The truck lurched forward, turned right twice, then started backing up. It stopped abruptly. Ten minutes passed before someone slapped the side of the hopper twice. Akil climbed out to look. He slapped the side three more times, and Crocker and the other two SEALs pushed off the boxes and got out.
Each man took some welcome breaths of fresh air as they squeezed past green dumpsters and entered the dark rear of the theater. Crocker, Mancini, and Ritchie climbed up to the third-floor landing where they waited for Akil and Rahman.
When Rahman arrived, he opened a metal door with a key on his belt and led them through a dark lobby that smelled of butter and popcorn. They followed him into a dark movie theater. Using a flashlight he borrowed from Akil, Rahman found the place on the wall where the connecting door to the neighboring building had once been.
Akil turned to Ritchie and whispered, “That’s it.”
Ritchie felt along the wall, tapped on it, and put his ear up to it. He whispered, “No way I can blast through that without causing a big commotion.”
“How big?” Crocker whispered back.
“Real big,” Ritchie answered. “Anahita told us the whole wall had been reinforced with metal. I think there’s metal plates behind here, too.”
Akil carried a rough sketch of Quds Force HQ that Danush had given him, and he now unfolded it. He said, “Our main targets are on the fourth floor,” referring to Alizadeh and Suleimani.
“This isn’t going to work,” Crocker said.
Ritchie: “What do you mean, boss?”
“Not this way, it isn’t.”
“But-”
“Quiet,” Crocker said, as anxious looks were exchanged. Turning to Akil, he said, “Ask Rahman to show us to the roof.”
Akil translated. A game-looking Rahman nodded. They climbed quickly behind him, holding their weapons and seventy-five-pound packs on their backs.
Breathing hard in the tight space, Akil said, “Rahman is going to turn off the building’s alarm system, so if we want to hide on the roof, we should do it now.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s got about thirty seconds to re-engage it.”
Crocker asked, “How long will it take him to get to it?”
“A few seconds.”
“Tell him to go now.”
Rahman waved his arm and muttered something. Akil translated: “First, he wants to know how we’re going to get out.”
“Tell him we’ll manage. And thanks.”
Rahman grunted a sound of disapproval.
“What’d he say?”
“He says he’ll drive one of his trucks to the back of the theater in the morning.”
Crocker: “Tell him that’s not necessary.”
Rahman grabbed Crocker’s wrist and pointed to his watch.
Akiclass="underline" “He wants to know what time.”
“Tell him ten fifteen.”
Mancini whispered to Crocker. “Chief, I need Akil to record something for me first.”
“Make it quick.”
The two SEALs went off into a corner while Crocker removed his pack, knelt, then gave Rahman the signal to go. The second he left, Crocker started to count the seconds in his head. At sixteen he pushed through the door and did a quick recon of the roof, which was flat and covered with thick black tar. To the right of the door sat a seven-foot-high metal cooling unit painted white.
Crocker got on his belly and crawled ten feet from the back of the unit to the edge of the building. He guesstimated a four-foot gap and a six-foot fall-off between the roof of the movie theater and that of Quds Force headquarters. Sticking out from the HQ roof near the front of that building was a rectangular cement structure that looked as if it housed a stairway, cooling unit, and guardhouse. Two soldiers with automatic weapons stood outside it.
His recon completed, Crocker turned, crawled back quickly, and waved the men through the door. They made it just in time.
The SEALs sat with their backs against the cooling unit and waited. As the sun started to light up the sky, Crocker heard a man from a nearby mosque call out the morning prayer known as Fajr over a microphone. His high, pleading voice echoed through the streets.
“What’s he saying?” Ritchie asked in a low voice.
“God hears those who call upon him. Our Lord, praise be to You,” Akil answered. “Glory be to my Lord, the Most High.”
Richie nodded. “I’m cool with that. It’s only when Allah starts telling them they’ve got to kill other people that I have a problem.”
Akiclass="underline" “Allah never tells us that.”
“Why?” Ritchie asked. “Because he doesn’t exist, or people deliberately misinterpret what he’s saying?”
“Quiet!” Crocker whispered.
A warm breeze blew in a cover of low gray clouds. A cool light rain started to fall.
“How much longer are we gonna wait?” Ritchie asked, wiping the precipitation off his forehead.
“Yeah, boss, what’s the plan?” Akil echoed.
Crocker looked at his watch: 0732. “I figure by 1000 hours whoever is coming to work today will be in the building,” he whispered. “That’s when we’re going to launch. Akil, you and I will go first. We’ll take out the guards. Mancini, you and Ritchie take the stairway and head down one flight to four. Look for Alizadeh and Suleimani. They’re our primary targets.”
“Then what?”
“We grab whatever hard drives, thumb drives, or CDs we can find and fight our way back to the stairway.”
“Then?”
“Then…we get the fuck out of Dodge.”
“Everybody’s gonna need to wear earplugs and a gas mask when we get inside,” Mancini said.
“Why?”
“I got something planned.”
The whole scenario seemed damn unlikely as Crocker articulated it and played it back in his head.
Maybe it would have been better to wait for another opportunity to hit them at the arena.
It was too late to second-guess himself, so he stopped, looked up at the sky, and let the little drops of water pelt his face, which felt like some sort of cleansing.
He’d been challenging himself since he was a teenager, doing crazy stunts on motorcycles and trying to outrun the police. He’d broken practically every bone in his body during one scrap or another but had always managed to escape.
Crocker said a silent prayer asking God to look after Holly, Jenny, his father, sister, and other relatives and friends and keep them safe. “If you find it in your heart to deliver me from this, too,” he added, “I promise to always be your faithful servant, never back away from danger, and do what I believe is right.”
At 0955, he screwed the silencers on the ends of both of his weapons, then saw a flash of light illuminate the sky. Thirteen seconds later thunder rumbled overhead, and he slapped Akil on the shoulder and pointed to Quds Force headquarters.
Crocker went first, on his belly, until he got within four feet of the edge. From that angle he could see three Iranian soldiers with their backs toward them and automatic weapons slung over their shoulders. They stood under the front lip of the guardhouse, smoking cigarettes and looking down at the street.
Lightning flashed again, and just as his uncle had taught him to do when he was six years old, he counted the seconds on his watch until the thunder came. Ten seconds. It was moving closer.
“Next time there’s lightning, I’m gonna jump,” Crocker whispered into Akil’s ear. “If the soldiers don’t notice me, give me a couple of seconds to start around the other side of that structure, then start taking them out.”
Akil nodded.
With the next flash, Crocker got his feet under him, cradled his weapon across his chest, ran to the lip of the roof, and jumped. He hit the Quds Force HQ roof, flexed his knees, slid on the gravel, and somersaulted over his right shoulder as lightning cracked overhead. Springing back up onto his toes, he knelt behind the base of a satellite dish on his left.
When no shouting or gunfire ensued, he continued to the back of the sand-colored cement structure. As he reached the back left corner, he heard the phewt-phewt-phewt of suppressed automatic fire.