“I’ll take two men across in a Zodiac.”
“Actually, I’d rather you sent Crosswhite in your place,” Pope said. The implications of this were obvious.
Crosswhite flashed Gil a devil-may-care grin. “Me being the most disavowable of us all.”
“You’ll take Trigg and Speed with you,” Gil said. “They’re the best boatmen on the squad. Do you swim, or don’t they teach that in snake eater school?” “Snake eater” was a term used for Green Berets.
Crosswhite gave him the finger and called to Alpha, “How fast can you get that Zodiac inflated and into the water?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Get Trigg and Speed ready to go!”
“Aye, aye!”
Crosswhite turned back toward Gil and Pope. “How’s that for delegation of authority?”
“No weapons,” Gil said. “You’ll work your way inland and recon the al-Rashid place. If it looks like you can snatch one of the bastards, drag his ass back. If not, no harm, no foul. Don’t take any risks. If you come back empty-handed, no big deal. We’ll just pretend like the mission never took place and wait to see what the president can work out with the PM.” He turned to Pope. “How much longer until that F-15 gets here?”
“Pretty soon now,” Pope said. “By the time it arrives, we’ll either have one of the al-Rashids or we won’t. If we don’t, that laptop’s liable to be our last and only possible lead. I believe we’re fast running out of time, gentlemen.”
45
Three SEALs set off into the night in a black Zodiac F47 °CRRC. Crosswhite was forward on the port side in the team leader’s position, with Trigg on the prow as the forward observer. Speed manned the coxswain’s position at the stern, running the fifty-five-horsepower engine. They were dressed all in black, wearing Under Armour compression shirts and pants in case they needed to dive into the water to evade capture. On their feet, they wore Core77 Abyss boots, specifically designed for SEALs, with drainage holes along the sides and in the soles. They wore night vision goggles but carried no weapons.
They motored across a narrow inlet, making very little wake, as Crosswhite monitored a handheld GPS programmed with the exact address of the al-Rashid residence. The far shore was two miles away, but once they made landfall, they would be less than a half mile from the house. The plan was simple: snatch one of the brothers — by whatever means necessary — secure his hands and feet with flex cuffs, cover his mouth with duct tape, and carry him like a rolled-up carpet back to the boat.
Speed navigated the Zodiac through an underpass beneath Eastern River Road and gunned the engine out into the open water of the Detroit River. The far shore was not a straight shot across. They had to detour three-quarters of a mile northward around the tip of Boblo Island and then bear south again to reach their insertion point along a residential section of the shoreline. They tied up the Zodiac at a private dock behind a small cabin cruiser, where it would not be visible.
Silent as cats, they moved swiftly through the shadows, with Crosswhite leading the way, hopping the occasional backyard fence and skirting three different swimming pools to finally arrive at the backyard of the al-Rashid residence. The house was dark, and there were no visible security cameras — not so much as a privacy fence for even minimal security.
Speed knelt beside Crosswhite near a garden shed. “Either we got the wrong fuckin’ house, or these dudes feel totally secure.”
“We’re about to find out,” Crosswhite said. “You guys wait here.”
He moved forward across the back lawn and up onto a spacious wooden deck, and then peered in through a window. His night vision revealed a neat and tidy kitchen. A small silver coffee pot called a Rakwah Qahwah rested on the stove; it had a long spout and a straight, elongated handle. The pot was used specifically for brewing Arabic coffee, and Crosswhite had seen many of them during his time in the Middle East.
He signaled the other two men forward.
“Let’s find the alarm system.”
After nearly five minutes of searching, they found nothing to indicate the house had an alarm.
“I don’t buy that,” Crosswhite whispered. “This is a wealthy neighborhood. All these houses have to be wired.”
“If you were a terrorist,” Trigg said, “would you want the cops showing up at your house every time there was a false alarm? Or would you figure that since you were the biggest criminal in the neighborhood, you didn’t need one?”
Crosswhite peered in through the back door, seeing no keypad on the wall. He tried the knob, but the door was locked.
Speed stepped back from the house to examine the upper level more closely. It was a Cape Cod — style home with two gabled windows on the second floor. One of the windows was partly open. The autumn night was cool, and there were no flying insects this time of year. Trigg gave Speed a boost onto the roof, and Speed carefully made his way over to the window, looking inside to see a woman with dark hair asleep in bed. He signaled the others to follow him up.
Trigg boosted Crosswhite onto the roof, but the grade was too steep for Crosswhite to pull Trigg up after him.
“I’ll go down and let you in ASAP.”
The two commandos slowly opened the window and slipped inside to stand over the woman. Crosswhite gripped his own throat with one hand, signaling Speed to take her under control.
Speed gripped her throat and straddled her, squeezing with two hands. She immediately came awake, flailing about on the bed in horror, but Speed was easily twice her size and ten times as strong. She tried to scream, but couldn’t suck any air. With no oxygen getting to her brain, she blacked out in just a few seconds. They taped her mouth and secured her hands and feet with flex cuffs from a black pouch around Crosswhite’s waist.
Crosswhite went to the door and opened it a crack. Seeing a short, empty hallway in his greenish-black field of vision, he could hear a man peeing in the bathroom at the end of the hall, its door ajar. The toilet flushed, and Crosswhite closed the bedroom door, stepping to the side.
“He’s coming back to bed,” he whispered. “I’ll grab him in a choke. You slug him.”
They stood in the dark waiting, but no one came into the room. Instead, a door opened and closed across the hall.
The two SEALs looked at each other for a couple of moments, giving the man time to settle back into bed.
The woman came awake and began screaming in the back of her throat, generating a hell of a lot of sound in the darkened room.
Speed whipped around, knocking her senseless with the back of his hand, but it was too late.
The door opened across the hall, and a dark figure burst into the room.
Crosswhite grabbed him in a rear naked choke, and Speed leapt forward.
A pistol shot rang out and Speed dropped to the floor. Crosswhite twisted at the torso to prevent the man from getting another shot off in Speed’s direction, at the same time sweeping his feet. They landed on the floor, with Crosswhite on top of the man’s back, flattening him out and sinking his arm deep beneath the chin to quickly choke him unconscious.
Speed got up holding his belly and grabbed the pistol, moving into the hall as Trigg appeared at the top of the stairs. They both moved quickly to clear the rest of the house. When they returned to the bedroom, Crosswhite had the gunman secured and ready to go.