Robert Ludlum's(TM) The Ares Decision (Covert-One) Read online

  But he would know the truth. The fact that the blood didn’t splash directly on him didn’t absolve him of responsibility.

  The entire operation was an incredibly delicate balancing act—let the Iranians go far enough for the evidence to be irrefutable, but not so far that they would be in a position to actually deploy the parasite.

  As his vision cleared, though, Gazenga began to see just how subjective that balance point was. How far were Drake and Collen willing to allow Iran to run? How much risk were they willing to take that this could spin out of control?

  “Welcome to the big leagues,” he said to the empty office.

  It was funny how different the reality was from the fantasy. Who would have ever thought he’d want nothing more than to join his brothers running the family restaurant chain? That standing elbow-deep in spiced beef and dishwater would be something he dreamed about?

  Gazenga walked unsteadily to his desk and sat in the leather chair his father had presented him as a graduation gift. This was getting way too big for him to handle. He needed to talk to someone who knew what the hell they were doing. Someone he could trust.

  24

  Entebbe, Uganda

  November 21—1517 Hours GMT+3

  SARIE VAN KEUREN TOSSED a bungee cord over the crate of field equipment and Smith caught it, securing the hook to a hole rusted in the top of the cab.

  “I think that’ll get us to Kampala,” he said, and the driver leaned through the open window, head bobbing in an energetic nod.

  “No problem.”

  Those seemed to be his only two words of English, but with the right inflection and expression, they could communicate just about any point.

  Smith climbed into the front passenger’s seat, pulling his pack onto his lap before repeatedly slamming the tiny car’s door in an effort to get it to stay closed. “Peter! Let’s roll.”

  Howell was standing on the sidewalk staring up at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport, hands jammed in the pockets of his faded jeans despite the heat and humidity. The original terminal building was gone now, but the airport was still something of a shrine for the men who served in the world’s special forces.

  In 1976, Palestinian terrorists hijacked a plane ferrying 250 passengers from Tel Aviv to Paris, forcing the pilot to land in Idi Amin–controlled Uganda. After releasing some of the passengers, they’d threatened to kill their remaining hostages if a number of their imprisoned compatriots weren’t set free.

  When it became clear that peaceful negotiations were going nowhere—due in no small part to Amin’s support of the hijackers—the Israelis began planning a rescue mission.

  Operation Thunderbolt was carried out by one hundred elite commandos and took only an hour and a half to complete. When the dust settled, all but three of the hostages had been rescued and all the hijackers, as well as forty-five Ugandan troops, were dead.

  It had been a very public demonstration of what a well-trained force could accomplish and had made that little airport a household name all over the world.

  “Peter!” Sarie called, wrestling her pack into the backseat and then squeezing in next to it. “What are you looking at? Meter’s running!”

  Her voice snapped him out of his trance and he slipped in next to her.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Of course I am, my dear. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Smith shot a quick glance back but then just settled into the vinyl-and-duct-tape seat as the cab shot into traffic. He watched the verdant hills dotted with houses pass by for a few minutes but found it more and more difficult to keep his eyes open. The drive to their hotel in the capital city wouldn’t take much more than a half hour, but he might as well put the time to good use. Unless he missed his guess, opportunities for sleep were going to be scarce over the next couple of weeks.

  Sarie’s phone rang and he half monitored her circumspect questioning of the German parasitologist she’d left a message for earlier that day. When the inevitable disappointment became audible in her voice, he shifted his attention back to the monotonous drone of the engine. It seemed that Star had once again been right—whatever this phenomenon turned out to be, the two lousy pages she turned up were the entire body of knowledge on it.

  Despite his exhaustion, Smith’s mind refused to shut down, instead churning through an ever-lengthening list of problems and unknowns.

  Dealing with deadly diseases in the field was dangerous enough when you had iron-fisted control over every variable. Normally, he’d know more or less what pathogen he was dealing with, his patients would be grateful for his presence, and he would be leading a large team of highly trained specialists wielding multimillion-dollar equipment.

  To say that his current situation wasn’t optimal would be the understatement of the century. His protective equipment consisted of some surgical gloves and masks raided from Sarie’s basement. He had virtually no knowledge of the pathogen they were after or, frankly, if it even existed. He had only guesses as to how it spread and no clue how it attacked its victims. And his patients, far from offering their thanks with donations of farm animals like they had last time he’d worked in Africa, were likely to try to tear him apart.

  Then there was Caleb Bahame—a man who had brought the technological innovation of the jeep to the old tradition of drawing and quartering. A man who wasn’t going to be happy about three white people wandering around in his backyard asking questions…

  The sudden blast of a car horn caused Smith to jerk upright in his seat. He squinted into the powerful sun, confused for a moment as to where he was. Ahead, tall concrete buildings broke up the outline of green hills, creating a vaguely Soviet skyline that overpowered the red roofs and whitewashed walls of colonial-era structures.

  Kampala was a tidy and surprisingly attractive city at odds with its history of political turmoil, military dictatorships, and now Caleb Bahame. It was a deeply unfair but common story in this part of the world: just when the populace was about to get out from under—just when hope began to dispel fear and desperation—someone rose with a ragtag force and some murky motivation for destroying it all.

