Hunt the Scorpion

Chapter Four

It took approximately two days for Seal Team Six to reach southern Morocco. First they flew ten hours to Gatwick Airport in London, then after a three-hour layover caught a charter to Ouarzazate, Morocco, known as the door of the desert-a quiet, dusty Berber town of fifty thousand built around a central street. Back in the early ’60s it had served as the location for the desert scenes in Lawrence of Arabia.

African traders had been using it as a crossroads for centuries. For many modern Europeans, it was a holiday destination and a launching point for excursions into the Sahara. Features included palm groves and kasbahs, earthen structures with high walls and tiny windows.

They chose an old man with a white wisp of beard to escort them to the hotel. As they drove through the dusty, sleepy streets, Akil, the handsome, single Egyptian American on the team, regaled them with stories of his sexual adventures with a beautiful blond runner from Norway whom he had met on a trip to Patagonia.

“She kept me up all night. Couldn’t get enough.”

“Of what?” Ritchie asked. “The bullshit stories you were feeding her?”

“Don’t expect that to happen here,” Crocker said. “The few female entrants registered for this event will be too exhausted to do anything but ask you to massage their feet. So will you.”

Akil: “Envy is a green-eyed monster.”

Mancini: “Maybe one day when you drop the BS you’ll find a woman you love who loves you back.”

Ritchie: “Unlikely.”

Cal sat in the back, plugged into his iPod.

“What are you listening to?” Davis asked.

“Gotye.”

“What’s that?”

“You don’t know ‘Somebody That I Used to Know?’ ”

“Never heard of it.”

Cal passed his earbuds to Davis.

Crocker said, “Instead of dicking around and playing music, you guys might want to start thinking about the race.”

Akil: “After what we went through last time in the Himalayas, this will be a piece of cake.”

“You think so? We’re looking at running the equivalent of five and a half marathons in hundred-and-twenty-degree heat. And we have to carry everything we need, except water, in rucksacks on our backs.”

“That’s why it’s considered the toughest footrace on the planet,” Mancini added.

“I’ll take the heat over the freezing cold anytime,” Akil said.

Ritchie: “And you’ll probably be the first one to pussy out.”

“I never backed out of fucking anything.”

“We’ll see how long you last.”

They stayed at a hotel inside the medina with a view of the valley and nearby reservoir. After a dinner of Berber spiced chicken and goat-cheese fritters, they sat in the lounge on the roof, sipped local bottled beer, and went over the plans for the race.

Crocker had put Mancini in charge of procuring and shipping all equipment and supplies. Besides running shoes big enough to comfortably accommodate swollen feet, shorts, tees, Adidas Explorer sunglasses, Cobbers, Skins compression vests, RailRiders Adventure shirts with front pockets, CW-X three-quarter-length compression tights, Injinji bamboo liners and SmartWool cushioned socks, Inov-8 390 boots, Sandbaggers gaiters, Buff headbands, RaidLight trekking poles, PHD Minimus sleeping bags, Platypus hot water bag with lid, ProLite 3 sleeping mat, titanium Esbit Wing Stove combination 900-milliliter cooking pot, titanium spork, disposable lighters with disco lights, toilet paper, alcohol hand gel, iPod, Suunto watches with heart-rate monitors, scarves, and hats, each man had to carry a rucksack packed with 14,000 calories of food-M &Ms, instant noodles, expedition meals, muesli, Honey Stinger Gel-extra clothing, gaffer’s tape, antivenom pump, compass, sunscreen, head torch with spare battery, disinfectant, Endurolytes, electrolytes, knives, safety pins, signaling mirror, space blanket, rehydration sachets, and whistle.

The backpacks were lightweight OMM 32-liter models. Also RaidLight pouches for their front belts that were big enough to hold snacks, lip salve, sunscreen. RaidLight bottle holders for each shoulder. Crocker preferred the CamelBak Podium bottles over the RaidLights because they were easier to suck water out of.

And there were medical kits-including lots of painkillers (Solpadeine, Diclofenac, Tramadol), zinc oxide, sterile padding, tape, needles, syringes, erythromycin for infections.

Everything was in order, except that two cases of the Datrex 3600-calorie survival food bars were past their expiration date.

Mancini was irate. “I’ll make ’em send back our money.”

Crocker said, “Don’t worry. We’ve got plenty of MREs, Clif Bars, and beef jerky. Besides, most ultramarathon organizers bring sponsored supplies like gels and energy bars.”

“Last time we use that supplier.”

“Let’s focus on the race.”

