Hunt the Falcon

Chapter Twelve

That night the two SEALs sat alone in the rear of the hotel lobby watching a rebroadcast of the Barcelona-Athletico Madrid soccer game on a big-screen TV. Crocker didn’t follow international soccer, but Akil was a fan. He explained that Barcelona was one of the greatest teams in the history of the sport, led by two of the most talented forwards who had ever played the game, Lionel Messi (an Argentine) and Andrés Iniesta (a Spaniard).

Barcelona had just pulled ahead 2 to 1 when Hamid, wearing a gray hoodie and jeans, waved at them from the front desk. They met him out front as a steady rain started to fall, lowering the temperature and producing a relaxing calm.

“Reminds me of summer showers in northern Virginia,” Akil remarked as they climbed into Hamid’s dark green Ford Explorer.

“DZ is gonna meet us there,” said Hamid as he navigated the SUV through dark, narrow streets.

The rain evoked Crocker’s childhood memories-sitting on the back porch at night listening to the owls, exploring the woods behind his parents’ house, catching fireflies with his brother.

The mosque sat in a high-walled compound in a residential part of town. There were two entrances, front and back.

Hamid volunteered to watch the back, while Crocker and Akil joined DZ, who had arrived in a Volkswagen Jetta that was now parked across the street and down the block from the front gate.

Once Hamid was in position, Akil walked to the blue gate and, standing in a pool of light from the lone streetlamp, rang the bell. A short stooped man with a short white beard and a long dark robe appeared looking like he’d just walked out of the Arabian desert. Akil addressed him in Farsi. The old man nodded, looked left and right along the street, then stepped aside and let him in.

Akil returned twenty minutes later to report that the guesthouse stood at the back left corner of the compound. He had walked by the one-story structure and seen through a window three men smoking cigarettes and drinking tea at a table.

“You recognize any of them?” Crocker asked.

“I only saw the sides of their heads.”

“What did you tell the old man at the gate?” Crocker asked.

“I told him I wanted to pray.”

As they sat in the car waiting for the men to leave or others to arrive, the conversation drifted to James Bond movies.

“Who’s your favorite Bond girl?” Akil asked.

“Ursula Andress in Dr. No,” Crocker said. “I was a kid when I first saw her coming out of the water wearing that white bikini. Suddenly a whole world of fantasies opened up to me.”

“I bet.”

“What about the orange bikini Halle Berry wore?” DZ asked.

“Outstanding as well.”

Crocker watched an old dog with sagging tits cross the street and disappear in the shadows next to the walled mosque. The rain had subsided to a gentle spray when he heard Hamid’s voice over the push-pull radio in DZ’s lap. He said, “Four men have just exited the back gate and are getting into a black Ford Ranger.”

Akil leaned over the back of the front seat and said, “That might be them.”

“What do you think?” Crocker asked Hamid over the radio.

“They have suitcases with them. Looks like they’re leaving.”

“Let’s follow,” Crocker said.

They did, in both vehicles-Hamid and Akil in the Explorer, DZ and Crocker in the Jetta-over the rusting iron International Friendship Bridge to the Brazilian border, where they were stopped by four Brazilian Federal Police officers wearing jeans and bulletproof vests who asked to examine their passports, then waved them in. DZ pointed out that they were in Foz do Iguaçu now, which seemed to be a slightly more upscale version of what they’d seen on the Paraguayan side.

They followed a hundred feet behind the Ford Ranger down a two-lane highway through a field of sugarcane. The half moon hung off kilter to their right, peeking through cumulus clouds.

The rain stopped and the wind picked up, whipping the high cane on both sides of the road. Crocker saw the brake lights on the Ranger light up, then the vehicle take a right past what looked like a little farmhouse.

“Where are they going?” he asked.

DZ shook his head. “I don’t know this area.”

The road narrowed and circled behind long, dilapidated, industrial-looking buildings to an unmanned gate. They lost the Ranger in a grove of mature avocado trees. Hamid’s voice over the radio barked, “Cut your lights!”

