Hunt the Falcon

Chapter Five

Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” played on the stereo as the pickup’s tires crunched across the gravel driveway. It was always difficult, pulling away from the ones you loved and not knowing if you’d ever see them again.

The lyrics entered his head as though Cash was singing directly to him: “When I hear that whistle blowin’, I hang my head and cry.”

Crocker wondered if he should have told Holly that he was going after Farhed Alizadeh, the man who had planned her kidnapping in Libya and ordered the killing of Brian Shaw. Maybe it wouldn’t have helped. Part of him wanted to stay with her, but a stronger sense of obligation compelled him to complete the mission and get Alizadeh.

How satisfying will that be, for Holly particularly? Crocker asked himself as the pickup hurtled down a country road, past modest houses where families were returning from work and school and starting to prepare dinner. He hoped the death of his rival would give Holly some feeling of closure.

He was uncharacteristically unsure of himself when it came to dealing with emotional matters, and he scolded himself for not saying goodbye to his teenage daughter. He’d hardly had occasion to talk to her during the few days he’d been home. In the competition between family and SEAL team for his attention, it seemed as if the team always won.

Crocker stood at a magazine kiosk in Dulles International Airport, looking down at the face of disgraced general David Petraeus, when he remembered that his father’s birthday was next week. He punched the button on his cell phone that speed-dialed his father’s number.

“Dad?”

“Tom, what’s wrong?” the eighty-two-year-old asked in a voice deepened and withered with time.

“Nothing. We missed you at Thanksgiving.”

“Holly was kind enough to invite me, but I was too busy to drive up.”

Tom’s father lived in an apartment in Fairfax and had been kind of lost since Crocker’s mother died three years ago. He spent most of his time volunteering at the local VFW, Post 8469, where he was commander.

“Too busy doing what?” Crocker asked.

“Serving turkey dinner to a bunch of beaten-down disabled vets.”

He admired his dad and wished they had more time to spend together. “How are things?” he asked.

“I could complain, but no one would listen. Sure sucks, getting old. But I made a new friend. A young gal named Carla, who works as a waitress at the local diner. She’s a single mom raising a son. Dale’s his name. Nine years old and already teaching me how to play video games. Can you imagine, an old fart like me?”

Crocker heard his flight being called and saw Akil waving at him from near the gate.

“Dad, I’ve got to go.”

“Where you calling from?”

“Dulles. I’m about to board a flight.”

“I’d tell you to stay out of trouble, but I know you can’t do that. Call me when you get back. Give my love to Hol and Jenny.”

“Will do.”

Approximately eight miles east of where Crocker’s dad lived in Virginia, thirteen-year-old Alex Rinehart sat in front of a TV in his grandparents’ basement, using a remote to flip through the channels. He was dressed in a black-and-white-striped shirt and jeans, and had a full face with a tangled mop of dark hair and sad, slightly Asian eyes. He looked like a normal, healthy, well-cared-for teenager. Hours earlier he had returned from his new school, the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Middle School.

Alex had been a student at the school for only two weeks and was already excelling in algebra, computer studies, and pre-calculus. But he was woefully behind in English, social science, and American history. A good deal of that had to do with his refusal to speak or write since the death of his parents in Bangkok.

A school-appointed developmental psychologist named Cathy Struthers sat in an armchair to his right observing him as he watched TV. She noticed that he quickly flipped past shows that dealt with personal relationships and, especially, family-Friends, Seinfeld, 1600 Penn, Modern Family. He paused at an old episode of Law & Order, but as soon as a distressed father appeared on the screen, Alex switched channels. He finally settled on a rebroadcast of Jeopardy!

His condition, which Dr. Struthers had diagnosed earlier, had a clinical name-reactive mutism-and was usually caused by trauma or abuse. RM was more prevalent among young people like Alex with an existing autism spectrum disorder. Treatment was problematic, especially for those in their teenage years.

Since Alex was already taking the serotonin reuptake inhibitor Paxil to help deal with his social anxiety, Struthers thought of recommending a medication designed to affect a broader range of neurotransmitters, such as Effexor or Serzone. But she suspected that they wouldn’t work either. The more she observed Alex and realized how intelligent he was, the more strongly she believed that his mutism was a conscious choice-a silent angry protest against the cruel injustice of the world, for which there was no cure.

The six members of Black Cell flew United from Dulles seven hours and twenty minutes to Heathrow. They then boarded British Airways Flight 9, which covered another 5,928 miles in a little over eleven hours to Suvarnabhumi Airport.

