Hunt the Scorpion (15 page)

The hiss of Crocker’s breath through the respirator and the crinkly roar produced by every movement of the thick plastic material drowned out all other sound. The suit was so bulky that Crocker couldn’t see his feet. And it was hot.

Holding a high-powered flashlight, Jabril led them inside one of two high tunnels that had been carved into the mountain. At one end was a twenty-by-twenty-foot chamber stacked to the ceiling with narrow five-foot-long aluminum cylinders.

“Mustard gas,” he said through the two-way radio built into his suit.

“Which ones?” Crocker asked.

The scientist pointed a purple glove to his right.

“And that’s sarin over here,” he said pointing to the cylinders to his left.

“That’s a whole lot of destructive power.”

“Serious stuff.”

“The sarin degrades quickly. But the mustard gas might still be lethal.”

“Even ten years later?”

“It’s possible.”

“I feel like I’m about to faint,” Lasher shouted through the radio. Mancini helped him out of the tunnel. The others followed.

Outside, Lasher removed his hood to reveal a head and face covered with sweat. After chugging a bottle of water, he said, “We’ve got to secure this place immediately. If the wrong people get their hands on this, the NTC could be fucked.”

“They’re fucked already,” Ritchie mumbled.

Davis: “The sat-phone’s in the vehicle.”

Lasher held up a hand. “Wait…”

Once he caught his breath, he explained that the United States had known about the chemical weapons stored here for years, but the Department of Defense had refused to allocate the $100 million it would cost to clean up the site and dispose of them.

“Why?” Ritchie asked.

“Politics. DOD wanted Congress to pass a special provision. The House held hearings back in 2007, but never allocated the funding.”

Akil: “I hope someone’s willing to spend the money now.”

Ritchie: “Either that or we bury the whole fucking thing under the mountain. I can rig up a bomb with the extra can of gasoline attached to the back of the van.”

Crocker: “Not yet.”

When they’d rehydrated and cooled down as best they could, Crocker and Mancini accompanied Jabril for one last look around the tunnel. Sand gophers and lizards scurried about in the dark. When Mancini switched on the handheld digital Geiger counter, it went berserk, whining and flashing.

“Hey, boss!”

“Is it working correctly?”

Jabril said through the radio, “Let me see that machine.”

The device squealed even louder when he approached the chamber at the far end. In the cone of light Crocker saw a dozen green canisters—each one the width and half the length of a coffin—propped against the rear wall.

Jabril handed the flashlight and Geiger counter to Mancini and started to unfasten the metal clasps along the side of one of them.

“Is that safe?” Crocker asked.

“Probably not.”

The scientist pulled back the lid and pointed to where he wanted Mancini to shine the light. Embedded inside the canister were four dozen glass ampoules filled with white and silver crystals.

“What’s that?” Crocker asked.

“I believe it’s uranium hexafluoride,” Jabril said.

“UF6?”

“Yes.”

Crocker knew that UF6 was a compound needed to enrich uranium. It was hard to make and carefully monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

He tried to locate Mancini’s eyes through the plastic mask but it was completely fogged up.

“You okay in there?” Crocker asked.

“Yeah. You need UF6 to make a nuclear weapon,” Mancini shouted into his radio.

“I know. I know. Lower the fucking volume.”

“Sorry. What do we do now?”

Crocker said, “Let’s seal it back up and carry it out of here.”

“Why?”

“Just do it. I’ll explain outside.”

The two SEALs lugged the canister under their arms, set it down near the entrance, then went back to help Jabril, who seemed to be struggling. Once outside they helped him take off his hood and saw that the scientist’s face was deep red.

“It’s my heart.”

“Sit down, breathe deeply,” Crocker said, unbuttoning the top of the Libyan’s shirt and checking his pulse. “I’ll get you some water.”

Meanwhile, Mancini joined the other men, who were sitting in the shade, and explained what they had found. At the mention of uranium hexafluoride Lasher jumped to his feet. “Jesus Christ! You found UF6? You’re kidding. Where?”