Crocker, in the passenger seat, spotted the Ranger two hundred feet ahead. “They’re turning left,” he said urgently.

DZ drove past the intersection, parked the Jetta off the road under a big tree, and got out.

“Why are we stopping here?” Crocker asked.

Hamid hurried over and spoke through the open driver’s window, the wind playing with his hair. “There’s an airstrip back there that’s used by Brazilian charters,” he said. “It’s not sufficiently lit, and closes after dark.”

Crocker said, “Let’s hide the vehicles and take a look.”

“Yes.”

They armed themselves with pistols, then Hamid led the way through a sea of high sawgrass. Frogs croaked and crickets chirped around them. Two hundred yards along, he raised his right hand, pushed the foliage in front of him aside, and pointed. “There they are, over there.”

Crocker saw a runway with portable klieg lights powered by a generator and an old aluminum 737 with “Aero Tetra” stenciled in black on its tail. Two large covered trucks were parked beside it. Men in short sleeves were tossing suitcase-sized bales of something wrapped in clear plastic from the back of the trucks into the jet’s forward and aft cargo doors. An empty jeep sat fifty feet behind the jet.

“Aero Tetra? Never heard of it,” Akil said.

“They couldn’t get away with calling it Aero Terror,” DZ commented.

“Who couldn’t get away with calling it that?” Akil asked.

“The Iranians, man, the Iranians.” There was no time to explain.

Crocker counted eight guards in shorts, armed with AK-47s, standing near the airplane and trucks.

“You think it’s cocaine?” DZ whispered to Crocker.

“If it is, they’re hauling hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth.”

“Where do you think they’re planning to take it?” Akil asked.

“Europe, probably.”

Akil: “What do we do now?”

“We stop it,” Crocker answered.

“The aircraft? How?”

An excellent question. Armed only with pistols, they were grossly outgunned and outnumbered, had no body armor or backup, and there was a strong probability that Brazilian authorities had been paid off.

Crocker stuck out his chin and looked to his right along the runway to the terminal, which was completely dark. Then he pushed a button that illuminated the dial on his watch. It read 2308 hours.

The men loading the plane were moving quickly. The cockpit lights were on, which meant that the pilot, copilot, and navigator were inside and probably doing a preflight instrument check before they started the engines. That gave Crocker and the three men with him ten to twenty minutes to stop the plane from taking off.

The time it would take to alert the CIA stations in Asunción, Brasília, or Buenos Aires didn’t seem worth it. Besides, all three cities were far away.

Turning to Akil, Crocker whispered, “Grab one of the radios and come with me. You guys wait here and stay alert,” he said to DZ and Hamid.

“What are you gonna do?” DZ asked.

“Don’t know yet, but I’ll keep you informed.”

He led the way through the sawgrass with his head tucked down and arms in front of him so the serrated blades wouldn’t cut his face to shreds. We’ve got to stop it. Somehow we’ve got to stop it, he repeated over and over in his head.

After two hundred feet the field opened onto a large cement parking lot. A one-story terminal topped with a seventy-foot-tall control tower stood to his left. No lights. No sign of people inside. Akil breathed heavily behind him.

“What do you see, boss?” Akil whispered, sweat running down his forehead.

“Nothing. Follow me.”

Crocker readied his 9mm Glock, dashed to the six-foot chain-link fence separating the parking lot from the runway, climbed it, and landed on the other side. He knelt on the concrete and scanned the area. On the tarmac on the runway side of the tower rested two trucks with “Petrobas” painted on them. One was a fuel truck; the other was a flatbed. Judging by the height of the tank above its suspension system, the fuel truck was empty.

“See if that one has keys inside,” Crocker whispered, pushing Akil to the flatbed.

Neither of them did.

Akil joined Crocker near the cab of the tanker. “Boss, what are you thinking?” he asked.

“I checked, and the tank is empty.”

“So?”

“I’m considering hot-wiring this baby and driving right at ’em. See how close we can get.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know.”

