“Sir?”
“Yeah.” Holding on to the bench as the copter banked sharply.
“You Chief Warrant Officer Tom Crocker?”
“That’s correct.”
“Orders to fly you and your men to USS Carl Vinson in the Gulf of Aden.”
“What for?”
“We’re operating on a need-to-know basis here, sir. Those are my orders.”
“Received. Thanks.”
Fifteen minutes later they had safely landed on the deck of the Carl Vinson. A landing signal officer handed Crocker a bottle of water with the ship’s seal stenciled on it and underneath it the Latin motto Vis Per Mare-“Strength from the Sea.” She was strong, all right. A metal beast measuring 1,092 feet long with a capacity to hold up to ninety fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, she carried a crew of over six thousand, including airmen. She was one of a fleet of ten Nimitz-class supercarriers-the largest, most lethal warships on the planet.
He’d been up twenty-four hours and would have preferred something with a little kick, like black coffee, Red Bull, or a can of Diet Mountain Dew. But water was better than nothing, especially with the taste of the desert still in his mouth.
The last time Crocker had stood on the deck of the Carl Vinson was the morning of May 2, 2011, when he and his team watched the corpse of Osama bin Laden being disposed of in the ocean. As much as they’d wanted to kick and piss on that piece-of-shit terrorist, they weren’t permitted to. But they had cheered as his white-shrouded body was slipped overboard and devoured by sharks.
It seemed like a lifetime ago now. Since the death of the notorious al-Qaeda leader, Crocker and his team had been running ops almost nonstop. Over fifty in the last year, to places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan, and Somalia.
Still, Crocker managed to squeeze in a few races. Like the 150-mile, six-stage marathon across the Sahara in Morocco (called the Marathon des Sables) that he and his men were scheduled to compete in next week. They had been trying to build up to it with at least sixty miles a week, plus a thirty-mile run on their day off. Which explained why both his Achilles were tight and his knee and lower back were barking. Crocker was used to dealing with pain. He thought of it as weakness leaving his body.
The lean, white-shirted LSO led him briskly along the flight deck past one of the steam catapults (known as a Fat Cat) that was capable of accelerating a thirty-seven-ton jet from zero to 180 miles per hour in less than three seconds. The marvels of technology. As much as Crocker admired engineers and scientists, they still hadn’t invented anything that could replace the versatility and ingenuity of men on the ground. He and his men were arguably the most highly trained, battle-tested, and lethal fighting force in the world, prepared to deal with anything on sea, air, or land. Raids behind enemy lines, commandeering ships or airliners, rescuing hostages, assassinations, sensitive intel-gathering ops-all in a day’s work.
A wise man named Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen; few in pursuit of the goal.” Crocker had committed those words to memory. They were his mantra. Don’t worry about the fuckups and bumps in the road, focus on your goal.
The goal was to protect his countrymen from people who wanted to destroy their way of life, take away their freedoms, shred the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
That wasn’t going to happen as long as Tom Crocker was alive. No way. He hadn’t earned his reputation as Chief Warrant Officer Manslaughter for nothing. People oohed and aahed over high-tech drones, listening systems, heat imaging. But when real nasty, difficult shit needed getting done, it was sheepdogs like him and his men who had to step in to protect the sheep from the wolves.
Crocker followed the LSO down steep metal steps and through a tight corridor that led to the captain’s quarters. Photos of the ship’s namesake, Congressman Carl Vinson-the only man to serve more than fifty years in the U.S. House of Representatives-lined the walls. Another bald-headed, sharp-eyed man in a suit. All Crocker wanted when he grew old was a shack in the woods, his wife-hopefully-and a means of securing food and water.
The LSO stopped and opened the door to a state-of-the-art conference room. The captain-an energetic man with a lantern jaw and short-cropped gray hair-stood and squeezed Crocker’s hand.
“Welcome aboard, Warrant. Glad you could make it.”
“It’s good to be back, sir.”
“Take a seat and we’ll drop the disco ball.”
Crocker, still dressed in his desert cammies, barely got out a question-“Sir, what’s going on?”-before the lights dimmed and a panel of four large color LED monitors descended from the ceiling and lit up. On one of them he recognized the gaunt face of his CO back at SEAL headquarters in Virginia, which caused him to sit up at attention. Instinctively, he started to wonder what he had done wrong.
“Crocker, is that you?” His CO, Captain Alan Sutter, was squinting through wire-rimmed glasses.
“Affirmative, sir.” Crocker focused on the bump where the captain’s nose had been smashed during Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada, 1983, when his chute had failed to open and he crashed into a tree. Lost a mouthful of teeth, too.
“Can you hear me?”
“See and hear you clear as day, sir.” His CO was damn lucky to be alive. So was he.
“Good.”
“How are things back at headquarters?”
His CO didn’t answer, cutting the small talk. “A critical situation has come up. Somewhat of a strategic emergency. Demands a swift response.”
“My men and I are ready, sir, to do whatever’s needed.”
“We need someone we can trust with a very difficult scenario who’s deployed in the area,” Sutter continued.
Crocker was going to say “Difficult is my call sign,” but bravado didn’t go over well in SEAL teams. Operators were expected to be humble, do their jobs, and limit the chest pounding.
“I appreciate that, sir,” Crocker said instead, fighting through his exhaustion. He wasn’t twenty years old anymore but in his midforties. And even though he was in incredible shape, his body needed time to recover.
He could probably forget about resting tonight.
From the video monitor, his CO continued: “Involves a pirated cargo ship off the Somali coast.”
The word “pirated” intrigued Crocker. He’d heard stories of local gangs stopping cargo ships and even supertankers off the coast of East Africa and the Malacca Straits in Indonesia.
An aide slipped a pad and pencil in front of him, and Crocker took notes as his CO and two officers from the Agency’s Counterterrorism Center related the ship’s position and various details, including info gleaned from the vessel’s emergency signal and satellite surveillance.
Crocker was wondering why a cargo ship of Australian registry was getting so much attention when his CO mentioned that it was transporting “sensitive nuclear material” from Melbourne to Marseille.
Among Crocker’s various duties, he happened to be the WMD officer at SEAL Team Six. “You referring to yellowcake, sir, or something else?” he asked. Yellowcake was uranium ore concentrate. Once it was enriched in a process that involved turning it into a gas called uranium hexafluoride, it could be used to fuel nuclear bombs.
“The exact nature of the material is classified. It’s not dangerous in its current state. But it’s important. Very goddamn important.”
“I understand, sir.”
“The White House wants this handled immediately.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get your men geared up and ready to deploy.”
“You can count on us, sir.”
“There’s no time to fly in another team or the cigarette boats. You think you and your men can handle this situation alone?”
“Absolutely. We’ll take care of it, sir, as long as someone can get us there.”