The Ares Decision Read online

  Using a toe to get the door open was easier than she anticipated, but getting out from under the seat wasn’t. She squirmed wildly, feeling the cool breeze running over her as she inched toward what she prayed was freedom.

  In the driver’s seat, pain had turned to fury and the Land Cruiser rocked with the force of the driver’s door being thrown open. Just as her foot touched dirt, Sarie heard the handle of the door behind her head being pulled and a frustrated howl when the man discovered it was locked.

  It didn’t seem to occur to him to reach through the open front door, and instead he shattered the glass with his elbow while she desperately tried to pull herself out with heels hooked over the running board.

  But it was too late. His hand was in her hair again, and a moment later the jagged glass clinging to the window frame was cutting across her back. There was no way to stop it, so she decided to do the opposite, kicking off one of the seats and sending him staggering backward into the road.

  She hit the ground hard, but not so hard that she couldn’t roll to her feet. In the moonlight, the right leg of his jeans had turned a glossy black, already completely saturated with blood.

  Whether the bullet had hit him in the leg or the ass was impossible to know, but either way he was going to be a hell of a lot slower than he’d been at the house.

  He’d obviously come to the same conclusion and reached behind him for something that Sarie wasn’t interested in waiting around to see. She ran past a flowering rose bush at the head of a row of vines, struggling to stay upright with her hands still bound and her shoes still back at the house.

  The first shot tore through the plants to her right, and she ducked, veering left. The second shot came close enough for her to hear the hiss of it as it passed, but as she penetrated deeper into the vines, his aim became more erratic.

  She finally fell to the ground in a narrow trough, breathing hard and listening to him empty the gun in her general direction.

  She stayed completely still, waiting for the sound of him wading in after her, but instead she heard distant voices shouting in Afrikaans. A moment later, the Land Cruiser roared away, skidding wildly across the asphalt as a group of farmers approached from the east, loudly listing the types of rifles they were carrying for anyone who might doubt their resolve.

  What was left of Sarie’s strength faded and her forehead came to rest in the damp earth. She’d done it again. She’d survived.

  14

  Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, USA

  November 13—1932 Hours GMT–5

  JON SMITH WALKED DOWN the empty hallway, peeking into unused rooms as he talked on his cell phone.

  “Have you gotten anything interesting?” Fred Klein asked.

  “The interview started a little rocky. The kid’s pretty torn up emotionally.”

  “Understandable.”

  He turned the corner and spotted a break room equipped with a refrigerator. “How about you? Have your people been able to dig anything up?”

  “Not much. Apparently they found a mention of similar attacks from a Jewish doctor who ran to Africa during World War II.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “I doubt it, but we’re trying to get confirmation and track down his last known location in Uganda.”

  “Any speculation from him that there was something behind the behavior beyond the obvious? A biological or chemical agent?”

  “Not yet, but our people just found this thread. They’ll keep pulling on it. If there’s anything there, they’ll find it.”

  Smith slipped into the break room and opened the fridge, reaching for a couple of Cokes before spotting a six-pack of beer at the back.

  “Call me when you finish the debriefing,” Klein continued. “Don’t worry about how late it is. I want to be kept in the loop.”

  “I’ll catch you on my way back to the airport.”

  The line went dead and he exchanged two beers for a ten-dollar bill from his wallet. Just what the doctor ordered.

  A bottle opener was a tougher find, but he managed to pry the caps off with the edge of the counter before heading back down the hall. He needed to do better—to get Rivera to focus. The question was how.

  Smith was older and supposedly wiser, but he wasn’t sure he’d react any differently if their positions were reversed. He’d watched people die of their wounds while he tried desperately to save them; he’d stood helplessly by as the woman he loved succumbed to a virus created by a madman. And he’d knowingly sent men and women into fights that seemed unwinnable.

  You never really learned to deal with it. The best you could do was push it away every night so that you could get a few hours of sleep free of the ghosts.

  He opened the door to the conference room, holding the beers up in front of him like the prize they were. “I found—”

  He fell silent when Rivera looked up from the sidearm lying on the table in front of him.

  Smith let go of the bottles and was already sliding across the table when they shattered on the floor. His reaction was faster than most men half his age could ever hope to match. But Rivera wasn’t most men.

  The SEAL snatched up the gun and shoved it beneath his chin, squeezing the trigger just as Smith reached him.

  The bullet tore the top of his skull off and they both went crashing to the floor in a spray of blood and brain matter.

  Smith’s immediate reaction was to check for a pulse, but there was clearly no point. Instead, he fell back against the wall and began slamming his head repeatedly into it.

  He’d completely blown it. He’d been so focused on what he was doing, so mired in his own preconceptions, he’d ignored the signals that seemed so obvious now.

  The young man’s blood continued to flow, running along the floor until it began to pool around Smith’s foot. There was always something you remembered from situations like this—something that, no matter how many years went by, you could never shake. This time he knew it would be the smell of that damn beer.

  15

  Langley, Virginia, USA

  November 14—0901 Hours GMT–5

  WHEN DRAKE ENTERED, BRANDON Gazenga was already there shuffling nervously through the papers on his lap.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  Drake nodded and sat, breaking the seal on a folder stamped DCI’s Eyes Only and flipping through the contents. “Is it completely done?”

