CHAPTER 23
S
UNDAY
W
ith his earbuds in, Jambo had pretended to be face-timing on his iPhone as he strolled the neighborhood and shot video. When they had reviewed it back at the hotel, Harvath and Ash were able to identify several places for static surveillance, plus launching pads if they needed to go dynamic. Harvath had no plans to attempt to breach the compound. However this went down, he wanted it to go down outside.
The next morning, they used Jambo and three of his relatives as cutouts to temporarily secure two second-storey apartments and access to a handful of rooftops ringing the target compound.
Even in a backwater like Congo, cell phone technology would allow Harvath and the team to feed images back to the Bunia Hotel. If Leonce and his son recognized any of the men, Decker would reply with a text.
With that said, there were limits to how clear a picture a camera phone would take. Harvath hadn’t come equipped for a surveillance assignment with long lenses and spotting scopes. They would have to make do with what they had.
Ash and the team had binoculars, but they didn’t have anti-flare lenses, so they were restricted to the apartments and forbidden from roof duty.
The team was operating under the assumption that they were dealing with active or former military personnel. From the little Jambo had been able to ascertain mingling in the market and throughout the neighborhood, the house they were surveilling was known by locals as the “white
house.” It wasn’t a reference to the building in Washington, D.C., but rather to this structure’s occupants—all of whom were said to be white men. The team decided they would use the same name.
No one knew who the occupants of the “white house” were. Though sometimes seen on foot, they usually came and went in nondescript SUVs. They all wore sunglasses and had short haircuts. That was the extent of the description people in the neighborhood were able to provide. It was enough for Harvath.
They sat on the “white house” for thirty-two humid hours before the package Harvath had requested from Nicholas arrived. Ash sent Jambo to the airport with bribe money to pick it up and make sure nothing happened to it.
“What is it?” Mick asked as Harvath opened the box and lifted the item out.
“It’s a predator.”
“As in the drone?”
Harvath shook his head. “No. This technology preys on human weakness.”
“What?”
“Give me your cell phone.”
Mick handed it over.
“Now give me your Glock.”
“Why?”
Harvath motioned for him to hand it over, and Mick complied.
Turning the weapon in his hand, Harvath prepared to strike the face of the phone with the butt of the weapon when Mick intervened.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said.
Harvath smiled. “Exactly.” Handing them back, he stated, “That’s what I’m counting on.”
•••
Included in the delivery from the Carlton Group was additional surveillance equipment, which they parceled out among their observation posts, along with tiny, wireless cameras for the rooftops.
Leonce had already identified two of the suspects, but as better imagery came rolling in, Harvath fed the pictures back to the hotel and Leonce grew more emphatic that they were on to the right group of men. Harvath agreed.
They were pros. The men did everything right when they entered or exited the compound. This was not some JV team. Their heads were on swivels and they took their time. Nothing was rushed. Everything was smooth and by the book.
In addition to sending the pictures back to the hotel, Harvath had also been funneling all of the camera phone imagery back to his office in Virginia. So far, there hadn’t been any hits via facial recognition.
That didn’t necessarily mean anything. The men wore sunglasses and baseball caps. With such poor resolution, it was tough to tag the appropriate markers. Now that the new cameras had arrived, Harvath was confident they’d know who the men were soon enough.
Back at the Carlton Group offices, Nicholas had been tracing the calls from their cell phones, the majority of which were going to South Africa. There was one phone inside the house, though, that Nicholas couldn’t crack or trace. It was heavily encrypted and not like anything he had ever seen before.
He warned Harvath about it and told him that if he did end up hitting the house, to make sure he bagged all of the phones. Nicholas couldn’t tell him what specifically to look for because he didn’t know himself.
“Just bring me all the phones, and I’ll sort it out,” is what he had said.
Harvath, though, hadn’t changed his mind. He still had no intention of taking the house down. There was no telling how many men were inside, how well armed they were, and what kind of resources they could muster if they got into a firefight. The last thing Harvath and his team needed were Armored Personnel Carriers full of UN troops rolling down the street and banging away at them.
The United Nations spent over $1.5 billion a year keeping twenty thousand troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It was their largest and most expensive area of focus. The UN had divided the DRC into six sectors, and Bunia was the seat of Sector Six.
Other than their phones pinging off a cell tower near the
MONUSCO HQ, there was nothing to connect the men inside the “white house” to the United Nations. What was interesting, though, was that of all the countries who had sent troops to be part of the MONUSCO stabilization force, only four others had sent as many or more than South Africa.
Harvath was willing to bet that a high prevalence of South African troops in the UN stabilization force and calls back-and-forth from the target house to South Africa weren’t a coincidence.
What they needed was to identify not only when the “black phone,” as Nicholas had dubbed it, was moving, but also who specifically was carrying it.
The phone had already left the compound once and returned, but had done so at night in a two-vehicle convoy carrying eight men. Harvath and his team had watched the needle and the haystack roll right past them, but hadn’t been able to learn much about either. It was one of the reasons Harvath hated surveillance work. It could not only be mind-numbingly boring, but incredibly frustrating. And, if you were working with the wrong people, tensions could quickly mount.
