SEAL Team Six: Hunt the Fox (5 page)

He felt something tighten in his chest.

Behind Mancini (who was the weapons, logistics, and tech expert on the team) followed Suarez (explosives) and Davis (comms). The last time Crocker saw Davis he’d been lying in a hospital in Guadalajara recovering from a bullet wound that had shattered his collarbone. He looked fit, tan, and healthy now.

“Glad to see you’re back,” Crocker said, squeezing his hand. “Been working out?”

“Yeah, boss, I’ve become a CrossFit fanatic. I missed you guys….”

It meant a lot coming from a man of few words.

“How’s the family?”

Light-haired Davis had a matching blond wife and two young sons. Looked like a family out of a J. Crew catalog, except that the dad was an adrenaline junkie, conspiracy theorist, and secret New Age follower who believed in aliens and communicating with the dead. He was convinced, for example, that Hitler and the Nazis had made contact with aliens.

“Good. All good.”

“Anybody hear from Cal?” Cal was the sniper and sixth member of Black Cell.

Mancini, who had clicked on the TV and was surfing through the channels with the sound muted, nodded.

“He wanted to come, but Doc wouldn’t clear him. Even though he bitched to Sutter, he wouldn’t sign off.” Captain Sutter was the commander of SEAL Team Six and their boss.

Suarez, who was the newest member of the team, handed Crocker a white envelope. “Your wife asked Sutter to give you this.”

“Thanks and welcome. Your family good?”

“Healthy and relatively happy, boss. Praise be to our savior Jesus Christ.”

“You still believe in the virgin birth?” Akil asked.

“You still a Muslim who chases anything with a pair of tits?” Suarez asked back.

“Hoo-ah.”

They banged knuckles and bumped chests.

Inside the envelope was a wallet-sized photo of his daughter, Jenny, and an invitation to her graduation. A reminder that, one, his daughter (from his first marriage) was graduating from high school, and, two, that the ceremony was being held in a week. Crocker didn’t want to miss it. He noticed that there was no accompanying message from Holly.

“You guys staying in one room or two?” Akil asked, referring to Mancini, Suarez, and Davis.

Suarez glanced at Mancini and answered, “Two. He snores and farts so much we gave him his own gas chamber.”

Akil laughed. “Talks to himself, too. Weird shit about making love to computers and robots.”

“You fucking sissies are lucky to associate with me,” Mancini shot back. “Maybe if you listen, some of my knowledge and erudition will wear off on you.”

“What the hell is erudition?”

“Maybe not.” Then, to Crocker, “What’s up, boss?”

“Looks like we might be going into Syria to recover some WMDs.”

“I figured Syria might be on the agenda. You got details?”

“Hopefully we’ll get them later tonight.”

Mancini slapped his hands together. “I’m ready to get it on!” Then, nodding toward the others, “Not sure about these jerk-offs.”

“Bring everything you’ve got, I’ll bring it ten times stronger,” said Akil.

“Really, Akil? Really? What are you bench-pressing these days? You up to a buck-fifty?”

“You know what they call muscle-bound guys in tight shorts who like to hang in the gym together?”

Mancini got in his face. “What? You really think you’re ready?”

Suarez: “Get a room, guys. Work it out.”

Akil tossed a pillow at Suarez that missed his head and knocked over a lamp on the desk where Crocker was sitting, studying some of the reports Janice had given him.

Crocker barked, “Come on, Akil. What are you, five years old?”

“It’s Manny’s fault.” To Mancini: “Don’t you know that all the self-improvement shit isn’t good for you? You need some primal rage.”

“Believe me, brother, I got plenty of that.” Then, to Davis: “You might want to buy some Clairol and die your hair black. They eat blonds like you for dinner in this part of the world. Which reminds me.…This is a great restaurant city, and I’m famished. Anybody up for dinner?”

“First intelligent thing you’ve said,” Akil responded.

