by Don Mann
They passed it and stopped at the gate of a compound with two large Turkish crescent-and-star insignias painted on the walls. An armed guard checked their passports and waved them in.
He slept for five hours, awoke in the dark, put on a pair of shorts and ASICS he kept in his bug-out bag, and went for a run through the deserted streets. Pre-dawn and dusk were his favorite times of the day, because they grounded him in nature. Back home in Virginia, he liked to run a fourteen-mile loop through First Landing State Park near the Chesapeake Bay Beach, with gulls and egrets flying overhead. Here his footsteps echoed through still streets and under rooms filled with sleeping children and parents. A slight tremble stirred the air in anticipation of the new day, less than an hour away.
This was his form of meditation, a way to release toxins from his body and guilt and second-guessing from his head. His mind focused on the present—the gentle swish of a breeze sweeping through the streets, the thump of his heart, a motor coughing and igniting.
Feeling refreshed and exhilarated, he started to loop the town a third time. Passing a school on the southern perimeter, he spotted ahead a mustached man dragging a suitcase held together with rope and leather belts. The man looked over his shoulder, saw Crocker approaching, and waved at someone to his right to go back. He ducked behind a whitewashed wall, desperation writ large all over him.
When Crocker got to within fifteen feet of the spot, he heard a girl cry out. Past the corner of the school gymnasium, he saw the same man lifting a girl onto his back. She had a pained expression on her face. A teenage boy climbed out of a drainpipe that ran under the track to help the middle-aged man, who Crocker assumed was his father.
Crocker called gently, “Stop.” Then using the equivalent Arabic term, he said, “Waqf.” It was the best he could manage, since he didn’t speak Turkish.
The boy, who looked to be about thirteen, reached into his pocket, produced a folding knife, and grunted a warning at Crocker.
Crocker stopped. It wasn’t as though he felt threatened. He knew he could disarm the kid in an instant, but he raised his hands instead and said, “It’s okay. There’s no problem. I want to help you.”
The older man grunted and, unable to bear the weight of the girl any longer, started to lower her. She let go of his shoulders and slid down to the ground, landing with a yelp of pain.
Crocker thought he understood the situation. “Syrian?” he asked. “You’re Syrian?”
“Syria,” the boy nodded back. He had deep circles under his eyes and the gaunt look of someone who hadn’t slept or eaten in days.
Crocker pointed to the girl, now moaning on the ground and holding her leg. “Your sister?”
“She…my sister. Yes.”
“Is she hurt?”
“Her foot. Bad foot.”
“Maybe I can help.”
The boy held up three fingers. “Three days…we walk. Khan al-Asal.”
Crocker didn’t know if this was the boy’s name or the village they came from. “This your family?”
“Family. Yes. Mother, father, sister, brother.”
Crocker hadn’t seen a mother. He pointed to the sister, then at his own eyes, and said, “Your sister. Can I look?”
The father grunted a warning, and the boy pointed the knife at Crocker’s chest. Simultaneously, a stout woman with a black scarf over her head stepped out from behind the side of the school.
She must be the mom.
“Doctor?” the boy asked Crocker.
“Medic.”
“What…medic?”
“Like a doctor. Yes.”
The kid looked confused. Crocker reached into the pouch around his waist and removed two Bonk Breaker energy bars, which he offered to the kid.
The boy lowered the knife, took the bars, and handed them to his mother and father. They ripped the packaging open and passed them to their children. The girl ate hers, but the boy handed his back. The father split it and handed half to his wife, who wolfed it down.
As Crocker knelt beside the girl, he detected the foul odor of infection. Slowly and carefully he undid a black scarf that had been wrapped around her foot. She winced, while the others leaned in and watched.
“You come far?” he asked.
“Far. Yes.”
Crocker found considerable swelling, a puncture wound on the sole of the foot, and two spots of gangrene—a quarter-sized one near the heel and a small, lighter colored one in the arch. The puncture was deep and required surgery.
The mother, seeing the discolored skin, covered her face with her hands and started to cry.
“Waqf,” Crocker whispered to her.
The woman nodded. Mother and daughter possessed the same dark, almond-shaped eyes.
“Has she had spasms or clenching of the jaw?” Crocker asked, wondering whether the girl had displayed any symptoms of tetanus poisoning.
The boy shook his head. “I no understand.”
“Fever? Hot?”
“Hot, yes.”
“And shaking?”
Behind him blue lights washed over the street and nearby buildings, and a vehicle braked to a stop. This produced looks of alarm from father and mother. The former lunged forward, grabbed his son by the collar, and pushed him toward the drainage pipe.
Crocker turned and saw a black jeep. Three men in black uniforms and hats stepped out. He didn’t know if they were Turkish police or military, or how exactly to handle the situation.
Both mother and father rushed toward the officers, holding out their arms and pleading in Arabic.
Standing in his running shorts, Crocker told them, “I’m an American official. A medic. This girl needs immediate medical attention.”
They didn’t seem to understand him, nor did they appear impressed. One of the Turkish officers pushed him back gently; another grabbed the boy by the arm and pulled him out of the drainage pipe. They stood surrounding the family and speaking to one another in Turkish as the girl remained on the ground.
