Hunt the Scorpion

by Don Mann

  Mustafa and Volman both lurched forward and smacked the windshield. The former started bleeding from his nose; the latter held his head and moaned. Crocker climbed over the seat to check them out. Neither wound looked serious.

  “Hold your head back,” he told Mustafa. “Squeeze here,” showing him where to pinch his fingers near the bridge of his nose.

  Volman complained that he couldn’t find his glasses and couldn’t see without them. Crocker pushed Mustafa to the back seat, got behind the wheel, shut off the headlights, and gunned the engine.

  “Direct me to the hotel,” he shouted.

  “I told you, I can’t see.”

  “Help me out, Mustafa.”

  “Straight ahead, sir.”

  He tried several times, but couldn’t shift the vehicle out of second gear. Secondary explosions lit up the sky.

  “What’s the problem?” Davis asked.

  “The clutch is fucked. Keep your heads down.”

  Volman said, “The Japanese embassy is nearby. We can find shelter there.”

  “Forget the Japanese embassy. Direct me to the hotel.”

  “Stay on this road, sir.”

  Closing in on the Mediterranean, they entered a cloud of orange-gray smoke. Directly ahead of them a fire was burning. Flames shot up above the buildings and turned the sea beyond a sinister shade of red.

  Off the Corniche, down a side street, Crocker saw the shattered front of what looked like a modern eight-story hotel. Three high marble arches formed what remained of the entrance.

  “I smell smoke,” Volman said, poking his head up over the dashboard.

  “It’s the Sheraton, sir,” Mustafa offered. “Looks like it’s been attacked.”

  To the right, past smaller white guesthouses and palms, Crocker saw a marina.

  “Turn this thing around and get us out of here!” Volman shouted.

  Crocker drove within a hundred feet of the hotel entrance and stopped. Cars were fleeing the hotel, steering wildly. A Mercedes with a shattered windshield crashed into another Mercedes in front of it. Crocker pulled up on the sidewalk and parked. “Let’s get out here, Davis. Stick together.”

  “What are you doing? What about us?”

  “Wait here,” Crocker said to Volman and Mustafa. “We’ll be back.”

  They ran, squeezing past cars and frenzied people streaming past. Flames rose to the left around some palm trees near the entrance. Crocker saw the burning carcass of what looked like it had once been a delivery truck near a checkpoint at the end of the block. Flames rose from several other overturned cars nearby. One had landed hood-first in a fountain.

  The explosion had left a gaping hole in one corner of the building. The place looked like some huge creature had taken a bite out of it. There was shattered glass everywhere. People moaning, screaming, calling out names, asking for help in various languages—English, Dutch, Arabic, French.

  Dozens poured out of the smoking structure, stepping over burnt bodies, walking, stumbling, and running in all directions. Some were injured, others looked perfectly fine except for the horrified looks on their faces. Others stared ahead blankly, like the man in a suit who staggered by with blood running down his face, calmly smoking a cigarette.

  The torso of a uniformed man lay in the street. His arms and legs had been blown off. His head was a gory mess of brains and shattered bone.

  Crocker expected sirens but heard none.

  As they approached the entrance, gunfire rang out. People jumped behind trees and walls or threw themselves to the pavement. Crocker and Davis crouched behind a planter overflowing with red bougainvillea.

  “Sounds like the shots are coming from inside,” Davis shouted.

  “That’s odd,” Crocker said, looking for soldiers or security guards and finding none.

  “Real odd.”

  “Maybe we should circle around back.”

  They rose together and almost tripped over a stout middle-aged woman holding up a bleeding man. The man’s face was injured.

  The woman screamed in a language Crocker didn’t understand. The man stumbled and grabbed his neck.

  With Davis’s help, Crocker sat the man down on the ground, against the wall of the entrance. Then he started to reach down his throat.

  The woman shouted, “No! No!” shaking her head, slipping into hysteria.

  Crocker nodded at Davis, who held her back.