The first time he’d seen Holly, almost fifteen years ago, he was struck by her poise and physical beauty. He remembered thinking she seemed like a perfect partner—smart, friendly, attractive, and fit. It had happened at an ST-6 picnic at a teammate’s house. She stood next to a teammate’s wife, holding a glass of wine. The sun glanced off her cheekbones and highlighted the waves in her long, auburn hair. Though he later heard that her marriage to her first husband (also a member of ST-6) was on the rocks, she looked completely in control of herself and happy.

He had lost sight of her for a few minutes in the smoke from the barbecue, then she was miraculously by his side, smiling at two-year-old Jenny. Almost too close for comfort. In proximity, her effect on him was even more powerful. Big blue eyes that were both intelligent and kind, a fit, womanly body stylishly adorned in a tight light-blue T-shirt and matching checkered shorts.

“Sweet girl,” she said, referring to Jenny. “How old?”

“I’ll let her tell you.”

Jenny held up two fingers. “Two and a half.”

“Really? What’s your name?”

“Jen-ny.”

“Pretty name.”

Later he’d seen Holly around the neighborhood and at other ST-6 functions. Heard she was a good mother and a decent athlete, including serving as captain on a women’s championship rowing team.

Six years after that, after Crocker’s first wife moved out, he dated for two years—an Australian skin diver, a Hispanic FBI agent, an anesthesiologist who was into rock climbing. He was starting to think about settling down again when one of the ST-6 wives informed him that Holly and her husband had split up. She suggested that the two of them might like to keep each other company.

They met at the Starbucks in the Red Mill Commons. He felt awkward at first, discussing his training for an upcoming Ironman competition and thinking that he was boring her, but she quickly put him at ease. She knew the SEAL life and the kind of people who were attracted to it. She explained that she had left her husband because of his drinking problem, which had led to abusive behavior and infidelity.

She said, “He refuses to deal with his personal problems, and I couldn’t put up with them anymore. It’s as simple as that. I wish him well. It’s time to move on.”

Crocker, who still felt bad about his first marriage, appreciated her no-nonsense practicality. His ex-wife was someone who could never decide what she wanted and was therefore impossible to please. She’d hated it when they were assigned to a base overseas, then didn’t want to leave. She wanted a child, but didn’t enjoy being a mother. It had driven him crazy. Holly seemed more solid emotionally and mature. They got together for coffee a few more times, then started dating.

It was so natural, because they liked the same things—being outdoors, working out, movies, and quiet restaurant dinners. After three months of dating, he moved in with her and her teenage son, Brian. When they discovered that Brian was taking and selling drugs, Crocker sat the kid down and tried talking sense into him. Brian started to take school seriously and seemed to be getting his life together when, one night, he was shot by a drug dealer friend, and slipped into a coma.

As horrible as the situation was, Holly dealt with it with incredible strength and dignity. When Brian’s brain and body started to swell because of damage to his spine and internal organs, the doctors told her that they had to unplug the respirator that was keeping him alive. She sat with Brian and held his hand when the doctors pulled the plug. He couldn’t imagine the pain she was in, but she handled it amazingly well. Her values were solid: God, country, family.

Crocker’s love and admiration grew. She became his rock—the partner who made his life fuller and more fun, and made everything work.

The first crack in her confidence came two years ago when she and a DS colleague were kidnapped while doing an embassy security survey in Libya. She was held for three days and forced to watch her male colleague being tortured and killed. She was still recovering from that trauma, a year and three months later, when cartel gunmen planted a bomb at their house. Holly had just driven Leslie Ames and Jenny back from a soccer tournament in Richmond. Leslie died in the explosion, which also lodged shards of glass and wood in Holly’s liver.

She recovered quickly. But the emotional impact seemed to linger. She spent more time in her room alone and didn’t want to talk. Sometimes he caught her crying. Crocker cheered her on, telling her that they’d build a new house and live even better than before. He kept waiting for her to snap out of her funk.

Dr. Mathews had told him to be patient. She also warned him that it might take years. She said, “Each one of us has an emotional limit.”

Maybe Holly had reached hers. Maybe she’d never be the same optimistic, confident woman she had been before.

“I can live with that,” he told Dr. Mathews. “As long as she doesn’t expect me to change.”

But she did.

He faced a choice: continuing as the leader of Black Cell, or staying married to Holly. He feared that he couldn’t have both.

