Code of Conduct

CHAPTER 4

The moment Harvath popped the Land Cruiser’s door open and climbed out, the soldiers began shouting at him to get back in. Keeping a smile on his face, he ignored their commands. Instead, he moved toward them.

The medical bag was slung over one shoulder and in his arms he cradled an assortment of supplies. Nodding toward the soldier with the bandaged hand, he offered to change his dressing in exchange for being allowed to step off the road and relieve himself afterward.

One soldier in particular raised his rifle as if he was about to strike Harvath, but the man with the bandaged hand told him to stop. He needed his dressing changed, badly.

Harvath stepped into the beams cast by the Land Cruiser’s headlights and motioned the man to him. Once he was there, Harvath convinced two more to join him and assist. Slinging their rifles, they accepted the supplies and did what Harvath asked.

Even lightly touching the man’s bandaged hand caused him to wince. He was in considerable pain. Harvath could see that the wound was oozing. It was infected.

As he carefully unwound the bandage, he asked the young man how he had been injured. The soldier, who couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty, explained that his hand had slipped while using his machete. Congolese rebels could be horrific butchers. Harvath didn’t want to know the details.

The wound was a week old, and another soldier had dressed it for him. The bandage hadn’t been changed. As soon as Harvath had it unwound, the stench alone told him the man’s hand was a lost cause.

“Is it very bad?” the young soldier asked in French.

Holding the man by the wrist, Harvath rotated the hand from side to side. “We need more light,” he said, moving the soldier farther away from the group. Gesturing with his head, he encouraged the other two to move with them. They did.

Once he had them where he needed them, he pretended to examine the wound once more and then told the man’s compatriots what he needed them to do. Explaining that they had limited disinfectant, he told one man he would need to pour it over the top of the wound while the other man held a clean dressing underneath to catch the liquid as it poured down. They would then wring the bandage out over the wound to give it a second cleansing.

As men who led lives of unfathomable paucity, reusing the liquid made complete sense to them. In order to keep their attention focused on the wound and off of him, Harvath further instructed them to watch for any indication that the discharge was changing color.

Harvath had his patient, as well as his two assistants, squat down so they could all work better via the Land Cruiser’s headlights.

One of the men became agitated when he saw him reach into his medical bag and demanded to know what he was doing. Harvath held out then penlight and showed it to him. Satisfied, the rebel returned his focus to his colleague’s wound.

Taking one last look around and fixing everyone’s position in his mind, Harvath instructed the man with the disinfectant to very slowly start pouring it over the wound and reminded the man holding the dressing underneath to make sure he caught every last drop.

Standing up straight, he moved the penlight to his left hand and held it where Ash and Mick would be the only ones able to see it. Then, sliding his right hand into the medical bag, he wrapped it around the butt of his weapon and took a deep breath. Exhaling, he depressed the light’s tail cap, giving out two quick flashes as he began to count backward from ten.

When the Land Cruiser’s high beams kicked on, Harvath already had the suppressed Glock free of the bag and his finger applying pressure to its trigger.

The three rebels next to him were stacked almost like a totem pole, with one head on top of another. Harvath started with the man who was pouring the disinfectant and worked his way down. Three headshots in less than two seconds.

Before the bodies had even crumpled to the ground, Harvath had his weapon up and trained on the remaining soldiers. Mick, though, had been just as deadly. All of his shots had found their marks.

Nevertheless, Harvath moved over to them to make sure they were dead. They were. The Brits joined him and quickly helped secure the scene.

After stripping the dead rebels of their weapons, ammunition, and sole radio, which they gave to an amazingly unperturbed Jambo to monitor, they tossed the bodies in the jungle on the opposite side of the road. Life in Africa, and especially Congo, was exceedingly cheap.

“How do you want to handle Dr. Decker?” Ash asked.

Harvath had never wanted her along in the first place. After what she had done, part of him wanted to leave her here, but he couldn’t do that. He knew he was going to have to be the one to get her out.

He also knew that Murphy, of the eponymous law, loved Africa more than any other country in the world. If it could go wrong, it would go wrong, especially in Africa. That went double for Congo.

Looking at the weapons they had taken off of the dead soldiers, two options popped into Harvath’s mind. A cigar roll or a picket fence.

In the cigar roll, he’d stagger Ash and his men along a route between the road and wherever Jessica Decker was. Once he had her, and they were making their escape, the shooters would give them cover and then join them in their retreat, “rolling” the cigar as they worked backward toward the vehicles. But that was one of the spots where Mr. Murphy would be waiting with the vehicles.

They needed to keep the Land Cruisers running and ready to go. There was no telling how many rebels they might have on their tail as they tore through the jungle. It would be a death sentence to arrive at the road and discover that something had happened to their only means of ultimate escape. They couldn’t risk leaving the vehicles.

Judging by the little he knew about Ash, the Brit wouldn’t like Harvath’s plan. Ash was a good man, a soldier. He’d want to go into the jungle too, but Harvath couldn’t ask him to do that. It wasn’t right. Not with how much had already been kept from him and his team.

Harvath decided to go with the picket.