Hunt the Wolf

Chapter Eighteen

A hero is a man who does what he can.

– Romain Rolland

Tom Crocker found himself somewhere in the desert behind the wheel of a pickup truck. A big saguaro cactus behind him cast a long shadow, which made him think he was in the American Southwest, or maybe northern Mexico, along the border.

The morning sun burned through the windshield and stung his eyes.

Squinting, he turned the ignition key and tried to remember what he was doing here and where he was going. The starter burped and turned, then very quickly ground to a stop.

He tried the ignition again, only to hear the same terrible churning sound and get the same result. The alternator light shone red.

Now what?

He got out warily, boots crunching the sun-baked dirt past the motel sign that he couldn’t read through the glare. Five paces back, he popped open the hood, which was already hot. As he swung it up, the thick smell hit him like a brick to the face.

He almost passed out.

Hot damn!

A small animal, a cat maybe, had crawled up into the engine compartment and gotten chewed up in the fan belt. The stench thick and horrendous, a cloying sweetness mixed with burnt flesh and entrails. He felt bile rising from his stomach and grabbed his throat.

Struggling to keep his breakfast down, Crocker awoke. Opened his eyes in the Omani hospital room, which was more familiar and real.

But the nausea was still with him, and the smell surrounded him, stronger than ever-entering his mouth, nose, skin, and eyes. Pulling the sheets aside, he searched for its source in the bed and underneath it, then in the room’s shadows, and found nothing.

Strange.

The room was empty. Walls painted with long dark shadows created by the moon. And he was alone.

Still the smell grew thicker, and his stomach was about to spasm.

Unable to stand it anymore, he removed his hand from his mouth and shouted, “Nurse! I need to see you! Quick!”

He slid out of bed and inspected his hospital gown again. Clean.

Where the hell is it coming from?

Growing more intense, traveling up his nose into his brain. If the bars weren’t blocking him, he would have jumped out the window.

Christ!

A young Asian nurse in white flung open the door and turned on the light. He stood squinting and doubled over in his light blue hospital gown by the edge of the bed.

“Sir, what’s wrong?” she asked, hurrying to his side.

“The smell is making me sick.”

“What?”

“The stench! The smell. Get rid of it. I can’t stand it. Please.”

“What smell?”

“What? You don’t smell it?”

She sniffed the air, then shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

“But-”

Unimaginable. Yet her face, her demeanor, the sound of her voice were all sincere.

That’s when Crocker remembered where he’d experienced the awful stink before. Emanating from the smoldering, eviscerated body on the floor of the suite in the Al Bustan Palace hotel.

The Asian nurse saw the troubled look in his eyes.

“Is there some way I can help you?” she asked.

The smell was some type of flashback. An echo of the trauma he’d endured, the violence, the fact that he’d narrowly escaped death.

“I’ll call a doctor,” she said as she helped him back into bed.

“That won’t be necessary.” He’d experienced flashbacks before, but they’d always been visual.

“It will just take a minute.”

“I was having a bad dream. I’m okay.”

Her expression remained compassionate and sweet. “If you want, sir, I can crack open the window.”

“That would be helpful. Thanks,” he said, slipping back under the covers, feeling like a little boy who had disturbed his parents’ sleep.

When he’d had nightmares as a child, his mother had told him to think of pleasant things. So he imagined himself and Holly hiking in the Shenandoah Valley. A beautiful late October day. The trees blazed with fall colors. As he conjured the smell of leaves and grass and burning firewood in the distance, the stench disappeared and he fell asleep.

“Boss?”

“What?”

“Wake up, boss.”

The SEAL team leader pushed himself up and rubbed his eyes, aware that he was still in the hospital and thinking he had to be somewhere else.

“Boss.”

“What is it?” Grasping for details in the half-conscious fog.

The face looming over him was unidentifiable because of the angle, but he recognized the voice-deep and resonant, with a hint of foreign accent. Akil.

“Akil, what’s going on? Did you find the girl?”

The Egyptian American looked thinner and paler than before.

“Not yet, boss. You feeling better?”

Funny, coming from him.

