Hunt the Scorpion (10 page)

The temporary compound was crammed with armed men wearing body armor. As he stepped out of the SUV, Crocker glimpsed a sign that listed all the items visitors were prohibited from carrying onto the property, including lighters, matches, radios, mobile phones, laptop computers, MP3 players, and flash drives.

They sat in a small first-floor conference room—Crocker, Remington, and a dozen other men. The air was thick with humidity. Crocker reached for the bottle of water in front of him, then saw a short man with red hair lean toward Remington and whisper into his ear. Remington turned to Crocker and nodded.

“What’s up?”

Remington said, “I need to talk to you outside.”

“Sure.”

Remington pointed to the man who had followed them into the corridor and said, “This is John Lasher. He works for us and has compiled a list of former Gaddafi bases and chemical plants that Cowens wanted you to survey.”

Lasher had piercing blue eyes.

“I thought maybe our priorities had shifted,” Crocker said.

Remington nodded. “You mean in terms of what happened last night?”

“My men and I would be more than happy to go after the attackers and nail their asses.”

“You mean bring them to justice, right?”

“Bring them to justice, or shoot them in the head. Same thing.”

It was the first time he’d seen Remington smile. He said, “I like your attitude, Crocker. But NATO’s going to want to handle that.”

Based on what he’d just seen and heard, he figured it would take the NATO command weeks to get their act together. By that time the perpetrators would have vanished—or, worse, carried out other attacks.

Remington said, “Given your experience as a SPECWAR WMD officer, I want you to work with John here and check the list. But you need to do it discreetly. The ambassador is wary of doing anything that makes it seem that we don’t trust or might be usurping authority from the interim government.”

“Of course.”

Back in the meeting room, Crocker listened to more distressed reports from frustrated, embarrassed, angry men. The only difference this time was that all of them were Americans—CIA case officers, military attachés, members of the embassy political section. He spotted Doug Volman in the corner, looking pale and worried.

Still no mention of Anaruz Mohammed.

The men described again how security at the Sheraton was lax. How reports about the effectiveness of the NTC were overblown. Its weak and disorganized central security apparatus still wasn’t willing or able to stop reprisals against former Gaddafi loyalists. Looting continued throughout the country. Cars were robbed; houses were broken into; women raped. Rival militias controlled different sectors of the city. All of them were basically looking after their own interests—namely, money and power in the new government.

The embassy was reluctant to put pressure on the NTC because they were competing with the French for influence with the new Libyan government. Their primary focus seemed to be the political maneuvering going on behind the scenes. The prize: the lucrative contracts that would be handed out to service and maintain Libya’s substantial oil industry.

Internal security, though troublesome, was less of a concern. Nobody wanted to alienate the leaders of the NTC.

Crocker left two hours later, angry, tired, and depressed. Doug Volman, smelling like he needed a shower and a change of clothes, joined him in the hall.

“Didn’t I tell you?” Volman asked.

“You did.”

“Nobody wants to talk about the political vacuum that was created when we helped force out Gaddafi. Or the opportunity we’ve created for al-Qaeda, or other Islamic fundamentalists, or countries like Iran and China.”

“What about Anaruz Mohammed?” Crocker asked. “Would you include him, too?”

Volman, seeing John Lasher approaching, lowered his voice to a whisper. “Anaruz is a simple kid who’s garnered a lot of media attention because of his background. He hasn’t proved that he can generate much of anything on his own.”

“Take everything he tells you with a big grain of salt,” Lasher muttered after Volman left. Then he informed Crocker that Remington was going to take him to meet the ambassador. Crocker said he wanted to meet the embassy security chief first.

“Make it quick,” Lasher answered. “I’ll be waiting outside the ambassador’s office on the second floor.”

The head of security was Leo Debray, a huge man with a smashed-in nose and a big, sunburned face. He had a marine flag on the wall of his little office and pictures of himself as a fighter standing in various boxing rings and gyms.

