Hunt the Wolf (12 page)

The carpet and floor ignited quickly. As Crocker crouched in the hallway and waited, flames spread from the rug to the curtains to the walls.

Pay attention, guys. Your house is on fire!

It didn’t take long. A minute or two at most.

As the SEAL team leader was starting to roast from the heat, three men entered and ran to the kitchen, where one of them grabbed a small fire extinguisher from the wall while the other two starting filling pots with water.

He rose from his crouch and didn’t stop firing until all three men stopped twitching on the floor.

So much for the plan to take Rafiq alive.

Since he still heard shooting from the direction of the porch, he doubled back, climbed out the window he’d come in, and snuck around the rear of the house past the Kawasaki Ninja he’d first seen only hours before. Seemed like a lifetime ago now.

Above him the roof started cracking and giving way. He peered around the corner. A man in boxer shorts was firing an AK in the direction of Akil. Another was reloading his weapon and backing away from the house.

He took them both down with three-round bursts from their own AK-47, then waited as their screams echoed through the little valley. Their agonies were overtaken by the sound of the house cracking and burning. The dogs grew quiet. The downed men were silent. The two vehicles still waited in the driveway.

He checked behind him. Nothing. No one. Then turned to the barnlike structure he’d seen off to the right and behind the house. A small lake stood behind it.

The barn was actually a large garage with a room on top. No lights illuminated either floor.

He was about to call Akil when he heard something moving, and turned and saw a tall, dark figure run from the garage toward the lake.

Crocker stuck the Makarov in the waistband of his pants and, holding the AK ready, took off past the garage, down a gravelly path that led to the lake.

The tall figure stopped at the water and looked back at Crocker. He was holding something across his bare chest, a pistol clutched in his free hand.

“Rafiq!” the American shouted. It was a hunch.

“Go to hell,” the man snarled back in English.

“Rafiq, it’s over. Drop your weapon. Hit the ground!”

“Never!”

The tall man lifted whatever he was holding over his head, tossed it into the lake, then started to run into the bushes like a rat.

Crocker thought he might have a chance to take him alive but wasn’t about to let him get away.

“Rafiq, stop!”

The rat kept running. It took three shots from Crocker to take him down—one to the back of the thigh, two into his butt. One of the bullets had severed a major artery. He was bleeding profusely when the American reached him.

“Rafiq, where’s Zaman?”

“I’m a businessman. I don’t know anyone named Zaman.”

“Tell me what you know about Zaman.”

“You’ll be dead soon,” the Arab man groaned. “My friends will kill you.”

“They already tried. Tell me where he is.”

“You…don’t…understand…”

Those were his last words.

Crocker left him there and hurried to the garage. He was looking for intel—computers, flash drives, notebooks, letters, anything that could potentially help the Agency locate AZ.

The bottom floor was filled with junk—an old boat, garden equipment, cardboard boxes. He was ripping through the cartons—which contained cans of motor oil and plastic bottles filled with water—when he heard something moving above.

Along the far side of the garage, he climbed a rickety wooden stairway to the second floor. The door was unlocked. The moment he opened it, he was hit with the stench, a thick combination of disinfectant and human excrement.

Several strange pieces of equipment stood in the central room—a weird-looking bench with straps and a harness of some sort. Plastic buckets on the floor. Paper towels on a bench. An old metal desk in one corner. Bottles of pills on top of it. A syringe.

What the hell is this?

He saw six little wooden cells like cages along the far wall. Then heard a whimper, like a dog’s.

Strange place to keep dogs.

Looking through the metal bars of the first two cages, he saw they were empty. Dirty mattresses lay on the floor. In the third, he made out something pale. It was a bare human leg, thin and shapely like a young girl’s.

“Hello. Can you hear me?” he whispered through the bars. The person didn’t move, though he could make out breathing.

Moving to the next, he saw a naked girl covered with what looked like dirt, feces, urine, and bruises. Judging from her eyes, she’d been drugged.

Jesus Christ!

The cages contained four women in total, scared and half alive. More like animals than human beings.

“I’m an American. I’ve come to save you,” Crocker said in a whisper.

All he got back were whimpers.

“Do any of you speak English?”

They didn’t answer.

He tried again. “The keys. Do any of you know where the keys are? Tell me where the keys are, and I’ll let you out.”

As smoke from the house drifted in the open door, they hid their heads and moaned—except for one bold girl, tall and thin, with matted hair, who stared at Crocker defiantly, then pulled herself up and spat through the bars.

