Hunt the Fox

Chapter Eleven

That was almost too easy, Crocker thought as they entered what once must have been an upscale part of town, now completely destroyed. The Syrian air force had leveled everything. They traveled a half-dozen blocks beside a little park with shattered, dying eucalyptus trees without seeing one light or any evidence of life besides an occasional rodent. There were signs of phosphorus bomb damage on practically every building.

Too fucking easy, Crocker thought. He had expected more resistance from the Syrians at the air base. Then remembered that Assad’s men were busy chasing ISIS jihadists. Our timing was perfect, for once.

Hassan pointed to some wreckage ahead on the right. “Turn in there,” he instructed. “It used to be a primary school. I had a girlfriend who taught there.”

“You had a girlfriend?” Akil asked. “I thought you were into guys.” But Hassan wasn’t laughing.

The three-story modern structure looked as if it had been abandoned for months. Bombs had landed on the roof, collapsing the middle of the building so that the resulting wreckage formed a giant V.

“Welcome to paradise,” Akil announced as he emerged from the cab of the Ford, farted loudly, and stretched.

“First let’s find a place to hide the trucks,” Crocker said. “Then I want you and Suarez to do a quick recon of what’s left of the building.”

“We looking for ghosts?” Akil was in a jaunty mood.

“Ghosts, rats, busted gas lines.”

“Roger that.”

“Davis, you establish comms with Ankara Station. Let ’em know that we’ve got the sarin and we’re planning to stay here until it gets dark.”

“Awesome.”

They found a garage in back that was big enough to accommodate both trucks and made them impossible to spot from above. Several of the washrooms on the first floor still had a trickle of running water-dirty and undrinkable, but enough to rinse their faces. Crocker, Mancini, and Davis pushed the trash out of a classroom with a view of the street.

“We’ll assemble here,” Crocker announced. “Soon as Akil and Suarez get back we’ll set up a sentry schedule and the rest of you bums can catch some z’s. I’ll take the first watch.”

No vehicles had passed along the street so far, which was what they’d hoped for. Since all the structures around them lay in ruins, there seemed no reason for anyone to enter the neighborhood. The buildings had already been looted.

When Ankara Station asked the name of the street and the building number, Crocker went looking for Hassan. He found him standing in a stairway, talking on his cell phone, which he found odd.

“Who are you talking to?” he asked.

“I was trying to reach a friend,” answered Hassan.

“Probably not a good idea to use it. If the Syrians are looking for us, which I assume they are, they could be using scanners to pick up cell-phone signals.”

“I’ll power it down.”

“Do it now. Thanks.”

He thought of taking the phone away from him, but decided against it. The kid had been useful and cooperative.

Akil and Suarez’s recon of floors one, two, and three yielded nothing surprising. The classrooms and offices they had been able to reach had already been stripped of valuables-desks, computers, calculators, books, toilet fixtures, and maps. They were about to wind up their search when Suarez noticed what looked like fresh wax drippings leading toward the basement.

Cautiously and quietly, they descended and entered a dark hallway that led to storage rooms, a laundry, and an electrical room. Here, too, doors had been ripped off their hinges and everything of value taken. Akil spotted water on the floor of the last storage area ahead. Strung from one wall to the other was a line containing items of women’s laundry, including two black bras.

In the far corner, behind a large heating unit, they found mattresses, blankets, and two trembling women. One held a pair of scissors, the other a small kitchen knife.

“We’re not going to hurt you. We’re not going to touch you,” Akil repeated over and over in Arabic.

The women didn’t believe him at first. But when the one with the long dark hair and amber-colored eyes asked where he was from and he told her that he and his colleague were humanitarian workers from Canada, she started to relax.

Her name was Amira, she said, and explained that the school had been destroyed with the rest of the neighborhood five months ago. She and her friend Natalie had both been teachers at the school. Along with many others, they tried to flee the country, but because they were young unmarried women, they had been picked up by pro-Assad forces and raped.

After about three weeks of abuse, they managed to escape. Hiding during the day and traveling at night, they had returned to the school. They’d now been in the basement for a month and a half, surviving on emergency supplies the looters hadn’t managed to find.

Akil told them that he and the men he was with were leaving for Turkey after sundown. When he asked the women if they would like to travel with them, they looked at each other and nodded.

