Hunt the Scorpion (13 page)

Ritchie leaned toward Crocker and whispered, “What do you think?”

Crocker shrugged, “She seems to know where she’s going.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

They watched her climb the ten-foot wall of dirt, then turn back and wave at them to join her.

Upon reaching the top, Crocker looked down and saw a large compound that had been dug into the earth. The whole plant was surrounded by walls of sandbags. It contained at least a dozen buildings, distillation and cooling tanks, and a concrete road that ran the length of the site. The road and roofs of the buildings had been painted with desert camouflage so they would be hard to see from above. Reminded him of a scene from the movie
Andromeda Strain
: perfectly preserved buildings, but no people.

“Clever, isn’t it?” Sandra asked, her blond hair whipping in the wind.

“Very clever,” Crocker answered.

According to the thermometer on his watch, the temperature had soared to over 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Hot gusts of wind kicked up angry twirls of dust.

Ritchie spotted a snake resting in the shade of the fence and picked it up with the barrel of his MP5.

“Don’t mess around,” Davis, who hated snakes, warned. Years earlier Ritchie had thrown a dead rattlesnake into Davis’s sleeping bag and freaked him out.

“It’s a sand viper,” Mancini said, examining the marking around its head. “Highly venomous.”

Ritchie waved it in front of Davis’s face, then tossed it over his shoulder.

When they rattled the chain on the gate, a stooped man with one eye emerged from a shed with an old M1 Garand rifle slung over his shoulder. He explained to Akil that he was a member of the NTC militia.

“Tell him we have permission from the prime minister to inspect the site.”

Akil spoke Arabic to the man, who nodded respectfully.

“He says a team from Germany arrived here months ago and locked away all the chemicals.”

“I know,” Sandra responded. “I was with them. Tell him we want to look around, make sure nothing has been touched.”

As the guard removed a key from under his tunic, the sky started to darken. Crocker looked at his watch. It was only 1 p.m. local time. “Looks like a storm’s approaching. Grab the goggles from the truck. Make sure everyone has a scarf.”

Akil ran off and came back as a big red cloud of sand and dust started to build around them.

Crocker said, “Keep your nose, mouth, and eyes covered. Everyone stick together.”

The one-eyed guard led them down the main road past modern buildings and equipment that had been partially covered with sand. At the end of the drive stood a sand-colored water tower. Past that was a storage shed filled with red, green, and orange barrels.

“You know what’s in them?” Crocker asked.

“Machine oil and other harmless chemicals,” Sandra answered. She was wearing stylish yellow goggles.

The guard turned and beckoned them with a finger. Just then a gust of sand hit the shed, almost lifting off its roof. It pounded the water tower. More gusts followed.

Akil shouted, “He’s leading us to an underground chamber.”

“Where?”

“Follow me!”

They walked in a cluster, pushing through the wind, to a concrete ramp with a set of steps beside it. At the bottom was a metal door that was bolted shut and locked. Pasted on it were warnings in Arabic, French, and English.

Sandra: “This is the same one we inspected two months ago.”

“Who has the keys?” Crocker asked.

“NATO command,” Sandra shouted over the wind. “We’re waiting for the toxic materials to be removed and disposed of.”

“Who’s responsible for that?”

“The NTC.”

“Alright,” Crocker said turning to Akil. “Show the guard the map Dr. Jabril drew of the metal fabrication plant. Tell him we want to take a look at that, too.”

The man studied the map as fine dust swirling around them made it hard to breathe. Sandra appeared to be suffering. Ritchie wrapped his kaffiyeh around her head.

Crocker said, “Hand her a bottle of water. Make sure she wets the scarf and ties it over her nose and mouth.” Then he turned to Akil and shouted over the roar, “What did the guard say?”

“He says part of the facility is destroyed. What’s left of it is on the other side of the hill.”

“How far?”

“Five minutes at the most.”

“Let’s wait down here.”

After twenty minutes the wind started to abate. Crocker said, “Sandra, why don’t you stay here with Ritchie? We’re gonna go look at the metal plant, then come back.”

He turned to Akil, who looked disappointed, and said, “Let’s go.”

It was like midnight, with dust and sand swirling everywhere. Crocker, Mancini, Davis, and Akil tried to keep up with the guard, but he was fast, scrambling up the embankment and hanging a right, then circling a mound of sand whose top they couldn’t see.

“Where’d he go?” Davis asked.

Akil: “Beats me.”

