Hunt the Jackal (10 page)

I
t was
a few minutes past 0500 by the time they launched—Crocker in the first SUV with Suárez, and Akil and Mancini following in the dark-blue Suburban with Davis and Nieves. They wore an assortment of straw hats and baseball caps pulled down low, sneakers, boots, and casual clothes to look like gardeners or day workers.

Underneath they had on lightweight eight-millimeter-thick Level III-A+ Dragon Skin Pinnacle Armor capable of stopping 7.62x25mm steel-cased lead-core bullets traveling at 1,450 feet per second. In warm weather the specially designed DuPont Supplex shoulder straps and carrier were designed to wick moisture and excess heat from the body to the surface of the fabric for release, but Crocker felt sweat dripping down his chest to his stomach and into the front of his jeans.

The sun hadn’t even begun to rise and the air was already dense and hot. They were driving west down a two-lane road past ranches, factories, subdivisions, and rough hills. Short, squat Maria, seated next to Suárez at the wheel, told him in Spanish to turn off at a dirt road. They bounced for a few minutes past a pen filled with chickens and pigs and stopped at a fence.

Akil hopped out and clipped the lock on the gate. Then they rolled into a scruffy little yard, parked behind some trees, and walked twenty feet to a shed. Maria pointed to a locked wooden box next to where some old clothes were hanging. Suárez kicked it open and retrieved two sets of keys.

“Por aqui,”
Maria said as she led the men to two old pickup trucks loaded with lawn mowers, weed whackers, leaf blowers, rakes, clippers, and other assorted gardening equipment. She still wore the black-and-silver wrestler’s mask. Judging from her hands, she appeared to be a woman in her twenties. She stood about five feet two and was soft and round, with black hair.

“When are these guys going to show up and find their trucks missing?” Crocker asked Suárez.

Suárez spoke to Maria and translated back. “She says they don’t work anymore. We gave them green cards, so they closed the business and are moving to the States.”

“Where in the States?” Akil asked.

“Orange County.”

According to the arrangement Lane had made with Maria, each man had been paid thirty thousand dollars, and they’d been given an additional twenty thousand for the two trucks.

The vehicles were hardly worth it—a beat-up black regular-cab Ford F-150 with a missing front fender and 176,000 miles on the odometer, and an extended-cab silver Chevy S-10. But they worked, as Suárez and Mancini discovered when they drove them out of the yard and back onto the paved road.

The sun started to rise to their right, turning the dusty, polluted air an unhealthy-looking shade of brownish yellow.

From the passenger seat of the lead Ford, Crocker once again consulted the hand-drawn sketch of the estate Maria had given them. “There’s only one entrance? She’s sure of that?” he asked Suárez.

Maria sat between them praying quietly with a pink rosary clutched in her hands.

“That’s what she said. Yes.”

“Which one of the Clarks is upstairs?”

Suárez checked with Maria. She pointed to a room on the sketch.

“They keep Mrs. Clark in one of the front bedrooms upstairs. Her daughter is staying in the guest house at the back of the estate.”

“And they’re both watched by armed guards?”

Maria nodded.

“How many guards inside the house?”

“Usually four or five beside the two watching the women.”

“Where?” Crocker asked.

“Two are at the front gate, two in the backyard, one maybe on the first floor.”

“Video surveillance?”

Suárez asked Maria, then translated to Crocker, “Eleven cameras total. Two at the front gate, two at the front and back of the main house, four along the outside wall perimeter, two at the front and side doors to the guest house, another at the balcony door to the main house.”

They had been over the layout a half dozen times, but still Crocker felt unease about the mission. He thought maybe it had to do with the tragic outcome of the op in Syria, or the fact that this mission had been thrown together so quickly, or that Maria was their source.

According to what Bob Marion had told them back at the safe house, she and members of her family had been employed by El Chacal for years. Recently a half sister and cousin who worked in one of his meth plants had been accused of stealing and buried alive.

Maria instructed Suárez to take a right at the next traffic light. An old man and a boy at the corner pulled a wagon full of yellow flowers. The team waited for a mangy dog to cross ahead of them.

