The quartet made their way to Dodoma, the Tanzanian capital where Tiyana and Hongo reported their passports stolen at the respective embassies. There would be a long wait for the replacements. The doctored ones that they used in Mozambique were missing the Tanzanian entry stamp, but they could probably be safely doctored one final time, especially if they only wanted to cross the border into the Congo. For more extensive travel, Virgil would need new identification. His Tibetan fake was the least believable and the most doctored. They would postpone dealing with it, however, until a later date. At their hotel, they planned their next move.

“A tracking device?” Tiyana asked.

“That’s right. Undetectable. Aldenduenum technology. If Shenouda is with Ghaelvord, we will find him.” Virgil said confidently.

“What if she isn’t with him? What if she tells him about our encounter?” Tiyana asked.

“He might send her away if he knows. He would probably guess that I tagged her. He knows, however, that he does not have the equipment or the technicians to find and remove the tracer. Even still, if we can find her, we can find him. She knows where he is.” Virgil responded.

“But what if he kills her? Look, I don’t want to be the one to say this, but it’s what we’re all thinking.” Tiyana asked.

“If he kills her, then he could hide, but I doubt that he will. I saw the way she moved. I saw her eyes. There is a virus. The Aldenduenum fostered its creation long ago, and then sealed it up. See, they found ways to prolong their lives. They lived, often, for hundreds of years. At one point, they invented a symbiotic virus that put the body into a static state. No aging, and no death, at least for the measurable future until they shut the field trials down. The problem was that the body needed fuel, organic fuel. Furthermore, no animal or synthetic versions of the fuel could be created. Those infected needed human blood to survive. They tried for centuries to develop a viable substitute, but, after enough time lapsed, the program came under heavy scrutiny from the ethics councils of the time. Eventually, they shut it down and boxed it up.”

“This sounds familiar, like Bram Stoker.” Tiyana said with an incredibly skeptical look on her face.

Virgil laughed, “Like most legends, it changed over the centuries. The vampires of old Slavic lore mixed with Coptic Christian influences courtesy of the Ottoman Empire were, to be sure, inspired by the nosferatu outbreak in Western Europe around the beginning of the dark ages.”

“The nosferatu outbreak?” Tiyana asked, puzzled.

Virgil answered. “The dark ages were no coincidence. I spent the better part of a few centuries exterminating every last remnant of that infernal disaster. I believe the outbreak occurred innocently enough. Somehow, someone found a trace of the virus that the Aldenduenum left behind. Without proper control, it turned into an absolute debacle. Shenouda’s situation is different. Ghaelvord does not plan to spread the virus indiscriminately. No, he plans on using it to his advantage. She may be contagious, but I believe that he used some of the control measures that the Aldenduenum had in place when they first created the damnable thing. He would not touch the virus if he did not know how to rein it in. He is too calculating and too methodical for that.”

“So why wouldn’t he kill her?” Hunter asked.

“She will not tell him about our encounter.” Virgil responded cryptically.

“And how would you know that?” Hunter asked.

Virgil responded. “Ghaelvord did not send her to meet with us. Why would he? It makes no sense. She must have come on her own. She must have figured out that we were in the city and visited us. From what you have told us of your conversation, it does not sound like she came with any particular agenda.”

“She knew whose side she was on.” Hunter said with just a twinge of bitterness in his voice.

“Did she?” Virgil asked rhetorically.

“But what if she does tell him? She could be killed.” Tiyana questioned.

Virgil responded, “I still do not think that he will kill her. First of all, he put a great deal of work into making her. There is only so much that one man can do. He is smart, but he is no Aldenduenum technician. He cannot safely create a great number of similar beings. Second, they are not easy to kill. Trust me on that. Third, she might be a part of whatever devious plans he has mulling around in that insidious brain of his. He may need her. Fourth, she almost certainly returned to his headquarters. If so, we will still find him eventually. Killing her and moving the body would only temporarily delay us.”

“I don’t like it.” Tiyana said. “There are too many variables. Too many ‘what ifs.’”

Hunter interjected. “Alright, well then the sooner we get moving the better. Those ‘what ifs’ are only going to grow while we sit on this. Vee, what can you tell us about where she is now?”

“She is southwest of here. Near Lake Upemba, in the Congo.” Virgil said. He went on, “It is a very remote location, near the rainforests, lots of cloud and tree cover. A fairly large compound could be built there that no satellite would pick up.”

