Hunt the Falcon (5 page)

CL-20 was the highest-energy solid explosive produced in the United States, 20 percent more powerful than HMX and extremely expensive to make. It had been called the most significant energetic discovery since the hydrogen bomb. Crocker knew it was used in high-rate detonating cord and high-performance gun propellants. But this was the first time he'd heard of it packed into a stand-alone explosive device.

Even more alarming to him was the news that it had fallen into the Falcon's hands.

“I didn't know that anyone besides us had access to CL-20 or other nitramine explosives,” Crocker said.

“Apparently they do now,” Sutter responded.

Anders said, “As far as we know, the only place that made it was the Thiokol Corporation in Ogden, Utah.”

Crocker's head shook as he considered the implications. But investigating breaches of domestic security was not part of his job description. They fell under the purview of the FBI.

“Similar devices were used to kill Sunni leaders in Iraq. But those were packed with RDX and C-4,” Anders added. “In each of the car bombings we're talking about now, someone on the back of a motorcycle attached one of these bad boys to a car's rear fender, near the vehicle's gas tank. The people inside didn't stand a chance.”

A well of anger rose inside Crocker as he thought of the assassination of John Rinehart and the recent death of Neal Stafford and the other SEALs in Nuristan Province. He growled, “That evil, fucking bastard.” Then, thinking of Rinehart, he asked, “Do you know why those particular people were targeted?”

“Most of them were diplomats. There seemed to be no reason they were selected, except to instill terror, fear, uncertainty,” Anders answered.

Sutter added, “The Iranians are too clever to take us on directly. So they try to undermine us and rattle our cage with acts of terrorism or working through proxies. It's a coward's game, in my opinion.”

Crocker growled, “I won't rest until I have Alizadeh's head on a stick.”

“We feel the same,” Anders added, meaning the CIA. “Which is why I'm here.”

Anders reached into the metal briefcase and retrieved an envelope. Crocker was hoping it contained information regarding Alizadeh's current location. Inside were several stills of a modest-size hotel surrounded by tropical foliage, a name (Lieutenant Colonel Sarit Petsut), and an address in Bangkok.

“What's this?” he asked, feeling somewhat disappointed.

“The Special Operations Unit of the Royal Thai Police believe they have a lead on the terrorists who struck twice in Bangkok. We want Black Cell to go there and pursue whatever Thai officials can provide.”

Black Cell was the name recently given to Crocker's six-man team—consisting of himself, Mancini, Ritchie, Akil, Davis, and Cal. They were a subgroup of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, known as DEVGRU, specifically tasked with top-secret antiterrorist operations assigned by CIA and the White House.

“You want us to gather intel?” Crocker asked. He'd much rather go after Alizadeh directly.

“You don't understand,” Anders answered. “We're taking the gloves off. So we expect intel, suspects, dead terrorists. We want to know what Unit 5000 is planning, and we want to punish the people who ordered the attacks, built the bombs, and carried out those attacks.”

All of this was sweet music to Crocker's ears. He said, “Sir, you have my assurance that we'll go after these Unit 5000 characters as hard as possible.”

“That's what we expect.”

Sutter rubbed his chin with the back of his hand and added, “I suspect you'll find an intricate chain of connections that lead directly back to Iran.”

Anders pointed at the contents of the envelope he had handed him and continued, “We've made reservations for the six of you at the Viengtai Hotel under assumed names. Those are your passports and travel documents. Your contact in Bangkok is an American businessman named Emile Anderson. Among other things, he runs a local tourist agency and is one of our assets. Anderson will help you get around and connect you with Lieutenant Colonel Petsut.”

Crocker frowned.

“Is there a problem?” Anders asked.

“I was hoping you were sending us to get the Falcon,” he answered.

“It's our hope, our suspicion in fact, that the trail you uncover will lead to him.”

“I sincerely hope so. He and I have a score to settle.”

“This isn't personal,” Sutter added.

