SEAL Team Six: Hunt the Fox (3 page)

He turned to Anders and asked, “How do I look?”

“The same, except maybe a little more buttoned-up than usual.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Why?”

Crocker pushed past him. “No reason. I think I’ll wait for Akil downstairs.”

“Why?” Dr. Mathews had asked him during their second counseling session.

“Why what?”

He wanted to dislike her but couldn’t. She had a gentle manner and didn’t come across as judgmental. In the photos of her with her daughter, she appeared to be a kind, loving mother. No man in any of them.

“You’ve chosen a very unique and extreme way to make a living,” she said. “I’m sure you know that.”

“I do.”

“Have you ever asked yourself why you chose to become a SEAL?” she asked. That’s all they had told her. She didn’t know that he was a member of ST-6 or about the existence of Black Cell. Only a handful of people in the CIA and the White House did.

Crocker looked at Holly, to his left, who lowered her head and wouldn’t meet his eyes. He wanted to say that he resented being here and the doctor’s last question. He wasn’t the type of person who liked to dwell on psychological motivations. He did what he did, and understood why.

Instead of snarling back, he answered evenly, “I was a very energetic kid. I’ve always been drawn to adventure and danger. The town where I grew up in Massachusetts was full of motorcycle gangs and drugs. My young friends and I were drifting into that life. I started working out and running, and joined the navy at eighteen. From the navy, I passed the test to get onto SEAL teams. It turned out to suit me perfectly. I’m very grateful for the life it’s provided me. And I love what I do.”

Dr. Mathews nodded. “It’s enormously satisfying to find a profession that suits you and gives you a sense of purpose, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” he said, liking her even better.

Now he sat in one of the big, silk-covered armchairs in the lobby, wondering about Jared’s family and how they would take the news about their son. Death, especially when it happened to someone he knew and liked, always affected him profoundly, drawing him deep inside himself.

That’s where he was now, considering the unfathomable mystery of life and death, and how someone so vital and intelligent could vanish in a second, leaving behind an emotional vacuum and a lifeless shell.

Crocker was thinking about the sacrifice Jared had made for his country, while most young people his age were playing video games and couldn’t find Syria on a map, when a tall, dapper-looking man strode through the lobby with a very attractive young woman by his side. She was dark-eyed and put together. His eyes followed her to the elevator. She walked as if she expected to be watched, the fabric of her dark skirt pulled tight against her full behind.

Realizing that he still hadn’t heard from Akil, he reached for his burner cell phone and called him again. The call went directly to voice mail; he left a message: “Call me, knucklehead!”

Two minutes later his cell pinged with a text from Anders: “They’re here! Soon as u return, we’ll start.”

“Waiting for A,” he punched back.

“Do we need him?” came Anders’s reply.

The question annoyed him. “Want 2 make sure he’s ok. B there in 5.”

Crocker called Akil’s burner cell again. No answer.

He was getting anxious. The loss of another teammate would be too much. Looking again at his watch, he started to think that he’d been around so much death and destruction in the past year that maybe he was cursed. His teammate Ritchie had died in a helo crash near the Golan Heights. He’d been working with four FBI and DEA agents who were beheaded in Mexico. His teammate Mancini’s brother was shot through the front door by cartel assassins—the same ones who had killed his daughter’s friend Leslie. Now Jared. A lousy track record, for sure.

Another ten minutes passed before his cell pinged again.

It was Anders asking, “WTF are you?”

“I’m still waiting for A. Hold on.”

“This is getting awkward,” texted back Anders. “Maybe we should start without him.”

Crocker got up and started pacing in front of the window that overlooked the entrance. His loyalty to the guys on his team was immense. Losing Ritchie had been like losing a brother. How many times since then had he dreamt of Ritchie running through the woods beside him, or imagining him with that mischievous grin on his face?

A white Mini Cooper with a red stripe down the roof and hood pulled to the curb. Through the window he saw a long-haired blonde at the wheel. She looked like a Scandinavian model. Gorgeous, but too boney and bloodless to be his type. Still, she caught his attention. He started to wonder why she was stopping in front of the hotel, and what she was doing in Istanbul. Suddenly a smiling, seemingly carefree Akil came into the picture, emerging from the passenger’s side, bounding over to the driver’s open window, and kissing her, long and hard.

