Hunt the Wolf

Chapter Six

There’s no school like old school, and I’m the fucking headmaster.

– RocknRolla

Wind smacked the side of the oval tent, sounding like a machine gun, as Mikael refilled Crocker’s mug with Teerenpeli single malt whisky poured from a tin flask. Then the Norwegian slipped the flask into his sleeping bag next to his iPod, water bottles, and other items he wanted to keep from freezing.

The Teerenpeli went down smoothly. Rich and old, its distilled essence of earth warmed Crocker’s body.

Several other Norwegian climbers slept in sleeping bags behind them, snoring and occasionally passing gas-which became more of a problem the higher one climbed, according to Boyle’s law (pV = K). Mancini had explained earlier that for a fixed amount of a gas kept at a fixed temperature, pressure and volume are inversely proportional. In other words, once you lower the atmospheric pressure the gas will escape.

One of the sleeping Norwegians called out the name Berit. Whoever she was.

The rest of Crocker’s team had returned to their tent, where their team leader hoped they were resting for the climb ahead.

He and the Norwegian spent hours comparing backgrounds and sharing stories about their children, tastes in food, music, and women, the economic states of their respective countries. All prelude.

“Last one for me,” Crocker announced.

They agreed on lots of things-including love, loyalty, and the need to protect their citizenry from the savagery of certain people.

Mikael frowned and cleared his throat. “For the better part of a year I’ve been on a fact-finding mission regarding a problem that plagues our country.”

“What problem is that?”

“Normal crimes of passion, drugs, prostitution, these aren’t things that I like, but as a realist I understand that they’re acceptable to a certain extent,” Mikael continued. “They don’t involve so many innocent victims.”

Crocker thought he knew what the Norwegian meant. He said, “That’s another way of saying that people get caught up in nasty shit because they’re weak for one reason or another. They do, or maybe they don’t, see what’s coming as a result.”

Mikael lowered his voice to a whisper. “What I’m going to discuss with you now is just between the two of us.”

“Understood.”

“My leader and dear friend the king of Norway, Harald V, has asked me to take this up as his personal mission. It’s something that offends him deeply as the leader of our country, and as a husband, father, and grandfather to five young children.”

Mention of the king got the SEAL’s attention. He wanted to meet him. His fellow Frogs, training buddies, and even his gnarly biker friends would get a kick out of that.

“You see, Mr. Crocker, in the last four or five years an increasing and alarming number of young men and, especially, young women have been disappearing from my country. Snatched off the streets. They’re never heard from again. Their bodies are never found.”

“How many are you talking about?”

“Dozens. Last year over fifty.”

Crocker remembered that Norway had a population of about five million. He said: “That’s a hell of a lot.”

“You might ask, What do they have in common? They include boys and girls but are predominantly female, all between the ages of twelve and eighteen. They’re in good health, usually from good families, with good educations.”

“You make it sound like something out of one of those vampire movies.”

“It’s worse. We have evidence that they’re being smuggled out of the country for two very sinister purposes. The physically attractive ones are sold into sexual slavery. The others are used in something called the ‘spare parts program.’ ”

Crocker felt a throb in the pit of his stomach. He’d heard rumors about the latter, but had never seen hard evidence that it existed.

The corner of Klausen’s mouth curled into a snarl. “Our investigators have traced some of these children to Central and South America, and to Middle Eastern countries, particularly Yemen, Syria, and Saudi Arabia,” he explained. “They believe they have been kept on farms and used, after being blood-typed and cross-matched, by wealthy Arabs and sheiks for organ transplants for their children when these are needed.”

“Disgusting.”

“Barbaric.”

“Besides collecting evidence, what have you done to stop the animals who are doing this?”

“We passed along our findings to a special committee of the European Parliament. They followed up and issued a report, which was referred to a special rapporteur of the United Nations. Warnings and information were then sent to member governments.”

Diplomatic maneuvers like that weren’t likely to accomplish much.

“Has any direct action been taken?” Crocker asked, clenching his fist.

“Of course in matters of this kind, getting countries to act is problematic. The nations accused of haboring such criminals protest vociferously. They claim to have looked into the charges and usually dismiss them as rumors.”

