Hunt the Scorpion (9 page)

The torso of a uniformed man lay in the street. His arms and legs had been blown off. His head was a gory mess of brains and shattered bone.

Crocker expected sirens but heard none.

As they approached the entrance, gunfire rang out. People jumped behind trees and walls or threw themselves to the pavement. Crocker and Davis crouched behind a planter overflowing with red bougainvillea.

“Sounds like the shots are coming from inside,” Davis shouted.

“That’s odd,” Crocker said, looking for soldiers or security guards and finding none.

“Real odd.”

“Maybe we should circle around back.”

They rose together and almost tripped over a stout middle-aged woman holding up a bleeding man. The man’s face was injured.

The woman screamed in a language Crocker didn’t understand. The man stumbled and grabbed his neck.

With Davis’s help, Crocker sat the man down on the ground, against the wall of the entrance. Then he started to reach down his throat.

The woman shouted, “No! No!” shaking her head, slipping into hysteria.

Crocker nodded at Davis, who held her back.

The man’s windpipe was blocked with blood and broken teeth. Crocker swept them free and fished them out of his mouth. The man coughed and started to breathe normally. The gash across his cheek and mouth was serious but not life threatening.

With no medical kit available, Crocker removed his own black polo shirt and held it against the man’s face. Then he grabbed the woman’s hand. “Hold this here and wait for an ambulance. Your husband will be okay.”

“Wait?”

“
Attendez,
” Crocker said, remembering one of the few words he knew in French.

“
Attendez, oui.
” She nodded her head, then kissed his cheek.

The firing from inside had picked up. More people were running out in panic. Some wore uniforms; some men, suits. Women were clothed in cocktail gowns and dresses. Many of them abandoned their high heels, which littered the tile floor.

Crocker saw someone who looked American and stopped him.

“Where’s the party for the NATO chief?”

“The party?”

“Yeah. Where’s Al Cowens?”

“Out of my way!”

Crocker grabbed him firmly by the shoulders. “Al Cowens from the U.S. embassy? You know him?”

“Don’t go in there! Men are shooting. Lots of dead. It’s fucked.”

He entered the building with Davis at his side. The lobby was littered with the injured and bleeding. Blood was smeared everywhere. A lot of the lights were out. Smoke. A Muzak version of “Copacabana” by Barry Manilow played over the PA, adding a surreal element.

People were screaming, moaning, crashing into things, asking for help.

The two SEALs followed the sound of gunfire past the lobby, down a hall to the other end of the building. Turning left, they entered what looked to be a brasserie-type restaurant that faced a pool and, beyond that, the beach.

Because it stood at the back of the building, the restaurant seemed to have escaped damage from the explosion, but tables had been overturned and people were hiding behind them. He saw bodies in the corners.

“What the—”

Before he could complete his question, an explosion threw Crocker against the back wall.

He landed on his right shoulder, picked himself up, and found Davis near a banquette, holding his head, looking woozy.

“You okay?”

No answer.

“Davis, can you hear me?”

He couldn’t. So Crocker did a quick inspection of his head and neck. Saw no external injuries, but his eyes were dilated and unfocused, indicating that he might have suffered a concussion.

There wasn’t anything Crocker could do for him now. He said, “Wait here.”

Gunshots went off and ricocheted off the walls and floor. Glass flew everywhere. People screamed. He ducked behind a table and slithered on his belly through air thick with the smell of cordite and smoke.

Reaching two NATO soldiers in light blue uniforms who lay in a heap along the right wall, he discovered that neither was breathing or had a pulse. He relieved them of their weapons—some sort of automatic pistol from one, an MP5 with a collapsible stock from the other. Both were loaded and seemingly in working order.

He peered through the shattered windows facing the back and saw men by the pool spraying the brasserie with bullets from automatic weapons held at their hips. Rambo-style, he thought. Black turbans, scarves hiding their faces.

Fucking cowards!

He watched a bearded man in a black T-shirt remove the pin of a grenade with his teeth. Before he had a chance to throw it, Crocker took aim and cut him down at the knees. The man fell backward as the grenade exploded, throwing him into the pool.

When the smoke cleared, he saw the man’s legless body floating next to a woman who was facedown in the blue water. Her dress billowed out like large pink fins.

Holly’s image flashed in his head, reminding him that the dead woman in the pool was someone’s wife or girlfriend. This added to his rage.

Sons of bitches!

