Hunt the Scorpion (6 page)

The last time he’d seen Donaldson, he was serving as the CIA deputy in Pakistan. He had since been promoted to an important job with CTC, the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center.

“Congratulations, Lou,” Crocker said, extending a hand. “I heard you were promoted. What brings you to Bahrain?”

Donaldson ignored his hand and responded with a curt “Sit down.”

His manner hadn’t changed. Still an asshole.

They were joined by Donaldson’s broad-shouldered deputy, Jim Anders, carrying plastic-wrapped sandwiches and Diet Cokes. Anders explained that they’d driven five hours from Saudi Arabia and were delayed because of repairs to the sixteen-mile King Fahd Causeway, which linked the two countries and also happened to be one of the longest bridges in the world. They hadn’t had time to stop for dinner.

Instead of enjoying chicken masala, Crocker bit into a stale turkey sandwich. And he hated Diet Coke.

Donaldson spoke as he chewed. “That launch was completely destroyed, and with it a trove of potentially valuable intel. Were you aware of that, Crocker?”

“No, sir.”

“Blew up and sank to the bottom of the bay.”

“I suspected that might happen.”

“You couldn’t put out the fire?”

“No time, sir, and nothing to do it with.”

“Fucking shame. The White House is disappointed. Could have bolstered their case at the UN.”

“What case is that?”

Donaldson had dripped some mustard on the front of his blue shirt. Instead of answering Crocker’s question, he used a handkerchief and water from a plastic bottle to blot it. This only seemed to make a bigger mess.

“The salvage team recovered some scraps, pieces of documents, one man’s body.”

“Have you been able to ID him?” Crocker asked.

“You interview the crew?” Donaldson asked back, sidestepping Crocker’s question.

“The crew of the
Contessa
?”

“No, the crew of the fucking Starship
Enterprise
.”

Crocker clenched his jaw, fighting back an urge to reach across the table and punch him in the mouth. “Didn’t have time, sir.”

“How many of them were there?”

“We recovered six dead. There were another five men injured, plus the captain.”

“For a grand total of twelve, including the captain.”

“And the captain’s wife. That’s correct.”

Donaldson slapped the table. “Wrong.”

“Sir?”

“Captain McCullum says he set sail from Melbourne with a crew of twelve, which means thirteen, including him.”

“He sure of that?”

“Yes, he is. One of them apparently got away.”

“Got away?”

“Yes, goddammit. Escaped.”

“Maybe he fell overboard and drowned.”

“Wrong again, Crocker. I suppose you weren’t aware that one of the
Contessa
’s lifeboats was missing, too.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Then there’s your answer.”

What answer?
Crocker asked himself.
Why is this important?
He was going to explain that he and his men had been under attack and that the action aboard and around the
Contessa
was unrelenting, but he realized there was no point.

“Where did this crewman go?” he asked instead.

“Unclear.”

“Then why is his disappearance such a big deal?”

“It is, Crocker. That’s all you need to know.”

Trying to understand what had been going on with the
Contessa,
Crocker asked, “Were you able to ascertain the nationality of the men on the launch?”

Donaldson nodded at Anders, who reached for a folder. “You ever hear of the Qods Force, Crocker?”

Of course he had. The Qods Force was the external intelligence apparatus of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards of Iran—essentially state-sponsored terrorists linked to assassinations and bombings in countries all over the world, including Lebanon, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Thailand, and France.

Crocker nodded. “They’re only the nastiest motherfuckers on the planet.”

“Among the cleverest, too.” Donaldson grunted and turned to Anders. “Show him the photo.”

The image was of a middle-aged man with intense black eyes, a broken nose, and acne-scarred skin partially covered by a short black beard.

“Recognize him?”

The eyes looked familiar. He thought they belonged to the third man in the launch cabin, the one who had slipped away while he was grappling on the floor with the two others.

“Maybe.”

“His name is Colonel Farhed Alizadeh, also known as Colonel D, member of the Iranian Revolutionary Corps and an engineer linked to Iran’s nuclear program.”