“So what you’re telling me is, nothing has been done?”

“I can’t speak for other countries besides my own, but it takes individuals with special abilities and international experience to track down the kind of people who commit these acts. For political reasons we can’t use our own people to eliminate them. That’s why I’ve been hoping to connect with someone like yourself.”

“I see.”

“What do you think?”

Crocker scratched the stubble on his chin. After the climb he and his team were scheduled to take a week to rest and recuperate, and he would then await further orders from his CO at ST-6 headquarters in Virginia. Hopefully, Zaman would surface by then, and he and his team would get another shot at him. But after what had happened in Karachi, he doubted they’d get that chance.

He said, “I’d like to help, but I can’t do anything without authorization.”

Mikael’s eyes lit up. He explained: “Like I said before, our ambassadors here in Pakistan are poker buddies. Also, the king and I have many important friends in Washington, especially some key decision makers at your Pentagon and White House. I believe I can prevail on them for a few weeks of your time. Unofficially, I can arrange for money to be wired into an account to cover your expenses. The king and I are hoping you might convince other members of your team to cooperate as well.”

Crocker figured that the Norwegian understood little about the command structure of SEAL Team Six. He said, “Even if you manage to get authorization from my superiors, what are we likely to accomplish in a short period of time?”

“Wait.” Mikael got to his feet, reached into a backpack, and returned to the table with a thin Apple laptop. “We’ve had a very recent case,” he said, eagerly firing it up and punching keys. A case file appeared on the screen, along with the photo of a lovely young woman.

“Malie Tingvoll. I know the family. Good, solid people.”

Crocker leaned closer. He thought she looked familiar.

“She recently turned eighteen. Disappeared a week ago from the small hotel she was working at in Oslo. Nobody has seen or heard from her since.”

“She didn’t run away with a boyfriend?”

“We don’t believe so. No.”

Crocker winced as he remembered long, light blond hair like hers, glimpsed in the backyard of a grand house in Mosul, Iraq. His memory took him back to the summer of 2003 and a morning when he and his team had been called in to help eliminate a “high-priority” target.

An army intelligence unit searching for Saddam Hussein had stopped to interrogate the owner of a large, gated house in Mosul when people started shooting at them from the second floor. Air support was called in; rockets were fired. By the time Crocker and his team arrived, the battle was pretty much over.

One of the Delta squadrons swept the house. The shredded bodies of two bearded men were found behind a bloody mattress. Army intelligence operatives believed they were Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qusay Hussein.

Crocker and his men had gone downstairs to search the basement. Past a workout room filled with Nautilus-type machines and decorated with leopard-skin-patterned wallpaper, they found a torture chamber, the medieval-looking devices covered with bloodstains. There was splatter on the walls and ceiling, even dried pools on the floor. Some of it was still sticky-wet and pungent.

Inside a desk, they discovered a collection of photos of naked, tortured women. Uday and Qusay posed with some of them, bound and gagged, in the act of being raped or sodomized. Many were young and blond, and had been burned, whipped, and cut.

Sick fucks!

Behind the house they found a large cage of lions busily gnawing the remains of some of these women down to the bone.

Crocker and his men saw rib cages, blanched pelvises, skulls. Some looked fresh. Akil had pointed out a head with long blond hair lying in one corner next to a pool of water. It was the one time in the SEAL team leader’s combat experience that he’d come close to losing his lunch.

His stomach churning, he focused on the screen again. The young girl in the picture had long, light blond hair and big breasts, which had made her a target.

“What’s her name again?”

“Malie Tingvoll.”

“Anything about her background that I should know?”

“She’s a nice girl, a good student, no record of drug use. Healthy and normal. Like I said before, I know her family.”

At times like these Crocker hated being tied down by regulations. Part of him wanted to turn around right now, grab his men, and fly to Oslo.

He said: “If you and the king can buy me a couple of weeks, I’ll try to find her.” Or what’s left of her, he thought.

“Are you confident you can accomplish that in so little time?”

“The more you can tell me about the people who grabbed her, the better chance I’ll have.”

“Of course,” Mikael answered, placing a hand on Crocker’s shoulder. “The king will be pleased.”

“Tell him he has to act quickly.”

