Maybe the judge would cut him some slack because of what he did for a living. Maybe he wouldn’t. Crocker wasn’t going to worry about it now.
“They’ve got dervishes here at night,” Jared announced as he stubbed out his cigarette and checked his cell again.
“What’d you say?” Crocker asked, sensing that they were being watched.
“You know, the dudes in the white peaked caps who spin. I was watching ’em one night when I met this cute Turkish girl named Zeliha. Real warm, with toffee-colored eyes. She explained the meaning of the whole ritual to me.” His voice trailed off.
“Yeah?”
“Great girl. I wanted to keep seeing her, but I had to disappear for two weeks for work. When I got back, I found out she had taken up with an old boyfriend she’d told me she wasn’t crazy about.”
“Sounds complicated.” It reminded Crocker of his own problems with women, including his wife, Holly, who had threatened to leave him if he went overseas again.
Here he was.
She wanted him around, but she needed space. She wanted stability, until she got bored and craved adventure. She wanted a family that included Crocker’s daughter from his first marriage, but now she was asking for more independence.
He loved her completely and knew that she’d been through hell-including almost being killed by cartel hit men and losing everything when they had torched their home. He and she had even attended several sessions of marriage and grief counseling together, which he’d found somewhat helpful. He wasn’t sure that she had, though, he thought, as he scanned the café again.
Jared’s burner cell phone pinged. He read the coded message and said, “That’s us.”
“When?”
“A-SAP.”
“Where are we meeting?” Crocker asked.
“The Sultanhan Hotel. Room 732. It’s about a seven-minute cab ride from here, or a fifteen-minute walk.”
“If we have time, let’s hump it. I could use the exercise.”
“You got it, friend,” Jared answered. “I’ll exit first. I’m gonna walk down to Torun, turn right, continue to the opposite corner, cross the street, buy a magazine at the newsstand, and turn back. Watch my back and let me know if I’m being followed. I’ll meet you on the corner of Torun Sokak and Mehmet Ağa.”
He was proposing that they run a routine SDR (surveillance detection route), which was standard in clandestine operations on foreign soil. The kid wasn’t sloppy. Crocker liked that.
“Torun Sokak and Mehmet,” he repeated. “Copy.”
“Torun’s that narrow, busy street that runs parallel to the Kabasakal.”
“I remember. They tell you who we’re going to meet at the hotel?” asked Crocker.
“I’ll fill you in on the people as we walk. You ready?”
“Yeah. You go ahead. I’ll pay the check.”
Jared stood, smiled quickly, and hurried off. He was slight and about five nine with an awkward bounce in his step, the result of an injury sustained from an IED attack near the Afghan-Pakistani border. According to what Crocker had heard, he had been through a lot. Assignments in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria, one after the other. A nervous breakdown after a rough op in Pakistan. The pressures on clandestine officers like Jared were intense.
Crocker’s eyes followed him through the windows down the pedestrian walkway in front of the bazaar to the corner. He tossed sixty Turkish liras on the table, exited onto the pedestrian Kabasakal, and saw Jared standing on the corner lighting a cigarette. Nothing unusual so far. Catching sight of Crocker, he zipped up his blue jacket, which was their prearranged signal that all was clear. Then he hung a right.
Both he and Jared were devoid of marks-in other words, anything that might cause them to stand out in a crowd, like long hair, jewelry, or unusual facial hair. With his beard, Jared could easily pass for a Turkish student on his way to the nearby Istanbul International University, and Crocker looked like a very fit tourist-black pants, black polo, black jacket, black Nikes.
The streets and alleys were jammed with people of all ages and ethnicities, merging and parting like a stream.
As Jared disappeared past the far end of the bazaar, two young men emerged from a jewelry stall and followed him. One of them carried a black motorcycle helmet under his arm. He looked determined and focused.
“Trouble,” Crocker muttered under his breath, then reached for his burner cell and texted *87, which meant “surveillance detected.” He thought he had seen one of the young men-the one not carrying the helmet; short and wiry with the pillar of dark curly hair-pass through the café when he and Jared were there.
Had Jared expected this? He didn’t know.
Aware that unfriendly eyes might be watching him, too, Crocker pushed through a group of German tourists to the opening of the bazaar near the perpendicular street, Mehmet Ağa, and turned right. The minarets of the Blue Mosque glistened beyond his shoulder. No way to know if this was routine surveillance by Turkish MiT (their intelligence service) or something more ominous. Istanbul was considered a hot site-active with foreign agents of various affiliations.
He paused among shoppers, worshippers, and tourists to scan the crowd for Jared, who wore a white oxford shirt and a blue zip-up jacket, and to check in the reflection of the glass entrance to a luggage shop to see if anyone was following him. A one-eyed man pushed in front of him, offering to sell cigarettes.
Crocker shook his head, remembering not to make eye contact with a possible pursuer.
“American and French brands, sir. Very gud price.”
“No thanks.”
As Crocker juked around him, he heard a screech of tires from the direction of Torun Sokak, the shout of a driver, followed by a woman’s shrill shout. A burst of pigeons tore into the air. His senses focused even tighter on sounds and movement.
What was that?
Considered a major thoroughfare, Torun Sokak consisted of two narrow lanes, both of which were clogged with traffic. Cars were honking. Drivers and pedestrians were hurrying away from the middle of the street and frantically dialing their cell phones. He caught a glimpse of someone crossing between the cars.
Where’s Jared?
Crocker continued right along the constricted sidewalk to where a group had gathered. A man shouted something in Arabic. An older man pointed at a gray van stopped along the curb. He turned.
Through the open side door he saw two men grappling inside. One of them wore a blue jacket. Jared! He quickly intuited that someone had pushed the young CIA officer into the open door of the van to try to abduct him, and he was resisting.
Without calling for help, Crocker slammed into action. Ducking inside the van, he saw a huge man with a black beard and a spider tattoo on his neck squeezing Jared in a headlock, while a man in the driver’s seat tried to hold something over his mouth. Without saying a word Crocker rammed his fist into the back of the big man’s neck, causing him to grunt and gasp for breath. He punched the man again in the face, and this time the man let go of Jared, who scrambled into the front seat and swung at the driver.
Meanwhile, the big dude turned to reach for a backpack on the metal floor of the van. Fearing that he was about to detonate an explosive device, Crocker grabbed a fistful of his hair, planted his knee in the small of the man’s back, and ripped back his right arm until it popped out of the shoulder socket and the man screamed bloody murder.
The noise filled the tight, hot space and hurt Crocker’s ears. He silenced him with a swift forearm to the temple, which sent the assailant sprawling over the floor and rendered him unconscious, his eyes staring at the ceiling. Taking two hard, quick breaths, he saw Jared with blood streaming down his face from a cut on his forehead. Heads bleed a lot. As a corpsman, he knew that.