Infidel Bleedout: The Ebola-ISIS Gambit

By Tripp Killian

Elusive. Incurable. Deadly.
In the depths of the African jungle lurks the ultimate serial killer: it pounces from the shadows, laying waste to entire communities and leaving its victims bleeding from every orifice as they pray for death. As difficult to contain as it is contagious, the name of this microbial mass-murderer strikes fear in the hearts of all who hear it: Ebola...

Fanatical. Militant. Merciless.
The infamous jihadist organization known as ISIS wants to bring the United States to its knees. When public beheadings fail to achieve this goal, extremist fighters leave the sands of Syria and Iraq. Setting their sights on the dense rain forests of the Congo, they have but a single objective: to unleash upon the infidels a biological weapon unlike any the world has ever known...

Focused. Driven. Brutally Efficient.
Now it's a race against the clock as intelligence operative Brace Reddick struggles to thwart the evil organization's diabolical schemes. Armed with his wits and the tools of a professional assassin, Brace faces perils that put all of his skills and training into play. And with the fate of the Western world hanging in the balance, it is a race that he cannot afford to lose...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Permuted
• Release date: Oct 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781618684110

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A PERMUTED PRESS book

Published at Smashwords

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-411-0

Infidel Bleedout: The Ebola-ISIS Gambit copyright © 2014

by Tripp Killian

All Rights Reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Epilogue

Prologue

The man on the cot screamed, and his hoarse voice cracked. He curled into the fetal position despite the searing pain that coursed through his bones. His gut felt as if it were being shredded with razor blades and the room swam in and out of focus as waves of agony crashed over him. He wanted to die. In more lucid moments, he prayed for release from this unending torment, for the relief which only the darkness of the grave could bring. But these prayers fell on deaf ears. Each minute was an eternity of torment which made the fires of Hell welcome in comparison. His throat burned from hours of vomiting and his breath reeked of clotted blood and bitter stomach lining. Every few seconds his head felt like it was being crushed beneath the boot heel of a cruel and vindictive God; with his face screwed into a rictus of agony, his clenched eyelids squeezed out tears of blood and his pulse pounded erratic rhythms as he writhed.

Through the haze of suffering, a nearby conversation struggled to emerge. The words rose and fell in an unfamiliar dialect and the man’s mind tried to latch onto them, as though the language could claw through the spasms of pain and anchor him in a world where screams and moans no longer held sway. Whether or not he understood what was being said was irrelevant; all that mattered was finding his way back to that world.

Reasoning, however, required all of his willpower. The same fever which glistened the man’s body in a sheen of sweat also boiled his brain. Thoughts were as nebulous as wisps of steam, dissipating before they had a chance to congeal into anything solid; his reality was dominated by torturous pain and pure emotion –flashes of fear, wordless desperation, and panic that bordered on hysteria. This, however, turned out to be the very foothold he needed.

Since all he understood was emotion, that is what he focused on: not the words… but how they were being said.

Harsh syllables barked in rapid succession, the tone angry and commanding. Not just one speaker, but several. Other people babbled in response, some of the voices sounding as if they were pleading through tears, others quivering with terror, and one ringing above the rest with the sharpness of outrage.

His initial assumption had been wrong. This wasn’t a conversation. Chaos. Confusion and commotion. This was some sort of conflict.

With this realization, other sounds wove themselves into the aural tapestry: coughs, soft groans, someone retching, and creaking bedsprings. Bit by bit, the world reasserted itself, if only by its noises alone. But then a single word cut through the chatter, one which even his pain-addled mind immediately recognized.

Ebola.

The name of the disease snapped the man back to reality. He became aware of the dirt-colored walls surrounding him, the bank of windows streaming afternoon sunlight, and the rows of beds neatly arranged throughout the room. Patients with IVs dangling from their arms suffered through various stages of the virus and the entire clinic smelled like an abandoned slaughterhouse which had been left to bake in the sun.

Across the room, a gaggle of healthcare workers huddled against the far wall. Dressed in white, their entire bodies were covered in one form or another, minimizing any chance that bare skin might come in contact with their wards. Booties protected their feet and tape secured long sleeves to their gloved hands; the cloth masks covering their mouths and noses dimpled as they breathed and wide, terror-stricken eyes gazed out from behind plastic goggles.

For God’s sake, these people are dying! A doctor with a British accent stood in front of the others, his arms spread wide as if he could somehow protect those cowering behind him. Don’t you understand that?

The doctor addressed the man looming before him, seemingly unfazed by the AK-47 pointed in his direction. Unlike the medical workers, this man was clothed almost entirely in black. A loose tunic hung over dark pants that had been tucked into combat boots and a balaclava hid most of his face from view, its narrow slit revealing only the steely gaze of eyes untouched by the doctor’s pleas.

Similarly dressed men pointed their own weapons at the windows and door, their fingers poised on triggers. One of them said something softly to a companion in a language which might have been Arabic, his voice barely audible above the sobbing of doctors and nurses.

The indignant doctor opened his mouth as if to release another admonishment, but never got the chance. Before the first syllable had even passed his lips, shots rang through the clinic as the muzzle of the AK-47 flashed with fire. The doctors and nurses twitched and jerked as bullets ripped through their bodies amid geysers of blood, and from somewhere in the room a shrill scream cut through the rapid-fire bursts.

In less than thirty seconds, it was all over. The slain medical workers slumped near the base of a wall now pockmarked with bullet holes, their once-pristine protective clothing darkened with blood. The infected man on the cot tried to muster the strength to sit up, his instincts demanding that he run far, far away from the massacre he’d just witnessed; but the virus had ravaged his body to the point that he could barely lift his head from the pillow, much less sit up. With his ears ringing and the scent of spent gunpowder stinging his nose, he clenched the sheets in a white-knuckled grip. In the throes of agony, he’d longed for death. But now—faced with the possibility that the fully-automatic rifles might be turned upon the patients next— he found that an ember of hope still smoldered deep within his soul.

He didn’t truly want to die. He simply wanted an end to the suffering.

The gunman turned from the corpses and mumbled something to one his compatriots. Within seconds, a lone healthcare worker was pushed into the center of the room. With a cocked pistol held to the back of her head, the woman’s entire body trembled. Her eyes were round and bloodshot through the goggles and her cheeks glistened with fresh tears. She hugged herself and tried to pull away as the gunman leaned close, but one of the men shoved her forward again, forcing her to listen to whatever the gunman had