“I’ll call him in the morning on my sat-phone and start making the arrangements,” Mikael said. “I’ll also alert our security police to assemble a file with their best evidence.”

“That’s fine,” Crocker answered. “But I can’t wait here. Tomorrow morning I’m proceeding into the mountains with my men.”

“I understand.”

Crocker thought it was a long shot. Unless Klausen secured the necessary authorizations immediately, Crocker would be almost impossible to reach. In the time it took him and his men to finish their climb and return to Islamabad, the girl would probably be sold into slavery, or dead, or God knows what.

But he’d learned to never underestimate the ability of politics to trump the rules and procedures, and of kings to influence the future.

As he got up to leave, Crocker said, “Nice to meet you, Mikael. Good luck.”

A king needed a crown. Towering above the frozen valley floor was a natural one formed by dozens of mountains that grew in size and dramatic splendor as the team picked its way farther north. Like the Himalayas, the Karakoram Range had been violently thrust upward when the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates collided. Both ranges were still growing at a rate of 2.4 inches a year. The peaks here seemed to have been sculpted by demonic gods.

They’d trudged two hundred yards over snow and hillocks of icy rocks, and already Mancini was lagging. Crocker led, postholing his way through the deep snow, which enabled the others to walk in the holes he created. He’d just sunk into drifts up to his knees when Davis slapped his shoulder. “Boss, look.”

The team leader pulled his legs out and doubled back to Mancini, who was leaning on Akil.

“It’s okay,” Akil said. “We’ll catch up.”

“We gotta stay together,” Crocker responded.

Crocker saw that Mancini was having a great deal of trouble putting weight on his right foot. When he did, ripples of pain and shame twisted what the team leader could see of his face. “Your knee still acting up?”

“It’s a little stiff. I’ll be fine.”

“Manny, conditions only get worse up there.”

“It’ll loosen up.”

Sometimes the die-hard SEAL mentality got in the way.

“Too much can-do can do you in.”

“I’m okay.”

“Show me.”

Reluctantly, carefully, Mancini rolled up his pant leg and medium-weight Icebreaker long underwear to reveal a bulge the size of a baseball and a livid purple bruise that ran from his calf to the bottom of his foot.

“Looks like you ripped your calf muscle.”

“No way.”

“That purple is the blood that’s drained from the tear.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means you won’t be climbing. You’re going back to last night’s camp. I’ll send you with two of the porters. We’ll meet you in Islamabad on our way back.”

Mancini pulled off his goggles and threw them in the snow. “Islamabad? That won’t be for another two weeks!”

“Ten days max. You can hang with Ritchie.”

“That crazy fucker threw a live rattlesnake at me once.”

“As a joke.”

“It wasn’t funny. I’ll follow up the rear with a couple of the porters. In a couple of days I’ll be fine.”

“You’re going back to Islamabad.”

“Fuck me.”

A day and a half more of slogging through ice sharks-exposed fins of ice that shoot up as high as two hundred feet-they entered the Concordia, which the Baltis referred to as the “throne of the gods.” The sky was clear blue, and the view spectacular, unrivaled by anything Crocker had seen.

Before he left them, Mancini had explained that back in the seventh century the Buddhist pilgrim Hsuan Tsang had called this valley the most splendid place on earth.

Located at approximately 13,100 feet, the Concordia is actually a rippling, pitted, pockmarked river of gray and white ice where the great glaciers Baltoro, Abruzzi, and Godwin-Austen slide together before separating and going their individual ways. It forms a proscenium for a 360-degree panorama of peaks. Over forty of them reach over 21,000 feet, and ten of the world’s thirty highest peaks are here, including the revered Broad Peak (26,414 feet), Gasherbrum-I (26,509 feet), Gasherbrum-II (26,360 feet), and K2 (28,251 feet)-the second tallest mountain in the world.

“There she is! That’s K2, the Savage Mountain, over there,” Crocker said, pointing at the spear-shaped thrust of rock.

“Incredible,” Davis said.

“And a total bitch to climb.”

“Great.”

“Arguably the most difficult in the world. Steeper and more treacherous than most of the routes on Everest. And the weather is significantly colder and more unpredictable.”

