SEAL Team Six: Hunt the Fox (25 page)

Mancini leaned over the front seat and faced a terrified-looking Talab in back just as Crocker opened the back door and saw the Syrian reaching for something in his briefcase. He held the M7A1 to Talab’s temple and shouted, “Stop!”

The Syrian froze. Crocker pulled him out and saw another man crouched on the floor, trying to be invisible. He was a big man with a tattoo of a spider on his neck. When Crocker straightened him up against the side of the Mercedes, he recognized him as the man he had grappled with in the van back in Istanbul.

“Hey, fuckface, remember me?” he asked. Unable to contain his anger, Crocker reared his head back and butted him hard in the face. The big man wobbled and caught himself on the car, blood streaming from his nose down his chin.

Sully pulled Crocker back.

“What was that about?” Sully asked.

“He killed a buddy of mine.”

“In that case, you want another go at him?”

“No, that’s good. Let’s split.”

They dragged both men to the back of the van. Once inside they Tuff-Tied their wrists and ankles together and slapped gaffer’s tape over their mouths. Ninety-five seconds after the op had started, Crocker gunned the van around the Mercedes and headed for the Orly military air base on the outskirts of Paris.

Later that night, after a celebratory dinner at the famous La Coupole in Montparnasse, Crocker, Anders, Janice, and Mancini returned to the InterContinental to pack their bags and check out before their midnight flight to Dulles. As they entered the lobby Anders informed Crocker that Talab and the three men with him had been ferried by military helo to the
USS Abraham Lincoln,
stationed in the South Atlantic, where they would be interrogated outside the legal jurisdiction of any country.

“I’d love to hear what you get out of him.”

“I’ll make sure you do,” said Anders.

Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t. It didn’t really matter. Crocker decided that as soon as he got upstairs he was going to call Holly and tell her that he was sure they could get through this rough patch together if they both tried a little harder, which he was one hundred percent willing to do.

As they passed the newsstand in the lobby, Mancini pointed out headlines in French, Spanish, English, and Italian that announced the daring rescue of the
Disney Magic
by “NATO commandos.” The attackers, according to the headlines, were “Islamic terrorists.”

Curious,
thought Crocker.
I wonder if their real affiliation will ever be revealed?

This wasn’t the first example of government misinformation he’d witnessed. Most of the ops he and Black Cell participated in were kept secret and never reached the public.

“You want one as a souvenir?” Mancini asked.

“Not really. Thanks.”

He stopped and glanced at his watch, wondering if there was still time to shop for a graduation present for Jenny. Typically, he experienced physical and emotional letdowns after a difficult mission, and he was starting to feel his brain and body relax.

Civilian life was more challenging. He’d keep that in mind and try to be more attentive to Holly when he got home.

He saw Anders, Janice, and Mancini wave from an open elevator. They all looked happy. Charlie Parker’s mournful, beautifully shaded version of “Everything Happens to Me” played over the hotel PA system. He waved back as if to say
Don’t wait for me
. As the elevator doors closed two women wearing black headscarves ducked in at the last second. There was something vaguely familiar about the way one of them moved. It alarmed him enough that he headed for the stairs to hurry up to the fourth floor, where he and Mancini were rooming.

On his way up, he remembered that his three colleagues were unarmed. So was he, except for the five-inch koppo martial stick Mohammad al-Kazaz had given him. He’d taken it to dinner to show to his friends, and it was now in his right rear pocket.

Crocker pushed through the stairwell door at four, dashed to the elevator, and reached it just as the doors were closing.

“Manny, wait!”

Maybe he was overreacting. Still, he stuck his leg out and squeezed in, bumping into something on the floor. Someone had disabled the lights so it was almost completely dark inside, and he couldn’t distinguish anything at first.

He made out the outline of a body at his feet, then heard people grappling in the far right corner. Reaching for the koppo stick in his pocket, he looped his middle and ring fingers through the paracord and stepped forward, slipping on a metal object on the floor and falling against someone’s back. It was a big man. Mancini, he thought as he crashed into one of the covered women. Except it wasn’t a woman, which Crocker discovered shortly after the person elbowed him in the gut. The pain he felt woke him up completely and unleashed an almost primordial rage that caused him to drive the point of the koppo into his attacker’s throat.

When the attacker gasped and raised his hands to his neck, Crocker saw Hassan’s beardless face.

“You again,” he grunted. Using the high-low principle from hand-to-hand combat, Crocker slammed a knee hard into Hassan’s groin, then grabbed his face with his left hand and smashed it, one, two, three times, hard, into the back of the elevator until Hassan lost consciousness. He would have kicked him a couple of times, too, if he wasn’t still in danger.

Before he could even take a breath he heard a metal clicking sound to his left. Turning, he saw that a second attacker—who really did appear to be a woman—had just loaded a mag into her pistol. He immediately recognized the eyes and mouth as she pointed it at his chest.

“Fatima.”

“Yes, Wallace.”

“This my reward?”

She hissed a kind of sneer and squeezed the trigger as Crocker turned sharply right, ducked, and, holding the koppo in a forward saber grip, drove it into her solar plexus. The shots went off so close to his face that they burned the skin on his cheek and numbed his eardrums. He kept charging into her knees until they gave way and she screamed. Grabbing the wrist with the pistol, he slammed it against the side of the elevator twice until it clanked to the floor.

