Viral

by James Lilliefors

  “What happened?”

  “Raided. Yesterday morning.”

  “Why didn’t we hear about it sooner?”

  Okoro didn’t reply. Charlie asked again, his heart pounding.

  “Wasn’t discovered until sometime after the fact.”

  “What happened?”

  “Armed gunmen.”

  “Ben Wilson?”

  “He was killed,” he said in an even voice.

  Mallory winced, feeling overwhelmed. He’d made the worst mistake of his life trusting Franklin. First Paul Bahdru. Now his brother.

  “Hassan.”

  “Apparently.”

  “Damn it!” he said. Then Okoro gave him the rest: The video feed had been knocked out first, so there was nothing recorded for them to see. Somehow, the perpetrators had rushed and killed both sentries, then Ben Wilson in his room. It had happened overnight, before they had made their strikes in Mungaza.

  “And my brother? They got him?”

  “Unaccounted for.”

  “Can we track him?”

  “Theoretically. I’ve not been able to pick up a signal, though.”

  Wilson had injected a bio-chip under the skin of Jon Mallory’s right palm with a syringe, as Charlie had requested. The bio-chip was a GPS device about the size of a grain of rice. Okoro called up a locator map on the monitor, homed in on the map of Switzerland.

  “Nothing,” he said. Charlie looked over his shoulder, his heart racing. “I can try the history trace.”

  “Do it!”

  He clicked several keys, paused, then clicked some more. Charlie saw the map shrink, and broaden, encompassing a larger region—surrounding countries, the Mediterranean, the Alps, all of Europe. Now there was a green trail, indicating satellite tracking, similar to a radar blip. The flashing arrow moved south, from Switzerland through France and Italy, showing date and time for each location.

  “Plane route,” Okoro said. He enlarged the map further as the arrow dipped in a southeasterly direction, over the Mediterranean and then above the African continent. Over the Sudan, a corner of the Congo, Uganda, Tanzania. Stopping in Kenya. And then moving south. To Mancala.

  To Mungaza.

  Then the signal stopped moving. But it continued to blink.

  “That’s it,” Okoro said, after a long time. “End of the road.”

  Charlie looked at his impassive expression, the green light of the computer screen coloring his face, blinking on his lenses. “What? He’s here?”

  “Evidently.”

  But where? And why?

  “Can we pinpoint it?”

  “If it’s still operational. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to. Let me zoom in.” This was technology that Mallory’s company had developed and Okoro had been testing. It wasn’t foolproof yet.

  The fact that his brother was here in Mungaza didn’t make him feel any better. But it didn’t make him feel any worse, either. On the plus side, it meant that he was probably still alive. The negative side he didn’t want to think about. They had moved him closer to Charles Mallory for a reason, as an end-game strategy.

  He knew that, and he could imagine what they had brought him here for. If the Hassan Network was responsible, they were surely planning something terrible. A payback. But he wasn’t going to think about that.

  “Okay. Let me match this,” Okoro said, at last. Charlie watched the monitor, trying to stay patient. “Here we go, then. It’s southwest of Mungaza. Looks like about nine kilometers.”

  “What’s there?”

  He didn’t answer at first. “Let me locate the exact coordinates.” He focused the map more tightly, called up a fix on the screen. Without any inflection in his voice, he said, “It’s the old prison grounds. Mungaza Prison site.”

  The outlaws. What had Jason Wells said? I think it’s connected with the Hassan Network. It had to be. Maybe it was all coming together now. The compartmentalized operations were showing how they were connected, as he knew they eventually would. But it was not a reassuring discovery.

  BY 2:17, OKORO had downloaded the satellite feeds and printed out five sets of aerials. Twenty-one minutes later, the five of them were gathered in a fifth-floor room at the Oasis Hotel, studying them.

  Charlie sat with Wells at a round maple-toned dining table. Nadra Nkosi was on one end of the sleeper sofa, leaning forward, watching them intently. Chaplin was at the other end, Okoro sitting on a tub chair. The room smelled of dirty carpet.

  Chaplin seemed uneasy with the new development. Charlie was feeling that way, too, but for different reasons. Something about the meeting didn’t feel right to him. Didn’t feel right at all.

  “Recommendation,” Jason said. “Four of us in, one out.”

