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Just because they were no longer active military didn’t mean they weren’t currently working for some other part of the South African government, like its intelligence division.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
The 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.