Code of Conduct

CHAPTER 16

Harvath was exhausted. So was Decker. He wanted to take a closer look at the burn pit, but now wasn’t the time. Not in the dark and the rain. It was time to get back to camp.

Shouldering their packs, they walked down to the river and returned the way they had come.

The rain made it difficult to talk, and it was probably for the best. Decker had already made going to the burn pit an issue. She wanted to go with him in the morning. Harvath had no idea what she had seen as a war correspondent, but he had strongly advised her against it. There were certain things that couldn’t be unseen. Once they were seared into your mind, they stayed there forever.

The additional reason he felt she should sit it out was that she had personal relationships with the people missing from the clinic. Based on what little he had seen, he knew the pit was going to be brutal.

Decker, though, had her mind made up. No matter how hard he might try to dissuade her, she intended to join him. There was no use fighting her on it and he let the subject drop.

When they entered the camp, they found the Brits, along with Jambo, sitting beneath a tarp slung between two trees and one of the Land Cruisers.

“How’d it go?” Ash asked.

“Not well,” Harvath replied. “We need to talk.”

The Brit motioned to the other Land Cruiser.

Inside, Harvath pulled his poncho off and threw it on the backseat.

Ash handed him a towel and asked, “What happened?”

“Someone hit the clinic.”

“Hit it how?”

“It looks like a team of shooters came in.”

The Brit stared at him. “The rebels? FRPI?”

“Not unless they travel with sanitation teams.”

“It was sanitized?”

Harvath nodded. “Right down to digging the slugs out of the wall and patching the holes.”

“It was a professional hit then.”

“That’s what it looks like.”

It didn’t make any sense. “It’s a charity clinic,” Ash replied. “Why would anyone waste those kinds of resources on it?”

Harvath shrugged. “No idea.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m serious.”

“No, you’re not,” the Brit stated. “You’ve been holding out on us since you arrived. I don’t believe for a second that you came to do some sort of assessment. You’re here to compile an after action report.”

Lying to people was part of Harvath’s job, but he hated doing it. Ash was completely correct. Harvath had been holding out on him. It was just the way things had to be done. At this point, though, he needed the man’s help more than he needed to keep any further secrets from him.

“Several days ago,” said Harvath, “CARE International received a video. It showed four gunmen entering the Matumaini Clinic and opening fire.”

“Who sent the video?”

“We don’t know.”

“Who took the video?”

“We don’t know.”

“When was it taken?”

“We don’t know that either.”

Ash narrowed his eyes in the semidarkness of the Land Cruiser and tried to read Harvath’s face. “What do you know?”

“What I just told you.”

“But you haven’t told me anything except that there were four gunmen. What did they look like? Were they black? White? Purple? How were they dressed?”

Harvath removed his phone, powered it on, and showed him the footage.

“Those are bloody biohazard suits.”

Harvath nodded and waited until Ash had watched the full clip.

“Play it again,” the Brit said.

Harvath did as he requested. When the video was over, he took his phone back.

Ash was not happy. “You and Decker went into the clinic, didn’t you?”

“Don’t worry,” Harvath said. “We wore protective gear.”

“What do you mean don’t worry? What the hell is going on here?”

“We don’t know.”

“You knew enough to bring protective gear with you,” the Brit said, adding, “That’s why you wanted us to wait here, isn’t it.”

Harvath nodded.

“And you never thought any of this was worth sharing?”

“I was under orders not to.”

“The hell you were.”

“I told you. We don’t know what’s going on here either,” Harvath emphasized. “The last thing CARE wants is a scandal.”

“Scandal? You’ve got a bloody international incident.”

Try selling that to the U.S. State Department, Harvath thought to himself.

“Listen, mate, those shooters didn’t go in kitted up like that just to freak out the natives. There was something bad inside that clinic that they were very afraid of.”

“I agree.”

“So what was going on there? What would cause an armed team in biohazard suits to just show up?”

“No one on our side knows. It’s just a basic medical clinic, period. They don’t treat highly communicable diseases.”

“Apparently, somebody thought they did,” replied Ash. “And it was somebody serious because, according to you, after the wet work was done, they sent in a mop-up team to sterilize the scene.”

“So let’s narrow that down,” Harvath said.

“How do I know you’re not carrying whatever was in that clinic?”

“Because I told you, we wore protective gear.”

“You’ve told me a lot of things.”

He was pissed. Harvath would have been too if their positions had been switched.

“We wore full biohazard suits and followed the strictest decon procedures.”

“That’s what was in the packs? Not medical supplies.”

“Correct,” Harvath replied.

Ash shook his head.

“About that wet work team—” Harvath continued, but Ash held his hand up, interrupting him.

“Our fee has just doubled. And if I find out you have held anything else back, I’m going to double it again.”

“I’ll have to call back to the States to get approval for that.”

“This isn’t a negotiation,” Ash stated. “You hired us under false pretenses and watered down the scope. The fee is double, or we pack up and drive you back to Bunia right now. Which is it?”

Harvath didn’t like having his balls busted, but the man was within his rights. He agreed to the increased fee. Then, he steered him back to his previous question. “Narrow down for me who might have sent in a wet work team and followed it up with cleaners.”

“Narrow it down? It could have been any foreign intelligence service in the first world, or from the second for that matter. How do you narrow that down?”

“Let’s start with how many of them are operating in Congo.”

“If they’re smart, all of them are. Congo’s untapped mineral resources alone are valued at over twenty-four trillion dollars. That’s more than the GDP of the U.S. and Europe combined.”

“But what nations specifically would you be focused on?” Harvath asked.

Ash thought about it. “You’ve got everyone from the Australians to the Swiss running a mining operation here. That includes the Chinese and Japanese as well. Even the Moroccans have established a presence.”

“But whose intelligence service would send out a wet work team?”

The Brit shook his head. “The question isn’t who, but rather why? As in, why would any foreign intelligence service give two whits about some medical clinic in the middle of nowhere?”

His point was well taken. It was the same question Harvath had been asking himself since seeing the clinic. But perhaps it wasn’t the question that was wrong. Maybe, it was how he was asking it.

“Let’s back up and start again,” Harvath stated. “Why would anyone send a wet work team into a medical clinic in the first place?”

“That seems fairly obvious,” Ash replied. “To make sure that someone, or something, never got out of there. And based on how those shooters were suited up, I’ll bet they were after someone who was infected.”

Harvath concurred. “So let’s assume for a minute that they were trying to contain something. Why not just quarantine the clinic? Why go in shooting?”

Ash paused again and thought about the question. Finally, he said, “Because whatever they have, it’s beyond bad.”

“Even if it were beyond bad,” Harvath replied, “you quarantine the victims and make them as comfortable as possible. You don’t kill them.”

“So what’s the answer then?”

“I don’t know,” he said as he reached up and ground his thumbs into his temples. This entire clusterfuck of an assignment was turning into one big headache.

After thinking about it some more, Ash attempted to come at it from another angle.

“Do you have any clue what they did with the bodies?”

Harvath nodded. “That’s the next thing we need to discuss.”