F
orty minutes
later, the five members of Black Cell were on their way to the Amedros Café on the other side of Divan Yolu, a touristy street that ran down the center of Sultanahmet, the old section of the city. Crocker, Mancini, and Suarez, dressed in casual attire, walked on one side of the street, Davis and Akil following on the opposite side, with both groups keeping an eye out for surveillance. They had progressed a block and a half, checking out the shops and the people strolling, and Crocker was thinking that it would be fun to explore the city sometime with Holly when his burner cell phone pinged.

He reached into his black 5.11 Tactical cargo pants and discovered that it was Akil, who had texted “*87!”

Suddenly the environment turned hostile. “Again? Fuck.”

“What’s the matter?” Mancini asked.

“We’re being followed.”

“Who? Where?”

“Don’t know.”

Again the opportunities for countersurveillance weren’t ideal because of the large number of tourists walking the narrow streets. And the SEALs weren’t armed, which was a big disadvantage. Nor did they know the city.

“Follow me,” Mancini said, nodding left and entering a hotel lobby. He was quick on his feet for a man built like a linebacker, which he had been at Boston College. As they stood near the front desk eyeballing the people who entered, Crocker’s cell pinged again.

“Akil again?” Mancini asked.

“No, it’s Anders.”

The text from Anders read “Meet at the gym in 30?” According to their prearranged code, the thirty minutes had to be halved, and “the gym” meant Anders’s room at the Sultanhan Hotel.

He pecked back “OK,” and decided not to tell him about the surveillance. He and his men were totally capable of dealing with that.

“What’s up?” Mancini asked, continuing to watch the people coming and going.

“Anders wants to see me. I’m taking Akil. You’re gonna have to eat without us.”

“I think I lost my appetite. Two guys in jumpsuits, eleven o’clock.”

Crocker quickly checked them out. The jumpsuits were too stylish and colorful. Seemed like two dudes going out for an evening run.

“Doubt that,” he countered as the men exited through the revolving door.

Mancini grinned. “You’re right. My appetite for food is hard to kill. You want me to order you some kabobs and bring ’em back to the room?”

“Unnecessary. But first you’ve got to shake whoever is following.”

“Of course. You, too.”

Crocker nodded and consulted his Suunto watch. “Be alert. If they’re the same guys I tangled with this morning, they’re deadly fuckers.”

“Got it. Suarez and I will go first. We’re gonna exit out the back.”

“Cool.”

Crocker consulted the tourist map he carried in his back pocket, then called Akil and told him to meet him on the corner of Divan Yolu and Bab-I Ali. He took an elevator up to the roof, lingered there for five minutes listening to two British women discuss who they considered sexier, Jon Hamm or Daniel Craig, then descended the stairs and exited out the back.

It was a beautiful, warm night with a sweet breeze. He found Akil standing in a tourist shop called Hookah John that sold rugs and knickknacks.

“What’d you see?” Crocker asked.

“Two guys riding in a dark-green Renault 19.”

“What’s that?”

“A boxy looking hatchback similar to a VW Passat.”

“What did they look like?”

“Young, clean-cut. One wore a black leather jacket. They both had short black hair. No facial hair.”

“You see them now?”

Akil shook his head.

“Follow me.”

They entered the heavy foot traffic on Divan Yolu, then hurried to catch the tram at
Ç
emberlita
ş
, near the Grand Bazaar. They rode it in the direction they’d come from and got off at the Sultanahmet, checking around them. No dark-green Renault in the vicinity. No one who looked suspicious.

“I’ll go first,” Crocker said. “You follow on the other side of the street.”

“Roger.”

Ten minutes later they entered the Sultanhan Hotel lobby. Janice stood near the elevator wearing a black jacket and black pants, with her hair pinned back.

“We were followed,” Crocker said.

“I know. Those are Colonel Oz’s men. They were sent to provide security.”

“Two clean-cut guys in a Renault 19 wearing civilian clothes, black jackets?”

“Sounds right.”

“Who is Colonel Oz?”

“He’s a section leader with MiT. You’re about to meet him. I’ve got a vehicle waiting.”

