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  ROTTERS

  ALPHA CONTACT

  Carl R. Cart

  Copyright 2014

  Other Books By This Author:

  ROTTERS

  ROTTERS: BRAVO COMPANY

  DWARFS OF THE DEAD

  DETOUR 366

  MORE ZOMBIES THAN BULLETS

  ZOMBIEMEISTER 9

  This book is a work of fiction. Zombies aren’t real; but if we keep cutting down the rain forests and poisoning the oceans, it won’t really matter anyway.

  The characters in this book are imaginary. Any resemblance to any person living, dead, or undead is purely coincidental and unintentional.

  I have no inkling of what a CIA operative really does, but if you meet one, give them a hug for me.

  Prologue

  02:50 p.m. Zulu

  Illegal Logging Site

  Democratic Republic of Congo

  Tim Miller pushed through the heavy undergrowth and stopped in amazement. His guide looked back, a sad smile on his face. The absolutely gigantic mahogany trees in the valley below him were the largest Tim had ever seen in a long career of cutting big trees.

  Gigantic really wasn’t the correct adjective for these trees. The words colossal and primordial sprang to mind as Tim walked down into the corridor formed by the massive behemoths, craning his head back to follow the enormous trunks into the canopy overhead. The logger reverently laid his hand on the gnarly bark of the closest tree. He realized that these were incredibly old. They had stood here for centuries. They reminded Tim of the pillars of Heaven.

  “Yeah, man, that’s what I’m talkin’ about!” his partner, Rick Johnson, shouted as he leaped joyously from tree to tree. “These are some high-dollar mother-fuckers!” The veteran logger didn’t see ancient trees, he saw dollars and yen.

  “I don’t know about this,” Tim dissembled.

  “What are you talking about, man? This is the fucking mother-load! Do you have any idea what our bonus on these bastards will be? We’ll make more money than we did in the entire last six months!” Rick argued.

  “I’m pretty sure these trees are in a reserve,” Tim pointed out. He looked at their local guide. The man turned forlornly away from him and pretended not to understand.

  “Of course they’re in a fucking reserve! They wouldn’t be here if they weren’t! We are in the deep woods, brother. The primordial fucking cradle of the Earth, and all that shit! I can guarantee you that we are the first white men who have ever stood here.” Rick paused to point to their guide. “If Sambo, there, hadn’t led us in here, we never would have found this fucking place!”

  “I know,” Tim replied. “But there’s something else. Can’t you feel the forest here? Something feels weird.”

  “You’re not talking about that voodoo shit the locals were sayin’, are you? How we shouldn’t cut the old trees because spirits live inside ‘em and shit?” Rick asked incredulously.

  “No, man, it’s not that,” Tim answered slowly. “I don’t mind cutting trees, you know that, but I guess I just don’t feel right killing something this ancient; it just feels wrong, somehow.”

  “Fuck that hippy-dippy green shit, man,” Rick shot back. “The Chinese are gonna’ pay extreme high-dollar for this lumber!”

  Tim looked sadly around him at the mahogany trees.

  Rick spat on the loam. “If we don’t take ‘em down, somebody else will. There’s only so many of these old trees left.” He turned to walk back the way he had come. “You can do whatever you want, mother fucker, I’m cutting down these trees!” He shouted at their guide, “Yo, Sambo, go get the rest of the crew!”

  Two hours later, the valley was altered beyond recognition. The downed trees lay stretched out like fallen giants; their age had ended and man’s was upon them.

  The roar of a chainsaw and smoke filled the air. Tim and Rick worked together as a team to bring each giant down. The blade of Tim’s chainsaw was six feet long; he thrust it through the tree trunk and slowly pulled it back. Cutting a big tree took considerable skill and strength. The chain spun, spitting out dark green saw dust and oil. A strong pungent odor filled the air as the saw chewed its way through to the tree’s inner core.

  The saw suddenly bogged down and stopped. Tim tugged back, but the tree had shifted imperceptibly and the blade was pinched.

