Cal left the engine running and the wipers slapping from side to side and got out. Crocker heard his footsteps on the wet dirt, then pulled himself up behind the seat and watched.
It was a low-slung, dilapidated structure painted pale yellow, with a porch in front and a rusted tin roof. A shed or garage with a red door peeked out from some bushes to the right. No cars, trucks, or motorcycles were visible through the light rain.
Through the earbud connected wirelessly to a tiny microphone in Cal’s shirt pocket, Crocker heard a door creak open and Cal speaking in Thai. Then he heard a screen door snap shut.
“It looks like Cal has gone inside,” Akil reported over the handheld radio. Anderson had joined Akil and Davis behind bushes on the right side of the house. Daw, Ritchie, and Mancini waited in front.
With Cal inside the house, Crocker waited and listened carefully. Things rarely went according to plan.
Through the earbud he heard a man talking aggressively in accented English, asking, “Who are you? Who sent you? What do you want?” At the end, he was almost shouting.
Cal started to answer in Thai, but the man cut him off. Then Crocker heard what sounded like a slap and scuffling, followed by two shots.
“Plan B!” Crocker shouted into the handheld. He burst out the side door of the SUV and ran as fast as he could to the front of the house. Arriving first, suppressed HK MP7A1 ready, he was about to push through the screen door when it opened and a very thin bearded man with a wild mop of hair stuck his head out. Crocker decked him with an elbow to the neck, then stepped over his prone body into the house.
He heard screams in what he thought was Farsi, and as his eyes adjusted to the darkness made out the shape of a man reaching for a pistol on the kitchen counter to his right. Crocker cut him down with four quick shots center of mass and one to the face. Mancini and Ritchie rushed in behind him.
The place was a shithole, with a sour, garlicky stench, discarded newspapers on the floor, clothes thrown over all available surfaces. He spotted a half-naked man scurrying out the back door; another was on his knees behind a sofa. A third stood near a mattress on the floor in front of Crocker, holding Cal in a headlock with his left arm. His right hand held a pistol to Cal’s head.
“Surrender!” the man shouted in heavily accented English. “Drop the gun!”
Crocker shouted back with authority, “You’re surrounded, asshole!”
The muscles on the terrorist’s face tightened. Cal’s nose bled down his chin onto the front of his shirt, but he appeared calm. The Middle Eastern man trembled as he pressed the gun harder against Cal’s temple. Out of the corner of his right eye, Crocker saw the short barrel of the MK18 Mod 0 beyond the window. Then he heard a stream of 5.56x45mm bullets rip through the glass and saw them slam into the man’s torso and head. The terrorist slumped and fell to the floor, leaving Cal frozen in place, covered with blood and brain matter.
“Cal, you okay?”
Crocker was aiming his gun at the man behind the sofa when a huge explosion went off behind the house, ripping through the back and sending debris and glass flying everywhere. He used his left arm and shoulder to shield his face. A piece of wood smacked into the Dragon Skin that covered his chest.
Crocker leaned against a cabinet to his right and caught his breath, then crossed to a big hole in the wall where the back window had been. “Wait here, Cal.”
The sofa lay in shreds, and the man who had been hiding behind it was legless now and choking on his blood and dying. A long shard of metal had severed his throat. Through the smoke and falling debris Crocker saw something burning beyond the lemon trees behind the house.
“What blew?” he asked into the handheld.
“The garage,” Akil reported. “The guy who ran out the back activated some kind of trigger before we could stop him.”
“You see anyone else flee the house?”
“Negative.”
“All our guys okay?”
“Anderson got some shit in his eye, a couple scratches. We’re good.”
“Search the back,” Crocker shouted. “See what you can find. Then we’d better clear out.”
Returning to the house, Crocker saw Ritchie and Mancini tie-tieing the man he had downed coming in the door. He was hyperventilating.
Crocker said, “Throw him in the truck, and help Cal. Tell Daw to stay with ’em. Then come back and help me look through this mess.”
“Roger.”
They gathered everything they could find-notebooks, laptops, thumb drives, maps, cell phones-threw them into plastic bags, and got the hell out of there, leaving behind four bodies and a burning garage. They had killed four suspected terrorists. A fifth lay on the floor in the backseat talking to himself in what sounded like Farsi.
Crocker said, “Slap some tape over his mouth. Shut him up.”
The rain had stopped and the sun was trying to burn through the low clouds. Behind them black smoke rose into the gray-blue sky.
This was exactly what Colonel Petsut had told them to avoid-an explosion and fire. But shit happened.
As they tore through the front gate and turned left, Crocker heard sirens approaching. He turned to Daw and shouted, “Get us back on the highway to Bangkok. Fast!” If nothing else, they had taken out the terrorists who had killed John Rinehart, his wife, and the other U.S. officials.
Chapter Seven
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
– Robert Frost
Black Cell arrived home in Virginia Beach ten days before Christmas. It felt strange to Crocker, being back. Maybe it was the abrupt transition from death and destruction to lights and holiday music. Friends and family tried to sweep him up in the celebration and excitement, but something in him resisted.
He stood outside Banana Republic at the local mall looking at the faces of children lined up to see Santa Claus. The Santa the mall had hired this year had the same beak-shaped nose, oval face, and bushy eyebrows as ST-6 psychologist Dr. Neal Petrovian. Except Dr. Petrovian was a hundred pounds leaner and his eyebrows, beard, and hair were more salt-and-pepper than white. Holly and Jenny were inside shopping. He was thinking about Cal and how he was doing when his cell phone lit up.
His sister Karen on the other end of the line said, “Tom, did you hear? Dad’s been arrested.”
What Crocker had just heard sounded surreal, like maybe he wasn’t hearing right. Or it was some kind of sick joke.
“Are you kidding me? Dad’s been arrested?”
“That’s what I just said.”
“Our father? Are you sure?” he asked into the cell phone.
“Yes I am, Tom.”
“Where is he now? What did he do?”
“He’s being held in Alexandria County Jail on two counts of assault with a deadly weapon.”
“Dad assaulted someone?” Those were words he had never expected to say.
“Yes, Tom. Our beloved father is in the slammer.”
Message received, he knew immediately what he had to do, and said, “I’ll drive there now.”
It seemed incredible. His father was the kindest, most outgoing, empathetic man he knew. He liked people and loved entertaining them with stories. Except during his service in the navy, he’d never been in a fight, as far as Crocker knew. Only once or twice had his son even seen him lose his temper.
Threaten someone with a weapon? It seemed wildly out of character.
Holly seemed equally confounded when he told her. She looked at him with suspicion, as though he might be making up some crazy story so he could slip away from all the people and festivities.
Nothing could have been further from his mind. All he wanted was peace and quiet, and some time with his family, because his heart was still heavy from the ordeal in Nuristan Province. The four days and nights he’d been home had been good. Holly had started seeing a female psychotherapist and seemed better.