Hunt the Jackal (15 page)

Akil pushed his left hand through the opening and sank the blade of the SOG knife into the dog’s neck. Hot blood spilled over his hand and down his arm as the dog’s eyes shifted from surprise, to anger, to recognition that he was dying in a matter of seconds.

“Sorry, mutt,” Akil moaned.

The dog exhaled its last breath, trembled, and went still.

Counting the seconds until the deadline in his head, Crocker hurried toward the stairway, weapons at ready. He glimpsed an olive-green pickup and armed men through the tall windows and white smoke, pulled the pins on two of the CS gas grenades, threw them toward the front door, then started to climb.
Boom…boom!
The house shook.

Ninety seconds.

He took the wooden steps two at a time, his heart thumping like a piston, the odorless smoke already finding its way into his eyes. Someone was moving above, and he heard shooting outside along the side of the house where the SEALs had entered.

Sixty.

All his senses on high alert and both the shotgun and MP7 off-safety, straight finger, he reached the landing and was confronted with a choice. A horseshoe balcony ran along the stairway opening on the second deck with two doors on either side and three more doors behind him, facing the front of the house.

Hearing something in the room to his left, he crossed and kicked the door open. Someone was leaning out the window. In a split second he ID’d that person as a male and released a salvo from the MP7 that ripped a T in him—eyes, to nose, to sternum. The man crumpled and turned, trying to hold in the white-and-purple putrid-smelling organs that were spilling out of his stomach. The room contained a desk covered with medical equipment (stethoscope, sutures, syringes, scissors, glass vials), a scale, an unmade bed, and a can of Coke.

No hostages!

Crocker took a deep breath and backed out, crossed to the other back bedroom, and stopped. The door was locked.
Ten seconds!
exclaimed a voice in his head. From the front of the house, he heard men shouting in Spanish, a vehicle starting, and weapons discharging.

Crocker reared his right foot to kick the door open, but something told him not to. So he loaded another M1030 cartridge into the 870 and fired at the lock. A second after the door sprang, the entire wall in front of him exploded, lifting him off his feet and throwing him against the wooden rail. He held on to keep from falling over. Shards of wood and metal embedded themselves in his face, neck, arms, and chest. His head wobbling, he struggled not to lose consciousness.

Zero
, the voice announced as he breathed deeply to clear his head. All that accomplished was to fill his lungs with smoke.

Tears muddled his vision. Through the dust, smoke, and flames, he heard a door creaking open behind him and footsteps running along the second-deck landing. The MP7 lay out of reach, so he grabbed the M870 that lay alongside him. Feeling along the pouch near his waist, he inserted another cartridge. Turning from a seated position, he spotted the blurry form of a man emerging from the bedroom to his left, holding an M4.

Crocker fired first. The M1030 breaching round hit the man smack in the middle of the chest and exploded. Crocker pulled himself up, ran, and stepped over the man as smoke rose from the ghastly hole in his chest. The man’s hair stood straight up.

Suárez and Mancini crouched behind an avocado tree along the front side of the house as white smoke spilled out of the barrels of their MP7s. The bodies of two Mexicans they had just taken down lay bleeding out on the concrete driveway next to a military-green Toyota pickup. Beyond the pickup rose a big black metal gate and a fence covered in red bougainvillea.

Mancini raised two fingers and pointed to the front of the house to indicate that two other Mexican guards had retreated through the front door.

Suárez nodded.

Using hand signals, Mancini instructed Suárez to enter through the side door, which was to their right and about ten meters behind them, while he circled around and bum-rushed the front.

The idea was to trap the two retreating Mexicans in a crossfire before they reached the stairs.

Mancini tapped the top of his head and nodded. Suárez tore across the lawn to the shattered side door. He entered and was immediately hit by a wave of heat and smoke. A fire had broken out on the other side of the front hall and was spreading quickly through the wooden structure.

Through the smoke, Suárez spotted two men kneeling along a wall near the stairway, and he circled to his right through a breakfast room, kitchen, back porch, and media room, to try to surprise them from the other side. The dark-wood-paneled media room was filled with white smoke. Still, he made out boxes of Cuban cigars and glass cases filled with DVDs.

Using his left foot, he slowly pulled open the door and stepped into the hallway. The combination of tear gas, smoke, and heat blinded him for a second and squeezed his throat. Still, he kept his head enough to see something move to his left along the floor.