“Do you think that’s it. Ghaelvord’s base?” Hunter asked.

Virgil merely nodded.

“We will need guns.” Hongo said.

“Now you’re talking.” Hunter replied.

Virgil said, “I would like to accompany you, Hongo, on your purchasing endeavor. I am curious.”

“Curious about guns or about black-market gunrunning?” Hongo asked.

“Both.”

• • •

After abysmal results at five gunshops in a row, Hongo began to despair. Following a one hundred U.S. dollar bribe, the clerk at the last store pulled a single Kalashnikov assault rifle from a locked chest. Hongo’s dreams of hidden rooms full of state-of-the-art equipment began fading.

“So far I have not been impressed.” Virgil said.

“You and me both.” Hongo replied as he walked through the door of a small gunshop located on the bottom floor of a large office building in downtown Dodoma.

Hongo jabbered with the storekeeper in Swahili for a while. Suddenly, Hongo’s face perceptibly lit up. Virgil’s interest piqued. Hongo waived Virgil over. The clerk led them into a back room. In the room sat a large black leather-bound book. The clerk went to the book and began flipping pages. Hongo and Virgil saw hundreds of weapons. They saw a massive hydraulically powered, air-cooled M61 Vulcan rotary cannon. The catalogue pictured it with an optional tripod affixed to the back of a flat-bed truck. After the large Gatling gun, they saw an impressive series of handheld miniguns. They saw bazookas, grenade launchers, mortar systems, land mines, grenades, plastic explosives, and nearly every imaginable type of gun. Hongo took particular interest in a Russian RPG-29 Vampir, the rocket-propelled grenade launcher known for its ability to penetrate tank hulls.

At the end of the catalogue Hongo’s jaw dropped. He saw the Khan S56 Armored Sport Utility Vehicle. The legendary armored car built for civilian customers had all-terrain capabilities, incredible horsepower, and unimaginably light armor plating with bulletproof windows, all made possible by state of the art carbon-infused, high-tensile polymers. Hongo got goosebumps. He tried to picture the Vulcan mounted somewhere on the vehicle, but unfortunately, he could not see how it would be feasible.

“Impressive.” Virgil said.

“I told you we would find it. Boom. Do not lose faith in me, bwana.” Hongo responded exultantly.

Virgil’s eyes narrowed in a look of skepticism. He started to open his mouth to tell Hongo that he was pretty sure Hongo had not told him that they would find it and that Hongo had actually seemed pretty discouraged after the third or fourth store, but he thought better of it and kept silent.

Hongo jabbered with the shopkeeper for a spell in Swahili. Then, he turned to Virgil.

“It cannot get any better. These guns are all in the Congo already. They have not yet smuggled them into Tanzania. I did some name dropping and let on that we were looking to upgrade security at the digsite and he bought it. They are going to deal with us. We just have to meet them at the headquarters in Zaire and have a great deal of money ready to be wired in. Now, here is the best part. Wait for it.” Hongo said teasingly.

“I am waiting quite patiently.” Virgil said with a slight look of consternation.

Hongo went on, “It is on our way, literally right off the main road. It is not in a civilized part of the country, but it is not too far from where we need to be.”

“Hongo, can we trust these men?” Virgil said in a hushed tone.

Hongo said in a conspiratorial tone, “I will let you in on a secret. Hunter and I have contacts in Egypt. If we wanted to actually take this stuff to the dig and use it for security, we could make it happen. These men will understand that. They will understand that we have powerful friends. They have seen us on the news. They sell to the Egyptians. They also sell to Americans. They will not want to upset anyone.”

“All the same, I believe that we should deal carefully with these brigands.” Virgil said.

With Hunter gone, Hongo slipped into the freewheeling role, “Relax bwana. Everyone in Africa runs an illegal business, but trade goes on. We have costly and time-consuming licensing and registration procedures that very few people have the time or resources to keep up with. You know how we deal with it?”

Hongo only waited a second before answering his own question, “We don’t. We just make a living as best as we can. These people though… These people are smart. They run an exclusive safari business. They legitimately charge top-dollar for premium hunts on private acreage. For all the records show, we will have spent excessive amounts of money on a private safari. A very, very expensive safari.”

Virgil acquiesced, “Let us do it then, Hongo. We will need all the help that we can get. We will be entering the lion’s den.”