SEAL Team Six: Hunt the Fox (22 page)

As much as she wanted to dislike him, she couldn’t. He was stressed out, too. None of them had ever faced a crisis of this magnitude.

Smoking, fidgeting, then biting his lip, he announced, “That’s all of them. That’s all the pictures.”

She nodded.

Interpol had told them it wasn’t a complete set.

Oz dropped the butt to the floor and lit up another. “We take a few minutes, then try again?”

“Okay.”

She stood, stretched her back, and used her cell to check her encrypted e-mail account. Having entered the passwords, she waited for the special program to translate the e-mails into readable English. Her mailbox was almost full, with a hundred new messages sent in the ten minutes since the last time she had checked. She quickly scrolled through subject lines like “Ship course and location,” “Estimated fuel consumption,” “Estimated number of terrorists required,” and “Ports of call and number of passengers onboarding at each.”

Janice opened and scanned through a handful. More conjecture about the identity of the Fox and several possible candidates. Consensus seemed to be building around Mohammad Farhad al-Kazaz, the ISIS leader Crocker had met in Syria. He fit all the primary criteria—a known and active ISIS jihadist, considered highly intelligent, with a fervent following and global ambitions.

Colonel Oz had his elbows propped on the desk and his head buried in his hands. “Anything I should know?”

“Just more ideas about the identity of the Fox.”

He looked as if he was about to cry. “It’s got to be al-Kazaz.”

“Why?”

“Because…” His voice trailed off.

She quickly ran through everything she knew about the ISIS leader—born in Syria, fought alongside bin Laden in Tora Bora, around forty years old, had built a base of followers in southwestern Iraq, had become a major player in northern Syria.

“You know what he looks like?” she asked, pocketing her phone and returning to the chair beside Oz.

“Of course.”

“Then let’s look through the photos again.”

He nodded and chicken-pecked the keys to set the sequence in motion.

She had already decided that if the crisis ended in tragedy, she would resign from the Agency and use the hardship money she had saved to start an organic farm in eastern Virginia. Settle down, maybe marry and adopt two needy children.

The photos flew by. The faces all started to look the same. Noses, eyes, mouths, all randomly placed, overlapping one another. She was reminded of some strange iteration of Mr. Potato Head, a toy she had loved as a child.

The sequence arrived at a set of stills taken from a surveillance camera above the customs desk in Ku
ş
adası. In it appeared a tall, fit, good-looking man in a black suit with an attractive woman. She thought the man resembled a model she had seen in a magazine ad for men’s suits. The woman also seemed familiar. The sequence moved automatically to the next set.

“Wait,” Janice said. “Go back.”

She studied the woman’s face and tried to place her.

“Can you zoom in closer?”

He did. There was something distinctive about her, the curl of her top lip, the narrowing of her nose at the tip. She tried to imagine her with her hair pulled up. And then it hit her.

“She’s Mr. Talab’s assistant! I met her with him four days ago at the Sultanhan Hotel in Istanbul.”

“This woman?” Oz asked, pointing a thick finger at the screen. “You know this woman? Are you sure about that?”

She looked again. She was certain. “Yes.”

“Do you know her last name or relationship to Mr. Talab?”

“She was introduced to us as Mr. Talab’s assistant. I believe he called her Fatima. I don’t remember her last name.”

“She’s on the ship?”

“Apparently.”

“If it’s really her, this might be something.”

Mentally, she started to assemble the pieces. Mr. Talab had led them to the sarin and to Hassan, both of whom went missing. His assistant had boarded the ship in Turkey hours before it was hijacked.

It had to be more than a series of coincidences. This seemed like evidence that pointed to people and motives behind the attack. The first person she wanted to tell was Anders, who had been at the meeting in Istanbul. Maybe he would remember Fatima’s last name and her connection to Talab.

Anders answered from the command center of the
USS Dwight D. Eisenhower
,
in the Mediterranean between the coasts of Cyprus and Turkey. The ship was a nuclear-powered Nimitz-class carrier first launched in 1975, and had since played an important role in numerous military deployments in the Middle East, including the 1990 Gulf War. She was a massive 1,115 feet long, armed with sophisticated radars and electronic jamming systems, Seasparrow antiaircraft and antimissile missiles, RIM-116 Rolling Airframe missiles, and ninety fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters.