“Fine. Yeah. How about you? And how’d you get in here?” The reality of his circumstances was coming back, along with familiar aches and pains.

“I was running a fever,” the Egyptian American explained, “so they transferred me to the hospital, where I met Colonel Bahrami. You remember Colonel Bahrami, don’t you?”

“Who?”

A stiff-backed, uniformed man stepped out of the long shadow across the door, and Crocker recognized the intelligent, mustached face from the afternoon before.

“Oh, yes. Hello, Colonel.”

“Sorry to interrupt your sleep, sir, but your colleague told me you wouldn’t mind,” he said in his clipped British accent.

“Did I hear correctly? You still haven’t found the Norwegian girl?”

“Not yet, sir.”

Akil explained that the colonel had visited his room the night before and the two had started talking about their experiences growing up, their respective intelligence services, and what they perceived to be the primary threats to their countries.

Colonel Bahrami’s interest had been piqued when Akil mentioned Abu Rasul Zaman. He said that Omani intelligence was very concerned about al-Qaeda activity in the area, and particularly in Yemen. The colonel had explained that Oman, which continued to make an effort to get along with all countries, had a complicated relationship with its neighbor to the southwest that dated back to the 1970s, when Yemen had supported the pro-communist Dhohar rebels who were trying to overthrow the sultan of Oman. After the rebels were defeated, Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said had launched a diplomatic campaign to improve relations between the two neighbors, which had been successful in fostering trade and commerce.

But now Yemen was embroiled in political turmoil. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) controlled important territory in the south of the country, near the borders of Oman and Saudi Arabia, and seemed to be growing in strength. Meanwhile, Houthi Shiite rebels in the north were fighting a civil war that threatened to overthrow the government.

“What does this have to do with me and my men?” Crocker asked, shifting to the edge of the bed and flexing his knees.

Colonel Bahrami stood before him in his clean khaki uniform. His white teeth, dark eyes, and black mustache all gleamed, set off by his caramel-colored skin.

“The fact that this ship, the Syrena, is registered in Yemen and was used to smuggle these kidnapped girls into my country intrigues me,” he said with great seriousness.

“It intrigues me, too,” Crocker said.

“Your colleague Akil explained how a document found in Zaman’s safe house seems to connect him to this ship. Do you agree?”

“Yes. I do.”

“According to our people stationed in Khasab, the Syrena has already passed through the Strait of Hormuz and has entered the Persian Gulf,” Colonel Bahrami added.

Crocker looked up. “Bound for where?”

“Bushehr, Iran, apparently.”

The SEAL leader remembered, and as he did, the noxious smell seemed to rise again from the floor.

“I was under the impression that security at the strait was relatively tight,” Crocker remarked, squeezing shut his nostrils.

“All we know is that the ship had the necessary papers and clearances to get through. Where they came from, and whether or not they were fraudulent, is unclear.”

“And your people are a hundred percent sure that it has entered the Gulf?”

The Omani colonel grinned sheepishly. “The question I have, sir, the one that continues to trouble me, is this: Why would a Yemeni ship be bound for Iran? These two countries are barely on speaking terms. I think this is highly unusual.”

“I agree.”

Crocker ran a hand gently over his mouth and right eye. The swelling seemed to have subsided considerably, and most of the soreness was gone.

“I might know a way to find out more about the ship,” the American offered. The more he focused on the unfinished aspects of his mission, the more the smell seemed to subside.

“How?”

“I heard that two of the kidnappers were captured. Is that correct?”

“They’re under guard on an upper floor of this hospital.”

“Would it be possible for us to pay them a visit?”

“That could be complicated.”

“They were on the Syrena. They might be persuaded to tell us what they know,” Crocker reasoned.

Colonel Bahrami considered for a minute, then looked at his watch. “This will require permission from my superiors.”

“How long will that take?”

“Several hours at least,” the colonel answered.

“In the meantime, help me find the missing girl.”

Bahrami looked surprised. “But the Norwegian ambassador has already expressed his concern to our sultan, and our sultan told him he’s not convinced that this girl ever arrived in Muscat.”

Crocker sat up. “I’m almost certain that she did.”

“We’re not.”

