Hunt the Wolf

Chapter Twenty-One

Victory is reserved for those who are willing to pay its price.

– Sun Tzu

A part of him wanted him to stop. It kept telling Crocker that he could relax now that Abu Rasul Zaman was dead. Other people would deal with the ship. His body had taken a beating since he’d arrived in Muscat. He’d basically had the shit kicked out of him-having been punched, shot at, burned, shot up with painkillers, deprived of sleep. He needed a break.

But he continued moving automatically-tying the shredded wreck of the launch to the side of the Syrena, slinging the MP5 over his shoulder as he climbed the ladder.

The SEAL team leader half expected to be greeted by Saudi troops or U.S. Rangers, but instead stood alone on the deck, the sun starting to heat up behind him, bursts of automatic-weapon fire coming from the bridge.

I guess we’ll have to stop this bad boy ourselves.

Why not? He and his men were once again at the pointy end of the spear. They’d been trained to do the undoable. But the challenge they faced this time seemed unreal, given the size of the vessel, the fact that it was loaded with kerosene and rigged with explosives. Fire burning on the third deck, sent a plume of black smoke into the early-morning sky. No one had arrived to help.

Hadn’t anyone else taken notice? Were he and his men the only ones who appreciated the danger the ship presented? What had happened to the Omani helicopter? Where were the Saudi patrols, the satellite cameras, the billions spent in the United States, Great Britain, France, on security?

Turning and looking behind him, he saw the Ras Tanura oil-loading platform past the ship’s bow, no more than half a mile away. If the ship did manage to reach the platform and explode, the entire industrialized world would feel the repercussions. Gasoline and heating-oil prices would skyrocket, affecting businesses and economies. Presidents, prime ministers, and generals would pay attention then.

But where were they now? Sleeping? Making pronouncements? Sitting in meetings discussing policy?

He heard a whisper from near the bottom of the cabin structure. “Boss. Boss, over here.”

And recognized the voice. “Davis, is that you?”

“Fifteen feet in front of you. Ten o’clock.”

Shielding his eyes from the glare of the morning sun, he spotted a figure seated in the shadows, his back against the dirty white metal wall. It was Davis, cradling his MP5 and trying to look like he was okay. But when Crocker stepped closer, he saw the intense anguish in Davis’s blue eyes. A bullet had torn through his forearm and fractured his ulna. Davis had used his shirt as a tourniquet, which he’d tied just below his shoulder. His white undershirt was dark with blood.

“We’ve got to get you out of here,” Crocker said, before remembering that they had deployed without the rescue or contingency plan they were accustomed to spelling out in meticulous detail. They hadn’t even carried a first-aid kit or blowout patch to put over a big wound like this.

Davis said grimly, “Looks like you’re going up alone.”

There was no time to try to stop the ship via the engine room.

“Guess so,” Crocker answered, hearing gunfire coming from the other side of the superstructure and hoping it was a sign that Ritchie and Mancini were making progress.

He admired the younger Davis’s warrior spirit, and hated leaving him.

Davis grimaced and asked, “Hey, boss, was that man we saw really AZ?”

“He’s dead now,” Crocker answered.

“Good work.”

Crocker took the narrow metal steps two at a time, feeling the burden of responsibility to his men-all brave and willing to give their lives.

Volleys of automatic-weapon fire echoed through the stairway. Spotting a still body on the floor of the passageway of deck two, he gritted his teeth and prayed that it wasn’t Ritchie or Mancini. Taking a step closer, he saw a bearded face and expectant eyes-waiting for a dozen beautiful virgins, no doubt.

Acrid gray smoke poured out of a cabin behind the corpse. He heard someone calling out in Arabic from a higher deck.

Shielding his eyes, Crocker stepped inside the cabin and saw that it had been a lounge of some sort. A game console was in one corner, a small flat-screen TV on the far wall, a couple of old leather armchairs. There was also a box of nine-millimeter ammunition, shells scattered across the floor, and shards of glass everywhere.

All he could hear was the crackle of something burning inside, so he backed out quickly and hurried up to deck three.

The balcony there was a mess: pools of blood, part of an arm with a hand attached, flames shooting out of the cabins, walls blackened and pitted from an explosion.

The smoke blinded him and burned his throat. The metal under his feet was so hot that the soles of his boots started to melt.

Shielding his eyes with his arm, he was halfway up to deck four when he was deafened for a moment by an explosion. Then, without warning, someone running down the smoke-filled stairway crashed into him chest to chest, as had happened to him one of the few times he’d played rugby.

Crocker went down hard and quickly tried to pull himself up. Got partway when he blacked out, the wind knocked out of him.

He came to seconds later and reached for his weapon, which he couldn’t locate. His hands were seared by the hot metal.

Fuck!