  The man’s windpipe was blocked with blood and broken teeth. Crocker swept them free and fished them out of his mouth. The man coughed and started to breathe normally. The gash across his cheek and mouth was serious but not life threatening.

  With no medical kit available, Crocker removed his own black polo shirt and held it against the man’s face. Then he grabbed the woman’s hand. “Hold this here and wait for an ambulance. Your husband will be okay.”

  “Wait?”

  “Attendez,” Crocker said, remembering one of the few words he knew in French.

  “Attendez, oui.” She nodded her head, then kissed his cheek.

  The firing from inside had picked up. More people were running out in panic. Some wore uniforms; some men, suits. Women were clothed in cocktail gowns and dresses. Many of them abandoned their high heels, which littered the tile floor.

  Crocker saw someone who looked American and stopped him.

  “Where’s the party for the NATO chief?”

  “The party?”

  “Yeah. Where’s Al Cowens?”

  “Out of my way!”

  Crocker grabbed him firmly by the shoulders. “Al Cowens from the U.S. embassy? You know him?”

  “Don’t go in there! Men are shooting. Lots of dead. It’s fucked.”

  He entered the building with Davis at his side. The lobby was littered with the injured and bleeding. Blood was smeared everywhere. A lot of the lights were out. Smoke. A Muzak version of “Copacabana” by Barry Manilow played over the PA, adding a surreal element.

  People were screaming, moaning, crashing into things, asking for help.

  The two SEALs followed the sound of gunfire past the lobby, down a hall to the other end of the building. Turning left, they entered what looked to be a brasserie-type restaurant that faced a pool and, beyond that, the beach.

  Because it stood at the back of the building, the restaurant seemed to have escaped damage from the explosion, but tables had been overturned and people were hiding behind them. He saw bodies in the corners.

  “What the—”

  Before he could complete his question, an explosion threw Crocker against the back wall.

  He landed on his right shoulder, picked himself up, and found Davis near a banquette, holding his head, looking woozy.

  “You okay?”

  No answer.

  “Davis, can you hear me?”

  He couldn’t. So Crocker did a quick inspection of his head and neck. Saw no external injuries, but his eyes were dilated and unfocused, indicating that he might have suffered a concussion.

  There wasn’t anything Crocker could do for him now. He said, “Wait here.”

  Gunshots went off and ricocheted off the walls and floor. Glass flew everywhere. People screamed. He ducked behind a table and slithered on his belly through air thick with the smell of cordite and smoke.

  Reaching two NATO soldiers in light blue uniforms who lay in a heap along the right wall, he discovered that neither was breathing or had a pulse. He relieved them of their weapons—some sort of automatic pistol from one, an MP5 with a collapsible stock from the other. Both were loaded and seemingly in working order.

  He peered through the shattered windows facing the back and saw men by the pool spraying the brasserie with bullets from automatic weapons held at their hips. Rambo-style, he thought. Black turbans, scarves hiding their faces.

  Fucking cowards!

  He watched a bearded man in a black T-shirt remove the pin of a grenade with his teeth. Before he had a chance to throw it, Crocker took aim and cut him down at the knees.
The man fell backward as the grenade exploded, throwing him into the pool.

  When the smoke cleared, he saw the man’s legless body floating next to a woman who was facedown in the blue water. Her dress billowed out like large pink fins.

  Holly’s image flashed in his head, reminding him that the dead woman in the pool was someone’s wife or girlfriend. This added to his rage.

  Sons of bitches!

  Spotting the shadows of the armed men retreating, he aimed and fired. One man stumbled and slid. Crocker ran across the patio to the far side of the pool, knelt on the terra-cotta tiles, and fired again. A group of attackers had turned right and were running in the direction of the marina. Crocker suspected that a boat or truck was waiting to pick them up and help them escape. He wasn’t going to let that happen.

