Code of Conduct Read Free Page B

Jambo had hired two of his relatives to spend the night with the vehicles.
    After checking in and moving the most sensitive of their gear to their rooms, the team reconvened in the lobby. Their first round of beers had just been served when the final member of the operation walked into the lobby.
    She was a tall blonde in a tight green T-shirt and even tighter gray REI hiking pants. A pair of Oakley sunglasses hung around her neck and dangled between her breasts. Her arms were buff and she sported a healthy tan. Freckles formed an imperfect bridge over a perfect nose. Her eyes, even in the half-light of the lobby, were a piercing gimlet-green.
    Unshouldering her pack, she had dropped it next to the pool table and introduced herself around to the team. Brash and unafraid, right from the jump.
    Before becoming a physician, Dr. Jessica Decker had been a war correspondent. She knew all too well what men were capable of doing to each other. Having seen enough suffering, particularly in Congo, she had decided she wanted to do more than just write about it. That’s why she left journalism and had gone into medical school.
    She had been working with CARE for less than a year when she was asked to open the Matumaini Clinic on their behalf. She went on to carry out three subsequent missions there. She knew the area and its people better than anyone else.
    She was in the middle of opening one of CARE’s two new clinics—a facility outside Kinshasa—when everything was put on hold.
    Beaman had thought she could be helpful in the current situation and the Old Man had agreed. It had been two to one, and Harvath was overruled. Decker, Carlton had decided, wouldn’t only be coming along, but she could also be part of their cover.
    Not even Ash and his team knew the full extent of what was going on. As far as they knew, they had been hired to accompany a load of medical supplies and two members of CARE International to a clinic in the Ituri Province. It was dangerous territory and the middleman for CARE claimed they had been robbed twice before en route. CARE wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again.
    Ash had guaranteed that his team would do everything they could tomake sure that didn’t happen. He felt relatively confident this would be a sure thing. Then Harvath had stepped off the plane in Lubumbashi.
    The American had “operator” written all over him. Ash could tell right away that there was more to this assignment than he and his team had been told. Quietly, he passed the word to each of his men to be on their guard. When the woman arrived, the complication factor escalated.
    She was incredibly attractive, too attractive for Congo—a rough place where people prized commodities above all else and would pay or do anything to get what they wanted. She didn’t belong here, yet she had walked in like she owned the place. Already she was playing with them.
    The shirt that showed off her chest, the tight pants that hugged her ass, the careful application of makeup—just enough to make it look like she wasn’t wearing any makeup at all—it all came together and spelled trouble. Ash was beginning to wonder if taking this assignment had been a mistake.
    Harvath didn’t know what to think of Jessica Decker either. The woman who entered the hotel was certainly not what he had expected. Beaman had forwarded a CARE newsletter to him with a bland photo taken in the field. It certainly hadn’t prepared him for what she looked like in real life. Not that it would have mattered, much. The fact that she was here was just a reminder that he didn’t have a say in the matter.
    After introducing herself around, she had walked over to the bar to order. Harvath fought the urge to watch her, and he watched the security team instead. Ash’s men looked like a pack of wild dogs ready to go to war over a pork chop.
    There weren’t a lot of western women in Congo and certainly not many, if any at all, who looked like Jessica Decker.
    If