Page 115 of The Presidents Shadow

OUR PLAN IS to start in Nairobi, Kenya, then travel together to Zanzibar in Tanzania.

My good and able associate from Finland, Gutta, was able to supply us with a self-powered hypersonic aircraft. So my four colleagues—Margo, Dr. Anna DaSilva, Burbank, and Jericho—make the journey to Kenya in fewer than four hours.

I, being uniquely self-powered, was able to make the journey in less than a minute by manipulating space and time.

Every second is vital to our success. We share no warm greetings.

Instead, we take a jet-powered open safari vehicle.

Gutta explained to me before the trip that it is on loan from a covert engineering unit in Russia.

When I asked him how he managed to obtain use of this extraordinary transport, he responded in direct and simple Finnish.

“Lamont, esit?t liikaa kysymyksi?.”

The translation is equally simple: “Lamont, you ask too many questions.”

Because I was close to Ambrose’s location when I engineered our face-off on the Atlantic Ocean, Tapper was able to triangulate the satellite signal that was used to deploy Terrageddon, narrowing down the area where Ambrose could be.

Now we are standing halfway up a twelve-hundred-foot mountain only miles outside the city of Zanzibar.

I would not even call the location “rugged.” Overgrown, with a great deal of orange flowers and scraggly green bushes; there are no sounds of animals or birds.

The air is humid, but not unbearably so.

That’s it. That’s the location. Not pretty, but not ugly or scary, and certainly not rugged.

Burbank, Margo, Dr. DaSilva, and Jericho set up a very primitive camp under what I identify as a huge rubber tree but what Jericho informs us is specifically called a Ficus elastica.

Then Dr. DaSilva speaks. Her voice is uncommonly harsh and impatient.

“If I might have your attention, lady and gentlemen,” she says. “The four of you are so focused on finding the master of Terrageddon that you seem to have lost interest in the equally important, perhaps even more important, reason we are in East Africa. The scourge of Newbola Strong.”

“Of course,” I say. “We—”

But Dr. DaSilva interrupts. She has a speech she is bursting to unleash, and there will be no stopping her.

“Am I the only one who saw the dead camels and water buffalo on the side streets of Zanzibar? Am I the only one who saw the infected children and their parents resting on piles of dirt and garbage? We were only in the city for a few minutes and it was a lesson in devastation.”

“Of course,” I say once again. Silence follows. Then Dr. DaSilva continues, but this time her voice is sad, soft.

“By all means, find Ambrose. But, please, find him quickly. Always remember, there is more than one way the world can end.”