To their credit, Ash and his SAS crew were thorough professionals. Nobody in their right mind enjoyed surveillance, but the Brits approached it with a sense of humor. Making fun of different people and things they saw happening down on the street, as well as directing jibes at each other, helped pass the time.
Jambo was an excellent cook, and they supplemented his meals with Chinese and Indian takeout from the hotel. With two long lenses, as well as IR cameras that could capture much better nighttime imagery, they recorded as much as they could and beamed it all back to the United States for analysis.
As they did, Nicholas’s facial recognition and data mining programs began to return hits. The men were not South African military. They were former South African military. Recces—former Special Forces from the 5 Special Forces Regiment based in Phalaborwa in northern Limpopo Province.
Just because they were no longer active military didn’t mean they weren’t currently working for some other part of the South African gov
ernment, like its intelligence division. But if that were the case, why would they have been involved in wiping out a charitable medical clinic and the adjacent village?
Harvath felt far more certain that the men were mercenaries of some sort, contractors. That of course, brought up all sorts of questions—most importantly who had hired them and what had they been hired to do? In order to get that answer, he was going to have to have a little talk with their head man. But before that could happen, they were going to have to ID him.
Twelve hours later, the gates opened and they got a clear view of one of the SUVs leaving. There were only two occupants—a driver in his forties and a passenger somewhere in his sixties. Nicholas confirmed that the black phone was in the vehicle and on the move. Harvath sent him the pictures they had taken.
An hour later, Nicholas called back. He had identified their target.
“The older man is your guy. His name is Jan Hendrik,” he said as he transmitted the man’s service record to Harvath’s computer. “All of the men we have ID’d so far served under him. Hendrik was their commanding officer.”
“What else do we know?”
“Nothing. I can’t find anything. No credit card bills, no parking tickets. They’re ghosts.”
Harvath scrolled through several of the photos on his laptop. These guys might be good at covering their tracks, but they were still men and men made mistakes, even the best of them. Especially when the right pressure was applied.
Pulling up satellite footage of the neighborhood, Harvath gestured Ash over and began to lay out his plan.
CHAPTER 24
T
he jammer Nicholas had sent had been born out of necessity in Iraq. U.S. troops used much larger versions to help disrupt cell phone and other wireless transmissions as their vehicles were rolled. This, in turn, made it incredibly difficult for the enemy to remotely detonate roadside bombs.
On one of his ops in Syria, Harvath had used a similar device to part a terrorist from the civilians he was hiding behind so that he could take him out. He was hoping to conduct a similar operation here. The problem, though, was that his current target was much more sophisticated and there were several additional layers of difficulty.
Putting a bag over someone’s head was always more dangerous and more complicated than laying up on a rooftop and putting a bullet between their eyes. Harvath would know. He had done both, many times.
The unknown element was buy-in from Asher and his men. While their SAS motto was
Who Dares Wins
, Harvath had taken them far beyond their agreed-to scope-of-work. Escorting a doctor and a civilian representative from a medical charity was one thing, but snatching a former South African Special Forces operator off the streets of Bunia was something entirely different.
Harvath figured he had one thing going for him. If Ash and his team hadn’t been interested, they would have already taken off. Technically, they had completed their assignment. Harvath and Decker had been returned to Bunia safe and sound. They had fulfilled the terms of their contract—
and then some
.
Now, everything came down to what they wanted. And even more importantly, what they
needed
.
Harvath understood the men all too well. There was a reason they had become contractors instead of fishing guides or boat builders—and it went beyond them being good at what they did. Harvath probably could up and go to Wall Street at any time and make a killing, but that wasn’t what he wanted, it wasn’t what he needed.
He needed this. He needed the action. That was why he kept coming back. He was pretty good at it, and it still scared the hell out of him time and time again. But it was exhilarating. It was a rush he couldn’t get anywhere else. He craved it like a drug. And like a drug, he would put it before everything else, even a trip to see the leaves turn colors with someone he professed was very important to him.
A common joke among operators was “don’t be
that
guy.” It meant don’t be the guy who does something stupid and screws up. But it was also a warning to never do anything you’d regret. Harvath knew that if he got out of the business, he would regret it. He also knew that there was nothing more lamentable than a former action guy who pined for his gun fighting days. Harvath never wanted to be “that guy.”
And so, he had stayed hard, and he had stayed in. He risked being shot, stabbed, and blown to pieces, all because he loved giving Death the finger as he sped on by.
Was it immature? Maybe. But the fact was that he was better when he was out here. At home he drank and recharged, ate and worked out, all the while looking forward to not knowing where the next assignment was going to take him. And all the while saying he wanted a family if he could just find the right person.
But he had found the right people, repeatedly—incredible women who would have done anything for him—and yet it hadn’t worked out.
It wasn’t about the women. It was obviously about him. He wanted his cake and to eat it too. It wasn’t impossible. Other people balanced dangerous, high-speed careers with family. Why not him?
It was a question he hadn’t been able to answer. At least not until a naked Jessica Decker had tried to climb in the shower with him. That had crystalized it.
He was loyal.
