Code of Conduct

by Brad Thor

  As he worked his way deeper into the jungle, he continued to hide rifles and leave chemlights along the way. What he wouldn’t have given for a ruck full of Claymores, but it was much better than nothing.

  The problem with spacing out the rifles was that he had no idea how far in he would have to go. It was all based on his gut.

  As he was about to place the last one, he began to hear voices.

  Every muscle in his body tensed and he stood absolutely still, his ears straining to not only discern what they were saying but also to determine how far away they were, and if they were moving in his direction.

  Quietly, he stepped off the path and crouched down. His suppressed Glock was pulled in tight to his chest, his finger on the trigger, ready to fire.

  Seconds felt like minutes. Drops of water thudded onto him as well as on the broad leaves of the plants all around him. It sounded like rain hitting a canvas awning. It made it difficult to hear anything else.

  As best he could tell, there were two voices, both men, and they were coming closer. He slowly began to apply pressure to his trigger.

  By the time they were close enough to be intelligible, they were almost on top of him. Whatever language they were speaking, he didn’t recognize it.

  They were walking in single file and appeared to be alone. There was no one else on the path.

  Harvath discharged his weapon and a muffled spit accompanied each of the two rounds as they ripped through moist air and found their targets.

  The lifeless bodies collapsed onto the wet vegetation, each with a dime-sized hole near the bridge of their nose. Any sound made by the clatter of their equipment was gobbled up by the cacophony of the jungle.

  Stripping them of their weapons, he then dragged them far enough off the path that they wouldn’t be noticed until daylight, which unfortunately was fast approaching.

  Stepping back onto the path, he pushed on. Soon enough, he found what he was looking for.

  The sentry was forty meters out. He dispatched him the same way he had the others and moved the body. There were no other defenses he could see between him and the small encampment.

  Circling around to the west, he counted three canvas tents. There were no fires. It was a “cold” camp. They obviously didn’t want to attract any notice.

  For several moments, he did nothing but listen, trying to figure out which of the tents Decker might be in. The drops began falling harder and he realized that it was now raining. From somewhere, there was a rumble of thunder. If he was lucky, the storm might hold back the daylight and help keep the rebels in their tents.

  There was no logic to picking which one to check first. She could have been in any one of them. He decided to work from right to left.

  Just as he was about to step out of the bush, something caught his eye. Trip wire.

  Backing away, he traced it to its source. It was a crude, but deadly antipersonnel device that had been fashioned by running a length of paracord to the pin of a hand grenade, which itself had been secured to a tree trunk.

  Without any chemlights left, there was no way to mark it. Carefully, he stepped over the cord and slipped into the camp.

  The rain was coming down hard enough to mask the sound of his movement even to his own ears. He could only imagine it sounded twice as loud for anyone inside the tents.

  He approached the first one and listened as the rain beat upon the canvas. He couldn’t hear anything.

  Creeping around to the front, he parted the fly and peered inside. There were six soldiers, all asleep, their AKs propped up next to them. Two of his worst fears had been confirmed.

  The first was that they had encountered something bigger than just a handful of rebels extorting money from passing motorists. The second was what he had said back on the road—that whoever the patient was, he appeared to be someone who couldn’t go to a regular hospital.

  The next tent contained supplies. There was a smattering of heavier weapons, what looked like an RPG crate, some ammunition, food, and water.

  With two tents down, he only had one to go. Already, he was mentally composing his evacuation route out of the camp, back to the path, and down to the road. He and Decker would need to be extra cautious as they slipped out of the camp, making sure they didn’t hit any trip wires along the way.

  Coming up to the third tent, he stopped once more and listened, but the pounding rain made it impossible to hear anything else.

  He took a deep breath and, readying his weapon, pulled back the fly. Two men inside were lacing up their boots while another two were sleeping. The men lacing up their boots looked up immediately.

  Shooting with night vision goggles on was extremely difficult, especially when you had to move fast.

  Harvath’s first shot went low and through the man’s throat. After drilling his colleague in the head, he came back and finished him, along with the other two who still lay sleeping.

  There was no sign of Jessica Decker or the rebel who had led her away from the road.

  CHAPTER 6

  * * *

  Where the hell was she? Harvath tried to think as he dissolved back into the trees and inserted a fresh magazine into his weapon. If the soldier hadn’t brought her to the campsite, where else would he have taken her? Deeper into the jungle? But why? To rape her? To kill her?

  That couldn’t be it. They needed a doctor and had been prepared to take him, until Decker had upended everything. So where were they? Where was the patient? Why weren’t they in the camp?

  He racked his brain. Why wouldn’t you keep someone who was wounded in the camp? Why create a whole separate position that needed to be reinforced and protected? Was the patient in such agony that he prevented his comrades from sleeping? Was that why he had been separated off? Or was it something else?

  Why would you need to give someone his or her own space? To isolate them?

  A chill swept over him. He wanted to blame the rain, but he knew better. All this time, he had figured the patient was suffering from wounds sustained in combat. But what if that wasn’t it at all? What if he was sick?