Crocker had never heard of him. “Did the divers find his body?”

“Not yet.”

“I hope they find him.”

“That would be a huge relief.”

Back at the barracks, Crocker tossed and turned throughout the night. He kept waking up and thinking about a museum he had visited in Nagasaki when he was a young navy corpsman stationed with the marines, and about the horrors of nuclear weapons.

On the morning of August 9, 1945, a U.S. B-29 bomber veered away from its intended target—Kokura—because of thick cloud cover and instead dropped a 10,200-pound nuclear bomb, known as Fat Man, on Nagasaki. The resulting 21-kiloton explosion—the equivalent of 75 million sticks of dynamite—destroyed almost all of the city’s buildings and killed roughly 39,000 people. Another 25,000 were horribly burned. Over the following weeks and months another 40,000 residents died from radiation exposure and other injuries.

According to one observer, “A huge fireball formed in the sky.…Together with the flash came the heat rays and the blast, which destroyed everything on earth. When the fire itself burned out, there appeared a completely changed, vast, colorless world that made you think it was the end of life on earth. The whole city became extinct.”

It was the pictures of the burn victims, and the deformed children born to survivors from outside the city who were exposed to radiation, that gave Crocker the chills. He knew that the Fat Man plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki was primitive and limited in firepower compared to some of the bombs built today, ten kilotons compared to as high as ten megatons—approximately a thousand times bigger.

As the WMD officer at ST-6, he also understood the dangers of nuclear proliferation and on more than one occasion had risked his life to stop it. After the fall of the Soviet Union, when approximately two hundred nuclear warheads were either sold or stolen, he had launched spectacular missions into Belarus, Uzbekistan, and caves in North Korea to recover them.

The idea of an aggressive country like Iran, run by a group of religious zealots, getting its hands on nuclear weapons that were even more lethal than the ones dropped on Japan filled him with dread. And the more he thought about Farhed Alizadeh and the incident on the
Contessa,
the more he was plagued by questions.

They were still screaming for his attention as he ran his team thirty-five miles around the island that morning. Even after they had stretched and he had reminded his men about the importance of hydration, electrolyte replacement, bringing extra shoes, and race tactics, he kept asking himself what the Iranians were up to.

He’d learned not to shy away from things that nagged him. They always came around to bite him in the ass. So despite the fact that he had a number of things to do that afternoon to prepare for the race in Morocco, he arranged to meet Ed Wolfson in a coffee shop near the U.S. embassy.

After they sat down, he said, “I hate being made to feel responsible for an outcome that I don’t really understand.”

“Likewise, I’m sure. What’s on your mind?”

“What do you know about Farhed Alizadeh’s mission on the
Contessa
?” Crocker asked.

“Enough to tell you that from my perspective the whole thing was planned ahead of time. More precisely, the crew member who disappeared was working for the Iranians. The whole pirating incident was staged.”

“Do you know what was in the barrels?”

“I do, but you didn’t hear it from me.”

Crocker nodded.

“High-strength aluminum alloy. Component parts for L-2 centrifuges manufactured by Scomi Precision Engineering in Malaysia. High-speed triggers made in China.”

“So Iran really is trying to build nuclear weapons.”

Wolfson folded his hands on the table and said, “Correct. And they’ve been playing a double game. Holding talks to stall the international community and playing up to China, which is secretly supplying them with parts, while working pedal-to-the-floor to build a bomb.”

“How close are they?”

“That depends on who you talk to.”

“What do you think?” Crocker asked.

“Most experts agree that they lack two things: some of the high-tech parts needed to build one, and enough enriched uranium.”

“Hence the high-speed triggers and parts in the barrels on the
Contessa.
”

“Exactly.”

I
t took
approximately two days for Seal Team Six to reach southern Morocco. First they flew ten hours to Gatwick Airport in London, then after a three-hour layover caught a charter to Ouarzazate, Morocco, known as the door of the desert—a quiet, dusty Berber town of fifty thousand built around a central street. Back in the early ’60s it had served as the location for the desert scenes in
Lawrence of Arabia.

