“Yeah, boss. Balls to the wall!”
He reached Nieves as his body started to convulse. There was nothing he could do except clear his tongue with one hand so he didn’t choke on it, and wrap the rug on the floor around him to keep him warm.
No more casualties, he said to himself, praying to God and remembering the recent string of rotten luck. I can’t allow another one.
He punched one of the emergency numbers Lane had programmed into the cell phone.
A smooth woman’s voice came on the line. “Who’s this?”
“Crocker. I’m with Black Cell at the FBI safe house in Zapopan. It’s been hit. Four people are dead.”
“What do you mean, it’s been hit?” the CIA station duty officer asked.
“You heard me. Find Jenson and tell him Crocker called and the mission went to shit. We just got back to the safe house and found Lane, Steele, and two others dead in the living room. Decapitated.”
“Lane? David Lane?”
“Yes!”
The woman on the other end gasped, “Oh, my God!”
“It’s awful.”
“David Lane?”
“Yes.”
“That was you who battled the police in Puerto del Hiero?” she asked.
“Yes,” Crocker answered. “We were ambushed by Federales. We’re back at the safe house now. I’ve got two severely injured men with me who need emergency medical assistance. I’m not going to let them die. How long is it going to take you to get a team out here?”
“I’ll have to check.”
“Where are you?”
“Mexico City. Hold on.”
She came back half a minute later and said, “Twenty minutes, maybe less.”
“They’ll be dead by then,” Crocker responded. “Is there a hospital nearby?”
“You’re in Zapopan now?”
“Correct.”
“Hospital San Javier is off Calle Parra about three minutes away.”
“I need directions.”
She transmitted them over the phone, and Crocker scribbled them down-a right at the first intersection and two lefts past a big park. “We’re going there now,” he said.
“How?”
“We’ve got an M706 that we took from the Federal Police.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Have your people meet us at the hospital. Call the consul, the ambassador, the mayor, anyone you think can help. We’re going in armed and the Mexicans are on our tail.”
“That’s ill advised. Let me get Mr. Jenson on the line.”
“Goodbye.”
Crocker radioed Suárez and Mancini and asked them if they saw any police activity on the street.
“Not yet,” Mancini reported.
“Any sign of Ramón?”
“Negative.”
“Okay,” Crocker said. “I want you to hurry back here and help reload Nieves and Davis onto the 706.”
“Aye-aye.”
Through the screen porch door, he watched the Black Hawk continue to burn out at the far end of the swimming pool as the men ran toward him.
They reloaded the two injured men; then Mancini climbed into the driver’s seat and asked, “Where’re we going?”
Crocker read the directions. Five minutes later, he pointed to the INGRESO DE EMERGENCIAS sign and Mancini steered the metal beast up to the entrance and stopped in front of a circular green-glassed atrium.
Seeing the armored car, the guard at the entrance dropped the M-1 he was holding and ran into the two-story hospital. The four-man construction crew that was repaving an outdoor staircase watched openmouthed as the grime-covered Americans stepped out of the vehicle, armed and ready. Crocker was still bare-chested. He and Suárez were bleeding from superficial wounds to their faces and backs.
Suárez took charge, grabbing orderlies and shouting instructions in Spanish.
Medical personnel wearing light-green tunics scrambled. Gurneys and nurses appeared. The wounded men were wheeled inside.
A weary Crocker turned to Mancini and said, “Relieve Akil in the M706. You and Suárez guard the door. Don’t let anyone in or out.”
“Looks like we’re taking the whole hospital hostage.”
“If that’s what it takes to save our men, yes.”
Chapter Twelve
Common sense is not so common.
– Voltaire
An hour later, Crocker stood as he watched a young Mexican doctor pass through swinging double doors and remove the white surgical mask from his face. He squinted, expecting the worst.
“The American consul and governor of the state of Jalisco are in the waiting room and want to talk to you,” the tall doctor said, looking at the scratches that had bled through the short-sleeved medical shirt a nurse had given Crocker. “Maybe we should clean you up first.”
“Not necessary,” Crocker answered, peering into the man’s small brown eyes.
He stood at least an inch taller than Crocker, who was six two. The sterling-silver plate on the front pocket of his white coat read RUBÉN WERNER. Crocker’s first wife, who was a German teacher, had told him that Werner meant “uncertain” in German.
“How are my men?” he asked.
“The blond gentleman…”
“Davis.”
“I don’t know if I should be talking to you about this.”
“Why not?”
“Because this is an extraordinary situation, and one that I find deplorable.”
“I don’t give a shit what you think. Tell me about my men.”
The doctor tightened his jaw and nodded. “Mr. Davis,” he pronounced slowly. “His collarbone was badly fractured. We’ve cleaned the wound and set the bone for the time being, but he’s probably going to need a bone graft of some kind.”
“When?”
“I’ve called a specialist from Mexico City who will arrive tomorrow.”
Crocker had spent the last sixty minutes thinking ahead and dealing with hard realities. He knew that the hospital was surrounded by Mexican police and army units that were threatening to raid the building.
“Davis can’t be moved?” he asked.
“Not for the next several days, until the injury is set properly and there’s no risk of infection.”
“What about Nieves?” Crocker asked.
“Nieves is more problematic. As you know, he lost a great deal of blood. We’ve given him transfusions, so his vital signs and stats are improving. But he’s still in a coma.”
Crocker nodded. At least he wasn’t dead.
He said, “Thanks, Doc. I appreciate what you’ve done.”
He followed Dr. Werner down a long hall, his dirty, bloody hiking boots echoing off the pale-blue walls. Nurses and orderlies poked their heads out of rooms and hallways to steal a glance at him. He was totally focused on getting his men out of there and continuing to pursue the Jackal. And he was very aware that the last hours of Lisa and Olivia Clark’s lives were passing by, if they weren’t dead already.
Crocker was so tired that he started to hallucinate. The nurse in the room to his right turned into his mother. Several orderlies standing ahead turned into schoolgirls in uniforms.
Staring at them, he remembered a mission he had gone on with Clark and Ritchie during the First Gulf War. It involved taking out six armed MA2-543 SCUD Transporter/Erector/Launcher missile installations hidden in the garden of a girls’ high school.
They had dyed their beards and mustaches black, parachuted onto a soccer field about a quarter mile away from the school in the middle of the night, taken out the six Iraqi guards, and disabled both the vehicles and the Shabab-2 engines of the thirty-four-foot-long Al-Hussein rockets.
Mission accomplished, they had retreated to an abandoned chemical plant north of the city and hidden in a drainage pipe, where Clark was bitten by a desert horned viper-one of several very lethal snakes native to Iraq.
Crocker had elevated Clark’s wrist, cleansed the wound, tying a not-too-tight tourniquet three inches above the wrist, and applied a Sawyer venom extractor he kept in his EM kit, which looked like a large yellow syringe.