Crocker located him near a forty-foot-long rectangular building, waving his scarf. Through the clouds of dust it appeared that windows were broken and the roof had partially caved in.

The guard smiled with broken teeth, then led them around the other side of the building to another stairway and ramp that descended into the ground. The door to this chamber was blocked by sand, so they had to clear it by hand. Then Mancini went to work on the rusted lock with his electric saw.

Inside they found napalm bombs and white phosphorus shells that Akil was able to identify by the warnings painted on them in Arabic. The SEALs had no way of telling how long they’d been there, or if they were still live.

They did a quick inventory, then wrapped the chain around the door and fixed it with a new Sargent and Greenleaf hardened-boron-alloy lock, which was almost impossible to pick, saw, or cut with a torch.

Crocker turned to Davis and said, “Run back to the truck and use the sat-phone to call Remington. Tell him what we found.”

“Yes, sir.”

They left the site as the storm started to pick up again, negotiating what they could see of the road until they found the highway.

Feeling a sense of accomplishment, the five men and one woman told stories and joked as the Polish driver struggled to keep the vehicle on the road through the wind and sand. Most of the stories had to do with their various scrapes with the law. Crocker’s were the most outrageous—numerous arrests for fighting, drunk driving, and resisting arrest as a wild teenager growing up in northern Massachusetts.

Sandra’s one legal infraction was less serious but far more provocative—a misdemeanor charge for nude sunbathing. All of them quickly imagined it, including Crocker, who said, “That cop was an idiot.”

“Yeah,” Ritchie said, “he should have left an ideal situation alone.”

By the time they arrived back at the NATO base the wind had let up and the sky had turned a strange shade of purple. When the truck turned into the compound, Crocker saw Major Ostrowski and his soldiers unloading a group of five prisoners from the back of two SPG Kalina armored personnel carriers.

“We used the storm to surprise them,” the major crowed. “While they keep shelling the base, me and my men circled around and attacked them from behind. Killed about a dozen and captured these guys.”

Crocker noticed that one of the tribesmen was badly wounded in the chest. He and Akil carried him into the compound, where they applied blowout patches. But the kid had lost so much blood that all they could do was try to comfort him as he spent his last minutes clutching the large silver amulet that hung around his neck and praying.

Afterward they joined the major, who loomed over the prisoners sitting on the ground looking hungry, thirsty, and scared. Ostrowski ordered his men to bring water and bread. Then he turned to Akil and said, “Tell the prisoners I’ll let them eat and drink, and will treat them well, if they answer a few of my questions. Otherwise I’ll drop them in the middle of the desert to be eaten by buzzards.”

The tribesmen whispered among themselves. Then one skinny kid spoke in a high, shrill voice. He told Akil that he and his fellow tribesmen were all under the age of twenty, and were simply trying to recover land and property that had previously belonged to their families. They had no beef with NATO, he said, and were not the men responsible for shelling the base.

“Bullshit,” the major said. “I suppose their property includes the uranium mines, yes? Who do they consider the enemy?”

“The NTC and the Arab radicals who overthrew Gaddafi.”

“Who supplies them with guns and ammunition?”

“The Iranians,” the man said to Akil, who translated his words into English.

“See?” Ostrowski said, turning to Crocker. “What did I tell you?”

Crocker: “Ask him if there are any Iranians over the border in Niger.”

The young man nodded and held up the fingers on one hand.

Ostrowski: “Ask the little man if he knows the name of the Iranian in charge.”

Akil said, “He doesn’t know the man’s full name. They call him Colonel D.”

Crocker stepped closer to the prisoner. “Is Colonel D a short man with a badly scarred face and hooded eyes?”

After Akil translated, the young tribesmen nodded.

“Colonel D is the alias of Farhed Alizadeh of the Qods Force,” Crocker stated.

Akil: “Isn’t he the guy you saw when we raided the
Contessa
? The one who escaped?”

“That’s him.”

They flew out on the same RCAF CC-130 early the next morning, accompanied by the four surviving prisoners and two Polish guards. Back in Tripoli, Sandra said she was returning to Germany in two days and hoped not to return to Libya anytime soon.

“We’ll always have Toummo,” Akil said, paraphrasing a line from
Casablanca.

Sandra shook her head and smiled.

Crocker had a lot on his mind, including the news about Farhed Alizadeh, which he wanted to report to Remington. But Holly came first.

