Hunt the Scorpion

by Don Mann

  Crocker had asked her to be patient and understanding. She accused him of being selfish and self-involved.

  Sitting up, he grabbed the MP5. The clock read 1:44, which meant he’d slept almost four hours.

  Holy shit! Why didn’t someone wake me?

  He hurried into the kitchen, where Mancini was adding sliced red onions to a big batch of tuna-fish salad.

  “Where is everyone? What the fuck’s going on?”

  “Akil and Davis went with Volman. He’s trying to pry some intel out of one of the officers at the CIA station.”

  “When are they expected back?”

  “Soon. I’m preparing lunch.”

  “What happened to Volman’s friend?”

  “He was delayed but is on his way.”

  Pushing back a feeling of panic, he stood under the shower with the cast on his left wrist covered with a plastic bag, and let the warm water loosen the muscles in his shoulders and back. He regretted that he’d argued with Holly. Sometimes he forgot how much the team dominated his life. Other men had time to coach their kids’ sports team, go on family vacations, do home improvement projects.

  He dressed and debated going out and searching the city by himself but instead went out onto the porch and did forty minutes of sit-ups and crunches, despite his aches and pains. He had to find some way to burn off the anxiety and relentless energy that were driving him nuts.

  Another half hour dragged by. He picked at the tuna on his plate, feeling he was about to burst out of his skin.

  He searched his mind for options but found none, which only added to his frustration. Frustration increased his sense of desperation, which fueled his rage. A vicious circle that made it impossible to think.

  “See you later, Manny. I’m going out!” he said, grabbing his MP5 and starting for the door.

  “Where?” Mancini shouted.

  “To look for Holly!”

  “Boss, you don’t know the country, don’t speak the language.”

  “So what?”

  “Don’t you always tell us that undirected aggression is self-destructive? Don’t you tell us to think first, be smart?”

  He set down the MP5 and took a deep breath. “You’re right. I’ll call Davis.”

  He did, on the sat-phone. Davis said he and Akil were sitting in the Suburban outside a café near the embassy. Volman was inside talking to another American—a CIA officer, he thought.

  “How fucking long is he gonna be?”

  “Don’t know. We’ll be there soon as we can.”

  He wished he could turn back the clock. Wished he’d talked Holly out of going to North Africa in the first place. Wished he’d never accepted the assignment to Libya, even though he really didn’t have a choice. Started questioning other decisions he had made in his life, then realized it was a pointless exercise. All he was doing was beating himself up.

  He felt an urge to call Jenny. But what would he say? I’m sitting here with my thumb up my ass while your stepmother is about to be executed by a bunch of fucking terrorists?

  He tried to imagine what Holly was going through, but that only made him more anxious, so he stopped that, too.

  Davis, Akil, and Volman returned at four. All of them sat down at the kitchen table. Volman, out of breath, said, “I learned two things. One, the kidnappers are sticking to their demands—release of the three Tuareg prisoners.”

  Crocker: “We knew that already.”

  “The second thing is, there were two cell phone calls from the kidnappers. They’ve been traced already and turned up nothing, but it might be a place to start.”

  “Where?”

  “You have a map of the city?”

  Akil retrieved one from his room and spread it out on the table. “The first,” Volman said, pointing to a spot on the map, “comes from a place east of here, between Mitiga Airport and the Belal Ibn Ribah Mosque. The second is a location about four miles southwest of there near the police academy on Al Hadhbah Road.”

  Davis: “They’re relatively close to each other.”

  Crocker: “Let’s go!”

  Volman: “We should wait for my friend. He’s a Libyan militia leader—very knowledgeable and savvy. Knows his way around.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Farouk Shakir al-Sayed. His friends call him Farag.”

  Crocker: “Is he a little guy, young, with big amber-colored eyes?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think I know him. Dark-skinned, curly black hair that sticks straight up. Weighs no more than a hundred pounds. We fought together at the Sheraton.”

  “That’s him.”

  “Good.”

