Hunt the Scorpion (21 page)

Remington: “We don’t know that.”

“East? West? South? Along the coast?”

Remington: “We don’t know exactly. But once we have actionable intelligence, we’ll move quickly.”

“Have you examined Brian’s body? Did you learn anything from that?”

“Nothing of material value.”

Crocker stood, took a deep breath, and said, “If anything happens to my wife, you’re both going to have hell to pay. I guarantee that.” As he started to walk, his arms and legs shook with emotion.

They seemed to know little, and had given him practically nothing.

“Crocker,” the ambassador said as he reached the door.

“What?”

“Don’t do anything you’ll regret later. The NTC is plenty annoyed with you and your team already.”

“Fuck them.”

His whole body burning with outrage, he walked past the secretary standing beside the Stars and Stripes, past the marine guard station, and into the dry heat outside. Sunlight glinted off multiple surfaces and stung his eyes. He saw the Suburban waiting and climbed inside, hoping for a few quiet minutes to figure out what to do next. But instead of two men inside, there were four, which confused him.

Then he recognized Volman, leaning over the front seat, sweaty and reeking of garlic, wearing a blue crewneck shirt with snaps at the neck, looking odd, out of place, like he always did. “What’d they tell you?” he asked.

Crocker took a moment to get his bearings. He turned to glimpse Ritchie behind him in the rear seat, with Akil beside him. Davis was at the wheel.

“Nothing, except that they think Holly’s being held somewhere in the city.”

“Where?”

“They don’t know.”

“What’s their strategy?”

“Their strategy is to wait.”

Davis: “Wait for what? Are they insane?”

“They reason that the terrorists won’t carry out their threat, because if they do, they’ll lose the leverage they have by holding her.”

Akil: “What if they’re wrong?”

Ritchie: “Yeah, what if they’re fucking wrong?”

Crocker felt a throb at the pit of his stomach.

Akil: “That’s ridiculous, boss. Stupid.”

Volman tapped Crocker on the shoulder and asked, “Who did they say is behind it?”

“Anaruz Mohammed.”

“Why?”

“Remember those three thugs we arrested at the refugee camp? It turns out that one of them is his half brother.”

“Fuck.”

Volman: “I have a source, someone with his ear to the ground, who is willing to help. He’s going to meet us at the guesthouse.”

“When?”

“Soon as he gets back into town. About an hour.”

“Thanks.” A slim ray of hope.

At the guesthouse gate Akil stopped to ask Volman why he was helping them.

Volman said, “I admire you guys and understand your frustration. I also think our policy of refusing to negotiate with terrorists is wrong. I mean, it’s fine to say that publicly, because you don’t want to encourage them to take our people hostage. But behind the scenes I believe we should do anything, including paying ransom, to get our people back.”

The more time Crocker spent with the young State Department officer, the more he liked him. He was an awkward man, but intelligent and with a good heart.

Crocker wanted to go on a short run to clear his head, but he thought it was more important to be ready when Volman’s contact arrived. So he lay on the sofa with his MP5 by his side and leafed through a copy of
Sports Illustrated.
One minute he was looking at a picture of Danica Patrick, the next he was dreaming that he was with Holly, lying on a bed in a hotel room. She was reading a magazine with Michelle Obama on the cover and wearing a white cheerleader-type skirt that showed off her tanned, smooth legs. When he reached out to touch them, they felt warm. Almost hot.

She moaned.

“Holly?”

He ran his hand farther up her leg to her thigh, where the skin turned lighter. She moaned again.

“Baby, can you hear me?”

Higher under her skirt he felt a big indentation and stopped. Lifted the dress up. Saw that a big piece of her leg was missing. Little black worms were eating at it.

He gasped, felt a stab of pain in his stomach, and woke.

Crocker lay alone in sweaty clothes. The last time he and Holly had spoken, they’d argued. He remembered it now. She was upset that he’d been spending so much time away from home, leaving her with the burden of dealing with Jenny, who was still adjusting to her new school and being a teenager.

Crocker had asked her to be patient and understanding. She accused him of being selfish and self-involved.

Sitting up, he grabbed the MP5. The clock read 1:44, which meant he’d slept almost four hours.