  “I’m in,” Nadra said.

  “No,” Charlie said. He sighed, thinking about what was planned for this evening.

  All four stared at him, waiting.

  “No, why?” Jason Wells said.

  “We can’t risk this. We can’t do it this way.”

  “Why? What do you mean?”

  “We can’t all be involved in this.”

  There was a long silence.

  “We are involved,” Nadra said.

  “No. This is not our mission, it’s not why we’re here. This is where I have to draw a line.” Mallory stood. He imagined for a moment things going very wrong. Worse than they had gone already. They hadn’t come this far to suddenly risk everything. This was his mistake. He would have to deal with it. “I’m going to go in by myself. I screwed up. The rest of you have to stay with the primary mission.”

  Only Okoro seemed neutral about that.

  “I’m with Nadra,” Wells said. “We were supposed to protect your brother. We didn’t. We screwed up.”

  “No.” Mallory closed his eyes for a moment. Focus. Work this out. He heard the ticking of the clock in his head. “No one screwed up. They surprised us. But this is my responsibility. I’m going to go in alone.”

  “What if you’re outvoted?” Nadra said. She was standing now.

  Charlie knew he was in a gray area. Even though he was technically in charge of this group, his policy had always been to run the business like a democracy, and his employees had for the most part held him to that.

  “Look at it another way,” Wells said. “They took out Ben Wilson. One sixth of our team. And two other men. That deserves a response.”

  Nadra nodded. “It is a team. No one goes off alone.”

  “Then we wait until the primary mission is accomplished,” Charlie said.

  “I don’t think we can afford that,” Wells said.

  No. Of course not.

  “It’s all part of the same mission, anyway,” Chaplin said, sighing his assent. “Your brother’s role is to get the story out there, isn’t it? If we don’t do everything we can to save him, we’re jeopardizing the story. Which is at the heart of the operation.”

  Mallory looked at Chidi Okoro, who always agreed with Chaplin. But his expression was blank, his eyes giant behind the glasses. Charlie thought of his father’s eyes, steady, urging him forward.

  Jason Wells said, “Anyway, it’s only three twenty-five. Why does it have to be one or the other? Why can’t we do this and come back and go after Priest?”

  “That’s assuming a lot, isn’t it?” Mallory said.

  “No. All it’s assuming is that we can do this,” Nadra said. “Which we can.”

  Mallory exchanged a look with Jason. It’s assuming my brother’s still alive, too, he thought, but didn’t say.

  “Okay. We’re a team, but I’m still the one going in. You can be back-up.”

  BY 3:46, JASON Wells had established tactics. It would, again, be a three-person operation, with Chaplin and Okoro staying behind. The prison compound was about twenty acres in total, Wells figured, and roughly rectangular-shaped, surrounded on all sides by a ten-foot mud-brick wall topped with concertina wire. The old stone prison building itself took up about four acres of t
hat, a rectangle within the larger rectangle, with a courtyard at its center. Also on site was a stone chaplain’s house and a recently built row of barracks with maybe two dozen rooms.

  “I don’t see any towers. Security cameras,” Nadra said.

  “No. I don’t think there are any,” Jason said.

  That was odd—completely different from Priest’s set-ups, as if the two were unrelated. Charlie studied the aerials some more. There were two entrances to the compound: the front gate and a side delivery entrance, where trucks went in after dark with people kidnapped from the streets.

  It had been Nadra’s suggestion to try going in on a truck. But Wells thought it was too dangerous. “None of the people who go in on those trucks come back out. Who knows what happens in there? I think we should take advantage of the lack of sophisticated security. Because there aren’t any cameras, we could probably climb over the wall.”

  “What about the razor?” Charlie said.

  “That’s a problem. Make it Plan C. Plan B would be blowing a hole in the wall. It’s mud brick; we could easily blast a hole in it with one of the remaining explosives.”

  “But we’d be announcing our arrival,” Nadra said.

  “Yes. That’s why it’s Plan B.”

  “What’s Plan A?” Charlie asked.

  “Going in through the storm drainage pipe.”

  He pointed to the aerial, to the corner where the pipe protruded from the outer wall. “It appears to be about three and a half feet in diameter. Wide enough to crawl through. Drains storm-water out into the river. There’s probably a grate inside. Whether it’s secured or not, we don’t know. It’s not a sure thing by any measure. But it would be the least obvious.”