“What can I do you for?” he asked with a crooked smile. Although friendly, he radiated violence.

“I’m trying to connect with my wife, Holly Crocker. I heard she’s in Cairo conducting a security survey.”

Debray leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head and howled, “Holy shit! You mean to tell me Holly is your wife?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, ain’t that something. Great gal. She’s been a big help. You’re one of the civil engineers, right?”

“That’s correct.”

“She know you’re here?”

“As a matter of fact, she doesn’t.”

“Holy shit! You undercover?” He lowered his voice. “Is she not supposed to know?”

Crocker: “I didn’t plan to be here, and didn’t have a chance to inform her. Can you tell me where she’s located now?”

“Holly, let’s see…” He leaned back again. “Well, I assume you know she was staying at the Sheraton the night before last.”

Crocker’s blood turned cold. “No!”

“Jesus, man, I’m sorry. I should have told you first, she’s fine! She wasn’t even there at the time of the attack.”

“Thank God.”

“She and her colleague finished up early in Cairo and stopped here on their way to Tunisia. They’re due back in Libya to eyeball our consulate in Benghazi any day now. That puppy’s in pretty ragged shape.”

Crocker felt relieved. “The consulate in Benghazi?”

“Yup. Whole town had the shit kicked out of it by the colonel’s hooligans and mercenaries. The uprising started there, so when the colonel’s forces retook the city, they punished the joint. Sacked our consulate in the process. Nice touch, huh?”

Crocker had had his fill of Libyan history for one day. “When is she expected back?”

“Holly and Brian? I thought they were coming back today. Wait here. I’ll check.”

Debray returned a few minutes later with a short woman in her thirties. Dirty blond hair cut short, blue slacks, blue oxford shirt, a tattoo of a rose covering the back of her hand.

“Kat Hamilton.”

“Hi, Kat. Tom Crocker.”

She bounced from one side to another, and spoke with a Pittsburgh accent, turning “ows” into “ahs.” “Yeah, Holly’s great,” she said. “Flew to Tunisia yesterday morning. With Brian. You know Brian?”

“Brian Shaw?”

“Yeah. You know him?”

“Sure do.” Brian Shaw was a good-looking guy in State Department Security, about ten years younger than Crocker and a couple of inches taller. A former major league pitcher, he’d been going through a bad divorce. Holly was giving him advice and support.

Kat said, “Everybody talks about the friggin’ Arab Spring and how wonderful it was, and all that. They forget to mention that most of our facilities got trashed in the process. It’s gonna cost us a fortune.”

“She’s okay?”

“Holly? Oh, yeah. I spoke to her about an hour ago. She and Brian were at the Carlton Hotel drinking mint tea. They’re finishing up in Tunis today, then flying from there to Benghazi.”

“After that she’s returning here?”

“To good ol’ Tripoli, that’s right. We’ve scheduled a regional meeting here for Friday to address the regional embassy security picture, evaluate needs, draft a budget, write a report. Holly’s input will be important. Critical, you might say.”

“When exactly do you expect her back?”

“Sometime Thursday.”

“Libyan Airlines?”

“I imagine.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

He turned to leave and stopped. “Oh, and one other thing. Please don’t tell her I’m here. I want to surprise her.”

“Sure thing.”

T
he guesthouse
was roughly six blocks away, a relatively modest three-bedroom behind a concrete wall topped with broken glass and barbed wire. The oval pool in the backyard was covered with a blue tarp.

He found most of his team loading in supplies and cleaning the kitchen. Mancini had his head in the fridge, a plastic bucket at his feet, the floor around him covered with old food containers, muttering to himself. Seeing Crocker, he stopped. “Hey, boss,” he said. “You alright? Heard you had a difficult night.”

“I’m running on fumes. How’s the place?”

“Not half bad,” Mancini answered, “but the people staying here before us left a goddamn mess.”

From the closet Akil said, “You should have called us.”

“When?”

“Last night.”

“No time. Everything happened so fast.”