At least one of them had some fight left in her.

Crocker wiped off the spittle that had landed on the front of his shirt. “I’m an American,” he said again. “I’ve come to save you.”

“Don’t touch me! I’ll kill you!” she screeched back in heavily accented English.

“I’m not going to touch you. I want to get you out of here.”

“You’re a liar. A fucking liar! I know what you want!”

“I’m not lying to you. Listen to me. Listen…”

Her delicate long nose sniffed the air. “Is something burning?”

“The house. I set it on fire.”

Her expression changed to curiosity. “Where are you from?”

“USA.”

“You’re American.”

“Yes, I am.”

She nodded and scratched the skin under her pale right breast. “I have a cousin who is studying veterinary medicine at George Mason University.”

“That’s not far from me,” he whispered back.

She grimaced, pointed past his shoulder, and said, “The keys, I think, are there, in the desk. Try the top drawer.”

“Thanks.”

He heard a creak on the stairs and froze. Holding a finger up to his mouth, he hid against the wall near the door.

The footsteps got closer.

The girl he had been talking to recoiled to the back of her cage and hid.

He readied the AK and waited, his heart pounding hard.

“Boss,” someone whispered. “Boss, are you up here?”

It was Akil.

C
rocker wanted
to get away from the farm before the French authorities arrived. But there were things he had to take care of first.

Continue the search for intel, and question the four female captives.

He and Akil had literally given two of them—the ballsy one from Romania who said her name was Dorina, and a rail-thin brunette who hailed from a small town in the Ukraine—the shirts off their backs. The sweaty, soiled, bloodstained polos hung over the girls’ skeletal torsos to the tops of their thighs. The other two sat in the corner, wrapped in a dirty blanket, their eyes staring blankly at the cracked linoleum floor. One hailed from Georgia. The fourth, who had a mole above the corner of her mouth, couldn’t remember her name.

They’d been beautiful once. Young and happy, with boyfriends, friends, and dreams. Now they were a mess. Drugged, raped, and god knew what else.

As much as Crocker’s heart went out to them, there was little he could do besides tell them their ordeal was over.

The only one who seemed to understand was Dorina, who gulped water from a Styrofoam cup. Anger and terror churned in her gray-blue eyes. Her bottom lip was swollen, the size and color of a plum.

“You really killed them?” she asked bluntly.

“Yes.”

“Dead? You’re sure of that?”

“Yes.”

“All of them?”

“Five or six,” he answered. “We captured another. He’s taped to the front seat of the car.”

“Shoot him in the face. First in the mouth; then wait a few minutes and shoot him between the eyes.”

She translated for the girl from Ukraine, who listened, nodded, then started to sob.

Dorina said, “She wants to see their bodies. To spit on them herself.”

“Tell her they’ve been burned to a crisp. There’s nothing to see.”

The Ukrainian girl grabbed Crocker’s hand like a child. “Thank you. Thank you,” she repeated in broken English. “Thank you so much from my heart.”

“You’re welcome.”

She clung to him trembling, and wouldn’t let go. “You American? You take us to America now?” she pleaded through her tears.

Crocker tried to remain reasonable and calm. “The French authorities will arrive soon and take care of all of you. They’ll send you back to your families. Don’t be afraid.”

“French?” she asked. “Why not Americans?”

“Because we’re in France,” Crocker answered.

“But I trust the Americans more.”

“The French will take care of you. I’ll make sure of that.”

As they spoke, Dorina crossed to the desk and started tearing through the drawers.

“What are you looking for?” Akil asked as he kept watch at the door.

“They took everything, those bastards. Our papers, clothing, jewelry, money!”

Dorina removed several DVDs from the top drawer. The rest were empty, except for a wooden ruler and a pair of pliers. She heaved the pliers against the wall and screamed. “Go to hell!
Go to hell!
”

“We’ve already been to hell,” the girl from the Ukraine remarked. “What could be worse?”

Dorina: “She’s right.”

Crocker wrapped his arms around the tall Romanian girl and sat her on the edge of the desk. He said, “You’re alive, Dorina. That’s the most important. Passports, jewelry, everything else can be replaced.”

Her mouth trembled with rage. “I need to search the house.”

“There’s nothing left. It burned to the ground.”

“They took my rings. One that belonged to my Polish grandmother.”

They’d taken their vanity, too. Dorina scratched at a sore between her breasts. He saw the Ukrainian girl past her shoulder squat over a blue bucket and piss.