Crocker passed the time playing chess with Mancini and Akil, watching Mel Brooks’s High Anxiety for about the fifteenth time, discussing the pluses and minuses of some new handguns and sniper rifles with Cal, eating, drinking beer, snoozing. He was dying to do a workout by the time he felt the plane descend and saw the giant double hoops of the terminal rising from a vast expanse of vivid green marshland.

He loved the lushness of the tropics.

The high-tech, futuristic airport stood in striking contrast to the wild marshland. It contained huge halls with soaring metal arches lit with blue neon and white lights. As they waited in line for immigration, a young woman on a video screen on the wall explained that the terminal had been opened in 2006 and boasted the world’s tallest freestanding control tower (434 feet), the world’s fourth-largest single building terminal (over six million square feet), and handled approximately forty-eight million passengers a year.

“I feel like I’ve arrived on a friendlier planet,” Akil said as beautiful hostesses dressed in purple checked to make sure they had filled out the appropriate forms and were standing in the correct line.

After they passed through customs, the SEALs-turned-businessmen arrived in the baggage claim area, where they saw a medium-height white guy with a middleweight’s muscular body and a thick mop of black hair standing next to a nice-looking dark-skinned man holding a sign that read “Sonnex Petroleum.”

Akil nodded toward the sign and whispered, “Look, boss.”

“I see it.”

Sonnex Petroleum was the name of the shell company the six SEALs were allegedly working for. They were traveling as oil company executives and engineers. Crocker’s alias was Tom Mansfield, VP of exploration and research. What he really knew about oil exploration could fit on the head of a pin.

The taller of the two men introduced himself with a strong, confident handshake as Emile Anderson. Black Cell couldn’t do what it did without the help and support of local agents.

“Welcome,” he said to Crocker, full of nervous energy. “We’re on kind of a tight schedule, so as soon as you get your bags, we’ll take off into town to try to beat the traffic. Lieutenant Colonel Petsut of the Royal Thai Police is meeting you for dinner.”

“The sooner we get started, the better,” Crocker replied, looking down at his watch, which had adjusted automatically to the local time zone, 1652 hours.

He stood at Baggage Claim Station 3, surveying the international crowd-a polyglot of Asian, East Asian, European, young and old, dressed in business clothes and casual. The diversity reminded him of the movie Blade Runner, but here everything was clean, orderly, and efficient.

Including Anderson, who handed him a large manila envelope and said, “I’ve already prechecked you into your rooms. Your electronic room keys are in there, along with seven hundred bucks’ worth of baht to get you started. My friend Daw here will be your driver.”

“Hey, Daw. Nice to meet you, and much appreciated.”

The short man with the round pockmarked face smiled back with a serene look in his eyes.

“Anything you need, you tell Daw or you call me on this,” Anderson continued, handing Crocker a shiny new Samsung cell phone. “Both our numbers have been programmed into it, along with an emergency contact at the Station. Only use that in case of an emergency. Try to call one of us first. We’ll be at your disposal twenty-four/seven. You need anything, and I mean anything, call.”

“Thanks. What’s the exchange rate?” Crocker asked.

“A hundred baht is worth about three dollars and twenty-six cents.”

Large photos of a smiling King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and her husband hung on the walls. The local people seemed amiable and gentle.

Within minutes the SEALs had packed their bags into the back of two Lexus SUVs and were racing down a modern, eight-lane expressway. Crocker sat in the passenger seat next to Anderson, who was driving 160 kilometers an hour, or approximately one hundred miles per hour.

“No speed limit?” Crocker asked.

“None that’s enforced,” Anderson replied with a grin that made his smashed-in nose stand out. “The freeways are F1 speed all the way.”

As he drove, he explained that Lieutenant Colonel Petsut of the RTP was a proud man who generally frowned on letting foreigners operate on his turf but was making an exception in this case because of the severity of what had happened, the international implications, and the deaths of American diplomats.

“But he’s only going to give you a small window to work in,” Emile Anderson said. “So you’ve got to respect boundaries.”

“In other words, you don’t want me to argue with him.”

“Like my daughter was taught in kindergarten: you get what you get, and you don’t complain.”

Crocker didn’t say that once the SEALs launched the op there would be no stopping them. And he understood that the cooperation of local authorities was an enormous asset.

The hotel was a modern six-story joint a few blocks from the Chao Phraya River and close to the busy night scene centered around Khao San Road. Anderson explained that many of the city’s attractions stood within walking distance-the National Museum, Grand Palace, Temple of the Emerald Buddha, and another spectacular gold-spired Buddhist temple called Wat Saket.