As soon as he and his men returned to the guesthouse, he called the embassy. Knocking out the rhythm to “Lonely Boy,” the Black Keys song playing in the living room, he waited for Leo Debray to get on the line.

“So tell me, Leo,” Crocker asked, “where is she staying?”

“Holly?”

“Who else?”

“Holly’s not here yet,” Debray answered in an official tone of voice.

“Why? What happened?”

“Nothing happened, really. She and Brian never arrived.”

Crocker sensed something wrong. “What do you mean, they never arrived? I thought they were supposed to land here this morning. Was the flight delayed again?”

“I don’t know.”

He felt his blood pressure rocket up. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I mean the flight did land earlier today, and they weren’t on it. Why, we don’t know. We’ve tried to contact them but don’t know where they are. We haven’t heard from them since last night.”

He felt like he’d been kicked in the balls. Trying to breathe normally, he said, “You’re telling me my wife is missing?”

“I’m sorry to report that’s more or less correct.”

He wanted to say that things like this weren’t supposed to happen to American officials traveling overseas. Instead he looked out the window and asked, “Holly doesn’t have a cell phone with her?”

“She has one but isn’t answering. We’ve left numerous messages but so far have received no calls back.”

“What about Brian?”

“Same thing.”

“And the last place you heard from them was Sirte?”

“That’s correct. Last night, like I told you.”

“You don’t have any people there who can check on them?”

“Not in Sirte.”

“How come?”

“Because the city was almost completely destroyed during the war.”

T
he sky
was pitch black by the time the NATO helicopter landed at the airport in Sirte, which was some 280 miles southeast of Tripoli. The town of seventy-five thousand was the birthplace of Muammar Gaddafi and the place where he had been captured and killed on October 20 of the preceding year. The airport and terminal still showed signs of the recent fighting: damaged and pockmarked buildings, the rusting carcass of a tank with slogans painted on it in white, pickup trucks with mounted antiaircraft guns and .50-caliber guns in back, their barrels pointed at the sky but covered with tarps.

Leo Debray had called ahead and arranged for a NATO rep to meet Crocker in the terminal. Since it was a personal matter, he had decided not to bring any members of his team.

Crocker found the rep standing in the entrance under a flickering fluorescent light in his olive-green uniform, a Canadian major with a gleaming shaved head. Behind him local men were sweeping the floor and collecting trash. The airport was closed for the night.

Major Cummings said, “Your wife and Mr. Shaw were booked to fly on a Libyan Airlines flight at nine this morning. Service at this airport has been spotty because several members of the control tower staff disappeared during the recent fighting. The upshot is, the flight didn’t take off until eleven. Your wife and Mr. Shaw weren’t on it. It was the only flight that left this airport bound for Tripoli today.”

“So they couldn’t have caught a later flight?”

“No. That was the only one.”

“Did they call and change their reservation?”

“Apparently not.”

“You checked?”

“Yes, sir. And I checked the passenger list for the flight that left at eleven. Your wife and Mr. Shaw’s names aren’t on it.”

“How accurate are those lists?”

“I wouldn’t bet the farm on them.”

“What about a military flight or a private plane?”

“Chances are they would have left from this airport, and there’s no record of any flight bound for Tripoli this afternoon.”

The fact remained that Holly hadn’t been heard from. Calls to her cell phone went unanswered. Nobody had seen or heard from her since yesterday.

Crocker ran through other possibilities as he followed the Canadian up a narrow flight of stairs to the second floor. The odds that they had decided to drive to Tripoli were remote. One, the road was dangerous and passed through numerous checkpoints. Two, Holly and Brian didn’t have a car, which meant they would have had to hire one.

Still, he held out hope. Holly was resourceful and generally lucky. She knew how to handle herself.

The airport manager was a little man, coffee-skinned with a wispy gray beard and hair. A framed photograph of President Barack Obama hung behind his desk. It turned out he had spent a year at Baylor University and spoke decent English. “The last time anyone saw your wife was yesterday afternoon,” he said. “She missed her flight today. That’s all I can tell you, I’m afraid.”

Crocker asked, “Do you have any idea where she stayed last night?”

The airport manager rubbed his head. “Nobody comes here anymore, so the hotels are all closed. You’re sure they stayed the night?”

“Yes. That’s what they told the embassy.”

The manager nodded and left.

Through the open window Crocker heard a woman’s wailing voice. He couldn’t understand the words she was singing but was moved by the sadness behind them.

Was it possible that Holly had decided to stay another night? Why?