  “Fuck,” Tim growled, wiping away the dripping sweat from his eyes.

  Rick picked up a large steel wedge and a ten-pound sledge-hammer. He drove the wedge into the fresh cut as close to the blade as he could, prying the cut open again.

  Tim pulled back on the saw’s handle, tugging vainly at the trapped blade.

  “Come on, you pussy!” Rick urged. He hit the wedge again for good measure.

  Tim yanked back, grunting with the tremendous effort.

  The saw sprang free, and Tim staggered back, overbalanced with the momentum. The jagged blade tore across Rick’s left leg, tearing through his coveralls and into the meat beneath. Bright red blood spurted onto the dark forest loam.

  Rick grasped the cut with both hands, his face set in a mask of shock and pain. Blood trickled through his interlocked fingers.

  Tim dropped the saw and cursed, “Fuck, man, I didn’t mean to do that. Are you okay?”

  Rick took a staggering step backwards. His body went ram-rod straight, and then he pitched face first into the mud.

  “Rick!” Tim screamed in concern. He quickly knelt beside him and carefully turned the stricken logger over. The cut on his leg wasn’t that bad, it wasn’t even bleeding anymore, but Rick was convulsing and beet red. His eyes bulged and every vein on his body stood out in stark relief.

  “Fuck’s sake, man, talk to me!” Tim screamed.

  Rick suddenly gasped for air and then slowly exhaled. He stopped breathing.

  Tim panicked. He put his ear to Rick’s chest, but he couldn’t hear a heartbeat. Tim tilted Rick’s head backwards; it was all he could do to slowly force his friend’s locked neck muscles backwards. He forced the clenched jaw open and took a deep breath. Tim clamped his lips over Rick’s mouth and forced air into his lungs. A foul coppery taste flooded Tim’s mouth, and he stumbled away in blind terror.

  Now it was Tim’s turn to convulse among the wilting leaves and stinking sawdust.

  To Regional Office DRC, A/O Field Agent Foster

  Case 5-8G Status-RIA

  US State Dept. requests any available information on the following missing persons, employees of GCL Inc. Last seen in the immediate area of village of Gatou, Haet-Mumbou Province, DRC.

  Kowalski, Steven R.

  Miller, Timothy K.

  Pannert, Jean.

  Johnson, Rick D.

  Tanner, Duane C.

  See attached dossier.

  At least four other foreign nationals reported missing from same party.

  Be advised, GCL was working under contract to supply Chinese markets, and has come under scrutiny for illegal operations, with at least eight violations pending. See previous report 3-7S for additional information, cases active.

  Johannesburg, SA, Regional Supervisor Sharpe.

  Chapter 1

  04:15 p.m. Zulu

  CIA Office Kinshasa

  Democratic Republic of Congo

  Jerry Foster cursed at the fax machine. It was four-fifteen on a Friday afternoon, and a fucking fax was coming out of the fucking fax machine. The very fact that Jerry’s office still had a fax machine was indicative to him of just how far outside of the real world he actually was. Jerry had only been with the company for six years, and he had spent the last two of them here in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or as the company called it, the DRC.

  The CIA put you where they needed you, not
where you wanted to go.

  Jerry would never have volunteered to go to the DRC, and he didn’t suggest it to anyone as a vacation spot. The country had a history of violence, oppression, and death that went back to the pre-colonial days. Conditions had hardly improved for the majority of the population since then. Most of the country’s sixty-six million people lived in abject poverty. Thousands of people still starved to death each month, and disease and famine were the norm. Two full-blown civil wars and various localized conflicts had erupted between the over two-hundred and fifty ethnic groups living in the Congo since the 1960’s. Ethnic cleansing was still occurring, and the DRC was known as the rape capital of the world. Corruption and graft were common-place in what passed for the local government.

  Despite the common people’s absolute poverty, the country was extremely rich in lumber and mineral wealth. Roughly ninety percent of its revenue came from mining and mineral exports. Diamonds, gold, copper, tin, and cobalt were abundant; especially cobalt. The Congo’s reserves of cobalt ore made it of strategic interest to the United States. That alone could account for the CIA’s interest in the region. Jerry knew the DRC; he knew its history and its possibilities, and how they were being squandered.