Mancini asked Anderson about Wat Phai Rong Wua, which he said was described as the “most bizarre tourist attraction on the planet” by a travel magazine he had read on the plane.

“If you’re into graphic scenes of people being tortured by demons and monsters with blood and entrails hanging out, you’ll love it,” Anderson answered.

“Manny loves entrails of all kinds,” Ritchie joked. “In fact, he was just telling me he wanted pig entrails for dinner.”

“I know a great little place where they serve them raw, grilled, or sautéed,” Anderson said, playing along as they passed through a cool caramel marble lobby decorated with tropical flowers.

Anderson left them there and said he’d be back to pick them up at seven.

“Cal, you still with us?” Ritchie asked as they rode the elevator up to the fourth floor.

“Yeah. Why?” Cal, their weapons expert and sniper, had a Polynesian face that seemed creased in a perpetual smile. He was an enigma to most men on the team because he rarely said anything and kept to himself. Crocker knew him to be laser focused and extremely dependable during missions, which is all he cared about.

“You haven’t said a freakin’ word since we left D.C.,” Ritchie said.

“That’s because he’s been sitting next to you, and he hates your guts,” Akil said.

Cal: “Not true.”

Electronic Asian music played over the elevator PA. “Sounds like a group of castrated gerbils,” Akil commented.

“It actually fits into a genre called K-pop,” Mancini said.

“What the fuck is that?” Ritchie asked.

“Electro pop-style music that originated in South Korea. Its best-known song is ‘Gangnam Style,’ by Psy. You’re familiar with that, right?”

“Of course.”

“Is there anything you don’t know?” Akil asked. “What do you do, stay up nights and just study random shit?”

Mancini ignored him.

Ritchie slapped Cal on the shoulder as they exited the elevator and started down the beige carpeted hallway. “So. What’s new?”

“Actually, I’ve been reading an interesting book.”

“Tell me about it.”

Cal reached into his backpack and pulled out a thick paperback entitled The Creature from Jekyll Island.

Ritchie looked at the cover and handed it back. “Who’s the creature?”

“The creature is the Federal Reserve System. According to this, the whole thing is a scam cooked up and run by some big banks. The system isn’t federal, and there aren’t any reserves.”

“Sounds like a real page-turner,” Ritchie said with a smirk.

The room they entered was spacious and clean, with two king-sized beds, a TV mounted on the wall, and a bathroom that stank of lime-scented disinfectant and mold, Mancini quickly pointed out, being the fussiest member of the group. His wife, Teresa, described him as Martha Stewart in an alligator-wrestler’s body.

“Two men to a room,” Crocker announced. “Akil and I will take this one.”

“How come you two always room together?” Ritchie asked. “Kind of makes me wonder.”

“Because you can’t fall asleep without the TV on, Manny snores like a wounded warthog, and Davis talks to his wife in his sleep,” Crocker answered.

“It’s true,” Davis said.

“What about Cal?”

Crocker handed out the electronic key cards and said, “Unpack, wash up, jerk off, whatever…And reassemble here at 1855.” That gave them roughly twenty minutes.

“You hear the part about washing up, Akil?” Ritchie cracked as he exited. “That’s a not-so-subtle hint that you need to take a shower.”

“Kiss my hairy Egyptian ass.”

Crocker stacked his clothes carefully on the wooden shelves in the closet, showered, clipped his salt-and-pepper mustache, and changed into a fresh black polo and black cotton pants. Exiting the bathroom he found CNN News blaring from the TV and Akil on the floor by the window doing crunches.

He turned down the sound and said, “You’d better get ready.”

On his way to the bathroom, Akil said, “I think I’m gonna like this city.”

“We’re not tourists,” Crocker reminded him. He remembered leaving a bar early one morning the last time he’d been in Bangkok and coming to the aid of two drunken Aussies who were getting the shit pounded out of them by a gang of Thai toughs. The toughs claimed the Aussies hadn’t paid their thousand-dollar bar bill. One of the Aussies shot back, “How could two skinny bums like us drink that much shitty Thai beer?”

He considered calling home, then realized it was something like 6 a.m. in Virginia. When the rest of the SEALs returned, Crocker quickly briefed them on the reason they were there and said, “I’m taking Mancini with me to meet the Thai colonel. I want the rest of you to grab some grub and return to the hotel. Hopefully, we’ll get a location on the terrorists and execute a raid before the sun comes up. So no drinking or fucking around. I need all of you focused and ready. And don’t expect to sleep tonight.”