“And I think I can prove it.”

“How?”

“I can show you, if you bring me my clothes and get a car to drive us to the Al Bustan Palace hotel.”

Crocker’s pants, underwear, and shirt, which had been washed and pressed, were still stained with blood. But he didn’t care. The three men exited the black Mercedes. It was lunchtime, and several groups of businessmen and tourists sat eating at metal tables overlooking the hotel’s lagoon and garden. They craned their necks to watch the big American with the badly bruised face and the pronounced limp pass. These well-heeled travelers hardly registered with the SEAL leader, who was hoping that his hunch was correct.

The head of hotel security-a short, stocky former ISI officer named Waleed-recognized Crocker and confirmed that yes, all entrances to the establishment and elevators were monitored by security cameras.

“I figured they would be,” Crocker said.

“We take pride in our security,” Waleed offered as he escorted them to a dark room behind the front desk. There, the men leaned forward to study grainy video footage from the passenger elevator that serviced the sixth-floor suite.

“It takes a special key to operate this particular lift,” Waleed explained.

“I rode in it,” Crocker told him. “I know.”

When the time signature on the bottom of the video registered 03:14:05 two mornings earlier, a corpulent man wearing a dishdasha and a black goatee entered with two large men in suits.

“There he is,” Crocker said pointing to the man in the dishdasha. “That’s Sheik Rastani.”

“Perhaps. But that proves nothing,” Colonel Bahrami replied.

“Wait.”

Approximately five minutes later, another group of passengers entered the same elevator on the ground floor, four men and two women in dark burkas. When the woman on the right side of the screen turned away from the camera, Crocker recognized Brigitte’s profile.

“Two girls entered. You see?”

He couldn’t make out the second young woman’s features, but thought he spotted strands of light hair sticking out of the hood of her burka.

“That’s Malie,” he said, excitedly. “There she is. There’s your proof!”

“That’s hardly proof,” Colonel Bahrami countered. “How do we know she’s not a servant, or some other sort of employee?”

Good question.

“Did anyone see this woman leave the hotel?” Crocker asked.

Mr. Waleed stuck his bottom lip out and shook his head. “We saw the sheik. We saw his men. At least, the ones who survived. But not this girl. No.”

Crocker asked the hotel security officer to fast-forward the tape. Images of a mostly empty elevator overlapped one another on the screen.

At around 08:42:23, according to the time signature on the bottom, Crocker saw his own image standing with two other men.

The events that had happened soon thereafter returned to Crocker’s consciousness, along with the stench of the smoldering body.

“Slow it down!” he shouted a little too loudly.

Waleed complied.

Crocker felt uncomfortable as he and the other three men watched his black-and-white image exit the elevator. It was like looking at one’s own ghost.

Roughly twelve minutes later, Sheik Rastani, wearing a white dishdasha, and several other men hurried into the tight space and started to descend. They seemed highly agitated, which made sense, because they were running away from Crocker, who had entered the suite.

They had left Brigitte in the bathroom, where he found her. But where was the second girl?

Another ten minutes of videotape passed before a group of armed Omani soldiers were seen entering the same elevator and going up to six.

“I didn’t see the second girl anywhere,” Crocker said.

Colonel Bahrami snapped, “Play it back.”

They reviewed the tape six more times, once so slowly that they were watching it one frame at a time, then viewed it again from 3 a.m. two mornings ago all the way to the present.

Two young women in burkas had gone up, but only one of them had come down, and that was Brigitte.

“What the hell happened to Malie?” Akil asked. “She couldn’t have just disappeared.”

Colonel Bahrami: “Maybe they took the second female down the stairway.”

The emergency stairway and all the exits were also monitored by security cameras. But none of them had captured the second woman either leaving the sixth floor or exiting the building.

All the men who had assembled looked perplexed.

“The suite was thoroughly searched?” Crocker asked.

“Yes. Of course.”

“And nothing was recovered?”

“Some articles of clothing. A pair of women’s shoes. Books, CDs. Mostly belongings of the sheik.”

“Anything else?”

“A suit wrapped in plastic. Some foodstuffs. A pair of sandals.”

