A gray man stepped forward. There was no set look to a CIA officer. They came in all different shapes and sizes. He supposed that, like in his covert line of work, blending in was paramount to success. The taller of the two spooks addressed the team. He had an average build and appeared to be in his early fifties. To Steele, he resembled somebody’s slightly awkward uncle; the kind who would drink a few too many beers at Thanksgiving and then tell dirty jokes. He clasped his hands in front of him as he spoke.
“Let me introduce myself. My name’s Bill, and this is my colleague Bob. We’re going to Kinshasa with you gentlemen and lady. I hope you don’t mind us tagging along,” he said with a smile.
“This will prove to be an interesting trip. The DRC really is a beautiful country, especially this time of year; plenty of areas to hike and places to eat in the North End.”
His gaze at the end showed that he didn’t believe the words he spoke. A cold, calculating mind lurked beneath his friendly exterior. “My friend Bob here is going to give you a short briefing on what’s happening on the ground in the DRC.”
Bob, a shorter version of Bill, made his way to the front of the room. He spoke with a Texan accent: “Hi y’all. Thanks for having us. We’re going into a very dangerous region. We have intelligence from the ground that the country is suffering from multiple rebel insurgencies. A bit of a hotspot, but not unsurprising, considering the weakness of their democratic institutions. However, it is concerning to us that all of these factions are active at once. The government is on the verge of collapse. When we land, we’ll disembark from the plane and meet with some of our local contacts and try to figure out what is really going on. The embassy is evacuating and should meet ya’ll at the airport. They’ll be scared, but happy to see you guys. Thank you for your service. If there is anything we can do to help, please let us know.” He said this with a small smile.
Steele gave Mauser a quick glance. Mauser gave him an indifferent shoulder, with his best ‘whatever they say’ face. The counterterrorism agents didn’t pose any questions. They had been conditioned over time not to ask them. They were ready for anything and everything. They would treat any threat with extreme prejudice. As long as the staffers were at the airport, they didn’t need much more information than that. Wheeler took his turn at the front.
“Hey boss, nice skinny jeans,” Andrea said with a shy smile. Wheeler had everyone’s respect, but the agents still liked to joke around with one another. It helped to relieve the tension of the job they were about to do.
Wheeler looked down at his pants. “Why thank you, Andrea,” he said.
“Are they bedazzled, sir?” Mauser chimed in.
Wheeler broke into a smile. “As a matter of fact, I think they are. I grabbed them from your top drawer on the way out,” he said. Everybody burst out laughing.
Steele chuckled. A regular person would have turned red, but Mauser just beamed.
Wheeler continued: “Unsurprisingly, we have no new intelligence from our side of the aisle.”
The agents shook their heads in scorn. It wasn’t uncommon for them to go on missions where the premise was to be alert, but they received nothing in terms of intelligence. It was like searching for a needle in a haystack, except that at any time the needle could come up behind you and put a bullet in the back of your head.
Wheeler continued his short brief: “This is what I do know. Our mission is to do a special protective detail for some embassy staffers. The embassy is being evacuated due to a probable terror threat in the region. That means nothing happens to these people on the way home. Nothing.”
He looked from one to the other, staring each of them in the eyes. “Everything else is secondary. We will not disembark the aircraft. The staffers should be awaiting our arrival. Our Agency friends will be on business, so to speak, so don’t blow their cover. We’re in it for the long haul. So get some rest on the way over because I need everyone on top of their game for the way back. Jarl and I will be in first; Andrea, you’re our sleeper in business class; and Mauser and Steele you’re in ‘steerage’ with the rest of the peasants.”
Mauser leaned over to whisper to Steele, “I guess we get to slum it in the back.”
Steele nodded. No hot towels or classy nuts for them, but they needed to provide coverage over all the staffers.
Wheeler ignored Mauser and continued: “I’ll meet you all at gate D15. No later than 1945, Steele is my secondary on this one.” Steele nodded.
“Does anyone have any questions?” He paused. “Good, our end time will be 1830 tomorrow, so tell your significant others not to wait up.”
A short time later, Mauser and Steele cruised down VA Route 29 in Mauser’s lifted Chevy Silverado. They passed a plethora of reflective glassed buildings belonging to defense contractors, aerospace, IT companies and government agencies. The whole region was filled with them. It was as if they were replicated on a nightly basis. Four squad cars zipped past heading south, as they approached Washington-McCone International Airport.
“Dude, what’s that about?” Mauser asked, raising his thick framed Oakley shades and checking his rear-view mirror.
“I don’t know. Do you think the donut shop is getting robbed?”
“That’s a safe bet. I can’t imagine any other reason why those guys would be getting so bent out of shape.”
Steele shook his head. He understood the convenience of fast food and food on the go, but food fueled the body. The better quality the fuel, the better the body would run. That’s why he didn’t understand why people, especially police officers — people who depended on their bodies to run at a high level because their lives depended on it — would decide to run them on garbage.
He scrolled through his contact list until he came across Chip’s contact information and hit the call button. “Turn that down,” Steele told Mauser. Mauser frowned. “Come on, man, you know ‘Die Zombie Die’ is one of my favorite jams,” he said, begrudgingly complying with Steele’s request.