“Whose idea was it to climb that beast?” Akil said.

“Don’t worry, we’re not going for a summit.”

Crocker, who had climbed a few of these peaks before, filled them in on K2’s history. First summited in 1954 by two Italians: Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni. Since then, something like 310 climbers had reached the top, compared to over 2,700 for Everest. Over eighty others had died.

As with most climbs, the descent was even more dangerous than the ascent.

Crocker told them that only ten women had climbed K2. Three of those had fallen to their deaths on the way down.

“And that’s the peak Edyta wants to summit?” Akil asked.

“Yeah, she’s kind of extreme.”

“I can’t wait to meet her.”

“Piss her off and she’ll kick your ass.”

The wind picked up, smacking them in the face as it blasted down between K2 and Broad Peak. It took them close to an hour to cross two hundred yards to the camp, a scattered collection of purple, pink, orange, red, yellow, and blue tents in various sizes and shapes.

The Concordia camp served as a meeting place for adventurers from all over the globe. Flags showed that there were climbers present from Korea, Nepal, Serbia, Pakistan, Norway, France, Ireland, and Germany.

While the porters sang and cleared places for the team’s tents, Crocker and Akil went to visit the Germans. Eight of them were packed into a rectangular blue structure, seated at a folding table. The two Americans were invited to share chapatis (flatbread), yak cheese (which tasted like unsalted butter), and goat-milk tea while one of the Germans relayed the latest weather report out of Switzerland.

“There’s a storm coming in tonight,” he said in English, “then a forty-eight-hour break before the next one rolls in.”

That’s when Edyta entered, wearing a bright yellow parka and black wool hat pulled down to her eyes. Crocker, who didn’t see her immediately, got an elbow in his side from Akil. “Look.”

Recognizing Crocker, her gray-blue eyes sparkled, and she wrapped him in a hug. “Crocker. You old dog.”

“It’s good to see you again, Edie.”

“I pictured you sitting before a fire, well fed and pleased with yourself, with your children and dogs gathered around you.”

“I’m still getting in a climb or two a year. How are things?”

She looked leaner, more wizened, but still attractive in a been-everywhere, nothing-will-shock-me kind of way. High cheekbones, a wide, full mouth, strong jaw and chin. Straight, dirty blond hair that barely reached her shoulders.

She said: “My body’s stronger than ever. My mind is still sharp. And I’m still hungry. Very hungry. I’m not ready to slow down yet. Too many mountains and too little time.”

“I hear you.”

“More mountains to conquer, more hearts to break.”

Even in her forties, she still projected the aura of a femme fatale. A leaner, much tougher Kathleen Turner from Body Heat. Knowing Edyta, it was probably one of her favorite movies.

She whispered to Crocker, brandy on her breath: “I’m going to eat with the Italians after I help them clear up some garbage. You want to come?”

“You’re doing what?”

“These Italian environmentalists, they’re cleaning all the camps from Askole on. Empty gas canisters, beer tins, Coke cans, packaged food wrappers, batteries. Drop by my tent later. We can catch up.”

Crocker knew what she wanted. Edyta made no bones about the fact that she’d slept with practically every attractive climber she’d met.

“I’d like to, but I’m married.”

The glint in her eyes was wicked. “That didn’t stop you before.”

She was right. But that was during his first marriage, when he’d spent over three hundred days of the year away from home. He had returned after a three-week deployment to find the lawn unmowed and no furniture, lightbulbs, or even toilet paper in the house. Had no idea where his wife and three-year-old daughter had gone.

That hurt real bad. Now he limited his days away from home base to two hundred. Crocker wanted this marriage to last.

“Not this time,” he said.

“You’ll change your mind.”

“I doubt it.”

Edyta had a voice that sounded like honey mixed with gravel. “You know, a warm body is a luxury in a place like this. And mine gets hot.”

Crocker’s teammate stood to his right, vibrating with eagerness to take his place.

“Edyta, I want you to meet a good friend of mine. His name’s Akil.”

She checked him out from head to toe. “You look strong.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“You like Italian food, Akil? You want to come with me and get dirty picking up some garbage?”

Akil winked in the direction of his boss. “Why not?” he answered.

Edyta grabbed his hand and led him out.