as if he was sizing him up, and then introduced himself as Major Adler. He made no effort to reciprocate extending his hand. Dave instantly realized that the officer must have been concerned about catching the illness that was running rampant through the town.
“And this is Lieutenant Becke,” said the Major as he glanced over in the direction of the other man. “We were asked by our commander to escort you into the water treatment facility. I am sorry we are a few minutes late.”
“Not a problem, I just arrived as well.”
“Why don’t we head right on in and let you conduct your testing,” suggested the Major in typical German efficiency.
“By all means,” replied Dave as he closed the car trunk and hit the lock button on the FOB he was holding.
The three men began walking in the direction of the water treatment facility. As they approached the back entrance Dave could not help but notice how isolated the entrance was. He also did not see any type of surveillance camera or motion sensors around or near the entrance. A child could have sneaked into this facility thought Dave to himself.
He approached the steel door and knocked on it while the two German officers followed up behind him. The upper half of the door was glass with hexagon wire mesh embedded in it. Well at least they had a modicum of security sense he thought to himself, as he looked in through the glass.
No one came to the door so he tried the handle. “Unlocked,” he said to the officers. Dave didn’t hesitate. He opened the door fully and stepped inside the building, the officers trailing him. “Hello, is there anyone in here?” he yelled over the din of the running water treatment equipment. A few seconds later a man who looked like he must have been in his mid-fifties came shuffling out of a side room to greet them. The man was mostly bald and had a large belly that hung out over his belt. He was wearing a tee-shirt and a pair of worker overalls.
“Hello, do you speak English?” Dave yelled to the man.
“Yes, yes, what can I do for you gentlemen?” asked the man with a wary look at Dave and the two German officers behind him. “I am with the United States government and was asked to assist your government in testing your facility’s treated water.”
Major Alder spoke rapidly in German to the old man to confirm Dave’s statement.
The man immediately responded, “Please follow me and I will take you to the outflow portion of the facility. This is where the water is pumped into the town’s plumbing system.” He started walking hurriedly down the center hallway in front of them.
Dave and the officers followed the man down the long poorly lit hallway. About halfway down the hall the man stopped and opened up another steel door. Again, the upper h
alf of the door was glass with hexagon mesh wire embedded in it. As they walked through the doorway Dave noticed that there was no lock on the door. Virtually anyone could have walked into the water treatment facility unseen and unimpeded. How many other municipalities around the world had water treatment facilities as unprotected as this he thought to himself. Probably a lot he surmised.
The room was extremely noisy. He could see a large swath of water flowing into a large cistern, and in the cistern was a couple of massive machines. He guessed they were water pumps.
“The water flowing into this large cement tank is treated and tested water,” yelled the old man over the roar of the pumps and flow of water. “The water is pumped from here into the town’s water plumbing system.”
“When was the last time you tested the water?” asked the Major.
“We test it once every day at eleven o’clock in the morning.”
“So you tested it yesterday and you did not see anything abnormal with the water at that time?” asked Dave.
“Yes, we did test the water yesterday, and it was negative for coliform bacteria, and within the safe levels for nitrates and about a dozen other contaminants that we check for,” responded the man.
“And have you tested it since the outbreak of cholera symptoms in the community?”
“No we have not. People only began to get sick about fourteen hours ago. Also, the other staff that normally work here did not show up today. I have been a one man show.”
“Understandable,” said Dave as he placed his knapsack on the concrete floor and knelt down to open it up. “I will conduct a couple of tests now on the water.”
The three men watched Dave quietly as he pulled out of his knapsack two of the same type of kits he used in Yemen. After putting on goggles and a pair of surgical gloves he reached down into the cement cistern area and filled the two sample containers with water. He then poured the vials of dextran coated iron-oxide nanoparticles into the water sample containers and closed their lids. After shaking both containers for a few seconds he set them aside for a couple of minutes. He then opened the first container, dipped the glass tube end of an eye dropper into it and squeezed the vacuum ball to draw a small sample of the mixture up into the tube. He squeezed a couple of drops of the water sample mixture into an opening in the detection instrument, pushed a couple of buttons on the instrument and read out the results on the display. They were identical to what he saw in Yemen. He checked the second container and found another perfect match.