  “Yes, sir. I consider that a final draft. It’s just waiting for you and Dave to sign off.”

  Gazenga’s parents had come over on the boat from Congo when he was only six, immediately becoming a shining example of the American dream. His father had gone into the restaurant business, starting as a dishwasher and ending up the owner of a café chain serving cuisine from his home continent.

  Despite their commitment to their new home, Brandon’s parents had never let him forget where he came from. He spoke Kituba fluently and while growing up had spent at least a month a year with his cousins in Kinshasa.

  That, combined with a degree in international studies from Yale, had made him an obvious target for recruitment by the CIA. And since that recruitment, he had performed admirably—becoming one of the agency’s top central African analysts despite his relative youth.

  Those qualifications alone, though, wouldn’t have been enough for Drake to include him in the off-the-books operation he’d undertaken. In the end, it was Gazenga’s personality profile that made him so perfect.

  The young man still had one foot in an extremely hierarchical culture and had spent his life serving a powerful father whose recent death left him adrift. Even better, his time in poverty-stricken Kinshasa had given him a deep gratitude toward America for the opportunities it had provided. All these things combined to make him extremely susceptible to manipulation by authority figures.

  “So you’re confident that it’s going to satisfy the president and his people?”

  Gazenga made a subtle swipe at the sweat forming along his hairline. “I th
ink I’ve put the best possible arguments forward, sir. Beyond the video, all anyone has regarding Bahame’s raids is legend and unreliable reports from survivors. I covered that in the first few paragraphs, highlighting the level of superstition and the discrepancies in eyewitness reports. The rest is mainly the opinions of psychologists and descriptions of similar phenomena throughout history with a focus on Pol Pot’s ability to brainwash children into perpetrating genocide in Cambodia. I sum up with a description of pertinent rituals known in Africa, including ritualized cutting and the painting of warriors with cow’s blood before going into battle.”

  “What about the Iranians?”

  “That’s obviously not included in the report we’re going to deliver, but I put the information at the back of your copy in the format of a Q&A. I’ve gone through every piece of information the intelligence community has connecting the Iranians to Bahame and recommended responses in the event the president is aware of the association and asks questions. Frankly, it wasn’t too difficult. The intel is pretty tenuous at this point.”

  Drake skimmed the Iranian section for a moment and then tossed the file on his desk. “Another excellent job, Brandon. It’s what I’ve come to expect from you.”

  Gazenga’s smile had a slightly queasy edge to it, and he took another swipe at his forehead. “Thank you, sir.”

  Drake looked over his reading glasses and scowled, mindful of the importance of maintaining his role as a replacement for the father who had been lost. “Is there a problem?”

  Fear flashed briefly in the young man’s eyes. “No, sir. Why would there be?”

  “Because this is a tough assignment. About as tough as they get. But that’s the job we’re stuck with. Castilla is a damn fine man, but he’s a politician. I’d already been working in intelligence for fifteen years when he decided to leave his law firm and run for local office. We’re the experts, and to some extent we have to protect the country from the revolving door of Congress and the White House.”

  “Yes, sir, I understand.” His voice had a comforting force to it, but there was still something audible in the background. Doubt.

  “You’ve seen the same things I have, Brandon: the military and intelligence communities getting more and more politicized and bureaucratic. Constant grandstanding and posturing by the people who are supposed to be leading us. A deficit that’s pushing us into another collapse. This country is on life support, and as much as I hate to admit it, the energy coming out of the Middle East is our blood supply. Without it, this country dies.”

  “I completely agree, sir,” Gazenga said, but Drake was unconvinced and decided to press his point home.

  “Can you imagine what will happen if we let Iran modernize and go nuclear? There won’t be any way for us to combat their influence in the Middle East—we’ll end up in a groveling contest with the rest of the world to see who gets the opportunity to spend the rest of their lives kissing Persian ass. We have a window of opportunity here, Brandon, and it’s closing fast. We need to make the politicians understand that the American military’s failure as a nation-building organization doesn’t mean that it’s not the greatest instrument of punishment ever created.”

  Gazenga nodded, seemingly regaining the resolve he’d let slip. But for how long? Drake was starting to see the limits of his influence over the young man, and it worried the hell out of him.

  “All right. That’s all, Brandon. I’ll go through your report in detail tonight and let you know if I find any problems.”

  Gazenga seemed relieved to be dismissed and hurried from the office. A moment later a side door opened and Dave Collen strode in.

  “Have you had a chance to go through this yet?” Drake said, tapping the folder on his desk.

  “Yeah, Brandon sent it to me this morning. His normal thorough job. Hell, he almost had me convinced.”

  Drake nodded slowly, fixing his gaze on a blank section of wall across from him.

  “This has the potential to put our problems with Castilla to bed,” Collen said. “Why don’t you look happy?”

  “It’s Brandon. I’m starting to see cracks.”

  “Are they wide enough that you want to do something about it?”