“Davis told us. Heard you kicked some butt.”

Mention of the SEAL’s name jarred Crocker’s memory. “How is he?”

“Davis? Got his bell rung good. Minor concussion. Damage to one of his eardrums. Doctor says he’ll be fine.”

“Where is he?”

“In the back bedroom jerking off.”

Ritchie walked in carrying a box of groceries. “Hey, boss. Welcome back. Cal needs to talk to you when you get a chance.”

“What’s wrong with Cal?”

“Mommy issues.”

“What?”

“I can never quite make out what he’s saying. He mumbled something under his breath about his mother.”

Crocker found Cal sitting in the living room next to a bag filled with weapons. The components of an MP5 lay on loose newspaper on the floor—the carrier, bolt head rollers, blast bore, and chamber. As Crocker watched, Cal spread some Tetra Gun Action Blaster on the chamber and scrubbed it with a wire brush.

Without looking up he said, “Big mash-up last night, huh, boss?”

“Turned out that way, yeah.”

“Sorry I missed the fireworks.”

The SEAL sniper, who was never very communicative, looked lost in his own thoughts as he wiped down the bore, barrel, and trigger pack.

Crocker said, “Ritchie said you want to speak to me. You okay?”

Cal raised his head and looked toward the window, which was covered with dusty yellow curtains. Crocker noticed puffiness around his eyes.

Cal spoke in a whisper. “I think so.”

“That scorpion bite still bothering you? Sometimes the effects of the venom can linger for weeks.”

“It’s not that.”

“What, then?”

“My mom.”

“Your mother?”

“Weird, huh? I dreamt about her the other night. Today I find out she’s in a hospice, dying.”

Crocker was so tired he wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “Your mother’s dying, and you just found out?”

“Yeah. Stage three lung cancer.”

Crocker knew there was almost zero chance of recovering from that. “Cal, I’m so sorry.”

“Doctor says she only has a few days left.”

Crocker flashed back to his own mom, suffering from cancer and hooked to a respirator. “You speak to her?” he asked.

“Weird how things change. She’s always been the most energetic woman, running businesses, doing all kinds of things, always in a hurry. Never stopped, until now.”

Crocker had left his mom one afternoon when she wanted him to stay. She died the next day.

“Where’s your mother now?” he asked, feeling the guilt wanting to punish him again.

“San Mateo.”

“You’ve got to visit her, Cal. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

Cal looked down at the tile floor and nodded. “I guess I will. Soon as this mission is over.”

“We’re likely to be here a week at least. That might be too late. I don’t think you should risk it.”

“Yeah.”

Cal put a drop of oil on the locking piece, then reassembled the bolt head and carrier. The emotional side of him that was never much in evidence seemed completely shut down.

“Cal?” Crocker asked.

“Yeah.”

“Soon as I get my hands on a laptop that’s working, I’ll e-mail our CO. Tell him you’re taking emergency medical leave effective immediately. You should get ready to leave first thing in the morning. When you’re done in San Mateo, report back to Virginia Beach.”

Cal pointed at the weapons on the floor. “I’ll check and clean the rest of them tonight before I go.”

“We can do that, Cal.”

“Not as good as I can.”

“Okay, Cal. Then pack your gear.”

“Yes, sir.”

An important part of Crocker’s job was to look out for the emotional welfare of his men. As highly trained and disciplined as they were, they were human beings, not machines. They needed to be able to focus and think clearly.

He had learned from personal experience that family roots run deeper than some people realize. Early in his career Crocker had missed both his sisters’ weddings and his uncle’s funeral because he was working 24/7 with ST-6. He deeply regretted that now.

As Cal checked the reassembled mechanism, Crocker saw him stop to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye. He placed a hand on Cal’s shoulder, then left him in peace.

Minutes later Crocker found Davis in the back bedroom, sitting on the edge of a double bed, flipping through the channels with the TV remote. The left side of his head and his left ear were covered with a white bandage.