  Smoke rising from the fire behind him, he brought down two of them with bursts from the MP5. A little dark-skinned teenager in a sleeveless T-shirt crouched beside him and toppled another. The scrawny teenager turned to Crocker, smiled with a mouthful of jumbled and broken teeth, and flashed a thumbs-up. He had big eyes that caught the light. Beside him were three other young men, all dressed in T-shirts and jeans. The black tee of one had SURFER printed on it. They were holding AKs that looked almost as big as they were.

  Crocker had no time to ask them who they were and which group they were affiliated with. He was glad that, like him, they were trying to stop the terrorists, who probably outnumbered them three to one.

  A helicopter circled around the hotel tower and swooped over the water. Its spotlight illuminated roughly a dozen men armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades escaping down the beach. One of them stopped, took aim at the helicopter, and fired his RPG before Crocker could take him down. The rocket whooshed and smashed into the copter’s side. The resulting explosion splashed everything with white light and numbed Crocker’s ears. The copter’s rear rotor continued spinning in the sky as the cockpit plummeted into the sea.

  Pieces of hot shrapnel screamed through the air, stuck in the sand around them. One of the teenagers fell. He started moaning and kicking wildly.

  “Where was he hit?” Crocker asked.

  One of the other teens ran over to help his injured friend and was struck in the back by a volley of bullets.

  Crocker shouted, “Stay down! Stay down!” as he lay facedown in the sand and returned fire. He asked himself, “Where is security? Where the fuck is NATO? How come we’re the only ones shooting back?”

  The attackers fired rockets in their direction, then retreated. One exploded in the sand in front of Crocker. Others screeched over his head.

  He got up, spit out the grit in his mouth, and gave chase. But when he stopped to fire, the mag in the MP5 ran out. He didn’t have another. When he tried to fire the pistol, it jammed.

  “Piece of shit!”

  Still he gave chase. Reaching the first fallen attacker, he kicked him in the face, then relieved him of his AK, which was still hot.

  The sand was a bitch to run in. Made him remember his younger brother and how they used to play on the beach when they were kids. His brother now owned several car dealerships north of Boston. Meanwhile, he was halfway around the world getting shot at by terrorists.

  Nearing the marina, he sensed someone running beside him. It was the kid in the sleeveless T-shirt with the big eyes and uneven teeth.

  Who is he?

  Sounds of chaos continued beyond his shoulder. He knelt and fired at the attackers ahead who were jumping on motorcycles and climbing into the back of a pickup parked alongside the marina. Bullets skidded off the pavement and slammed into the cab of the truck. The kid beside him hit the rider of one of the motorcycles in the chest.

  “Good shot!”

  The bike spun, hit the curb with an eruption of sparks, and threw its rider into the bushes along the canal.

  Crocker ran over and righted the bike. Jumped on and gunned the engine.

  The kid sprinted to the canal, shot the rider again, then jumped on the back. A smooth customer.

  Pointing the motorcycle toward the Corniche, Crocker pulled back on the throttle. The bike roared and took off.

  For the first time he heard sirens approaching, which pleased him.

  Finally!

  But the bike wouldn’t pick up speed. He heard scraping from the back wheel.

  Maybe the axle is messed up.

  He got about fifty yards down the Corniche and stopped, his heart pounding.

  “Motherfuckers!”

  He looked at the kid with the big eyes and the tangle of dark hair that stood straight up.

  The kid grinned and repeated, “Mutha-fukka.”

  They knelt on the pavement and fired until they ran out of ammo. Then hurried together back across the beach to where the kid’s two buddies were lying. The one who was shot in the back had bled out and was dead, but the other was still breathing. Crocker removed the kid’s SURFER T-shirt and pressed it against two bullet holes near his hip.

  “Hold it there until we can get him to a hospital. He’ll be okay.”

  The kid with the big eyes grinned and raised his thumb. He was a brave little guy, whoever he was.

  Pointing to his chest, he said, “Farag.”

  “Tom Crocker. I’m going to help the people inside.”

  “Very good. Good man.”

  “Good luck, Farag. And thanks.”

