The translator did, and Harvath studied the man’s face for any indication that he was lying. He was looking for microexpressions, sometimes referred to as tells. They were subconscious facial cues that indicated that a person was under duress because they were lying or had intent to do some other type of harm. So far he didn’t see any.
When the man replied, Jambo translated. Harvath didn’t see any signs that the man was lying. In fact, everything about him suggested he was telling the truth.
“Ask him about the video,” Harvath said. “Who filmed it?”
Jambo posed the question and then listened to the man’s response. Finally, he turned to Harvath and said, “He took the video.”
“He did?”
Jambo nodded.
“With what?”
Jambo asked the man and then replied, “With his cell phone.”
Harvath didn’t believe him. There was no reception anywhere near this village. “Tell him I want to see his phone,” he said.
Jambo bobbed his head up and down as the man spoke and then turned back to Harvath. “He doesn’t have it anymore.”
“Where is it?”
“He hid it in one of their trucks. The men who killed everyone in the clinic and then killed everyone in the village.”
“Why?”
“He was worried he would be killed too,” said Jambo. “There is no cellular service here. He pressed send and then hid the phone in a truck. He assumed that eventually the truck would pass into an area with reception and the message would be sent.”
Smart. Harvath had to give the man credit. There was something, though, that was bothering him. “How did he know where to send it? How did he know that email address?”
Decker cleared her throat, and all eyes turned to her as she looked at Harvath. “Didn’t you see all the signs in the clinic?” she asked. “The banners?”
Harvath had seen lots of things, but he had been focused on figuring out what had happened. “What signs?”
“The ones advertising CARE International’s support of the clinic. Each of them has CARE’s web address, as well as an email for more information. That’s the address the video was sent to.”
Harvath turned his attention back to the villager and said to Jambo, “Tell him I want to know about the trucks.”
Jambo asked him, and the man rattled off a short description. There were no distinctive colors or markings. They appeared to be commercial, not military. Nothing special.
“How about the men themselves?”
“Mzungu,” the villager replied.
“What’s mzungu?” Harvath asked.
“It’s Swahili for white people,” said Decker.
“White people?”
She nodded.
Harvath asked Jambo, “Were they military?”
Seconds later he replied, “Apparently they carried rifles, but they were not wearing uniforms.”
“How about their hair? Long? Short? Any beards? Mustaches? Tattoos? Anything at all that stood out?”
Jambo asked the man and then said, “They acted military. One man gave orders and the others followed. They all had short hair. No beards, no mustaches. No tattoos.”
“How many were there?”
“He says somewhere between eight to twelve.”
About the size of a military squad, Harvath thought. “What language were they speaking?”
Jambo translated the question and then said, “He’s not sure. He didn’t recognize it. He says maybe German. Or Russian.”
“Would he recognize any of them if he saw them again?”
Jambo asked the man, and then nodded.
Harvath stepped outside, retrieved a pen and a piece of paper, and walked back into the dwelling.
“Tell him I need his cell phone number,” he said, handing the pen and paper to Jambo.
Once he had it, he left Decker with Jambo to ask more questions and stepped back outside.
Positioning his Iridium system, he fired up his phone, waited until he had a strong signal and then placed his call.
When the man on the other end picked up, he apologized for waking him and then said, “I need you to locate a phone for me. It was tossed into a truck in Congo several days ago. The battery is probably dead, but I want to know all the other towers it touched. I also want a list of phones that touched those same towers at the same time, as well as where those phones are now.”
“How soon do you need it?” the man asked.
“Right away,” Harvath replied. Ending the call, he stepped back inside to join Decker. Jambo was in the middle of translating the villager’s tale.
His name was Leonce, and he talked about a stranger who had shown up at the Matumaini Clinic, sick with a high fever. No one knew how he had gotten there. He lost consciousness soon after coming in. He had no ID, no money, nothing.
They placed him in a bed, started an IV, and began trying to figure out who he was and what was wrong with him.
He regained consciousness twice, but only briefly. Both times he screamed to be protected and begged the clinic staff not to “send him back.” They were never able to figure out what he was talking about. A nurse said she thought he might be Muslim, a very minority community in Congo, as it sounded at one point as if he had moaned the word for the Muslim god, “Allah.”
Per their protocols, they contacted the Health Ministry hotline in Kinshasa. The rather blasé bureaucrat told them it was probably nothing, but to take full protective measures.
An hour later, the clinic received a call from the World Health Organization representative in Kinshasa telling them to prep blood and tissue samples and deliver them to the airport in Bunia for transport. The rep also asked to be emailed pictures of the patient.
The clinic had one very small, very old, and very unreliable car. Leonce offered to make the trip to Bunia. When the clinic staff agreed, Leonce invited his son, the deaf boy named Pepsy, to come with him.
The staff took great pains to make sure the samples were completely airtight and properly packaged. Leonce was given money for fuel. Any food or lodging would be his responsibility. They had already given him all the petty cash they had.
Leonce had been to Bunia many times and knew the route well. He had a relative there, and he and Pepsy would spend the night before returning the next morning.
With their package safely on the backseat, Leonce ground the gears of the little car, he and Pepsy waved out their open windows to the staff, and they began their journey.
Their problems began almost immediately.
First came the rain. It was so heavy, it sounded like rocks being poured onto the roof of the car. Each enormous drop landed with a great splash.
Leonce activated the wipers. They swung to the left. They swung to the right. Then, they stopped. He and his son had to try to use their shirts to keep the windshield clear, but the rain was so bad, that they could barely see the road. Then they hit a roadblock.
“Roadblock?” Harvath asked.
“It would be more appropriate to designate it a toll,” Jambo clarified. “Bandits set them up to extort money from motorists.”
Ash and Mick, who had been listening to the interrogation, shot Harvath a look.
“Does Leonce know who these bandits were?” Harvath asked.
Jambo nodded. “FRPI. The Front for the—”
“Patriotic Resistance of Ituri,” Harvath said, finishing the translator’s sentence for him. “What happened?”
“They demanded that Mr. Leonce pay their toll. He had very little money with him. When they tried to take his package from the backseat, he struggled with them. One of the rebels struck him in the stomach with the butt of his rifle.”
“And then what happened?”