  Jerry considered himself lucky to be assigned to the capital. Kinshasa was a shit-hole, but at least it still had a two-star hotel, and that hotel had an air-conditioned bar that served real scotch. He was just about to leave for his afternoon drink when the fax came through. For a few seconds, he almost ignored it, but then he changed his mind. The field agent grudgingly walked to the machine and picked up the fax. He silently said a prayer that the fax would not necessitate a trip in country.

  Jerry absolutely hated going outside the city and into the jungle. He would do almost anything to avoid leaving the comforts of civilization, which was ironic considering his office of assignment.

  “Come on, baby, come on, baby,” he urged as his eyes scanned the document. “Shit!” he cursed as he finished it. He rubbed his furrowed brow in concern. His drink would have to wait. Jerry realized he would probably have to work through the entire weekend. He would have to travel, he would have to sweat in the equatorial heat, and he would have to earn his paycheck. He silently cursed the loggers and the logging companies and the Chinese with their insatiable appetites for all the illegal commodities they could export from the Congo. He cursed the trees and the dark forbidding jungle and his bad luck for being stuck in the DRC in the first place.

  “Fuck me,” he groaned. “Inconsiderate cock-suckers!”

  Foreign workers were always getting themselves kidnapped or lost or killed in the jungle. People routinely just disappeared. The work was extremely dangerous, but the pay was high, and they came in droves and planeloads. The missing loggers had to be Americans of course, making their problems Jerry’s problems. Jerry didn’t give a shit or a fuck about anyone dumb enough to come to the DRC on purpose. They knew the risks and they got whatever they got. A troop of missing boy scouts wouldn’t have gotten his slightest sympathy if they had gone into the rain forest voluntarily.

  But, of course, the logger’s families had contacted the State Department, who eventually contacted the CIA, and shit rolled downhill until it landed as a fax at almost five on a Friday afternoon on Jerry’s desk.

  Jerry resigned himself to the inevitable and tried to think for a moment. He had never even heard of the village of Gatou. That didn’t mean anything in itself. There were hundreds of tiny villages scattered throughout the country he had never heard of. With any luck, he could find out something by making a few phone calls. He would start there first, and then proceed. No need to go off half-cocked. He also considered the fact that he could make calls from the bar just as efficiently as he could from his office. Jerry pocketed his cell phone, turned off the lights, and locked the door behind him.

  Ten minutes later, he was perched on his favorite bar stool in the lounge of the Kinshasa Ambassador Hotel. He was regular here; he knew all the bartenders and waiters, the desk staff and the porters. The bartenders kept him in stiff drinks, and the rest collected gossip and intelligence for him. Anyone who visited the capital ended up at the Ambassador.

  The bar was dead, but it was early, and Jerry liked it that way. An air-conditioned, empty bar with a half-full glass of good scotch on the rocks was Jerry’s idea of heaven. It was his ideal work environment. Information about the DRC, its leaders and outlaws, foreign interests, drugs, scandal, and intrigue flowed through the bars like whiskey sloshing from a bottle to a shot glass. People talked more once they were drunk or high. Jerry had figured out long ago that he could learn more in fifteen minutes in a sleazy bar than he could in a week on the streets.

  For a CIA agent, Jerry wasn’t much to look at. At thirty-eight, he was already half-bald, and very much overweight. He abhorred exercise, and never missed a steak, sandwich, donut, or a drink. He dressed like a slob; his ill-fitting suits always looked like he had slept in them half an hour after he put them on. He didn’t carry a gun, and certainly didn’t seem intimidating. The CIA field agent worked very hard to cultivate his friendly, bored business-man image. He seemed innocuous, but he was sharp and calculating. He liked to delegate his work, and let his contacts and paid informants bring the things he needed to him. Jerry was on excellent terms with most of the prostitutes and fences in Kinshasa. He had also bribed most of the minor government and military officials, and a couple of the higher-ranking ones. He got the job done with minimal fuss. Most of his company work involved gathering information discreetly, without anyone wondering who was asking or why. He didn’t do wet work, and actually considered himself to be one of the good guys.