“The ampoules are in the canister we carried out. Right there.”

Lasher ran over to it and examined the labels and writing on the outside.

Mancini warned, “It’s leaking radioactivity, so don’t get too close.”

Lasher said, “It was shipped to Tajoura in 2010. In 2010!”

Davis: “What’s Tajoura?”

“It’s a nuclear research facility about ten miles east of Tripoli. Houses a research lab and a ten-megawatt reactor built by the Soviets. But it was shut down in 2004, after Gaddafi told the world he was abandoning his plan to build a nuclear weapon. Back in March of that year the IAEA oversaw the removal of weapons-grade enriched uranium from Tajoura, which was then shipped to the Russian Federation.”

“Incredible,” Mancini muttered, shaking his head.

“Why is it here?” Crocker asked.

Lasher: “Good question.”

“What’s it mean?” Davis asked.

“It’s a smoking gun,” Lasher offered. “The proof that Scorpion is real—a lethal weapon buried in the desert sand.”

“A smoking gun in what sense?”

“The presence of UF6 proves that Gaddafi was still trying to build a nuclear weapon after the invasion of Iraq and the whole furor over WMDs. Back in 2004 he was afraid he was going to be invaded next. Made a speech before the UN, telling the whole world that he was going to play nice from now on.”

“What do we do with it now?” Crocker asked.

Lasher: “Was that the only green canister?”

Mancini: “There were about a dozen more like it.”

“You check those, too?”

“No.”

Lasher: “Doesn’t matter. We’ll take this one back as evidence. NATO will have to figure out how to deal with the rest.”

Jabril was feeling better. He said, “It’s too dangerous to handle.”

Lasher: “I brought a lead sheet in the truck. We’ll wrap it in the lead sheet and take it with us.”

Crocker: “Sounds like a plan.”

They’d parked the van at the second gate—the one that connected the military base to the chemical plant. Lasher and Ritchie volunteered to walk back and get it.

While the others waited, Crocker and Davis went to explore the far side of the hill. There they found a vent hidden behind a boulder, but nothing else.

Davis said, “Sometimes I wonder what kind of world we brought our kids into.”

“It was a hell of a lot easier to defend yourself when men fought with rocks and slingshots,” Crocker answered.

“You read about all this apocalyptic end-of-time stuff and it makes you wonder.”

“Sure does.”

They sat in the shade talking about how advances in technology, designed to make the world safer, seemed to be having the opposite effect. Crocker heard a car horn honk three times.

“There’s the van,” he said getting to his feet.

He had taken half a dozen steps around the hill when he heard angry voices speaking Arabic, and stopped.

“What’s wrong?” Davis asked.

“Listen,” Crocker whispered back, pointing to the other side of the hill, then holding a finger to his lips.

Davis looked perplexed.

Very carefully, Crocker craned his head around the edge of the hill to look. In the distance he saw the van driving away, accompanied by two white pickups armed with .50-caliber machine guns. In the foreground, approximately two hundred feet from where he was standing, a dozen men wearing black and brown kaffiyehs pointed automatic weapons at Mancini and Jabril, who were seated on the ground with their hands tied behind their backs.

As Crocker watched, the armed men led Mancini and Jabril to two more white pickup trucks, pushed them into the back, then piled in themselves and drove off, leaving behind a cloud of dust. The canister was gone.

“Who the hell are they?” Davis asked.

“I didn’t see any patches or insignia. Did you?”

“No, but there was a green flag painted on the door of the truck.”

“Fuck.”

The two SEALs ran along the back of the three hills and arrived at the fence surrounding the military base. Seeing parked pickups on the other side, they hid behind some rocks and waited almost an hour, until the sky started to turn dark, so they could enter the base with a diminished risk of being discovered.

“What do we do now?” Davis asked.

“First we climb the fence. Then we try to find our guys.”

C
limbing the
chain-link fence was the easy part, the only danger being the razor wire on top. Once Crocker and Davis got over that, they scrambled down the other side, crouched on the lid of a dumpster, then eased themselves down to the ground. They were completely unarmed and had no comms.

