“You need to be at the airport at six a.m.,” Melkasian reported.
“We’ll be there.”
Crocker didn’t know whether it was the seriousness of the threat or all the caffeinated sodas he’d consumed in the conference room, but either way, he was fired up. Back at the safe house, he briefed his men on the upcoming mission. Then the three of them went to a local Italian joint for dinner-fried calamari, pasta, grilled fish, salad, dessert, and bottled water.
Later that night, after packing his gear, he called Holly, who was watching a rerun of Suits, which Crocker didn’t care for but was one of Holly’s favorite shows. She said, “Tom, my therapist has diagnosed me with PTSD and mild depression.”
The PTSD didn’t surprise him, given what she’d gone through in Libya, but the depression was troubling. “You trust her?” he asked.
“I have no reason not to. I told you I haven’t been feeling well.”
“But isn’t it normal that you would feel down for a while after what happened?”
“She put me on Prozac.”
Crocker wasn’t a big fan of prescription medication. To his mind, doctors often used it to deal with one set of symptoms without taking into consideration how it might affect the patient’s overall health. “How much?”
“Forty milligrams daily,” Holly answered.
“That sounds like a lot.”
“Well, you’re not here. And I don’t know what else to do, Tom.”
She was right. Changing his tactics, he said, “When I get back, I want to take you on a vacation.”
“I’d really like that,” Holly responded. “What do you have in mind?”
They had climbed Mount Kilimanjaro together, gone cave-diving in the Yucatán, trekked in Patagonia. A love of outdoor adventure was something they shared. “I thought we could go mountain biking and camping in Monument Valley,” Crocker said. The Navajo Tribal Park in Utah was not only breathtakingly beautiful, it also seemed to replenish his soul every time he visited.
“I think I’d prefer something a little more luxurious this time,” Holly replied. “Like skiing in Park City, or a beach somewhere.”
The vacation he had in mind was far from other people, in a place where he could clear his head. But he said, “Sure. Skiing could be fun.”
“Could be, Tom? You don’t sound enthusiastic.”
“I am.”
She asked, “You want me to start making plans now?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet?” She sounded disappointed.
“Soon.”
He slept soundly and woke in the morning refreshed. Melkasian filled them in on the latest intel as he drove them to the airport. The Iranians had spent the night at a motel in Chihuahua, about a five-hour drive south of the U.S. border.
The pilot of the Learjet 60XR had long gray hair that he wore in a ponytail. Mancini knew him from a mission they’d been on in Iraq, soon after the fall of Baghdad.
“A lot of shit has gone down since then,” the pilot reminded them.
Events moved quickly in the war against terror. Sometimes it seemed they were grappling with an octopus. You chopped off one tentacle and another sprung into action. Which made sense, given the fact that there were numerous Sunni and Shiite terrorist groups. Sunni groups included al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda Magreb operating in Northern Africa, and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula; Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines and Malaysia; Ansar al-Islam in Iraq; the GIA in Algeria; Asbat al-Ansar in Lebanon; Jundallah, Harakat ul-Mujahidin, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, all operating in Pakistan.
Shiite terrorist groups included the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Palestine Liberation Front, and others.
Some of them cooperated with one another. Others were rivals. Loyalties and leadership shifted.
It wasn’t Crocker’s job to keep track of the various Islamic terrorist organizations and their activities. Experts and analysts at CIA, NSA, NSC, Pentagon, Homeland Security, and FBI did that. Once they identified operatives and targets, Crocker and his men in Black Cell acted as the sharp end of the spear.
Outside the window of the Learjet, Crocker watched thin white clouds drift past like childhood dreams. He had spent many days and weeks as a boy playing good guys and bad guys in the woods behind his house in New England with sticks fashioned into rifles. The fact that he was now doing that for a living seemed preordained.
Looking at the sky and feeling the tight vibration of the plane as it cut through the atmosphere at 550 miles an hour, he experienced a moment of perfection, realizing that fate had put him in the right place, in a role he was suited for, and had surrounded him with men like himself whom he trusted and admired.
He knew exactly what they had to do: stop three Iranian men before they crossed into the States and disappeared, possibly only to be heard of again after they carried out their sinister mission, whatever that was. Only then would the Iranians have actual names and faces-like the al-Qaeda terrorists who killed more than three thousand innocent people on 9/11. Then their backgrounds would be discussed and their motivations speculated on in newspaper articles and on blogs.
Sitting back, he sipped from the plastic cup filled with ice water and listened to Tré beside him talk about Bushido-the ancient code of the samurai-which he said he had been studying and applying to his life. Tré named the eight virtues: rectitude or justice, courage, benevolence or mercy, politeness, honesty and sincerity, honor, loyalty, character and self-control.
Across the aisle, Mancini put down the book on naval warfare he was reading and asked, “According to Bushido, how does one determine the right course of action in a particular situation?”
“It teaches that a true samurai should behave according to an absolute moral standard, one that transcends logic,” Tré answered. “What is right is right, and what’s wrong is wrong.”
“So the difference between good and bad and right and wrong are givens, not concepts subject to discussion or justification,” Crocker said.
“Correct.”
“Then how does one determine what’s right and wrong?” Mancini asked, playing devil’s advocate, which he liked to do.
“There are no set rules to determine that. A warrior should know the difference.”
Crocker could get on board with that.
Chapter Seventeen
For everyone who asks, receives; he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
– Luke 11:10
They landed at an airstrip on the governor of Chihuahua’s ranch a few miles south of Ciudad Juárez. Jim Randal, a young man with a bland, round face, met them wearing a Teflon vest under his tan safari shirt and surrounded by four armed guards. “Welcome to the most violent city in the world,” he said.
Crocker had heard horror stories about mass decapitations and the hundreds of women who went missing only to turn up dead and mutilated. Randal explained that since 2006 something like eleven thousand people had been killed in the city of a million as rival drug gangs fought for control of one of the most lucrative routes, a direct line to the U.S. black market for marijuana, cocaine, and meth.
Crocker’s own brother had once been a cocaine addict, and Crocker had seen drugs ravage the lives of countless friends and other members of his family. He’d also participated in the so-called War on Drugs in countries like Colombia, Panama, and Bolivia, destroying coke labs in the jungle and helping arrest financiers and traffickers. To him it wasn’t a war but an epidemic. The cure, he thought, lay in helping stem the desire for drugs, educating young people about the dangers of addiction, and providing treatment to users.
Their black SUV stopped at a house with a high white metal gate. Two of the armed Mexican guards got out and rang the buzzer. “Why are we stopping here?” Crocker asked.