“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.”
CHAPTER 17
By the time Decker was awake and out of her hammock, Harvath had already gone. He had taken Ash and Mick with him.
While Jambo and the Brute Squad broke down the camp, Harvath and the two other Brits proceeded to the pit on foot. They wanted to establish a perimeter before calling in the rest of the team.
The rain had stopped overnight and when the first pale streaks of dawn began to paint the sky, it looked as if it would be a halfway decent morning. Harvath wanted to take it as a good omen, but he knew better than to put his trust in that kind of thing. Rain or shine, this was still Congo.
Per Ash’s request, they had given the clinic a healthy berth on their hike in. They had stopped to survey it at a distance from the jungle, but only for a moment, and then had pushed on.
As soon as they neared the pit, they could smell the jet fuel. While it wasn’t as strong as it had been the night before for Harvath, it was still unmistakable.
They worked their way around the pit and conducted a preliminary reconnaissance in the semidarkness. None of them spoke. They all knew what this place was. You could feel it.
Ash sent Mick out to the road as a lookout and then called in the rest of the team.
The sun was just beginning to pierce the trees when the white Land Cruisers rolled up.
Decker stepped out of LC1 wrapped in a fleece and holding a coffee cup. Her hair was pulled back and tied in a ponytail. She arched her shoulders and lazily looked around as if she had just shown up for a 5K and was searching for the sign-in table.