Code of Conduct

CHAPTER 53

Ben Mordechai was in a lot of pain and didn’t want to leave Helena, but he understood the importance of attending the meeting at Mount Weather. It would be much more powerful if he was there to answer questions and represent Israel’s interests.

When CIA Director McGee’s Sikorsky S-76 helicopter touched down, Harvath, Mordechai, and Justice Leascht were already assembled on the tarmac, waiting. The copilot helped everyone board and made sure they were buckled in before hopping back up front and confirming with the pilot that they were ready to go.

As the helicopter raced toward Mount Weather, McGee explained over his passenger’s headsets how he wanted the meeting to go down. He wanted nothing short of complete discipline. They were going to get one crack at this and one crack only. The die had already been cast for the rest of the world. All McGee cared about at this point was rescuing the United States.

They were met at the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center by the Secret Service and taken down to the subterranean complex via a secondary route. Acting President Fleming had been briefed that the CIA Director wanted as few people to know about his visit as possible.

The Secret Service had conducted a thorough search of the facility, but there had been no sign of Pierre Damien.

Showing the party into the makeshift Situation Room, the agents then stepped out. Minutes later, Dennis Fleming appeared on the large flat screen at the head of the conference table.

Everyone joined in a chorus of “Good evening, Mr. President.”

“You can address me as Secretary Fleming,” he said. “Paul Porter is still the President as far as I am concerned.”

Fleming didn’t look good. No one needed to ask him if he had been part of the Federal flu shot leadership campaign. The man was head of the Treasury Department. He had been a good leader and had set the example for the people working under him. For that, he had been rewarded with African Hemorrhagic Fever. It was incredibly unjust. There was no telling how long he had, but he had refused to quit working just because he was in isolation. Too much needed to be done.

McGee gave Fleming the thirty-thousand-foot view, hitting the high points and only going granular when the man asked.

When the CIA Director finished, he picked up a phone off-screen and said, “I want the full cabinet assembled, as well as the National Security Council, now. Find Linda Landon and have her standing by. I’ll call for her when I’m ready.”

It took less than five minutes for everyone to file into the room and take their places. All of the attendees knew Chief Justice Leascht and stopped to shake his hand. Those who knew Harvath nodded. No one knew Mordechai.

Fleming didn’t want to waste any time and so immediately handed the meeting over to McGee. The CIA Director patched the Israeli Prime Minister in via videoconference on a split-screen and then gave the same briefing he had just given Secretary Fleming.

All of the attendees were shocked, doubly so those who had participated in the flu shot leadership program. Each of them had just been handed an almost certain death sentence.

Everyone wanted to know if there was a cure. If people took the correct flu shot now would the benefits be retroactive? They were questions that, sadly, had no answers at the moment.

The Acting Secretary of State, who had participated in the leadership program, but had yet to feel any ill effects from the virus, suggested the same thing Harvath had to Lydia Ryan. Israel was full of American and Western European citizens who had been visiting Israel when the virus broke out. If they had been vaccinated, they could be instrumental in helping the Israelis.

The Israeli Prime Minister agreed and said something to someone off-camera about getting the word out via television and radio right away.

There was some back and forth with the Prime Minister about Pierre Damien and what the Israelis knew and when. McGee introduced Mordechai, who fielded a handful of questions before the CIA Director brought the conversation back to the United States and what needed to be done.

In particular, they focused on Linda Landon and the best way to deal with her. Once there was consensus, Fleming summoned her.

Harvath led the assault team through the pine and spruce, up the steep slope. McGee had choppered in Ashby, Palmer, and a small contingent of operators from the Carlton Group. No one knew yet how deep this plot went, and neither Fleming nor McGee wanted to draw in outside agencies.

What they did know was that Landon wasn’t providing Damien sanctuary at Mount Weather. He was a man who understood contingencies, and he had established a redoubt. His fallback location was a log home at the end of an unpopulated road.

To his credit, Damien had not revealed a word of it to Landon. She had broken quickly, as Harvath had known she would. The look on her face when she walked into the room and saw Judge Leascht told everyone that she was guilty.

And while Damien had been smart enough not to reveal the existence of his bolt-hole, he had established windows during which he and Landon could communicate via the encrypted cell phone he had given her.

When he popped up, he didn’t stay up for long. It wasn’t until the third window that the NSA nailed his location.

Secretary Fleming knew Harvath only by his call sign and reputation. He had been present in a briefing once where Harvath’s exploits in Pakistan had been discussed. He knew President Porter thought very highly of him and so gave his blessing for Harvath to lead the team charged with going after Damien.

“How does this work?” he had asked. “Do I need to give you specific instructions? A list of dos and don’ts?”

“It is actually better if you just let me go and do what I have been trained to do.”

“You know what I expect, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go do it,” Fleming had said. And with that, he had let Harvath off the chain.

It would be daylight in an hour. By then, everything would be over. Damien was the devil himself — worse than Stalin, worse than Hitler or Mao or Pol Pot. He was worse than all of them combined, and even then, the comparison failed to depict the horror of what he had done.

How many mothers and fathers were inconsolable with grief at this very moment, having had their children taken by the ghastly disease Damien had unleashed? How many children had lost parents, husbands their wives, and on and on?

The only thing that would come close to equaling the misery would be the guilt of the survivors. Though they had no knowledge of Damien’s abhorrent plot, they had been the beneficiaries of his gruesome largess. Harvath couldn’t wait to make him pay.