As he turned, shots rang out. One of them slammed into the door near his chin. Another cut through the web of skin between his right thumb and forefinger and clattered along the stock of his weapon, causing him to let it go.

The MP7 hit the floor. So Suárez reached for his handgun, and in that second he knew he was fucked. He heard a weapon discharge and clenched the muscles in his chest and stomach to try to repel the bullets. But mysteriously, they didn’t come. Instead, they tore into the men along the wall, who screamed and grunted.

Looking up, he saw Mancini step through the white mist, gray smoke still wafting out of the end of his weapon.

“You okay?” Mancini whispered.

“Flesh wound,” Suárez whispered back, pointing to his hand, then bending to recover his weapon from the floor. His arms shook. What he really wanted to say was:
Thank you for saving my life.

Choking on cordite, smoke, and tear gas rising from the second deck, his eyes raw and teary, Crocker entered the front bedroom, his mind operating at warp speed, picking up impressions—two windows in front of him, a white wrought iron king-sized bed in the middle, and stretched over the bed, a blue plastic sheet, which had ballooned a foot and a half on the top and sides. A clear plastic tube traveled from the bed to a tank of gas near the wall to his right.

Otherwise, the room was empty. A terrific firing erupted outside, shattering glass and ripping through the clapboard walls.

He knelt, dropped the M870 on the floor, located the SOG knife in his vest, and slit the plastic open in one long, careful motion. A pungent gas leaked out.

A chlorine compound
, Crocker said to himself, reaching into his admin pouch, feeling for a blue bandana, and tying it over his nose and mouth. Spinning to his right, he rose and kicked out the window, then tightened the knob on the tank, which had an elaborate timer attached.

Under the sheet, he spotted one woman, not two. It looked like Mrs. Clark, and she appeared unconscious. Six leather straps bound her tightly to the bed. Kneeling on its edge, he sawed through the restraints, carefully lifted her into his arms, carried her like a baby to the bathroom, and shut the door. Patches of livid red covered the skin on her face and neck, and her lips had turned purple. He set her down on the green tile floor, pulled open the bathroom window, then felt for a pulse along her neck.

It was weak, but she was still breathing, so he held her airway open.

Akil’s voice filled his ears. “Boss, boss…”

Crocker thought he was hearing him through the headset, but when he looked up through tear-filled eyes, he saw Akil standing in the other doorway—the one that opened to the landing. The left side of his head and his left arm were covered with blood.

“Boss.”

“You intact?”

“Hell, yeah. You locate the other one?”

Crocker shook his head vigorously and pointed to the other front bedroom. His throat, ears, and eyes burned, and he was sweating excessively because of exposure to the chlorine gas.

“The downstairs is on fire,” Akil announced.

“Then go, quick! Find her.”

Akil nodded, turned, and ran, and Crocker heard Mrs. Clark moan. He watched her gasp for breath and cough and a second later throw up greenish-yellow bile all over his arms.

He was pleased to see it, and the surprised look on her face, as he held her mouth open with his left hand and cleared her throat with his right.

“You’re okay,” he whispered. “Bear with me. Try not to make a sound.”

He walked to the stall shower, turned on the water, then picked up Lisa and carried her inside. Feeling the cool water on her skin, she tried to pull away.

“No. Don’t!”

“Quiet,” whispered Crocker, holding her firmly. “You’ve been exposed to chlorine gas, so I have to wash it off your skin and out of your hair and eyes immediately.”

“Take me home, please,” she groaned.

“I will.”

“Don’t hurt me.”

“I won’t.”

He propped her against the wall of the shower and pulled off her skirt and blouse. She stared at him in shock as he peeled off her underwear to the pale skin underneath, covered with patches of red. She shivered against him.

He let go of her and whispered, “Wash your whole body. Nose, ears, throat, eyes, everything. I’ll be right back.”

She nodded, covered herself with her arms, and sank to her knees.

On the landing, he ran into Akil emerging from the other front bedroom. Smoke and flames rose from the ground floor.

“Where’s the girl?” he asked urgently.

Akil shook his head.

“You check all the rooms up here?”

“Affirmative.”

Crocker pointed downstairs. “Find her.”