Spotting the shadows of the armed men retreating, he aimed and fired. One man stumbled and slid. Crocker ran across the patio to the far side of the pool, knelt on the terra-cotta tiles, and fired again. A group of attackers had turned right and were running in the direction of the marina. Crocker suspected that a boat or truck was waiting to pick them up and help them escape. He wasn’t going to let that happen.

Smoke rising from the fire behind him, he brought down two of them with bursts from the MP5. A little dark-skinned teenager in a sleeveless T-shirt crouched beside him and toppled another. The scrawny teenager turned to Crocker, smiled with a mouthful of jumbled and broken teeth, and flashed a thumbs-up. He had big eyes that caught the light. Beside him were three other young men, all dressed in T-shirts and jeans. The black tee of one had
SURFER
printed on it. They were holding AKs that looked almost as big as they were.

Crocker had no time to ask them who they were and which group they were affiliated with. He was glad that, like him, they were trying to stop the terrorists, who probably outnumbered them three to one.

A helicopter circled around the hotel tower and swooped over the water. Its spotlight illuminated roughly a dozen men armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades escaping down the beach. One of them stopped, took aim at the helicopter, and fired his RPG before Crocker could take him down. The rocket whooshed and smashed into the copter’s side. The resulting explosion splashed everything with white light and numbed Crocker’s ears. The copter’s rear rotor continued spinning in the sky as the cockpit plummeted into the sea.

Pieces of hot shrapnel screamed through the air, stuck in the sand around them. One of the teenagers fell. He started moaning and kicking wildly.

“Where was he hit?” Crocker asked.

One of the other teens ran over to help his injured friend and was struck in the back by a volley of bullets.

Crocker shouted, “Stay down! Stay down!” as he lay facedown in the sand and returned fire. He asked himself, “Where is security? Where the fuck is NATO? How come we’re the only ones shooting back?”

The attackers fired rockets in their direction, then retreated. One exploded in the sand in front of Crocker. Others screeched over his head.

He got up, spit out the grit in his mouth, and gave chase. But when he stopped to fire, the mag in the MP5 ran out. He didn’t have another. When he tried to fire the pistol, it jammed.

“Piece of shit!”

Still he gave chase. Reaching the first fallen attacker, he kicked him in the face, then relieved him of his AK, which was still hot.

The sand was a bitch to run in. Made him remember his younger brother and how they used to play on the beach when they were kids. His brother now owned several car dealerships north of Boston. Meanwhile, he was halfway around the world getting shot at by terrorists.

Nearing the marina, he sensed someone running beside him. It was the kid in the sleeveless T-shirt with the big eyes and uneven teeth.

Who is he?

Sounds of chaos continued beyond his shoulder. He knelt and fired at the attackers ahead who were jumping on motorcycles and climbing into the back of a pickup parked alongside the marina. Bullets skidded off the pavement and slammed into the cab of the truck. The kid beside him hit the rider of one of the motorcycles in the chest.

“Good shot!”

The bike spun, hit the curb with an eruption of sparks, and threw its rider into the bushes along the canal.

Crocker ran over and righted the bike. Jumped on and gunned the engine.

The kid sprinted to the canal, shot the rider again, then jumped on the back. A smooth customer.

Pointing the motorcycle toward the Corniche, Crocker pulled back on the throttle. The bike roared and took off.

For the first time he heard sirens approaching, which pleased him.

Finally!

But the bike wouldn’t pick up speed. He heard scraping from the back wheel.

Maybe the axle is messed up.

He got about fifty yards down the Corniche and stopped, his heart pounding.

“Motherfuckers!”

He looked at the kid with the big eyes and the tangle of dark hair that stood straight up.

The kid grinned and repeated, “Mutha-fukka.”

They knelt on the pavement and fired until they ran out of ammo. Then hurried together back across the beach to where the kid’s two buddies were lying. The one who was shot in the back had bled out and was dead, but the other was still breathing. Crocker removed the kid’s
SURFER
T-shirt and pressed it against two bullet holes near his hip.

“Hold it there until we can get him to a hospital. He’ll be okay.”

The kid with the big eyes grinned and raised his thumb. He was a brave little guy, whoever he was.

Pointing to his chest, he said, “Farag.”

“Tom Crocker. I’m going to help the people inside.”

“Very good. Good man.”

“Good luck, Farag. And thanks.”