“Janice, we’re extremely pressed for time here,” Anders answered. “What do you have to report?” He was sitting at a conference room table between Crocker and the ship’s electronic warfare officer, who had just reported that the AN/SLQ-32 (V)4 electronic warfare system had successfully deployed focused radio waves and laser light to disable the
Disney Magic
’s electronics. It was also collecting incoming and outgoing radio signals and carefully tracking the ship’s movement, speed, and fuel consumption.

Janice informed him that Mr. Talab’s assistant, Fatima, had boarded the ship at Ku
ş
adası, Turkey, only hours before it was hijacked.

“Who?”

“Mr. Talab’s assistant, the woman he brought with him to the meeting at the Sultanhan Hotel.”

“Interesting,” Anders said, not sure what to make of the information or how it related to the rescue mission that he and the others in the room were a hundred percent focused on. “Report this to Grissom in Ankara. Tell him I suggested that he track down Talab. Let’s find out exactly what this means before we jump to any conclusions.”

“Okay.”

“What about Hassan? Has he been located? Any evidence that he’s on the
Magic
,
too?”

“As far as I know, he’s still unaccounted for. We continue to pore through customs records and passenger lists. At this point our information is incomplete, but Interpol is updating it constantly.”

“Good.”

The lights in the conference room dimmed and grainy real-time aerial footage of the
Disney Magic
shot from a high-altitude surveillance drone appeared on a screen.

“I’ve got to go, Janice. But excellent work. Call Grissom. Keep up your pursuit. It’s an interesting lead, no question.”

“I will, sir.”

“Thanks.”

The circular room was crowded with Mighty Ike officers who were coming and going, whispering in Admiral Marcelus’s ear and leaving reports. The captain sat at the middle of the table in a high-backed executive chair, rubbing his chin and studying the various data—including wind speed and direction measured at various altitudes, the course and speed of the
Disney Magic
,
radar readings, and incoming weather patterns—projected on various screens on the walls.

It was a whole lot for Crocker to digest.

One of the
Eisenhower
’s executive officers reported that they had located two cigarette boats in the ship’s hold that were currently being loaded onto wooden pallets. Six additional SEALs from Team Ten had been flown in from a base in Crete where they had been practicing amphibious landings with members of British SBS and the Greek First Raider Paratrooper Brigade.

Neither of the cigarette boats was equipped with a Vetus HD silencer. The bigger problem was the turbulent wind conditions. Current readings near the
Magic
showed gusts of up to forty knots (forty-six miles an hour) at three thousand feet, which made any kind of canopy parachute jump impossible. Enhanced satellite weather prediction data indicated the windy and stormy conditions would abate beginning at around 0700—the same time as the terrorists’ deadline.

At 0002 hours, time was running out.

In spite of the extremely dangerous conditions, Crocker called Captain Sutter in Virginia Beach to request permission to launch.

Sutter said, “I admire your courage, Crocker, but I can’t make that decision.”

“Who can?”

“Admiral Evan Thompson of U.S. Special Operations Command in conjunction with the president.”

“Put me in touch with him,” demanded Crocker.

“I just got off the phone with the admiral, and his answer was a big no. Given current conditions, he doubts that the cigarette boats will ever make it to the ship. His engineers tell him they’ll break up as soon as they hit the water.”

“Then we’ll deploy directly from the
Eisenhower
.”

“The cig boats will never make it.”

“It’s worth a try,” Crocker argued. “We’re looking at the real possibility of three or four thousand casualties.”

“We all realize that,” Sutter answered.

“Then what’s the alternative?”

“The Turkish president has initiated secret discussions with the terrorists in hopes of talking them down to some kind of reasonable settlement.”

“How’s that going?”

“Badly.”

“That means you’ve got to let us deploy.”

“I can’t. The president will never allow it. And Admiral Marcelus won’t let you leave his ship.”

Crocker hung up, seething with so much frustration he couldn’t stand still. He got up, paced behind the table, then told Anders he was heading to the men’s room to splash water on his face.

