Authors: Don Mann,Ralph Pezzullo
The man in the driver’s seat was smoking a cigarette. Crocker saw white smoke waft out the side window and closed the gap quickly with the pistol ready, safety off. When he was halfway there, headlights climbed the hill at the other end of the lane and lit up the street. He recognized the shape of Holly’s Subaru as it braked and turned left into the driveway.
The man in the SUV flicked the cigarette out the window and opened the door. As sparks skipped off the asphalt, Crocker grabbed him by the back of his collar, spun him around, and squeezed him so tightly around the neck that the young man’s eyes started to pop out of his head.
“Who the fuck are you?” Crocker whispered into the man’s dark eyes.
The man mouthed the words
Fuck you.
In the moonlight Crocker saw the black-and-gold Mexican passport in the console between the two seats and thought he had his answer.
He raised the pistol, fired two bullets into the young man’s head, watched the life drain out of him, and let him go. And as the man slumped to the pavement, Crocker heard Holly telling Jenny to grab the suitcases out of the back of the car, and alarms went off in his head.
He ran as fast as his tired legs would take him through the woods in the direction of the house, screaming, “Holly, no!”
Crocker knew he was letting emotion determine his behavior, but he couldn’t stop himself. Just then someone opened fire from a position to his right. A bullet tore into his left arm just above the elbow, and he stumbled and fell face-first to the hard ground. Still, he had enough presence of mind to roll to his right, into an elderberry bush, as the two shadows moved closer.
He fired into them. A man screamed
“¡Mierda!”
and fell. Then he heard the explosion that lifted his whole body off the ground and knocked him unconscious.
When he came to seconds later, he saw the whole front of his house in flames. He pulled himself up desperately and ran toward it shouting, “Holly! Jenny!”
More shots rang out. A round caught him in the back of the thigh, causing him to stumble and drop the pistol. But he wouldn’t let it stop him. Ignoring the bullets whizzing past, he pushed himself forward.
When he reached the Subaru, he saw a bleeding, half-conscious Jenny lying near the rear bumper, trying to pull herself up. And in his left periphery, he saw a man with a pistol charging from the woods.
As the running man aimed the weapon at Jenny, Crocker screamed, “No!” and grabbed the hilt of the knife and threw it—the way he’d practiced hundreds of times as a kid. The knife flipped end over end and embedded itself at the base of the man’s neck, causing him to fall backward and fire wildly into the air.
Starting to feel light-headed and trying to stem the blood pouring from the wound to his thigh, he saw Holly lying on the asphalt by the front of the car, holding her leg. Jenny stood beside him, her young face twisted into a mask of horror and desperation.
She pointed to the burning house and choked out the word: “Leslie!”
Crocker tried to find the strength to ask who Leslie was, then remembered that red-haired Leslie Ames was his daughter’s best friend and soccer teammate. The last realization he had was that Leslie had entered the house and set off the booby trap the Mexican had fixed to the kitchen door.
He told himself he had to rescue her. He pushed, tried, and cajoled. But his body wouldn’t respond and the scene around him wobbled. Then, feeling as though he was sinking to the ground, he passed out.
Five days later, armed navy security officers escorted Crocker and his daughter, Jenny, from the Navy Gateway Inns & Suites, where they were living temporarily, to a black Ford Taurus parked alongside the curb. As the car headed north on semirural Birdneck Road past the Owl’s Creek golf course, he sat deep in his own thoughts.
His sense of bereavement was profound. He and his family had lost their home, their dog, a majority of their personal possessions, and most importantly, their sense of security. His teammate Mancini had lost his brother. Holly remained in the hospital, recovering from the shards of wood and glass that had punctured her liver.
There was irony in that, he thought as he gazed out the window. But it gave him no comfort and taught him nothing, except to underline the fact that evil was an active force that had to be guarded against and eradicated.