African traders had been using it as a crossroads for centuries. For many modern Europeans, it was a holiday destination and a launching point for excursions into the Sahara. Features included palm groves and kasbahs, earthen structures with high walls and tiny windows.

They chose an old man with a white wisp of beard to escort them to the hotel. As they drove through the dusty, sleepy streets, Akil, the handsome, single Egyptian American on the team, regaled them with stories of his sexual adventures with a beautiful blond runner from Norway whom he had met on a trip to Patagonia.

“She kept me up all night. Couldn’t get enough.”

“Of what?” Ritchie asked. “The bullshit stories you were feeding her?”

“Don’t expect that to happen here,” Crocker said. “The few female entrants registered for this event will be too exhausted to do anything but ask you to massage their feet. So will you.”

Akil: “Envy is a green-eyed monster.”

Mancini: “Maybe one day when you drop the BS you’ll find a woman you love who loves you back.”

Ritchie: “Unlikely.”

Cal sat in the back, plugged into his iPod.

“What are you listening to?” Davis asked.

“Gotye.”

“What’s that?”

“You don’t know ‘Somebody That I Used to Know?’ ”

“Never heard of it.”

Cal passed his earbuds to Davis.

Crocker said, “Instead of dicking around and playing music, you guys might want to start thinking about the race.”

Akil: “After what we went through last time in the Himalayas, this will be a piece of cake.”

“You think so? We’re looking at running the equivalent of five and a half marathons in hundred-and-twenty-degree heat. And we have to carry everything we need, except water, in rucksacks on our backs.”

“That’s why it’s considered the toughest footrace on the planet,” Mancini added.

“I’ll take the heat over the freezing cold anytime,” Akil said.

Ritchie: “And you’ll probably be the first one to pussy out.”

“I never backed out of fucking anything.”

“We’ll see how long you last.”

They stayed at a hotel inside the medina with a view of the valley and nearby reservoir. After a dinner of Berber spiced chicken and goat-cheese fritters, they sat in the lounge on the roof, sipped local bottled beer, and went over the plans for the race.

Crocker had put Mancini in charge of procuring and shipping all equipment and supplies. Besides running shoes big enough to comfortably accommodate swollen feet, shorts, tees, Adidas Explorer sunglasses, Cobbers, Skins compression vests, RailRiders Adventure shirts with front pockets, CW-X three-quarter-length compression tights, Injinji bamboo liners and SmartWool cushioned socks, Inov-8 390 boots, Sandbaggers gaiters, Buff headbands, RaidLight trekking poles, PHD Minimus sleeping bags, Platypus hot water bag with lid, ProLite 3 sleeping mat, titanium Esbit Wing Stove combination 900-milliliter cooking pot, titanium spork, disposable lighters with disco lights, toilet paper, alcohol hand gel, iPod, Suunto watches with heart-rate monitors, scarves, and hats, each man had to carry a rucksack packed with 14,000 calories of food—M&Ms, instant noodles, expedition meals, muesli, Honey Stinger Gel—extra clothing, gaffer’s tape, antivenom pump, compass, sunscreen, head torch with spare battery, disinfectant, Endurolytes, electrolytes, knives, safety pins, signaling mirror, space blanket, rehydration sachets, and whistle.

The backpacks were lightweight OMM 32-liter models. Also RaidLight pouches for their front belts that were big enough to hold snacks, lip salve, sunscreen. RaidLight bottle holders for each shoulder. Crocker preferred the CamelBak Podium bottles over the RaidLights because they were easier to suck water out of.

And there were medical kits—including lots of painkillers (Solpadeine, Diclofenac, Tramadol), zinc oxide, sterile padding, tape, needles, syringes, erythromycin for infections.

Everything was in order, except that two cases of the Datrex 3600-calorie survival food bars were past their expiration date.

Mancini was irate. “I’ll make ’em send back our money.”

Crocker said, “Don’t worry. We’ve got plenty of MREs, Clif Bars, and beef jerky. Besides, most ultramarathon organizers bring sponsored supplies like gels and energy bars.”

