Hunt the Wolf

Chapter Eleven

Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory.

– Sun Tzu

The seconds pounded in Crocker’s head as the coast road flew past, the sky thick, pitch black. Two guys with Soviet-made Makarov pistols laughed at some private joke up front. Another armed thug leered at him in back. Akil was on the floor to the man’s right with his mouth and hands taped.

Crocker’s own wrists were duct-taped together in his lap.

This sucks.

Crocker figured they were going to Rafiq’s place. There they would be interrogated and shot. Tortured, possibly.

He could almost smell the fear and desperation oozing from Akil. From Edyta’s death on K2 to this, in less than a week.

He felt bad. Responsible.

He’d met Akil’s parents and sisters. Knew the poor bastard’s life history.

Born outside Cairo. Moved to the States with his family at age six. Back in Egypt all of them had lived in two rooms. In suburban Virginia, Akil got his own room with his own bed. Remembered jumping up and down on it like it was a trampoline.

No one in school understood him, since his family spoke Arabic at home. Within a few months, he learned English. Adapted. Made friends.

When it came time to graduate from high school, his parents had plans for him to go to college and work for a cousin who ran a small trucking company near their home. Akil joined the navy instead, went through BUD/S, and became a proud member of SEAL Team Six. When he returned home after earning his trident, his father insisted his son wear his dress uniform and go with him to visit all their friends and family in the community. Akil had become the final validation of the family’s decision to immigrate to America.

Now this…

Crocker couldn’t let the dream end here. He focused intently.

The car was new. Maybe even brand-new, judging from the scent. Black leather seats, dark wood paneling on the doors.

The men were dressed in black. French-Arabic or Middle Eastern. All in their twenties. Slick operators. Far more sophisticated than the punks he’d tussled with in the alley. They carried themselves like they had money.

He searched for the slightest opportunity. A tiny bit of leverage. Anything to get them out of this before they arrived at Rafiq’s place, where more of them would be waiting and things could get ugly.

All he could think of was that maybe one of the doors was unlocked. But he wasn’t sure. And with the oily-haired fucker beside him sneering and pointing the Glock at his face-with his finger on the trigger-he wasn’t about to try.

They zipped by the turnoff to Cassis, the place where Crocker had pulled over on the Triumph Legend less than an hour earlier.

The moment was screaming at him. Do something. Do something, goddammit!

But what?

“Who the fuck are you?” the driver asked.

“My name is Crocker. I’m a Canadian.”

“You work for your government?”

“No. I’m a climber.”

“What do you mean, a climber?”

“I climb mountains and train people who want to learn to climb.”

“Why do you want to see Rafiq?”

“I’m here as a tourist. I’m looking for a bike to tour through Europe. Figure I can really get to see the countries that way.”

“You’re a bad fucking liar.”

The driver nodded in the mirror to the man seated beside Crocker, who reached into the American’s pockets and located his wallet. Inside he found a thick wad of euros but no ID.

The two men spoke in Arabic, then the driver looked back at Crocker and said in English, “Now I know you’re a liar.”

Precious minutes passed. Above the smooth growl of the engine and the electronic dance music pumping over the stereo, Crocker heard a choking sound. Looking down and to his right, he saw two streams of yellowish puke shooting out of Akil’s nostrils, a pained exclamation in his eyes.

“You’d better do something. My friend’s going to choke!” he shouted in English.

The thug beside him smacked him with the back of his hand. “Shut up!”

Some of the vomit had splattered across the leg of the guy’s black jeans. He seemed more concerned about his pants than the fate of Akil.

“Cochon!” Spitting at Crocker’s teammate. Like choking on his puke wasn’t bad enough.

Almost simultaneously the driver screamed in Arabic, “What’s that horrible smell?”

Then things happened fast. The thug in the backseat kicked Akil in the stomach with his boot. And the driver went apoplectic, shouting, “My car! Motherfucker! Get that nigger out of here. Throw him in the trunk!”

He steered the car abruptly right and stopped on the shoulder in a cloud of dust.

It took both men-the thug in the passenger seat and the dude in back-to pull Akil roughly out, the driver all the time screaming instructions in Arabic. “Watch the leather seats! Clean it. Make sure you clean it all up! Get rid of that fucking smell before I kick your asses!”

Crocker noticed that the driver wasn’t holding a weapon.

So he propelled himself over the seat, grabbed the Makarov pistol that was lying on the console with his hands still taped together at the wrists, and brought his arms up with all the violence he could muster into the driver’s jaw.