A wild animal howled in the distance. Otherwise, the landscape around them was eerily still. Abandoned tanks and vehicles in front of them, the shooting range to their left. Most of the camp, including the barracks, storage shed, and water tower, stood to their right. Beyond that rose the front gate.

“You wait here near the dumpster,” Crocker said. “I’ll go surveil the base.”

“Careful, boss.”

“Let’s hope our guys are still here.”

“What do we do if they’re not?”

“We’ll figure that out later.”

His excitement grew as he moved alone in the dark, hiding behind the wheels of an abandoned transport truck, checking to see if the coast was clear. He felt like he was a kid back in the town he’d grown up in, playing with stolen cars. Canvas flapped in the breeze that arrived as the sky turned black. A window on one of the storage sheds banged open and closed.

The four white pickups were parked thirty feet in front of him, the barrels of their .50-cals pointed at the stars.

Seeing no one near the vehicles, he ran toward them in a crouch, then heard someone cough and spit to his right. He ducked behind a barrel that reeked of urine, his heart pounding.

There was an armed man at two o’clock. Another farther to Crocker’s right, smoking a cigarette. They stood at the entrance to one of the barracks, talking in low voices, cradling AK-47s, recognizable by their long, curved magazines. A chill ran up his spine as he remembered the dozens of them that had been fired at him in places like Pakistan, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iran.

Here I go again.

He waited for the soldier to toss his cigarette butt to the ground and enter the barracks with his colleague behind him. Then Crocker continued to the trucks, hoping to find a weapon of some kind. When he looked into the cab of the nearest Toyota, he saw a man sleeping on the front seat clutching what looked to be a brand-new Soviet-design PPSh-41 submachine gun.

Crocker thought for a second of wrestling it away but decided the noise might attract attention. He needed to assess the layout of the base first.

So he made a wide arc to the water tower, pausing to hide behind its legs, then continued to the far end of the two-hundred-foot-long concrete barracks. This part of the structure was badly in need of repair. Windows were missing on both floors, and so were many of the tiles on the roof. Dozens of bats darted in and out.

No sign of the van or the men. Desperation started to creep under his skin.

Someone screamed near the other end of the barracks, causing his hair to stand on end.

He saw a light on the second floor, then heard the man screaming again. This time it sounded like Jabril.

He ran along the front of the barracks and abruptly stopped when he saw two soldiers sitting out front. One of them tossed a rock toward the trucks. Crocker held his breath, turned on his toes, and hurried back.

This time he circled around the back of the barracks, which seemed deserted. What appeared to have been an exercise yard was now littered with garbage and pieces of rusting metal. The long building had been constructed in three forty-foot-wide sections, each with its own entrance in front and back. Each section had its own metal fire escape that ran the length of the six second-story windows and led to a ladder in the middle.

He hurried past barrels, broken bicycle parts, and rats scurrying through the trash to the ladder at the first section. Dim lights shone from the windows above. He heard someone talking in a loud voice.

The bottom of the ladder was beyond Crocker’s reach, so he jumped, held on to the bottom rung, and pulled himself up. As the ladder extended, it made a screeching metal sound.

The man who was speaking stopped. But no way was Crocker turning back, now that he’d come this far. He climbed to the second floor, lay facedown on the metal slats, and waited, feeling his chest rising, adrenaline rushing through his body.

One minute passed, then another, then three. No sound from inside. He looked along the length of the barracks.

Seeing no soldiers, he pulled himself up onto his knees and walked in a crouch to the window with the light. Eased his head up so that his eyes barely reached the bottom of the window. Saw shadows against the wall and ceiling, but his view was blocked by the backs of several men in mismatched camouflage.

The same male voice he had heard before was scolding someone. Crocker heard the sound of something hitting flesh, then a muffled yelp.

When one of the men blocking the window stepped aside, he saw the terrified eyes of Ritchie, Lasher, and Mancini, who were squatting along the opposite wall. Their mouths were covered with tape and their hands were tied behind their backs.