“In this case I respectfully disagree, sir.” The more anti- and counterterrorism ops Crocker ran, the more he realized how personal it was—a clash of fundamental beliefs and will.

“We need you to launch within twenty-four hours,” Anders said. “Can you do that?”

“Of course we can,” Crocker answered.

“Then good luck.”

There were always complications—usually minor, sometimes major—having to do with getting his men ready to leave on a few hours' notice. In this case, they were being asked to deploy a few days after a difficult mission in Afghanistan. Davis's wife was expecting their second child in four weeks. Mancini had recently buried his younger brother, who died of pancreatic cancer, and was dealing with paying off his medical bills. Cal's mother had died two months ago, and he was still settling her estate. Ritchie's girlfriend, Monica, a real estate developer, wanted to get married. Akil was helping his Egyptian father refurbish his Alexandria, Virginia, jewelry store.

Crocker returned to find Holly sitting on the edge of their bed changing into gym clothes and sneakers.

She said, “I'll pick up some salmon after my spin class. Do you mind grilling it with that lemon-mustard sauce you like?”

“Don't bother, sweetheart. I'm leaving tonight on a nine o'clock flight out of Dulles.”

“Oh,” she said sadly. “So soon?”

“Yeah.” Crocker couldn't tell her what the mission was about or where he was going.

“Do you know how long you'll be gone?” Holly asked.

He couldn't tell her that, either. So he shook his head as he retrieved a black suitcase from the closet and zipped it open. It was prepacked with “business” clothes. He always kept his kit bags filled and ready for military deployments, and a suitcase for when he was traveling as a civilian. He checked to see if it contained garments appropriate for Bangkok. According to Yahoo! Weather, late November to early December was the beginning of the most temperate season, with lighter rainfall, average highs in the mid-eighties and the temperature dropping at night into the sixties.

When he turned to tell Holly that he hoped to be home before Christmas, her face was buried in her hands. He set the heavier-weight clothes he'd pulled from the suitcase on the bed and sat down beside her.

“What's wrong?” he asked her.

“Nothing, Tom,” she answered, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. “I'm sorry.”

“There's nothing to be sorry about,” he said, gently. “What's bothering you—Neal's death, or Brian Shaw's, or the kidnapping?”

“All three,” she sighed, squeezing his hand. In a low, even voice she told him that she was considering quitting her job at State Department Security and had recently discussed it with her boss. He'd suggested that she take a leave of absence and seek psychological counseling instead.

Crocker continued to switch out heavier clothes for lighter-weight wear—T-shirts, polo shirts, khaki pants—while staying mindful of the schedule he had to keep. “Maybe you should,” he said.

“You mean, do the counseling?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think I'm being…selfish?”

“Absolutely not,” Crocker said, stuffing his shaving kit in the suitcase and zipping up the outside pocket.

“I want to do the right thing, Tom,” Holly said through tears. “I've been waiting for the right time to discuss this with you.”

He didn't want to tell her she had waited too long as he rechecked his watch and realized that he had to be at the base airport in thirty-five minutes to catch a flight to Andrews Air Force Base, outside D.C. From there he and the other five members of Black Cell would be ferried to Dulles by helicopter.

Taking her hand in his, he said, “Maybe the best thing to do is take a couple of months off, do the counseling thing, and see how that works.”

“What happens if a couple months isn't enough?”

“Try the counseling,” he said. “Hopefully it works. If not, you can always ask for more time. Right?”

“I'm kind of scared to talk about it,” Holly admitted. “You know, the incident. They tortured Brian and made me watch. It wasn't like what you see in a James Bond movie. You're there, and you see the cruelty and the pain on his face, and you want to disappear and die.”

He put his arm around her, felt her trembling, and pulled her close. “Take all the time you need to heal yourself. Don't worry about what happens next.”

“I'm afraid, Tom, and embarrassed.”

He kissed her on the lips and she responded. But he had to pull free. “Whatever happens,” he said, “I love you.”

“You have to leave now?”

