“Does a bear shit in the woods?”
Nothing life-threatening. But it had to be attended to soon.
Crocker said to Akil, “Pull over for a second so I can get back there and clean it.”
He and Davis traded positions, then Crocker extracted gauze and Bacitracin from his emergency medical kit.
They were already halfway to the safe house in Karsaz, near the golf course. There they would find a surgeon waiting. Warm showers, beer, sandwiches, fresh clothes.
Crocker, from the backseat, said, “Brothers…well done.”
Chapter Four
Success builds character, failure reveals it.
– Dave Checketts
The muscles in Crocker’s arms and legs shook as he sat on the back patio nursing a cold Corona. Nothing unusual about that. It always took his body several hours to wind down from the adrenaline rush of an op.
His friends joked that the SEAL team leader’s favorite leisure-time activity was kicking back in his rec room with a glass of red wine or a beer and watching reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond on TV. I’d kind of like to do that now, he thought. Never mind the ribbing he’d have to take from his men.
Besides, something nagged at him. Through the sliding glass door he saw a well-scrubbed officer from the U.S. embassy sorting through stuff they had recovered from the terrorist safe house.
In front of him, the morning sun had burned through much of the haze. Past a row of eucalyptus trees he saw well-dressed golfers walking together down a yellow-green fairway. Like watching a dream. Or a video feed from some faraway place.
What struck him was the deliberation with which the golfers went about lining up and measuring their shots. Kneeling, frowning, studying their scorecards, consulting with their caddies.
Crocker pegged the men as business executives. Successful enough to belong to the exclusive club. Probably with fat bank accounts, diversified stock portfolios, vacation homes.
As they walked together, he wondered what they were talking about. Interest rates? The size of their stock portfolios? The trading price of oil?
Whatever it was probably wouldn’t interest him. Crocker preferred to keep his needs to a minimum and direct his energy toward bigger challenges.
Wiping the perspiration off the neck of the Corona, he imagined his father limping up to the kitchen table of their house in Methuen, Massachusetts.
His dad had admired men who played “in the big arena,” made personal sacrifices for their country or beliefs, and didn’t give in to fear. He’d consumed biographies of George Washington, Thurgood Marshall, Ulysses S. Grant, Andrew Jackson, Simón Bolívar, Francis Marion, Teddy Roosevelt, Alexander the Great, and men like them.
Tom Crocker understood that his destiny had been cast at that little oak table as he listened to his father talk about leaders, his gray eyes shining, his scratchy voice rising in his throat.
Now the patio door slid open and Mancini stuck his thick head out. “We need you, boss.”
Crocker cracked his neck and straightened his back. Ran his hand over the scar over his left eye that he’d gotten falling off a motorcycle as a kid. “What’s up?”
“Inventory.”
Inside, leaning on the dining room table, Officer Williams was checking off a list of the recovered items that he had written on a yellow legal pad. Crocker watched as he slipped on white cotton gloves, carefully wrapped each item in plastic, and packed it in a metal box. He saw the two battered-looking laptops, several notebooks covered in Arabic writing, a half dozen videos, including one that looked like an Arabic version of Pulp Fiction, one of Crocker’s favorite movies.
“I wonder what the analysts at the CIA will make of that,” he said, referring to the video.
Williams didn’t answer.
Crocker was reaching out to turn over a charred book that still lay on the table when Williams stopped him with a gloved hand. “We’d rather you didn’t touch anything.”
We? Who are we?
“Sure thing. But I doubt you’re going to find any usable fingerprints on something that’s been burned to shit.”
Williams stopped. “Is this everything?”
Crocker found his backpack among a pile of gear in the corner. From inside he removed a handful of papers that he’d grabbed off a desk on the second floor of AZ’s safe house. He paused to study one of them-the remains of an invoice with the address burned off. He made out an unusual name.
“The name Syrena mean anything to you?”
Williams: “No, sir.”
Mancini perked up: “Serena, like the tennis player?”
“No, Syrena with a y.”
Past his shoulder, in the corner of the sunken living room decorated in a cool pale green, Davis and Akil sat huddled in front of a big-screen TV that was broadcasting a story on BBC World News. Their story. An excited British voice over the whop-whop-whop of helicopter blades: “Appears to be a terrorist-type bombing, though details are sketchy. Through the smoke we’re seeing a seriously damaged three-story building near the port. Preliminary reports from the Ministry of Interior say that a large explosive device was hidden in a van. Has all the earmarks of the Taliban extremists…”
Taliban extremists. Isn’t that rich?
Down the hall, past the steamy bathroom he’d showered in, Crocker stopped at the beige door at the end and knocked.
“Come in,” came a no-nonsense woman’s voice.
He turned the knob and saw the nurse leaning over the nightstand, placing a stopper in a vial. The thin white fabric stretched to the contour of her nicely shaped behind.
God, what I’d like to do to that.
He stopped. Pushed what he knew was a dangerous urge aside, and focused on Ritchie sitting up on the bed with his right leg stretched out.
The East Indian doctor attending him glanced up at Crocker with a mischievous look in his eyes. He seemed to relish the idea of mixing with shadowy men like them. Probably couldn’t wait to get home to tell his wife.
Crocker said: “Doc, did you tell Ritchie that the next time he shaves his legs he needs to stand still?”
The doctor cracked up. “I told. Oh…I told him that. Yes.”
Ritchie shot him the finger.
“You guys with Delta?” the nurse asked.
“You trying to insult us?” Ritchie asked back.
“Why?”
“D boys look like soldiers,” Ritchie explained. “Clean cut. Sticks up their asses. Do everything by the book. SEALs are cooler, more relaxed, until we swing into action. Then watch out.”
Her eyes shifted from Ritchie’s shaggy hair to the biceps bulging out of Crocker’s shirt. Rested on the left one, with the tattoo of a skull smoking a cigarette.
“So you’re SEALs.”
“That’s right.”
Ten years and one failed marriage earlier, he would have taken the bait. Invited her out for a couple of beers. He imagined she was the kind of woman who posted overseas in search of adventure. Tom Crocker had it running through his blood. But he was too happily married now to invite complications. Had learned to keep his life clean and compartmentalized. Love, marriage, family, sex in one box. Work, danger, mental and physical challenges in another.
The big SEAL team leader turned to Ritchie with a look that cut right through him.
“We’re going up north without you, Rich,” Crocker said. “Give your leg a chance to heal. We’ll be back in a couple of weeks.”
“Hell, I can still outclimb you guys.”
“Not on one leg, you can’t.”
“You want to bet?”
“I’ll bring back a yeti if we find one.”
“Or one of those cute German climbers.”
“Stay out of trouble.”
“I’ll do the best I can.” Then, glancing at the doctor’s light-haired assistant, “But no guarantees.”