Loyalty meant honoring the promises you made to other people—
whether it was an oath of service or the rules of your relationship. But there was something more to it than that, especially when it came to relationships. It meant that you didn’t just think about yourself. You had to think about that other person. That’s what Decker had helped him realize. That was what his problem was.
He was successful because he pushed everything right to the razor’s edge. He
liked
pushing it to that edge. The harder the mission, the more he enjoyed it. It came partly from who he was and how he was raised. His father had taught him to push and keep pushing. It was the SEAL in him. When Harvath became a SEAL himself, they took him to a completely new level.
The only easy day was yesterday, Failure is not an option
, and
Never Quit
were SEAL mottos that had become a part of him. They were so deeply burned into who he was that they impacted every decision he made.
But how could he look at a woman and say,
As much as I love you, my job will always come first?
Didn’t that mean failure when it came to that relationship? Was it selfish? Was it immature? Unfair?
But as frank and as honest as he thought he was being with himself, there was something else tapping at the back of his mind. This was not the time to be trying to get to the truth, but he was closer to it than he had ever felt before.
Jesus
, he thought,
t
his job is like a drug
. It fought like crazy to keep you hooked. It also provided great moments of euphoria, along with some amazing moments of clarity.
Instead of slamming the iron door of his mind shut, as was his practice, he decided to leave it open and focus his mind elsewhere. Maybe the answer he was looking for would come, maybe it wouldn’t. As long as the job got done, that was what mattered for the moment.
•••
The remaining items Harvath needed were not small, but with the help of a stack of currency, Jambo and his relatives had taken care of them in the blink of an eye. Mick had gone along with them to do the assessment and had given it his approval. With the final pieces in place, they were ready for their operation to go dynamic.
As Harvath powered up the jammer, Ash shook his head in disbelief.
“Bloody amazing technology,” he said. “I never would have thought to use it like this.”
“Any job’s easy if you’ve got the correct tool, right?”
“But you’re sawing boards with a hammer, mate. It’s brilliant.”
Harvath smiled and turned his attention back to the jammer. He had been right about Ash and his team. If the money was right, they were happy to be on board, especially with the action factor so high. Harvath had provided more excitement in the last couple of days than they had seen in the last couple of years. It had been a long time since they had played cowboys and Indians.
If the truth be told, they would have stuck with Harvath even if there was no money left to be made. What had happened at the clinic and to those villagers was horrific. It was an affront to their sense of honor. If they could help settle that score, they were one hundred percent on board and wouldn’t quit until every last person responsible had been brought to justice. It was about doing what was right. Like Harvath, they believed in standing up for those who couldn’t stand up for themselves.
With the jammer ready to go, Harvath hailed Nicholas and got ready for their first test. He would operate it remotely from the United States. When the time came, Harvath would need to be on the street, not up in the apartment pressing buttons.
“Okay,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“Roger that,” Nicholas said over his earpiece. “Stand by.”
Mick looked at the jammer and said, “It’s that accurate? You can focus on a single phone? It doesn’t simply shut down the entire block?”
“Let’s watch,” Harvath replied.
Several lights on the jammer changed colors as Nicholas manipulated its levels from back in the United States. There was a slight lag in what he could see from the camera feed, but not so much that it would make a difference.
There was an art to this and Harvath had been very specific about what he wanted. If he drove the black phone straight into the dirt, Hendrik might become suspicious. It was better that everyone in the house experience some signal drop at first. It was Congo after all. Shit happened.
The Brute Squad was the first to notice movement inside the house.
“I’ve got someone at the window,” Eddie said over the radio. “Second floor, northwest corner. Looks like he has his phone in his hand and is trying to find a better signal.”
“Make sure to keep taking pictures,” Harvath replied.
“Roger that.”
Cell phones had gone beyond being simple electronic devices. They had actually become part of people. Harvath was convinced that every time a person’s phone chimed, that a little blast of dopamine was released into the brain. It was like watching monkeys press on a bar for food. People were constantly looking at them, just in case a text or an email had come in. Take their phone away from them, even if only for a few moments, and they started to go into withdrawal.
“We’ve got movement in the courtyard,” Ash said.
Mick joined him at the window.
“Oh, look at this guy,” he laughed. “He’s spinning around like he’s got one foot nailed to the ground. Raise the phone higher you twat! That’s it. Up over your head. Now jump up and down on your left leg and see if that helps your signal, you tosser.”
Harvath smiled and asked in the room and over the radio, “Any sign of Hendrik yet?”
“We’ve got activity at the door on the west side,” Eddie replied.
“What do you see?”
“Stand by. Nothing yet.”
“Roger that,” Harvath replied. “Standing by.”
They all watched their respective areas of responsibility. Harvath was glued to the remote rooftop cameras.
“Okay, got him,” Eddie finally said. “It’s our guy. It’s Hendrik.”
“You’re positive?”
“Yes. It’s him.”
With that confirmation, Harvath instructed Nicholas to slowly bring the signal strength back up to normal.
“Cracking!” Mick exclaimed as he turned away from the window and flashed Harvath the thumbs-up. “Time to have fun?”
Harvath nodded. “Roger that. Time to have fun.”