Screaming and flailing like an injured animal, Fatima reached up and raked her long nails across his cheek. She was trying to find his eyes, breathing furiously and struggling with all her might. But he had trapped her in the corner from behind.

For a second he thought of detaining her. Then, remembering the extent of her betrayal and his colleagues on the elevator floor, he took her head in both hands, pulled up, and twisted hard to the right so that her spinal column snapped and she went limp.

“Peace be with you.”

Somehow the three Americans in the elevator managed to survive. Crocker didn’t know how, because they had all suffered gunshot wounds. The French EMS team had acted quickly and expertly, for which he was enormously grateful, and his colleagues were out of danger.

He left Paris clinging to that knowledge, like a kid holding on to a favorite toy, and proud of the fact that they had completed the mission without losing anyone. He’d learn the details later. Now all he wanted was to get home to Holly and Jenny, decompress, and rest.

Since he’d flown civilian, he landed at Norfolk International Airport at around 1850 local time. He was so tired he couldn’t remember which airport the team had left from or where he had parked his truck, so he hired a cab to drive him to the Navy Gateway Inns and Suites, where he and his family were staying temporarily.

Jenny answered the door in shorts and a Virginia Tech T-shirt and immediately threw her arms around him. “Dad, you’re home! Yay!”

“Sorry I missed your graduation. I’m so proud of you, sweetheart. How did it go?”

“It was fun. Grandpa came. We missed you.”

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it. I bought you something.”

He entered the little red-tiled foyer and set down his bag as familiar smells surrounded him. Jenny followed, looking happy to see him yet somewhat wary, as if she knew to treat him carefully. “What happened to your face?” she asked.

He quickly manufactured a lie. “Oh, I fell off the hotel Stairmaster and scratched myself. Burned it a little, too.”

“Gee, Dad.”

He’d had the presence of mind to buy her something at the duty-free shop at Charles de Gaulle. He found it now in the side pocket of his bag and handed it to her—a stunning silver Michele Deco Day chronograph dial watch that had been recommended by the young woman at the shop and had set him back almost seven hundred dollars. The look of surprise and joy on her face made it worth the price.

“Wow, Dad. It’s so beautiful. Thanks!”

She kissed him again and bounced around in a circle with her arms in the air and her new watch on her wrist. “I feel like a princess.”

“It looks great on you. You here alone?”

He watched Jenny’s mood change on a dime. She sighed loudly, and reached out and held his forearm. “Dad, Holly left yesterday,” she said softly. “There’s a note for you on the kitchen counter by the mail. I’m so sorry.”

A wave of sadness almost knocked him off his feet. Leaning against the kitchen wall, he read:

“Dear Tom: I’ve moved in with my friend Lena. I’m sorry things didn’t work out between us. I’ll always love you, but I can’t live with you anymore and be fulfilled and happy. I’ll come over Saturday for the rest of my things. Love, Holly.”

He felt something give way in his chest, followed by relief mixed with profound hurt and disappointment. He’d opened up his heart to her and loved her, but it wasn’t enough.

Jenny squeezed his hand and said, “You’re a good man, Dad, and I love you, if that’s any comfort.”

He put his arm around her shoulder, hugged her, and said, “Of course it is. I love you, too, with all my heart.”

As tears gathered in his eyes, he knew that somehow he had to find the strength to soldier on. He didn’t know how, but he would. It was what he did best, and what he would always be. A soldier, through and through.

Don and Ralph would like to thank our agent, Heather Mitchell, and the talented professionals at Mulholland Books / Little, Brown who have made this book possible, including Wes Miller, Pamela Brown, Joshua Kendall, Ben Allen, Kapo Ng, Tracy Williams, Chris Jerome, and Morgan Moroney. They would also like to extend a special thanks to their loving and supportive families and friends.

DON MANN (CWO3, USN) has for the past thirty years been associated with the U.S. Navy SEALs as a platoon member, assault team member, boat crew leader, and advanced training officer, and more recently as program director preparing civilians to go to BUD/S (SEAL Training). Until 1998 he was on active duty with SEAL Team Six. Since then, he has deployed to the Middle East on numerous occasions in support of the war against terrorism. Many of today’s active-duty SEALs on Team Six are the same guys he taught how to shoot, conduct ship and aircraft takedowns, and operate in urban, arctic, desert, river, and jungle warfare, as well as Close Quarters Battle and Military Operations in Urban Terrain. He has suffered two cases of high-altitude pulmonary edema, frostbite, a broken back, and multiple other broken bones in training or service. He has been captured twice during operations and lived to talk about it.

RALPH PEZZULLO is a
New York Times
bestselling author and an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His books include
Jawbreaker
and
The Walk-In
(with CIA operative Gary Berntsen),
At the Fall of Somoza, Plunging into Haiti
(winner of the Douglas Dillon Award for Distinguished Writing on American Diplomacy),
Most Evil
(with Steve Hodel),
Eve Missing,
and
Blood of My Blood.
His nonfiction book about the shadowy world of private military contracting with former British Special Forces commando Simon Chase,
Zero Footprint,
will be published by Little, Brown next year.