He entered the bedroom Akil had just exited, pulled a white cotton coverlet from the bed, and returned to the bathroom. There he helped Mrs. Clark out of the shower, and seeing that the patches of red were less livid, draped the coverlet around her.

“Wait here, but don’t rub your skin.”

Then he removed his vest and T-shirt and stood under the water himself. After quickly cleaning his hair, face, and chest, he stepped out of the shower and picked her up in his arms.

“Try to hold on to me,” he said.

“Who are you?” she asked, looking up at his face, which was dripping with water, grim, and bloody from the dozen or so wood and metal shards embedded in it.

“An American soldier.”

“Where are we?”

“Cover your mouth and nose with the sheet and close your eyes. This might get hot.”

S
uárez was
standing in the front hallway, getting ready to exit out the side door, when he saw a dark head descending through the smoke.

“Akil?” he whispered.

“No. It’s me, Crocker.”

Suárez hurried toward him, thinking he looked like a character in a slasher movie—soaking wet, blood dripping down his face and neck, holding a shroud-covered body in his arms.

“Dead?” Suárez whispered.

Crocker shook his head.

A grin spread across Suárez’s face. “What do we do now?” he asked.

The front door was covered with flames. Crocker nodded to the side one.

Suárez ran ahead and helped Crocker clear the woman’s pale legs through the doorway.

Outside, in the night air, he thought that he admired these guys more than he ever could have imagined. Not only were they the baddest of badasses, but they did their extraordinary work like it was no big deal. Another day at the office raiding a drug cartel leader’s house without planning or backup. No sweat walking through fire to rescue someone from a burning house.

Suárez helped Crocker set the shrouded body on the bed of the olive-colored pickup. The person underneath it stirred, and a woman’s blue eyes peered out.

Suárez patted Crocker on the shoulder and pointed.

Crocker nodded as the woman whispered weakly, “Am I okay?”

“Fine, Mrs. Clark,” Crocker answered. “Lie here quietly. Breathe the fresh air. We’ll get you out of here in a minute.”

As he spoke, angry flames reflected in her curious eyes. Ten meters behind him, the entire left front of the house was engulfed in smoke and fire.

Remembering something, Crocker grabbed Suárez and asked, “Where’s Gomez?”

“He’s waiting near the gate.”

“Good. Stay here.”

“And do what?”

“Talk to her. Tell her a story. I’ll be back.”

Suárez couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Crocker was actually heading to the same side door they had just exited and was about to reenter the house. “Sir?” he called softly.

Crocker paused on the lawn and spoke past his shoulder. “Don’t call me sir. Call me chief, or boss if you want. Call me dickwad or motherfucker, but don’t call me sir. I work for a living.”

“Okay, boss.”

Crocker spun on his toes and entered the house.

He found Akil in a room off the kitchen, kicking in a closet door that was covered with hand-painted vines and flowers.

“Find any sign of the other female?” Crocker asked to Akil’s back.

“Only flour, maize, beans, tortillas.”

“You recheck upstairs?”

“Yeah. Negative. I grabbed some medical papers, which I stuck in my vest.”

“No sign of the other hostage?”

“Your ears messed up? No.”

“Where’s Manny?” Crocker asked.

“Out by the pool, checking the cabanas.”

He’d forgotten about the grounds.

“Anything else I need to know?” asked Crocker.

“Yeah. In about five minutes the Federales are gonna be swarming all over this place,” Akil growled.

“Right.”

“And this guy’s got an amazing porn collection and a
Pirates of the Caribbean
poster signed by Johnny Depp.”

“What we need is a helo.”

They checked the rooms at the rear of the house, looking for hidden chambers or a basement of some kind, before the smoke started to overwhelm them. Then they escaped out the back, where darker smoke obscured the sky. When Crocker tried to use his headset, he discovered it wasn’t working, because part of it had melted from the flames and heat.

Turning to Akil and pointing to his, he asked, “Yours working?”

“My gear always works.”

“Tell Manny we’re on our way, and tell Suárez we’ll be at the front gate in five mikes,” he said to Akil, who did and reported back.

“Gomez and Suárez are both freaking out.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

“Where?”

Crocker pointed toward the pool, which was lit from inside and looked like a cool, inviting dream. They sprinted across the lawn and past it to the cabanas, where they found striped towels, mattress pads, inflatable pool toys, and a stack of magazines.

Crocker slapped Akil on the shoulder and led the way to the stables, where they caught up with Mancini.