Amira said that her friend thought she might be pregnant and needed medical attention.

“We’ll get that for you in Turkey,” offered Akil.

The opening chords of the darkly beautiful “’Round Midnight” by Thelonious Monk played on Crocker’s iPod. There was something hauntingly sad about the way the angular chords built to the melody. Crocker had read somewhere that the jazz genius had composed it when he was eighteen years old.

It might have been written for this moment-the broken, abandoned school, his men snoring gently behind him, the light from the sun slanting through the wreckage. Kids had played here. The rooms were once filled with laughter and young, eager faces. It bothered him that one man-one tyrant and his supporters-had been allowed to wreak so much damage. How did the world allow this?

Birds chirped, unaware of the human madness around them. A breeze rattled aluminum roofing that had once covered the entrance to the playground.

Where are the children now? he wondered, aware of an engine chugging in the distance. As it slowly drew closer, Crocker shouldered his HK416 and decided to take a look.

Standing at the far end of the third floor where the roof was still more or less intact, he peered out the shattered windows and saw an old Corolla sedan approaching tentatively, stopping every ten feet as though the people in it were looking for a specific address. Nothing about it appeared alarming, but still he kept it fixed in the crosshairs of the EOTech 553 gunsight.

As the Corolla drew within thirty feet of the school, a curious thing happened. Hassan emerged from the building and waved it down. Crocker watched as the Corolla stopped and Hassan ran to the back door, opened it, and helped a very pregnant young woman out. They embraced. Then a young man emerged from the driver’s side and kissed them both.

What the hell is this? A family reunion?

Crocker watched as the driver hurried to the back of the car, popped open the trunk, and handed the pregnant woman a suitcase. Then he returned to the Corolla, waved to Hassan and the woman, and started to back the car down the street.

Who’s she? Crocker asked himself. Is she the person Hassan was talking to on the phone?

His thinking was interrupted by the whoosh of an approaching RPG. The Corolla was twenty feet from where it had left her when it hit the car from behind and exploded, destroying the car and throwing Hassan and the pregnant woman to the ground.

The pregnant woman screamed repeatedly in Arabic. The men downstairs stirred and reached for their weapons. Crocker flew down the concrete steps two at a time, his 416 ready.

What the hell is going on?

He found Hassan and the pregnant woman lying on the pavement, hugging each other and trembling. He helped her up first. She was bleeding from a cut to her forehead and was blubbering hysterically, pointing at the burning car and saying, “K…K… Khoya…”

Hassan pointed to a piece of shrapnel embedded in his arm. “Look. Oh God!”

“Get inside!” Crocker shouted. To the woman: “Lean on me. Hurry.”

She struggled to walk. “Khoya! Khoya! My…brother!”

“Come.”

“My brother! My brother!”

He had to pick her up in his arms. With his free left hand he reached out to stop Hassan, who was stumbling toward the burning car in a half crouch. He was holding his ears and appeared disoriented.

“Hassan, get back inside the fucking school! Turn around!”

Hassan pointed toward the car and mumbled something. Then a peal of automatic gunfire came from beyond the car and ricocheted off the pavement around them. Crocker ran the woman to the schoolhouse. He passed Mancini wearing running shorts and cradling an M7A1.

“Incoming. Down the street! Past the burning car!”

“Who are they?”

“Unclear! Get Hassan. Bring him in. He’s fucked up.”

Mancini grabbed Hassan under one arm and scooped up the suitcase with the other. Hassan struggled, seemingly determined to rescue the man in the burning car even though he was surely burnt to a crisp by now.

Akil ran out to help wrestle a very resistant Hassan inside. Crocker left Suarez to watch him and the pregnant woman, then returned with Davis to try to deal with the attack from the end of the block.

“Who the hell are they?” asked Davis, slamming a mag into his automatic rifle.

“Unclear.”

“How many?”

“Unclear again.”

What they didn’t need was a big commotion, which could bring Assad army reinforcements and air support. They were completely vulnerable and didn’t even know their way out.

“You two stay here and defend,” Crocker said to Mancini and Davis, who returned fire from the front of an adjacent structure that appeared to have been a church of some sort. “Akil and I are going to try to flank them from the right.”

“What about Hassan?”

“Suarez is guarding him and trying to calm him down.”