Part of Crocker’s unease had to do with operating in Mexico, where it seemed
gringos
were distrusted and
gringo
government agents like them were considered the enemy.

He forced himself to think positively.

Maria pointed to a McDonald’s with blue-and-gold plastic monkey bars on the next block. Suárez pulled over.

“Why are we stopping?” Crocker asked.

“She’s getting out,” Suárez answered.

“Muchas gracias,”
Crocker said as he slipped out so she could exit.

“Vaya con Dios, Señor,”
she muttered through the hole in the wrestler’s mask.

He watched through the rearview mirror as she turned her back to them, removed the mask, and tossed it into a box of trash.

They were on their own now, armed with SIG Sauer side arms, HK45CTs, MP7s, HK416s, M-79s, explosives, and handheld USMC ISR radios—all of which were concealed in different parts of the trucks. The neighborhood they entered was quiet, with high walls topped by barbed wire and broken glass. Morning sunlight simmered off the asphalt road.

Crocker saw a tall, freshly painted burnt-sienna wall and palm trees ahead.

“That’s it,” Suárez remarked.

“Just like Carlos said.”

“What?”

“The palm trees, Suárez. Pay attention.”

They turned in front of the tall green gate and stopped.

“Should I honk?” Suárez asked.

“Honk once,” Crocker said, pulling the faded New York Yankees cap lower over his eyes. He grabbed the SIG Sauer P226 alongside the seat and conducted a press check to ensure there was a chambered round.

A guard poked his dark face over the wall to the right; then the gate swung open. Crocker spotted big trees heavy with lemons and other fruit, and walls covered with flowering vines.

The guard, who had an AK-47 slung over his shoulder, walked to the driver’s window, said something to Suárez, then waved them in.

“What did he say?”

“A snake bit one of the dogs last night in the back near some mango trees. He warned us to watch out.”

“Dogs?”

“Maria didn’t say anything about dogs,” Suárez said.

“Dogs we can handle,” Crocker whispered back.

They were in about thirty meters before they saw the main house on their left. It appeared smaller than what Maria had described, with columns and a portico at the entrance and a large balcony on the second floor. Golden sunlight reflected off the windows.

They wound to the right and braked in the back by the garage, just as Maria had instructed them to do. A few seconds later, the Chevy S-10 stopped behind them.

The only person Crocker had spotted so far was the guard at the gate, which was good. The stronger the element of surprise, the better.

The six men unloaded the lawn mowers and other equipment, then grabbed their weapons. Each man had a prearranged assignment. They moved quickly—Akil and Nieves to the front gate, Davis and Mancini to the guest house, Crocker and Suárez to the main residence.

Crocker entered first through the side door, his HK416 with ten-inch barrel and suppressor ready. Standing on the tile floor in the small vestibule, he paused a moment to take everything in—sounds, smells, dimensions, shadows—all faster than the speed of light. Through the opening ahead of him, he saw the edge of a large dining room table. Past that was a hallway that led to the stairway to the second floor. On the other side of the stairway he saw a living room with modern bamboo furniture covered in cool colors.

Water flowed in the kitchen to his right. He held up two fingers to Suárez behind him and pointed to his right.

Suárez poked his head into the room and quickly came back.

“Somebody left the water running,” Suárez whispered, “but there’s no one in there. Fresh coffee in the coffeemaker.”

Crocker signaled for him to circle though the kitchen and meet him at the stairs.

He entered the dining room weapon ready, safety off. A white cat sat curled in one of the chairs. A plate of freshly cut papaya, mango, and pineapple lay on the table. But there was no one present.

He paused for a beat and listened but heard nothing inside or out.

The living room was devoid of people, too. Just a large aquarium along one wall, where he watched a little red sea horse swim past. An issue of the Spanish-language gossip magazine
¡Hola!
with Shakira on the cover lay on the sofa. A framed poster for the movie
Donnie Brasco
hung on one of the walls.

Suárez met him at the foot of the stairs and shook his head. They climbed up the stairs two steps at a time. At the landing, Crocker turned right and Suárez turned left, according to the plan.

Another right and Crocker entered a bathroom. He stepped over two wet pink towels on the floor, crossed past the glass shower stall to his right, then carefully pushed open the door to the bedroom.