“If we drive at ’em, they’re going to shoot us to shreds,” Akil warned. “I counted eight armed guards, another half-dozen loaders. They could be armed, too.”

“What’s your gut say? You think Alizadeh’s on the plane?” Crocker asked.

“My gut’s not working.”

He wanted this guy so bad he could feel it in his bones. No fucking way he was going to let him slip away again, even though he wasn’t sure he was on the plane. It was a chance. A shot. That’s all you got. Bold action was always clouded with danger and uncertainty. He said, “Radio DZ and tell him and Hamid to get ready. We’re gonna need them to support us when the guards open fire.”

Akil nodded. “Whatever you say, boss.”

Crocker climbed into the cab and reached under the steering column to locate the starter wires. Access to the ignition switch involved removing the panel and cover around the ignition tumbler, which was directly below the lock. He located the wires and stripped the ends, then looked up as Akil hopped in the passenger-side door.

“What?” Akil asked, reading the uncharacteristic uncertainty on Crocker’s face.

Crocker whispered, “We’d better wait.”

“Wait for what? A miracle? An act of God?”

“That would be nice.”

A fatalistic grin spread across Akil’s wide face. “We launch now, it’s a suicide mission, which I’m okay with if that’s what you choose. But we gotta hope some vestal virgins are waiting for us.”

“Shut up. I’m thinking…”

“Think hard.”

Crocker twisted the ends of the two red wires together. “When I give the signal, you touch these to the end of this one,” he said, pointing to the brown ignition wire.

“You want me to drive?” Akil asked.

“Yeah, you’re driving. I’m gonna hide on top of the tank.”

“I wish we had a Blackhawk about now, armed with Hellfire missiles,” Akil whispered.

“And I wish I was Superman.”

They sat in the stillness and watched from approximately two hundred yards away as the men continued loading. When the pilot fired up the 737-300’s twin CFM56 turbofan engines, Crocker was jolted to a higher level of readiness.

The loading stopped. Someone inside the fuselage pulled the cargo doors shut. The jet engine revved higher, screaming into the night, burning into Crocker’s head, demanding that he do something fast.

The tension in the cab grew. “Now?’ Akil asked.

“Not yet,” Crocker whispered back.

He wanted to act, but the eight armed guards were still ranged in a perimeter around the trucks. Someone leaned out the cockpit window and was shouting something to one of the men on the ground. He threw him a packet. The man who caught it flashed a thumbs-up to the cockpit and ran to one of the trucks. Four guards jumped in, leaving another four standing around the jet. The trucks backed up and started to leave.

“Let’s go!” Crocker said.

Akil gritted his teeth and nodded. He shifted into the driver’s seat as Crocker opened the door and got out.

“When I slap the top of the cab, that’s the signal to launch.”

“Got it.”

“I want you to drive straight toward the jet. If the guards stop you, talk to them in Farsi. They probably won’t understand, but they might get confused and think you’re with the men flying the plane.”

“Okay.”

“See if you can get all four of the guards to come over to you. Keep your pistol ready on the seat. I’m going to try to take out as many as I can.”

“Then what?”

“Then you take out the rest and we stop the plane.” At the very least it was an illegal flight carrying Iranians holding Venezuelan passports and trying to leave under cover of night.

“Sounds like fun.”

“Start the engine, now!” Crocker said.

He scurried up the ladder and lay belly down on the front of the cylindrical tank. The trucks that had carried the drugs were gone. All that remained was the jeep, the 737, which was in the process of swinging its nose toward the runway, and four AK-47-wielding guards who were backing away from the jet.

Crocker reached out and slapped the cab of the tanker. Akil put it in gear. The truck lurched forward, and Crocker held on.

He was trying to fix the location of the guards, but the powerful wing lights on the 737 blinded him. He thought he heard shots above the noise of the grinding truck engine and the whine of the jet.

Hamid and DZ?

As the truck picked up speed, a hot wind hit his face, causing his eyes to water. The gunfire was coming from his left, somewhere in the high grass, maybe near the road where they had parked. What was transpiring there, he didn’t know.

