“What mission?”
“You’ll soon find out.”
“Seemed like a great guy.”
“Dynamic, yeah. Smart, fun. A huge, huge loss.”
As Anders was heating up, Crocker started to calm down.
“All right,” he said. “If we’re going through with the meeting, I’m going to have to borrow a shirt.”
“The timing sucks, I know. But I’ve been led to believe that our source is bringing intelligence that needs to be acted on immediately.”
“The darker the better. The shirt, I mean.” Crocker’s wardrobe leaned toward black, but this time he had a reason that went beyond convenience. A dark color would hide the blood from his back if it leaked through.
“Right.”
Anders finished helping Crocker clean his back and secure the bandages. He looked at his watch again when they were done. “They’re scheduled to arrive in fifteen minutes. I’d better tell Janice to order the drinks and snacks.”
“They?”
“A Syrian businessman and his assistant.”
“Go ahead. I’ll wait.” He thought of something and grabbed Anders’s wrist. “What are you going to tell them about Jared?”
“Jared? Good question. I don’t know if they’re expecting him. I’ll wait for him to ask.”
“What’s his name?”
“Manshir Talab. He’s a friend of ours.”
“You mean he’s a source.”
Anders nodded.
“Do we have any friends in this part of the world?” Crocker asked.
“Good question.”
“I mean people we can trust with our lives?”
“I can’t answer that definitively. I’d better go.”
He left. Crocker had no appetite, but he was thirsty. So he twisted open the bottle of Evian he found near the sink and sat on the edge of the tub drinking and remembering his Black Cell/SEAL colleague Akil, who had arrived with him yesterday.
He should be here by now, Crocker thought as he checked his damaged cell.
He punched out a text to Akil. “Do a SDR. Where r u?”
Anders returned with a white T-shirt and a light-blue oxford that was almost identical to the one he was wearing. He didn’t look rested and relaxed anymore. “This is the best I could find,” he said, as if the weight of the world had fallen on his broad shoulders.
Not dark or black, but it would do. “Did you inform Akil about the meeting?” asked Crocker.
“Akil?”
“My colleague Akil. The big Egyptian-American guy. You asked me to bring him because of his language skills. Remember?”
“Yes, of course,” Anders answered. “I texted him about forty minutes ago.”
“He respond?”
“Yes. He’s on his way.”
As Crocker buttoned the shirt, he worried. What if whatever organization that attacked me and Jared is lying in wait for Akil, too?
He turned to Anders and asked, “How do I look?”
“The same, except maybe a little more buttoned-up than usual.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Why?”
Crocker pushed past him. “No reason. I think I’ll wait for Akil downstairs.”
“Why?” Dr. Mathews had asked him during their second counseling session.
“Why what?”
He wanted to dislike her but couldn’t. She had a gentle manner and didn’t come across as judgmental. In the photos of her with her daughter, she appeared to be a kind, loving mother. No man in any of them.
“You’ve chosen a very unique and extreme way to make a living,” she said. “I’m sure you know that.”
“I do.”
“Have you ever asked yourself why you chose to become a SEAL?” she asked. That’s all they had told her. She didn’t know that he was a member of ST-6 or about the existence of Black Cell. Only a handful of people in the CIA and the White House did.
Crocker looked at Holly, to his left, who lowered her head and wouldn’t meet his eyes. He wanted to say that he resented being here and the doctor’s last question. He wasn’t the type of person who liked to dwell on psychological motivations. He did what he did, and understood why.
Instead of snarling back, he answered evenly, “I was a very energetic kid. I’ve always been drawn to adventure and danger. The town where I grew up in Massachusetts was full of motorcycle gangs and drugs. My young friends and I were drifting into that life. I started working out and running, and joined the navy at eighteen. From the navy, I passed the test to get onto SEAL teams. It turned out to suit me perfectly. I’m very grateful for the life it’s provided me. And I love what I do.”
Dr. Mathews nodded. “It’s enormously satisfying to find a profession that suits you and gives you a sense of purpose, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” he said, liking her even better.
Now he sat in one of the big, silk-covered armchairs in the lobby, wondering about Jared’s family and how they would take the news about their son. Death, especially when it happened to someone he knew and liked, always affected him profoundly, drawing him deep inside himself.
That’s where he was now, considering the unfathomable mystery of life and death, and how someone so vital and intelligent could vanish in a second, leaving behind an emotional vacuum and a lifeless shell.
Crocker was thinking about the sacrifice Jared had made for his country, while most young people his age were playing video games and couldn’t find Syria on a map, when a tall, dapper-looking man strode through the lobby with a very attractive young woman by his side. She was dark-eyed and put together. His eyes followed her to the elevator. She walked as if she expected to be watched, the fabric of her dark skirt pulled tight against her full behind.
Realizing that he still hadn’t heard from Akil, he reached for his burner cell phone and called him again. The call went directly to voice mail; he left a message: “Call me, knucklehead!”
Two minutes later his cell pinged with a text from Anders: “They’re here! Soon as u return, we’ll start.”
“Waiting for A,” he punched back.
“Do we need him?” came Anders’s reply.
The question annoyed him. “Want 2 make sure he’s ok. B there in 5.”
Crocker called Akil’s burner cell again. No answer.
He was getting anxious. The loss of another teammate would be too much. Looking again at his watch, he started to think that he’d been around so much death and destruction in the past year that maybe he was cursed. His teammate Ritchie had died in a helo crash near the Golan Heights. He’d been working with four FBI and DEA agents who were beheaded in Mexico. His teammate Mancini’s brother was shot through the front door by cartel assassins-the same ones who had killed his daughter’s friend Leslie. Now Jared. A lousy track record, for sure.
Another ten minutes passed before his cell pinged again.
It was Anders asking, “WTF are you?”
“I’m still waiting for A. Hold on.”
“This is getting awkward,” texted back Anders. “Maybe we should start without him.”
Crocker got up and started pacing in front of the window that overlooked the entrance. His loyalty to the guys on his team was immense. Losing Ritchie had been like losing a brother. How many times since then had he dreamt of Ritchie running through the woods beside him, or imagining him with that mischievous grin on his face?
A white Mini Cooper with a red stripe down the roof and hood pulled to the curb. Through the window he saw a long-haired blonde at the wheel. She looked like a Scandinavian model. Gorgeous, but too boney and bloodless to be his type. Still, she caught his attention. He started to wonder why she was stopping in front of the hotel, and what she was doing in Istanbul. Suddenly a smiling, seemingly carefree Akil came into the picture, emerging from the passenger’s side, bounding over to the driver’s open window, and kissing her, long and hard.
WTF!
She pulled him close. Akil whispered something in the young blonde’s ear that made her blush. She waved, put the little car in gear, and sped off in what might have been a scene from a James Bond movie.