“What does this have to do with the woman?”
“Sir, there’s a large number of mentally ill people in the world who believe that various government or private entities are beaming voices into their heads using Cassandra. They’re quite organized. They filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon after an FOI request revealed the existence of the weapon—some idiot DIA bureaucrat actually granted their request. Worse, he neglected to black out my name on one page of one document in the records dump.”
“She knows about you.”
“She’s got multiple copies of the FOI records in her office. She was a co-complainant in the lawsuit. Sir, since joining the Council, I’ve managed a near-invisible career in DIA. The public disclosure of my connection to Cassandra is the one major point of”—he quickly rejected the word “vulnerability”—“visibility.”
“Delineate your level of exposure, exactly.”
“Just that I ran a successful project for Air Force Intelligence developing voice-to-skull remote auditory hallucination technology in the 1980s. That’s all, nothing relating to AIT or the Council. They don’t even know the name of the project.”
“But the woman traveling with Daniel Byrne knows of your existence and your connection to auditory hallucinations. And she has voices in her head.”
“Yes.”
“That’s how Daniel’s been climbing the chain. Blankenship pointed him to Mandal, but she led him to the cave. Mike, the woman has AIT.”
“Yes, I suspect she does.”
Conrad sighed into Dillman’s ear. “All right. Do what you have to do. But I need you stateside tomorrow.”
11:00 a.m.
Michael Dillman stood in Dr. Kara Singh’s living room, drinking her scotch and looking out through her bay window as a blue British Gas service van parked in front of the building.
Two men in blue coveralls, reflective yellow vests, and white hardhats got out of the van. One man opened the back doors and started placing orange traffic cones to prevent anyone from parking in front, while the other confirmed the address on his clipboard with the number on the building. Together the men lifted a large packing crate out of the van and carried it to the front door.
Dillman buzzed them in and opened the apartment door, and they came in and put the crate down in the living room and removed their hardhats.
Bobby had brought George Richards, a demolitions expert from Blackpool. Former SAS. Reliable man, if a little too in love with his job.
“Welcome aboard, George,” said Dillman, extending his hand. “Let’s try not to bring down the whole building, shall we?”
George grinned broadly, flashing a gold tooth, and shook Dillman’s hand firmly. “Wouldn’t dream of it, sir.” He opened the crate, pulled out a scuba tank with a hose attached, and placed it near the apartment door.
Bobby removed another British Gas uniform from the crate, along with a hardhat and tool belt. Dillman slipped into the uniform while the others loaded the crate with Kara Singh’s notebooks, computer, and files.
George opened the apartment door wide and turned the valve on the scuba tank. The hose began hissing out into the hallway. Then he and Bobby closed the clasps on the packing crate and carried it out to the van. They returned, and Bobby checked the clipboard.
“One upstairs neighbor, a Mrs. Gertrude Browne. Widow, lives alone. I’ll go get her out before George toasts the place.” Bobby turned to go.
“Hold up.” Dillman gestured to the scuba tank. “George, how long until you can smell that upstairs?”
“Two minutes, sir.”
“Wait three minutes, Bobby. We want her to smell gas as soon as she opens the door.”
35: BABYLON SYSTEM
Monrovia, Liberia
Dawn was breaking, sky bruising in waves of purple and orange to the east as they flew in low over the Atlantic and touched down at James Spriggs Payne Airfield, runway lights switched on for their arrival, the airport itself still dark. They taxied straight past the building, directly to an open gate in the chain-link fence at the end of the airstrip, where two men stood waiting.
The pilot lowered the aluminum stairs, and Daniel disembarked ahead of Pat and Kara, stepping into the equatorial sea air, hot and wet on the skin, heavy with salt. Like being embraced by a living thing. He breathed deep, enjoying the smell of jet fuel as he’d enjoyed the smell of diesel when he was a boy living in a motor home with his uncle.
The taller man walked forward to greet them. He looked in his middle forties, skinny but strong, with sinewy arms and a way of moving that suggested a tightly coiled spring.