“Last time we use
that
supplier.”

“Let’s focus on the race.”

The next morning after breakfast, the six SEALs packed into a bus with registrants from the UK, Australia, Israel, New Zealand, and France for a five-hour drive into the desert. When they arrived at the staging area in the early afternoon, all they could see out the window were endless sand dunes, a vivid blue sky, and the brilliant sun. A painted sign read in English:
ANY IDIOT CAN RUN A MARATHON, BUT IT TAKES A SPECIAL KIND OF IDIOT TO RUN THE MARATHON DES SABLES
.

“They’re kidding, right?” Akil asked as he stretched. “We’re supposed to run in this?”

“What the hell did you expect?”

That night they slept in a tent with two competitors from Worcester, England. One of them, who called himself Perks, said he was planning to run the entire six-day race with an ironing board strapped to his back to raise money for a cancer hospice back home. Why he was making the already very difficult race even harder for himself was unclear.

In the morning they lined up for medical checks and registration. Crocker—a veteran of many ultramarathons, including Double and Triple Ironman races and four Raid World Championships—ran into several competitors he knew, including the Moroccan Ahansal brothers, Lahcen and Mohammed, who between them had won the race thirteen out of the twenty-two times it had been staged.

Later, approximately seven hundred runners from all over the world set off into the desert to the sound of AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.” The atmosphere among the competitors was jovial, bordering on euphoric.

A group of French runners yelled,
“Vive la France!”

Some Australians countered with “Stick a ferret up yer clacker!”

Some Brits: “Hail Britannia!”

Ritchie shouted, “USA, baby, all the way!”

The excitement quickly drained out of all of them as they realized there were approximately 150 very difficult miles between them and the finish line.

The first couple of miles were relatively easy. The racers ran the flats and downhills. Most walked the uphills. Then they reached the dunes, a landscape of seemingly endless mountains of rolling sand. They sank down with each step, pushed by the weight of their full backpacks. Crocker told his men to try walking in the footsteps of the man in front to help prevent them from slipping and sliding on the way up.

The afternoon had started with a cool breeze, but as the hours dragged past, the heat grew increasingly intense, moving from the mid-90s up to 124 degrees Fahrenheit. When the wind whipped up, contestants struggled to protect every inch of their skin from the savage stinging sand.

The more difficult conditions became, the more Crocker’s focus narrowed—drink some water, check your compass, concentrate intently on reaching your next checkpoint. The incredible beauty of the landscape made the discomfort bearable. No shadows for miles. Just the subtly shifting colors and undulating shapes of the dunes, interrupted occasionally by a perfectly rounded boulder or ridge of marble protruding from the sand.

He’d learned that if you didn’t push yourself beyond your limits, you never understood what your limits were. Most people yielded to the voices in their heads that told them they were too tired, hungry, thirsty, or old, or that conditions were too dangerous to continue. So they stopped.

Special operators and endurance athletes learned to push past warnings like that and trust that they would pull through. If you urinated blood after a long race, as Crocker had many times, you’d recover. If you passed out, your teammates would revive you.

At the nineteen-kilometer mark they came to a checkpoint, where they filled their water bottles and waited for Akil to catch up. Ten minutes passed before they saw a blurry shape hobbling over a hill.

“What’s wrong?” Crocker asked.

“It’s my feet.”

They’d barely started, and he’d already developed blisters on the sides of the little toes of both feet. This surprised Crocker, since Akil had run many long-distance training runs in the same shoes. He treated the blisters with Super Glue and duct tape. Then they set out again, climbing, running downhill, stopping to rest, refuel, and rehydrate, until the sun started to set. As usually happened at sundown, the temperature dropped and the wind picked up.

They reached another flat stretch of about ten kilometers, which Crocker, Ritchie, and Davis ran together, following blue, yellow, and red glow sticks that marked the route. Crocker felt a strange sense of euphoria; he heard the Doors’ “Spanish Caravan” playing in his head and imagined they were following the footsteps of ancient traders.