“Akil said that you were back here beating off.”

Davis said, “Thirty-some channels, and all but one of them is in Arabic. The only one in English is BBC World News.”

“No
Criminal Minds
or
CSI,
huh?”

“No, nothing.”

“We’ll survive.”

“I’d rather read anyway.”

“How’s your head?”

“Hurts, but it seems to be working.”

Crocker held up the fingers of his right hand. “How many digits?”

“Seventeen.”

“You’re fine. Any mention of the Sheraton bombing on the news?”

“Some still pictures. Nothing about casualties.”

“That’s because the war is over, so reporters are busy elsewhere. What’d the doc say about your head?”

“I should expect headaches the next couple of days. Probably lost a shitload of brain cells. Otherwise, I’m fine.”

“Maybe you should take some emergency medical leave, spend some time with your family.” Davis and his wife had an infant son and another baby due in six months.

He asked, “What’s going on with Cal?”

“He’s leaving in the morning to spend some time with his mom.”

“Then you need me.”

Sometimes team spirit and loyalty got in the way. “Think about it,” Crocker said.

“As long as I’ve got plenty of eight-hundred-milligram Motrin, I’ll be fine.”

They ate at a long table in the kitchen. Mancini had whipped up a big bowl of pasta with tomatoes, capers, peppers, and canned tuna. Pretty damn good, under the circumstances. They were talking, eating, and listening to Raj Music on the radio when they heard someone banging on the gate.

It was John Lasher, carrying several shopping bags that contained DVDs, paperbacks for Davis, peanut butter, crackers, bars of chocolate, boxes of energy bars, and bottles of Italian wine. The back of his SUV was loaded with hazmat suits, digital Geiger counters, a bolt cutter, a couple of acetylene torches, maps and charts.

As Crocker helped him carry the gear in, Lasher turned to him and asked, “How do you know Farag Shakir?”

Because his mind was clouded with exhaustion, it took him a moment to remember. “Farag? Yeah, Farag. He’s the brave kid who fought beside me at the Sheraton last night.”

“He asked me to thank you for helping save his cousin’s life.”

“I didn’t know the injured boy was his cousin. How is he?”

“Hanging on, apparently.”

“Tough kid, that Farag. What’s his background?”

“He’s from one of the tribes west of here, near the Tunisian border, called Zintani. Ended up in Tripoli during the war for one reason or another. He wants to be helpful, so we’ve used him for a couple of things, mainly for backup security. That’s why he was at the Sheraton last night.”

After they finished eating, Lasher spread out a map of Libya on the table with several locations circled in red. He explained that he was a former marine major and UN weapons inspector in Iraq, then said, “Remington wants us to do this quickly and low profile, so we’ll focus on the three most important sites.”

“I was in Iraq, too,” Crocker said. “March 2003, right after it fell. Minutes after I landed, I ran into the chief of CIA Operations at the airport. He said, ‘Crocker, if you came here looking for WMDs, you’re not gonna find any.’ ”

Lasher: “I worked for Scott Ritter when we did the UN inspections. We knew that months before the invasion.”

Crocker had learned not to try to second-guess the president or his foreign policy team, but he wasn’t afraid to call out a mistake if he saw one. “Fucked up, huh?”

“A major international black eye, yeah. But at least we took down Saddam.”

“Sure did.”

Lasher pointed to one of the red circles, only a short distance west of Tripoli. “We might as well start with the closest one, Busetta, which was Gaddafi’s former naval base. I’m not sure what’s left of it now.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Mustard gas, stocks of VX gas, missile engines, ingredients for the production of missile fuel, shells, chemical bombs.”

Crocker knew that VX was a very dangerous nerve agent developed by the British, a compound of organic phosphorus and sulfur that can penetrate the skin and disrupt the transmission of nerve impulses, causing paralysis and death.

“And you think these weapons exist?” he asked.

“NATO claims to have inspected the sites.”

“But you don’t trust them?”