Back in the brasserie, Crocker spent the next hour giving CPR and trying to clear airways and stop bleeding, using towels and pillows and the pathetically meager emergency medical supplies on hand. People were missing hands, parts of legs. They’d been shot in every place imaginable, struck with shrapnel, burned.

His hands and arms were covered with blood, and he was wrapping a sock around a man’s arm as a tourniquet when someone tapped him on the shoulder. Turning, he saw a NATO doctor and nurse standing behind him, light blue masks over their faces.

Emergency lights were now burning, powered by a portable generator, and he saw the room clearly for the first time. The scene was gruesome. Blood smeared everywhere. Piles of bodies. Reminded him of a documentary he’d once watched about a slaughterhouse in Chicago.

At least the wounded were being carried out on stretchers. Nurses, paramedics, and doctors were taking charge, directing armor-clad NATO soldiers.

“Have you seen Al Cowens?” he asked.

Someone pointed to a pile of bodies near the far wall.

“Really?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Which one?”

The man shrugged.

He searched and found Cowens near the bottom, the top left side of his head and face missing, and his tongue hanging out. Crocker sat on the floor, rested his back against the wall, and covered his face with his hands, exhausted. Completely spent. “It isn’t Al,” he mumbled to himself. “It’s just his body. Al, rest his soul, has hopefully gone to a better place. God bless him.”

H
e dreamt
that he was bleeding from a hole in his stomach and trying to get it to stop. His blood kept pouring out. It flowed into a clear hose that led to a fountain. Buzzards drank from it.

He woke up in a sweat, lying on a single bed in an unfamiliar room. An African mask staring at him from the opposite wall. Alicia Keys singing from a stereo in another room.

While he was washing his face in the bathroom, a woman with a blue scarf tied around her head entered the bedroom with food and fresh tangerine juice on a tray. Sunlight created a sharp angle on the floor. Through the doorway he saw a courtyard with a lemon tree.

“Where am I?” he asked her.

Smiling, she said, “Palm City.”

“Palm City. Where’s that?”

“It’s in Janzour.”

“Oh…” He remembered the woman in the hotel shower, Doug Volman crouched in the front seat of the SUV, flames rising from the front of the Sheraton.

He’d forgotten about Volman and Mustafa. And he hadn’t seen Davis since leaving him in the brasserie.

What the hell happened to them?
he asked himself.

“This home of…Mr. Remington,” the local woman said.

“Remington?”

“Yes.”

Crocker didn’t know the name. He felt disoriented, perplexed.

“Mr. Remington is American?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

She returned a minute later with clean boxers, a T-shirt, a dark green polo shirt, black workout pants. “For you.”

“Thanks.”

Standing under a warm shower, he felt sharp pains in his back. His whole right side was sore and bruised. The muscles in both arms were tired and tight. Otherwise, he seemed intact. Alive.

Not like Al Cowens, with his tongue hanging out of his mouth.

He dressed and entered the courtyard, where an orange cat was stalking a little bird with an orange beak—a finch maybe. Looked up at the sky above and saw the sun at approximately 9 a.m. The angle of the light reminded him of Southern California, when he was a young member of SEAL Team One living in a double-wide trailer with his first wife. She’d kept spice finches as pets.

A tall African American man in khaki pants and a white shirt entered. The lines in his face were deep.

“Crocker,” he said. “My name’s Jaime Remington. I’m Al’s deputy. Rather, I
was
his deputy. I’m running the station now.”

“Al.”

“Yeah…It’s terrible. I just got off the phone with his wife. She’s in California. They were living apart.”

“Children?”

“Two daughters. One married; the other a junior at Fresno State.”

The image of his dead body flashed before Crocker’s eyes.

“Fucking tragic. I saw him last night at the Sheraton.”

“I heard you were there in the middle of everything.”

“Yeah.”

“We’re all in shock…How did you sleep?”

“So-so.”

“I’m kind of in a fog myself. But here’s the situation…You were brought to my house last night.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Your men are being moved to a guesthouse near the embassy. You’ll meet them there later.”

“What about Davis?”

“Who’s he?”

“A member of my team. He was with me at the Sheraton last night, in the brasserie.”

“What about him?”

“He was hurt. I want to know if he’s alright.”

“I’ll ask. What’s his last name?”

“Davis. John Davis. I left two more people in an SUV out front. Doug Volman and a driver named Mustafa.”

“Volman’s resting. The embassy doctor said he’ll be fine. Mustafa is back at work.”