“Find anything?” Crocker asked.

“Horseshit and bridles,” Mancini replied, kicking some of the former from the bottom of his boot.

“I was thinking in terms of a second hostage.”

“I found a pink bikini in one of the cabanas and a woman’s headband,” Mancini replied, pulling them out of his back pocket.

“Which means a woman was there. Any woman. Anything else of significance?”

“Like a fresh grave? No.”

Crocker tossed the bikini and headband to the ground as flames from the burning house licked the sky. There was still a lot of ground to cover, so he decided to bridle one of the stallions.

“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” Crocker said, thinking out loud. “Manny, you’re gonna inspect the barn and sheds along the front fence while I check out the landing strip and hangar.”

“What about me?” Akil asked.

“You still have your camera?”

“Yeah.”

“Run back to the gate. Have Gomez and Suárez move the vehicles away from the house. Then reenter the front gate and photograph the faces of the any of the dead Mexicans you can find.”

“Okay. Where?” Akil asked.

“Where what?”

“Where do you want us to move the trucks?”

“Down the road somewhere, away from the front gate so they can’t be seen. Wait there when you’re finished photographing the dead men. We’ll find you.”

The big brown horse looked anxious to move. Crocker was anxious, too. He grabbed it by its mane and jumped up and slid onto its back. The horse shuddered and neighed.

“How long are you gonna be?” Akil asked.

“As long as it takes.”

Using the heels of his boots, he coaxed the brown horse from a trot to a gallop. Rotors of an approaching helicopter echoed in the distance. The thick night air caressed his face, reminding him of the last time he’d ridden a horse at night, as a teenager on his cousin Johnny’s farm in New Hampshire—which seemed like a lifetime ago.

Reaching the square tin-roofed terminal building, he tied the stallion to a lamppost and searched. His NVGs had bit the dust somewhere in the house, so he flipped on the Maglite he carried in his low-profile vest.

A concrete airstrip stretched to his left and right and faded into darkness. Over it swirled thousands of mosquitos and other insects. He heard a siren wail in the distance. The half-moon hung crooked in the sky.

The door to the little terminal was locked, so he kicked it open and surveyed its contents: a desk, a radio, navigational equipment, and a Pirelli calendar with a naked Kate Moss leering at him from the wall. Judging from the dust on the surface of the desk, it hadn’t been used in weeks. In its drawers he found some cans of soda, a loaded .38 revolver, a receipt for Jet A-1–type fuel, a chart with the variable costs of operating a Learjet 60XR per hour, a serial number (N662MS), and the purchase price ($8,950,000) and seller (Maxfly Aviation).

He stuffed the documents and the revolver into his utility pouch and moved on.

The hangar was more of the same—tools, jacks, tire blocks, spare tires, drums of Type K lubricant, a repair manual, men’s overalls, cables, ropes. But no people, or anything to indicate that anyone had used it recently.

He worried for a second that maybe they had missed the other hostage in the house, and he didn’t want that on his conscience. If Ritchie had been there, he would have told Crocker not to torture himself with what-ifs. Something like:
Do what you can, boss, and move on.

The horse reared as the roof and second floor of the house collapsed, releasing a tremendous cloud of embers. Crocker ran his hand along its neck and tried to calm it down.

Sensitive creatures. There was nothing he could think of to do now but try to get out alive. Remounting, he considered the ride back to the Tapachula airstrip, where Jenson waited. As far as he knew, there was only one road back, and that would be teeming with Federales.

With no appetite for a stint in a Mexican prison or worse, he considered alternatives. The idea struck him that it might be better to have Jenson and his men fly the Gulfstream and pick them up here. That way they could get the hell out of Mexico and find medical attention for the Clark woman in another country.

He’d been so focused on keeping her alive and getting her out of the house, he didn’t even ask her about her daughter. He steered the galloping horse wide of the burning house and out the gate. It was breathing hard, and its back and sides were covered with a foamy sweat, so he stopped.

Without a headset or cell phone, he had no way to communicate with anyone.

A pair of headlights flickered twice from behind some thick foliage to his right. Crocker slid off, patted the horse, and tied it to a tree. Frogs and cicadas croaked loudly around him. He made out Mancini sitting in the passenger seat of the pickup, adjusting the sight on his MP7. Akil stood beside the Explorer, parked behind the pickup.

