The Days Before: A Prequel to the Five Roads to Texas series (A Five Roads to Texas Novel Book 8) Read online

  French, Kikongo, and Swahili were the three main languages spoken in the Congo, and Phillipe was a French ex-pat, so that meant the people who’d attacked the girl probably weren’t local. It could have been the Tutsi rebels, or it could have been any other number of groups vying for power in the region. She waited a moment for her assistant to continue, but the man on the other end of the phone line had gone deathly silent.

  “Everything alright?” Andrew asked.

  She shook her head slightly. “Phillipe? Are you there?” she asked into the phone.

  “I must go,” he replied. “They are back. With guns.”

  The phone line clicked dead and she looked at the display. The phone was tracking two satellites—not enough for a perfect signal, but enough to stay connected. She held it up in Andrew’s direction. “Phillipe said the jungle people killed Sarai. Does that make any sense to you?”

  The doctor’s eyes widened. “Jungle people? Who—why? She was negative for Ebola and Cholera. Her body was in shock from the attack.”

  Riley nodded grimly, shuffling down the aisle toward the exit. The girl had snuck off into the jungle with her lover a week ago. She’d stumbled into the village the next morning, covered in blood with the bite marks across her arms and face, mumbling about an animal in the undergrowth. The bites were consistent with a primate and the only two that naturally inhabited the Congo were bonobos and chimpanzees. Her lover’s body was never found.

  “Phillipe didn’t say. He doesn’t speak the native Kikongo, so he didn’t know what the attackers said.” She paused as she stepped down the small folding stairs to the pitted tarmac below the plane. When Andrew pulled up beside her, she continued. “He stopped talking suddenly in the middle of our call and said they were back. Then the phone went dead.”

  Andrew screwed up his face as he looked around them. “Maybe we should have accepted that security detail that the State guys offered.”

  They’d stopped by the US Embassy in Kinshasa after the utter failure of convincing the Congolese government to provide aid for the villages dotted throughout the jungles. The embassy’s security chief had offered to provide a small escort team of two or three guys, men who were legally allowed to carry weapons because of their positions with the diplomatic service. Riley had refused. She’d been in and out of Africa and South America for nearly a decade on her own. She wasn’t about to start taking handouts from the State Department any time soon. If she accepted their help once they’d use it against her everywhere she went.

  Not in this lifetime, she scoffed.

  Riley and Andrew waited for a taxi to take them to the riverfront. Their basecamp in the village of Bena Makima was upstream four hundred and fifty miles by boat along the Kasai River. Best-case scenario, it would take them at least twenty-four hours to make it all the way to the village. That was a long time for them to wonder what had happened to Phillipe and the rest of their people at the village.

  The boat had to be at least double Riley’s age. Probably more, she thought as she stared at the places where the paint had chipped, revealing multiple layers of various colored paint underneath. Beyond her line of sight, the muddy, brown water stretched on for as far as she could see.

  They’d been on the river for what seemed like forever, but in reality, it’d only been two days. Their boat was a fairly small craft with four crewmen and themselves aboard. Three of the crew doubled as security, toting rifles everywhere they went while the fourth was the pilot. The Kasai River was busy with larger, flat-bottomed boats motoring up and down the river between the Congo River to the north and the country of Angola to the south. The vast majority of them hauled ores that some Chinese company or another was mining and paying the Congolese pennies on the dollar for what it was actually worth to the rest of the world. In places, the bigger boats made it nearly impossible for their boat to pass, so they lost valuable time waiting in the shallows as the boats chugged by. Those larger boats sported their own sets of guards who brandished their weapons to discourage any attempt at piracy.

  She wasn’t sure how far from their destination they were at this point. They’d had to stop twice for fuel and overnight rest. To make matters worse, they’d turned tail to run back downriver for a couple of miles when they saw a group of armed men crossing the river via a suspended rope bridge. While the presence of an unknown group of men with weapons wasn’t cause for concern by itself, the vast expanse of ungoverned jungles gave Tutsi rebels from neighboring Rwanda a place to hide and attack back across the border. The rebels, in conjunction with the Congo’s own political instability were enough to make the boat captain err on the side of caution and drop anchor for several hours out of sight of the rope bridge.