Up ahead he saw an outcropping of flags representing the countries of the various competitors and banners championing the causes many were running for that marked the makeshift camp—a circle of tents with no toilets. Men and women were too tired to bother with modesty. They walked around half naked—men in shorts, women in skimpy sport bras and bikini-type bottoms. Thirty or so feet from the tents they squatted or stood and did their business. No big deal.

Crocker, Davis, and Ritchie waited almost twenty minutes there for Akil, Cal, and Mancini to catch up. Akil’s feet were a bloody mess, and Mancini’s right knee was barking—the same one he’d injured when they were climbing in Pakistan.

Crocker was attending to both when an Aussie on his right washing his feet said, “They feel drier than a nun’s nasty.”

“Put some sesame oil on those puppies,” Crocker said, pointing to a bottle that was being passed along the line.

“Much obliged, mate.”

Mancini started complaining. “I thought we agreed we were going to run this together, as a team.”

“My bad,” Crocker answered. “Tomorrow we’ll try to stick together.”

Despite the myriad injuries, ranging from heat cramps, to heat exhaustion and heat stroke, to troubled bowels, twisted knees and ankles, and swollen feet, most contestants were determined to continue. They were doing this for a purpose—raising money for a cause, trying to achieve a personal goal.

About three dozen dropped out. Crocker watched as Berber volunteers loaded them into a truck for the ride back to Ouarzazate.

The mood among the remaining competitors was good. Someone passed a big bar of chocolate. An Aussie whipped up a vat of something called Miracle Beer—a beer made from powder he said he had purchased in the UK. One of the Brits played a harmonica and sang. Others joined in. Verses of “Maggie May,” “Wild Rover,” and “Satisfaction” floated through the dry night air.

Crocker had just fallen asleep when a sandstorm blew in and swept away their tent. He and the others crawled inside their sleeping bags, zipped them up, and tried to sleep through the storm. But sand managed to find its way into everything—teeth, noses, and ears.

When he did fall asleep, he dreamt he was at the controls of a huge jetliner flying over a city at dusk. Barely skimming over telephone poles and the tops of buildings, looking for a runway.

He still had enough liquid in his body to wake up in a sweat.

The morning sun was scorching from the start, which slowed their progress. Up and down, up and down. Monotonous and taxing. The sun seemed to draw every last drop of water out of them, resulting in constant thirst. Reminded Crocker of his days as a young SEAL with ST-1, training at Camp Niland in the California desert. Forty-mile hikes with seventy-pound packs in 114-degree heat. This had to be easy in comparison.

After about twenty kilometers they reached a flat stretch that they welcomed at first. But after a while the featureless terrain and the heaviness of the heat started to wear them down. The soles of their feet felt on fire.

Crocker started dreaming about summers on the beaches of New England as a kid. He and his younger brother catching sand crabs, body surfing, eating ice cream. He could taste it in his mouth—rich, creamy, cold, chocolate, strawberry, pistachio.

Beside him he heard Davis talking to his wife. He spoke as though she were walking beside him, telling her about the roof he was planning to build over their deck and how it was going to shade the back of the house. How he was going to plant fruit trees, too. Davis even started to argue, saying he wanted them to be cherry trees even though he knew she preferred peaches.

Crocker thought he saw a group of camels ahead but when he looked closer realized they were only swirls of heat.

After refreshing themselves at Checkpoint Three they faced a monstrous thousand-meter sand dune that took over an hour to climb. Crocker blacked out a couple of times but managed to keep walking.

The camp that night was overrun with happy Berber children willing to fetch water, wash clothes, and even sing and dance for a couple of ten-santimat coins. They lightened the mood considerably. The sky glittered with thousands of stars, many of which were rarely visible to the naked eye.

Crocker learned that his team, Eagle Bravo, was currently ranked thirty-fifth out of the 120 teams in competition. They would have been even higher if not for Akil, who was still suffering but refused to quit.

They exchanged stories with some of the Aussies and told filthy jokes. Akil managed to find a Frenchwoman who massaged his feet and calves.