She led the way through a narrow hallway that exited into an alley. Akil elbowed Crocker, thrust his chin toward the rear of her tight pants, and smiled.

Crocker leaned into him and whispered, “Grow up.”

Two beefy guys in black suits waited by the black Suburban. They had buds in their ears and looked like Scorpions—CIA private security personnel. Probably ex-military. Both of them appeared to have been bench-pressing serious weight and doing ’roids. Veins stood out on their necks.

Janice climbed into the front with the driver—bull-necked, shaved head, with a tattoo of an inverted cross behind his ear. Crocker and Akil slid into the back with the second Scorpion. Crocker sat wondering whether the inverted cross stood for atheism, humanism, the occult, or devotion to Satan as expressed by one of his favorite bands, Black Sabbath. Depended on the context, he supposed.

As they left the alley, Janice turned to face them. “Anders set up a meet with a couple of guys from MiT. They’ll brief you.”

“When are we gonna see the guy who shot the video we watched earlier?” Crocker asked.

“The engineering student? We’re arranging that now.”

“I want to talk to him.”

They left the historical/tourist area and turned onto a well-lit freeway that cut through the northern hills and suburbs. Akil’s eyes closed, and he seemed to be taking a power nap.

Crocker glanced out the darkened windows and followed the full moon in the cloudy sky. “Nobody told us about the security,” he said. “We thought we were being followed.”

“Our oversight,” Janice answered. “After what happened this morning, we’re not taking any chances.”

He phoned Mancini to update him. He and the rest of the team were already at the Amedros Café. Crocker heard singing and rhythmic slapping in the background. His teammates hadn’t forgotten how to have a good time.

As he put the cell away, Janice asked, “You been doing this long?”

“Three years in the navy; sixteen on the teams.”

“I admire you guys a lot.”

“Thanks.”

He knew her type—dedicated, serious, probably a screwed-up personal life. Sometimes young women like her overdid the tough act as they tried to fit into a field dominated by men.

“What about you?” he asked.

“Eight years in.”

“Overseas?”

“No, mostly at HQ.”

“Nice.”

He imagined a town house in Reston where she lived alone. Probably dated within the Agency. Looked like she ran and worked out.

“We have a friend in common,” she announced. “John J. Smith.”

Crocker smiled. John Smith was the alias of a CIA officer who ran Shkin Firebase on the Afghan-Pakistani border. Crocker remembered him as a tireless worker with a positive, can-do attitude. He had heard that Smith had gotten into trouble with management for running unauthorized ops into the Pakistani tribal areas.

“What happened to John?” he asked.

“Last I heard he’s living near Tampa, running a private executive protection and recovery outfit.”

From the wistful expression on her face, he concluded that they had either dated or had had a thing.

“Married?”

“Yeah, to some Colombian girl. They have a baby.”

“Good for him,” Crocker said, thinking he should call him when he got back to the States.

So many of the guys he had served with as SEALs or with the Agency overseas resurfaced in private security and military companies (PMCs) like Academi (formerly Xe, and before that, Blackwater), L-3 (formerly Titan Corp), Aegis Defense Services, and others. Ten years ago his former SEAL teammate and workout buddy Scott Helvenston was in Iraq as an employee of Blackwater. He and three colleagues were escorting trucks from a food catering company over a bridge near Fallujah when insurgents attacked their vehicle with rocket-propelled grenades. The four men were killed, their bodies burned and mutilated, and two were strung up on a bridge over the Euphrates.

All these years later, Crocker was unable to get the image of the crowd celebrating over the charred bodies out of his head.

There was a lot of ugly shit in there that he’d like to expunge.

They had turned off the freeway and were entering an industrial area. The Scorpion at the wheel guided the vehicle into a gated compound with two tall smokestacks, turned to Janice, sitting beside him, and said, “This is the place.”

Judging by the railroad cars loaded with rock, it looked like a metal smelting operation of some kind. Behind one of the large buildings stood a streamlined office structure with cars outside. Three local men wearing street clothes and wielding automatic weapons indicated that they should stop. After Janice addressed them in Turkish through the open window and showed them an ID, they pointed to a place to park.

