“If you decide to venture outside Nairobi, we recommend only doing so with Kenyan military forces that include units with combat experience and heavy artillery at their disposal. We would also advise you to wait until the NRO can position a satellite in geosynchronous orbit with the area you’ll be operating in. And we strongly recommend you wait until the Navy can position a vessel with a rapid deployment force within striking distance of your theater of operations.”
Peyton chewed her lip. She knew the recommendations were prudent but also that they would take time—especially the request to the National Reconnaissance Office, where bureaucratic red tape was a fact of life.
“How long would all that take?” Elliott asked.
“Unknown. DOD would have to advise on the RDF and vessel alignment; we’re not privy to their fleet positioning, but it’s safe to assume there are suitable vessels in the Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean. NRO would have to feed in on the sat requisition.”
“Can you guess?”
“Maybe seventy-two hours,” Richards said, “but I would again urge you not to go to Mandera at all, and if you do, to wait. Somalia is a failed state. We haven’t had an embassy there since ’91. It closed two years before the Battle of Mogadishu—that’s when the Black Hawk Down incidents took place. Frankly, that’s what you’ll be looking at if al-Shabaab militants find you and engage the Kenyan army. We’ve got a couple hundred US troops at the Mogadishu airport, but I can’t comment on whether they’d be able to assist in an emergency. I know CIA has special operators in Somalia. Also status unknown.”
Elliott looked over at Peyton. They had worked together so long, knew each other so well, that she could sense what he was thinking. She confirmed it with a short nod that silently said, We both know what we have to do.
“All right,” Elliott said, “we’d like to put in the requests to the NRO and DOD and expedite them as much as possible. I’ll have the director make calls.”
“You’re going to wait?” Richards asked.
“No. We’re going to deploy to Mandera with all possible haste.”
Richards shook his head in disbelief.
Elliott held up his hands. “Look, if we don’t stop this outbreak in Mandera, we’ll be fighting it in Nairobi and Mombasa and then in Cairo and Johannesburg and Casablanca. If we can’t stop it in Africa, we’ll be dealing with it here at home, in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. Seventy-two hours could mean the difference between a local outbreak and a global pandemic, between a dozen deaths and millions. Right now, infected individuals could be boarding buses, trains, and airplanes. We don’t know who they are or where they’re going. They may well be on their way to infect cities anywhere in the world—cities that aren’t on alert, that have no idea that a deadly pathogen has just touched down within its borders. Our only chance of stopping this outbreak is containing it. That has to happen now, not three days from now. Our people are among the best trained in the world. They need to be there—right now. We’re the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We can’t control this disease over the phone.”