Ritchie turned to Mancini and asked, “Any place you’d recommend nearby for dinner?”

“For good Thai food try Tom Yum Kung on Khao San Road. If you want Italian, look for a place called Scoozi. They’re both affordable.”

Cal pointed to Ritchie’s new watch and advised, “If we’re going walking down Khao San Road, you might want to leave that in the hotel safe.” It was a Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Compressor diving watch with a Super-LumiNova dial visible underwater, and it retailed for a little over ten thousand dollars-a marriage proposal gift from his girlfriend.

Cal, Ritchie, Davis, and Akil left first. When Crocker and Mancini descended to the lobby, they found Anderson dressed in a black silk shirt and cream blazer. With his hair slicked back, he looked like a character from Miami Vice.

They sat in the lounge and ordered Singha beer.

“What do you think of Admiral Olsen’s statement about women performing combat roles in special ops?” Anderson asked out of the side of his mouth. Admiral Eric T. Olsen was the former head of U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), which oversees the various special operations commands of the army, air force, navy, and marine corps, including SEAL Team 6, Delta Force, and the air force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron. He had been replaced by the current commander, Admiral William McRaven, in August 2011.

“Asinine,” Mancini answered.

“If they want to and can hack it, why not?” Crocker asked.

“Because it’s wrong,” Mancini answered.

Crocker, who was getting antsy, leaned toward Anderson and said, “We’d like to do this tonight, if possible. Can you get us everything we need?”

“Within reason, of course. Expect Colonel Petsut to set the parameters.”

After paying the check, Anderson led the way to Khao San Road, a colorful stretch of shops, restaurants, sidewalk masseuses, sex parlors, bars, stalls hawking T-shirts, counterfeit watches, purses, bongs, and even Botox treatments, populated by tourists from all over the globe, including lots of young kids in tank tops and shorts, sporting cornrowed hair and bad tattoos. They pushed past shady local characters offering to sell them Armani suits for fifty dollars, “refurbished” iPhones and iPads, drugs, and every variety of sexual activity known to man. Several tuk-tuk drivers offered to take them on a tour of the city for twenty baht, the equivalent of sixty-five cents.

“It’s gotta be a scam,” Crocker said.

“No, mister,” one of the drivers countered in Tinglish-a combination of Thai and bad English. “We get money from gov’ment for every tourist we take.”

“Yeah, and I’m really a six-foot-six black basketball player named Michael Jordan. You ever hear of Michael Jordan?”

“You, Michael Jordan the basketball player? You crazy!”

A topless young woman waved to them from a window above a dress shop.

“Perky,” Mancini commented.

“Friendly, too.”

They turned into an alley that led to a wider street and the dark marble front of a somber, modern four-story structure. Anderson announced his name into the intercom and they were buzzed in. Two men in dark green uniforms checked them with metal detector wands, then pointed to a little elevator that took them to the top floor.

A pretty young woman in a tight white tunic and black skirt, her hair pulled back and decorated with a pink-and-yellow orchid, met them there.

Mancini whispered, “She smells nice,” as they followed her into a dark room that looked like an empty cocktail lounge. Norah Jones crooned “Come Away with Me” over the sound system. The young woman pointed her delicate arm at a tan banquette in the corner where three men in uniform sat. They bowed.

Recognizing Anderson, the man in the middle stood, smiled, and offered Crocker his hand. “Mr. Mansfield, welcome to my country.”

“Thank you, Colonel. This is my associate Mr. Mark Jones.”

“Sit down, please. What would you like to drink?”

Lieutenant Colonel Petsut of the Royal Thai Police was a little man with big ears and a scar that ran from the tip of his nose across his mouth to his chin. Short black hair greased back, mischievous dark eyes. He said something to one of his aides in Thai, and the man disappeared. Pointing to his other companion, he added, “I want you to meet my assistant, Captain Jakkri Phibulsongkram. You can call him Jack.”

“Jack, it’s a pleasure.”

A lovely young waitress arrived with a tray of drinks, including a local tom yum, which featured lime vodka with Thai chili garnish. Crocker sipped it while Petsut talked about his time as a young man studying criminal justice at the University of California, Irvine, that apparently involved a love affair with a young Southern California girl named Linda and a proposal of marriage. He said that the two had not married but remained friends. As evidence he showed them a picture of Linda, her husband, and two daughters standing with him and his family in front of a huge reclining gold Buddha known as Wat Pho. As he stuffed the photo back in his wallet, he said, “I suppose you won’t have time to visit the temple and stroll around the grounds. It always puts my spirit at peace.”