The long, low-ceilinged room was crowded with people and smoke. Groups of Turkish officials stood conferring and puffing on cigarettes. Through the haze and to his right, Crocker saw Anders standing next to a tall, bald man with a walrus mustache.

What are all these people doing here? Typical second-world shit. Invite everybody and their cousin.

Anders appeared to be the only other American. He waved at Crocker and said something to the bald man, who slapped the table and blurted out something in Turkish.

Three of the Turks put out their cigarettes and took places at the table. The other dozen or so nodded in the direction of their leader and left. The lone female among them paused near the door and looked back at Crocker. He thought for a second that it was Fatima wearing an olive pantsuit and a black headscarf. But this woman had a nose that stuck out like Gibraltar.

Mr. Talab wasn’t present.

“All these people work for MiT?” Crocker whispered to Janice, feeling somewhat awkward. He was in the country clandestinely as John Wallace, a security consultant, and didn’t like being seen in the company of a known CIA employee, especially by so many people.

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

The bald man at the head of the table barked something in Turkish, then shifted quickly to English. As he did, his tone softened.

“Welcome, to you all. Particularly you, Mr. Wallace, and your associates. My name is Colonel Ozgun Ozmert. Call me Colonel Oz. Everybody does.” He spoke with a slight British accent and smiled a lot. Reminded him of the actor Yul Brynner.

“Thank you, Colonel. It’s good to be here.”

“You’re very welcome. My good friend Mr. Anders has asked me to answer your questions and to assist you in any way I can.”

“I appreciate that.”

Colonel Oz held out his hand to a thin man in a dark suit and white shirt to his right.

“First, one of my assistants, Inspector Evren, would like to ask you one or two questions about the unfortunate incident this morning, if that’s permittable.”

“Go ahead.” Again he felt exposed and uncomfortable.

What’s the purpose of this meeting?

Oz continued, “Let me say, first, that political violence of that kind has been rare in Istanbul. We’ve made sure of that. But with the war in Syria and all the problems that has caused us, these unfortunate incidents have become more frequent.”

“Understood.” Crocker reminded himself that the Turks were U.S. allies. He had worked with them before and found them cooperative and helpful. He attributed his acute sensitivity to the incident that morning near the Blue Mosque.

Inspector Evren rubbed his hands together and in a pinched voice asked, “You sure you don’t mind if I ask you these questions?”

Crocker, who hadn’t expected this, looked at Anders, who nodded.

“No. Not at all,” he said, feeling strange talking about something he hadn’t had time to process fully in front of a group of strangers.

“First, all of us express our deep condolences about Mr. Munoz,” Evren said. “Many of us here worked with him and considered him a friend.”

Crocker assumed he was talking about Jared. “Thank you.”

“The initial attack took place on Torun Sokak?”

“Just around the corner from the bazaar. That’s correct.”

“How many individuals were involved?”

“I saw four men altogether. Two in a van and two on a motorcycle. I noticed the two motorcycle men on the sidewalk first. I observed that they were following Jared. I was behind him. When I turned onto Torun Sokak, I saw that Jared had been pushed into a van. I rushed to his aid. He was killed while trying to get away. I encountered the two motorcycle men again when they attacked me in a shop on Kabasakal.”

By the time he had finished, Crocker noticed that his heart rate was elevated and he had started to perspire.

“Thank you, Mr. Wallace. We’re very sorry for your trouble. You might want to know that we were able to capture one of the wounded men from the van.”

“Oh. I’m glad to hear that.”

“I can also tell you that one of the men you fought off in the shop on Kabasakal is dead from a wound to his head.”

“Good.”

“We interrogated the wounded man and believe he is a member of Shabiha. These men are paid assassins working for President Assad in Syria.”

Crocker wasn’t surprised. “I’ve heard about them, yes.”

It made sense. Jared had been in Syria helping the FSA rebels who were trying to destroy the Assad government.

“We are very sorry for your trouble, and apologize deeply.”

“If you need me to identify anyone, or to provide you with further details, I’m happy to comply.”