“I am Jacob,” the man said. “You are Daniel.” Not a question.
Daniel shook Jacob’s hand and introduced Pat and Kara by their first names.
The man at the gate was evidently a customs officer Jacob had dragged out of bed for this, his uniform shirt still half-unbuttoned over a white undershirt. He looked at the three arrivals with no expression whatsoever, then turned to Jacob and held up five fingers.
Daniel handed a bank envelope to Jacob and Jacob passed it to the customs man. The man tucked the bribe in his belt and stamped their passports on the hood of a vintage Toyota Land Cruiser, scarcely even looking at them. He handed the passports back and resecured the gate and climbed into a little Daihatsu hatchback and drove away into the early morning light.
Without a word.
Jacob gestured to the Land Cruiser’s mottled paint job—once green, now more primer than paint. “No beauty queen but when I say go, she go, and when I say stop, she stop.” He opened the tailgate, revealing four five-gallon jugs of water, a large blue Coleman cooler, three dirty gas cans, and a red blanket bearing the logo of the Arsenal football club. “Plenty, plenty food in the cooler. Flashlight, binocular, and DEET—bathe in it. And sat phone, no cell coverage out there.” He pulled the blanket aside. Two Browning Hi Power pistols and a Mossberg tactical shotgun, and enough boxes of ammunition to start a small war. “I think this enough. Yes?”
“Plenty, plenty,” said Pat.
Daniel said, “It really is just reconnaissance, Jacob. Don’t worry.”
“I ain’t worried,” said Jacob, replacing the blanket. “I live here. This shithole is my home.” He reached deeper, pulled out a medical kit—a heavy white metal box with a red cross painted on it. He opened it and removed a pill bottle, rattled the pills, and handed it to Daniel.
“Antimalarial, take one a day. If you plan to stay for any length of time you also need injection for yellow fever, hep B, typhoid, diphtheria, polio booster, and God knows what more.” He tossed the keys to Daniel. “Map is in front. Best to double-clutch, it stick a little sometime.”
“Wait, you’re not coming?” said Pat. “I thought you were supposed to be our local fixer.”
Jacob sucked air through his teeth. “Man, I ain’t your anything.” He fought a silent battle with himself for a few seconds before deciding to speak his mind, then jutted his chin at Pat. “I say you the muscle”—turned his head to Daniel—“and you the boss.” He looked at Kara. “The hell are you?”
“Deeply involved citizen,” said Daniel.
“You should not bring the woman on this mission. It’s wrong.” Jacob’s look dared Daniel to break eye contact. He didn’t.
Kara said, “I thank you for your concern, Jacob, but the woman is here by her own choice.”
Jacob faced her. “The woman don’t know what the hell she get involved in.” Back to Daniel. “You chasin’ some of the most dangerous men I ever see. And I see”—a glance at Pat—“plenty, plenty. The same thing ever since: moneymen from London and Zurich and New York, Paris and Berlin, Moscow, Beijing. Everybody come Liberia, do they dirty deals, run they dirty shipments under Liberia flag, steal African wealth out the ground. Oil, diamond, gold, uranium, timber—every damn thing.” He sucked air through his teeth again. “Monrovia the r
eal Wild West now—everybody come here do things they don’t want nobody know about. And where moneymen go, spooks go. CIA, SVR, MSS, everybody pass through—and bring they tin soldier. Liberia awash in mercs, they in our bar and hotel and whorehouse, get drunk and wave they gun around, do what they like, always brag loud and flex bicep. Like peacock. Mercs everywhere, like rats. Always, always, it never change, even since the revolution everything just get worse—” Jacob caught himself, stopped talking with a sharp nod of his head.
He stood silent for a minute, refocusing. “But the guys you after, they a different breed. These guys nail down. Don’t flash they gun, don’t get drunk, keep to theyself, import they own pussy. Real discipline.”
“Any idea what they’re doing here?”