He signaled Akil to follow him to an alley that ran behind the buildings. Much of it was blocked with rubble and garbage like broken bicycles and furniture, making it impossible for a vehicle to pass. They squeezed through, Akil in Marine Corps shorts and a white Hooters tank top, Crocker in his usual black tee and pants.

None of the men had shaved in the past several days, so they didn’t stand out. Nothing to mark them as Westerners, or trained operators. Even their weapons weren’t that unusual. HK416s with attached grenade launchers, SIG Sauer P226 handguns, SOG knives, an RPG-7 with an assortment of warheads that Crocker carried in pouches on his black combat vest.

The firing on their left was close. Sounded like mostly small-arms stuff, with the occasional boom of a grenade. Seeing a badly damaged apartment tower ahead and to the right, Crocker signaled that this was their objective. He veered right, breaking a sweat, hopped a low concrete wall, pushed past a bloodstained mattress, and entered the back stairway. The trapped, stale air tasted like bitter coffee.

He pointed upward. At four o’clock, the stairway was completely blocked by a collapsed wall, so he turned left into a hallway and then into a large apartment that had been completely burned out. Ran in a crouch to the front windows, past the burnt remains of sofas and rugs, a child’s crib, a cracked flat-screen hanging precariously from the wall. Akil followed.

Below and slightly left sat a jeep and a Toyota pickup with a nasty-looking.50 cal machine gun mounted in its bed. Several men with beards were crouched around the front of the jeep, firing automatic weapons. The jeep flew a yellow flag with the green logo of an arm raising an assault rifle and over it in Kufic script “Party of God.”

“Hezbollah,” Akil whispered.

Crocker hated those fuckers, having tangled with them before in Lebanon. He was aware that the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia had come to Assad’s aid in the south and east. At least they weren’t encountering Assad’s army. Not this time.

The pickup was in the process of turning and backing up so that the.50 cal would have a clean shot down the street at the school.

Crocker pointed to the.50 cal and raised the RPG-7 to his shoulder. Then he pointed at Akil and signaled for him to deploy downstairs. Akil nodded and hightailed it, clutching his 416 and pushing a grenade into the M320 launcher on its lower rail.

Crocker knew he’d have only one shot before he gave away their position, so he loaded in a 40mm PG-7VR rocket, aimed carefully, and fired. The round glanced off the roof of the truck and hit the guy manning the.50 cal square in the back. The following explosion had the red aura of a direct hit.

Goner!

The hajis below turned and directed their fire at his window. With bullets tearing up the concrete and brick around him, Crocker quickly reloaded with an OG-7V fragmentation charge and fired again. This round hit the back of the jeep, causing it to lift off its rear axle and flip over. The resulting shrapnel downed most of the terrorists around it like a set of bowling pins.

He wanted this over as soon as possible, so he ran down the stairway as fast as his legs could take him. Through the drifting smoke he found Akil on the street, mopping up.

Pop-pop-pop!

A shot to the head finished off one Hezbollah terrorist. Two in the chest silenced another.

“Nice shot from the window,” Akil said poking him in the chest with his elbow.

“Like picking off ducks in a pond.”

Crocker was fired up to the max, wanting to get out of Idlib as soon as possible. Back at the school, he saw Davis on the radio talking to Ankara Station, his hair matted across his forehead, his eyes bloodshot, his frustration growing.

Because the weather had cleared and Assad’s air force maintained complete control of the airspace, it was deemed impossible to rescue Black Cell and the sarin canisters by helicopter without taking a tremendous risk. A downed U.S. or NATO helo in Syrian territory wasn’t something the White House appeared willing to tolerate. Still, the military maintained that they were looking for a safe LZ while they waited for approvals.

“Where does that leave us, sir?” Davis asked into the transmitter.

“Up the creek without a paddle,” groaned Mancini, who sat near the window reassembling his M7A1 assault gun.

“We’ll inform you of new developments,” Grissom answered over the radio. “You’ll do the same. Over and out.”

Crocker didn’t like the situation at all. It seemed to him that every minute they remained at the school, their risk of being discovered-either by another Hezbollah patrol wondering what happened to their colleagues or other Assad fighters-increased. FIBUA (fighting in built-up areas) was a hairy proposition and one they weren’t equipped for.

“What did Ankara say about moving?” Crocker asked.