The phone rang and rang, but Chip didn’t pick up.
“That redneck can’t possibly be sleeping. He knows he’s missing out on seeing the motherland, right?” Steele said.
“Well, he’s probably out spending time with his family, enjoying his ‘sick’ leave,” Mauser said, messing with the radio.
Thirty minutes later, the pair made their way through the airport on the look out for suspicious activity. If they could handle an incident before they were in the air that would be ideal. Duking it out at thirty thousand feet was a much riskier endeavor.
They walked to the gate in a leisurely fashion. Roller boards squeaked behind them, just like any other day. Travel was work for the men. A family hustled on by, racing to reach their flight on time.
It seemed pretty light for a Friday. The blue shirted security stood around waiting for patrons to pass through their checkpoints. Every day people commute through airports, and those who travel enough begin to notice trends. As a frequent traveler, Steele noticed that something about today was off. Friday was a busy day: a day when people traveled home from business trips. If it was a holiday, add in families with children and college students. Today just didn’t feel right. To Steele, it felt as though some people were just gone.
He confirmed his hunch when they approached gate D15, and only a dozen or so people sat around the lobby. “Did we get a gate change or something?” Steele said aloud.
“I’ll check it out,” Mauser said, walking over to the gate agent. “This is the right spot,” he said when he returned.
“Either people are much smarter than we are, or they must have watched the news,” Steele said.
“Does that make them smarter? Or does that make them plain crazy?” Mauser asked.
“I’d have to bet on crazy,” Steele said.
“Well what about these poor saps sitting here with us? What does that make them?”
Steele people watched in a relaxed fashion. A couple of men in tan tactical pants with matching tan pac
ks sat conversing with their backs to the wall. They were former military, most likely defense contractors for the government. They could be potential allies if things went bad, or the worst of enemies if they went bad.
On the other side of them, sat a group of young men and women in a semi-circle lounging like they were on a school field trip. They were dressed like backpackers, but were clearly going on some sort of humanitarian mission. A shorthaired woman with a bandana around her neck gave Steele a dismissive look. Apparently, he didn’t fit her criteria of acceptability. She would sing a different tune if a bad guy pointed a gun at her head and the only thing between her life and death was Steele not missing. He ignored her. He didn’t get to pick who he protected, but he would protect her regardless of her color or creed. He wondered if she would do the same for him, or if he was just too different for saving.
He leaned back in his seat and relaxed, but never fully. He was ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.
“I’d have to bet on stupidity,” Steele said, after sizing up the other passengers.
“Why’s that?” Mauser questioned.
“For two reasons. One, you’ve got to be kind of dumb if you’re going to go over there to risk your neck. Two, you’ve got to be dumb if you’re going over there to risk your neck without a gun,” Steele surmised.
“So what’s that make us?” Mauser asked.
“That makes us slightly above average,” Steele said.
Mauser laughed, shouldering his bag. It was time to go.
Without observing anything noteworthy, the agents boarded the plane. They were taking a Boeing 777 over to Kinshasa. The dual-aisle plane could seat around three hundred people in its current configuration. A few individual pods for passengers decorated the first class cabin, the business class area held individual pods placed closer together, an economy plus segment with extra legroom and economy regular, ‘sardine-crammed’ seating. Naturally, most seats were the kind where passengers had to practically sit on top of their fellow travelers. Steele often had a hard time staying within the confines of his own seat; just one of the problems resulting from spending a few too many hours eating steak and lifting weights.
The rest of the team had already boarded, congregating in the first-class cabin.
Wheeler called out his orders from just beyond the partition. “I want this plane licked clean of any suspicious items. If it isn’t supposed to be here, I want to know about it. That includes Jarl’s sister.”
Steele laughed. “God, I hope we don’t find Jarl’s sister on here. Where would she hide?”
“Well, if we haven’t found her already, then we are doing a really shitty job searching the plane,” Wheeler laughed.
“She can hide in the seat next to me. Just like our Christmas party last year,” Mauser said.
Jarl’s broad face popped out from behind a lavatory. “I can hear you, shitheads. Mauser you never touched her. None of you will ever touch her,” he said, raising a meaty fist at them. “She’s an angel,” he muttered to himself.
“All right, you two. Finish your checks. Then we can get the chatterboxes on board,” Wheeler yelled at them. Steele turned away, shining his tactical light into the corner of the cabin.
They deemed the aircraft safe after a thorough search. They gave the flight crew the go-ahead to enter the plane and begin their preparatory actions for a flight. A host of flight attendants in their blue uniforms, along with a pilot and two copilots entered the aircraft. They talked together loudly as they came aboard.
“You would not believe what Caitlyn did to Gina. Seriously, she is such a bitch,” a dark-haired flight attendant said, flinging her hair back.
“Doesn’t surprise me. That woman’s totally out of control,” an older blonde said to her colleague.
They breezed past Steele and Mauser, not giving them a second glance. The flight attendants were part of an interesting community, to say the least. Everything was pure drama with them. Steele tried to steer his nose clear of that mess.