The next morning after breakfast, the six SEALs packed into a bus with registrants from the UK, Australia, Israel, New Zealand, and France for a five-hour drive into the desert. When they arrived at the staging area in the early afternoon, all they could see out the window were endless sand dunes, a vivid blue sky, and the brilliant sun. A painted sign read in English: ANY IDIOT CAN RUN A MARATHON, BUT IT TAKES A SPECIAL KIND OF IDIOT TO RUN THE MARATHON DES SABLES.

“They’re kidding, right?” Akil asked as he stretched. “We’re supposed to run in this?”

“What the hell did you expect?”

That night they slept in a tent with two competitors from Worcester, England. One of them, who called himself Perks, said he was planning to run the entire six-day race with an ironing board strapped to his back to raise money for a cancer hospice back home. Why he was making the already very difficult race even harder for himself was unclear.

In the morning they lined up for medical checks and registration. Crocker-a veteran of many ultramarathons, including Double and Triple Ironman races and four Raid World Championships-ran into several competitors he knew, including the Moroccan Ahansal brothers, Lahcen and Mohammed, who between them had won the race thirteen out of the twenty-two times it had been staged.

Later, approximately seven hundred runners from all over the world set off into the desert to the sound of AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.” The atmosphere among the competitors was jovial, bordering on euphoric.

A group of French runners yelled, “Vive la France!”

Some Australians countered with “Stick a ferret up yer clacker!”

Some Brits: “Hail Britannia!”

Ritchie shouted, “USA, baby, all the way!”

The excitement quickly drained out of all of them as they realized there were approximately 150 very difficult miles between them and the finish line.

The first couple of miles were relatively easy. The racers ran the flats and downhills. Most walked the uphills. Then they reached the dunes, a landscape of seemingly endless mountains of rolling sand. They sank down with each step, pushed by the weight of their full backpacks. Crocker told his men to try walking in the footsteps of the man in front to help prevent them from slipping and sliding on the way up.

The afternoon had started with a cool breeze, but as the hours dragged past, the heat grew increasingly intense, moving from the mid-90s up to 124 degrees Fahrenheit. When the wind whipped up, contestants struggled to protect every inch of their skin from the savage stinging sand.

The more difficult conditions became, the more Crocker’s focus narrowed-drink some water, check your compass, concentrate intently on reaching your next checkpoint. The incredible beauty of the landscape made the discomfort bearable. No shadows for miles. Just the subtly shifting colors and undulating shapes of the dunes, interrupted occasionally by a perfectly rounded boulder or ridge of marble protruding from the sand.

He’d learned that if you didn’t push yourself beyond your limits, you never understood what your limits were. Most people yielded to the voices in their heads that told them they were too tired, hungry, thirsty, or old, or that conditions were too dangerous to continue. So they stopped.

Special operators and endurance athletes learned to push past warnings like that and trust that they would pull through. If you urinated blood after a long race, as Crocker had many times, you’d recover. If you passed out, your teammates would revive you.

At the nineteen-kilometer mark they came to a checkpoint, where they filled their water bottles and waited for Akil to catch up. Ten minutes passed before they saw a blurry shape hobbling over a hill.

“What’s wrong?” Crocker asked.

“It’s my feet.”

They’d barely started, and he’d already developed blisters on the sides of the little toes of both feet. This surprised Crocker, since Akil had run many long-distance training runs in the same shoes. He treated the blisters with Super Glue and duct tape. Then they set out again, climbing, running downhill, stopping to rest, refuel, and rehydrate, until the sun started to set. As usually happened at sundown, the temperature dropped and the wind picked up.

They reached another flat stretch of about ten kilometers, which Crocker, Ritchie, and Davis ran together, following blue, yellow, and red glow sticks that marked the route. Crocker felt a strange sense of euphoria; he heard the Doors’ “Spanish Caravan” playing in his head and imagined they were following the footsteps of ancient traders.

Up ahead he saw an outcropping of flags representing the countries of the various competitors and banners championing the causes many were running for that marked the makeshift camp-a circle of tents with no toilets. Men and women were too tired to bother with modesty. They walked around half naked-men in shorts, women in skimpy sport bras and bikini-type bottoms. Thirty or so feet from the tents they squatted or stood and did their business. No big deal.

Crocker, Davis, and Ritchie waited almost twenty minutes there for Akil, Cal, and Mancini to catch up. Akil’s feet were a bloody mess, and Mancini’s right knee was barking-the same one he’d injured when they were climbing in Pakistan.