  Andrew rejoined her under the canopy after talking with the pilot. He offered her a glass bottle of Coca Cola that they’d picked up at their last refuel station. The soda was cold to the touch and beads of condensation ran down the sides. “Thanks,” she said. “What’d he say?”

  “The captain says we are about five kilometers from the village. We’ll be able to see it very soon.”

  “Good. As crazy as it sounds, I miss sleeping in my own hammock.”

  Andrew grinned. “You’re not crazy. I know exactly what you mean. My backside was not cut out for sleeping on the wooden benches of this old junker.”

  The boat turned onto the Lulua River and began churning the last couple of kilometers to their final destination. The Lulua was a wide tributary to the Kasai that the village was located beside. At over a hundred feet across, anywhere else and it would be considered a major river, but compared to the Kasai, it was just a tributary, barely worthy of a name.

  Riley and Andrew sat quietly, watching the countryside as the jungle pressed close and silent beside the Lulua. The trees opened to the sky above, which boasted lazy white clouds floating in the blue. This was only her third time on the river, but the terrain had never felt as oppressive as it did now.

  “Do you feel that?” she asked her fellow doctor.

  He lifted his chin up to allow the gentle breeze to hit him in the neck to ease the unrelenting heat. “That breeze feels great.”

  “No, not that,” she said, shaking her head. “The jungle. It’s quiet. Something feels off.”

  He cocked his head. “Huh. I didn’t notice it, but now that you say something, it does feel different than normal.”

  Andrew had lived amongst the Congolese for two years, she’d only been in country for four weeks on assignment from the CDC to investigate reports of a potential outbreak of Ebola. The 2002-03 outbreak in the Congo had been the deadliest strain in history with a ninety percent death rate, so any time the virus was mentioned in the war-torn country, the World Health Organization responded immediately.

  So far, there had been no evidence of any type of viral hemorrhagic fevers, including Ebola, in the small villages along the Kasai River, but they had identified something that afflicted a few members of the local population. They just didn’t know what it was. It was some type of compound that neither of them had seen before. It attacked the brain and altered the victim’s mental state, making them extremely aggressive. Of the five villagers who’d contracted the disease, all had died.

  And now, the jungle seemed to be warning her that something else was wrong.

  “What do you think it means?” Riley asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never heard the jungle go quiet before. But, to be fair, it’s just background noise to me now—like the L in Chicago when I was a kid. Hardly noticed it, but tourists thought it was loud as hell.”

  Maybe that was why she’d been able to tell the difference. The jungle sounds weren’t background noise to her yet, and she would probably leave before she became accustomed to them. Before this, she’d been in the heavily populated slums of Prague investigating concerns of a false plague outbreak. If nothing presented itself soon regarding the feared Ebola outbreak, the CDC would recall her. Then, she could go anywhere for her next assignment.


  The boat went around a bend and shouts of alarm from the crew made her whip her head around so fast that a jolt of pain traveled down her neck. “Oh, ow!” she exclaimed, reaching up for her neck.

  Andrew glanced her way, but quickly turned his attention back to the front of the boat and pointed. “The… The village.”

  Riley massaged her neck as she tried to see what had happened. The scene before her didn’t make any sense. Where there should have been fifty-four wooden huts, there were only charred black remains. Everything had been burned to the ground. Here and there, faint white and gray smoke drifted from the ashes, meaning the fires had been out for a while—several hours at least. As the boat motored closer, she could make out skeletons. Hundreds of them of every size. Young and old alike had been put to the torch.

  Riley covered her mouth to keep from crying out. “Oh my God,” she mumbled. An arm settled over her shoulder and she leaned in to Andrew’s chest. “Who would have done such a thing?”

