by Brad Thor
He could smell the pit long before he could see it. More appropriately, he could smell the accelerant that had been used. Jet fuel had a unique odor. But the nearest airport was hundreds of kilometers away. How the hell had jet fuel ended up in the middle of the jungle?
For the moment, that question would have to remain unanswered. Nearing the pit, he stopped and listened. When he didn’t hear anything, he crept forward to take a look.
There was no sign of anyone, but someone had been there. And they had come through with heavy vehicles, one of which was on treads.
A bulldozer, Harvath thought to himself. Not a good sign. The only reason you brought in something that big was if you had something very large to unearth or to cover up. Though he had never held out much hope for the staff and patients of the Matumaini Clinic, he had held out some. The revelation that a bulldozer had likely been involved in the pit now dashed that hope.
It also raised his concern as to who had staged the alleged attack on the clinic. Hazmat suits, jet fuel, and earth-moving equipment spoke to a very high level of sophistication.
He wanted to examine more of the pit. There was still that question poking at the back of his mind from when he had seen the original satellite footage of it. Something hadn’t made sense. Was it the shape of the pit? The part where the heat was concentrated?
Unfortunately, he was out of time. He needed to get back before Decker took off.
Retracing his steps, he moved as quickly and as quietly as he could.
CHAPTER 14
* * *
By the time he got back to Decker, she had completely filled the canisters and was almost done filling the bladder.
“What did you see?” she asked. “Is anyone at the clinic?”
He shook his head. “Everything’s quiet.” Pointing at her empty buckets, he added, “Want me to finish the bladder?”
“Thanks,” she replied.
Taking Jambo’s machete, he chopped off a tree branch about the diameter of a closet rod, notched it in two places at both ends and then, picking up his buckets, as well as Decker’s, headed down to the river.
When he returned with the pole across his shoulders and two buckets on each side, Decker was drinking from one of the large, plastic water bottles they had brought in with them.
“You want some?” she asked, holding the bottle out to him.
“No, you finish it,” he answered as he set the buckets of water down. “You’re going to need it.”
“So are you.”
She was right. Now was as good as any time to get started. He pulled a bottle from his pack, twisted off the top, and guzzled over half of it. Then he turned his attention to the canvas sling that held the bladder.
A gallon of water weighed almost eight and a half pounds. While he figured they would only need ten to fifteen gallons apiece, he had spec’d a forty-gallon bladder, just in case. Not counting the powdered-chemicals he had added, the weight of which was negligible, the bladder clocked in at over three hundred pounds.
Once they were a “safe” distance away from the river, he had begun looking for a level piece of ground with a strong enough tree. That’s how he had chosen where to stop.
Into each of the sling’s heavy-duty grommets, he attached a carabiner, which itself was attached to a cable leading to a hoist ring. He removed a ratchet lever hoist, suspended it from the tree limb, and went to work lifting the bladder.
When he had it at the level he wanted, he moved the PVC frame underneath it, extended the hose and tried the nozzle. The water was cold, but it smelled clean and the pressure was excellent. He positioned the supplies they would need and then returned to the bottle of water sitting next to his pack.
As he was drinking, Decker tossed him a pair of surgical scrubs.
“Time to get dressed,” she said.
He half expected her to either retreat down the path, or behind the opaque sheeting affixed to the makeshift PVC shower stall, but she didn’t bother.
Instead, standing next to her own pack, Decker began to slowly get undressed. Apparently modesty wasn’t one of her strong suits. Neither was subtlety.
Harvath didn’t want to watch, but he couldn’t help himself. The way in which she took off her clothes practically begged for a cover charge and a two drink minimum. He disliked everything about her, but when her mouth was shut and her clothes were dropping to the ground, she wasn’t half bad.
The only reason he shifted his eyes away was because he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing he was looking.
As he focused on getting himself undressed, he had to give her points for style. If he had been a woman travelling in the wilds of Congo, he doubted a thong and sexy bra would have been on his packing list.
Shaking his head, he continued to get undressed. She was a boatload of trouble and he figured she probably knew it. Her undoubtedly expensive lingerie was completely impractical and totally out of place in the middle of the jungle. She had to have known that too.
It was, of course, total theater, but in one of the crummiest places in the world, Jessica Decker had decided that the show must go on. He had to give her an A for effort. Any man who couldn’t applaud, or at the very least appreciate her dedication to maintaining a modicum of sex appeal, didn’t deserve to call himself a man.
While it didn’t mean he had any intention of hanging an “Open For Business” sign on his hammock, he decided to sneak one more peek. When he did, he found that she was already looking at him, admiring his body.
Their eyes met. They were both completely naked and they held each other’s gaze for several beats longer than they should have.
It was Harvath who eventually broke it off and looked away. That word that rhymed with truck leapt back into his mind.