WTF!

She pulled him close. Akil whispered something in the young blonde’s ear that made her blush. She waved, put the little car in gear, and sped off in what might have been a scene from a James Bond movie.

Fucking Akil
,
Crocker said to himself, half relieved, half pissed. His teammate amused him, even when he was totally friggin’ exasperating. Like now.

He stood waiting as the burly, good-natured SEAL hurried through the glass doors, winking at the doorman and pulling on the blue blazer he’d been carrying on his shoulder.

“You’re late,” Crocker barked.

“Sorry, boss. Something wrong? You look stressed.”

They knew each other so well that they could read the other’s mood.

“Yeah, I’m stressed, because you don’t answer your fucking cell phone. You got it on you? It work?”

“Yeah. Oh, yeah. I was stuck in traffic. No signal,” Akil explained with a pat on Crocker’s back and a smile. “What’s up? The powwow canceled?”

“I texted you five fucking times.”

“Ease up, boss. I’m present and accounted for. Sorry I’m a few minutes behind schedule, but I had to take care of something.”

“I saw. Let’s go.”

Crocker’s irritation didn’t dim in the elevator, even though he wanted it to. It didn’t help that Akil quipped, “Nice shirt. When did you start shopping at Brooks Brothers?”

“Fuck off.”

“Looks like somebody got out of bed on the wrong side this morning.”

“No. Actually, I slept fine. It’s what happened since that’s got me annoyed.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll tell you later. No more bimbos, understand? No more fucking around. I need you to be present and alert. We got eyes on us. Killers.”

“She’s not a bimbo,” offered Akil. “She’s a visiting fellow at the archeological museum. Looks, brains, personality, and a fabulous tush all rolled into one.”

“Stop screwing around.”

“Okay. But honestly, how often in life do you find all three in one package?”

Crocker stopped in front of 732 and lowered his voice. “I’m serious, Akil. Cut the bullshit. I’m glad you met someone you like. Now forget her and focus.”

“I got it, boss,” Akil whispered back. “I figure we’re about to get into the shit, right? So I wanted to have some fun first.”

“We’re in it already, deeper than you think.”

“Have you experienced issues with PTSD yourself?” Dr. Mathews had asked two weeks ago.

Crocker twisted in the metal chair. He assumed that she already knew the answer, because he saw his carefully redacted psychological file on the table by her side, provided by Dr. Petrovian.

He nodded.

It contained the results of a recent personality test, which revealed him to be a combination of an aggressive and introverted intuitive personality type. That meant he liked to command and exercise power, but also tried to stay in the background until he felt the need to take over. He was active, adventurous, and someone who relied primarily on his instincts. Others with his unique slate of characteristics included Al Capone, Fidel Castro, and Jeffrey Dahmer.

The Al Capone part was a hoot. But the Castro and Dahmer associations were harder to swallow.

“Do you think your PTSD issues have anything to do with why you want to continue doing what you’re doing?” Dr. Mathews asked.

He lied. “No, ma’am. Not at all.”

The “ma’am” was a tell. He caught that. Warned himself not to use it again.

“Because research shows that PTSD is often triggered by guilt.”

She’d hit the bull’s-eye again. He flashed to the image of Ritchie’s bisected body lying on the ground inside the Syrian border, and a cold flash blew through his body.

“I’ve heard that,” he answered, shivering and quickly straightening his back. “But in my case, it’s a nonissue. The reason I continue has more to do with service to my country and loyalty to my teammates. They’re critical to me, Doc.”

Holly sighed loudly. She’d been uncommunicative so far during this session. Lost in her head.

“More important than saving your marriage?” Dr. Mathews asked.

“No, ma’am. I didn’t say that.”

He had a hard time keeping his eyes off her. Mr. Talab’s secretary had been introduced to him as Fatima. She sat by Talab’s side, almost directly across from Crocker, in a tight black skirt and matching jacket with a white blouse underneath. Red lipstick on full lips, contrasted with her caramel-colored skin and sparkling dark eyes.

