Olivia felt no less anxious.
Chapter 46
Najid stepped onto the patio and looked over at the tiny free school halfway between the hospital and the main school. Dr. Kassis had set up a primitive divider with sheets of canvas from a farm truck. He’d doused the whole space with bleach, and it became a clean zone. It was the only place in Kapchorwa where any of them could remove their gear and take care of the body’s necessities. The conditions in the schoolhouse weren’t much better than the setup for the sick in the hospital or any of the other overflowing buildings. A few cots gave them a place to take turns sleeping. Not that Najid had slept. He’d been on his feet for more hours than he cared to think about, but there would be time for resting and sleeping later.
Nevertheless, Najid was thinking about going to the clean room in the free school, removing his Tyvek suit, gloves, goggles, and mask. It would feel so good to be out of the hot, stinking suit.
The sound of gunfire from the west cut those thoughts short.
Najid ran to one of the Range Rovers as the two men who’d been standing guard in the center of town ran over. Removing an AK-47 from the rear compartment, Najid motioned for the others to get in. He had men stationed a quarter-mile to the west of town who had been tasked to block the road. It wasn’t a far run, but driving there would be faster than running and risking overheating in the suits. Najid jumped into the passenger’s seat, and one of his other men took the driver’s side and started the engine.
Once the other guard got in the back seat, the vehicle started to roll. Another of his men came running up to the vehicle and Najid spoke in rushed Arabic, instructing him to keep the others at their duties in the village. The Land Rover accelerated along the dirt road through the tiny town throwing up a plume of dust. By the time they passed the last house, the gunshots had ceased.
Najid worried about what he’d find when he reached his men at the roadblock. They were not experienced soldiers. They’d been through a month or two of training in Pakistan or Afghanistan, and perhaps even a little extra training in Africa. If there had been a firefight, it had ended quickly, with too few shots. And that was the point that worried him. His men weren’t experienced enough to kill armed enemies so quickly.
The road made a sudden, hairpin curve. The driver cornered the Land Rover around the curve and bounced it through a shallow riverbed with the skill of an experienced wadi basher. Najid checked his weapon. The magazine was full. He moved the lever on his AK-47 from safety to semi-auto, the position he preferred when shooting. He put the weapon out of the window and laid the muzzle over the mirror, ready to fire at any threat that materialized ahead.
In the back seat, his man positioned himself in the center, and pointed his muzzle up between the seats and out through the windshield.
The road snaked through a few curves, finally coming to a section that ran straight. Not too far in the distance, a few vehicles sat in the middle of the road.
The driver slowed, and Najid commanded him to stop. He flung his door open, jumped out, and raised his weapon to his shoulder, using the door for whatever cover it provided. The two men with him positioned themselves on the other side of the Land Rover.
A man was jogging up the road toward the SUV before the dust settled around them. He looked like one of the men Najid had positioned at the roadblock. Down along the sights on his rifle, Najid looked past the jogging man. He spotted what looked like a half-dozen people lying on the shoulder. A few armed men were visible around the vehicles and in the trees nearby.
Breathing heavily, the runner coming toward them slowed, and raised his rifle over his head. He wasn’t wearing protective gear. None of the men Najid left at the roadblocks wore gear—they were expendable.
Certain of the runner’s identity, Najid waved him closer. “Come.”
The man hurried over to stand on the other side of the door.
“What happened?” Najid asked.
The runner pointed behind him. “Doctors. Aid workers.”
Najid looked at the bodies.
“They are dead.” After speaking, the runner focused on Najid’s masked face, looking for some reaction.
Najid nodded. Those were his orders to the men he’d left at the roadblocks—kill anyone attempting to enter the village. “Did any escape?”
“No.”
Najid pointed toward where the ambush had taken place. To his driver he motioned, “Let’s go.”
All four men got into the Land Rover and drove up to where the other vehicles were parked. Najid got out. All the men watched him, waiting for his commands. He walked over to the edge of the dirt road and looked at seven people laying face down, each with at least one bullet hole in his body—mostly to the head, some in the back.
Najid looked around. The doctors appeared to have lain down, expecting perhaps to be robbed, not executed.
He turned and looked through a window into the back of the first vehicle. Boxes of medical supplies and some cases with scraped paint and worn edges were stacked. Those medical supplies could have come in handy for the sick townsfolk, but the arrival of the doctors occurred earlier than Najid had hoped. That pushed up Najid’s timeline. The townsfolk had fulfilled their purpose of infecting his young, western jihadists. Now, the townsfolk were expendable.
To the men in the HAZMAT suits, he pointed at the doctors’ vehicles and said, “Take them to the village.” To the men on the roadblock, he pointed at the bodies and said, “Drag them into the jungle. Stay ready. Others will come.”
Najid walked up to the man in charge of the roadblock. “Did any of them have radios or telephones?”
“Yes,” the man answered.
“Did they call for help?”
“I don’t think so,” replied the man.
“Where are the devices?”
The man pointed to a spot on the road near the rear of the first vehicle. “Smashed.”
Najid looked over toward the broken pieces of electronics scattered in the dirt. “Good.”
Chapter 47
The gunshots startled Salim. He looked across the sick and the dying on the floor of the ward. Jalal was looking back at him, frozen. He’d heard the shots, too. Salim slowly looked down at his water pail and cup as if to say, “What do I do with this when we get attacked?”
Jalal shrugged.
Salim heard some shouting outside and the sound of a car speeding off. He looked back down at his pail. It wasn’t empty, not nearly. He motioned to Jalal—it was time for an early refill. He stepped over a woman whose eyes were rolling back as she seemed to go into seizures—gurgling, choking on something in her throat. Salim glanced over toward the Tyvek-covered man tending to the boy. He had to be a doctor or a nurse, but he didn’t even look up. Salim looked down at the woman. She was just another one dying.
With a shame in his heart that would surely disappoint his instructors from the past few months, he glanced back at the woman as he slowly headed for the door, seriously wondering if he’d died and gone to hell.
Jalal was out the door first and already going down the stairs when Salim let the door slam shut as he hurried down to walk beside him. “What do you think?”
“How many shots did you hear?”
Salim wasn’t counting. “Five? Ten? I don’t know.”
“Did it sound like a gun battle to you?”
Salim shook his head. “No. I didn’t hear any automatic weapons. Single shots, mostly.”
“Mostly,” Jalal agreed.