Code of Conduct

CHAPTER 28

Harvath had made the call to scrap the Bunia airport altogether. It was too dangerous. They were better off taking their chances on the road south to Goma.

The Hotel Ihusi on Lake Kivu near the Rwanda border crossing was the perfect place for them to hole up while they waited for their jet to arrive. It was filled with mercenaries, smugglers, hookers, NGO workers, and all sorts of other characters. It reminded Harvath of the cantina scene in Star Wars. The best part was that everyone minded their own business. If you didn’t want to be social, no one bothered you.

It had taken Harvath all the cash he had left to organize their departure. But complicating matters was the fact that Decker had flat-out refused to cooperate.

She not only wouldn’t help with Harvath’s plan, but she also wanted to return to the Matumaini Clinic and begin to rebuild it. That, though, was absolutely out of the question. It was too dangerous. In addition to it being a crime scene, there was no telling if Hendrik’s men, or the FRPI rebels for that matter, might show up there.

In only a handful of days, Harvath had blazed a trail the width of a twenty-lane highway through that part of Congo. It had pissed off a lot of people. The fallout was going to be intense.

Leaving the country as soon as possible was the right thing to do. He had tried to convince Decker of it too, but she wouldn’t listen. Finally, he had to get Beaman on the sat phone to straighten her out.

Beaman made it perfectly clear that the Matumaini Clinic was off-limits. He suggested she come back to the United States until things cooled down. She refused and informed him that she intended to return to Kinshasa even though the CARE clinic there was still on hold. There was nothing Beaman could do to persuade her, and he told Harvath to let her go.

Harvath had no trouble letting her go, but he had no intention of doing it in Bunia. She could catch a plane to Kinshasa from Goma. It would be safer there.

Needless to say, Decker dug her heels in. She wanted to know where Harvath had been and why he had left her at the hotel for two days with Leonce and his son. He didn’t owe her an explanation, but he gave her one anyway.

He told her that they had gotten a lead on who had been behind the attack on the clinic, as well as the village. When he refused to give her any further details, she went supernova on him. It was blistering, and much of it was uncalled for. He let her get it out of her system and then told her to pack her bag. He told her they were taking her to the airport. Technically, that was true. He just didn’t tell her which one.

Once she had finished her next temper tantrum over not being taken to the airport in Bunia and had calmed down, he filled her in a little bit more on what had gone down.

He had a private MediJet flying in to Goma. Without telling her everything about Hendrik, he explained that he planned to smuggle him out of the country as an acute medical patient. To do that, he would need Decker’s help as a doctor. She not only said no, she said hell no and lectured him about ethics.

Harvath had had just about as much as he could take from her. His bandwidth for her ideological bullshit was full.

When they arrived at the hotel, he helped carry her bag up to her room, and then zip-tied her in the bathroom. As soon as he had left the country, she would be released, taken to the airport, and put on a plane. Until then, Simon and Eddie would take shifts keeping an eye on her. The last thing he needed was her screwing up his departure.

With the rest of Harvath’s money, Jambo scoured Goma to purchase the people and paperwork Harvath needed. Everything else would have to be “borrowed.” Without even being asked, Ash and Mick volunteered.

As the men worked on their lists, Harvath unpacked Decker’s gear. Over the phone, one of the Carlton Group’s medical assets stepped him through preparation of the drugs he was going to give Hendrik.

Harvath had mixed feelings about leaving. With everything he had learned, he needed to get back to the United States. There were still several accounts, though, that needed to be settled in Congo.

While he wanted Hendrik’s men placed on the front burner for the atrocities they had committed, the WHO lab in Ngoa was the U.S. Government’s main focus.

Reed Carlton had conducted a very private briefing with the President, as well as the Director of the CIA. Based on Harvath’s reporting, it was decided that a highly specialized, covert team from the U.S. Army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland, would be sent in to investigate.

Known as a Scientific Tactical Assessment Response team, or STAR team for short, it was a hybrid of Special Operations and scientific personnel. Whatever threats they encountered, be they chemical, biological, or anthropological — i.e. human — the team members were equipped and trained to face them. If there was intelligence to be had at Ngoa, they would secure it, and bring it back to the United States.