Holy shit! Why didn’t someone wake me?

He hurried into the kitchen, where Mancini was adding sliced red onions to a big batch of tuna-fish salad.

“Where is everyone? What the fuck’s going on?”

“Akil and Davis went with Volman. He’s trying to pry some intel out of one of the officers at the CIA station.”

“When are they expected back?”

“Soon. I’m preparing lunch.”

“What happened to Volman’s friend?”

“He was delayed but is on his way.”

Pushing back a feeling of panic, he stood under the shower with the cast on his left wrist covered with a plastic bag, and let the warm water loosen the muscles in his shoulders and back. He regretted that he’d argued with Holly. Sometimes he forgot how much the team dominated his life. Other men had time to coach their kids’ sports team, go on family vacations, do home improvement projects.

He dressed and debated going out and searching the city by himself but instead went out onto the porch and did forty minutes of sit-ups and crunches, despite his aches and pains. He had to find some way to burn off the anxiety and relentless energy that were driving him nuts.

Another half hour dragged by. He picked at the tuna on his plate, feeling he was about to burst out of his skin.

He searched his mind for options but found none, which only added to his frustration. Frustration increased his sense of desperation, which fueled his rage. A vicious circle that made it impossible to think.

“See you later, Manny. I’m going out!” he said, grabbing his MP5 and starting for the door.

“Where?” Mancini shouted.

“To look for Holly!”

“Boss, you don’t know the country, don’t speak the language.”

“So what?”

“Don’t you always tell us that undirected aggression is self-destructive? Don’t you tell us to think first, be smart?”

He set down the MP5 and took a deep breath. “You’re right. I’ll call Davis.”

He did, on the sat-phone. Davis said he and Akil were sitting in the Suburban outside a café near the embassy. Volman was inside talking to another American—a CIA officer, he thought.

“How fucking long is he gonna be?”

“Don’t know. We’ll be there soon as we can.”

He wished he could turn back the clock. Wished he’d talked Holly out of going to North Africa in the first place. Wished he’d never accepted the assignment to Libya, even though he really didn’t have a choice. Started questioning other decisions he had made in his life, then realized it was a pointless exercise. All he was doing was beating himself up.

He felt an urge to call Jenny. But what would he say? I’m sitting here with my thumb up my ass while your stepmother is about to be executed by a bunch of fucking terrorists?

He tried to imagine what Holly was going through, but that only made him more anxious, so he stopped that, too.

Davis, Akil, and Volman returned at four. All of them sat down at the kitchen table. Volman, out of breath, said, “I learned two things. One, the kidnappers are sticking to their demands—release of the three Tuareg prisoners.”

Crocker: “We knew that already.”

“The second thing is, there were two cell phone calls from the kidnappers. They’ve been traced already and turned up nothing, but it might be a place to start.”

“Where?”

“You have a map of the city?”

Akil retrieved one from his room and spread it out on the table. “The first,” Volman said, pointing to a spot on the map, “comes from a place east of here, between Mitiga Airport and the Belal Ibn Ribah Mosque. The second is a location about four miles southwest of there near the police academy on Al Hadhbah Road.”

Davis: “They’re relatively close to each other.”

Crocker: “Let’s go!”

Volman: “We should wait for my friend. He’s a Libyan militia leader—very knowledgeable and savvy. Knows his way around.”

“What’s his name?”

“Farouk Shakir al-Sayed. His friends call him Farag.”

Crocker: “Is he a little guy, young, with big amber-colored eyes?”

“Yeah.”

“I think I know him. Dark-skinned, curly black hair that sticks straight up. Weighs no more than a hundred pounds. We fought together at the Sheraton.”

“That’s him.”

“Good.”

Crocker felt a little better. Farag was a tough kid, but the optimism his name inspired quickly vanished as they waited longer. Another excruciating hour dragged by, each tick of the clock like a punch to the head.

By 5:40, when they heard a vehicle honking at the front gate, Crocker felt like a boxer entering the final round. And he hadn’t even thrown a jab.

“My friend. My brother,” Farag said, climbing out of the old Toyota truck and wrapping Crocker in a hug. “Good to see you. You remember Mohi?”

