“I do, but it isn’t capable of making international calls. I think your only option would be to buy a cell phone and—”
“Buy a phone,” he interjected. “There’s somewhere I can do that here?”
“Of course. Just follow this corridor to the end and turn left. You can’t miss it.”
The store was right where she said it was, but there was only one person working and five customers in line. Based on the impatient tone of the man in front of the counter and the bored expression of the woman behind it, progress could be stalled for hours.
“Jon?”
He spun and saw Howell at the entrance to the shop, waving him over. They retreated to the terminal’s far wall, out of earshot of the people flowing back and forth.
“We’ve got a problem, mate.”
“What? Are there other airstrips?”
“No. But I found that tall bloke from the cave.”
“The one who infected himself ?”
Howell nodded.
“Where?”
“Going through security. He’s getting on a direct flight to Brussels and he doesn’t look like he’s feeling all that well.”
Smith blinked hard, calculating how long the man had been infected and adding the time it would take to fly to Belgium.
“Even using De Vries’s most optimistic estimate, he’s going to go fully symptomatic on that plane,” Smith said. “When he starts attacking the other passengers, they’ll most likely think he’s a terrorist. There’s no telling how many people he’ll infect before they get control of him.”
“Boarding has already started,” Howell prompted. “We don’t have much time. Can you get in touch with someone who can bring that plane down somewhere safe?”
“He’s a decoy, Peter. Omidi infected someone else and left Dahab here as a diversion.”
“No question. But you have to admit, it’s one hell of a good diversion.”
He was right. Omidi could be anywhere — waiting for his jet to arrive in a private lounge a hundred yards away, on his way to a remote airstrip in a hired helicopter, or heading for the border in an unmarked car full of Iranian security personnel. Their chances of finding him at this point were hovering around zero.
Smith looked at the man still arguing about his phone and the mild interest they were getting from yet another machine-gun-toting guard. Trying to cut in line would be pointless — it wouldn’t get him the phone any faster and would certainly bring airport security down on them. Explaining to the guard that the Sudanese had to be prevented from getting on that flight would likely accomplish nothing but involving an ever-increasing number of supervisors and setting into motion the glacial African bureaucracy.
“Boss?” Howell prompted.
“I’m entertaining suggestions.”
“If we can get into the boarding area fast enough, we may be able to find a way to take him.”
Smith shook his head. “Too much possibility of blood getting thrown around. We’d be killed or arrested, and someone infected could get on that plane or out into Kampala. Are there seats left on the flight?”
“Probably, but I seem to have misplaced my travel documents.”
Smith pulled his, Howell’s, and Sarie’s passports from his pocket. “They were still in the glove box. The one thing a child soldier living in the jungle would have no use for.”
“So we’re going to let him get on a plane to Europe?”
“You see a plane; I see an airtight quarantine with a good international communication system and only a couple hundred people at risk.”
Howell shrugged, not bothering to hide his skepticism. “It’s your party. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Me too,” Smith said, starting for the Brussels Airlines counter.
59
Padshah Gohlam looked down at his watch, but the hands had ceased glowing. The movement of the stars suggested that it was past two a.m. and the aches beginning in his young body supported that estimate.
His training for this mission had begun almost the day he was born in a remote part of central Afghanistan. The mountains of the Hindu Kush were more barren but had the same penetrating cold, the same overwhelming solitude. His father, a great and pious man, had taught him to move silently and invisibly through the desolation, avoiding the Americans’ technology and ambushing their special forces as they tried to claim his country for Christendom.
When his father died, the Americans, who still believed the fiction that he was a supporter of the infidel invasion, had given the young Padshah a visa to study in Maryland. And he had suffered through it — the arrogant professors, the women sitting unashamed next to him in his classes, the curriculum devoid of God. In truth, though, he’d only been waiting to be called upon. Waiting for this night.
He reached up and gently folded back a branch of the tree he was sitting in, examining the tiny farmhouse a hundred meters away. Much of it was obscured by foliage, but there was a natural hole that revealed the driveway and part of the icy path to the front door. Once again, God had provided.
The snow started again, and he had to admit to himself that the Western hunting clothing he’d purchased was far superior to what he grew up with. So many of his enemies were still alive because of a slight cold-induced tremor in his hands. But not tonight.
He saw headlights for the first time in hours and lifted his rifle, sighting through the scope at the vehicle turning into the driveway. The door was thrown open and a shock of blond hair gleamed in the dome light as the woman pulled herself unsteadily from the car.
Probably drunk, he thought. Without the supervision of a father or husband, who knew what she might have been doing? This was what the Americans wanted to do to his people — strip them of their identity and turn their daughters into whores. How could a country that was unable to control its women ever hope to control Afghanistan?
She moved awkwardly along the slick ground, turning up the collar of her long coat as she picked her way toward the door. This was the great Randi Russell? The woman who had killed so many of his Taliban brothers? It was almost impossible to believe the stories now that he saw her in person.
She was initially in profile, and he waited until she turned toward the door, unwittingly squaring her back in his crosshairs. Gohlam took a breath and held it, quelling his excitement and concentrating on not subconsciously anticipating the rifle’s recoil.
The crack of it seemed impossibly loud amid the falling snow, echoing through the forest for a moment before fading into the ringing in his ears. Russell pitched forward, bouncing off the door before collapsing into the snow piled at the edge of the walkway.
Gohlam chambered another round before sweeping the scope across her blood-spattered back, finally letting the crosshairs stop on the back of her head. A silent prayer for the men who had fallen to her was on his lips as his finger began to tense again on the trigger.
The sound of the shot was all wrong, and instead of the satisfying impact of the butt against his shoulder, he felt the hot sting of wood shards penetrating his cheek.
It took him only a moment to understand what was happening, and he threw himself to the right, narrowly avoiding a second bullet that exploded against the tree trunk he’d been leaning against. Branches buffeted him as he fell, slowing his descent enough that when he hit the ground, he was able to immediately roll to his feet and start running. Another shot sounded and he waited for it to carry him to God, but instead it hissed harmlessly past.
Randi Russell tried to move, instinct telling her to get to cover when virtually every other system had shut down. She could hear shouting and gunshots but couldn’t feel her arms or legs. The flair of pain in her back had disappeared into numbness, and she found it impossible to discern whether or not she was breathing. The snow next to her had turned red and she tried to grasp what that meant.