“Everybody guess, nobody know. Six month back, they fly that big metal structure upriver in pieces. Sikorsky helicopter: back and forth, back and forth. They take over a village, about three hundred people live. Isolated place, only one road in, you gotta turn around and come back the same way. They use the Sikorsky because large trucks can’t get there, the road is just dirt and tight to the trees in many place.”
“Nobody went up to check it out?”
“Put enough money in enough pockets, nobody want to know. And they bring in new clothing and cook pan for the people live up there, toy for they kids, Angus beef for they table. But no visitor allowed. Then a reporter come, Englishman, white, writing some book or ’nother about private militaries and secret wars. He ask me about them. I rent him a car and he go up see what he can see. He don’t come back. So no, I ain’t gonna carry you up there, do your dirty business.”
“Fine, I get it,” said Daniel, “but we’re not the same as them. You just got done telling us how bad these guys are. You really think they came here to give teddy bears and Angus beef to poor villagers? They look like Oxfam to you?”
“So what?”
“So you know they’re playing the devil’s game up that river, doing wrong. And I mean to stop them.”
Jacob shook his head. “I wish you luck. But it won’t change nothing. World is run by the people who live far from the equator, and your luxury is paid for by the people who live near it. That’s the bottom line, never change.”
Jacob walked to the fence and straddled a Kawasaki dirt bike parked there. “I work with you because you the less bad bad guys, but you ain’t the good guys. You playing the devil’s game too.” He kicked the motorbike alive and peeled away, leaving a cloud of blue exhaust.
Kara looked at Daniel. Daniel looked at Pat.
Pat said, “Welcome to Liberia.”
36: PRAY FOR RAIN
Liberia’s rainy season stretches from May to November, giving Monrovia the official title of World’s Wettest Capital City. In the month of July alone, Monrovia gets almost twice the rainfall London sees in an entire year. And every year for the past twenty-five, Liberia has earned another dubious title: World’s Worst Roads.
Once you get away from the airport, it’s all crumbling asphalt and potholes—sinkholes, really—some big enough to swallow a piano.
And once you get away from the city, it’s all red mud.
Red.
Mud.
Everywhere.
Red mud beside the dirt road, washed across the dirt road, piled atop the dirt road . . . three feet high in spots. And then you just can’t tell the difference, because the road is mud.
Pat said, “Kids living out here in the sticks scratch together a living in the rainy season, charging money to dig out cars that get stuck. Nicer the car, the higher the fee. Looming starvation makes capitalists of us all. Gotta give ’em respect, they work hard and earn enough to keep themselves fed and clothed. And their capital investment? A shovel.”
“What do they do in the dry season?” said Kara.
“Starve, mostly . . . and pray for rain. Look, sister, it’s a shitty place to be born, they do whatever they have to.” He gestured at the few wispy clouds in the wide blue sky. “Anyway we got lucky. Hasn’t rained for two days, which at the end of August is a minor miracle. These roads are passable. If you feel bad about it, you can always toss some money out the window.”
Pat was right, the roads were passable, but it was a slow drive. After two hours, they pulled off and parked in the shade of a large mahogany tree.
“DEET up,” said Pat, tossing the gallon jug of industrial-strength insect repellant to Daniel. They were at a higher elevation now, but if the place was no longer a swamp, it was still a steam bath, with frequent swarms of mosquitoes and other evil, biting bugs that fly. And despite his earlier application of the foul stuff, Daniel had already picked up a few bites.
Daniel and Kara shared the bottle, pouring the greasy liquid over their hands and spreading it on their skin and clothes, combing it through their hair with their fingers.
“I may asphyxiate before the critters can get me,” said Kara, waving at the toxic fumes in front of her face.
“Beats the hell out of the alternative,” said Daniel. He’d caught dengue fever six years earlier in Venezuela and it hadn’t been a fun ride. He’d be perfectly content not to add malaria to his list of life’s adventures.