“What’s wrong with Volman?”

“High blood pressure and heart palpitations. Look, I’m about to leave for NATO headquarters. I’d like you to come with me, if you feel up to it.”

“I’m fine.”

“Finish your breakfast.”

“No appetite. Let’s go.”

A weird calm hung over the city. Crocker had no idea in which direction they were headed. All he was aware of was movement, the sunlight, and the automatic pistol Remington held in his hand as they sat in the backseat. A bodyguard with an Uzi and sunglasses sat in the passenger seat. A backup car behind them held more armed guards.

They were speeding; tires screeched around turns. Everyone seemed tense. The muscles around Remington’s mouth twitched.

A thousand thoughts were flying through Crocker’s head—Davis, Al Cowens, the attackers, the kid who had helped him, the helicopter that blew up in the sky.

He noticed that the safety on Remington’s pistol was off. He was about to say something but stopped.

He tried to think clearly. First I have to find out if Davis is alright. Then I have to ascertain if what happened last night affects our mission.

His head felt thick and heavy on his shoulders.

“How many casualties?” he asked.

“We counted twenty, but more bodies are still being recovered. Another fifty-seven spent the night in various local hospitals. We’ve got doctors and nurses out checking on them now.”

“How many Americans?”

“Five, including Cowens.”

They were speeding east along the coast, which was mostly barren. It reminded him of the desert. The majority of the nearby buildings were ravaged—bombed out, burned, pockmarked with bullets. Arabic graffiti scrawled over everything. More black flags.

They turned and stopped at a heavily fortified gate. The blue-and-white NATO flag flew at half mast. Soldiers in battle fatigues and blue helmets leaned into the windows of the SUV, anxiously scanned their faces, checked a clipboard, then waved them in.

Through the waves of heat rising from the sand he saw a runway, a control tower, and several badly damaged buildings. Tall palm trees in the distance. They stopped at a long three-story building that was under repair. Men on scaffolds were painting it a funny mustard color that seemed to clash with the vivid blue sky.

Crocker wondered if the local construction workers could be trusted, which reminded him a little of Iraq, where you couldn’t distinguish your enemies from your friends.

That sense of uncertainty put him on edge.

“This is it,” Remington announced, stashing his pistol in the SUV door’s pocket and grabbing his briefcase.

“This is what?”

Remington was already bounding ahead, sunglasses reflecting the strong sun. Crocker had to move fast to catch up.

Tall, good-looking African soldiers in dark green uniforms stood at attention and saluted as they entered. Asian soldiers on duty inside wore odd-colored camouflage and maroon berets. On the chest of one, Crocker read
MONGOLIA
.

“What are we doing here?” Crocker asked. “What’s the agenda?”

“The absolute disaster last night,” Remington said out of the side of his mouth.

He had the long legs and stride of a runner. Crocker followed him up a flight of stairs and into a crowded conference room. The table was covered with papers, cups, half-empty water bottles. A mélange of nationalities and uniforms.

Three dozen weary-looking men and one woman were focused on a tall man at the head of the table. His face was grim and creased with concern. He wore frameless oval glasses and an ironed khaki shirt with red bars on the collar. On his epaulets shone three gold stars.

“Communication,” he said in a British accent as he kneaded his hands. “The lack of it, primarily. That’s what we’re dealing with here. We’ve spoken about this problem week after week for months. Now we’re faced with a tragedy. A terrible tragedy. Is this what had to happen before we learn this basic lesson?”

His tone and words didn’t seem to fit the situation. Way too scholarly and intellectual, Crocker thought.

One of the men at the table said, with tears in his eyes, “We had no warning, general. None at all.”

Then several of them starting speaking at once. They were all excited, emotional, and stressed. A stocky Italian officer with close-cropped gray hair stood and tried to shout down the others.

“It’s an insult to all of us! A kick in the nuts!”

Someone else shouted, “We can’t operate like this…like stupid sitting ducks! What’s our role here, general? Define the mission.”

The British general clapped his hands and said, “First, we need to cooperate. Communication works for those who work at it. This isn’t communication. It’s shouting.”

“And accusations!” the Italian added.

“What happened to the Italians who were supposed to establish an outer perimeter around the hotel?” the only woman in the room asked.

The Italian waved a sheet of paper and threw it on the table. “Read the order! We were scheduled to relieve the Dutch at 2200 hours. The outer perimeter was the responsibility of the French.”