Crocker was attending to both when an Aussie on his right washing his feet said, “They feel drier than a nun’s nasty.”

“Put some sesame oil on those puppies,” Crocker said, pointing to a bottle that was being passed along the line.

“Much obliged, mate.”

Mancini started complaining. “I thought we agreed we were going to run this together, as a team.”

“My bad,” Crocker answered. “Tomorrow we’ll try to stick together.”

Despite the myriad injuries, ranging from heat cramps, to heat exhaustion and heat stroke, to troubled bowels, twisted knees and ankles, and swollen feet, most contestants were determined to continue. They were doing this for a purpose-raising money for a cause, trying to achieve a personal goal.

About three dozen dropped out. Crocker watched as Berber volunteers loaded them into a truck for the ride back to Ouarzazate.

The mood among the remaining competitors was good. Someone passed a big bar of chocolate. An Aussie whipped up a vat of something called Miracle Beer-a beer made from powder he said he had purchased in the UK. One of the Brits played a harmonica and sang. Others joined in. Verses of “Maggie May,” “Wild Rover,” and “Satisfaction” floated through the dry night air.

Crocker had just fallen asleep when a sandstorm blew in and swept away their tent. He and the others crawled inside their sleeping bags, zipped them up, and tried to sleep through the storm. But sand managed to find its way into everything-teeth, noses, and ears.

When he did fall asleep, he dreamt he was at the controls of a huge jetliner flying over a city at dusk. Barely skimming over telephone poles and the tops of buildings, looking for a runway.

He still had enough liquid in his body to wake up in a sweat.

The morning sun was scorching from the start, which slowed their progress. Up and down, up and down. Monotonous and taxing. The sun seemed to draw every last drop of water out of them, resulting in constant thirst. Reminded Crocker of his days as a young SEAL with ST-1, training at Camp Niland in the California desert. Forty-mile hikes with seventy-pound packs in 114-degree heat. This had to be easy in comparison.

After about twenty kilometers they reached a flat stretch that they welcomed at first. But after a while the featureless terrain and the heaviness of the heat started to wear them down. The soles of their feet felt on fire.

Crocker started dreaming about summers on the beaches of New England as a kid. He and his younger brother catching sand crabs, body surfing, eating ice cream. He could taste it in his mouth-rich, creamy, cold, chocolate, strawberry, pistachio.

Beside him he heard Davis talking to his wife. He spoke as though she were walking beside him, telling her about the roof he was planning to build over their deck and how it was going to shade the back of the house. How he was going to plant fruit trees, too. Davis even started to argue, saying he wanted them to be cherry trees even though he knew she preferred peaches.

Crocker thought he saw a group of camels ahead but when he looked closer realized they were only swirls of heat.

After refreshing themselves at Checkpoint Three they faced a monstrous thousand-meter sand dune that took over an hour to climb. Crocker blacked out a couple of times but managed to keep walking.

The camp that night was overrun with happy Berber children willing to fetch water, wash clothes, and even sing and dance for a couple of ten-santimat coins. They lightened the mood considerably. The sky glittered with thousands of stars, many of which were rarely visible to the naked eye.

Crocker learned that his team, Eagle Bravo, was currently ranked thirty-fifth out of the 120 teams in competition. They would have been even higher if not for Akil, who was still suffering but refused to quit.

They exchanged stories with some of the Aussies and told filthy jokes. Akil managed to find a Frenchwoman who massaged his feet and calves.

Day three was a bitch, with endless dunes as far as the eye could see. The sand somehow seemed softer and deeper than before. It crumpled as soon as you touched it and caused them to sink halfway up to their knees with each footfall. Crocker felt he was about to hit a wall but refused to stop. He had to set an example for his men.

The sun burned through his Adidas Explorer sunglasses. The heat pounded his shoulders and neck.

He started to feel light-headed, then felt something touch his hand. It was a blond girl in a blue bikini. Her stride was strong and sure. They were walking down the beach together. He felt water lapping at his feet.

He turned to kiss her. “Kim?”

His first wife smiled and pushed back her hair.

“Hey, Kim.”

“You okay, boss?”

It was Ritchie, with his head and face wrapped in a white scarf.

Crocker thought he heard music as they approached the day’s destination, a little desert town called Tazzarine. Turned out the music was real. A local band played enthusiastically as girls danced in circles and shook tambourines. They ate lamb couscous for dinner and immediately passed out.

The next morning the sky was cloudy, and one of the organizers warned him that a storm was approaching. Crocker told his men to stick together. “They can blow in quickly, so stay alert.”