  Crocker felt a little better. Farag was a tough kid, but the optimism his name inspired quickly vanished as they waited longer. Another excruciating hour dragged by, each tick of the clock like a punch to the head.

  By 5:40, when they heard a vehicle honking at the front gate, Crocker felt like a boxer entering the final round. And he hadn’t even thrown a jab.

  “My friend. My brother,” Farag said, climbing out of the old Toyota truck and wrapping Crocker in a hug. “Good to see you. You remember Mohi?”

  He pointed to a wider, slightly taller young man with short hair who walked with a limp. It was the kid Crocker had given medical attention to after he’d taken two bullets in his hip.

  “Mohi. It’s good to see you again. You’re all healed up?”

  The teenager shook Crocker’s hand vigorously and smiled. Some of his front teeth were missing.

  Farag’s face turned serious when Volman showed them the map and explained the situation in Arabic. He looked at Crocker, nodded as if he understood the gravity of what they faced, then glanced at the watch on his wrist and muttered something in Arabic.

  “What did he say?” Crocker said.

  “Loosely translated: Do not hate misfortune because maybe there is fortune for you inside it.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “I know these areas,” Farag said in English. “We go fast.”

  “As fast as possible.”

  They climbed into the trucks. Farag led at a breakneck pace in the Toyota pickup with the Americans following in the Suburban. Within minutes Crocker spotted an airport tower ahead.

  From the front seat, Volman explained, “This used to be Gaddafi’s airport. His compound wasn’t far from here. This part of the city experienced the heaviest fighting during the war.”

  They passed the runway dotted with parked NATO warplanes and ran into a roadblock manned by armed men in black.

  Crocker: “Who the fuck are they?”

  Volman: “Beats me.”

  They watched Farag lean out of the Toyota and shout at the men. They shouted back, with a lot of waving of guns and pointing.

  Volman started to get out to join them.

  Crocker said, “Maybe you should let him handle this.”

  Volman went anyway.

  “Doesn’t listen, does he?”

  “Acts weird, but he’s smart,” Ritchie said.

  The sun was starting to set, casting long shadows in the streets. Volman walked back toward them in his baggy pants, shirttail half out.

  “We’re cool,” he said. “It’s a ragtag group of volunteers from the neighborhood. They say this area is relatively safe during the day but changes at night. They’ve experienced a lot of robberies, break-ins, kidnappings, rapes.”

  “They know anything about a gang of Tuaregs operating in the area?”

  “They’ve heard rumors about a group of thugs stealing cars and shipping them to Tunisia.”

  “Are they Berber tribesmen? Did they say where we can find them?”

  “That’s all they know.”

  Stars were visible in the sky by the time the Toyota took off again in a cloud of dust. One of the men back at the roadblock lifted his AK-47 and fired it into the air.

  “What the fuck was that for?” Davis asked.

  Volman: “He got excited.”
>
  They were in the Bu al Ashhar neighborhood. The Toyota screeched to a stop in front of the mosque, a blue domed structure with a minaret rising from one side. The streets around it were empty. The Arabic speakers in the group—Farag, Mohi, Volman, and Akil—went door to door, trying to elicit information.

  The handful of men who were brave enough to answer said they’d seen some strangers in the area but no women, and no one they could identify as Tuareg. Nor could they describe the strangers they’d seen, except to say that some of them were armed.

  They took off again and arrived at the second location after 9 p.m. Crocker’s stomach was killing him. The area in front of the police academy had also seen heavy fighting, since it was in the vicinity of Gaddafi’s heavily armed Bab al Azizia compound and Tripoli University. The academy was dark and its gate locked. Crocker saw no one on the streets, except the occasional vehicle passing on Al Hadhbah Road.

  Again the four Arabic speakers knocked on the doors of nearby residential compounds and stores. Most of the latter were closed for the night. One man reported that he’d seen armed men getting out of vehicles beside the fence surrounding a field across the street from the academy.