One of the Turks asked the father a question in Arabic, and the father responded with a look of defeat.
Crocker had no ID on him, but he tried again. “American,” he said pointing at his chest. “I work with Colonel Oz. This girl needs to go to a hospital. Hospital, you understand?”
One of the officers stared Crocker in the eye and barked, “Pasaport!”
“Not on me. Back at the military base.”
Realizing the futility of staying, arguing, and maybe being detained, he backed away and said to the son, “I’ll get help. What’s your name?”
“Hakim.”
“Wallace. I’m going now to get help.”
He sprinted back to the MiT compound and found Colonel Oz standing on the front steps smoking a cigarette and speaking on his cell. The sun had started to rise over his shoulder, casting a golden light on the structures around them.
“You might want to conserve your energy,” Colonel Oz said, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as Crocker caught his breath. “Your colleagues will arrive within the hour.”
He turned to the clock on the tower to his left. If the time displayed there was correct, they would be there by 0745 local time.
“Colonel, as I was running just now I found a Syrian family—father, mother, and two kids. The girl is young. She’s gotten a very serious infection on her foot that requires surgery. While I was examining it, three Turkish officials arrived in a black jeep. They were about to detain them.”
“Where?” the colonel asked.
“Near a school in that direction.” He pointed past the building they stood beside.
“Fatih Terim Lisesi,” Colonel Oz concluded.
“That sounds right.”
Oz punched a number into his cell with thick fingers.
“I memorized the license plate number.”
“Good,” the colonel said. “I’ll call now and take care of it.” Crocker repeated the number, which Oz translated into Turkish as he spoke into the phone.
“Thank you,” Crocker said. “Later, I want to go to the hospital or clinic where they take the girl and make sure she’s treated correctly.”
The colonel nodded and said, “We have to locate them first.”
Chapter Six
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.
—Matthew 5:5
He stood in the shower, staring at the spaces between the green tiles and thinking how fortunate he and his family were to be citizens of the United States. Most Americans didn’t appreciate how lucky they were, nor did they understand the thin line between peace and chaos. When he got home, he’d tell the story of the refugee family to Jenny. He tried to imagine himself and his family in the same situation, fleeing their home with as many possessions as they could carry.
As he pulled on cotton pants and a T-shirt—all in his customary black—a Turkish military aide arrived to inform him that Colonel Oz requested his presence in a room on the second floor.
“Me alone, or my whole team?” Crocker asked.
The aide looked confused. “Your team, I think.”
He found Mancini, Akil, Davis, and Suarez sitting on sofas on the second floor, drinking hot tea from glasses and cracking jokes about Davis’s dyed black beard and hair.
“Don’t you think he looks like an Arab pinup boy?” Akil asked.
The dark hair made Davis’s blue eyes stand out more than usual.
“Have you seen Colonel Oz?” Crocker asked.
Mancini shook his head. “Not since we arrived. Why?”
“What about Logan?”
“Logan? Don’t think I’ve met him.”
“What do you call a Turkish baby?” Akil asked in a low voice as Crocker craned his neck looking down the hall.
“What?”
“A kebaby.”
Crocker groaned. “That sucks.”
“What do you say to a crying Turkish baby?”
“What?”
“Shish kebaby.”
Crocker shook his head and groaned again. “Even worse. You guys drive here?”
“Unfortunately. We’ve been listening to his bad jokes for the last hour,” Davis complained.
“I would have tossed him out of the vehicle.”
“We considered it.”
Mancini asked, “Boss, what’s going on? You look like you got a lot on your mind.”
“We need to get ready to deploy into Syria tonight.”
“How?” the always practical Mancini asked. “What’s the plan?”
“There is no plan, as of yet. We just have an objective and a timeline, but no approval.”
“Let’s not do what we did in southern Mexico,” Mancini commented. In that case, with the minutes ticking down to a deadline, Crocker and his men had launched a raid before they’d gotten White House approval. Fortunately, they had saved a U.S. senator’s wife in the process, otherwise Crocker might have been drummed out of the service.
“Hopefully Oz will have more intel when I find him.”
“He’s getting his head polished,” Akil joked.
“Not funny.”
“Seriously, boss, some cultural advice,” Akil offered. “Don’t get impatient. Turks don’t like that. Pride and honor are important to them.”
“Thanks.”
He hurried down to the end of the long hall. All the offices and rooms were empty, except for one in which a man with his feet on his desk was reading a report.
“Excuse me, do you know where I can find Colonel Oz?”
The Turkish soldier picked up a phone and called someone. After he hung up, he led Crocker over to the window and pointed to a low adjoining building on the left.
“Kahvalti,” he said in Turkish.
“I don’t understand.”
The Turk mimed sipping a cup of coffee. “Colonel Oz…”
The Turkish orderly led them across an empty cafeteria and entered a private dining room where Colonel Oz sat at a round table with Mr. Asani and Logan watching a TV propped in the corner. Logan looked bored and uncomfortable.