“They want us to stay put until dark,” answered Davis.

Not happening, Crocker said to himself as a column of black smoke continued to rise from the burning vehicles on the street.

It wasn’t clear whether Hassan’s pregnant girlfriend, Jamila, had inadvertently tipped off the Hezbollah fighters or they had tracked Hassan’s cell phone. All that mattered was that someone had made their current location. And they were sitting ducks.

“Romeo, what are you looking at?” Crocker asked into his head mic.

“Yo, Deadwood. Nothing moving,” Akil replied from his lookout spot on the third floor. “Clear as far as I can see. Over.”

“Keep looking. Over and out.”

Suarez offered MREs to the schoolteachers huddled in the corner. The meals consisted of bean-and-cheese burritos, cheese spread, crackers, powdered Gatorade, a HOOAH! bar, utensils, an accessory pack containing sugar-free chewing gum, a waterproof matchbook, and seasonings, all individually sealed in plastic, and a water-activated exothermic heater made of finely powdered iron, magnesium, and salt. When mixed with a small amount of water, the solution reached a quick boil that produced readily usable heat.

Before Suarez had a chance to show them how to use it, the women had ripped into the burritos and HOOAH! bars. The latter were an apple-cinnamon variant of Clif energy bars. The food seemed to calm their nerves.

Crocker, meanwhile, had medical duties to attend to, examining the cut on Jamila’s forehead, which was superficial, then cleaning and bandaging it. She had droopy dark eyes, a round, pale face, and shoulder-length straight dark hair. He poured her a cup of water from one of the Camelbaks. As she drank, she clutched her abdomen and moaned.

“What’s going on down there?” Crocker asked gently, checking her pulse, which was more rapid than normal. Little beads of perspiration appeared on her forehead. Her temperature was above normal, too. She didn’t answer, and continued to chew her top lip and hold her stomach. He saw a large wet area near the bottom of her long dark skirt.

Suspecting that she was on the verge of going into labor, he asked, “Your water broke, didn’t it? How long ago?”

He saw a tear slide down her face and land in her lap. He used a wad of clean gauze to dab her eyes.

“I’ll help you, but I need you to tell me what’s going on,” he said gently. “You understand English, don’t you?”

She nodded without looking up.

“When did it break?”

“In…the car,” she muttered with a strong accent.

“I need to touch your stomach. Is that okay?”

She nodded again.

He felt along it, carefully. The muscles were hard and the fetus had dropped, indicating that she was already in the early stages of labor.

“It’s all good,” he said. “The pain has just started?”

“Yes.”

“Where do you feel it?”

“It starts here, in the lower back, and moves to the front.”

“How long does it last?”

“Maybe twenty seconds.”

“The pains occur at regular intervals?”

“Yes.”

“How far apart?”

“Maybe five minutes. Maybe more.”

“Okay. Drink, relax. We’ll take care of everything.”

Before he could make a decision, he had Hassan to attend to, carefully extracting the shrapnel from his forearm, disinfecting the wound and bandaging it. He wanted to scold him for the added complication, but what was the point?

“You’re fine,” Crocker said, “but your girlfriend is going into labor.”

The young man immediately tensed up again. “Not now. No!”

“She’ll be fine, Hassan. But I need you to think. Is there a hospital or clinic nearby?”

“No, nothing.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yes. Yes.”

He heard combat in the distance, which added to his sense of urgency. Akil, from the third-floor lookout, reported that the fighting seemed to be happening south of them. He also reported the presence of helicopters.

“Romeo, I need you down here,” Crocker said into the head mic. “I’m sending Manny up to relieve you.”

“Semper gumby, boss.” Always flexible.

Crocker asked Amira to sit with Jamila, give her water, and measure the time between contractions. Then he had Davis and Suarez load the trucks while he huddled with Hassan and Akil and looked at the Garmin GPS and available maps. They were of limited utility.

Not wanting to get into a debate with Grissom and waste more time, he called Janice, who was still in Yayladaği, on the secure sat-phone.

“I need you to do something for me and not tell Ankara,” said Crocker. “If you’re uncomfortable with that, let me know now.”

“Fine,” she answered. “What do you want?”

He gave her their current location, then said, “We’re looking for a place to hide for the next four or five hours until it turns dark-hopefully away from the city, which seems to be where most of the action is. Preferably north or northwest.”