The first trip wire they encountered was a thousand yards out from the house. It was set at chest height so that most deer and other animals could pass beneath it. Harvath pointed it out to the team and kept moving.

They encountered two more trip wires before Harvath could begin to see the outline of the house through the trees. This was as close as he wanted to get for the moment. Damien’s security detail would have night vision devices too. They needed to be careful.

After giving his team the signal to move into position, he unslung the suppressed rifle he was carrying, lay down on the ground, and crept slowly forward. There was no need to rush it. They had plenty of time.

It took him twenty minutes to move the last fifteen meters. But once he was in place, he had a perfect view through the last few trees of the back of the home.

There were no lights on. A guard, with night vision goggles, sat wrapped in a coat, his weapon across his lap. He sat so still, Harvath wondered if he was asleep.

Then, the man moved his head. He had heard something off to his right. Harvath wondered if he had picked up the sound of Ashby’s portion of the team back in the trees.

“Just a raccoon,” Harvath said to himself. “Don’t get out of your chair.”

But somehow the man sensed there was something lurking out there in the darkness, and he not only got out of his chair, he called it in on his radio. Shit.

Harvath watched as the man made a beeline right for where Ashby and her part of the assault team were dug in.

Congo, D.C., even the Blue Ridge Mountains — Murphy was everywhere.

As Harvath continued to watch, he willed the man to break it off, to pick up the radio and tell his colleagues that it was nothing.

Any hope of that happening, though, was dashed when the man neared the trees and definitely saw the operators beyond. His weapon came up so fast, Harvath barely had time to react. But he didn’t need to. Ashby was ready for him and drilled a silenced round right through the guard’s head.

Harvath leapt to his feet and gave the command to hit the house.

As the men appeared out of the woods like wraiths, Harvath had several meters’ head start.

When one of the guards came around the back of the house, Harvath turned, fired, and dropped him.

There were muffled spits off to Harvath’s right as Palmer took out another guard who had come to investigate. That was three down. Based on what Helena had told Mordechai, there were likely at least three more guards, plus Damien and his assistant cum valet, Jeffery.

Reaching the rear of the house, Harvath approached the sliding glass door. He gave the handle a tug, and it slid back. From further inside, he heard an alarm panel chime. Murphy.

He stepped over the threshold into a family room area. The house smelled musty and unused. There was the odor of stale coffee and a hint of a long-dead creature, probably a mouse, rotting somewhere behind one of the walls.

Harvath wanted Damien, and he moved quickly toward where he thought he would be. At the end of the hall was a door that looked like it belonged to a master bedroom. He headed right for it, stopping only to check two closets and a small powder room.

The carpeted floor creaked in spots beneath his boots. Pulling up short just before the door, he positioned himself off to the side and listened. He didn’t hear anything and so reached for the handle.

But before he grabbed it, the door opened from the other side, and he was nose-to-nose with one of Damien’s men.

Jamming his suppressor under the man’s chin, he fired. The man, dressed only in his underwear and likely on his way to the bathroom, fell to the floor dead with half his head missing.

A second man who had been asleep now scrambled for his weapon. Harvath shot him too and exited the room.

Palmer and Ashby were making their way down the hallway toward him, and Harvath waved them off. Crossing back toward the kitchen, he located a staircase, and signaled for them to follow him upstairs.

The stairs creaked worse than the hallway floor. Undeterred, he kept moving.

When he reached the top, there was a door immediately to his right. Reaching for the knob, he twisted it, and pushed the door open. It was a small office of some sort stacked with Pelican Cases and electronic equipment. Standing back, he sent Palmer in to clear it.

Moving down a narrow hallway, the next door he encountered was on his left and opened onto a small walk-in closet. There were only two rooms left. One of them was bound to have Damien.

Pushing open the door to the first room, he could see that it was a guest room of some sort, and that the bed had been slept in. He was about to signal Ashby when suddenly his entire field of vision was obscured.

The man must have been pressed against the wall and had leapt out the minute he saw the door open. All Harvath could do was react. The man was literally on top of him. He couldn’t get his weapon into a good enough angle to shoot, and so he snapped his head forward, driving his night vision goggles into his assailant’s face.

The man staggered backward, blood pouring down his face. Instead of surrendering, though, he charged again. This time, Harvath had enough distance and dropped him with two shots to his head. That left one final door.

Harvath crossed over to it and listened. There was no sound. But there hadn’t been in his other two encounters either.

Signaling the team, he twisted the doorknob. It was locked. Taking a step back, he kicked it open, and they poured in.

Like the other room, the bed was unmade, but there was no sign of its recent occupant. As Ashby quickly checked beneath it, Palmer checked the closet, and Harvath crossed to the bathroom.

It was secured by a sliding pocket door that hadn’t been closed all the way. Through the crack, Harvath could see the man identified as Jeffery, Damien’s valet, putting a shotgun in his mouth.

He took a step back and fired five shots in rapid succession through the door.

The valet screamed in agony as he dropped the shotgun onto the bathroom floor.

Harvath ripped open the door and kicked the weapon out of the way. This guy wasn’t going to get the luxury of taking the coward’s way out and committing suicide. All of his shots had been below the waist, including the valet’s groin.

Leaning over he placed the hot suppressor against the wound, and the valet screamed even louder.

“That was from Helena,” Harvath said. “Now tell me where Damien is.”