As much as he thanked God for sparing his wife and daughter and tried to focus on the positive, his sense of violation wouldn’t go away. SEALs like him were trained to endure pain and difficult combat, but personal attacks on their families weren’t supposed to occur. Certainly, not by foreign criminals operating a few miles from ST-6 headquarters.
Again, he vowed to punish the people responsible and never let anything like that happen again. But the pledge felt hollow this time, and even as he made it, he wondered if he shouldn’t consider moving far away from Virginia Beach and finding a new line of work.
The car turned right onto Mill Dam Road and slowed in front of the high school. Feeling a combination of confusion and anger, Crocker turned to Jenny beside him on the back seat and saw that she, too, was deep in thought, probably remembering her late friend.
The strength and dignity Jenny had demonstrated so far had been incredible. Considering her young age and the fact that she had suffered from emotional difficulties in the past, he wondered how much longer it would last.
“You okay, sweetheart?” he asked, taking her hand.
“Yeah, Dad. I’m fine.”
He leaned across the seat and kissed her on the cheek.
“I’m proud of you, sweetheart,” he said as she opened the door and climbed out.
“Thanks, Dad.”
As she stood on the sidewalk and adjusted the straps of her backpack, Crocker saw that she was pausing to look at the flag that flew at half-mast and a large smiling photograph of Leslie Ames printed on a sheet affixed to the brick wall. Written underneath were the words “You’ll be in our hearts forever” and the letters “RIP.”
He worried that the weight of what had happened would hit Jenny again and she wouldn’t be able to continue. Kids milling under the portico and in the entrance became aware of her presence and stopped and turned silent.
As she lowered her head, a boy called out, “Welcome back, Jen!” Other kids started to applaud and the outpouring of emotion spread. Another boy offered to carry her backpack, and kids of various ethnicities and backgrounds gathered around to hug and kiss her and pat her on the back.
Seeing this filled Crocker with unexpected hope. It was difficult at times to understand whom specifically he and his men were fighting for and why they made the sacrifices they did. But when he saw these young people, he knew.
As one of Navy security officers put the Taurus in gear and drove away, Crocker thought of Ritchie. Sometimes the gap between the living and dead seemed vast and incomprehensible, and other times the dead seemed present, as Ritchie did now. Crocker sensed him in the shadows near the opposite window and imagined him saying, “Suck it up, boss, and fight on.”
Don and Ralph would like to thank all the remarkably skilled people at Mulholland Books / Little, Brown who made his book possible—including Wes Miller, Amelia Possanza, Sabrina Callahan, Pamela Brown, Ben Allen, Barbara Perris, and Kapo Ng—and our excellent agent at ICM Partners, Heather Mitchell.
We also want to express our warm appreciation to our loving and supportive families: Don’s wife, Dawn, and his daughter, Dawn; and Ralph’s wife, Jessica, and his children, John, Michael, Francesca, and Alessandra.
Don Mann
(CWO3, USN) has for the past thirty years been associated with the U.S. Navy SEALs as a platoon member, assault team leader, boat crew member, and advanced training officer, and more recently as program director preparing civilians to go to BUD/S (SEAL Training). Until 1998 he was on active duty with SEAL Team Six. Since then, he has deployed to the Middle East on numerous occasions in support of the war against terrorism. Many of today’s active-duty SEALs on Team Six are the same men he taught how to shoot, conduct ship and aircraft takedowns, and operate in urban, arctic, desert, river, and jungle warfare, as well as close-quarters battle and military operations in urban terrain. He has suffered two cases of high-altitude pulmonary edema, frostbite, a broken back, and multiple other broken bones in training or service. He has been captured twice during operations and lived to talk about it.
Ralph Pezzullo
is a
New York Times
bestselling author and an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His books include
Jawbreaker
and
The Walk-In
(with CIA operative Gary Berntsen),
At the Fall of Somoza,
Plunging into Haiti
(winner of the Douglas Dillon Award for Distinguished Writing on American Diplomacy),
Most Evil
(with Steve Hodel),
Eve Missing,
and
Blood of My Blood.