“Where are these items now?” Crocker asked.

“They were locked in a room in the basement on orders from the sultan,” Waleed answered.

Crocker was reminded that the Sultan and Sheik Rastani were friends, both prominent members of the Ibadhi sect of Islam.

He suggested that they go up and inspect the suite again.

A scowling Colonel Bahrami gave his approval.

While Waleed went to fetch the electronic key that would let them in, Crocker recalled something else-the black pull suitcase he’d seen one of the men abandon as he was running out the door.

“There was also a large black suitcase,” the SEAL team leader said. “I passed it on my way out. It was to my left, near the door of the sixth-floor suite.”

“What suitcase?”

“A black pull suitcase. About this big,” the American said holding out his arms.

When Waleed returned, he admitted that he hadn’t personally seen the items that had been removed from the suite and locked downstairs.

The two Americans followed the Omanis to the lift. The experience of ascending in the elevator was strange for Crocker. So was retracing his bloody footprints on the carpet. But it wasn’t until they entered the suite and he was hit with the lingering smell that the muscles in Crocker’s neck and stomach tightened and he started to feel sick.

Leaning against the wall, the bitter taste of bile reached his mouth.

“Boss, you all right? You want to sit down?” Akil asked, noticing his leader’s discomfort.

“I’m good.”

Crocker lingered four paces inside, just far enough to scan the foyer/dining/living area and establish that the suitcase wasn’t there.

The other three men inspected the interior rooms of the suite and came out empty-handed.

“It’s completely clean,” Akil reported.

“Let’s go see the room in the basement.”

This required permission from the minister of interior, who was at his country club eating lunch. They waited in the lobby while Bahrami called.

The suitcase. The suitcase…

Pacing and looking at the clock, hoping that the items in the basement would provide some clue, Crocker sensed there was something else he should be remembering, but his mind was too exhausted and agitated to identify it.

Cups of coffee and tea were consumed and stories exchanged in the hour that passed before a black SUV stopped in the driveway and a tall functionary from the ministry jumped out and handed the colonel a set of keys.

“With the approval of the minister, who says we can look but not disturb anything.”

“Gentlemen, this way,” Waleed directed.

They descended in a service elevator to the belly of the hotel, the space thick with the smells of garbage and vinegar.

Four sets of footsteps resounded through hallways lit with buzzing fluorescent lights, Crocker praying that somehow Malie was alive.

They turned left at a locked cage stacked to the ceiling with cases of expensive wines and brandies, into a darker corridor, to a door on the right.

“Here it is,” Waleed announced.

Bahrami opened the door with a yellow-tabbed key and threw the switch.

Crocker’s heart started to leap in his chest.

In the left corner behind the door stood a metal footlocker and the black hard-shelled suitcase, which were chained together and secured with a brass lock. Signs in English, Arabic, and Farsi warned the curious not to touch without signed permission from Oman’s interior minister.

Bahrami opened the lock with a red-tabbed key. Crocker leaned over and pulled the chain free. He was so juiced he was having trouble breathing as he felt along the little holes that been punched in the smooth front of the hard plastic suitcase.

“Wait,” the colonel barked. He produced another key, a little green-tabbed one this time.

Crocker laid the suitcase on its side and opened the lock. He dreaded what he was about to see so much that he turned his eyes away as he swung it open. The smell of sweat and piss met his nostrils.

The men behind him gasped.

“Dear God-”

“It’s the girl!”

“She’s dead.”

He had to will his eyes to focus on the awkwardly folded little body, knees at her chin, silver tape around her wrists and ankles and across her mouth. The skin on her arms a smooth yellowish gray. More mottled near her shoulders.

“Malie?” he whispered, fearing the worst.

Light blond hair like that of an angel.

It had to be her.

“Malie?”

He reached inside, along the cool skin of her neck, and tried to find a pulse.

The men breathed heavily behind him.

On his knees, his hand shaking, he prayed to his mother, God, and all that he held dear. He thought he felt a flicker of life under her skin.

Is it my imagination?

He waited and felt it again.

And a third time, before he looked up and said firmly, “Call an ambulance and an EMS team. Tell them to hurry!”