“Got it.”

Janice came back five minutes later with the location of an abandoned chicken farm twenty-five kilometers west of Idlib, off Highway 60.

“That work?” she asked.

“I think so.”

“I don’t need to remind you that you should approach it with caution, but I will.”

“Thanks.”

“Let me know if you need an alternative.”

“I will.”

“Crocker, NSA and TA (threat assessment) are reporting a lot of rebel and government activity around Idlib, so watch the roads,” she added.

“We will, Janice.”

“One more thing: this call didn’t take place.”

“No, it didn’t. I owe you one.”

The problem would be getting to the farm undetected during daylight. He was sure that Ankara Station would strenuously advise against it. Given the fact that he would be delivering a baby soon and didn’t want to do it in a compromised location, he decided to risk moving. The other members of Black Cell agreed.

Hassan was the only one who objected. Crocker asked him to cooperate and stay calm, but the kid continued to act like a nervous father-to-be.

They set out at normal speed-Crocker, Akil, Hassan, and Suarez in the lead truck, and Jamila, the two schoolteachers, Mancini, and Davis in the Mercedes Sprinter-navigating bomb craters and local roads piled with rubble.

The small groups of armed men they passed didn’t seem to pay much notice. They looked young, hollow-eyed and exhausted.

“SFA rebels,” Hassan pronounced, “waiting for the next bombing run or counterattack.”

Up ahead they spotted a column of smoke rising from the middle of a row of houses. Gathered around were a small group of angry people chanting in Arabic, “The people want to execute you, Bashar! The people want to topple your regime!”

A beat-up white-and-red civil defense truck blocked the road. A man Hassan identified by his white helmet as an unpaid volunteer explained that the regime was dropping barrel bombs out of low-flying jets. Their job as civil defense workers, he said, was to uncover the bodies and get the wounded to a house that served as a clinic.

Crocker decided to give them the balance of the medical supplies they were still carrying. The grateful men thanked them with several Allahu akbars, and they continued.

Another five minutes of passing through narrow streets, and a wider road with a public park appeared ahead, with a large soccer stadium on the right. “The turnoff should be a couple of klicks from here, on the left,” Akil said.

Davis through the comms reported that Jamila’s contractions were now three minutes apart.

“Good,” Crocker responded. “We still have time.”

“Problem,” grunted Akil, pointing to a roundabout that marked the intersection with a road that circled the outskirts of the city.

Through the windshield Crocker saw a roadblock. One of the jeeps that formed it flew the Free Syrian Army’s green, white, black, and red “independence” flag-the official flag of Syria before the Ba’athist coup of 1963 that had brought the Assad family to power.

Crocker said, “Slow down. Tell them we’re looking for Captain Zeid. They might be able to help us.”

Just in case, he held his 416 in his lap and told the men in the Sprinter to lock and load.

Akil spoke in Arabic to a young fighter with a peroxided Mohawk. He looked like a skateboarder, and had an Element brand sticker affixed to the stock of his AK-47.

“Who are you?” the kid asked, the AK balanced on his right hip so it pointed skyward.

“Humanitarian workers from Canada, carrying a pregnant woman and some wounded civilians back to Turkey,” Akil responded. “We’re looking for Captain Zeid, who is supposed to escort us back to the border.”

“You know Captain Zeid?” the skinny man asked.

“Yeah. He’s been helping us.”

“No more, brother, because he’s dead. Killed in a gunfight with some Assad thugs last night.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, man, tragic. Like everything else.”

Akil glanced back at Crocker, who gestured that he wanted to keep moving.

“You know anyone else who might be willing to escort us?” Akil asked.

“Not today, brother. We’re on alert. Assad’s got his killers out. Some crazy ISIS motherfuckers hit the Abu al-Duhur air base last night. They’re looking for them.” He pointed to the slogan on the Element sticker and said in halting English, “Make it count.”

“You, too, brother.”

Past the roadblock, they found a dirt road on the left that led them to a clump of trees with a small house and a string of chicken coops behind it, along with the nauseating odor of chicken feces and putrefying birds.

“This must be the place,” Akil announced as he tied a scarf over his nose.

“It’s disgusting,” said Hassan.

“Nobody’s gonna look for us here,” Akil responded.

