One, two, three times, quickly. He felt the driver’s head snap back and heard a groan.
Then turned immediately and fired two shots through the open front door into the back of the thug who had occupied the passenger seat.
The punk screamed something Crocker didn’t understand and fell to the ground.
Simultaneously the guy who’d been sitting in back directed a salvo of bullets that tore into the rear of the front seat. He was firing wildly through the open rear door of the car.
Crocker countered, slithering out the open passenger-side door onto the ground and shooting upward into the guy’s crotch. The thug squealed like a cat on fire, twisted and jumped, holding what was left of his balls, then crumpled along the rear wheel of the car, writhing in pain.
Rough justice.
High on adrenaline, Crocker pulled himself up into a crouch, then checked to see that the driver was still unconscious. The other two were dead.
He quickly crawled over to Akil, who lay on his side, and turned him over, pulling the tape from his mouth and feeling for a pulse along his neck. Using his teeth, Crocker ripped the tape from his own wrists, then quickly cleared Akil’s mouth and throat with a finger sweep, pulling out a glob of yellow bile and mucus. His colleague coughed up more, started breathing freely, and slowly came to.
Thank God.
Crocker found a bottle of Evian in a pocket on the passenger’s door and quickly washed Akil’s mouth and face. The smell was awful.
“What happened?” the Egyptian American asked, his right eye swollen nearly shut. “Where the fuck are we?”
“Heaven. How do you like it?”
“Looks like a fucking nightmare.”
“How do you feel?”
“My head is on fire. My face aches like shit.”
“You’re still complaining. That’s good.”
Akil looked around him, taking in the bullet holes in the car and the dead bodies on the ground, the groaning driver still in the car with blood dripping from his mouth. “You did all this yourself?”
“You pussied out on me, so I had no choice.”
Crocker was on his feet, quickly taking in the situation. So far no other vehicles had stopped. The BMW conveniently blocked the view of the dead bodies from anyone passing on the road. It was parked in a dirt turnaround. Ten feet farther the land dropped down into dark brush. There were no lights nearby, only a long deserted slope to the rocky shore.
It would be easy enough to hide the bodies. But he had to deal with the driver first.
He found the roll of duct tape on the floor of the backseat, covered the driver’s mouth, and taped together his ankles and hands. Then he slapped his face until he came to.
“Hey! Asshole! You remember me?”
Panic flashed in the man’s dark eyes.
Crocker pointed the Makarov at him and called Akil.
“Tell this piece of shit he’s going to take us to Rafiq. Tell him otherwise, I’ll shoot him in the stomach and let him bleed. Tell him it will be a slow and painful death.”
Akil did, dramatically, in Arabic.
The driver started nodding right away.
Meanwhile, Crocker dragged the bodies into the brush so they were out of sight. Then he circled around to the driver’s side, shoved the driver over so he was straddling the console, and slid behind the wheel. He made sure Akil, in the passenger seat, had a loaded pistol ready.
He stuck one of the other two he had recovered into the waistband of his pants, and stashed the third under the front seat.
“Pull the tape off this asshole’s mouth. Tell him if he screams or says one fucking word that doesn’t directly answer a question, you’ll shoot him in the balls.”
“Roger.”
Crocker hit the gas. Soon they were eating up the asphalt.
The driver started hyperventilating.
“Shoot the motherfucker!”
“Boss, not so fast. Give him a chance to talk.”
The driver pointed ahead and started speaking in Arabic.
“He says the house where Rafiq is staying is down a road before we reach Toulon.”
“Where?”
A few miles later, the driver directed them north onto a dirt road that wove around a grove of olive trees in a gully between some hills.
“He says the house is maybe two hundred yards ahead. He begs us not to kill him. He has a wife and baby son.”
“Tough shit.”
“He wants to cooperate.”
“Ask him how many men are with Rafiq.”
Akil did, and came back with the reply, “He doesn’t know.”
“Tell him to start praying.”
“Boss, he doesn’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
Crocker eased the car to a stop under some trees. “Tape his mouth shut again, then tape him securely to the passenger seat.”
“All right.”
Crocker ran ahead to recon the area, looked around the bend, and returned.
“It’s a one-story farmhouse with a barn-type structure in back. There’s a couple of lights on in the house. A jeep and a Nissan sedan parked out front.”
“Sounds like we’re outnumbered. What’s the plan?”
“Plan, my ass. Just go with the flow. We want Rafiq, alive if possible. And any intel we can find. Let’s go!”
Some would have called it a suicide mission, but Crocker didn’t care. He was amped up to the max. Though he was used to facing danger, most of the risks he took were calculated ones. When SEALs took on a mission, they usually planned thoroughly and rehearsed. It was rare that they would enter a potentially life-threatening situation on the fly, but it did happen.
Crocker couldn’t stop. All the anger and frustration that had built up during the last couple of weeks was about to burst out of him.
They moved quickly and quietly along the edge of the little dirt road. Owls hooted in the distance. Then a dog barked a warning.
Fuck.
As they drew within a hundred yards a second dog started up, barking deeper than the first. Sounded like a hound of some sort. The two dogs were near a porch by the side of the house.
He made out the sloping roof and the side of the structure through some thick bushes.
“You want me to silence them?” Akil whispered.
“Too fucking late for that.”
“What do we do now?”
It was the oldest trick in the books, one that Crocker had first seen as a kid watching a John Wayne western. When they got within twenty yards of the house, he picked up a big rock and threw it into the bushes on the right, near the dogs, which went ballistic, barking their heads off.
He threw another, and saw people moving in the house.
Crocker turned to Akil and whispered, “You hide behind those trees over there.” He pointed to the right. “When the bastards come out, start shooting. One shot at a time. Draw it out. Occupy them. Give me time to circle ’round the other side of the house. I’m going in.”
“Roger that.”
Akil took off one way, Crocker went the other.
Over the barking, he heard a door slamming and men’s angry voices shouting in Arabic and French. Then he heard the first shot from Akil’s nine-millimeter.
His adrenaline spiked further.
Entry was easy. An open window on the left side of the house (the opposite side from where the porch was located). All he had to do was punch in the screen, then yank it out.
In less than a minute he was standing in a bedroom, looking down at a king-sized mattress with rumpled sheets. Saw a stack of porn videos, a VCR, a TV, a soccer ball, an AK-47 propped in the corner.
No computers or other potential sources of intel, but the AK was his now. Loaded and ready, thank you very much.
The place was smaller than it appeared from outside. Two more little bedrooms off a hallway. One bathroom with a running toilet. All dark, unoccupied. Then another narrow hallway that led to a kitchen and a living room.
The living room lights blazed.
The racket from outside the front of the house was loud. Dogs barking furiously, men shouting, weapons discharging.