He was getting to his feet unsteadily when the other man hurled himself on top of him. Had him in a headlock before Crocker could react.

The two men grappled in the narrow smoky stairway.

Impossible to see and difficult-painful, even-to breathe.

The man squeezed Crocker’s throat with one arm and reached for something with his other hand. A knife, most likely.

The American had no room to maneuver, and the metal through the back of his shirt was hot. His right arm pinned against the wall, his left grabbed the terrorist’s hair and twisted his head hard.

The man growled and swore in Arabic.

“Fuck you, too!”

He brought his knee up into the terrorist’s crotch. And again. And one more time, with vigor, until the bearded man groaned and loosened his lock on Crocker’s neck.

He pulled free. But a big intake of smoke-filled air clouded his head, and immediately the terrorist swung his right arm and Crocker felt a burning sensation travel along the top of his bicep.

Motherfucker!

The pain from the cut brought a tremendous surge of energy, which Crocker directed into his free left hand, which moved up the man’s chest to his beard. Grasping the mesh of whiskers, with all the force he could muster he shoved the man’s head back until it smashed into the wall of the stairway with the dull echo of a hammer.

The man struggled to raise his knife.

Crocker bashed his head into the metal wall one more time, harder. Then a third, until he heard the skull crack and the knife clatter down the metal stairs. He felt the fight drain out of him.

Round one. Or two. Or three, four, or five. He’d lost count.

His head spinning from the combat and the smoke, Crocker kicked the groaning man in the chest, then stepped over him and relieved him of the nine-millimeter pistol stuck in his belt. Crocker’s own MP5 had slid down the stairs when the men collided. There was no time to look for it now.

Pushing through the dense smoke and stepping over another body, he arrived on the top deck-the bridge. His lungs and chest burning. Blood from the cut across his bicep spilling down his arm.

He tore off a piece of his shirt and made a field tourniquet, tightening it around the top of his arm until the bleeding stopped. He figured he had a couple of minutes at best before he passed out from the smoke or loss of blood.

Righting himself against a metal doorway, he seared his left palm again.

Men were grunting and struggling nearby. Through the smoke he recognized the back of Mancini’s square head. Then the side of a stubble-covered face, the whites of someone’s eyes.

In a little oval window of visibility, he saw Mancini and a terrorist locked nose to nose, knife blades glistening, eyes bulging. Mancini shoved the terrorist against a dark blue instrument panel. Then his feet slipped out from under him and the two men fell.

Knives clattered across the floor.

Crocker lost the two men in the smoke.

“Mancini? Where are you?” His heart beating desperately.

“Watch out, boss!”

Holding his KA-BAR knife ready, Crocker bent at the waist, trying to see through the thick murk. He saw someone raise a pistol, then a terrified look on Mancini’s face.

He dove for what he hoped was the terrorist’s arm, held it, and twisted it right. Two shots from the pistol reverberated in the half-open space and numbed his hearing.

Teeth sunk into his left shoulder.

Fucking savage!

“Manny, you all right?” All the while clubbing the side of the man’s head with his fist. Then he stumbled over a pair of legs and fell. Landed on his bum shoulder.

Fuck!

A stab of pain shot from his arm to the base of his head. From his vantage on the floor of the bridge, he saw a knife blade drag across a man’s throat. The thin ribbon of red grew wider.

“Manny, fuck-”

He held his breath and readied himself. His heart pounded; his arm, shoulder, and eyes burned.

“Boss, you still here?” the Italian American whispered.

Huge relief. “Hey, Mancini. How about you help me the fuck up?”

The gunfire had stopped. Both men were breathing hard, wheezing from the smoke.

“That was fun.”

“You see Ritchie?”

“He went inside to try to get the radio to work. Call for-”

A whooping sound.

“What the hell is that?”

Up ahead, past the bow, they saw two Saudi navy patrol boats approaching with wailing sirens.

“I’ll look for Ritchie,” Crocker said. “You try turning this piece of shit around.”

“Sure, boss.” Then, pointing at the patrol boats, “What about them?”

“What about ’em?” Crocker retorted, thinking that the Saudis had arrived with too little and were way too late.

As he pivoted to his right, an explosion went off in one of the cabins, throwing both him and Mancini to the floor.

“I’m getting tired of this shit,” the Italian American groaned from near the wheel.

Crocker’s ears were still ringing. “What’d you say?”

“Ears are fucked, right knee is screwed to shit again, but I’ll manage.”

Crocker saw something, or someone, emerging from the smoke-filled cabin and reached for his knife.

“Three o’clock!”

Mancini aimed his pistol and was about to pull the trigger when Crocker recognized the Nike footwear Ritchie favored. “Ritchie, that you?”

The dark-haired SEAL removed the blanket he’d thrown over his head and squinted. “Boss?”