He stood, grabbed his bag, and nodded. “I'll call as soon as I can.”

“Be careful, okay? And come back.”

J
ohnny Cash's
“Folsom Prison Blues” played on the stereo as the pickup's tires crunched across the gravel driveway. It was always difficult, pulling away from the ones you loved and not knowing if you'd ever see them again.

The lyrics entered his head as though Cash was singing directly to him: “When I hear that whistle blowin', I hang my head and cry.”

Crocker wondered if he should have told Holly that he was going after Farhed Alizadeh, the man who had planned her kidnapping in Libya and ordered the killing of Brian Shaw. Maybe it wouldn't have helped. Part of him wanted to stay with her, but a stronger sense of obligation compelled him to complete the mission and get Alizadeh.

How satisfying will that be, for Holly particularly?
Crocker asked himself as the pickup hurtled down a country road, past modest houses where families were returning from work and school and starting to prepare dinner. He hoped the death of his rival would give Holly some feeling of closure.

He was uncharacteristically unsure of himself when it came to dealing with emotional matters, and he scolded himself for not saying goodbye to his teenage daughter. He'd hardly had occasion to talk to her during the few days he'd been home. In the competition between family and SEAL team for his attention, it seemed as if the team always won.

Crocker stood at a magazine kiosk in Dulles International Airport, looking down at the face of disgraced general David Petraeus, when he remembered that his father's birthday was next week. He punched the button on his cell phone that speed-dialed his father's number.

“Dad?”

“Tom, what's wrong?” the eighty-two-year-old asked in a voice deepened and withered with time.

“Nothing. We missed you at Thanksgiving.”

“Holly was kind enough to invite me, but I was too busy to drive up.”

Tom's father lived in an apartment in Fairfax and had been kind of lost since Crocker's mother died three years ago. He spent most of his time volunteering at the local VFW, Post 8469, where he was commander.

“Too busy doing what?” Crocker asked.

“Serving turkey dinner to a bunch of beaten-down disabled vets.”

He admired his dad and wished they had more time to spend together. “How are things?” he asked.

“I could complain, but no one would listen. Sure sucks, getting old. But I made a new friend. A young gal named Carla, who works as a waitress at the local diner. She's a single mom raising a son. Dale's his name. Nine years old and already teaching me how to play video games. Can you imagine, an old fart like me?”

Crocker heard his flight being called and saw Akil waving at him from near the gate.

“Dad, I've got to go.”

“Where you calling from?”

“Dulles. I'm about to board a flight.”

“I'd tell you to stay out of trouble, but I know you can't do that. Call me when you get back. Give my love to Hol and Jenny.”

“Will do.”

Approximately eight miles east of where Crocker's dad lived in Virginia, thirteen-year-old Alex Rinehart sat in front of a TV in his grandparents' basement, using a remote to flip through the channels. He was dressed in a black-and-white-striped shirt and jeans, and had a full face with a tangled mop of dark hair and sad, slightly Asian eyes. He looked like a normal, healthy, well-cared-for teenager. Hours earlier he had returned from his new school, the Bethesda–Chevy Chase Middle School.

Alex had been a student at the school for only two weeks and was already excelling in algebra, computer studies, and pre-calculus. But he was woefully behind in English, social science, and American history. A good deal of that had to do with his refusal to speak or write since the death of his parents in Bangkok.

A school-appointed developmental psychologist named Cathy Struthers sat in an armchair to his right observing him as he watched TV. She noticed that he quickly flipped past shows that dealt with personal relationships and, especially, family—
Friends, Seinfeld, 1600 Penn, Modern Family
. He paused at an old episode of
Law & Order
, but as soon as a distressed father appeared on the screen, Alex switched channels. He finally settled on a rebroadcast of
Jeopardy!

His condition, which Dr. Struthers had diagnosed earlier, had a clinical name—reactive mutism—and was usually caused by trauma or abuse. RM was more prevalent among young people like Alex with an existing autism spectrum disorder. Treatment was problematic, especially for those in their teenage years.