  Farag and Akil went to explore. They came back a few minutes later to retrieve their weapons.

  “What’d you find?” Crocker asked.

  “Something worth checking out.”

  “What?”

  Akil: “Follow me.”

  Volman, Mancini, Davis, Ritchie, and Mohi waited beside the vehicles.

  The sky glittered like a star-studded crown. A breeze picked up dust and threw it in Crocker’s face.

  Farag pointed to a place in the aluminum fence where it had been cut and temporarily wired back in place. He undid the wires and rolled the fence aside. “You see?” Motioned for Crocker and Akil to enter.

  After he stepped through, Farag let go of the fence so it rolled back into place.

  The little Libyan led the way, following a faint trail beaten into the dirt. Past pathetic-looking shrubs and garbage—an old mattress, the twisted frame of a bike, an old sign advertising Canaba King Size cigarettes.

  “Where the hell does he think this leads?” Crocker whispered to Akil’s back.

  Farag stopped ahead of them, held a finger to his lips, and pointed to a spot in the ground. All Crocker saw was a round patch of earth. But when he focused harder in the low light, he was able to distinguish a round cover about four feet in diameter painted the same color as the dirt.

  A dog howled in the distance as the three men quietly swung it open. Akil was the first to enter, holding a small flashlight that illuminated metal rungs along the side of a concrete tube.

  They descended approximately thirty feet and reached the bottom, where they saw a concrete tunnel about twelve feet high and six wide that extended about sixty feet.

  When they reached what they thought was the end, they saw that the tunnel curved left at a ninety-degree angle. The second leg was even longer. There was still no light, but they heard faint, muffled noises and proceeded carefully.

  The closer to the end they got, the more distinct the sounds became. Voices at first. A man, then a woman whispering. Then what sounded like two people making love.

  What the fuck?

  They inched closer. A ribbon of light spilled out of a door ahead to their right.

  The sounds of lovemaking grew louder. A woman approaching ecstasy screamed in English, “Harder! Faster! Yes!”

  Fingers on the triggers of their weapons, they stopped. Farag pointed to the metal door and tried the lever. It wasn’t locked.

  He nodded. Crocker nodded back, his heart leaping into his throat.

  Farag lowered the lever and kicked the metal door open. Crocker pushed past him and entered with his MP5 ready. His brain picked up thousands of impressions at the speed of light—the size of the concrete room, the source of light, the number of occupants, the presence of weapons.

  The second he saw one of them reach for his AK, he started shooting, raking the two men sitting with their feet up on an overturned table. Their bodies shook from the impact, bounced against their chairs, and slumped to the floor. They didn’t have time to scream.

  But the sound of lovemaking continued. It was coming from a flat-screen propped against the wall, a DVD player on the floor beside it, wires snaking around.

  A third man emerged from a room off a dark passageway behind the opposite wall, saw the three armed men and his dead colleagues, and started scrambling down the passage in the opposite direction.

  Akil, his MP5 ready, started after him.

  Farag reached out and stopped him. “No!”

  Akil pushed the hand off his shoulder. “What do you mean, no?”

  Crocker: “He’s right, Akil. Let him go.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Akil used the flashlight to illuminate the passageway, which led to a ladder, just as Crocker thought it would.

  Crocker removed the radio from his back pocket and said: “Manny, very soon you’re going to see an individual emerge from the ground somewhere on the field we just entered.”

  “Anywhere on the field?”

  “Affirmative.”

  A few seconds later Mancini said excitedly, “Yeah! I see him.”

  “Good.”

  “You want me to grab him?”

  “No! You and Mohi get in the Toyota and follow him. Don’t lose him, and don’t let him see you. I think he’s going to lead you to the rest of the group.”

  “Ten-four.”

  “Don’t fucking lose him. It’s important.”

  “Don’t worry, boss. That’s not gonna happen.”