  Andrew made a noise in the back of his throat as if her were trying to clear away his own grief. “Any number of groups could have done this,” he said. “The real question is why did somebody do this? These people weren’t harming anyone. They didn’t get in the way of some big mining corporation…” he trailed off.

  “What is it?” Riley asked, looking up to him.

  “All of my work,” he replied. “Phillipe said they took the blood samples from the medical tent, right?”

  “Yeah. He said they killed Sarai and then took the samples. He didn’t say anything about your computers.” Andrew gestured mutely toward the smoldering remains of the medical tent where he’d stored his research. “I know it was your life work, Andrew, but these people—”

  “I don’t care about the damn thesis, Riley,” he barked. “We had hard data on those patients. It wasn’t Creutzfeldt-Jakob, but it mimicked a lot of its properties. I—I never got any of the test results completed before we had to go to Kinshasa. It’s all gone. Whatever this was, all of our research is gone.”

  A cold lump settled into the pit of her stomach, despite the heat. “It was a hit,” she surmised.

  He nodded. “I think somebody in the capital heard our description of the disease and decided to take matters into their own hands.”

  GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN

  “Outstanding work, Doctor Bergqvist.” Kasra Amol’s voice dripped with honey. “The field test in Africa worked perfectly. Exactly as we’d hoped.”

  Karl Bergqvist nodded, licking his lips. The temptress had returned to him after such a long time away. Their last meeting had been quite…convincing.

  “Thank you, Mistress. I’m glad you were pleased.”

  She wore a light blue trench coat and dark boots against the chill of the Swedish fall, “Oh, I am more than pleased, Doctor,” the woman replied. “I’m simply ecstatic.” She opened her carryon and pulled a small leather horse crop from inside.

  She sauntered over to him, setting her bag aside, before unbuckling the coat and allowing the edges to fall open. She was completely naked underneath. He grinned at the sight of the beautiful woman who’d returned to his lab after such a long time away. “I see, you’re—”

  She stopped his foolish attempt at witty banter by straddling him. He slid down in his office chair slightly, providing more contact between their lower regions than his previous upright position had allowed. Kasra leaned down and kissed him, pressing her tongue deeply into his mouth before allowing it to trail wetly along his cheek to his earlobe. “Your work to develop a rapid delivery system turns me on, Doctor. It makes me so wet to see the ideas that we hatched together bearing fruit.”

  He nodded, the combination of her breath on his neck and her lips on his ear sent a shiver down his spine. “I—I knew you’d like it, Mistress.”

  Kasra Amol had other scientists working on the cure for Alzheimer’s and convinced him of the government’s lack of interest in a cure. They were firmly in the pocket of Big Pharma, so every disease cured was a patient lost. She’d asked for him to develop a delivery system for an unknown pathogen that could be easily transferred from one person to another through body fluids, similar to HIV, but much improved. The eventual cure could be passed amongst the population without the government’s interference and the disease could be eradicated within a decade.

  The incredible sex had just been a boon, and it’d been far too long since their last meeting.

  “The flu antibody trial in The Congo was a complete success,” she said, rubbing her hands along his chest. “Can I see your data and notes on how you did it?”

  His breath caught in his throat as her hands plunged underneath his belt. “It wouldn’t make any sense to you, Mistress. It’s all very—” He stopped as her grip tightened on him and she began to stroke.

  “I know,” she purred. “I just want to see what a true work of genius looks like.”

  “It’s all very technical.”

  She withdrew her hand and stuck out her bottom lip. “Please, Doctor. I want to see it.”

  He sighed. “Can’t this wait until, after?”

  “No. It turns me on so much. I want to see it all.”

  He started to get up, but she pressed him down. “I want to see you work, Doctor.” Karl swiveled his chair back to the computer and he tried to lean forward. “No, just type it,” she directed. “I want to see it all.”