He hated the thought, but a hookup wasn’t out of the question. Holly was an attractive woman, Brian a good-looking younger man who had recently left his wife. Crocker hadn’t seen Holly for almost a month. He hadn’t spoken to her in weeks.

The station manager returned with a smile. Holding up a finger, he said, “I have the answer. How? Because I found the man who drove your wife and her friend to the house where they’re staying. This man is downstairs now, in front of the terminal.”

Outside, bullet holes and craters from rocket attacks marked every building. Many of the streetlights were damaged; burnt-out hulks of cars lined the street.

To their right, three men sat on the curb sipping coffee out of glass cups. One of them, an older man with badly bowed legs, rose and approached cautiously. He pointed to a black-and-white Datsun cab and nodded. Crocker and the Canadian opened the back door and got in.

It felt like a fever dream—the destruction everywhere, the savagery he’d witnessed here and throughout the Middle East, the empty streets, stars sparkling in the sky above, fresh air blowing in from the sea, the moon a crescent resembling an off-kilter smile.

The driver hummed to himself as he drove. Displayed on the dashboard was a laminated photograph of his family framed in black cloth, with a bouquet of dried flowers clipped to the top.

The city seemed abandoned. Crocker looked for lights in the houses they passed, like signs of hope.

After about ten miles the driver stopped at a one-story house set back from the beach. It sat on an incline and was topped by a white wall that almost reached the roof. Because of the angle, Crocker was able to see lights on inside.

“Give me a minute,” he said, turning to the Canadian major. “I’ll be right back.”

“Call me if you need me.”

No buzzer at the front door, so he tried knocking.

Once, twice, a third time so hard the door shook.

No answer. The front wall was too high to climb, so he pushed past some low shrubs and descended along the side. The property ended at the beach, where gentle waves washed across the sand. A second door sat in the middle of the back wall. No bell or buzzer there, either, so he hoisted himself up, put his foot on the knob, and climbed over, past palm trees that rattled overhead. The lights were on in the oval pool. Someone had left a white towel and an old issue of
Us
magazine by one of the lounge chairs.

It struck Crocker as a strange place for two professional colleagues to spend the night. Seemed more fitting for a romantic vacation.

Doubts started to stalk him. As he peered through the patio window he tried to remember precisely when he had spoken to Holly last and what they had discussed. There wasn’t much to see—modern living room furniture, a vase filled with peacock feathers, a fireplace that opened to both sides of the house.

The patio door wasn’t locked, so he slid it open and stepped in.

Saw a light and heard murmuring voices from inside.

This was starting to remind him of a movie scene where the husband returns home unexpectedly to find another man sleeping with his wife.

Holly would never do that.

Right?

He followed the light and voices up two steps and stopped. His heart seemed to be beating in his throat.

He tried to prepare himself. Took a deep breath.

What if I find them together? What will I do then?

He blocked out these thoughts and concentrated instead on the sounds: a rumble of waves crashing in the background, the low murmur of voices from the room. Bracing himself, he entered. The light came from a lamp on the far side of the bed. The sheets and coverlet had been pulled aside but the bed was empty. The murmuring sound was coming from a television on the opposite wall. He looked for signs of Holly and saw an open lipstick on the dresser alongside the white-handled brush she always carried in her purse, a pair of her running shoes on the floor.

She’s still here!

Where?

Turning, he crossed along the front of the house through a long kitchen and dining area to a hallway on the far end. The bathroom door was open, the toilet inside running.

One door at the end of the hall; another behind him. He opened the one ahead and entered, let his eyes adjust to the darkness. The place was a mess—clothes, men’s shoes, and papers strewn across the floor, the sheets pulled off a bed, a chair turned over. The dresser drawers emptied.

Crocker pulled aside the curtains so the moonlight streamed in and quickly confirmed that there was no one in the room.

His heart beating wildly, he spun and doubled back to the front of the house. Alarms were going off in his head.

A faint bluish light spilled out the bottom of the door. He clenched his fists and entered.

The first thing he noticed was the light from the desk lamp filling the small rectangular room with strange shadows. Next, his eyes focused on a single bed. In the folds of the covers Crocker saw a shiny object he identified as a six-inch kitchen knife.

Then he noticed a pool of blood on the floor near the desk. Stepping past the bed, he saw a man’s body lying facedown. The back of his head had been blasted off, indicating an exit wound.

Instinctively, Crocker felt for an artery on his neck to confirm that he was dead. No pulse.