“Have you seen other girls come and go from here?” he asked.

Staring ahead, she got to her feet and started to leave, even though she was barefoot and half naked.

Crocker stopped her. “Dorina, listen. This is important. Have you seen other girls here who then left?”

“There were others,” she answered in heavily accented English. “Yes.”

“How many?”

She paused like she was remembering, then held up ten fingers.

“Ten.”

“Around ten, yes.”

“Was one of them named Malie?”

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Maybe. I don’t remember all their names.”

“She would have come from Norway. Oslo. Eighteen years old.”

“Same as me.” Dorina looked at least ten years older than that. Crocker tried not to appear shocked.

“She was blond. She would have arrived about two weeks ago.”

The skeletally thin Ukrainian girl spoke up. “Malie, yes.”

“You saw her? Malie from Oslo, Norway?”

“Yes. She was here when I arrived.”

“Malie Tingvoll. You’re sure of that?”

She pointed a bony finger to the first cage along the opposite wall. “The first day I arrived, I watched them take pictures of her, first in a pretty white dress, then stripped her naked with her legs spread open.”

He glanced at the cage, which contained another stained mattress; there were scratches on the wall. “When was that?”

“When I arrived? Eighteen days and approximately seven hours ago.” Even though she’d been drugged and abused, she’d been keeping track of time in her head.

“Do you know what happened to Malie?” Crocker asked.

“She left two days ago with a man named Cyrus.”

The name meant nothing to Crocker.

“Who is Cyrus? Can you describe him?”

“Arabic-looking but dresses European. Around thirty years old. He acted like the nicest one. But he was sick, too. Ask her,” the Ukrainian said, pointing to the girl with the mole, who was wrapped in a blanket and still staring at the floor.

Crocker knelt beside her and asked gently, “What’s your name?”

She didn’t shift her gaze and didn’t answer.

Dorina answered for her. “Justine.”

“Justine looks so young.”

“She’s fourteen. Cyrus raped her, then bathed her. Raped her, then bathed her. Over and over and over.”

“I’m sorry.”

The girl finally looked up and asked, “Why?”

“Because I feel for you and what you’ve been forced to endure.”

She said something in a language Crocker didn’t understand. Dorina translated. “She asks, Why did he degrade me, then bathe me so gently?”

“I don’t know.”

Dorina said, “We were forced to watch everything.”

Crocker looked at Akil, who shook his head in disgust, then asked, “Do you have any idea where Cyrus took Malie?”

“They treated us like animals. Worse than animals.”

“I’m sorry. But that’s over now.”

“What did we do to them?”

“Nothing, Dorina.”

“Nothing.” She twisted up her mouth like she was trying to comprehend the injustice of what had happened.

“Dorina, please. I need you to focus.”

“What do you want?”

“Did Cyrus say where he was taking her? Taking Malie?”

She shrugged. “I think somewhere east.”

They were interrupted by the sound of sirens approaching.
EE-OO…EE-OO…
Akil hurried outside to look.

The thin Ukrainian girl mumbled something in Russian and pointed to her breasts.

“What’d she say?”

“She said that Cyrus bragged to her,” Dorina answered. “He told her that he’d sold the Norwegian girl for a million dollars, to a sheik, because she had a big chest.”

“A sheik?”

The Ukrainian girl nodded.

“Did this sheik have a name?”

Not that either one of them remembered hearing.

Akil gestured from the doorway and said, “They’re here, boss. Two fire trucks. Half a dozen men.”

Crocker tried to sound gentle and reassuring as he addressed the young women. “The French authorities are here. They’ll look after you. They’ll send you back to your families. Don’t be afraid.”

Dorina smiled ironically, as if to say: What could be worse than what we’ve been through?

The Ukrainian girl muttered one last “Thank you very much.”

He stuffed the DVDs in his pocket and took off in the direction of the lake with Akil at his heels whispering, “Boss, you’re going in the wrong direction. Boss, what are you doing?”

“I’ll explain later.”

Arriving at the approximate spot where he’d seen Rafiq, Crocker removed his shoes, placed the DVDs, AK, and Makarov on the ground, and jumped in.

“Boss…”

The water was cool and thick with algae, no more than six feet deep. It was impossible to see anything, so he felt along the bottom. Mostly silt and rocks. He swam in a circle until his lungs started to burn, then came up for air, which was pungent with the smell of burnt wood.

Flashing blue lights swept the lake and surrounding hills.