Since Alex was already taking the serotonin reuptake inhibitor Paxil to help deal with his social anxiety, Struthers thought of recommending a medication designed to affect a broader range of neurotransmitters, such as Effexor or Serzone. But she suspected that they wouldn't work either. The more she observed Alex and realized how intelligent he was, the more strongly she believed that his mutism was a conscious choice—a silent angry protest against the cruel injustice of the world, for which there was no cure.

The six members of Black Cell flew United from Dulles seven hours and twenty minutes to Heathrow. They then boarded British Airways Flight 9, which covered another 5,928 miles in a little over eleven hours to Suvarnabhumi Airport.

Crocker passed the time playing chess with Mancini and Akil, watching Mel Brooks's
High Anxiety
for about the fifteenth time, discussing the pluses and minuses of some new handguns and sniper rifles with Cal, eating, drinking beer, snoozing. He was dying to do a workout by the time he felt the plane descend and saw the giant double hoops of the terminal rising from a vast expanse of vivid green marshland.

He loved the lushness of the tropics.

The high-tech, futuristic airport stood in striking contrast to the wild marshland. It contained huge halls with soaring metal arches lit with blue neon and white lights. As they waited in line for immigration, a young woman on a video screen on the wall explained that the terminal had been opened in 2006 and boasted the world's tallest freestanding control tower (434 feet), the world's fourth-largest single building terminal (over six million square feet), and handled approximately forty-eight million passengers a year.

“I feel like I've arrived on a friendlier planet,” Akil said as beautiful hostesses dressed in purple checked to make sure they had filled out the appropriate forms and were standing in the correct line.

After they passed through customs, the SEALs-turned-businessmen arrived in the baggage claim area, where they saw a medium-height white guy with a middleweight's muscular body and a thick mop of black hair standing next to a nice-looking dark-skinned man holding a sign that read “Sonnex Petroleum.”

Akil nodded toward the sign and whispered, “Look, boss.”

“I see it.”

Sonnex Petroleum was the name of the shell company the six SEALs were allegedly working for. They were traveling as oil company executives and engineers. Crocker's alias was Tom Mansfield, VP of exploration and research. What he really knew about oil exploration could fit on the head of a pin.

The taller of the two men introduced himself with a strong, confident handshake as Emile Anderson. Black Cell couldn't do what it did without the help and support of local agents.

“Welcome,” he said to Crocker, full of nervous energy. “We're on kind of a tight schedule, so as soon as you get your bags, we'll take off into town to try to beat the traffic. Lieutenant Colonel Petsut of the Royal Thai Police is meeting you for dinner.”

“The sooner we get started, the better,” Crocker replied, looking down at his watch, which had adjusted automatically to the local time zone, 1652 hours.

He stood at Baggage Claim Station 3, surveying the international crowd—a polyglot of Asian, East Asian, European, young and old, dressed in business clothes and casual. The diversity reminded him of the movie
Blade Runner,
but here everything was clean, orderly, and efficient.

Including Anderson, who handed him a large manila envelope and said, “I've already prechecked you into your rooms. Your electronic room keys are in there, along with seven hundred bucks' worth of baht to get you started. My friend Daw here will be your driver.”

“Hey, Daw. Nice to meet you, and much appreciated.”

The short man with the round pockmarked face smiled back with a serene look in his eyes.

“Anything you need, you tell Daw or you call me on this,” Anderson continued, handing Crocker a shiny new Samsung cell phone. “Both our numbers have been programmed into it, along with an emergency contact at the Station. Only use that in case of an emergency. Try to call one of us first. We'll be at your disposal twenty-four/seven. You need anything, and I mean anything, call.”

“Thanks. What's the exchange rate?” Crocker asked.

“A hundred baht is worth about three dollars and twenty-six cents.”

Large photos of a smiling King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and her husband hung on the walls. The local people seemed amiable and gentle.