  He turned the chair slightly so he could see the keyboard as he typed his password in and then authenticated it with a secondary password. After a few seconds of navigating the menus, Karl was able to open the folder with his research. Several more subfolders inside were labeled with various parts of the project.

  “What are those,” Kasra Amol purred, putting a finger on the monitor as she ground her crotch into his. He wanted to take his pants off, before long, the jean material would rub away his skin.

  “Those are the failed compound notes,” he replied, reaching up to cup one of her breasts and feeling the hardened nipples. It’s been so long…

  “And those?” She pointed to another folder.

  “Those are the notes for things I was planning to try next if the current batch hadn’t proved successful.” He caressed her for a moment before allowing his hand to slip lower.

  She moaned slightly in pleasure, rubbing harder against him. “And this folder? What is this one?”

  “That’s the correct formulas and my DNA sequencing instructions.” He reached around with his other hand and clicked on the folder, displaying twenty or so files.

  “That is all of it?” she asked breathlessly.

  “All of my notes are here,” he confirmed. “What does that make you want to do to me, Mistress?” He unbuttoned his jeans, moving his hips back and forth to slide them down.

  She grabbed his hair on either side of his head, just behind his ears and guided his mouth to her body. “This is all so exciting. Are you sure there are no notes anywhere else? I want to see it all.”

  He sucked for a moment before backing away. “Everything I have is here.”

  “And what about backups?”

  Karl’s mind snapped back from the brink. “Excuse me?”

  She stood and slid his pants down before straddling him again, guiding him into her. “I asked about backups,” she whispered, rocking her hips forward and back. “Did you make any copies of the data?”

  “Uh, no…”

  “Any assistants? Maybe some cute little teacher’s aide that you fuck while showing her all of your work?”

  She began to grind into him, working him deeper into her as she pulled her body down onto him. “Ow!” he exclaimed. “You’re hurting me.”

  “You didn’t tell Karina about our little project?”

  Karl’s blood froze and he tried to pull away from her, but she was strong. She continued her rapid movements atop him. “Stop. I want you to leave,” he ordered.

  The door to his office opened and two large men pushed a smaller person through between th
em. It was Karina. She had tape over her mouth and both of her eyes were purple, one so swollen that she could no longer see through it.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “You were supposed to keep this project a secret, Doctor.” Kasra Amol leaned over and bit off the corner of his ear. Blood flowed from the wound and she licked her chin, smiling. “That’s good.”

  “Stop it!” he shouted, trying to pull out of her.

  She hooked her elbows under his armpits and rubbed frantically. “One more… Ah!” Her body shivered against him as she leaned forward. She held him tight for a long moment, then released him, rubbing at her crotch as she stepped away.

  “I told you not to share our secret, Doctor,” Kasra said as she strutted to where Karina stood trembling. She wiped her hand across the young woman’s nose and then slapped her. “Kill her,” she directed, reaching up into her hair.

  “Wait!” Karl begged. “I can—”

  He was cut off as Kasra Amol’s voice rose in a shriek of hatred and she lunged at him. Her fingers grasped a long, slender object that slid effortlessly through Karl Bergqvist’s eye and into his brain, silencing him forever.

  THREE

  * * *

  ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

  ONE YEAR AGO

  Ian scrubbed at his close-cropped hair. There was a lot more gray in it than there had been just six months ago. The shampoo stung his eyes as he dipped his head under the showerhead, but the feeling was good. He needed the minor irritation to get his mind working.

  He had a company to run, but the drawdown of the big wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had left him with little or no new business prospects for the last year. When his last contract had run out two months ago and wasn’t optioned for the third year, he’d had to make some hard choices. He needed to take care of his people, first and foremost, so he had to let the company’s plush offices in Crystal City, just one Metro stop away from the Pentagon, go back to the developer and they’d schlepped all the company gear down to Old Town Alexandria. Military contracting companies located in Alexandria were just a few months of poor business decisions away from moving outside the Beltway completely.