  Back in the brasserie, Crocker spent the next hour giving CPR and trying to clear airways and stop bleeding, using towels and pillows and the pathetically meager emergency medical supplies on hand. People were missing hands, parts of legs. They’d been shot in every place imaginable, struck with shrapnel, burned.

  His hands and arms were covered with blood, and he was wrapping a sock around a man’s arm as a tourniquet when someone tapped him on the shoulder. Turning, he saw a NATO doctor and nurse standing behind him, light blue masks over their faces.

  Emergency lights were now burning, powered by a portable generator, and he saw the room clearly for the first time. The scene was gruesome. Blood smeared everywhere. Piles of bodies. Reminded him of a documentary he’d once watched about a slaughterhouse in Chicago.

  At least the wounded were being carried out on stretchers. Nurses, paramedics, and doctors were taking charge, directing armor-clad NATO soldiers.

  “Have you seen Al Cowens?” he asked.

  Someone pointed to a pile of bodies near the far wall.

  “Really?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Which one?”

  The man shrugged.

  He searched and found Cowens near the bottom, the top left side of his head and face missing, and his tongue hanging out. Crocker sat on the floor, rested his back against the wall, and covered his face with his hands, exhausted. Completely spent. “It isn’t Al,” he mumbled to himself. “It’s just his body. Al, rest his soul, has hopefully gone to a better place. God bless him.”

  Chapter Six

  The wound that bleedeth inwardly is the most dangerous.

  —Arab proverb

  He dreamt that he was bleeding from a hole in his stomach and trying to get it to stop. His blood kept pouring out. It flowed into a clear hose that led to a fountain. Buzzards drank from it.

  He woke up in a sweat, lying on a single bed in an unfamiliar room. An African mask staring at him from the opposite wall. Alicia Keys singing from a stereo in another room.

  While he was washing his face in the bathroom, a woman with a blue scarf tied around her head entered the bedroom with food and fresh tangerine juice on a tray. Sunlight created a sharp angle on the floor. Through the doorway he saw a courtyard with a lemon tree.

  “Where am I?” he asked her.

  Smiling, she said, “Palm City.”

  “Palm City. Where’s that?”

  “It’s in Janzour.”

  “Oh…” He remembered the woman in the hotel shower, Doug Volman crouched in the front seat of the SUV, flames rising from the
front of the Sheraton.

  He’d forgotten about Volman and Mustafa. And he hadn’t seen Davis since leaving him in the brasserie.

  What the hell happened to them? he asked himself.

  “This home of…Mr. Remington,” the local woman said.

  “Remington?”

  “Yes.”

  Crocker didn’t know the name. He felt disoriented, perplexed.

  “Mr. Remington is American?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  She returned a minute later with clean boxers, a T-shirt, a dark green polo shirt, black workout pants. “For you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Standing under a warm shower, he felt sharp pains in his back. His whole right side was sore and bruised. The muscles in both arms were tired and tight. Otherwise, he seemed intact. Alive.

  Not like Al Cowens, with his tongue hanging out of his mouth.

  He dressed and entered the courtyard, where an orange cat was stalking a little bird with an orange beak—a finch maybe. Looked up at the sky above and saw the sun at approximately 9 a.m. The angle of the light reminded him of Southern California, when he was a young member of SEAL Team One living in a double-wide trailer with his first wife. She’d kept spice finches as pets.

  A tall African American man in khaki pants and a white shirt entered. The lines in his face were deep.

  “Crocker,” he said. “My name’s Jaime Remington. I’m Al’s deputy. Rather, I was his deputy. I’m running the station now.”

  “Al.”

  “Yeah…It’s terrible. I just got off the phone with his wife. She’s in California. They were living apart.”

  “Children?”

  “Two daughters. One married; the other a junior at Fresno State.”

  The image of his dead body flashed before Crocker’s eyes.

  “Fucking tragic. I saw him last night at the Sheraton.”

  “I heard you were there in the middle of everything.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’re all in shock…How did you sleep?”

  “So-so.”

  “I’m kind of in a fog myself. But here’s the situation…You were brought to my house last night.”

  “I don’t remember.”