“We know that Gaddafi vowed to dismantle his WMD program after the Iraq War. But instead of destroying anything, he spent the next eight years playing cat and mouse with the international community. According to our intel, at the time of his death his regime was in possession of at least 9.5 metric tons of mustard gas and 100 metric tons of VX.”

“Code name Scorpion.”

“Yeah, Scorpion. Designed to strike when no one’s looking.”

“How much of that mustard gas and VX has NATO recovered?”

“Almost none.”

“Then it looks like we’ve got a real job to do.”

“Sure does.”

Crocker spent that night dreaming about his mother. He saw her barefoot in the kitchen, making pancakes. Then he hid from her as she called him to come with her to church.

He woke before dawn, breakfasted on yogurt, cereal, and oranges. Ran ten miles, did some calisthenics, then showered and watched the kids next door pedal their bicycles up and down the street. Two brothers ages six and eight, named Bouba and Mohi. The younger one, Bouba, was having trouble reaching the pedals, so Crocker adjusted the seat as their father smoked a cigarette and watched silently from the front gate.

“Great kids,” Crocker said.

The father smiled and nodded.

Just before eight Lasher arrived with a short older man with thinning gray hair and a tight smile. “This is Dr. Jabril,” Lasher said. “He used to run Colonel Gaddafi’s chemical weapons program, before he was dismissed in 2002 and thrown in jail.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Dr. Jabril has been living in exile in southern France. He agreed to return to Libya and help us.”

That meant that the CIA had probably paid him a shitload of money.

Jabril said, “I hope I can make a small contribution to the future of my country. It looks like it needs all the help it can get.”

After saying good-bye to Cal, they all drove in a black Chevy Suburban to the Corniche and hung a left. The city was slowly coming to life under low-lying gray clouds. Vendors, most of them male, were setting out their goods—bags of fresh oranges, dates, and tangerines, pistachio nuts, spices, tribal rugs, cartons of cigarettes, counterfeit CDs and DVDs. Traffic was light, bikes, motorcycles, a few cars and trucks driving at their customary ninety miles an hour.

What’s the hurry?
Crocker wondered as he tried to orient himself to the layout of the city.

After a few miles following the coast, they approached the Sheraton on their right. Crocker’s stomach tightened. The thick burning smell—a combination of electrical wire, other building materials, and death—made him nauseous. It reminded him of the spilled guts and blood, his buddy Al Cowens.

“That’s it. Right, boss?” Akil asked from the backseat.

“Yeah.” Covering his nose.

The streets leading to the hotel were blocked and manned by NATO and NTC soldiers wearing red berets. Two unmarked helicopters swooped overhead.

“Nice of them to secure it now,” Davis remarked.

“You got that right.”

People tended to respond to specific types of threats after the fact, which was a problem if the terrorists stayed a step ahead. Crocker thought they should be pursuing the men who had attacked the hotel. The fact that they weren’t made him angry.

After forty-five minutes of bouncing down the potholed highway, they reached the Busetta naval base. Lasher and Jabril got out and spoke in Arabic to armed men guarding the gate.

When the conversation had gone on for more than five minutes, Crocker turned to Akil and asked, “Can you understand what’s going on?”

“They showed them a letter from Abdurrahim El-Keib, who is the prime minister of the National Transitional Council. But I don’t think the guards can read.”

Crocker: “Get out and tell them that if they don’t let us in, we’ll arrest them.”

“And what happens if they resist? We’re unarmed.”

“We’ll kick their asses anyway.”

Akil: “Chill, boss. It’s hardly worth the risk.”

He was right. Even though Akil sometimes acted like an immature asshole, Crocker appreciated the fact that he wasn’t afraid to tell his boss when he thought he was out of line.

After a few more minutes of arguing, the guards stepped aside and waved them in.

The place was a wreck. Bombed-out hangars and warehouses, scorched pieces of sheet-metal roof flapping in the breeze. They passed burnt-out trucks and jeeps.