Crocker said, “We’re here on business.”

“Yes,” Petsut answered, sounding sad. He spoke about the terrorist attacks and the panic they had caused, as appetizers were set on the table-meang kum, Baan Thai spring rolls, pumpkin tod, chicken satay, crispy tofu, and chicken served with sweet sauce and crushed peanuts. All done gracefully and without interrupting the flow of conversation.

When Petsut mentioned Thailand’s Malay Muslim separatist movement, which had set off bombs that had killed and wounded more than three hundred people in the southern cities of Yala and Hat Yai, Anderson quickly pointed out that those attacks were not related to the recent car bombings in Bangkok. Those, he said, had likely been orchestrated by Iranian nationals.

“Yes, yes,” Petsut answered, “but the violence perpetrated by the Malay Muslims should also be a concern to you Americans, because they have specifically targeted civilian foreigners. They’re trying to upset the very active tourist industry in the south.”

“I’m aware of that, Colonel,” Anderson said. “But Mr. Mansfield and his men are here specifically to deal with the men who planned and orchestrated the attacks last month.”

Dinner was served with green tea, rice wine, and white Australian wine. They ate seafood curry, kaeng phet pet yang (roast duck in curry), fried rice with crabmeat, noodles stir-fried with Thai basil, deep-fried fish with sweet and tangy tamarind sauce.

Crocker dined heartily while Captain Jack explained that one of the men suspected of carrying out the attack against John Rinehart and his wife had been wounded in the face. This individual had sought medical attention at a clinic in Khlong Toei, a lower-class, crime-ridden area of the city. The injured man claimed to have been walking in the vicinity of the attack with his girlfriend. But the doctor who treated him became suspicious because he was a foreigner and had recent burn marks on his ankles that looked as if they’d been caused by a motorcycle exhaust pipe.

After several days the injured man recovered enough to take a train to Kanchanaburi. At the station there he was observed arguing with another foreigner, who then let him into his car and drove him to a small farm outside the town.

Members of the Special Operations Unit under the supervision of Captain Jack had placed the farm under surveillance. They had observed four men, all foreigners who looked Middle Eastern, coming and going, but they pretty much kept to themselves. The police also saw two motorcycles that resembled the bikes used in the bomb attacks parked in a barn. A CIA-installed listening device revealed that the men conversed in Farsi.

As Captain Jack spoke, Crocker grew progressively excited. The leads the Thais had developed sounded promising. He knew from a previous trip to Thailand that Kanchanaburi was only a two-hour drive northwest of Bangkok.

With the arrival of dessert, Petsut started to discuss parameters. Because the violence had been directed at American officials and the perpetrators appeared to have arrived from a third country, he said he was willing to allow Crocker and his team to deal with the situation. Ideally, the four foreigners would be detained and quickly flown out of Thailand, and nobody in his country would notice.

He asked that violence and gunfire, especially, be kept to the minimum, only what was required to subdue the suspects. He pointed out that local Royal Thai Police would be forced to respond to any gun battle or loud explosion.

“Can you ask them to respond slowly?” Anderson asked.

“Of course,” Petsut replied. “We can do that.” Then turning to Crocker, he ran a finger along the scar on his face and asked, “Mr. Mansfield, when are you planning to execute your raid?”

“As soon as possible,” Crocker answered, looking around the room to find the source of the terrible stink that had suddenly reached his nostrils. It smelled like an overflowing toilet or broken sewage pipe. Petsut, Captain Jack, and Anderson ate the pastries, pastes, and fruits as though nothing were wrong.

Anderson noticed Crocker’s unease and whispered, “It’s the durian you’re smelling.”

“What’s that?”

Anderson pointed to a plate of light-green melon sections in the middle of the table. “Taste it, it’s delicious.”

Crocker did his best to get past the smell and put a piece in his mouth. The durian tasted creamy and bittersweet. To his surprise, he actually liked it.

“Is there a problem?” Colonel Petsut asked with a very slight smile.

“Not at all,” Crocker answered. “I was thinking about how much time my men and I will need. By end of the day tomorrow I think our mission will be completed.”

“Excellent,” Petsut said. “I wish you success.”

After the meal concluded with coffee, tea, and brandy, the Americans were asked whether they wanted a relaxing massage from one of several pretty and strong-looking women who arrived at their table dressed in white pants and T-shirts.

The offer was enticing, but Crocker declined.

“Work before pleasure,” Colonel Petsut commented.

“That’s correct.”