It might have been a game to Decker, but he knew he had to be careful. Hanging off a skyscraper, only a fool whipped out his knife and starting sawing away at the rope. It was amazing, though, how foolish even the most resolute of men could be.
Thankfully, when he looked back over, Decker was nearly dressed. She made a show of pulling the top of her scrubs over her breasts before smoothing it down. She was trouble all right and she definitely knew it. Harvath, though, had enough other things to think about and shifted his mind to those.
Taking only the bare minimum of things they would need, he repacked Decker’s ruck and covered it with one of their ponchos. He used the other poncho to cover a hole he had dug and needed to keep dry. There had been no rain since they had left the Brits back at camp. For the time being, Mother Nature seemed to be smiling on them, or at least unaware of their presence.
When Decker indicated that she was ready, Harvath struck off toward the clinic.
The idea was to get as close as possible before climbing into the stifling heat of their biohazard suits. At most, they would be good for a half hour—and even then it would feel like they had done an Ironman race in one hundred degree heat. Dehydration and heat stroke were very serious concerns, which was why they had been drinking water and would be watching the clock once they were suited up.
At the clinic’s perimeter, Harvath took a long look around and then removed his night vision goggles and allowed Decker to take a look. His primary goal was to put her at ease. If she was at all nervous, the stress would erode the amount of time she could remain in her suit.
His secondary goal was to give her an opportunity to reacquaint herself with the property and see if she noticed anything out of place.
After a couple of minutes, she handed the goggles back to him.
“Does it look the way you remembered it?” he asked.
“Pretty much.”
“Okay. Let’s get suited up.”
Unpacking his ruck, Harvath laid out their gear in stacks of his and hers. Though they had already examined the suits, gloves, hoods, and booties fo
r punctures, tears, or any other vulnerability whatsoever, they went through each pile once more and then switched, checking each other’s work.
Content that the suits had not been compromised they began climbing into their personal protective equipment, also known as PPE.
The process required multiple pairs of sterile gloves and each one had to be taped to your suit. The tape had to be applied in a very specific manner, so as not to “tent,” which might provide an opening for a virus or other deadly pathogens to get in. This was one of the biggest reasons Harvath had been overruled and Decker was along for the assignment. A person not only needed help donning their PPE, but it was crucial to have help in doffing it. It simply wasn’t possible to properly remove the suit on one’s own.
Decker had been through extensive training and knew what she was doing. She stepped Harvath through what he needed to do as her partner.
When he asked about the multiple pairs of gloves, she explained that while they were a protection against the outermost level being punctured or torn, their primary raison d’être was to provide uncontaminated gloves beneath the outer gloves in order to help you get out of your suit.
The whole process, right down to getting out of your boots and slithering out of the suit was like the board game Operation. Touch the sides at any time and that was it. It came down to partnership and absolute trust.
While Decker may have pissed him off immeasurably with her behavior that morning, right now she radiated professionalism.
Taping the seams at his wrists and ankles, running her hands over the exterior of his suit—all of it was expert and clinical. However coquettish she may or may not have intended to be while getting into her scrubs, all of that was now gone. Jessica Decker was one hundred percent business.
They were going through the final stages of taping when Harvath heard her curse.
At first, he thought he had done something wrong. Then, he saw what had triggered the expletive.
A large raindrop had landed on her face panel. It was quickly followed by another and then another. Without any preamble, the clouds had opened up and the rain was now pounding down. Congo.
“We need to work fast,” Decker shouted over the din, “but methodically. Don’t screw up.”
Harvath did as she instructed, taking great care to make sure his tape didn’t tent. They were working beneath their headlamps, which had been wrapped around a tree limb. It was already less than optimal conditions. The rain only made it worse.
When he was done, Harvath flashed her the thumbs-up.
She examined her seams, then his. It was now that faith entered the equation. They had either done everything right, or they hadn’t. Only time would tell.
Taking a step back, Decker moved out of the way so that Harvath could lead.
The suit was extremely uncomfortable. Because of its bulk, his range of motion was severely limited. He felt like the midwestern boy in A Christmas Story, whose mother had over-bundled him with umpteen layers against the severe winter walk to school.
The hood not only impacted his hearing, but it also narrowed his field of view. His peripheral vision was all but nonexistent.
Usually, they would have taken each other’s vitals before suiting up, but they didn’t have the luxury of allowing vitals to dictate go or no-go for this assignment.
After powering up a small IR video camera, Harvath stepped into the clearing and kept his head on a swivel as they walked toward the clinic.
He had told Decker to inform him right away if anything seemed out of place. Twice he looked back at her and twice she flashed him the thumbs-up.
From across the clearing, the clinic had somehow looked more formidable, more robust. The closer they came, the more shabby and run-down it became. He had thought that maybe it was a trick of the rain streaming down his faceplate, but it wasn’t. Like everything else in Congo, even this American-funded medical clinic was woefully underwhelming.
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,” Decke
r 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?”