Harvath’s job was to get Hendrik out of Congo and deliver him to an interrogation team on the island of Malta. This was where Dr. Jessica Decker had refused to lend any assistance whatsoever.

Normally, Harvath wouldn’t have cared, but Hendrik was of high intelligence value. If he coded during the flight, it would be left to Harvath to save him. The plane wasn’t going to land anywhere else but Malta. If it did, and Hendrik came to and began talking, Harvath and the pilots would be thrown in the nearest prison.

The Carlton Group moved a lot of detainees via medical transport jets. The owner of Sentinel Medevac was a patriot who had been very generous to Harvath and the Old Man. There was no way they were going to allow two of his pilots to be incarcerated and one of his very expensive long-haul jets impounded. It was Malta or bust, which was why Harvath had spent so much time on the phone getting the dosing right.

Hendrik was going to be heavily sedated. So much so, he wouldn’t talk, moan, or even move. Jambo’s assignment was to take care of greasing the skids at the airport and buying the appropriate health ministry paperwork. Ash and Mick were in charge of sets and props. It all would come down to mounting an absolutely convincing show.

When his cell phone chimed, Harvath left Hendrik with one of the Brute Squad and walked down to the parking lot. He found Mick standing in front of the team’s Land Cruisers with a smile.

United Nations vehicles were white with simple black lettering for a reason. It made them easy to spot and instantly recognizable. It also made them easy to counterfeit.

Both vehicles were already white, so all that they had needed was for the letters U and N to be stenciled in the right places. Mick, though, had gone a step further and had even matched the correct high-gloss black paint. Leave it to a team of Special Operations guys not only to get the job done but to get it done to precise detail.

Ash was standing behind LC2 and waved Harvath over. Because the vehicle was set up to carry cargo, it made the perfect makeshift ambulance. In fact, it was quite common in Congo to see them used that way.

Inside were all the things Harvath had asked for, plus a couple he hadn’t. Resourceful didn’t even come close to describing the two SAS men.

The health ministry documents Jambo acquired were the icing on the cake. Based on everything they had pulled together, Harvath had little doubt they were going to be able to smuggle Hendrik out without incident.

This was still Congo, though, and Harvath wouldn’t rest completely assured of anything until the entire country was in his rearview mirror.

Back in his room, he thought about giving Decker a final opportunity to leave with him, but decided against it. She had made her decision. He couldn’t risk her tanking this leg of the operation out of spite or misguided moralization. They would do fine without her. Harvath would monitor Hendrik’s vitals throughout the flight and have a doctor on standby via sat phone. If anything happened, Harvath would handle it. Hendrik was going to Malta. End of story.

When the pilot contacted Harvath to let him know he was on the ground, the clock began ticking. The first thing they had to do was drug Hendrik.

The bound-and-gagged South African spun on the floor like a crocodile when he saw the syringe come out. It took Ash, Mick, and Jambo to hold him down so Harvath could inject him. Moments later, his eyes rolled up into his head, and he was out.

The men moved quickly. They changed Hendrik into a hospital gown, placed him on a stretcher, and Harvath started an IV.

When the second text came in from the pilot confirming that he had completed refueling and preflight, Harvath told the team it was time to roll.

They waited until things were clear at the side of the hotel and carried Hendrik out that way. After transferring him to the isolation stretcher in the back of LC2, they secured his arms and legs with zip-ties, and then disguised everything with hospital blankets. Harvath checked his vitals once more before closing the seams of the translucent tent.

Once Hendrik was ready for transport, the team donned goggles, facemasks, and disposable Tyvek coveralls. As it was just for show, they only put on one layer of gloves, but they taped them up just the same. Anyone who saw them now wouldn’t want anything to do with them, much less get anywhere near them. Fear was the biggest thing Harvath was counting on.

Even by third world standards, Goma International Airport was a pit. It still hadn’t fully recovered from the eruption of Mount Nyiragongo over a decade before. A lake of solidified lava two hundred meters wide by a thousand meters long had swallowed up a third of its main runway and cut off access to the terminal. All of the “temporary” work-arounds that airport authorities had come up with back then were still in place. This actually played right into Harvath’s plan.

Nobody at Goma International wanted a contagious patient with a highly communicable disease passing through the commercial aviation area. Nor did they want them passing through the adjacent area that all of the military and relief flights used. The airport authority wanted the patient completely isolated and so Jambo had arranged for the team to be admitted via a gate at the far side of the airport.