Just to make sure, Crocker got out with Suarez to recce it. They found no one.

The smell was a powerful deterrent. So was the completely ransacked state of the coops, main house, and outbuildings. They chose a barn with a partially intact roof to hide the trucks, then camped out in the farmhouse and quickly established sat-phone contact with Ankara Station.

Nothing had changed. Decision makers in D.C. were still dragging their feet. They wanted Black Cell to remain at the school until they could be rescued. There was logic to their argument. Black Cell had recovered the sarin; they were now safely in FSA-controlled territory. Aside from the threat of being discovered by Assad’s air force, they seemed relatively safe.

But Crocker’s instincts told him that D.C. and Ankara weren’t taking into account the wildly unpredictable situation on the ground. Boundaries and alliances were shifting constantly. No one, except ISIS, seemed particularly interested in holding territory, since most of it had been destroyed and looted, and most of the residents had fled.

“Tell ’em, boss,” Mancini argued. “Explain the situation. Maybe they’ll send a helo now that we’ve got a pregnant woman.”

When Crocker got on the sat-phone and told Grissom that they had moved from the school to a chicken farm outside the city and were carrying a woman who was going into labor, the station chief became apoplectic.

“Screw you, Crocker. If you can’t obey orders and keep us informed, we can’t help you.”

“Sorry you feel that way, but I have to trust my own judgment.”

“Your judgment sucks, Crocker. A pregnant woman? Who do you think you are, Mother Fucking Teresa?”

“It was unavoidable. But I have no time to explain.”

Anders, when he got on the line, was slightly more understanding. “Be sensible, for Christ’s sake. Leave the woman if she’s an impediment. Don’t move again until it turns dark. And before you move, check with us.”

“Okay. What’s the status of the air rescue?”

“Nothing’s happening, Crocker, until it turns dark.”

“That’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking if it’s been approved.”

“Approval is still pending. HQ continues to consider all circumstances and contingencies. I’ll inform them now of your new location, see if that changes anything. We’ll let you know when and if we get the okay. Stay safe.”

“We’ll try.”

He took a deep breath and sucked it up. Dissatisfaction from HQ, Anders, and even the White House was something he’d dealt with before. He knew how this worked. If the mission turned out to be a success and he delivered the sarin, he’d get scolded and given a slap on the wrist. But if the mission went south, he’d be seriously screwed. Possibly court-martialed and dismissed from the service.

He couldn’t worry about that now. There were practicalities to deal with, including the fact that Jamila’s contractions were growing more frequent and intense.

Hassan was practically hysterical when he found Crocker on the front porch. “We need to leave immediately and get Jamila to a hospital in Turkey.”

“What about the clinic they were taking the wounded to in Idlib?” asked Crocker.

“It’s even more disgusting than this. Don’t you think I thought of that? Are you serious? Why are we staying here? Why are we waiting?”

“We’re not waiting, Hassan, so calm the fuck down. You brought us this situation, and we’re going to find a way to deal with it.”

“How? How?”

“How do you think?” Crocker retorted, checking his watch again. “Deliver the baby.”

“Here, in this disgusting place? Are you crazy? Jamila will die. The baby will die, too. And both their deaths will be your fault!”

Crocker reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Listen to me,” he said evenly and with authority, even though he wanted to slap him. “You’re going to be a father soon. You need to start acting like one.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you need to help your girlfriend by calming her down and acting positive, even if you’re scared to death.”

Hassan looked like he was about to cry. “How can I look at her, when she will see the truth in my eyes? The midwife who examined her yesterday said that the baby had not turned. It isn’t in the right position. She said she needs a surgeon or an obstetrician.”

That brought a new wrinkle to the situation.

“Now do you understand? That’s why we have to find one in Turkey.”

“Great idea, but not happening,” Crocker said, trying to remember what he had learned about different birthing methods. “Did the midwife say what position the fetus is in?”

“No, of course not. Why would she tell me that? I’m not a doctor. You’re not, either. That’s why we have to leave now! What’s preventing us? Why are you being so stubborn?”

“Because there’s no time, Hassan. The baby’s in distress, and so is your girlfriend.”

“But the baby’s in the wrong position! Didn’t you just hear me? It won’t come out!”

“It has to,” answered Crocker, “and it will.”