He pointed to a wider, slightly taller young man with short hair who walked with a limp. It was the kid Crocker had given medical attention to after he’d taken two bullets in his hip.

“Mohi. It’s good to see you again. You’re all healed up?”

The teenager shook Crocker’s hand vigorously and smiled. Some of his front teeth were missing.

Farag’s face turned serious when Volman showed them the map and explained the situation in Arabic. He looked at Crocker, nodded as if he understood the gravity of what they faced, then glanced at the watch on his wrist and muttered something in Arabic.

“What did he say?” Crocker said.

“Loosely translated: Do not hate misfortune because maybe there is fortune for you inside it.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I know these areas,” Farag said in English. “We go fast.”

“As fast as possible.”

They climbed into the trucks. Farag led at a breakneck pace in the Toyota pickup with the Americans following in the Suburban. Within minutes Crocker spotted an airport tower ahead.

From the front seat, Volman explained, “This used to be Gaddafi’s airport. His compound wasn’t far from here. This part of the city experienced the heaviest fighting during the war.”

They passed the runway dotted with parked NATO warplanes and ran into a roadblock manned by armed men in black.

Crocker: “Who the fuck are they?”

Volman: “Beats me.”

They watched Farag lean out of the Toyota and shout at the men. They shouted back, with a lot of waving of guns and pointing.

Volman started to get out to join them.

Crocker said, “Maybe you should let him handle this.”

Volman went anyway.

“Doesn’t listen, does he?”

“Acts weird, but he’s smart,” Ritchie said.

The sun was starting to set, casting long shadows in the streets. Volman walked back toward them in his baggy pants, shirttail half out.

“We’re cool,” he said. “It’s a ragtag group of volunteers from the neighborhood. They say this area is relatively safe during the day but changes at night. They’ve experienced a lot of robberies, break-ins, kidnappings, rapes.”

“They know anything about a gang of Tuaregs operating in the area?”

“They’ve heard rumors about a group of thugs stealing cars and shipping them to Tunisia.”

“Are they Berber tribesmen? Did they say where we can find them?”

“That’s all they know.”

Stars were visible in the sky by the time the Toyota took off again in a cloud of dust. One of the men back at the roadblock lifted his AK-47 and fired it into the air.

“What the fuck was that for?” Davis asked.

Volman: “He got excited.”

They were in the Bu al Ashhar neighborhood. The Toyota screeched to a stop in front of the mosque, a blue domed structure with a minaret rising from one side. The streets around it were empty. The Arabic speakers in the group—Farag, Mohi, Volman, and Akil—went door to door, trying to elicit information.

The handful of men who were brave enough to answer said they’d seen some strangers in the area but no women, and no one they could identify as Tuareg. Nor could they describe the strangers they’d seen, except to say that some of them were armed.

They took off again and arrived at the second location after 9 p.m. Crocker’s stomach was killing him. The area in front of the police academy had also seen heavy fighting, since it was in the vicinity of Gaddafi’s heavily armed Bab al Azizia compound and Tripoli University. The academy was dark and its gate locked. Crocker saw no one on the streets, except the occasional vehicle passing on Al Hadhbah Road.

Again the four Arabic speakers knocked on the doors of nearby residential compounds and stores. Most of the latter were closed for the night. One man reported that he’d seen armed men getting out of vehicles beside the fence surrounding a field across the street from the academy.

Farag and Akil went to explore. They came back a few minutes later to retrieve their weapons.

“What’d you find?” Crocker asked.

“Something worth checking out.”

“What?”

Akil: “Follow me.”

Volman, Mancini, Davis, Ritchie, and Mohi waited beside the vehicles.

The sky glittered like a star-studded crown. A breeze picked up dust and threw it in Crocker’s face.

Farag pointed to a place in the aluminum fence where it had been cut and temporarily wired back in place. He undid the wires and rolled the fence aside. “You see?” Motioned for Crocker and Akil to enter.

After he stepped through, Farag let go of the fence so it rolled back into place.

The little Libyan led the way, following a faint trail beaten into the dirt. Past pathetic-looking shrubs and garbage—an old mattress, the twisted frame of a bike, an old sign advertising Canaba King Size cigarettes.