Within minutes the SEALs had packed their bags into the back of two Lexus SUVs and were racing down a modern, eight-lane expressway. Crocker sat in the passenger seat next to Anderson, who was driving 160 kilometers an hour, or approximately one hundred miles per hour.

“No speed limit?” Crocker asked.

“None that's enforced,” Anderson replied with a grin that made his smashed-in nose stand out. “The freeways are F1 speed all the way.”

As he drove, he explained that Lieutenant Colonel Petsut of the RTP was a proud man who generally frowned on letting foreigners operate on his turf but was making an exception in this case because of the severity of what had happened, the international implications, and the deaths of American diplomats.

“But he's only going to give you a small window to work in,” Emile Anderson said. “So you've got to respect boundaries.”

“In other words, you don't want me to argue with him.”

“Like my daughter was taught in kindergarten: you get what you get, and you don't complain.”

Crocker didn't say that once the SEALs launched the op there would be no stopping them. And he understood that the cooperation of local authorities was an enormous asset.

The hotel was a modern six-story joint a few blocks from the Chao Phraya River and close to the busy night scene centered around Khao San Road. Anderson explained that many of the city's attractions stood within walking distance—the National Museum, Grand Palace, Temple of the Emerald Buddha, and another spectacular gold-spired Buddhist temple called Wat Saket.

Mancini asked Anderson about Wat Phai Rong Wua, which he said was described as the “most bizarre tourist attraction on the planet” by a travel magazine he had read on the plane.

“If you're into graphic scenes of people being tortured by demons and monsters with blood and entrails hanging out, you'll love it,” Anderson answered.

“Manny loves entrails of all kinds,” Ritchie joked. “In fact, he was just telling me he wanted pig entrails for dinner.”

“I know a great little place where they serve them raw, grilled, or sautéed,” Anderson said, playing along as they passed through a cool caramel marble lobby decorated with tropical flowers.

Anderson left them there and said he'd be back to pick them up at seven.

“Cal, you still with us?” Ritchie asked as they rode the elevator up to the fourth floor.

“Yeah. Why?” Cal, their weapons expert and sniper, had a Polynesian face that seemed creased in a perpetual smile. He was an enigma to most men on the team because he rarely said anything and kept to himself. Crocker knew him to be laser focused and extremely dependable during missions, which is all he cared about.

“You haven't said a freakin' word since we left D.C.,” Ritchie said.

“That's because he's been sitting next to you, and he hates your guts,” Akil said.

Cal: “Not true.”

Electronic Asian music played over the elevator PA. “Sounds like a group of castrated gerbils,” Akil commented.

“It actually fits into a genre called K-pop,” Mancini said.

“What the fuck is that?” Ritchie asked.

“Electro pop-style music that originated in South Korea. Its best-known song is ‘Gangnam Style,' by Psy. You're familiar with that, right?”

“Of course.”

“Is there anything you don't know?” Akil asked. “What do you do, stay up nights and just study random shit?”

Mancini ignored him.

Ritchie slapped Cal on the shoulder as they exited the elevator and started down the beige carpeted hallway. “So. What's new?”

“Actually, I've been reading an interesting book.”

“Tell me about it.”

Cal reached into his backpack and pulled out a thick paperback entitled
The Creature from Jekyll Island
.

Ritchie looked at the cover and handed it back. “Who's the creature?”

“The creature is the Federal Reserve System. According to this, the whole thing is a scam cooked up and run by some big banks. The system isn't federal, and there aren't any reserves.”

“Sounds like a real page-turner,” Ritchie said with a smirk.

The room they entered was spacious and clean, with two king-sized beds, a TV mounted on the wall, and a bathroom that stank of lime-scented disinfectant and mold, Mancini quickly pointed out, being the fussiest member of the group. His wife, Teresa, described him as Martha Stewart in an alligator-wrestler's body.

“Two men to a room,” Crocker announced. “Akil and I will take this one.”

“How come you two always room together?” Ritchie asked. “Kind of makes me wonder.”