He needed something—a ray of hope, a possibility. In the narrow passageways lined with photos of the ship’s officers, he saw Mancini standing with one of the ship operations men, a tall red-bearded fellow in a khaki uniform. They were going over a list of equipment on a clipboard. Weapons, NVGs, comms.

Mancini saw the intensity in Crocker’s eyes and asked, “What’s wrong? You look like you’re about to explode.”

“The op’s on hold. Looks like a no-go.”

“The weather?”

“Yeah, weather sucks big time.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Admiral Thompson from SOCOM has decided it’s too dangerous to deploy from the air. We can’t swim because of the conditions, and we can’t get close enough without being detected.”

“Mules, man. What do we do?”

“Nothing. Wait. Hope for conditions to improve. But that seems unlikely to happen before the deadline.”

“Condition FUBAR.” (Fucked up beyond all recognition.)

“You got any crazy ideas?”

Mancini was always good at thinking outside the box. He pulled at his beard, rubbed his huge biceps, then nodded. “Yeah, I might.”

Crocker nodded at him. “What?”

“The SEALION II.”

“What the fuck’s that?”

“It’s the high-speed experimental insertion craft developed by NAVSEA Future Concepts.”

Crocker remembered seeing one at the Naval Amphibious Base in Virginia. “You mean that long, weird, alligator-looking thing?”

“Yeah, looks like an old Confederate torpedo boat, only a whole lot faster and sleeker.”

“Does it work?”

“I hear the fancy electronics suite it carries is filled with kinks, but it’s fast as hell, with low visibility and an almost-zero radar profile. I rode in one once. Cool beans. The advantages it has over cigarette boats include superior ballast, strength, and stealth, including much lower noise production.”

Leave it to Manny to know the latest shit. But the odds of one being on the
Eisenhower
were about the same as finding a snowball in the Amazon jungle.

“Is the one in Virginia the only one in existence?” Crocker asked, bracing himself for disappointment.

“I think NAVSEA has built four or five. I’ll check.”

“You find one for us and I’ll put you on my Christmas card list.”

At 0035 Crocker was on the phone with Captain Sutter again, informing him that Mancini had located a SEALION II at the U.S. Naval Command Center in Naples, Italy—where it was being tested in ocean conditions—and requesting permission to cram it into a C-130T Hercules and transport it to the
Eisenhower
.

“God bless, Mancini,” Sutter responded. “But how long is it going to take to get there?”

“Approximately three and a half hours flying at max speed, which is why they need to leave now,” answered Crocker.

“Who’s they?”

“The boat, the chief special boat operator, and pilot.”

Sutter didn’t need more than several seconds to think about it before he answered, “Permission granted.”

“A heartfelt thanks, sir.”

“That doesn’t mean you’ve got a go to launch. That’s the sole prerogative of the White House, but let’s see if the SEALION makes it there in time first.”

“Sound thinking.”

Crocker immediately called Naples and relayed the approval from Sutter, then sat down with Admiral Marcelus and Anders and told them about the plan. They were as excited as he was, but remained leery about the weather.

The SEALION II, like other low-displacement-hull crafts (including cigarette boats) had the capability to navigate the ocean but was designed for littoral (or coastal) waters. High, turbulent seas posed a real danger of capsizing.

Crocker, who was willing to take that risk, next huddled with his men—Mancini, Akil, and Davis, and the six SEALs from Team Ten. The incoming SEALs introduced themselves as Storm (sniper), Revis (logistics), Diego (chief climber), Nash (breacher and explosives), JD (comms), and Duke (weapons). Crocker briefed them on the pending arrival of the SEALION II, the dangerous weather conditions, and the mission to take down the terrorists on the
Disney Magic
. All nine men expressed their readiness and eagerness to go.

Next they moved to a conference room where they studied plans of the cruise ship and consulted with the Disney engineer via Skype. Given the large number of video surveillance cameras on the ship, the distance from the Security Command Center to the bridge, and the very small margin of time they had to work with, it was a mission that required precise planning and perfect execution.

Surprise and speed had to be impeccable.