Akil looked anxious. “Boss, they’re coming!” he exclaimed in a whisper. “They’re close.”

“I need a minute.”

“Why? What are you looking for?”

Crocker took a big breath and went down again, this time pushing out farther from the shore. He swam as fast as he could with one arm, found something that felt like metal, and came up.

“Boss!”

It had once been the top of a small chest. He tossed it aside.

“Last time.”

Kicking hard, he swept the bottom with both hands this time, over smooth rocks covered with slime. Then he reached something hard and slick. Grabbed it under his arm and pushed to the surface.

It was an Apple laptop. White and a little banged up.

“Let’s go!”

Akil helped him out and pointed to a spot on his shoulder. “What’s that?”

A sliver of wood or metal had created a long gash, he couldn’t remember when. Blood mixed with the water from the lake smeared across his chest.

“It’s nothing,” Crocker said, removing the sliver and finding his shoes, the DVDs, the weapons.

He ran barefoot, making a long arc around the house, through the woods.

All the time he was thinking: The French firefighters won’t call the police until they find the bodies.

Not that he felt in any real danger. But he didn’t want to be detained and have to answer questions. The local CIA station and U.S. diplomats would go ballistic. Bureaucrats were always highly sensitive to anything that upset the local authorities—like American operatives doing violence on their turf.

They reached the road about fifty meters in front of the car, with scratches on their chests and arms.

Crocker ran to the BMW and checked the Arab driver still taped to the passenger seat. He’d pissed his pants.

“Where’s your fucking manners?” Crocker asked as he started the engine. He spun the car around.

“He doesn’t have any,” Akil growled from the rear seat, backhanding the driver across the side of his head. The driver groaned.

Later, Crocker would have to decide whether shoot him in the head and dump him somewhere or hand him over to the French police.

Now he pushed down on the gas as Akil reached around the prisoner and checked the glove compartment.

Akil reported that the car had been purchased two months ago from a dealer in Nice. The driver’s name was Marcel Saloud, with an address in Cap d’Antibes.

“Easy come, easy go, right, Marcel?” Crocker said to the driver, who squirmed in the leather bucket seat. The heavy tape gave him little room to move.

At the junction with the D-455, the road was empty except for emergency vehicles coming from both directions. Crocker pointed the car west and picked up speed.

“They found the bodies,” Akil said from the back, with the wind in his face.

“Donaldson is gonna be pissed.”

Crocker’s heart burned with outrage as he thought about the four girls. But when his attention shifted to the dead men, his anger morphed into satisfaction.

He was thrilled that they’d killed them. Almost ecstatic.

Entering the outskirts of Marseille, he pulled over into an empty parking lot and checked the trunk. He was looking for something to throw over his bare chest—a T-shirt, windbreaker, anything—but found instead a box of large plastic garbage bags, a pick, and two shovels.

“You know what those were for, don’t you?” he asked, looking at Akil.

“Looks like you saved my life.”

Crocker caught sight of the Arab driver through the back window.

Akil asked, “What do you want to do with him?”

“Let’s pull the tape off his mouth and find out what he knows about the sheik,” he instructed.

Crocker kept an eye on the passing traffic as Akil questioned the driver in French. The Arab swore up and down that he didn’t know anything about the activities at the farm. He’d simply been doing Rafiq a favor, and offered to drive some of his friends.

When Akil responded, Crocker recognized the French word for liar,
menteur.

Crocker said, “Tell him that if he tells us what he knows about Cyrus and the sheik, we’ll let him live.”

The driver started blubbering and talking a mile a minute. Crocker slapped the side of his head. “Shut the fuck up!”

The driver composed himself, then turned to Akil and said in French, “I know nothing about the girls. I didn’t know what these men were doing. I swear.”

“What did he say?”

“He claims he doesn’t know anything.”

Crocker leaned into the car and punched the driver in the face, breaking his nose.

“Fuck you.”

Then they retaped his mouth, wrists, and ankles, and threw him in the trunk.

Returning to their hotel past midnight, Crocker dialed the number he’d committed to memory. The woman with the British accent answered on the third ring. “Yes.”

“We had some problems with the vehicle.”

“Meet me at the same location. Fifteen minutes.”

“Thanks.”

He summoned Akil from the bathroom, where he was taking a shower, and the two men returned to the corner of Rue Lafayette and Rue Marcel Sembat. The same attractive North African woman sat behind the wheel of the Acura SUV, as composed as before.

“How can I help you?” she asked.