Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller: Book 2 by Bobby Adair Read Free Book Online Page B

Oblivious to Salim’s tone of voice, the woman laid her hand on his and said, “I thought maybe you were nervous about landing. I know what a mileage run is. I have a friend who hit a million miles last spring.”
    That impressed Salim as he imagined his discomfort in getting through the ten or twenty thousand he’d already racked up. “A million?”
    Out the window, the ground rose closely enough to convey a sense of the speed they were traveling.
    “Yes,” she said, “both him and his wife.”
    The airplane jolted, and the wheels briefly screeched as rubber touched concrete. Wind roared over the wings, and the plane braked hard. The seatbelt tugged at Salim’s lap again as he prayed that he could hold on just a few minutes longer.
    The airplane slowed to taxi speed and started bumping across the joints in the runway’s concrete slabs. People started clicking the clasps on their laps in anticipation of the seatbelt sign being turned off. Passengers retrieved bags from beneath the seats in front of them and situated themselves to exit.
    Salim removed his phone from his pocket and turned it on. He watched the screen as the phone went through its boot process, hoping mostly to take his mind off the waiting, to think about something besides how badly he needed to sit down on a toilet.
    Please, let me make it to the restroom in the terminal.
    The main screen came to life. The phone searched for a signal. It dinged with the arrival of a text message—a message from a contact in his phone named Mother .

Chapter 14
    It was a narrow bathroom stall in the terminal, and for that, Salim was thankful. As he sat on the commode, he leaned over with one elbow on his knee, the other on the toilet paper dispenser. Past caring about the noise he was making, he grunted as another cramp stabbed him in the belly.
    He rubbed a hand across his sweating face. As bad as he was feeling when the airplane landed, he was getting worse. He had no thermometer, but knew he had a fever. Salim ached like never before, and he was starting to wonder if the runs would keep him on the toilet for the rest of his life.
    Salim shivered. Not from the fever, but from fear.
    For the first time since he started hopping through airports and driving himself into a jet-lagged stupor, he didn’t believe it was the loss of a regular schedule that had sent him reeling. He now feared he’d caught the disease that had killed those villagers in Kapchorwa.
    If so, Salim realized, he could be dying.
    With that thought came despair so real and so deep he bit his lip while he muffled a pained cry into his shirtsleeve. He gasped a ragged breath and sobbed again. Having seen so many people suffer, bleed, and wither, having smelled the stench of what flowed from their bodies, having felt trembling lips that tried to drink, having touched dying flesh, and hearing the wails of parents over dead children, Salim knew the true horror of death.
    “You okay, buddy?” a voice called from the next stall over.
    “Yes,” Salim managed a reply. “Just...just...on my phone. Bad news...from home.”
    “No good comes from looking at your phone in the john,” came the voice of a man that sounded like he was smiling.
    Salim sucked in a few long, silent breaths and rubbed the tears out of his eyes. He’d made a mistake in going to Pakistan. But that was just the finale in a long list of pathetic, ill-advised choices. There was no romance in dying for jihad—not for anybody or anything. He was too young, had too much living to do. Sobs threatened to overwhelm him again.
    He made a significant effort to get himself under control while he stared at the floor and contemplated what to do next.
    The toilet in the next stall flushed, and then beneath the wall Salim saw feet shuffle. He heard a zipper and a belt buckle rattle.
    “You good, buddy?” the man asked.
    “Yeah,” said Salim.
    “Safe travels.” The guy in the next stall exited.
    Salim remembered he had a message from Mother