“If he gives you any shit, Doc, you’ve got my permission to cut his balls off.”
The shoulders under the doctor’s white coat shook hard. He covered his mouth with a little pink palm and laughed. “I’ll remember that,” he said. “Oh, my. I don’t think it will be necessary. But I’ll remember it for sure.”
That’s when Akil burst through the door looking worried. “Boss, you’d better come see this.”
Crocker stopped him in the hall and whispered, “What?”
“They recovered a little girl’s body from the apartment. She was crushed to death.”
Each of the four men wrestled with the news during the two-hour Pakistan International Airlines flight to Islamabad. It was easy to say, as Crocker had, that the girl was an unfortunate and probably unavoidable casualty of war, and one they had tried very hard to prevent.
But that didn’t stop each man from feeling regret. Mancini and Crocker both had wives and children. Davis’s wife was almost eight months pregnant with their first.
Crocker had a daughter. Plus, he was the one who had made the decision to deploy the VBIED that partially destroyed the building and probably killed the girl.
How old was she?
It didn’t matter. Nor did it help that there were a dozen or so Pakistani and Arabic-looking girls on the flight. Seeing them, he couldn’t help trying to imagine her.
What did she look like? What was her name? Was she related to Zaman? Who was her mother? Would she have made a good wife and mother?
Stop it! This is useless. Stop!
Tom Crocker sat up in his seat and reminded himself that he was fighting a war to preserve the freedom of people to choose the kind of life they wanted to live. It was a simple equation.
Yes, there were degrees of freedom and innumerable other factors and influences. But he held tight to a basic proposition. Namely, that Islamic terrorists like Zaman wanted to impose a highly restrictive and repressive set of religious laws on people all over the world, and they were hell-bent on making it come true. He, as an agent of the United States, was fighting to preserve and extend personal freedom at home and abroad.
Crocker said a silent prayer for the girl and vowed to be even more careful in the future.
Entering the baggage claim area, the SEAL team leader spotted a tall man in a light-colored suit and recognized him immediately.
What’s he want?
It was Lou Donaldson from the CIA station-their main contact in Pakistan.
Shit…
Crocker had worked with Donaldson numerous times before, and didn’t like his superior manner and the way he talked down to people, like a disappointed father or a scolding schoolteacher.
The CIA officer sidled up to him at the first baggage turnstile.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“No Hello? Or How have you been?”
“Follow me.”
Crocker left Davis, Mancini, and Akil to deal with the gear and followed the man out of the terminal to a light-colored SUV with blacked-out windows idling beside the curb.
Despite the fact that the sun was fading and the sky had turned a vivid shade of salmon, the air was still surprisingly hot. Gods with halitosis, or something like that.
Crocker had perspired through his shirt by the time he climbed into the air-conditioned backseat. Two thick-chested men waited inside. One behind the wheel. One in back, Jim Anders, Donaldson’s chief aide and yes-man, whom Crocker had also met before. Lou slid into the passenger seat and slammed the door.
He said, “We’ve got a major fuckup on our hands, thanks to you.”
Crocker chose to remain silent, biting on his anger.
Donaldson craned his long neck past the headrest.
“You hear about the girl?”
“Yes, I did.” Trying to hold it back.
“Six years old. Regrettable. But there’s more.” Donaldson looked quickly at the other two, to add their displeasure to his.
“Zaman. You didn’t get him!”
“What do you mean?”
Donaldson wasn’t finished. “The guys you killed mean nothing. We’ve checked their backgrounds. Minor players. Bodyguards. But the guy we sent you in to get…according to our intel, he was there, and you let him walk.”
“You know that as a fact?”
“Yes, goddammit. AZ was in the fucking apartment!”
Crocker, his blood pressure rising, immediately flashed back to the two women in brown burkas he had let pass.
“What do you have to say for yourself?”
Rage boiled in his stomach. “How can you be absolutely sure he was there?”
“You screwed up, Crocker. You failed!”
“We carried out the mission professionally, thoughtfully, to the best of our abilities. Of course, everything happened very fast. As you know, every mission involves certain-” His words sounded hollow even to himself.
Donaldson cut him off. “The Pakistanis are fucking irate! They’re pretty damn sure that we were involved.”
“Do they have evidence? Because we were careful not to leave anything behind.”
“Not yet.”
“Then that’s not my problem.”
Donaldson turned to his cohorts-Anders and the driver. “Did you hear that? Not his problem. Fuck.”
Crocker struggled to stay calm. He said, “Look, I did see two women in burkas as I was engaged in a firefight on the first floor. One was holding what I assumed to be a baby. The other was leading a four-year-old boy by the hand. I let them pass and assume they escaped the building unharmed.”
“Piss-poor decision, Crocker! Jesus Christ! I bet one of those women was AZ.” The tall CIA officer punched the back of his seat.
“In the heat of battle I wasn’t able to stop and question them.”
“It didn’t occur to you that one of them could have been Zaman?”
“Like I said, this happened in the heat of battle.”
“So?”
“I couldn’t see their faces clearly, but neither of them appeared to have a beard.”
“Maybe he shaved the fucking thing off!”
“Your intel described him as bearded.”
“This is a goddamn disaster!”
“He’s on the run. We’ll get him. I’ll make sure of that.”
“No, Crocker. You missed your chance.”
The SEAL team leader was determined to extract something positive. “What about the laptops we captured?”
“What about them?”
“You find anything on the laptops that might be useful in tracking Zaman down?”
“Nothing so far.”
“Nothing?”
Jim Anders spoke up for the first time. “Seems he liked to download images of half-naked blondes in cages.”
“Blondes?”
“Yeah, blondes.”
“Does the name Syrena mean anything to you?” Crocker asked.
“Why?”
“I saw it on something that was burned in half that looked like an official invoice.”
“How was it spelled?”
“S-y-r-e-n-a.”
Donaldson looked at Jim Anders, who said, “Syrena, spelled s-y-r-e-n-a, was the name of a Polish sedan that went out of production in 1983.”
“It might be important,” Crocker said.
“Thanks, Crocker,” Donaldson countered snidely. “We’ll keep our eyes out for old Polish cars.”
“What about Zaman? Any idea where he is now?”
“Wherever he is, he’s probably planning more attacks against Americans.”
“I want another shot at him,” Crocker said, looking Donaldson in the eye.
“Go climb your mountain. Expect to make contact with a foreign national, six foot one, longish blond hair, early forties. His name is Mikael Klausen.”
“What’s he want?”
“He has something he wants to discuss with you. We’ll talk when you get back.”
Chapter Five
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
– Samuel Beckett
Leaves me feeling like a fool, Crocker thought, referring to the pencil-pushing, risk-averse Agency asshole Donaldson. Calls the mission a fuckup…