  It was a living.

  Twenty or thirty phone calls and a half a bottle of scotch later, Jerry learned that no one knew anything about his missing loggers. No one was coming forward to claim responsibility for killing any foreigners. There were no ransom demands. No bodies had been found. There were some disquieting rumors of a viral outbreak in the Haet-Mombou district near Gatou. Some deaths had already been reported there. Jerry dismissed the reports out of hand. They were hardly worth noticing in Africa where viruses killed hundreds every day, and he was fairly sure they had nothing to do with his missing person’s case. Foreigners who became sick were evacuated to a hospital, and his boys weren’t in any of them.

  GCL, Inc. wasn’t talking to him; they wouldn’t even return his calls. His contact at the BBC, a journalist named Allison Snowe, knew even less than he did. All of his calls came up dead ends.

  Jerry finished his drink and motioned for another. Everything about this assignment screamed uncomfortable trip into the jungle, and Jerry didn’t like it. He considered his options as he nursed his last drink. They were thin and none.

  “Damn,” Jerry muttered. He went through his phone’s contact list until he found the man he wanted. He dialed the number, and waited patiently for the man to answer.

  “Angel, it's Jerry. I need to hire you for a few days’ work.”

  Attention of Regional Supervisor - Central Africa

  Case 5-8G

  Orders Received - Enroute to Gatou, Haet-Mumbou District

  Any Assets that region?

  Request Additional Information GCL Inc.

  FA Foster - Kinshasa DRC

  Chapter 2

  09:05 a.m. Zulu

  Kinshasa

  Democratic Republic of Congo

  Anjewasisie Jebo, or as his English-speaking friends called him, Angel, was a native Congolese guide. Luckily, Jerry had been able to bribe him to drop what he was doing and come to Kinshasa immediately. Jerry liked working with Angel; the man was amazing.

  Angel was fluent in all the local dialects, and knew the Congo well. He had traveled the entire region on foot or by boat. He seemed to know someone everywhere he went, and he was an expert hunter and tracker. Jerry had never met anyone as physically strong as Angel. The man was a solid mass of muscle and bone; as ugly as sin and as friendly as a saint
. They were polar opposites, but for some inexplicable reason, Angel liked Jerry too. Or, at least, Angel liked Jerry’s money. Jerry always paid the guide a huge bonus.

  Angel drove through the night to arrive in the capital the next morning. He found Jerry in the Ambassador lobby, eating breakfast and nursing a hangover.

  He strode forward and crushed the hapless field agent in a bear hug. “Jerry, it is good to see you,” he rumbled. His “Jerry” sounded like “Ja-Ree.”

  “Put me down, you big bastard,” Jerry complained as Angel gently dropped him to the floor. “It’s good to see you, too.”

  “It has been so long,” Angel complained. “When did I last see you? Ahh. The troubles in Angola.” He poked Jerry in his ample belly. “You have been in the city too long, I think,” he laughed merrily.

  “You’re not getting any smaller, either,” Jerry retorted.

  “All my wives are good cooks,” Angel replied with a shrug. He helped himself to some of Jerry’s food.

  Jerry had briefed Angel on the phone about the missing loggers, and where they had disappeared. He was concerned about travel in the region, and picked Angel’s brain while they both ate more breakfast.

  “Haet-Mombou is a primitive place, my friend, you will love it there.” Angel grinned. “Dirt roads. No services at all. It is the old Congo. There are still Pygmies there. But it is close to Junta. It is almost a city and they have a bar. As I remember, they serve a good monkey on Thursday nights.”

  “Great,” Jerry groaned. “Have you ever been to Gatou?”

  “Once, long ago,” Angel replied. “But it probably is the same as I remember. It is far from here, almost a thousand kilometers.”