  Mallory nodded. “Why is it a three-man operation?” he asked.

  “Nadra and I will create the diversion once you get in.”

  “How?”

  “Explosives at the front. Plan B.”

  AT 4:39, CHARLES Mallory came out of the woods and walked across the shallow river through the speckles of afternoon sunlight. He moved in a crouch along the opposite bank, looking for sensors or cameras, anything they might have missed from the aerials. But he saw nothing.

  He was dressed in jeans and a dark sweatshirt, wearing cotton gloves, carrying a flashlight in his right hand and the 9mm handgun in the right pocket of his sweatshirt. The first problem he had noticed from across the river: The pipe did not end at river level as it seemed to in aerials. The opposite bank had eroded, and the pipe was a good five feet above the ground, maybe more. He wouldn’t just be able to crawl into it.

  Charlie came to a spot directly below the opening of the drain pipe and looked both ways along the rust-colored mud-brick wall. Nothing. He stood and reached, closing his fingers on the bottom of the pipe entrance, the flashlight still in his right hand. Felt the gritty, rusted iron. He lifted himself up like he was doing a pull-up, raising his head above the bottom lip of the pipe: pure darkness, no light at the other end. He tossed in the flashlight, then pulled himself as high as he could and jammed his right elbow up into the pipe. Held on, used it as a lever to yank his left elbow in. Tried to move from side to side, pulling himself up and in. It almost worked.

  Then his right elbow lost traction and he fell back, felt his left forearm scrape across the rusted edge of the pipe opening, and he was out, the metal tearing a cut through the sleeve of the sweatshirt.

  He tried again, pulling himself up. Planting his right elbow and pivoting his left arm into the pipe. Using his elbows to lift himself in. Moving in tiny increments this time, until his center of gravity was up inside the pipe. He lay still for a moment, breathing deeply. The pipe was three and a half feet in diameter, as Jason had said. It smelled damp, an old and slightly unpleasant odor. Charlie began to crawl forward into the darkness, rocking from side to side, advancing his elbows several inches at a time. Within three or four minutes, he was engulfed in darkness. There was no light behind him anymore, none in front. He lay for a moment on his belly and listened. The sounds were faint and distant: what seemed to be a periodic scratching sound that might have been the footsteps of animals, or something catching in a breeze, and a persistent low buzzing that he couldn’t identify. He began to crawl again. Ten yards. Fifteen yards. Twenty yards. He stopped to rest. Started again. Estimating how far he had gone, picturing where the pipe would come out inside the prison building. Moving side to side, inches at a time.

  Then his elbows came into something softer. Some kind of sludge covered the bottom of the pipe. He crawled through it, using his elbows to pivot himself forward, but he was getting less traction now. The pipe tilted slightly upward, making the crawl more difficult. His elbows slipped. He stopped. Tried again. Couldn’t move. He had come to an impasse. Couldn’t go forward any more. He was going to have to quit.

  Charles Mallory closed his eyes. He breathed the damp, foul-smelling air, his thoughts shuffling—Franklin’s deception, his brother’s trust, the millions of people who might die tonight.

  Improvise. He gathered his strength and tried something different, jamming his hands against the sides of the pipe and using them to thrust his body forward. It got him another several inches. Again: the sides of the pipe were less slippery than the bottom. He went a third time, using his hands and legs to lever his body forward. Two inches, four inches. He kept it going for several minutes. Then his arms began to tire, and he collapsed, realizing he wasn’t going to make it much farther. He lay belly down in the sludge for a moment, breathing in and out heavily. Sweating in the dampness. He felt the pipe again through the sludge and tried to crawl. Jerked his elbows forward. One, and the other, his feet pushing off the sides of the pipe, his body advancing in tiny increments again, two or three inches each time. Resting, moving forward, resting. And then suddenly he felt air against his face and stopped. There was no more tunnel. His hands felt a wall. He took a deep breath and looked up. Saw dim, abstract shapes above him. Something distinct from the darkness. A grate.