Lifting the body under the shoulders, he turned it over carefully.

It didn’t resemble Brian Shaw or anyone else he recognized. Poor fellow looked to be a local—dark skin, hair, and eyes, a couple of days’ growth of beard.

Crocker set the body back down, relieved and unsettled—relieved that his worst fears hadn’t been confirmed, unsettled because he realized that something equally terrible had happened. A man had been killed, and Holly and Brian were missing.

He wanted to run and find her but had no idea where to go.

He also felt violated.

Nobody touches my wife and gets away with it. No one!

The
whoop-whoop-whoop
of the helicopter blades still echoed in his head as he sat in a comfortable leather chair in Ambassador Saltzman’s office. Air-conditioned air tickled his nose. He wanted to sneeze but caught himself. The ambassador sat behind his desk speaking into a cordless phone.

Crocker had remained in Sirte the previous night with a group of Canadian soldiers who worked the scene. Canucks, they called themselves. Good guys who loved the North African weather but missed their girlfriends back home. All the female residents of the city were hiding, they reported as they gathered evidence from the house, searched the area, and set up local roadblocks, all in a frenzy.

They’d come up with practically nothing. The deceased man in the house turned out to be the caretaker, a Libyan engineering student named Ali ak-Riyyad, twenty-one years old. The owners had fled to Morocco before the war and hadn’t returned. When friends and family members weren’t using the place, they rented it to visitors.

Holly and Brian Shaw had learned about the house from the man who ran the information desk at the airport. They had driven there in a cab two afternoons ago. Judging from the condition of Ali’s body, the attack had taken place in the early morning hours of the following day, approximately eighteen hours before Crocker arrived.

Shoe marks and handprints indicated that the attackers had climbed over the front wall and entered the house through an open kitchen window. They had exited out the front door. Someone had been injured, because drops of blood were spotted leading outside.

Now, sunlight streamed in through a crack in the curtains of the ambassador’s office. A quick glance at his watch showed Crocker it was almost one in the afternoon.

“Please, general, this is a priority. You must do everything in your power,” Saltzman said into the phone, “and act quickly. The last thing we want is for this to reach the press.”

The last sentence jarred Crocker’s attention.
Who gives a shit about the press?

He looked up. Remington sat across from him, next to a framed photograph of the ambassador standing next to the Clintons. He was writing something on a yellow pad as the ambassador spoke.

“No. Absolutely not,” the ambassador continued. “We haven’t heard anything here. I’ll let you know as soon as we do. Remember, speed is of the utmost importance. Yes. Yes. Thanks.”

He hung up, undid the top button of his white oxford shirt, and called, “Nancy, find Leo Debray and tell him I want to see him.”

Crocker was picturing Holly—the way her long brown hair framed her face, the warmth in her brown eyes, the fullness of her lips. She was strong, but delicate inside.

Amazing woman…Grace under pressure…A beautiful, compassionate soul…

He jerked his head up when he heard his name. “Crocker? Warrant Officer Crocker?”

“Yes, sir.”

“This is a terrible situation. I wish I knew you and your wife better.”

Strange thing to say.

“Why?”

“Why?” The ambassador pulled up a chair, sat directly in front of him, and adjusted his suspenders. “Sometimes people in authority are put in a godawful position. So please excuse me for asking, is there any chance that your wife and Mr. Shaw ran off together?”

It was like a slap in the face. “Why do you ask?”

“Not that I’ve heard anything. No. I’m referring to a spur-of-the-moment decision. Maybe they realized they had some time off and chose to explore the country together.”

“Where would they go?”

“I don’t know. Misrata? Benghazi? One of the towns along the coast?”

Crocker’s throat had turned so dry that he found it difficult to speak. “Why, sir? Has someone said something?”

“No. No. Not at all. I don’t want you to think…”

“Think…what?”

“The fact is that we’ve seen very little residual violence in that area. It’s been more or less completely calm.”

Crocker felt his fists clenching. He wanted to shout something but held back. He took a breath and said, “Sir, the house was attacked. There’s no doubt about that. The caretaker was killed. My wife and Mr. Shaw left behind a good number of their personal belongings.”

“But not their suitcases, correct? Did you find their suitcases?”

This line of questioning was pissing him off. “No, I didn’t, but—”

“It makes one wonder…”

“What, sir? I found my wife’s favorite hairbrush. She takes it with her everywhere. Her grandmother gave it to her. There’s no way in…”