One, two, three times, quickly. He felt the driver’s head snap back and heard a groan.

Then turned immediately and fired two shots through the open front door into the back of the thug who had occupied the passenger seat.

The punk screamed something Crocker didn’t understand and fell to the ground.

Simultaneously the guy who’d been sitting in back directed a salvo of bullets that tore into the rear of the front seat. He was firing wildly through the open rear door of the car.

Crocker countered, slithering out the open passenger-side door onto the ground and shooting upward into the guy’s crotch. The thug squealed like a cat on fire, twisted and jumped, holding what was left of his balls, then crumpled along the rear wheel of the car, writhing in pain.

Rough justice.

High on adrenaline, Crocker pulled himself up into a crouch, then checked to see that the driver was still unconscious. The other two were dead.

He quickly crawled over to Akil, who lay on his side, and turned him over, pulling the tape from his mouth and feeling for a pulse along his neck. Using his teeth, Crocker ripped the tape from his own wrists, then quickly cleared Akil’s mouth and throat with a finger sweep, pulling out a glob of yellow bile and mucus. His colleague coughed up more, started breathing freely, and slowly came to.

Thank God.

Crocker found a bottle of Evian in a pocket on the passenger’s door and quickly washed Akil’s mouth and face. The smell was awful.

“What happened?” the Egyptian American asked, his right eye swollen nearly shut. “Where the fuck are we?”

“Heaven. How do you like it?”

“Looks like a fucking nightmare.”

“How do you feel?”

“My head is on fire. My face aches like shit.”

“You’re still complaining. That’s good.”

Akil looked around him, taking in the bullet holes in the car and the dead bodies on the ground, the groaning driver still in the car with blood dripping from his mouth. “You did all this yourself?”

“You pussied out on me, so I had no choice.”

Crocker was on his feet, quickly taking in the situation. So far no other vehicles had stopped. The BMW conveniently blocked the view of the dead bodies from anyone passing on the road. It was parked in a dirt turnaround. Ten feet farther the land dropped down into dark brush. There were no lights nearby, only a long deserted slope to the rocky shore.

It would be easy enough to hide the bodies. But he had to deal with the driver first.

He found the roll of duct tape on the floor of the backseat, covered the driver’s mouth, and taped together his ankles and hands. Then he slapped his face until he came to.

“Hey! Asshole! You remember me?”

Panic flashed in the man’s dark eyes.

Crocker pointed the Makarov at him and called Akil.

“Tell this piece of shit he’s going to take us to Rafiq. Tell him otherwise, I’ll shoot him in the stomach and let him bleed. Tell him it will be a slow and painful death.”

Akil did, dramatically, in Arabic.

The driver started nodding right away.

Meanwhile, Crocker dragged the bodies into the brush so they were out of sight. Then he circled around to the driver’s side, shoved the driver over so he was straddling the console, and slid behind the wheel. He made sure Akil, in the passenger seat, had a loaded pistol ready.

He stuck one of the other two he had recovered into the waistband of his pants, and stashed the third under the front seat.

“Pull the tape off this asshole’s mouth. Tell him if he screams or says one fucking word that doesn’t directly answer a question, you’ll shoot him in the balls.”

“Roger.”

Crocker hit the gas. Soon they were eating up the asphalt.

The driver started hyperventilating.

“Shoot the motherfucker!”

“Boss, not so fast. Give him a chance to talk.”

The driver pointed ahead and started speaking in Arabic.

“He says the house where Rafiq is staying is down a road before we reach Toulon.”

“Where?”

A few miles later, the driver directed them north onto a dirt road that wove around a grove of olive trees in a gully between some hills.

“He says the house is maybe two hundred yards ahead. He begs us not to kill him. He has a wife and baby son.”

“Tough shit.”

“He wants to cooperate.”

“Ask him how many men are with Rafiq.”

Akil did, and came back with the reply, “He doesn’t know.”

“Tell him to start praying.”

“Boss, he doesn’t know.”

“Bullshit.”

Crocker eased the car to a stop under some trees. “Tape his mouth shut again, then tape him securely to the passenger seat.”

“All right.”

Crocker ran ahead to recon the area, looked around the bend, and returned.

“It’s a one-story farmhouse with a barn-type structure in back. There’s a couple of lights on in the house. A jeep and a Nissan sedan parked out front.”

“Sounds like we’re outnumbered. What’s the plan?”