  They spent the next few minutes rifling through the contents of the room and bathroom—half-empty bottles of Russian vodka, a box of crackers, several porno DVDs, two Glock pistols, a bag of pistachio nuts, a leather gym bag containing over a dozen cell phones, several grenades, two ski masks. Also a laptop and several thumb drives, which Crocker kept.

  He went through the dead men’s pockets. One of them had a wallet containing a wad of dinars and pictures of him and his girlfriend. In the other he found a silver amulet like the one he had seen around the neck of the wounded Tuareg tribesman he had tried to save in Toummo.

  “I think these are the guys we’re looking for,” Crocker said. “Let’s go!”

  They climbed the steps at the end of the tunnel behind the bathroom and emerged in a corner of the field opposite where they’d entered.

  They ran to meet Volman, Ritchie, and Davis, who were waiting by the fence.

  “The guy sped off in a little dark blue Nissan sedan,” Davis said excitedly.

  Ritchie: “Manny’s on his heels with Mohi. He’s headed south.”

  “Let’s hurry!”

  They piled into the Suburban. Davis gunned the engine; he’d raced stock cars as a young man and knew how to get the most out of a vehicle—even the bulky, clumsy Suburban they were in now.

  Ritchie was on the radio communicating with Manny, then instructing Davis, “Make a right here. Look for a four-lane highway ahead. Get on it going south!”

  Crocker sat throbbing on the middle seat, hoping against hope that the man would lead them to Holly.

  Manny screamed through the radio, “Turn off at Al Belah Road.”

  “Ask him how far.”

  Manny over the radio, “You’ll see a stadium on your left.”

  “How far?”

  “You can’t miss it.”

  Two minutes later Ritchie screamed, “There it is!”

  Tires burning, they took the turnoff at sixty. Up a ramp, onto a dark, deserted street.

  “Where now?” Davis asked.

  Ritchie: “Keep going straight. Cut the headlights. Manny says you’ll see him parked next to a burnt-out truck. There’s one lone streetlight at the end of the block.”

  Davis: “I see it! Yeah, I see it. There!”

  “Stop. Park this thing in
the alley.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  They slung their weapons over their shoulders, got out, and ran in a crouch behind the few parked cars to where the Toyota had stopped.

  Mancini sat in the driver’s seat, loading his MP5, stuffing frag grenades and extra magazines in his pants pockets.

  “Where the fuck did he go?” Crocker asked, stealing a glimpse at his watch.

  “He entered a beat-up building around the block. You can’t see it from here.”

  It was 11:38. His heart sank. They were running out of time.

  “Where’s Mohi?”

  “He went ahead to recon the place.”

  “Why the fuck didn’t you go with him?”

  “Calm down, boss. I was on the radio to you.”

  “Sorry.”

  “We’re gonna find her. I can feel it. We’re close. Fidem tene.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Keep the faith.”

  Hearing footsteps approaching, they ducked behind the Suburban and readied their weapons. It was Mohi, out of breath. He pointed as he spoke a mile a minute in Arabic.

  “What’s he saying?”

  Akil: “It’s a five-story structure. Two vehicles parked out front. Men are loading shit into them, like they’re getting ready to leave. They’re moving fast.”

  “Did he see a prisoner? Were they moving a female prisoner?”

  “He says no.”

  “Fuck!”

  “Four large men. No woman. He thinks they’re just about ready to split.”

  Crocker was thinking fast. “Okay. Here’s what we’re gonna do. Wait. Ask him about the front gate.”

  Akil: “What about it?”

  “Ask him if there is one, and if it’s open.”

  “It’s open.”

  “Okay. Davis—you and Ritchie bring the Suburban around. Position it near the gate so you can block their escape if necessary. Manny, you take Mohi. Climb the wall and take the building from the rear.”

  “Got it.”

  “Make sure you’ve got your radio. Akil and Farag come with me. We’re going in the front gate. You guys know what to do. Shoot to kill any motherfucking terrorists. Look for the hostage—my wife!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Volman, you stay with the vehicle.”

  Volman: “Good luck. I hope you find her safe.”