  “Take your next left,” Howell said, reaching up between the seats and tapping their driver on the shoulder.

  The Ugandan seemed confused and pointed through the cracked windshield at the approaching city. “No problem. Hotel.”

  “Not the bloody hotel,” Howell said more forcefully. “Do it. Turn there.”

  “No! Problem! Bad place.”

  Smith twisted around in his seat but was grateful when Sarie spoke first. “What’s going on, Peter? I thought you’d never been to Uganda.”

  Her naïve openness was not only engaging but useful. Smith really couldn’t ask questions—particularly in light of the fact that he had Howell on a mission for an organization the Brit didn’t even know existed.

  “I said here!” Howell said, pulling himself between the seats and grabbing the wheel. The taxi careened onto a dirt side road violently enough to slam Smith into the poorly latched door. He grabbed for the dash and barely managed to keep from falling out.

  “What the hell, Peter?” he said, starting the process of trying to get the door closed again.

  “I thought we’d take in the sights.”

  Howell passed three one-hundred-dollar bills to the driver, who didn’t seem to know whether to be more afraid of the man in the backseat or what lay ahead. The cash broke the tie.

  Smith managed to get the door latched again and twisted around to the degree the pack on his lap would allow. The fact that Howell hadn’t told him about his history in Uganda didn’t particularly bother him—their entire relationship was built on secrets. What did bother him, though, was that the normally squared-away SAS man had turned erratic and moody.

  He’d never had reason to question Howell’s judgment before and he wasn’t anxious to start, but there was something wrong here. How much rope should he give his old friend before he yanked back?

  As they
approached a ramshackle township, the driver began talking irritably in his native language, obviously trying to convince himself of something. They’d closed to within about two hundred yards of the first building, a leaning shack built from corrugated tin and wire, when the African slammed on the brakes. “We go no more!”

  Howell stepped calmly from the car and yanked the driver’s door open, pulling the frightened man out into the road.

  “Back in a jif,” he said, sliding behind the wheel and launching the car forward again.

  “Peter,” Sarie said as they wound through the dense shacks, eliciting perplexed stares from the pedestrians hurrying out of the way. “I’m from this part of the world and I’m telling you we shouldn’t be here. We aren’t welcome.”

  He didn’t respond, and Smith felt her hand light on his shoulder, a clear signal that she wanted him to intervene. But for one of the first times in his life, he wasn’t sure what to do. He’d be dead five times over if it weren’t for Peter Howell.

  The farther they penetrated, the more the township changed in character. Women and children evident at the outer edges were gone now, replaced by increasingly well-armed men. A pickup with a mounted machine gun crossed in front of them and the shirtless man standing in the bed swung the gun in their direction but didn’t have time to decide whether or not to pull the trigger before he disappeared around a corner.

  “Okay, that’s far enough, Peter,” Smith said, grabbing the shifter and pulling it into neutral. “Either you tell us what we’re doing, or we turn around and get the hell out of here.”

  The Brit just thumbed into the backseat, where Sarie was on her knees watching the crowd close in behind them. Unlike the machine gunner, they’d had time to think about the strangers in their midst and were well on their way to a decision that wasn’t going to go well for anyone.

  25

  Langley, Virginia, USA

  November 21—1015 Hours GMT–5

  THERE SHE WAS.

  Brandon examined the woman waiting for the elevator and, when he was satisfied that she wasn’t on speaking terms with any of the people around her, moved in.

  As his discomfort with the Uganda operation had grown, he’d begun quietly researching people he could go to if he decided he was in over his head. His work with Drake allowed him access to the CIA’s database well beyond his pay grade and he’d managed to come up with a short list of tough operatives with extensive experience and reputations for unshakable integrity.

  Despite looking like she was still in her midthirties, the woman in front of him was a minor legend at the agency. He’d initially disregarded her because she was posted in Afghanistan but then heard she was back stateside sitting out the backlash over the death of a Taliban leader she’d tracked into the Hindu Kush. Maybe his luck was finally changing.

  The elevator door opened and he shuffled in, staying close enough to her that he could smell the shampoo in her short blond hair. The athletic body, full lips, and tanned skin were undoubtedly significant assets in her work but a clear liability to him. The surreptitious glances of the men in the elevator weren’t going to make what he’d come to do any easier.

  Gazenga fought for a position beside her in the crowded space, watching in his peripheral vision as she fixed her dark eyes on the floor numbers counting down.

  The elevator stopped with a jerk and he used it as an excuse to bump into her, slipping a note into the pocket of her jacket as he did so.

  She turned slightly, black eyes wandering along the side of his face and giving him a sudden overwhelming sense of claustrophobia. At the last moment, he pushed through the people in front of him and out the closing doors. The hallway was nearly empty and he concentrated on controlling his breathing as a duct overhead blew cool air across his sweaty skin.

  He hadn’t lost his nerve. He’d done it. But for some reason the sense of relief he’d anticipated didn’t materialize. If anything, the sensation of being trapped continued to tighten around his chest.

