Theirs was not, suffice it to say, a traditional relationship.
He ran a hand through his unruly black hair then opened his eyes and took out his phone. The display screen told him what he already knew-“service unavailable”-but what he was interested in was stored in the device’s memory: Sara’s text message to him:
Safari time. Got a hot one;-) Every THing Is Ok. Pizza In A week or so.
“A hot one” undoubtedly signified a disease outbreak; epidemiologists referred to an area where a contagion was spreading as a “hot zone.” The rest of the message seemed innocuous enough.
Or at least it would to anyone who didn’t know Sara Fogg very well.
King had seen the text for what it was almost immediately. The message was anything but typical for the erudite, precise and detail-oriented disease detective. Sara would never send a missive so riddled with apparent formatting errors, at least not without a very good reason.
The simple fact of the message itself was very telling. Once a CDC response team was activated, its members were not supposed to communicate with the outside world. As team leader, Sara knew this better than anyone, so for her to break protocol, even in such a seemingly harmless manner, was a veritable cry for help. The kind of help that only Chess Team could provide.
Also, Sara never, ever used smileys.
It had only taken about fifteen seconds for him to decipher her hasty code. The capital letters following the emoticon spelled out: ETHIOPIA. That was absolutely not an accident. The code wasn’t very sophisticated, but it probably would have slipped past an automated eavesdropping program like the NSA’s massive Echelon system. And so within a minute of receiving the text, King was on the move.
He had made a conscious decision to deal with this on his own. Most of the Chess Team members were otherwise occupied anyway, but with nothing more to go on than a cryptic text message and a bad feeling, he was loath to utilize the many other assets that were available for discretionary use. That included Deep Blue.
King may have been the head of Chess Team, but Deep Blue was its central nervous system. When the group had first been mustered, they had believed the mysterious Deep Blue-the code name was an homage to the computer that had defeated chess champion Gary Kasparov in the 1990’s-to be a cyber-warrior with a Spec-Ops background and almost unlimited information resources. Only later did they learn the man’s real identity: then-President of the United States, Tom Duncan. The leader of the free world, a former Army Ranger, had been moonlighting as the eyes, ears and guiding hand of Chess Team. A recent crisis had forced Duncan to sacrifice his presidency in order to save the country, but that hadn’t spelled the end of his association with Chess Team. With a few strokes of the keyboard, Deep Blue probably could have arranged for supersonic transport to Africa, and put King on the ground in Ethiopia inside of three hours, armed to the teeth and ready for anything.
But if Sara had wanted that, she would have come right out and said it. King wasn’t entirely convinced that her message had been intended to summon him. She might simply have been saying: ‘Keep an eye on me.’ King had decided to split the difference.
So, instead of parachuting in from a stealth aircraft in black BDU’s, sporting an XM-25 airburst delivery weapon, his favorite SiG P220. 45 caliber semi-automatic pistol and his 7-inch fixed blade KA-BAR knife, King was riding in a battered Toyota Corolla taxicab, wearing a black Elvis T-shirt and blue jeans, with nothing more in his go-bag than a change of clothes, some travelling money, and a phone with a service plan that didn’t extend to Ethiopia. But that didn’t mean he was without resources. Chess Team had contacts in every part of the world, and his phone also contained a list of suppliers-some reputable, some not so much-who could provide him with almost anything he needed on very short notice. A discreet inquiry made during a layover in Germany had revealed that the CDC team planned to establish a command center at Tewahedo General Hospital in Addis Ababa; in fact, they would have only just arrived. The drive from Bole International Airport to the hospital would take about thirty minutes. King reckoned that inside of an hour, he’d be ready for anything.
That was an hour more than he got.
# # #
One of the first lessons every soldier learned was the importance of situational awareness, or as drill instructors were fond of saying: “Keep your head on a swivel.” Even in the absence of a perceived threat, it was almost second nature for King to crane his head around for a 360° sweep every few minutes, scrutinizing the faces of passersby, the shadowy recesses of alleyways, and the way other cars moved through traffic. The first sign of trouble might not be obvious, just something about a scene that wasn’t quite right.
The pair of black Dodge Ram pick-ups charging up behind the taxi, however, were pretty hard to miss.
“No way.”
The black trucks certainly stood out from the other cars King had seen since arriving, but the reason they commanded his attention owed to the fact that he had seen similar vehicles roaming the streets of Baghdad and Kandahar-trucks with darkened bullet-resistant glass and concealed armor plating, driven by private security contractors.
Got to be a coincidence, he thought. Security contractors-mercenaries, in more common parlance-were ubiquitous in developing countries, working as bodyguards for wealthy businessmen, or training military and police forces.
His belief that there was a rational explanation lasted about ten seconds-the length of time it took for the lead truck to race ahead and pull alongside the taxi. As it did, the passenger side window slid down.
“Look out!”
Even as he shouted the warning, King curled himself into a ball behind the driver’s seat. An instant later he heard a sound like hammers striking metal followed by the distinctive crack of shattering glass, but the report of the gunfire was conspicuously absent. There was a rush of air through the cab and the noise of an engine roaring past. He risked a quick look.
All the windows on the driver side had been shattered and the tempered glass of the windshield was now fogged with myriad tiny cracks. King saw the truck that had strafed the cab a few hundred meters ahead, while the second remained close on their tail. He then turned his attention to the driver.
“Are you…” He didn’t bother finishing the inquiry. The Ethiopian man lay slumped over the steering wheel, his head and back a mess of red.
King breathed a curse at the senselessness of the murder, and then another when he realized that the cab was now veering out of control toward the edge of the road.
Even though it meant risking exposure, he knew he had to keep the car on the pavement; if it crashed, then he was dead anyway. He thrust his upper torso over the back of the driver’s seat, shoving the slain driver out of the way with one hand, and gripping the steering wheel with the other. He steered the cab away from disaster, but this minor victory did little to cheer him. The cab was losing speed and the two pick-ups had him boxed in. It was only a matter of time before they checkmated him.
Where’s Chess Team when I really need them?
He pushed that idea right out of his head. Defeatism was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe he didn’t have the team to back him up, but that was no reason to give in to despair. Maybe it was true that the king was the least effective, most vulnerable piece on the chessboard, but his callsign didn’t define him or his abilities.
Still, it would have been nice to have Rook next to him, blasting away with his Desert Eagle pistols.