Seeing Crocker and his men, Oz stood and pointed to a buffet set up on a table along the wall and said, “Buyrun, takilin” (Help yourselves). Before the SEALs had heard the translation, they were filling plastic plates with boiled eggs, cheese, green olives, sucuk (dried sausage), and börek (thin dough filled with meat, cheese, and chopped vegetables).
“These people know how to eat,” commented Akil as he bit into a piece of börek.
“Good,” Mancini said. “Check out the baklava.”
“Isn’t baklava a Greek word?” asked Davis.
“No, Turkish. Dates back to ancient Mesopotamia.”
They found places at the table and filled cups from white pitchers of Turkish coffee and green tea. Colonel Oz’s eyes never wandered from the TV, where a buxom blonde with elaborate makeup and a tight lavender outfit was interviewing a bearded man in a white suit.
“Who’s the babe?” Crocker asked as he sat next to Logan.
“Don’t know.”
Crocker couldn’t understand what the man on TV was saying, but he noted his extreme self-importance and theatricality.
“What about the guy in the white suit?”
“His name is Harun Yahya.”
Crocker had never heard of him. “Who is he?”
“Harun Yahya? The messianic leader of an apocalyptic Islamic sex cult, and a close friend of Prime Minister Erdoğan.”
“Really?” Crocker asked in disbelief. “I never thought I’d hear the words Islamic and sex cult in the same sentence.”
“Harun Yahya is an important man in Turkey and considered one of the most influential figures in Islam. Kind of a cross between L. Ron Hubbard and Hugh Hefner.”
“Who’s she?” Davis asked from the other side of Logan, pointing to the woman in lavender.
“Don’t know her name, but she must be one of Harun Yahya’s so-called kittens. He’s into kinky sex and cocaine, and has written something called the Atlas of Creation, which espouses some weird form of creationism, that he’s sent to academics and biologists all over the world. Those who have bothered to read it dismiss it as pure BS.”
“Sounds like your kind of thing,” Crocker said to Davis. “You ever hear of it?”
Davis shook his head.
As they watched, one of several lavender-spacesuit-clad kittens did a slow pirouette and broke into song, an off-key Turkish version of “The Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha.
Colonel Oz applauded and started to laugh. He rose halfway to his feet as though he was about to say something when a massive explosion blew the glass out of the cafeteria window, threw him back against the wall, and lifted the others out of their seats. Glass flew everywhere. Chunks of plaster from the ceiling crashed onto the table. Eggs, tea, and coffee spilled onto the floor.
Crocker found himself on the floor gasping for breath. He brushed the dust away from his eyes and mouth, and did a lightning-fast appraisal of the damage. When he saw that the ceiling wasn’t going to cave in, he hurried over to Oz, who lay near the wall holding his chest and coughing.
“What the fuck was that?” Akil shouted through the dust and debris.
“Car bomb, probably,” Mancini responded, picking a sliver of glass out of his thigh. “The explosion originated to our left.”
Men were scrambling, moaning, and coughing. Some crawled under the table.
Crocker, his eardrums ringing, shouted, “Clear everyone to the courtyard in back!”
He heard no gunfire or sounds of a follow-up attack.
With Oz leaning on him and wheezing, he turned to him and said, “We’re going outside to get fresh air and find out what’s going on.”
Oz nodded.
Mr. Asani, who was bleeding from a cut to his forehead, took Oz by the arm and led him out while Crocker accounted for his men. Except for a few minor cuts, they were all intact.
The courtyard, which occupied the space between the military
headquarters building and barracks, quickly filled with half-dressed soldiers carrying AKMs (modernized Kalashnikovs) and Spanish-made G3 7.62x51mm NATO assault rifles. MiT officials in black were barking orders into handheld radios and cell phones, and medics were ministering to the wounded. Nobody appeared to be seriously hurt.
“The bomb went off in front of Turkish police headquarters down the street,” Asani reported. “From what I hear, the whole front of the building collapsed.”
Crocker knew that meant casualties and wounded. “You wait here,” he said, turning to Mancini. “I’m going to see if I can help.”
Akil chimed in, “I’m coming with you.”
With a borrowed medical kit and two Sarsilmaz Kilinç 2000 semiautomatic 9mm pistols, he and Akil hurried left along the main street.
As he ran, the thick, stomach-turning smell of Ritchie lying on the ground hit Crocker again. His throat turned dry and he started to feel sick. Leaning on the hood of a parked truck, he felt the muscles in his abdomen convulsing and he threw up.
“Go back, boss,” Akil said. “I can handle this.”
“No, I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not. Wait here. I’ll get you some water.”
“Screw that.”
Three short blocks later they reached the Turkish police building. Pushing through the throng of onlookers and stepping around the six-foot-deep crater and smoking ruin of what was left of the truck that had carried the bomb, they confronted the pancaked façade of a modern six-story building.
“Holy shit!” Akil exclaimed.
Crocker had seen too many scenes like this.
The sickening smell of ammonium and burning plastic lingered in the air—a telltale sign of an ammonium nitrate car bomb. Half-dressed Turkish firefighters were trying to extinguish a furious blaze on the third floor. Scattered around them lay bodies, parts of bodies, the twisted remains of furniture, glass, and rubble. People trapped in the building called for help.
“What do we do now?” Akil asked.