Pressed against the wall, he hoped Akil could hold them off long enough.
Crocker watched a little man in shorts run into the kitchen with an AK slung over his shoulder and quickly turn off something that was burning on the stove.
He stepped through the doorway and downed the man with two shots to the chest and one to the head.
Mozambique! It was the name of the shooting drill he’d practiced thousands of times. Every time he used it on a human target, he was pleased at how quickly and effectively it worked.
He checked for doors that might lead to a basement or other rooms but found none.
Then he crossed to the stove, picked up the pan of liver, bacon, and whatever else had been frying in it and dumped everything on the living room carpet. He emptied the rest of the plastic liter jug of cooking oil over that and the wooden floor, and using a towel lit from the stove, set the whole mess on fire.
The carpet and floor ignited quickly. As Crocker crouched in the hallway and waited, flames spread from the rug to the curtains to the walls.
Pay attention, guys. Your house is on fire!
It didn’t take long. A minute or two at most.
As the SEAL team leader was starting to roast from the heat, three men entered and ran to the kitchen, where one of them grabbed a small fire extinguisher from the wall while the other two starting filling pots with water.
He rose from his crouch and didn’t stop firing until all three men stopped twitching on the floor.
So much for the plan to take Rafiq alive.
Since he still heard shooting from the direction of the porch, he doubled back, climbed out the window he’d come in, and snuck around the rear of the house past the Kawasaki Ninja he’d first seen only hours before. Seemed like a lifetime ago now.
Above him the roof started cracking and giving way. He peered around the corner. A man in boxer shorts was firing an AK in the direction of Akil. Another was reloading his weapon and backing away from the house.
He took them both down with three-round bursts from their own AK-47, then waited as their screams echoed through the little valley. Their agonies were overtaken by the sound of the house cracking and burning. The dogs grew quiet. The downed men were silent. The two vehicles still waited in the driveway.
He checked behind him. Nothing. No one. Then turned to the barnlike structure he’d seen off to the right and behind the house. A small lake stood behind it.
The barn was actually a large garage with a room on top. No lights illuminated either floor.
He was about to call Akil when he heard something moving, and turned and saw a tall, dark figure run from the garage toward the lake.
Crocker stuck the Makarov in the waistband of his pants and, holding the AK ready, took off past the garage, down a gravelly path that led to the lake.
The tall figure stopped at the water and looked back at Crocker. He was holding something across his bare chest, a pistol clutched in his free hand.
“Rafiq!” the American shouted. It was a hunch.
“Go to hell,” the man snarled back in English.
“Rafiq, it’s over. Drop your weapon. Hit the ground!”
“Never!”
The tall man lifted whatever he was holding over his head, tossed it into the lake, then started to run into the bushes like a rat.
Crocker thought he might have a chance to take him alive but wasn’t about to let him get away.
“Rafiq, stop!”
The rat kept running. It took three shots from Crocker to take him down-one to the back of the thigh, two into his butt. One of the bullets had severed a major artery. He was bleeding profusely when the American reached him.
“Rafiq, where’s Zaman?”
“I’m a businessman. I don’t know anyone named Zaman.”
“Tell me what you know about Zaman.”
“You’ll be dead soon,” the Arab man groaned. “My friends will kill you.”
“They already tried. Tell me where he is.”
“You…don’t…understand…”
Those were his last words.
Crocker left him there and hurried to the garage. He was looking for intel-computers, flash drives, notebooks, letters, anything that could potentially help the Agency locate AZ.
The bottom floor was filled with junk-an old boat, garden equipment, cardboard boxes. He was ripping through the cartons-which contained cans of motor oil and plastic bottles filled with water-when he heard something moving above.
Along the far side of the garage, he climbed a rickety wooden stairway to the second floor. The door was unlocked. The moment he opened it, he was hit with the stench, a thick combination of disinfectant and human excrement.
Several strange pieces of equipment stood in the central room-a weird-looking bench with straps and a harness of some sort. Plastic buckets on the floor. Paper towels on a bench. An old metal desk in one corner. Bottles of pills on top of it. A syringe.
What the hell is this?
He saw six little wooden cells like cages along the far wall. Then heard a whimper, like a dog’s.
Strange place to keep dogs.
Looking through the metal bars of the first two cages, he saw they were empty. Dirty mattresses lay on the floor. In the third, he made out something pale. It was a bare human leg, thin and shapely like a young girl’s.
“Hello. Can you hear me?” he whispered through the bars. The person didn’t move, though he could make out breathing.
Moving to the next, he saw a naked girl covered with what looked like dirt, feces, urine, and bruises. Judging from her eyes, she’d been drugged.
Jesus Christ!
The cages contained four women in total, scared and half alive. More like animals than human beings.
“I’m an American. I’ve come to save you,” Crocker said in a whisper.
All he got back were whimpers.
“Do any of you speak English?”
They didn’t answer.
He tried again. “The keys. Do any of you know where the keys are? Tell me where the keys are, and I’ll let you out.”
As smoke from the house drifted in the open door, they hid their heads and moaned-except for one bold girl, tall and thin, with matted hair, who stared at Crocker defiantly, then pulled herself up and spat through the bars.
At least one of them had some fight left in her.
Crocker wiped off the spittle that had landed on the front of his shirt. “I’m an American,” he said again. “I’ve come to save you.”
“Don’t touch me! I’ll kill you!” she screeched back in heavily accented English.
“I’m not going to touch you. I want to get you out of here.”
“You’re a liar. A fucking liar! I know what you want!”
“I’m not lying to you. Listen to me. Listen…”
Her delicate long nose sniffed the air. “Is something burning?”
“The house. I set it on fire.”
Her expression changed to curiosity. “Where are you from?”
“USA.”
“You’re American.”
“Yes, I am.”
She nodded and scratched the skin under her pale right breast. “I have a cousin who is studying veterinary medicine at George Mason University.”
“That’s not far from me,” he whispered back.
She grimaced, pointed past his shoulder, and said, “The keys, I think, are there, in the desk. Try the top drawer.”
“Thanks.”
He heard a creak on the stairs and froze. Holding a finger up to his mouth, he hid against the wall near the door.
The footsteps got closer.
The girl he had been talking to recoiled to the back of her cage and hid.
He readied the AK and waited, his heart pounding hard.
“Boss,” someone whispered. “Boss, are you up here?”
It was Akil.
Chapter Twelve
And whosoever shed man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.
– Il Duce, The Boondock Saints