  That thought sent another chill down Harvath’s spine. Sick in Congo could mean a lot of things, none of it good. He needed to find Decker, and they needed to get the hell out of here.

  Retracing his steps, he stepped back over the trip wire and circled the camp in a counterclockwise motion. Had he not been on the lookout for more trip wires, he never would have noticed a narrow path that had been trampled farther back into the jungle. He took it and moved as quickly, quietly, and carefully as he could. Less than two minutes later, he found it. The isolation ward.

  A lone tent had been set up in a small clearing recently hacked out of the bush. Light spilled from inside. As he neared, he could hear voices. He could also hear vomiting.

  One word kept going through his mind. It started with f and rhymed with truck. He didn’t want to get any closer than he already was, but he had no choice. Decker had put all of them in a terrible position.

  Raising his night vision goggles, he gave his eyes a moment to adjust. In a perfect world, he would have picked a safe spot, set the back of the tent on fire, and waited to shoot anyone other than Decker who ran out. But it wasn’t a perfect world and he couldn’t afford to alert the other rebels.

  He thought about using a snake, but he didn’t have the time, and he especially didn’t have the desire, to go catch one. He could only imagine the field day Murphy would have with that one. This was one of those things he would just have to do the hard way.

  Moving to the front of the tent, Harvath tightened his grip on his weapon and reached for the flap.

  But no sooner had he begun to pull it back, than a hand reached out and grabbed hold of his wrist.

  Harvath drove his arm down, pulling the figure off balance. As the man’s head came into view, Harvath saw that he was wea
ring a piece of cloth fashioned into a makeshift surgical mask. Leveling his pistol, he shot him in the head and pushed the man into the tent.

  Instantly, his mind took in the entire scene. A second similarly masked rebel was reaching for his rifle. A third couldn’t get to his rifle, but had picked up a machete. Harvath shot them both and kept advancing on his objective.

  Standing above a cot, holding an IV bag over the ill patient—a man with a long scar across his forehead—was a fourth rebel. He was a large man who didn’t show an ounce of fear. Instead, he shot Harvath I’m going to kill you eyes and looked ready to shout the alarm.

  Harvath double-tapped him with two rounds to the chest and followed with another to the head, dropping him where he stood. The rebel who had taken Decker into the jungle was nowhere to be seen.

  The doctor, though, sat at the back of the tent. A gag had been placed around her mouth and her hands and feet had been bound.

  Because he was a believer in keeping radio traffic minimal, Harvath had given the Brits a handful of code words he would use during his search. Unless there was an absolute emergency, they had agreed not to distract his op by hailing him. Harvath now recited the word that would tell them that he had located and retrieved Dr. Decker. “Omaha,” he said over his bone mic.

  Ash sent back two squelch clicks indicating he had received the message.

  Holding his index finger to his lips, Harvath bent down and loosened her gag. He then untied her hands and feet.

  “Can you move?” he whispered.

  Decker nodded.

  “Good,” he replied, helping her up. “Where’s the man who brought you here?”

  “I don’t know. He asked me some questions about medical supplies and what we had in the trucks, then he left.”

  Harvath quickly radioed the team and told them to be on guard. Pointing at the man on the cot, he said, “Who’s he?”

  “Their commander.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Without a lab test, I can’t be sure. It could be anything. It could be the flu. It could even be yellow fever.”

  “Will he survive without a hospital?”

  “Maybe. But without a proper diagnosis, I can’t say either way.”

  Harvath picked up Decker’s medical bag and handed it to her. “Follow right behind me. Step exactly where I step and do exactly what I say. Don’t make a sound. Do you understand?”

  Once again, she nodded.

  Turning off the lanterns, he flipped his NVGs back down. Once his eyes were focused on the ghostly green image, he led Decker to the front of the tent.

  He parted the flaps and took several moments to scan the area. When he was convinced it was safe, he waved her forward and had her step out into the rain.

  As she did, Harvath turned and shot the rebel commander twice in the head. No loose ends.

  He inserted a fresh magazine and led Decker back the way he had come, keeping a very careful lookout for trip wires.

  There was also the issue of at least seven, and possibly more, heavily armed rebel soldiers remaining.

  The six back in the encampment, if still sleeping, were of no importance to him. It was the seventh rebel, the one who had controlled the toll stop and had led Decker away that he was concerned with. He was a huge loose end and could be a big problem for CARE now and in the future. If they let him live, the FRPI rebels wouldn’t stop until they had exacted their revenge.

  They were nearly even with the encampment when Harvath’s earpiece crackled to life.

  “The rebels know you’re there,” Ash radioed. “You need to get the hell out of there.”

  Harvath was about to ask how the Brits knew, but then remembered that Jambo was monitoring the communications.

  “Turn the vehicles around and move them half a click back,” Harvath said. “If anybody wants to get to you, they’ll be forced to come straight down the road.”

  “That goes for you too,” Ash reminded him.