When they rolled up in their UN-marked vehicles, Jambo — in full mask, goggles, and bunny suit — lowered his window and offered his paperwork and Hendrik’s blue, UN Laissez-Passer passport for inspection.

The armed soldiers looked at him like he was crazy. They were all too familiar with disease in Congo. They weren’t going to exit the safety of their booth and inspect anything. In fact, they immediately shut their own window, opened the security gates, and quickly waved the convoy through.

The jet’s airstairs were already down as the Land Cruisers pulled up alongside. As instructed, the pilots remained in the cockpit and did not exit.

Knowing that they were under observation, Harvath waited until they had loaded Hendrik inside the aircraft to say thank you. He shook each man’s hand and told them how much he appreciated what they had done.

While he would have loved to have bought them all beers and steak dinners to celebrate the completion of the assignment, his work wasn’t done. They were professionals. They understood.

As they filed down the stairs, Asher was the last to leave the plane. He stopped in the aircraft’s door and turned to Harvath.

“If you ever to come back to Africa,” he said, “I’ll be expecting a phone call. And that steak dinner.”

“You got it,” replied Harvath.

Asher stepped onto the top stair, gave the doorframe two quick taps and shouted “See ya, Superman,” as he returned to the vehicles.

After retracting the airstairs and closing the aircraft door, Harvath checked to make sure Hendrik was secure and then informed the pilots that they were ready to take off.

As the plane began to taxi forward, Harvath took a seat, cinched his seat belt, and drew a deep breath. Goma International was known for its crashes — both on landing and on takeoff. He prayed Mr. Murphy had overlooked the airport today.

The plane had been given first position and had been cleared for takeoff. The engines whined as the pilot throttled up the power and turned onto the runway.

Harvath leaned back in his seat and looked out the window. Ash, Mick, and Jambo had already cleared the gate and were headed back to the hotel. They were good men. Harvath had meant it when he said that he appreciated them. They had his back and had proven that he could trust them. That was everything in his book.

He could only imagine the new assholes Decker was going to tear them once they cut her loose. But no matter how arrogant or nasty she was, they would take it like pros and make sure she got on her flight, even if they had to carry her onto the plane.

As the jet raced down the runway and lifted off into the air, he watched Congo fall away beneath him. This was the point where he usually felt relieved. Not this time.

Throughout the flight, he monitored Hendrik and kept him pumped up with sedatives. When the jet touched down in Malta, it taxied into a private hangar where he handed over the prisoner to the interrogation team. The lead operative was a man named Vella. Harvath had never met him before, but he knew him by reputation. He was very good at what he did. He worked out of a facility masquerading as a rural Maltese farmhouse. It had been irreverently nicknamed the “Solarium” because most of it was deep below ground with no windows. If Hendrik was holding anything back, Vella was going to get it.

Waiting in the hangar for Harvath was a new jet and crew. The Gulfstream G650ER had been arranged by Beaman to get him back to the States as quickly as possible. It came fully catered along with a flight attendant. But the best feature as far as Harvath was concerned was the private bedroom.

He had a drink just after takeoff and another with his meal. By the time he took off his clothes and hit the bed, he was more than ready to close his eyes and fall asleep.

He woke up a couple of times in flight — just long enough to open his eyes, check his watch, and drift back asleep.

It was a godsend — a chunk of over eight hours of uninterrupted time. When he couldn’t sleep any longer, he availed himself of the en suite bathroom and took a long, hot shower. He then shaved as he let the water pound against his body.

After drying off, he returned to the bedroom, where he found the bed made, his clothes hung up, the TV turned to a satellite news channel, and coffee waiting. Sitting on the bed was a menu offering a range of meals he could choose from before they landed.

This really was the way to fly. The only thing it was missing was someone to share it with. He had no doubt Lara would love it. Who wouldn’t?

Scanning the menu, he made his decision, and called up front to order. By the time he had dressed and walked out of the bedroom, the table had been set with new silver, new flowers, and a fresh linen tablecloth. A plate of fresh fruit was already waiting. Lara would like this a lot.

The flight attendant asked if he wanted a cocktail, and he politely declined. He knew he was going to have to hit the ground running when the plane landed.