Daniel set up a folding card table and three stools in the shade as Pat took his turn with the insect repellant. Kara got some protein bars and Tetra Paks of coconut water from the cooler, and refilled their canteens from one of the large water jugs. Pat used the sat phone to tether his Toughbook to the web, then dialed the phone and spoke into it.
“Hey, Gerald, we’re about an hour away. Can your guys get us a live feed? Thanks, dude.” Pat tore open a protein bar and ate. He was just starting on his second bar when the satellite came online.
Daniel leaned over to see the screen. The village looked the same as it had the previous day. The ground perhaps slightly less red, having had another day to dry out, but otherwise the same.
“This is live, yes?” he said.
Pat nodded. “Gerald says we’ve got this satellite for an hour, hour and thirty tops. After that, no eye in the sky until tomorrow morning.”
They kept their eyes on the screen as they finished their lunch. Nothing changed.
“Not even a sentry,” said Daniel.
Pat said, “Sentry’s not gonna stand in the sun—it’s 105 out, dude’s gonna find shade. We gotta assume whoever’s there is just stayin’ cool inside or under the canopy.”
Daniel squinted at the screen, at something that looked like movement in the trees just north of the clearing. He held out his hand and Pat passed him the sat phone. “Hey, Gerald. Is it possible to get any closer?”
From over forty-six hundred miles away in New York City, Gerald So, the Foundation’s chief computer genius, chuckled. “Not piggybacking on this bird. It’ll be days before we get a better ride. But we’re close enough to pick up individuals. There’s nobody out there right now.”
A quarter mile from their destination, Pat said, “We walk from here.” He pulled the Land Cruiser around to face the way they’d come, parked it in a shady spot. He put the key in a magnetic box and stuck it behind the bumper while Daniel called Gerald on the sat phone.
Nothing to report, still no movement in the village.
The Browning Hi Power carries a thirteen-round magazine, plus one in the chamber. Daniel and Pat both carried a fully loaded gun and three spare mags. If they couldn’t get away while firing a combined 106 rounds, a few more bullets wouldn’t help them. Better just to run than to stop and feed bullets one by one into the empty mags. They left the shotgun behind, loaded and accessible. If they were coming in hot, it could be a lifesaver.
They moved very slowly—Pat walking point, then Kara, Daniel covering their rear—guns drawn, staying quiet, stopping frequently, checking through binoculars, seeing no one, taking slightly more than thirty minutes to cross the final quarter mile. By the time they rea
ched the edge of the village, Daniel’s shirt was plastered to his chest and back, his arms and the backs of his hands covered by a sheen of perspiration.
Just outside the village clearing, they stopped again. This time it was an odor that stopped them. And it wasn’t the odor of bug spray.
“I’ve spent enough time in morgues to know that smell,” whispered Kara.
They scanned the place through lenses once more and, seeing no sign of occupancy, broke past the cover of the trees and walked on the dirt road that ran along the north edge of the village clearing.
And then Daniel saw the camouflage netting suspended above a long rectangular pit dug in the ground—about twenty feet by fifty—the mottled green netting held up by black metal poles. It was the very spot that had drawn Daniel’s attention on the satellite feed, where he thought he’d seen something move.
The sour stench of rotting flesh grew stifling as they walked closer, and Daniel could now hear a loud humming, like electricity, coming from the pit under the blind. He walked close enough to see down into the pit and realized the source of the humming.
Not electricity. Flies. A black buzzing cloud of flies stretched from one end of the trench to the other, hovering over piles of human corpses putrefying in the heat, exposed skin split open, yellow liquid oozing from eye sockets and ears, mouths full of maggots.
Dillman’s crew had killed the entire village, young and old. Just as Kara had dreamed.
The flies were not the only opportunists to find the pit. Three vultures and a dozen smaller birds were making meals of the dead, squawking and flapping whenever a rival moved in to feast off a body they’d claimed for themselves.
The Devil's Game (The Game Trilogy Book 2) Page 17
