Harvath had been to more war-ravaged areas than he cared to remember. He had seen things beyond horrible. The worth of a culture, in his opinion, could be boiled down to one thing — how well that culture took care of its weakest members, particularly its women and children.
The satellite image of the burn pit brought back a flood of memories, none of them pleasant, none of them things he wanted to remember. Something about it, though, was odd. He tried to put his finger on it and when he couldn’t, he relegated it to the back of his mind.
“Mr. Carlton is right,” Harvath conceded. “It could be anything.”
For a moment, Beaman didn’t know how to respond. “But we all agree, it probably wasn’t trash.”
Harvath looked to the Old Man, then back at Beaman, and nodded.
An uncomfortable silence fell over the conference room. Finally, Beaman broke it. “Mr. Harvath, I want to find out what happened. Scratch that,” he said, correcting himself. “I have to find out what happened. I owe it to those people, to all of my people. If this had happened to a team you were responsible for, I don’t doubt that you’d feel the same way.”
Harvath began to understand where this was headed. Beaman wanted him to lead the operation.
If their places were reversed, of course Harvath would want to know what had happened to his team. But this wasn’t about a team of his. This was about Beaman’s people, and there was a lot more to this story. It wasn’t as simple as flying over and figuring out what had happened.
Congo was the world’s deadliest conflict zone. Five and a half million dead in less than twenty years. Invasions from neighboring countries, wars, political instability — it was like a match factory, if match factories also stored buckets of gasoline and hung lit sparklers from the ceiling. Calling it unstable was too generous by half.
The danger and instability of the region were just two of the many problems Harvath saw with this situation. There was also a host of unanswered questions. No one even knew who had sent the video to CARE and worse still, no one could explain why the gunmen entering the clinic had been wearing biohazard suits.
According to Beaman, Matumaini was a small family medicine clinic. They didn’t treat highly communicable illnesses. They didn’t have the capacity. The furthest they went was performing minor surgeries. If something exotic or unusual walked in their door, they knew to call for help.
But as far as Beaman, or anyone at CARE knew, no such call had gone out.
Harvath didn’t like it any of it. He hated loose ends. There were too many things stacked one upon another that didn’t make sense.
Beaman was also running out of time. The longer it took to get a team over to Congo, the colder the trail would become. If something wasn’t done soon, they might never know what happened and who was responsible.
Once again, a rush of unpleasant images moved across the screen of his mind’s eye. The scenes of families were the hardest to stomach. He had witnessed what monsters could do. He knew what monsters continued to do when not stopped. In this case, the monsters embodied an amplified evil. They had preyed not only on the sick and infirm, but also upon those who had helped to care for them.
His mind then drifted to his trip to New England, but only as an afterthought. He had already decided what he was going to do. What he told himself he had to do. The Carlton Group didn’t have anyone else who could take on this kind of assignment with so little advance warning.
If he didn’t agree to take charge, it wouldn’t get done. The State Department had passed, and Beaman was right, the FBI and CIA weren’t going to help him either. Harvath was CARE’s only hope.
It would be an absolute ballbuster of an assignment, and he would have to figure out a lot of it on the fly, but he knew he could do it. Just like he knew he could convince Lara that he had no choice but to postpone their trip to New England. He would find leaves for her someplace else, someplace even better. It would all work out.
And with his decision made, he had jumped in with both feet. Logistics, equipment, funds, support… it was chaos, but he relished the challenge because chaos was the arena in which he excelled. The Old Man had left him with one final directive. “Get in and get the hell out as fast as you can.”
Within twenty-four hours, he was on the ground in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Twelve hours later, he had assembled his team and they were on their way north to the Matumaini Clinic.
Exiting out of the video player, he took another look at his text message screen before returning the phone to his pocket and powering down the tiny Iridium cube he used to access the satellite network. He had texted Lara when he had touched down to let her know that he had arrived safely. She had not responded and Harvath tried to put it out of his mind. He needed to get his head in the game.
If everything went according to plan, they would be in and out. At least that’s what he had told himself. He had also told himself that he’d be able to sway Lara about cancelling, or as he had put it, rescheduling their trip. That had not gone over well with her at all.
But Scot Harvath had a bad habit of telling himself things he knew weren’t true.
CHAPTER 2
Harvath’s security team was made up of four Brits — all former SAS members. They had been with a private contracting company in Kenya called Ridgeback. There was too much money and too much action in Congo, though, so they left to form their own venture.
They called their four-man company Extremis. Harvath had never met any of them before, but they had come highly recommended. He had linked up with Patrick Asher and Mike Michaelson in Lubumbashi, where they loaded their gear onto the plane CARE had arranged for them.
Asher, or “Ash” as his men referred to him, was the team leader. He was in his early forties and reminded Harvath in a way of the Old Man. He was cordial, but all business. No jokes, no small talk, just straight to the point. His graying hair and dark eyes gave him an added air of intensity.
Michaelson, on the other hand, was different. Known by his teammates as “Mick,” he was a short, muscular man in his thirties with a shaved head, and a neck like a tree trunk. Everything amused him. Within the first ten minutes of their having met, he had slapped Harvath on the back at least three times.
After loading their equipment, they flew north to Bunia, the provincial capital of Ituri. Waiting for them, were the other two members of the team, Simon Bruce and Evan “Eddie” Edwards.
On the flight up, Mick had referred to Simon and Eddie as the “Brute Squad.” Meeting them, Harvath understood why.
They were large men, both in their thirties, well over six feet tall and half a block wide. Unlike their clean-shaven compatriots from Lubumbashi, they sported facial hair. But not just any kind of facial hair.
Simon had the biggest, reddest beard Harvath had ever seen. He looked like a lumberjack on steroids. Eddie sported a meticulous, jet-black Van Dyke that made him look like he had just stepped out of a Captain Morgan ad. Congo was already living up to its Wild, Wild West reputation.
Accompanying Simon and Eddie was their fixer, a skinny, young Congolese man they had nicknamed “Jambo,” which meant hello in Swahili. Because his real name was practically impossible for anyone to pronounce and because of the manic enthusiasm with which he greeted people, the Jambo nickname had stuck.
Two white Toyota Land Cruisers stood idling on the tarmac. One was outfitted for carrying passengers, the other for hauling cargo. Both had been tricked out with off-road packages that included lift kits, snorkels, winches, and mud tires.