Read Online Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller: Book 2 by Bobby Adair - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Bobby Adair
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by the near absence of new Ebola cases being reported around the world. He hoped for, and desperately depended on, so many more.
Najid’s few contacts in Western law enforcement agencies told him eighteen of his unwitting martyrs had been apprehended. How that happened, Najid guessed, was that the young men must have been under the scrutiny of some Western intelligence agency before they’d come into his possession. His mistake was that of trusting Hakimi to do the work of securing his own organization.
Hadi, Najid’s computer man and cousin, had been keeping Najid apprised on the progress of his remaining men with a meeting each morning and another in the afternoon. At each meeting, Hadi had reported that fewer and fewer of the jihadists had shown up on flights for which their tickets had already been purchased. Only eleven of the one hundred and eight made it to the end. The last of the tickets had been used the day before by an Indonesian boy who was currently at the Auckland airport in New Zealand. He was the only one responding to messages and awaiting further instructions.
Najid laughed bitterly. Auckland—the hundredth busiest airport in the world. That wasn’t the kind of information Najid would ever have been aware of had it not been for Hadi. Hadi had made the ticket purchases, chosen the routes, and optimized the layovers.
Optimize the layovers? Najid didn’t follow Hadi’s logic on it. Hadi had first taken a list of the hundred busiest airports—from Atlanta, Georgia, which processed on average over ten thousand travelers an hour, down to Auckland, which processed maybe a sixth of that number at fourteen million a year. Not knowing which of the jihadists would turn symptomatic and when made for a statistical game. Hadi had to schedule infected men to fly through the busiest airports spread across the globe’s different regions on laughably circuitous routes.
In Europe, they cycled through Frankfurt and London. In the Far East, they visited Tokyo, Beijing, and Hong Kong. In America, Hadi had seven of the top twenty busiest airports in the world to choose from, not to mention all the others that filled out the top one hundred. For geography’s sake, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, and Mumbai each received extra visits.
He divided individual trips up between coach and business class. In coach, passengers who sat near contagious jihadists were most likely people going to or from an annual vacation; people who could carry the disease on to infect their friends and family where they lived. Those in business class were most likely to fly with great regularity, picking up the virus and perpetuating it through their fellow business travelers even after all of the jihadists had become too ill to continue.
Through careful planning, Hadi had been able to provide Najid with an estimate on the number of people exposed to his infected men through close contact at an airport or on an airplane. Each day Hadi provided a low and a high estimate, all graphed on a pretty curve with a second line for the growth of indirect infections. Unfortunately, the range of uncertainty between the low and high estimate of the number of infected after eight weeks—the range of time over which Hadi projected into the future—wasn’t any better than Najid’s pure guesswork, somewhere between a few thousand and a few billion.
Najid left the disposition of the remaining jihadist in Auckland to Hadi. Najid suspected that if the man wasn’t showing symptoms already, he was probably in the clear.
For Najid, the question of what to do about Firas Hakimi was a more pressing problem. Hakimi had made no attempt to contact him despite the ignorant English boy, Jalal, whom Najid had sent his way.
Had that plan failed?
Had that plan failed, as well?
Najid stared at the water in the pool a little longer and decided he wasn’t going to be victimized by his mood. He chose to move forward pragmatically and accept the pain of his
Najid’s few contacts in Western law enforcement agencies told him eighteen of his unwitting martyrs had been apprehended. How that happened, Najid guessed, was that the young men must have been under the scrutiny of some Western intelligence agency before they’d come into his possession. His mistake was that of trusting Hakimi to do the work of securing his own organization.
Hadi, Najid’s computer man and cousin, had been keeping Najid apprised on the progress of his remaining men with a meeting each morning and another in the afternoon. At each meeting, Hadi had reported that fewer and fewer of the jihadists had shown up on flights for which their tickets had already been purchased. Only eleven of the one hundred and eight made it to the end. The last of the tickets had been used the day before by an Indonesian boy who was currently at the Auckland airport in New Zealand. He was the only one responding to messages and awaiting further instructions.
Najid laughed bitterly. Auckland—the hundredth busiest airport in the world. That wasn’t the kind of information Najid would ever have been aware of had it not been for Hadi. Hadi had made the ticket purchases, chosen the routes, and optimized the layovers.
Optimize the layovers? Najid didn’t follow Hadi’s logic on it. Hadi had first taken a list of the hundred busiest airports—from Atlanta, Georgia, which processed on average over ten thousand travelers an hour, down to Auckland, which processed maybe a sixth of that number at fourteen million a year. Not knowing which of the jihadists would turn symptomatic and when made for a statistical game. Hadi had to schedule infected men to fly through the busiest airports spread across the globe’s different regions on laughably circuitous routes.
In Europe, they cycled through Frankfurt and London. In the Far East, they visited Tokyo, Beijing, and Hong Kong. In America, Hadi had seven of the top twenty busiest airports in the world to choose from, not to mention all the others that filled out the top one hundred. For geography’s sake, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, and Mumbai each received extra visits.
He divided individual trips up between coach and business class. In coach, passengers who sat near contagious jihadists were most likely people going to or from an annual vacation; people who could carry the disease on to infect their friends and family where they lived. Those in business class were most likely to fly with great regularity, picking up the virus and perpetuating it through their fellow business travelers even after all of the jihadists had become too ill to continue.
Through careful planning, Hadi had been able to provide Najid with an estimate on the number of people exposed to his infected men through close contact at an airport or on an airplane. Each day Hadi provided a low and a high estimate, all graphed on a pretty curve with a second line for the growth of indirect infections. Unfortunately, the range of uncertainty between the low and high estimate of the number of infected after eight weeks—the range of time over which Hadi projected into the future—wasn’t any better than Najid’s pure guesswork, somewhere between a few thousand and a few billion.
Najid left the disposition of the remaining jihadist in Auckland to Hadi. Najid suspected that if the man wasn’t showing symptoms already, he was probably in the clear.
For Najid, the question of what to do about Firas Hakimi was a more pressing problem. Hakimi had made no attempt to contact him despite the ignorant English boy, Jalal, whom Najid had sent his way.
Had that plan failed?
Had that plan failed, as well?
Najid stared at the water in the pool a little longer and decided he wasn’t going to be victimized by his mood. He chose to move forward pragmatically and accept the pain of his
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