  “Maybe not,” said Harvath. “Hurry up. We’ll get there as soon as we can.”

  Signing off, he picked up the pace. As they neared the antipersonnel trap he had seen earlier, he slowed back down. Because he hadn’t been able to mark its position, it took him a few moments to find it. Once he did, he held the pin in place while Decker clipped the cord that functioned as the trip wire.

  He thought about tossing the grenade into the tent that acted as the rebels’ supply depot, but as quickly as the idea had entered his mind, he dismissed it. There was no telling how many rebels were converging on them. He only had one grenade. He would need to make it count.

  Skirting the encampment, he could see the previously sleeping rebels pouring out of their tent. He had the thickness of the jungle and the darkness on his side, so he stopped just long enough to take two shots. Both rounds found their marks and two more rebels lay dead.

  By the time their comrades noticed, Harvath and Decker were already on the move. That didn’t stop the soldiers from firing wildly into the jungle where they thought their attackers had been.

  It was chaos, which was the state Harvath wanted to put the enemy in. The more confused, the more unsure, the more stressed they were, the better it was for him. People who were off balance had trouble thinking and usually screwed up.

  It was why, in his SEAL training, he had been deprived of sleep and stressed to the breaking point. Never allow failure to become an option. Adapt and overcome.

  When they finally stepped out of the underbrush and rejoined the path that led to the road, Harvath could hear the rebels coming. He and Decker didn’t have a big enough lead. They needed to open up a wider gap.

  At the first chemlight marker, he told Decker to keep going. Snatching up one of the AK-47s he had cached, he turned and fired in the rebels’ direction.

  When he had emptied the first of the duct-taped magazines, he flipped it, and inserted the fresh one. He laid rounds right up the path again, and then swung the weapon from side to side, hoping to spray anyone who had tried to jump out of the way. Once he had run the weapon dry, he took off after Decker.

  The move bought them an additional twenty seconds of a head start. He did the same thing at the next secreted AK-47 and the one after that, never knowing if he had succeeded in taking out any of the men giving him chase. Run the weapon dry and move. Run the next weapon dry and move. That was his picket line.

  While the dense jungle provided concealment, the path didn’t offer much in the way of cover. As they neared the last AK-47, Harvath had a decision to make.

  They would be about fifty meters from the road. It would be incredibly slow going trying to move parallel through the jungle until they reached the Land Cruisers and could safely pop out. Should they make a break for it together and try to run up the road, or should Harvath make his stand here while Decker made a break for it alone?

  By his count, he had two fully loaded Glock mags, in addition to what was already in his weapon, plus the two mags that would be with the AK-47. He also had the hand grenade. But that would only work if he could bottle the soldiers up. If they were spread throughout the jungle, it would be far less effective.

  And where there was one grenade, there were going to be more. Once they began to close in on him, what would stop them from using them? If the coast was clear, he decided he’d take his chances with Decker on the road. They could always cut back into the jungle if they had to. He would use the last AK to buy them a few more precious seconds.

  As they got to the last marker, their lungs heaving for air, he lunged for the weapon, but it was gone.

  CHAPTER 7

  * * *

  Before Harvath could warn Decker to stop, the man had grabbed her. It was the same Congolese rebel who had escorted her into the jungle in the first place. He stood behind her, his left arm wrapped around her throat. His right hand held the
pistol-style grip of his AK-47. His finger was curled around the trigger. The muzzle of the weapon was pressed into her back. The other AK-47 hung from the man’s shoulder.

  Harvath thought about his options. None of them were good. He didn’t have a clean shot. The only thing he could do was save himself. The word that rhymed with truck popped back into his mind as he raised his Glock.

  “Drop your gun!” the rebel ordered. “Drop your gun! I kill the woman! I kill her!”

  Decker’s face was twisted in a mask of fear. Her eyes riveted on Harvath, silently imploring him not to let her die.

  “If you kill her, I am going to kill you. Do you understand me?”

  “Drop your gun! I kill her! I kill her now!” the soldier yelled.

  Harvath adjusted his weapon, trying to get the best sight picture possible. “I am going to count to ten. If you do not let her go, I am going to kill you.”

  “Please,” Decker cried.

  “Stop moving,” Harvath warned her.

  “I kill her!”

  Harvath ignored him. “One. Two. Thr—”

  Mick’s suppressed round entered the rebel’s skull just behind his left ear. It was like throwing a circuit breaker. Instant blackout. The man was dead before his body hit the ground.

  Decker, who hadn’t seen the Brit step out of the shadows behind her and take the shot, had no idea what had happened. All she knew was that the man had been there, his body pressed hard against hers, and then he was gone.

  When she turned and saw the man standing there, wearing night vision goggles and the same voice-activated bone microphone in his ear as Harvath, she put it together. Even if she had known what to say, she wasn’t able to speak. Shock was quickly overtaking her.

  Bullets from the rebels approaching from up the path were now popping and zinging all around them. Vegetation was being shredded.