  “No. Not yet. But I think we have to start considering the possibility that he’s going to become a liability sooner than we’d planned.”

  16

  Near Bloemfontein, South Africa

  November 14—1620 Hours GMT+2

  DEMBE KAIKARA GRIMACED AS the ancient Volkswagen bounced through a deep rut, causing the bullet lodged in his thigh to grind against bone. The bleeding in his side had stopped on its own, but the wound in his leg was far worse. The scarf tied around the entry wound was so tight, he could no longer feel the accelerator beneath his foot, and yet the seat was still soaked through.

  The narrow dirt track cut through an informal settlement consisting of buildings clapped together from old signs, discarded lumber, and wire. People sat in the shade, glancing briefly at him as he passed and then just as quickly turning away. It was a place where those who didn’t quickly learn to mind their own business didn’t survive to adulthood.

  His head was becoming increasingly fuzzy from blood loss, and he struggled to recall the directions that had been so thoroughly drilled into him before leaving Uganda. A toppled water tower became visible to his right, and he turned hesitantly toward it, forcing the low-slung car off the road and onto the dry, cracked earth it had been carved from.

  He had considered running, but where would he go? He was in South Africa illegally, and a hospital would report his gunshot wound. Van Keuren certainly had called the police by now, and they would be looking for him.

  Not that he really feared things like deportation and prison—he had faced far worse from the time he was a small child. No, the only thing he feared in this world was Caleb Bahame. There was no way to run from him. He would see. And he would send the demons.

  Kaikara finally rolled to a stop in front of a group of men sitting on the hoods of a line of polished luxury cars that looked hopelessly out of place in the surrounding poverty. He recognized only the thin, scarred face of Haidaar—one of Bahame’s most trusted disciples. The others were Nigerian drug dealers who controlled the surrounding settlements and understood how to get things done without attracting the attention of the South African police. Guns of various types and a few stained machetes leaned against their bumpers, never far from reach.

  His vision blurred and he nearly fell trying to get out of the car, leaving himself leaning heavily on the door with blood rolling down his leg. The laughter of the Nigerians wasn’t quite loud enough to cover Haidaar’s footfalls, and Kaikara tried to find the strength to meet his eye.

  “What happened to you?”

  “The woman had a gun. She shot me.”

  More laughter from the Nigerians. They seemed to think his misfortune should be commemorated with a drink and began passing a bottle of liquor.

  “I’ve been bleeding for a long time,” Kaikara said, his voice sounding as weak as a woman’s, even to him. “Is there someone here who can stop it?”

  Haidaar gave him a disgusted sneer and pulled the car’s rear door open. When he threw back the blanket spread across the seat, he took a hesitant step backward.

  “What is this?”

  Kaikara looked down at the bodies of the young couple he’d carjacked. “The van Keuren woman escaped. I had to get rid of her car…”

  Haidaar stood in stunned silence for a moment, fear flashing across his face before being replaced by anger. He grabbed Kaikara by the back of the neck, pulling him away from the car and throwing him to the garbage-strewn ground.

  “You lost her?” he screamed. “You let a woman do this to you and then you let her get away?”

  Kaikara tried to get to his feet, but he was too weak. All he could manage to do was hold his hands up in a pathetic attempt to protect himself. “She had a gun. She ran. I—”

  Haidaar kicked him hard
in the side, flipping him onto his stomach and then grinding a foot down on the bullet wound in the back of his leg. “Not far from your ass, is it, Kaikara? It looks like you were the one running.”

  The Nigerians had taken notice and were surrounding them, weapons in hand. One with a machete moved in, and Kaikara’s words came out in a panicked flood. “No! I was driving! The bitch must have had the gun under the seat. She—”

  The machete came up and Kaikara tried to crawl away, but pain and blood loss made his progress almost comically slow.

  “Stop!” he heard Haidaar shout. “Find him a doctor.”

  “What?” one of the Nigerians said. “Why would you want this worthless piece of shit to live even one more minute?”

  “Because I’m not going to be the one to tell Bahame that we don’t have the woman.”

  Kaikara suddenly understood the enormity of his mistake. “No! It wasn’t my fault. I’ve never failed Bahame before.”

  “Shut up!” Haidaar yelled, kicking him again, but not as hard this time. His own survival was now in serious doubt, but if he didn’t return with someone to focus Bahame’s rage, death would be certain.

  “Go!” Haidaar said. “Get a doctor!”

  Kaikara tried again to escape, crawling painfully toward an open sewer as the Nigerians began to argue. If he could make it, he might be able to drown himself. Or find a piece of glass to plunge into his heart. He couldn’t allow himself to be taken back to Uganda. To Bahame.

  “We transport things and people over borders,” one of the Nigerians said. “We’re not a hospital.”

  “Fine,” Haidaar said. “I’ll call Caleb and tell him that you can’t help him. That he’s paid you for nothing.”

  There was a brief silence before an argument that Kaikara couldn’t understand broke out between the Nigerians. His hand fell on the sharp edge of a section of barbed wire, but there was no pain, only elation. He pulled it free from the rotting stake it was wound around and brought it to his jugular. One deep gash and no one would be able to save him. He would be free.