  With that note, he’d irretrievably stepped off the diving board. All he could do now was hope the pool had water in it.

  26

  Outside Kampala, Uganda

  November 21—1626 Hours GMT+3

  PETER HOWELL SMILED CASUALLY at a group of comically overarmed men staring dumbfounded at them as they cruised by. Ahead, an elaborate archway led through the stone wall they’d been paralleling for the last few minutes. By the time they stopped in front of it, there were at least three mounted machine guns and no fewer than thirty small arms trained on the aging taxi. A man in fatigues came cautiously toward them, looking over the sights of an Israeli-made Tavor assault rifle and screaming unintelligible instructions.

  They were forced from the vehicle, and Smith grabbed Sarie’s arm to keep her from being dragged away, trying to position himself so that she was shielded between him and the car.

  “Is there a plan here?” Smith shouted over the hood, not sure if he was more angry with Howell or himself. “Or did you just pick today to commit suicide?”

  “A bit of shopping,” came the Brit’s enigmatic answer.

  A young man in a tattered Smurfs T-shirt gave Smith a hard shove and he pushed back, sending the man to the ground. “Back the hell off!”

  The African jumped to his feet, clawing for the machine gun hanging across his chest, and Smith lunged for him. Someone to his left threw an elbow and he ducked around it, keeping his eyes locked on the compact Heckler & Koch lining up on him.

  Then it all stopped. There was a brief shout from the direction of the archway and the young man backed away, careful to keep his hands well away from his weapon.

  The crowd began to disperse and the guards lost interest in them, going back to surveying the people moving back and forth in the dusty road.

  “Peter! My good friend,” came a heavily accented voice. What remained of the mob scurried out of the way of a tall African striding toward Howell.

  “It warms my heart to see you again,” he said, pumping the Brit’s hand. “I never dreamed I would.”

  “Good to see you, too, Janani. I’d like to introduce you to my friends Sarie and Jon.”

  The African motioned toward them. “Come. We must get out of this horrible sun.”

  Smith looked over at Sarie and shrugged, taking her arm before following the two chatting men through the arch.

  “You’ve gotten fat,” Howell said.

  “And you’ve gotten old, my brother. I live a good life. I have many wives and children. How many sons do you have?”

  “None.”

  Janani shook his head sympathetically as they turned down a narrow alley lined with storefronts dedicated to merchandise built around the theme “Things that can kill you.” There were numerous gun dealers, specialists in various types of explosives, and a shop with a canary-​yellow awning advertising Africa’s best selection of handheld SAMs.

  Janani led them through an unmarked door that opened into a surprisingly large and well-equipped machine shop.

  “Janani makes custom guns,” Howell explained, waving a hand around him but not looking back. “The best in the world.”

  “You flatter me, Peter. Do you still have the pistol I made you so many years ago?”

  “I’m afraid I lost it.”

  “But not before it killed many men.”

  Howell nodded, his voice suddenly sounding a bit distant. “Many men.”

  They passed through an open door at the back and came out onto a covered patio containing a dizzying assortment of guns lined up in racks. A lush butte started about twenty-five yards beyond, sloping gently upward, with targets spaced at measured intervals.

  “Jon,” Janani said, spinning to face him. “What do you normally carry?”

  “A Sig Sauer. Sometimes a Beretta.”

  An unimpressed frown crossed the African’s face and he pulled a pistol from a neat foam display.

  Smith accepted it but barely had his hand around it before Janani snatched i
t back with a disgusted scowl.

  “Completely wrong,” he muttered, selecting one with a slightly thicker grip. “Tell me how this one feels.”

  He had to admit that it felt good—the same confidence-inspiring solidness of the Sig Sauer without the weight.

  “Do you mind?” Smith said, pointing to the range.

  “Please.”

  He fired a round at the fifty-meter target, putting it dead center in the human silhouette.

  “It seems to agree with you,” Janani said, a craftsman’s pride audible in his voice.

  “Fits good, shoots nice. But will it stop anything? The recoil feels light.”

  “You’re firing a 170-grain ten-millimeter round with a thirteen-hundred-foot-per-second muzzle velocity.”

  “Come on…Really?”

  The African dipped his head respectfully.

  “So what’s the verdict, mate?” Howell said.

  “If it’s reliable, it’s the best thing I ever shot.”

  “Of course it’s reliable!” Janani whined. “Certainly more so than anything the Italians are involved in.”

  “All right,” Howell said. “We’ll take it and another one like it for me. Then I’ll need a couple assault rifles. Something maneuverable along the lines of a SCAR-L, but I’ll leave the final decision to you. No point in traveling light, so say a thousand rounds for the rifles and a hundred each for the handguns. Three spare clips apiece.”

  “Of course. We can have them ready by morning. Can I interest you in anything else? Perhaps a portable rocket launcher? I have a prototype that I think you’d find very compelling.”

  “Tempting, but we’re trying to keep a low profile. You wouldn’t happen to know anybody in the car business, would yo—”

  “Excuse me!”

  They all turned toward Sarie, who was waving a hand irritably. “Are we forgetting someone?”