After eating a double portion of bacon and eggs, he took a bottle of water back to the bedroom and closed the door. There wasn’t much time before they touched down, and he wanted to use it to get his thoughts together.

He didn’t know how secure the plane’s WiFi was, so he had refrained from using his laptop. He didn’t like going in to the office blind, but he didn’t have any choice. Security always came first.

They would be landing at Dulles and Harvath assumed the Old Man would send someone to pick him up. If no one was there, he would just hop in a cab. The Carlton Group was not that far away. The building’s proximity to Dulles had been one of the selling points for Carlton. Taking in the crawl along the bottom of the screen, Harvath tried to get up to speed on what had transpired while he had been away. He also needed to make the mental shift from Congo mode to back home, CONUS mode — military speak for Continental United States.

Once the plane had landed and come to a stop, the flight attendant lowered the airstairs and a U.S. immigration agent boarded the plane. Harvath handed the man his passport, as well as the still blank declaration form the flight attendant had given him.

The agent looked at it and smiled. Harvath was on a very special VIP list.

“Nothing to declare then?” he asked.

“Only that I’m glad to be home.”

“It’s good to have you back, sir.”

The man handed Harvath’s passport back to him, and Harvath picked up his bag and stepped off the plane. The crew met him at the bottom of the airstairs and thanked him for flying with them. They were extremely professional and he thanked them in return before heading across the tarmac.

Though most of his travel was done out of D.C.’s Reagan International, he knew the private aviation routine at Dulles very well and walked toward the Signature Flight Support building.

When he stepped inside, he saw that Reed Carlton had sent someone to meet him. Standing with a garment bag over her shoulder was one of his colleagues from the Carlton Group, Sloane Ashby.

“You better not have been in my house,” Harvath said as she held out the garment bag to him.

Only Reed Carlton had keys to Harvath’s home, but on more than one occasion he had given them to Ashby for one reason or another.

Harvath didn’t like it. Not only because he didn’t want her looking around his house when he wasn’t there but also because it was demeaning to an operator of Ashby’s status to relegate her to errand-girl status.

That was the Old Man’s style, though. No matter who you were or where you came from, you had to earn your way up in his organization.

The problem with sending Ashby to select clothes for Harvath was that every time she was sent to do it, she always pushed the envelope — picking combinations Harvath would never assemble for himself.

“I didn’t pick these,” she said, handing over the garment bag. “I wasn’t in your house. I only drove up and popped the trunk.”

Harvath unzipped the bag and looked inside. It wasn’t the staid dark suit, white shirt, and dark tie he would have expected from the Old Man, but it wasn’t the envelope-pushing ensemble he would have expected from Ashby. In fact, it fell tastefully right in the middle.

“Who gave this to you?” he asked.

“Lara.”

“Lara?”

“Did you develop a hearing problem in Congo?” she joked. “Yeah, Lara.”

“Why was she at my house?”

“You can ask the Old Man when you see him. Right now, you need to get changed into your party clothes, or he’s going to chew my ass for being late. Let’s go, pretty boy.”

Harvath had a real soft spot for Ashby. She was a smartass, and he liked that. She could dish it out as well as she could take it. In fact, she probably dished it out too well, which was part of the reason the Army had agreed to let Carlton have her.

Ashby had killed so many of the enemy in Afghanistan that when a magazine back home did an unauthorized profile of her, a price was put on her head. She had taken out more bad guys than any other woman in combat, and more than even most male soldiers. The Army, though, couldn’t risk the negative PR of a celebrity soldier, much less one who was killed or captured, so they pulled her from active duty.

To add insult to injury, they refused her request to be sent to Iraq. Instead, she was detailed to Fort Bragg where she helped train the top-secret, all female Delta Force detachment known as The Athena Project.

She couldn’t believe her government had sidelined her for being good at what she had been trained to do — killing bad guys. While she may have been a good instructor, she was too talented and too young to be mothballed. When Carlton offered to arrange for her to be released to his organization, she had jumped at the chance.

Everyone knew that Harvath was the Old Man’s golden boy, but like any smart manager, he was always looking to add depth to his bench. At about the same time he hired Ashby, he had hired Chase Palmer. When Harvath stepped out of the Signature Flight Support building in his tailored Argentine blue suit, Palmer and Ashby were leaning against Palmer’s car waiting for him.