He saw an empty leather armchair with a picture of a strange skeleton-like woman above it on the wall. Stepping inside, he took in the windows facing the back of the house, and a small desk with a glass holding two paintbrushes. Turning, he saw an unmade bed to his left. A woman’s suit hung in the closet over a pair of black high heels.

A tray with an uneaten chicken sandwich sat on a table opposite the bed. In the corner he saw a pair of women’s slippers, a pile of women’s clothes that included underwear and a pair of gray workout pants, and a half-finished paint-by-numbers art board of an Italian street with a pastry shop.

Crocker pressed the button on the side of the USMC ISR radio and said, “Omega One not here. Repeat, Omega One not in bedroom.”

“No sign of Omega Two in the guest house, either,” Mancini reported. “The guest house is empty. No dogs present on the property, either.”

“All right. Grab any intel you find and meet at the trucks in five.”

“Copy.”

They were warned
, Crocker said to himself. That meant the Jackal knew they were there.

A second later Akil’s voice came over the radio. “Alpha One. Alpha One, it’s Delta Four. The front gate is unmanned.”

“What happened to the guard we saw when we entered?”

“Gone, man. Vanished.”

Even more suspicious.

“Wait there, Delta Four. We’re pulling out.”

“Copy.”

He and Suárez quickly scanned the second floor for personal items but didn’t find much—some receipts in the desk drawer in one of the other bedrooms, a book in Spanish about Muhammad Ali, a closet full of men’s clothes. Even the phones were gone.

“Strange,” Suárez whispered.

“Very.”

Nothing much, either, on the ground floor. Suárez was standing on a stool looking in kitchen cabinets when Crocker said, “Let’s go.”

Out the side door, he saw Davis and Mancini waiting by the trucks. Without warning, shots came from the direction of the side wall and a burst of blood rose from Davis’s left collarbone. Crocker watched him spin, grab hold of the hood of the Ford pickup, and slide to the ground. Seconds later explosions rocked the front and back walls.

His ears filled with the high-pitched sounds of dogs wailing, Crocker backed inside the doorway and knelt into a crouch. Shielding his eyes from the smoke and flying debris with his left hand and turning left, he saw armed men dressed in dark camouflage with black armored vests and black masks stream through a smoking gap in the back wall. He figured they were probably charging through the front gate, too.

“Move to the main house!” he shouted into the radio. “Manny, you need help with Davis?”

“I’ve got him.”

Nieves: “We’re fucked!”

Akil: “Not happening.”

Crocker: “Keep quiet and grab as much ammo as you can from the trucks. Then rendezvous in the main house!”

Lisa Clark dreamt that she was sitting in front of a
pasticceria
on an old cobblestone Italian street, admiring the yellow tulips in the little park across the street. Her head was numb and soft like a pillow and her body filled with a cottony, fuzzy warmth.

Noticing that some of the tulips hadn’t been colored in yet, she filled them in with her mind, and as she did, a wave of euphoria passed through her body. The scene was perfect now. And she had created it herself according to the plan of the numbered schemata.

All the pain and anguish of the past had retreated far away.

She floated through the air like a feather. Then the air stopped moving and settled around her. Fingers touched her bare arm.

She heard someone say, “This way,
Señora,
” as though he was singing a song.

Her feet touched the ground. Gravel tickled her feet through the leather sandals. The air was fragrant with the smells of grass and flowers.

Although she couldn’t see, everything felt as though it fit together in a perfect God-like order.

She heard a voice whisper to her right, “Mom.”

She recognized the voice of her daughter, Olivia, which thrilled her. “Olivia.”

“Mom, I’m blindfolded. Are you there?”

“Yes, darling.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. Yes, absolutely.”

“Mom…Mom, I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Lisa responded. “Is something wrong?”

“Are you serious, Mom? Did they give you something?”

“Maybe…It’s not important.”

“Do you understand what’s going on? Do you know where they’re taking us?”

The urgency in her daughter’s voice was something that she didn’t understand and that almost offended her. She had opened her mouth to say something, when a man grunted “Quiet!” and squeezed her arm tightly until it hurt.