“Plan, my ass. Just go with the flow. We want Rafiq, alive if possible. And any intel we can find. Let’s go!”

Some would have called it a suicide mission, but Crocker didn’t care. He was amped up to the max. Though he was used to facing danger, most of the risks he took were calculated ones. When SEALs took on a mission, they usually planned thoroughly and rehearsed. It was rare that they would enter a potentially life-threatening situation on the fly, but it did happen.

Crocker couldn’t stop. All the anger and frustration that had built up during the last couple of weeks was about to burst out of him.

They moved quickly and quietly along the edge of the little dirt road. Owls hooted in the distance. Then a dog barked a warning.

Fuck.

As they drew within a hundred yards a second dog started up, barking deeper than the first. Sounded like a hound of some sort. The two dogs were near a porch by the side of the house.

He made out the sloping roof and the side of the structure through some thick bushes.

“You want me to silence them?” Akil whispered.

“Too fucking late for that.”

“What do we do now?”

It was the oldest trick in the books, one that Crocker had first seen as a kid watching a John Wayne western. When they got within twenty yards of the house, he picked up a big rock and threw it into the bushes on the right, near the dogs, which went ballistic, barking their heads off.

He threw another, and saw people moving in the house.

Crocker turned to Akil and whispered, “You hide behind those trees over there.” He pointed to the right. “When the bastards come out, start shooting. One shot at a time. Draw it out. Occupy them. Give me time to circle ’round the other side of the house. I’m going in.”

“Roger that.”

Akil took off one way, Crocker went the other.

Over the barking, he heard a door slamming and men’s angry voices shouting in Arabic and French. Then he heard the first shot from Akil’s nine-millimeter.

His adrenaline spiked further.

Entry was easy. An open window on the left side of the house (the opposite side from where the porch was located). All he had to do was punch in the screen, then yank it out.

In less than a minute he was standing in a bedroom, looking down at a king-sized mattress with rumpled sheets. Saw a stack of porn videos, a VCR, a TV, a soccer ball, an AK-47 propped in the corner.

No computers or other potential sources of intel, but the AK was his now. Loaded and ready, thank you very much.

The place was smaller than it appeared from outside. Two more little bedrooms off a hallway. One bathroom with a running toilet. All dark, unoccupied. Then another narrow hallway that led to a kitchen and a living room.

The living room lights blazed.

The racket from outside the front of the house was loud. Dogs barking furiously, men shouting, weapons discharging.

Pressed against the wall, he hoped Akil could hold them off long enough.

Crocker watched a little man in shorts run into the kitchen with an AK slung over his shoulder and quickly turn off something that was burning on the stove.

He stepped through the doorway and downed the man with two shots to the chest and one to the head.

Mozambique! It was the name of the shooting drill he’d practiced thousands of times. Every time he used it on a human target, he was pleased at how quickly and effectively it worked.

He checked for doors that might lead to a basement or other rooms but found none.

Then he crossed to the stove, picked up the pan of liver, bacon, and whatever else had been frying in it and dumped everything on the living room carpet. He emptied the rest of the plastic liter jug of cooking oil over that and the wooden floor, and using a towel lit from the stove, set the whole mess on fire.

The carpet and floor ignited quickly. As Crocker crouched in the hallway and waited, flames spread from the rug to the curtains to the walls.

Pay attention, guys. Your house is on fire!

It didn’t take long. A minute or two at most.

As the SEAL team leader was starting to roast from the heat, three men entered and ran to the kitchen, where one of them grabbed a small fire extinguisher from the wall while the other two starting filling pots with water.

He rose from his crouch and didn’t stop firing until all three men stopped twitching on the floor.

So much for the plan to take Rafiq alive.

Since he still heard shooting from the direction of the porch, he doubled back, climbed out the window he’d come in, and snuck around the rear of the house past the Kawasaki Ninja he’d first seen only hours before. Seemed like a lifetime ago now.

Above him the roof started cracking and giving way. He peered around the corner. A man in boxer shorts was firing an AK in the direction of Akil. Another was reloading his weapon and backing away from the house.

He took them both down with three-round bursts from their own AK-47, then waited as their screams echoed through the little valley. Their agonies were overtaken by the sound of the house cracking and burning. The dogs grew quiet. The downed men were silent. The two vehicles still waited in the driveway.

He checked behind him. Nothing. No one. Then turned to the barnlike structure he’d seen off to the right and behind the house. A small lake stood behind it.