“What’d you find?”

“Radio’s for shit. Some of the explosives are on a timer, so unless we want to get blown to pieces, we’d better abandon this shitbox. Like, now!”

Crocker turned to Mancini, who had his nose inches from the controls. Through the shifting smoke he could make out a professional navigator, a radar screen, charts, assorted gauges.

“You hear that, Mancini?”

“I need a minute,” the thickly built SEAL said, grasping the ship’s wheel.

“You know what you’re doing?”

“I don’t know this vessel specifically, but I haven’t met one yet that I couldn’t figure out.”

Crocker took some solace in the fact that the Italian American was one of the leading VBSS experts in Naval Special Warfare. His training had included practice in taking down ship bridges and engine rooms in everything from cruise ships to destroyers and supertankers.

Ritchie wasn’t happy. “No time for figuring shit out, right, boss?”

Crocker felt himself fading in and out of consciousness, and begged his mind to hang on for another minute or two.

“Motherfucker’s gonna blow any second!”

“What?”

“You hear me, boss? We’d better bail!”

“No…”

“No, what? Boss, can you hear me?”

Ritchie was holding him up.

“Manny…Rich…”

“Boss, what are you trying to say?”

“Go down to the main deck. Get Davis. You need to help him to the launch. It’s tied up midship. We’ll meet you on the starboard side.”

“You sure you don’t need help?”

“Quickly!”

As he spoke, he felt the ship shifting under his feet.

He looked through the smoke to see Mancini smiling like a kid who’d just discovered how a new toy works. “It’s like steering a big semi, but smoother. Really nice.”

“You got it turning?”

“Look.” The Italian American’s whole body was shrouded in gray-black smoke, which curled around his neck. Past his shoulders, through the windows, Crocker saw that the ship was veering northward.

“Excellent, Manny! Nice fucking work.”

“The Saudis sure seemed surprised.”

“Where?”

Mancini pointed toward the port bow, where the two Saudi patrol boats appeared as the ship swung right. They sounded their sirens and fired flares.

“Lot of good the flares will do.”

“Except possibly set this big sardine can on fire.”

Crocker started to cough. His head wobbled and his lungs hurt.

He felt Mancini lifting him up. “Boss. Lean on me, boss. Like the Bill Withers song.” Mancini started humming in his ear. Everything felt sticky and hot.

“Stop fucking around,” Crocker said with a groan. “Keep an eye out for terrorists. Abandon ship!”

He blacked out as Mancini started to explain how he’d aced a piloting course at the New York Maritime College the team had sent him to a few years back.

Next thing Crocker remembered was standing on the deck and seeing an endless expanse of water in front of the bow.

That means we’ve succeeded. Right?

He was leaning against Mancini’s shoulder. “What happened? Where are we?”

“Watch the cables.”

“Davis. Where’s Davis? I need to treat his wound.”

“Ritchie’s got him.”

Good…

He felt warm salt water all around him and opened his eyes. Mancini had an arm around his chest. He started kicking, trying to swim.

“Relax, boss. Stop struggling.”

“I’m good.” His shoulder and arm burned like hell from the salt.

“Boss, I got you.”

“Where’s the launch?” His vision started to blur.

“The launch sunk.”

“What?”

“There’s a Saudi boat here. We’re close…”

He remembered treading water, then blinked and saw a ship in the distance, steaming away. He blinked again and was seated on a deck. Saudi men in uniform scurried around him. One of them handed him a blanket.

“Is that the Syrena? ” he asked pointing at the distant ship with its stern toward them.

Ritchie: “Yes, boss. That’s it.”

He counted his men: Ritchie, Mancini, Davis.

Where was the fourth? Where was Akil?

The next time he opened his eyes, he was shaken by a huge explosion. The Syrena had been replaced by a tremendous ball of orange flames. The Saudi boat rocked; a heavy spray of water hit him in the face.

“What the fuck was that?” he asked, holding on to a metal flange.

“The tanker, boss. The tanker blew.”

“The Syrena? You sure?”

“Gone.”

“Really?”

“It’s all good, boss.”

“Where’s Akil?”

“We left him on the helicopter, remember?”

“That’s right.”

“Mission accomplished!”

It hurt to smile. “Mission accomplished…”

He sighed, and relaxed.

He looked up to see Jim Anders in his light blue suit grinning down at him, sunlight forming a halo around his head.

“Crocker,” he said. “Congratulations.”

Crocker squinted into the sunlight that streamed past the curtains, not sure whether what he was experiencing was a dream or reality.

Anders stepped closer. “You wanted Zaman and you got him. And in the process stopped a major terrorist attack.”

Crocker’s lungs hurt when he took a deep breath. “Where am I?”

“You’re back in Muscat.”