He could feel the heat coming off her body, and had to resist the impulse to take her in his arms and rip her clothes off right there. He imagined himself pushing over the chair and taking her from behind, while reaching under her shirt and grabbing her breasts.

Hard and fast.

He stopped and asked himself,
What the hell’s wrong with me? This is an operational meeting. I need to pay attention.
Maybe it was this morning’s brush with death that made him preoccupied with sex.

She dabbed her lips with a napkin, caught him looking, and shot him a quick and intense glance dense with history and emotion. It traveled like an electric spark to his groin.

His burner cell phone vibrated, and he glanced at it in his lap.

“Stop eyeballing F like a t-bone steak!”

Akil, forty-five degrees to his right, grinned out of the side of his mouth. Crocker resisted the impulse to text something back.

He made an effort to ignore her, but her magnetic pull was strong. They were in the tub together; they were furiously making love on the carpet; she was screaming in ecstasy and covered with sweat.

Stop!

Anders, to his immediate left, continued to talk with Mr. Talab informally about his background. Crocker learned that he came from a prominent Lebanese-Syrian family that owned hotels throughout the Middle East. Educated in France, he maintained residences in Beirut, London, and Dubai, where his wife and two daughters lived. A sophisticated, well-traveled man, who spoke several languages.

Crocker immediately had questions and suspicions.
Why is a guy like him working for us? He doesn’t seem to need the money. So what does he want?

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Fatima recross her legs, a hint of silk and black garters.

He focused on Anders and Talab so hard that it almost hurt.

Anders asked if he still owned a small interest in the professional soccer team Al Ahli Club that played in the UAE League.

“Oh yes,” Mr. Talab boasted. “We won the President’s Cup last year. The Brazilian striker Grafite scored the winning goal.”

He wished Jared was present to give him the skinny on these two. Anders, though highly intelligent, clearly didn’t know them that well and operated more on a need-to-know basis.

Janice passed a silver tray with cookies. She had a thin gold bracelet on her wrist with a name engraved on it that he couldn’t make out.

Crocker handed the cookies across to Fatima, who selected a round shortbread with raspberry jam in the middle. She craned her long neck left toward Talab, bit into it, and smiled.

He caught a whiff of her rosewater-scented perfume and wondered what her real relationship to Talab was. He knew that the role of women in this part of the world was fraught with compromise and religious restriction. The ones he had encountered in his many travels throughout the region almost never made eye contact with men they weren’t related to.

This lady knew her way around and understood her effect on men.

Anders mentioned the mysterious disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines 777 over the Indian Ocean and the continuing search for wreckage.

Mr. Talab, who claimed to have a great deal of knowledge about flying Boeing aircraft, said he believed that the autopilot on the plane had been interrupted via satellite signal from a foreign government. He noted that this system had been installed in all advanced Boeing passenger aircraft after 9/11 to foil terrorists should they gain control of the flight deck.

He came across as a consummate businessman—confident, prosperous, and pleased with himself. Crocker thought his theory about Flight 370 was wack.

Anders cleared his throat and, pointing to Crocker and Akil, said, “Mr. Talab, these are two of the men from our special ops team. Perhaps you’d like to tell them a little about the situation inside Syria.”

As Crocker sat up he felt Fatima’s warm eyes looking him over.

“Yes.” Talab shifted his long frame in the chair and recrossed his legs. “I can tell you that my family is part Lebanese, part Syrian, and we have done business in Syria for years. Damascus was my father’s favorite city. We have investments there and many friends, which is why I travel there often.”

Anders turned to Crocker and said, “Mr. Talab and President Bashar al-Assad went to school together.”

They had Crocker’s full attention.

“Yes. Yes, we did,” Mr. Talab responded. “For two years we were classmates at the al-Hurriya School in Damascus. Bashar went on to study medicine. In those days he wanted to be an ophthalmologist. I traveled to London to get a business degree.”

Crocker noted the familiar tone in which he talked about Assad.