The barn was actually a large garage with a room on top. No lights illuminated either floor.

He was about to call Akil when he heard something moving, and turned and saw a tall, dark figure run from the garage toward the lake.

Crocker stuck the Makarov in the waistband of his pants and, holding the AK ready, took off past the garage, down a gravelly path that led to the lake.

The tall figure stopped at the water and looked back at Crocker. He was holding something across his bare chest, a pistol clutched in his free hand.

“Rafiq!” the American shouted. It was a hunch.

“Go to hell,” the man snarled back in English.

“Rafiq, it’s over. Drop your weapon. Hit the ground!”

“Never!”

The tall man lifted whatever he was holding over his head, tossed it into the lake, then started to run into the bushes like a rat.

Crocker thought he might have a chance to take him alive but wasn’t about to let him get away.

“Rafiq, stop!”

The rat kept running. It took three shots from Crocker to take him down-one to the back of the thigh, two into his butt. One of the bullets had severed a major artery. He was bleeding profusely when the American reached him.

“Rafiq, where’s Zaman?”

“I’m a businessman. I don’t know anyone named Zaman.”

“Tell me what you know about Zaman.”

“You’ll be dead soon,” the Arab man groaned. “My friends will kill you.”

“They already tried. Tell me where he is.”

“You…don’t…understand…”

Those were his last words.

Crocker left him there and hurried to the garage. He was looking for intel-computers, flash drives, notebooks, letters, anything that could potentially help the Agency locate AZ.

The bottom floor was filled with junk-an old boat, garden equipment, cardboard boxes. He was ripping through the cartons-which contained cans of motor oil and plastic bottles filled with water-when he heard something moving above.

Along the far side of the garage, he climbed a rickety wooden stairway to the second floor. The door was unlocked. The moment he opened it, he was hit with the stench, a thick combination of disinfectant and human excrement.

Several strange pieces of equipment stood in the central room-a weird-looking bench with straps and a harness of some sort. Plastic buckets on the floor. Paper towels on a bench. An old metal desk in one corner. Bottles of pills on top of it. A syringe.

What the hell is this?

He saw six little wooden cells like cages along the far wall. Then heard a whimper, like a dog’s.

Strange place to keep dogs.

Looking through the metal bars of the first two cages, he saw they were empty. Dirty mattresses lay on the floor. In the third, he made out something pale. It was a bare human leg, thin and shapely like a young girl’s.

“Hello. Can you hear me?” he whispered through the bars. The person didn’t move, though he could make out breathing.

Moving to the next, he saw a naked girl covered with what looked like dirt, feces, urine, and bruises. Judging from her eyes, she’d been drugged.

Jesus Christ!

The cages contained four women in total, scared and half alive. More like animals than human beings.

“I’m an American. I’ve come to save you,” Crocker said in a whisper.

All he got back were whimpers.

“Do any of you speak English?”

They didn’t answer.

He tried again. “The keys. Do any of you know where the keys are? Tell me where the keys are, and I’ll let you out.”

As smoke from the house drifted in the open door, they hid their heads and moaned-except for one bold girl, tall and thin, with matted hair, who stared at Crocker defiantly, then pulled herself up and spat through the bars.

At least one of them had some fight left in her.

Crocker wiped off the spittle that had landed on the front of his shirt. “I’m an American,” he said again. “I’ve come to save you.”

“Don’t touch me! I’ll kill you!” she screeched back in heavily accented English.

“I’m not going to touch you. I want to get you out of here.”

“You’re a liar. A fucking liar! I know what you want!”

“I’m not lying to you. Listen to me. Listen…”

Her delicate long nose sniffed the air. “Is something burning?”

“The house. I set it on fire.”

Her expression changed to curiosity. “Where are you from?”

“USA.”

“You’re American.”

“Yes, I am.”

She nodded and scratched the skin under her pale right breast. “I have a cousin who is studying veterinary medicine at George Mason University.”

“That’s not far from me,” he whispered back.

She grimaced, pointed past his shoulder, and said, “The keys, I think, are there, in the desk. Try the top drawer.”

“Thanks.”

He heard a creak on the stairs and froze. Holding a finger up to his mouth, he hid against the wall near the door.

The footsteps got closer.

The girl he had been talking to recoiled to the back of her cage and hid.

He readied the AK and waited, his heart pounding hard.

“Boss,” someone whispered. “Boss, are you up here?”

It was Akil.