A light of some sort beamed from the back of the room. Everyone’s attention seemed to be directed to the front. When the man standing with his back to Crocker shifted, he saw that they were all looking at Jabril.

He’d been tied naked to a chair so that his arms were behind him and his genitals exposed. A soldier stepped into view and hit the doctor across the face with a stick. His head snapped back, splashing blood across the wall and floor.

Crocker had to restrain himself from busting through the window right then. He was shocked, offended, and knew he had to move fast—before Jabril was beaten to death, or his men executed or moved somewhere else.

A peal of automatic-weapons fire went off in the distance. Crocker ducked below the window. He heard the squealing cry of an animal, followed by more gunshots, men shouting.

Hearing steps approaching along the back of the building, he hurried to the ladder and slid down, his hands wet with sweat. The steps were coming fast. On reaching the ground he turned to face the sound. An animal lunged at him, claws first. It was big, quick, and black—a dog? a hyena? He pivoted left and ducked so that it sailed past his shoulder and hit the ground, losing its footing and skidding on its side. It gathered its feet under it and turned, reared onto its back legs, and bared its teeth as if it was about to charge.

Crocker grabbed a chunk of concrete off the ground and faced it.

I dare you! I fucking dare you!
his eyes blazed.

Hearing something behind it, the animal turned to look, and tore off.

Crocker took a deep breath, then hurried to the end of the barracks and circled back, retracing his steps. He found Davis hiding behind the dumpster, holding a four-foot length of lead pipe.

“I heard shots,” Davis whispered. “I thought they got you!”

“I’m fine,” he said, his chest heaving.

“Then what the fuck was that?”

“Hyenas, I think.”

“They must have crawled through the fence.”

“Maybe,” Crocker whispered, catching his breath. “I saw our guys. I know where they’re holding them.”

“Who? Where?”

“Ritchie, Mancini, Lasher, Jabril.”

“What about Akil?”

“I didn’t see him.”

“Where are they?”

Crocker pointed. “Second floor of the barracks. But I didn’t see the van.”

“I did. It’s behind that shed.”

“Which shed?”

Davis pointed to his left. “That one over there. But the doors are locked.”

“Shit.”

Davis unwrapped a rag he held in his hand. “Look what I found.”

In the light of the half moon Crocker saw a rusted jigsaw blade, a plastic lighter, a section of metal wire, an empty bottle, and several large rocks.

“The lighter works?”

“Yeah.”

Crocker’s mind was processing fast. “You see any more bottles?”

Davis pointed to the dumpster. “I think there are more inside.”

“Grab a few extras.”

“Now?”

Crocker nodded as he formulated a plan.

Davis hoisted himself up into the dumpster, handed Crocker two soda bottles, and climbed out.

“Good.”

“What now?”

“They don’t know we exist. We’ve got one chance to surprise them. Show me the van.”

“Now?”

“Go!”

They ran in a crouch, Davis first, Crocker right behind him. Around the back of the warehouse, past a broken-down tank painted with graffiti to where the van was parked under sheets of tin rattling in the breeze.

The canister of UF6 lay in back, but their weapons and gear were missing. And, as Davis had said, the doors were locked. So was the lid to the gas tank.

Crocker grabbed the container of extra fuel strapped to the rear door.

“Help me get this down,” he whispered.

They undid the latch, set the container down, untwisted the cap.

Crocker said, “Now set down the bottles.”

He lifted the container, filled the bottles with gasoline, then ripped the rag Davis was carrying and stuffed the pieces into the necks of the bottles as fuses.

Davis grinned at the three Molotov cocktails. “Nice.”

“Now,” Crocker whispered, “we need a gun.”

“Unlikely we’ll find one lying around.”

“Follow me,” he said.

Again they made a wide arc past three trashed transport trucks and the edge of the shooting range to avoid the barracks and the other soldiers.

Crocker stopped behind a concrete structure with a flagpole in the center that stood thirty feet from the four white pickups. On the other side of the trucks was the middle entrance to the barracks.