He pulled himself up carefully, pain and stiffness radiating from all areas of his body. “How’s Davis? Where are my men?”

“Davis is recuperating. The rest of your team is resting at a nearby hotel.”

“Is he okay?”

“Davis? Yeah, the doctors patched him up and say he’ll be out of here by the end of the week.”

“Good. And he’s spoken to his wife?”

“Yes. The baby arrived early. It’s a girl.”

Crocker grinned. “A girl. That’s funny.”

“Why?”

“It’s not important.”

Anders kept smiling as though he had more to say. “I’ve got to give you credit, Crocker. You were right all along.”

“About what?”

“The connection between Zaman and Cyrus.”

“Oh, that.” Crocker wanted to sleep.

“Zaman was using the kidnapping operation to fund his terrorist activities. Sheik Rastani was one of his clients. Our people in Marseille have uncovered more evidence linking Cyrus and Zaman. The FBI and Interpol are tracking down additional girls.”

“I’m glad.”

“You saw the connection clearly. We weren’t so sure.”

Crocker had to will his eyes to stay open. “When you’re on the ground, in the middle of the shit, you learn to trust your instincts. They’re always way ahead of your rational mind.”

“But policy decisions have to be justified.”

Crocker wanted to say, “Try it sometime.” But he had already sunk back on the bed and was fast asleep.

Two days later, he was dreaming of being tossed back and forth by two large men dressed in gorilla suits. One of them sounded like Mancini. The sailing through the air made him giggle.

“Stop, you guys! Stop!”

He was laughing so hard he thought he was going to piss his pants.

“That’s an order! I can’t-”

He woke up in the window seat of a passenger jet, smiling. A stewardess with bright eyes leaned toward him and asked him to bring his seat to the upright position.

“Where are we?” he asked, looking out the window. Saw that the airplane was passing through billowy white clouds that reminded him of smoke.

For a few seconds he was back on the bridge of the Syrena, in the chaos and grunting bodies, trying to locate Mancini’s face.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re beginning our approach to Dulles Airport,” the voice over the PA said. “The captain is expecting some minor turbulence.”

He relaxed and, feeling pressure in his bladder, knew what he had to do.

The woman in the business suit in the aisle seat looked annoyed when he asked to get by her. He recalled that earlier in the flight she had asked him if he was a boxer.

He’d answered, “No, ma’am.”

“Then what happened to your face?”

“I fell off a horse.”

Confronting his bruised face in the bathroom mirror, he remembered the last two days in Muscat, mostly spent in the hospital, where he’d been stitched up and treated for smoke inhalation. Then the reunion with his men in Davis’s room, the debriefing from Lou Donaldson, the congratulations from the U.S. ambassador, and, finally, a medal awarded by the sultan of Oman himself.

The Legion of Royal Merit, or something like that. Crocker had stashed it in his luggage. Planned to show it to Jenny when he got home.

The two days since the mission in the Persian Gulf had been a blur of sleep, dreams, and pieces of memories.

All he really cared about was that he and the members of his team had completed their mission and were returning home alive.

He longed to see Holly and Jenny again, to spend time in their company and rest. Maybe take them for a drive into the Shenandoah. Hike. Camp. Maybe book a couple of nights at a nice hotel. Enjoy some good meals. Feed his soul with live music. Work out.

Sonny Rollins’s strong, confident version of “My One and Only Love” played in his head.

Crocker knew himself well enough to understand that in a week or two, he’d start getting antsy and would be ready for another dangerous mission somewhere in the world.

Returning to his seat, he leafed through the front section of the New York Times. Headline stories about political haggling on Capitol Hill, inflation in China, volatility on the stock market, a boy from Korea who had become a millionaire at nineteen.

But no mention of the kidnapped girls, or the dramatic end of the Syrena in the Persian Gulf.

Crocker decided it was better that way.

The last weeks had underlined several important truths. One, all those dedicated to fostering and preserving individual freedom were in this fight together. Two, the world was becoming increasingly complex and interdependent-which meant that the dangers to free people everywhere were growing exponentially. Three, his men hadn’t let him down and never would.

Once again, they’d lived up to the promise they’d made when they received their tridents and became SEALs-to “never quit,” to “persevere and thrive under adversity,” and to “be physically harder and mentally stronger” than their enemies.

Arguably the world’s most lethal, versatile, and highly trained warriors, Crocker and his men had succeeded in defeating the terrorists this time, with the help of dedicated Omanis and Norwegians. But barely.

Maybe next time they wouldn’t be so lucky.

Crocker knew that possibility wouldn’t diminish his enthusiasm for doing what he was driven to do. He also understood that to stay ahead of freedom’s enemies, he and his team would have to get smarter and be more proactive.

He’d make sure they did.