She shouted at Henri to gun the engine and leave fast.
He turned to her and asked what had happened.
Looking past his shoulder, she saw Raj running toward them, pulling at his gray sweatpants. She thought he looked pathetic, then realized he was running into the path of the car. “Watch out!” she shouted.
In a moment of panic, she grabbed hold of the steering wheel with her left hand and turned it sharply to avoid hitting Raj head-on. The front right fender grazed his left hip and knocked him off his feet and into the side of the building. In the headlights, she saw his head hit the brick wall and shatter.
Two days later, she read in the Washington Post that Raj Malik Gupta had been found dead-“the victim of a suspected drug-related hit-and-run.” The D.C. police never questioned her or Henri and, as far as she knew, never traced the Mercedes.
Henri dismissed it as an accident. But the truth was that they had left Raj bleeding to death in the parking lot and fled the scene. Had they called an ambulance immediately, he might have been saved.
Now she pictured Raj’s bulbous nose and big limpid eyes. He had been young, greedy, and stupid, but he hadn’t deserved to die.
Remembering his sour stench, her stomach clenched like she was going to be sick. She had thought over the years that somehow the past might come back to haunt her. But she had never imagined that it would happen like this.
Even if I deserve this, my daughter doesn’t. I’ve got to save Olivia. She needs me. I’ve got to be strong!
Crocker had suffered pangs of conscience, too. But they weren’t as deep, or as active. Part of that had to do with the role he played, defending his country, and his training.
He worked hard to be an honest man. And during quiet moments like this, he sensed that the lives he had taken in the line of duty had left a dark spot on his soul. When he thought about the young men he had trained and led, and all the young men and women in the armed forces who had killed others in combat, he knew that the emotional scars would stay with them forever.
There was a spiritual price a warrior had to pay, and Crocker saw honor in that, not shame. You had to be brave enough to look the horror of war in the face and acknowledge the shortcomings of mankind. Then suck it up and move on.
He faced forward and straightened his seat as the American Airlines pilot announced that the three-and-a-half-hour flight from Norfolk was about to end at Dallas-Fort Worth airport. After a two-hour layover, he and the other four SEALs would catch another two-and-a-half-hour flight to Guadalajara. They’d arrive around 1900 hours local, less than two days from the kidnappers’ deadline.
Maybe because this was their first mission without Ritchie, the guys on the team seemed uncharacteristically quiet and lost in their own thoughts. Mancini sat behind Crocker reading a book titled What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. Davis beside him watched Braveheart on his laptop.
Suárez and Akil, across the aisle, were the only ones talking. Crocker heard Suárez ask Akil if he was Muslim and heard Akil answer, “Yeah. So what?”
“You don’t have a problem fighting the war on terror against Muslim extremists?” Suárez asked.
“No,” Akil answered. “Just like you’re part Mexican, and we’re on our way to that country now to kick the asses of some nasty mofos there.”
“What I’m talking about is different,” Suárez explained.
His skin was browner than Akil’s, and he had brilliant black eyes and a wide face with a scar that ran from his cheekbone to his chin-the result of a diving accident during training.
“You’re talking about nationality,” Suárez said. “I’m talking about religious beliefs.”
“You Christian?” the taller, broader Akil asked.
From across the aisle, Crocker watched Suárez make the sign of the cross. “Yes,” he answered, “the Lord Jesus Christ is my savior.”
“Then how can you be in the business of annihilating our enemies when Jesus told his followers to turn the other cheek?”
It was a good question, Crocker thought. Suárez responded by reciting Matthew 5:39: “‘But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.’”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” argued Akil.
“The Scripture also says in Exodus 22:2, ‘If a thief be found breaking up, and be smitten that he die, there shall no blood be shed for him.’”
“So…”
“To me that means one has the right to defend his home, his family, and his country,” Suárez explained. “Because aren’t the terrorists we fight against the same as thieves who are trying to steal our freedoms and liberties?”
Akil grinned. “Maybe.”
“Or maybe not,” Suárez mused out loud. “I ask myself those questions all the time and pray for an answer.”
“Do you get one?”
“Sometimes.”
Crocker liked Suárez more already. He wanted strong men with consciences who understood the personal and spiritual sacrifices they were making, not stone-cold killers and sociopaths.
And he hoped that Suárez and Akil were getting off on the right foot but wasn’t sure when he exited the plane beside Akil, who described the new team member as “a nice guy with shit for brains.”
Crocker said, “Don’t be so judgmental, and cut the new guy some slack.”
“I’ll try.”
After the dull sameness of the plane cabin and the stale air, the sights and sounds of the Dallas-Fort Worth airport terminal woke him up. Tall, buxom blondes; an old couple holding hands while being pushed in matching wheelchairs; an overweight family sitting around a huge bucket of fries; anxious young men in business suits selling stuff over cell phones; a group of smiling young recruits in camouflage fatigues boarding a flight to North Carolina; a couple of college guys in shorts and flip-flops carrying Mexican sombreros; women in power suits and patent-leather shoes pulling black carry-ons; kids dressed all in black covered with tattoos.
These are the people we’re defending, he said to himself with a smile.
Carrying his Starbucks double espresso and Greek yogurt, he approached Suárez, Davis, and Akil. The last two were sitting near the gate howling with laughter.
“What are you two baboons laughing about?” Crocker asked.
Davis: “Suárez was just telling us that his ex-wife used to ask him to piss on her in the shower.”
“What for?”
“I’m not kidding, chief. She used to wipe it all over her face and body like this. She said it was good for her skin.”
“Where is she now?” Akil asked.
“She’s living outside Albuquerque making jewelry.”
Akiclass="underline" “Next time I pass through, I’ll look her up.”
Their banter was interrupted by a PA announcement informing them that their flight’s gate was being moved from concourse A to C, which meant gathering their stuff and taking the Skylink. They walked in a group, dressed casually in jeans, polo shirts, and hoodies, looking like athletes.
Aside from Mancini, with his perpetual scowl and numerous tattoos, they seemed like a genial group of guys. Only if you looked carefully would you notice the confidence with which they carried themselves and the intensity in their eyes.
Approximately three hours later, the Boeing 767-200 they rode in cut through the smog and low-lying clouds and landed at Don Miguel Hidalgo y Castilla International Airport in Guadalajara.
As they stood in line at Immigration, Mancini explained that the modern steel-and-glass structure they stood in had been named in honor of Miguel Gregorio Antonio Ignacio Hidalgo y Castilla Gallaga Mandarte Villaseñor, who was a priest born of pure Spanish blood. Father Hidalgo was so shocked by the poverty he saw in his rural Mexican town of Dolores in the early 1800s that he marched throughout the territory preaching revolt against the Spanish and eventually raising an army of a hundred thousand campesinos armed with sticks, stones, and machetes.