He had to focus on what was in front of him-the jet, the jeep, and the armed men. The tanker truck was now sixty feet from them. He heard Akil shouting out the window in Farsi and waving. One of the guards fired into the air. Akil slammed on the brakes and the tanker screeched to a stop. Crocker had to hold on with all his strength to prevent being thrown forward over the hood.

Two armed guards ran toward them, pointing their AK-47s at Akil, who emerged from the cab with his hands held over his head. One of them ordered him to lie prone on the ground. Akil shouted back at him in Farsi. He didn’t want to lie down, and when Crocker saw the pistol stuck in the back waistband of his pants, he understood why.

One of the guards aimed his AK at Akil’s head, while the second guard stepped forward and used the butt of his gun to pound Akil in the chest. Crocker aimed the Glock at the first guard and pumped four rounds into his torso. The man spun and fell, surprising his companion, who was standing over Akil, now lying on his back.

The second guard turned for a split second to look back at his colleague, and as he did, Akil cocked his leg back and kicked him in the groin. The guard doubled over. Crocker leaned over the edge of the tank to get a clear shot, but as he aimed the Glock, a third guard fired from somewhere near the plane. A bullet sailed past Crocker’s ear. Others slammed into the metal around him.

He ducked, flipped his body over to the right, grabbed the rail that ran along the other side of the tank, and let himself down. Akil and the second guard were wrestling on the opposite side of the truck. Ignoring his colleague’s safety, the third guard sprayed the truck, causing bullets to ricochet off the tank and hood.

Crocker crouched by the front right wheel and fired at Guard #3, but the intense light in his face made it hard to see. The jet was bearing down on them. Turning and looking up, he saw the pilot’s and copilot’s eyes, their determined faces. Guard #4 now opened fire at him from near the parked jeep. Bullets skidded off the concrete around him, throwing up long sparks.

But he couldn’t hear the shots, because the roar of the engines drowned out all other sound. The jet picked up speed. Its wing was practically overhead.

With bullets whizzing past him and slamming into the side of the truck, Crocker opened the passenger door and climbed in. The engine was still running. He glanced out the side window and saw Guard #1 reaching for his AK. Crocker leaned out and shot him three times in the head.

As he put the truck in reverse, bullets shattered the windshield. He ducked. The plane’s wings were behind him now. Crocker saw Akil pulling himself up off the tarmac and knew he was in danger of being sucked up into the jet’s engine. So he opened the door, leaned down, grabbed Akil around the torso with his left arm, lifted him into the cab, and pushed him over his lap into the passenger seat.

“Nice fucking plan,” Akil groaned, wiping blood from his face with the back of his hand.

“Sloppy execution,” Crocker countered, shifting the vehicle into first and pushing down on the accelerator. He realized that bullets were no longer hitting the truck.

Maybe DZ or Hamid took the other guards out from behind.

“Now what?” Akil grimaced.

“Buckle your seat belt and hold on!”

He had the truck in fourth gear. The left front fender was about twenty feet wide of and thirty feet behind the oscillating red light on the tip of the jet’s wing. Crocker gunned the engine and pulled even. Just then someone in the cockpit leaned out with an AK-47 and started shooting. Crocker ducked behind the dashboard as bullets slammed into the vehicle’s hood and grille.

They were passing the terminal, and the jet was moving fast. Crocker thought, Now’s the time!

With bullets ricocheting off the hood and tearing into the dash, he turned the steering wheel sharply left just as the plane started to lift off. The top of the tanker grazed the side of the jet engine, then slammed into the landing gear with a tremendous explosion of sparks.

“Fuck, yeah!” Akil shouted.

Crocker felt an incredible jolt and tried to hold on to the steering wheel, but lost control. The tanker was knocked off its wheels and rolled once, twice, then flipped again and landed in the grass with a thud that jarred him so powerfully he passed out. He gained consciousness briefly at the sound of an enormous explosion that lifted the truck off the ground.

“Akil?” he called weakly.