Fortunately, the first set of dunes wasn’t as high as those of the previous day, and the sun wasn’t as strong.

After an hour of trekking they stopped at a water hole to wash their faces and refill their bottles. Cal was leaning back in the sand, looking up at the clouds, when he ripped out the earbuds of his iPod and shouted, “That fucking hurt!”

“What?”

Crocker saw that a yellow sand scorpion (Opistophthalmus) about two inches long had bitten the palm of his right hand. He washed the area with water and noted that the site of the sting was becoming red and swollen.

Even after he applied a local anesthetic, Cal continued to complain about the pain. He also reported a tingling, twitchy sensation up his right arm.

“It’s my trigger hand,” Cal said, grimacing. “Maybe it’s karma.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Payback for all the people I’ve killed.”

“I don’t know about that.”

Crocker knew that in some cases scorpion poisoning could cause shock and even death. He wished he had some tetanus toxoid with him, but he’d have to make do, because they wouldn’t reach the next medical aid and communications point until evening. So he wrapped his Buff headband around Cal’s right wrist to restrict the poison.

Meanwhile the sky had darkened and the wind had picked up. A cloud of fine red dust enveloped them. Huge balls of desert brambles raced across the sand.

“Where’d they come from?” Akil shouted.

“Seek cover, but stay away from the leeward side of the dunes. Keep your scarves secured over your nose, ears, and mouth. Make sure you keep your sunglasses on. Goggles, if you have them!” Crocker yelled back.

Within minutes visibility was zero. The temperature dropped twenty degrees. Each gust of wind carried with it a blast of highly abrasive sand that felt like it could rip the skin right off your body.

Crocker wrapped the thin Tyvek sheet he carried in his backpack around Cal and led him over to the water hole, where they knelt behind the stump of an old palm tree. It was hard to breathe.

Cal started to shiver. “How long is this likely to last?”

“Don’t think about that.”

After half an hour Crocker released the headband around Cal’s wrist, held his arm in the water for approximately five minutes, then secured the headband again, just tight enough to slow the flow of blood. He repeated the process a half hour later. Then the wind abated and the air started to clear. Within five minutes the sky overhead was blue and the sun was beating down strongly.

“Amazing,” Cal said.

“You feeling better?”

“My arm is killing me, and the rest of my body feels like shit.”

Five men were accounted for, but Akil was missing. They found him on the other side of a dune, wrapped in a blanket and covered with sand, and helped him dig out.

“You enjoy that, desert rat?”

“I think I dozed off.”

Or maybe he’d lost consciousness from sheer exhaustion. But as they walked he seemed to be his same happy-go-lucky self, talking about the movie The Mummy and one of his favorite actresses, Rachel Weisz. He was convinced that she’d fall for him if they ever met, and the others were too exhausted to tell him he was full of shit. Crocker helped Cal, who was slipping in and out of a fever. Hot one minute, freezing cold the next.

When they reached the night’s camp, the nurse there gave Cal a shot of tetanus toxoid, and he started to improve. His hand hurt, but his temperature and pulse returned to normal.

Akil’s mouth was still working, but his feet were beat to shit. And even though Mancini didn’t complain, he appeared to be favoring his left leg.

One more day, Crocker said to himself as he poured hot water into a cupful of noodles. One of the Aussies shook a bucket of sand out of his long brown hair.

Someone tapped the SEAL chief on the shoulder. “Mr. Crocker?” the man asked. He was dressed head to toe in khaki and wore a bristling black mustache.

“Yeah.” Wondering if he was seeing a mirage.

“You’re Mr. Crocker?”

“That’s correct.”

The man bowed from the waist and handed Crocker a folded piece of paper. He read it quickly in the mottled light of the various lamps. At the end he saw the name Lou Donaldson, and he felt his sphincters tighten.

“Now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He wants us to withdraw from this race?”

“Affirmative, sir.”

“Does he realize that we’re half a day away from completing this sucker?”

“I believe he does, sir. Yes.”

Focusing on the typed instructions, he read them again carefully. Ritchie saw him reading and knelt beside him.

“What’s up, boss?”

Crocker folded the letter and handed it back to the waiting man. “Give us ten minutes to pack everything.”

“We’re leaving?”

“Seems like.”

The man in khaki pointed past a mud wall to a dirt road. “The vehicles are waiting over there, sir.”

“Ten-four.”

Ritchie again, at his elbow. “Boss, what is it? What’s he want?”

“We’re going to Rabat. We’ve got orders. Tell the others. Help them organize the gear.”