As the flight attendants made their safety checks, Wheeler waved Steele over to the cockpit. Hundreds of tiny lights flickered on the control panels. Steele always wondered how the pilots kept all the controls straight. The captain ducked under the doorframe of the cockpit. Wearing a finely pressed white shirt with four gold bars on his shoulder, the distinguished man nodded his graying head to Steele as he approached. “Captain Richards, I’d like you to meet our ATL, Agent Mark Steele. He’s my protégé of sorts,” Wheeler said.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mark,” he said with a firm handshake. “Hopefully you haven’t taken too much advice from this man here. He was quite the lady’s man back in his day.”
Steele was confused. He gave Wheeler a questioning eyebrow.
“This old man here?” Steele said, gesturing toward Wheeler.
“Captain Richards used to fly aircraft for the Navy. We’re old war buddies.”
“Oh, I see. Well then I will have to say he’s taught me everything he knows.”
Captain Richards laughed. “God help us. If shit hits the fan, just don’t miss. Got it?”
“Got it,” echoed Steele. If shit hits the fan, just don’t crash the plane.
“Let’s see here,” Captain Richards said as he scanned his flight log paperwork. “Looks like, it’ll be about ten hours over to Kinshasa. We’ve got a good tailwind today.” This meant it would be an even longer haul on the way back. Everything was a give and take.
Steele’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He nodded and politely left the two old friends taking an empty seat.
“Hey babe,” he said, smiling.
“Come back,” Gwen cooed on the line.
Steele always felt comforted that she wanted him to come home. It was nice to be missed.
“You know that I have to do this. I’ll be back in a few days and then we can enjoy the weekend.”
He usually had a long weekend after an extended tour of duty to recover from the intense tempo of operations.
“I know, I know. I just have a bad feeling about this trip. Things are bad out there. The news is saying our embassy is under attack.”
This concerned Steele, but it wasn’t the first time something like this was happening, nor would it be the last.
“Really? That is bad.”
“Yeah rioting in the streets. It looks dangerous.”
“We’ll just have to roll with the punches.”
They sat in silence for a moment, both of their minds racing over the dire circumstances presented to them. He broke the silence with a faint whisper: “I love you. I’ll do anything to get back to you.”
“I love you too,” she said with a slight quiver in her voice.
“I’ll call you on our layover,” Steele said. “Bye love.” He punched End Call on his cell. Saying goodbye was always the hardest part.
JOSEPH
US Embassy Kinshasa, DRC
Joseph dug through his office. A small, simple room contained only a desk and chair, along with a computer and a filing cabinet. A small window overlooked a storage building that housed food and beverages for the embassy. Since he wasn’t leaving anytime soon, he would make sure his things were ready to flee.
He fished out all the notes he had collected on Monkeypox over the past year. Carefully, he placed dozens of blood vials into a small, padded case. The building had begun to heat up, as though someone had turned off the air conditioning. Sweat trickled down his back. He reached over to flick on his light switch. Flick. No lights came on. Only emergency power must be on.
While the staff waited for an escort to safety, they set about burning and destroying anything of value, lest it fall into the wrong the hands should the embassy be overrun, as it had been in Tehran in 1979. No one had bothered with Joseph’s office yet. Not that the people outside were interested in his research, but even if they were, it was not high on the list of national security priorities. His collections on Monkeypox were shared liberally with the public,
as well as the University of Kinshasa School of Public Health. He thought hard, trying to remember everything he would need to take with him. Sweat stung his eyes, causing them to tear up. He plopped down in his chair. He must be ready to run when Nixon came back.
His eyelids dipped low, his body feeling as though it weighed a thousand pounds. Unable to keep his eyes open any longer, Joseph laid his head down on his desk, using his arms as a pillow. Maybe just a quick nap. I can rest my eyes for just a moment. Sleep took him quickly.
Bloody faces plagued his dreams. He couldn’t escape their greedy hands and gory mouths. Agent Reliford’s tooth-gouged face and neck dripping blood loomed close as he grabbed Joseph in a vice-like grip. Joseph twisted out of Reliford’s hands, only to be pulled in the direction of Bowali’s face, a mangled mess beyond repair. The only distinguishing mark that remained was the small metal crucifix hanging from Bowali’s neck.
Reliford and Bowali struggled over Joseph’s body. Red hands yanked him side to side in a battle for his limbs. Joseph lacked any control over his body. Now, his patients were there, skinny emaciated Congolese tearing his flesh in revenge for not saving their lives. The charred remains of burnt Marines joined them, skin peeling from their faces like paint off an old weathered barn. His mouth opened as he tried to scream, and the stench of the dead filled his nostrils as their oppressive weight smothered down upon him.
The building shook, rumbling Joseph out of his horrid dream with a cloud of dust. He sat up, attempting to catch his breath, eyes still groggy from his uncomfortable sleep. How long have I been out? Has another helicopter landed on the roof? He listened intently but couldn’t make out the twirl of the rotor blades.
His window provided him with no view, so he walked into the hallway.
The End Time Saga Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 7