“Where’s Suárez?” Crocker asked.

“He’s in the back of the pickup with Mrs. Clark,” Mancini answered.

“She okay?”

“Breathing and alert.”

Crocker found Gomez behind the wheel of the Explorer, looking like he was about to jump out of his skin.

“I want you to call Jenson and tell him to meet us here,” Crocker said, leaning in the window.

“How’s he going to do that?”

“He’s gonna get in the goddamn plane and have the pilot land it on the landing strip behind that wall.”

“That’s a crazy idea.”

“Maybe. But it’s the only way this is gonna work.” He pointed past the fence behind him. “Give him the approximate location. Tell him we’ll light the runway up if he needs us to.”

“Bad idea.”

“Why?”

“The Mexicans are gonna get here first.”

“Call him.”

“I don’t think—”

“Give me the fucking cell phone and I’ll do it myself.”

Gomez acquiesced and dialed. Crocker meantime instructed Akil to see if there was another gate to the property closer to the landing strip. Then he went to check on the woman sitting up in the back of the pickup still wrapped in the bedcover.

Suárez knelt beside her, relating a story about his grandfather’s involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba.

“You okay?” Crocker asked, leaning over the side of the truck and feeling along her neck for her pulse, which was strong but quite a bit faster than normal.

“My throat and chest hurt, but I’m better,” the woman answered. “Did you find my daughter?”

“We’re still looking, ma’am.” Crocker used the back of his hand to wipe sweat and blood from his forehead. “When’s the last time you saw her?”

“Yesterday, or the day before. I lost track of time.”

“Here at this house?”

“I’m not sure. I was drugged.”

Her pupils were dilated and her skin felt hot.

“You warm enough, ma’am? You need water?”

“Suárez’s been taking good care of me.”

“Any difficulty breathing?”

“Not really.”

“If Suárez’s boring you, tell him to shut up. We’ll have you out of here soon.”

Akil clipped the lock on the rusted gate at the other end of the property, then waved them in. They entered, the pickup first, then the Explorer. Crocker instructed Gomez and Mancini to park the vehicles inside the hangar; then he returned the horse to the stables. From outside the little terminal building they watched the first of two fire trucks enter through the main gate.

“Lousy-as-shit response time,” Mancini announced.

The house was now a pile of smoldering embers.

Following the firefighters came the Federales in two pickups, an armored personnel carrier, and a jeep.

Crocker said, “Everybody stand on the other side of the building so we can’t be seen.”

They were approximately two hundred meters from the main gate, but he didn’t want to take any chances. “No lights, no loud noises or sudden movements. Akil and Manny, you keep an eye on the Federales and form a perimeter.”

“Sure, boss.”

Gomez’s cell phone lit up. It was Jenson. Gomez said, “Yes, sir. Tell us what you want us to do. We’re ready.”

Crocker grabbed him by the elbow. “What’d he say?”

In the distance, the Mexicans were inspecting the bodies on the driveway. Red-and-blue lights flashed across the trees and sky.

“They’re following the Coatan River, direction east-northeast, and are approximately five minutes away,” Gomez reported.

“Tell him to stay on the line. They might not be able to see the airstrip through the smoke. Tell the pilot to keep an eye out for the fire trucks and flashing lights.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“Where’s Suárez?” Crocker asked.

Mancini nodded toward the hangar. “He’s inside with Mrs. Clark, keeping her company.”

“Good.”

He borrowed Akil’s NVGs and watched from the corner of the hangar as two more truckloads of Federales arrived. They stood in a clump inside the front gate near a firefighter in yellow who was pointing out positions throughout the property.

Then a group of black-uniformed Federales hopped into one of the black pickups and drove past the far side of the house. Crocker watched headlights wash the back fence, then inch along the back of the estate and turn left. It would be only a matter of minutes before the Federales reached them. He didn’t want to risk another gun battle, or the possibility of Mrs. Clark’s being seized again.

Still, he did a quick inventory and found that all that remained were three partially filled mags for the MP7s, four handguns with one mag each, one M870 shotgun with four buckshot shells, and three percussion grenades.

Hearing footsteps, he turned and saw Gomez hurrying toward him and pointing at the sky.

“Here they come!”

“Tell Suárez and Mrs. Clark. Get everyone ready and meet in front of the shack.”