  JON MALLORY HEARD the footsteps again. Deliberate, dull. Shoe soles on stone. And a rumbling distant sound of an engine. He was less groggy now but could summon no clear recollection of what had happened, just confused images. Explosions. Men rushing in. A bright light. Someone pushing him to the floor.

  Help!

  He tried to scream the word again. But he couldn’t. He tried to speak, to just say the word. And then to say his name. But he couldn’t do that, either. His brain still wasn’t working right. He was unable to say anything. Unable to make a sound.

  THE GRATE WAS iron, circular, with a series of narrow slats where the water drained. Charles Mallory saw the dim outlines of other pipes above it, which fed water from the roof to the drain. He pushed his fingers up into the grate, felt it give, and let go. That was good. But he couldn’t get enough traction with his feet in the pipe to push it up and climb to the surface. He took a deep breath. Imagined going all the way back through the pipe, crawling a hundred and fifty feet backwards down to the entrance. Decided he didn’t like that option.

  He lay in the pipe, gathering strength, listening. Thinking about Hassan. What they had done to Paul. Heard a distant rustling again, the feet of small animals on stone. Then nothing. But there were human smells here. He reached up and pushed again, felt the grate give. Then he jammed his fingers onto the edge of the opening and breathed in and out several times. Summoned all of his strength to pull himself up again. He slammed his elbow and shoulder into the grate so that it spun up from the casement, clattering onto the stone, the sound echoing for several seconds. He used both hands, then, to pull himself through, planting an elbow and lifting himself the rest of the way in. Tossing the flashlight ahead of him with his right hand.

  He was in a narrow corridor, maybe three times the width of the pipe. It was dark, and he breathed the rank smell of standing water and urine, and something worse. He felt along the cold wall and came into a larger corridor. Pitch dark. He flicked on the flashlight and moved it l
eft and right, his eyes smarting from the sudden brightness. He was in a corridor that separated a procession of prison cells. Two levels, forty-five-square-foot cells, he guessed. Rusted iron bars, most of the doors ajar. The corridor continued in front of him for about sixty yards.

  He heard human sounds, then, and froze. What seemed to be breathing. And moaning. From several sources, it seemed. More remotely: footsteps. Then the sounds stopped and he wondered if he had really heard anything.

  FORTY-NINE

  CHARLES MALLORY WALKED SLOWLY to the end of the corridor, shining his light into the cells on either side as he went. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Nearly identical cells, all of them empty. Based on the shape of the complex, he figured that there were two main corridors, linked by rung passages on each end, one to the east, the other to the west. He was in one of the main corridors, walking south toward the rear of the prison, he guessed.

  He heard a sharp sound. Stopped. Breathed a sweet, sickly odor. A faint but steady hissing became louder as he stepped forward. Charlie felt a cobweb on his face, broke it with his left forearm. He clicked the light on. Pointed it into the cell he was standing in front of, to his left, and saw a giant cluster of flies. He let the light go off and then pressed it on again. The flies were crawling over a decomposing human shape in a corner. He searched the rest of the cell and saw two others, both covered with flies. He pulled against the bars of the door. Locked.

  He moved on, examined the next cell, and the next. Both empty. Kept walking. He heard it again. The buzzing of flies. He trained the light into the cell on his right. A pile of naked bodies, six or seven of them, some dead for days, others longer. He saw the patches of black discoloration on the limbs, the missing flesh on the faces, and wondered for a moment if one of them could be his brother. No. Charlie turned away and walked on. At the end of the corridor he heard a faint, intermittent scratching sound, like tiny footsteps on stone. He swung his light on the cell doors, stopping at the only one that was closed. Inside, shapes scurried over the floor, casting long shadows across the walls. Rats. In the center of the cell lay the remains of a boy, maybe six or seven, his arms, face, and genitals partly eaten away. Mallory angled the flashlight beam lower, saw that something seemed to be moving inside the boy—his belly appeared to contract and then rise as if he were still breathing. Charlie turned the light off and blinked at the darkness, knowing what it was: one of the rats had gotten inside the boy and was gnawing its way out. He walked deeper into the darkness, his footsteps softly crunching on the stone. The air turned cooler and he heard a new sort of scuffling. Mallory stopped, listening. He touched the rough stone wall, turned left, into a cooler darkness: the rung passageway linking the main corridors. He was in the rear of the prison now, he sensed.