A French officer stood up. “That’s false! The order says, and I quote, ‘Platoon Henri IV will be deployed at the discretion of the watch commander.’ We never received a call from the commander.”

“Untrue.”

“Gentlemen, please!” the general said, trying to establish order.

Crocker had a hard time keeping the faces straight.

“Clearly, we have considerable work to do,” the general added.

“That’s an understatement.”

Someone disagreed. “The problem’s not communication, it’s cooperation. And how can we cooperate if members of the alliance have different goals?”

It was a good question, but Crocker didn’t know enough about the situation there to know what the speaker meant.

The British general cleared his throat. “Let’s talk for a minute about the specifics of what happened last night. My executive officer, Colonel Anthony Hollins, has drafted a damage and assessment report. Listen carefully.”

He nodded to a thin, sandy-haired man with a pinched face, who pushed his hair off his forehead and spoke in a high, officious voice. “Last night we experienced a massive breakdown in security.”

No shit.

“Instead of six squadrons of soldiers patrolling the streets around the hotel, we had two on duty. The Dutch who were there fought like heroes.”

The men at the table turned to a tall Dutch lieutenant colonel and nodded.

The British general said, “Thank you, colonel, and my condolences to your fallen and their families.”

Hollins continued, “The Dutch suffered the greatest number of casualties. Ten dead, four others severely wounded.”

The general cut in. “I want to say that the men who were there fought valiantly. We should all be extremely proud of them.”

Men slapped the table and exclaimed, “Hear! Hear!”

The British general lowered his head in silent prayer. When he was finished, the people around the table started murmuring again all at once.

Hollins raised his voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, if it weren’t for the swift action of our soldiers on the scene, the results could have been much worse. Let’s keep that in mind as we look at how this tragedy unfolded.”

A diagram of the streets in front of the Sheraton appeared on the wall behind Hollins. With the aid of a laser pointer, he explained how at approximately 2015 hours the previous night a truck carrying explosives had tried to back up to the front entrance of the hotel.

Crocker knew that once a suicide bomber got into proximity to a target there wasn’t much you could do but pray.

Hollins described how a NATO jeep with two Dutch soldiers inside had quickly moved behind the truck to block its access. That’s when the driver of the truck ignited the thousand pounds of ANFO, ammonium nitrate/fuel oil, he was carrying.

Crocker found it painful to sit and listen. He’d attended hundreds of such meetings following terrorist bombings, raids, and other operations—in SPECWAR (Naval Special Warfare) they called them hot washes. But this one was particularly difficult as he kept flashing back to the carnage from the night before.

He had no appetite for the grilled chicken and hummus sandwiches that were served. Nor was he interested in the bottles of wine the Italian passed around.

After lunch Jaime Remington spoke. According to the CIA’s analysis, terrorists had attacked in four directions. Forty to fifty men took part, armed with AK-47s, RPGs, explosives, and grenades. They had escaped in two directions, east and west, and left behind seven dead. None of the dead men were carrying personal items or wallets. No group had so far issued a statement taking credit.

Several of the dead attackers had the features of Tuareg tribesmen.

“Can you describe those features specifically?” the British general asked.

“They’re generally taller, solidly built, copper complexions, large black eyes, finely shaped noses.”

No mention of Anaruz Mohammed, the Chinese, Iranians, or al-Qaeda.

“You know what Tuareg means?” the Italian asked.

“People of the blue veil?”

“Abandoned by God.”

“You’d feel abandoned by God, too, if you lived in that bloody desert.”

Crocker sat with his hands folded on the table in front of him, wondering when this meeting was going to end. The most important thing he learned was that the terrorists had fled approximately fifteen kilometers east of the city, near the site of a major refugee camp.

As the hours dragged by he realized that although he was the only one in the room who had actually been at the hotel, no one was going to bother to ask him anything. He left confused and pissed off.

The sky to their right was turning bright red by the time they arrived at the U.S. embassy compound, which looked more like a house than an office building. Remington explained that these were temporary quarters. The original embassy had been ransacked by pro-Gaddafi mobs on May 2, 2011 (the same day Bin Laden was taken out in Pakistan), after the strongman’s son Saif al-Arab and three of his grandchildren were killed in a NATO air strike. Remington described how the embassy had been completely totaled—balustrades ripped off, photocopiers and air-conditioning units smashed to smithereens, cabinets wrenched open and overturned. Whole floors were doused in gasoline and burned.