There was a crappy, hand-painted wooden sign above the dilapidated covered entrance. Written in French and English it read: CARE INTERNATIONAL: MATUMAINI MEDICAL CLINIC.
Its ridiculously hopeful blue shutters were drawn flush against the chipped and peeling white façade. The faded front door was also closed.
Standing beneath the overhang, Harvath wiped the rain from his faceplate and then leaned in to study the door.
“What is it?” Decker asked.
With his finger, he pointed to a discolored inch-and-a-half-wide strip around the frame.
“Something was taped over this door at one point,” he said. And then, examining the windows on either side added, “The windows were too. Stay here.”
Before Decker could respond, he had already stepped out from under the overhang and into the rain to examine the rest of the structure.
She didn’t like being left alone, especially not right at the front door. What if someone was inside? What if that someone came out? How would she protect herself? Decker willed herself to calm down.
This was her clinic. She used to be in charge here. There was nothing to worry about.
Staring out into the rain, she thought about all the people she had worked with here. They were good people, hard-working people, whose only sin was to have been born in Congo. Why someone would attack this clinic was beyond her. In fact, why someone would attack any clinic was beyond her. It was that kind of senselessness that had made her want to stop reporting tragedies and become part of making people’s lives better. They had done that at the Matumaini Clinic and she hoped they would be able to do it again.
A rumble of thunder echoed from somewhere off in the distance. Decker took a step back and pressed herself against the wall. It was pitch black and the rain was coming down in sheets. She couldn’t make out where the clinic grounds ended and the jungle began.
Nevertheless, someone was watching. She could feel it. She had sensed eyes on them from the moment they had stepped out of the jungle. She wished she still had the machete. Something wasn’t right.
No sooner had that thought popped into her mind than she heard the sound of glass breaking from inside the clinic.
CHAPTER 15
Lying in the sill to Decker’s left was a short piece of rebar used for propping open the window. She grabbed it. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was something.
There was another noise from inside, followed by the groan of metal on metal and the scraping of wood against stone as the faded front door creaked and began to open.
She made ready to strike until she saw the outline of Harvath’s hazmat suit as he stepped out of the clinic.
“What the hell are you doing? I thought you were checking the exterior of the building.”
“I saw enough. Come inside.”
Decker followed him. Parts of the interior were illuminated with an eerie, greenish glow. Harvath had brought along a box of his own full-sized chemlights and was snapping and tossing them into various corners as he went. They provided enough light to see by, but not so much that it would be noticed from outside.
“What was that crash I heard?” Decker asked.
“Nothing,” Harvath replied. “I had to break a window to get in.”
“Let me check the integrity of your suit.”
“I’m fine.” He was already overheating and not in a good mood.
“Let me check,” Decker insisted.
Harvath complied and she pulled out her headlamp, activated the low-level red beam, and examined him from head to toe.
“You’re good.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Now, come look at this.”
He led her into the main ward. It was a graveyard of metal bedframes. All of the mattresses had been stripped away. There wasn’t a sheet or blanket to be seen either.
“It’s like a swarm of locusts came through here,” Decker stated. “Even the mosquito netting and privacy dividers are gone.”
All of the bedframes had been jumbled together in the center of the ward. Harvath pulled a large plastic bottle of liquid from his bag and began spraying it in different places around the room.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Luminol. It reacts with the iron in hemoglobin. If there’s any blood in here, it’ll start glowing blue.”
Decker waited, but she didn’t see anything. Neither did Harvath.
“There,” she suddenly said, pointing to an area glowing in the corner. “And there. And there.”
Harvath turned and looked at each occurrence, along with several others that were actively glowing.
“My God,” Decker exclaimed. “There’s blood everywhere!”
“Take it easy,” replied Harvath, as he began spraying more luminol around the room. He even stood on one of the bedframes to spray several spots along the ceiling. All of them started to glow blue.
“How is that possible?” she asked. “It’s like the whole ward was painted in blood.”
“Not exactly,” he said as he exited the ward and made his way through the clinic, randomly spraying walls, doors, floors, windows, and ceilings with the luminol.
“It’s all glowing,” he heard her shout as she trailed behind him. “Every single thing you’re spraying.”
She caught up with him in the small dispensary that also acted as the clinic’s laboratory. Harvath was spraying the small, empty refrigerator. It all glowed blue.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“There’s only two other substances that can cause luminol to glow like this and I don’t think it’s the first one.”
“What’s the first one?”
Harvath got out an S and an H before catching himself and saying, “Excrement.”
“And the second?” Decker asked.
“Bleach.”
“Bleach?”
He nodded. “I think this entire place has been sanitized. Literally from top to bottom. I also think,” he began, but his voice trailed off as something caught his eye.
“What is it?”
Harvath motioned for her to back out of the dispensary. He had been bending down near the tiny fridge and saw something beneath the cabinets on the adjacent wall.
There was a narrow strip of black, plastic trim along the top of the fridge that had begun to peel back on one side. Harvath helped it the rest of the way off.
Lying down on his stomach, he slid the piece of trim under the cabinets and coaxed out the item from underneath. Once he got it out, he held it up.
“What is it?” Decker repeated from the doorway. It looked like a giant mint the size of a hockey puck. It was chipped, and a large portion appeared to have been burned.
“No one ever used these when you were here?”
“I don’t even know what it is.”
Harvath sprayed it with luminol. Seconds later it started to glow.
“It’s a bleach tablet,” he said.
“Why would that be here?”
“Drop this in a pie plate and set it on top of a camping stove, and you can gasify it. The fumes go everywhere and will sanitize anything your liquid bleach missed.”
“Then you’re right. The clinic was sanitized. But by whom? And why? What were they sanitizing?”
Good questions, none of which Harvath wanted to waste time deciphering right now. His scrubs were soaked through and the sweat was rolling down his face into his eyes. He wanted to finish looking around and get the hell out of here.
Retreating to the front door, he reenacted what he had seen on the video. Though someone outside had filmed it, he could approximate where the shooters had been standing when they entered and had opened fire.