“Did you go to Congo or a Day Spa?” Palmer asked when he saw him.

Being a smartass seemed to be part of the Old Man’s corporate culture.

“It wasn’t Congo,” Harvath replied. “Your mom and I went to Turks and Caicos.”

Palmer flipped him his middle finger as Harvath chucked his bag in the trunk and told his two colleagues to get in the car.

Their conversation grew more serious as they neared the office. Ashby and Palmer were both privy to his operation, and he gave them a full recap of what had happened. It was good practice for what he would have to recount to the Old Man.

At the office building, they cleared security and pulled into the underground garage. Harvath retrieved his bag from the trunk and Ashby used her keycard to summon the elevator to take them upstairs.

Even though the Carlton Group was a private organization, they handled classified information, and so all of their systems were built to the strictest NSA specifications.

Every step had been taken to safeguard against “compromising emanations” or CE as they were known. CE was any electrical, mechanical, or acoustical signal from equipment that was transmitting, receiving, processing, analyzing, encrypting, or decrypting classified information. From preventing magnetic field radiation and line conduction, to actively vibrating the windows so that conversations and keyboard strokes couldn’t be intercepted, nothing had been overlooked.

All of these measures, though, were largely invisible. To the untrained eye, the Carlton Group’s offices resembled a successful, high-tech law firm.

Though Carlton believed in hiring the top people and staying out of their way so they could do their jobs, he ran a tight ship.

There were no casual dress Fridays. The Group’s employees were the best. They were expected to dress and act like it. There were also strict rules about physical conditioning, grooming, and hygiene. The Old Man was old school.

As a smoker himself, Carlton allowed people to smoke, but they couldn’t go outside to do it. Smokers had a habit of getting too chummy and chatty with strangers and other tenants in a building. That was dangerous in the intelligence business. They milled around outside and lingered over cigarettes, wasting productive time. They also made themselves vulnerable to surveillance and approach.

To cater to the smokers, he’d built what became known as “the coffin,” a small glass booth barely big enough for two people at the far end of the office. It had an intense air purification system that roared so loudly you could barely hear yourself think.

It wasn’t supposed to be comfortable. There wasn’t even a place to sit down inside. You went in, got your fix, and got out.

Strangely enough, no one ever saw the Old Man using the coffin, and it was widely suspected he had an equally efficient though much quieter system placed in his office that allowed him to smoke whenever he wanted to.

When Harvath stepped off the elevator and entered the offices, he half expected to find the Old Man waiting for him up front in the main conference room. Instead, there was a medical team. Harvath recognized the doctor. It was the same one he had been on the phone with from Congo. The man waved him into the conference room.

Despite Harvath feeling perfectly fine, Carlton had ordered a full workup. They took his temperature and vitals, as well as several blood samples.

After the team was finished, the doc handed Harvath a digital thermometer. He told him to take his temperature twice daily and to text him the results.

Harvath tucked the device in his pocket, put his jacket on, and thanked the doctor. He then walked back toward the Old Man’s office.

He and Jessica Decker had been wearing full protective gear when they explored the Matumaini Clinic, but only a respirator at the pit, and nothing at all in the village, nor in their encounter with the sick FRPI rebel commander.

From what he had gleaned from Hendrik, whatever the illness was that had been cooked up in Ngoa, it moved fast. The incubation period was days, not weeks. Oddly enough, Leonce and his son had been standing right there when the rebel commander had damaged one of the vials, but nothing had happened to them. They had been perfectly fine. If, and when, he started running a fever or had any other symptoms, then he’d raise his concern level. Right now, he tried not to think about it.

Reaching the Old Man’s office, Harvath stuck his head inside, but it was empty.

As he had sent Ashby with a suit to pick him up at the airport, someone important had to be in the building, or on their way. Harvath figured it was Beaman. The Old Man probably wanted to give him an update. But as he was a civilian, there was a lot that had happened in Congo that couldn’t be shared with him. They would have to figure out what their story was and just how far they would read Beaman in.

Walking down the hall, Harvath breezed past the coffin, but still no sign of Carlton. Unless he had left the building, there was only one other place he could be.