They huddled together, clutching the bottles. Crocker whispered, “See that Toyota facing us?”

Davis nodded.

“There’s a soldier sleeping on the front seat. I’ll circle around the other side. When you hear me jump the bastard and smash him with this rock, you come up from this side and grab his weapon.”

“What about the bottles?”

“Leave ’em here.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

Crocker ran like a Mohawk—on his toes, as close as possible to the ground. Reaching the front of the Toyota, he ducked below the grille and slowly slithered around the bumper to the passenger side. But when he peeked in the window, the soldier was gone.

Fuck!

Standing halfway up, he signaled to Davis to go back and was about to leave when he heard someone mumbling behind him. He froze, took a deep breath, and pivoted slowly. Looking past his shoulder into the trapezoidal space created by the parked trucks, he saw a soldier with his back to him, kneeling on a blanket, praying. An old submachine gun with a perforated barrel lay beside him.

Without a moment’s hesitation he crossed the four feet between them on his toes, reached over the soldier’s head with both hands, and covered his mouth. He pushed the soldier’s head down and then, pressing his knees against his shoulders, pulled the man’s head back with all his might until he heard vertebrae snap. Instant death.

“Go with God,” he whispered as the soldier’s body twitched one last time and relaxed. Crocker set him down gently, then grabbed the submachine gun.

He ran back to Davis, who asked, “What happened?”

“No time to explain.”

“Where’d you find the weapon?”

“This is what we’re going to do. You’re going to give me two minutes to run around back and climb up the fire escape.”

“Two minutes.”

“We’ll both count off our watches. When you reach two minutes, you’re going to light two of the Molotov cocktails and throw them at the pickups in front of us. Set those babies on fire.”

“Got it.”

“Then you’re going to follow my route, but stop at the front side of the barracks, over there. Wait at the corner. If you hear firing on the second floor of the farthest section, that’s me.”

“You’re taking the weapon with you?”

“That’s correct.”

“It looks ancient. What is it?”

“I believe it’s a PPSh-41. The Soviets manufactured millions of these suckers during World War Two.”

“Will it fire?”

“I hope so.”

“Boss—”

“Listen! If you get an opportunity to surprise a soldier and grab a weapon, do it. Then enter through the front door of the section on our right. You’ll find me on the second floor. When you get close, shout ‘Delta Bravo’ so I know it’s you.”

“And if I’m not able to get a weapon?”

“Wait at the corner of the building, like I told you before. You’ll still have one more cocktail. Use it at your discretion.”

“Roger.”

“Improvise, but figure that there are at least a dozen enemy.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“One other thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m gonna need that saw blade.”

Davis reached into his back pocket and handed it over. “Good luck.”

“Two minutes. Start your timer…”

“It’s engaged.”

“See ya in a few.”

He was running.

Looking up, Crocker saw a shooting star flash across the sky. His mother had told him they were good luck. He hoped so.

Glancing at the timer of his watch, he saw that fifty seconds had passed. At sixty, he was rounding the end of the barracks. At seventy-nine, he reached for the ladder. Ninety, he was on the metal fire escape. At a hundred and five, he knelt under the second-floor window.

Light spilled out. Looking down at the PPSh-41 and its drum magazine, he took a deep breath. Inside, the same man was still shouting questions. His voice sounded angrier this time.

At 119 seconds, Crocker took the weapon off safety, checked to be sure that a round was chambered, put it on full auto, and got ready to throw himself through the window.

He heard an explosion. Soldiers shouted in Arabic from the front of the building. A gun discharged.

He waited ten more seconds, praying that Davis was safe, then threw himself through the window back first. Hitting the floor, he somersaulted and started looking for targets. Two soldiers near the back wall were reaching for their weapons. He squeezed the trigger and ripped them with one long stream of bullets. Tore one soldier’s leg in half at the knee. Caught the other in the groin. The PPSh-41 made a loud clanging sound and felt like it was going to come apart in his hands.