by Don Mann
“Follow me,” Crocker said, crossing to a passageway along the far side of the building where rescue workers in blue-and-red helmets were carrying out people on stretchers. The heat and dust were oppressively thick. Pushing forward, they climbed through the rubble to the back. All the windows there had been blown out, and although the six stories were still intact, the whole structure looked about to collapse.
Men from inside a basement floor were shouting in Turkish and waving pieces of clothing. Crocker and Akil knelt in the broken glass and lifted out a stretcher bearing a wounded man through the broken frame of a window. They handed it up to rescue workers, grabbed an empty stretcher, passed it inside, and got ready to take the next wounded individual.
After the fourth one, Crocker’s arms were aching and sweat was dripping from his brow. “There are prisoners trapped downstairs,” he heard a woman behind him say in English.
“Where?”
“Over there.” She pointed to a pancaked section of the building to their right.
He stood and acknowledged the woman in the blue Turkish EMS uniform. “Thanks.”
Stepping over a chunk of smoldering, undistinguishable flesh, he pulled at Akil’s sleeve and pointed to the little space in the collapsed concrete where a man was attempting to pull himself through. His shoulders were stuck and he grimaced in pain.
“Calm down,” Crocker told him. “We’ll get you out.”
“American?” the trapped man asked, his face covered with white dust and vivid red blood dripping from the top of his head.
“Canadian.”
“Toronto Maple Leafs or Montreal Canadiens?”
“The Leafs, of course.”
Together, the SEALs used their legs to pivot a chunk of concrete to the right so it continued to hold back the debris above it but opened enough space for the man to worm through.
He smiled and embraced them, even though his right foot was a mess. A relief worker with a Canadian patch on his shoulder led the man off. Weird coincidence, Crocker thought, his throat and nostrils clogged with dust and smoke.
The space they had opened allowed more prisoners to squeeze out. Crocker was helping one with an injured arm when he recognized the face of the Syrian boy he had seen earlier with his family.
“Hakim.”
“My friend! My friend! Mr. Wallace.”
He knelt in the rubble, cleaned and dressed a cut near the kid’s elbow, and asked, “Where’s the rest of your family?”
“Hospital. They go to hospital.”
“Good. What’s your last name?”
“Gannani.”
“Hakim, stay with me. You can be my assistant. Okay?”
“Yes.” The boy smiled, revealing a large space between his upper front teeth.
Crocker found Akil on his knees, still passing empty stretchers to the workers inside. Wiping the perspiration from his forehead, Crocker said, “I’m taking this kid to the hospital and will meet you back at headquarters.”
“Who’s he?”
“I’ll explain later.”
“When?”
“I’m going now.”
“I mean, when will you be back at HQ?” Akil asked.
“Soon as I’m finished.”
“Remember, we’ve got a mission.”
“I know. I’ll be no more than an hour.”
He and the boy worked their way to the front of the building, stopping to disinfect and bandage wounds and clean faces. Crocker directed Hakim into the back of a blue-and-white medical van. A young female nurse with pale blond hair leaned on his shoulder and sobbed throughout the five-minute ride uphill.
“You’re doing good work,” he said to her in English. “These people need you.”
She nodded and wiped her eyes. “Nona.”
“Wallace.”
“Polish.”
“Canadian.”
Cute girl. No more than twenty-five.
He lost her in the chaos of the hospital—a parking lot and entrance lined with stretchers; inside, stressed-out EMS workers, doctors, and nurses shouting orders in Turkish and Arabic and running to and fro.
He saw a little girl lying on her back fully conscious, with her stomach, liver, and intestines exposed. He held her hand, grabbed a doctor, and locked his eyes on her dark-brown ones as they wheeled her into surgery—heroism and tragedy all around him. Everyone pitching in to save lives.
Crocker worked his way down a green corridor, administering help where it was needed—setting one man’s broken femur, removing broken teeth and debris from a soldier’s throat, handing out bottles of water to people in shock. Hakim ran upstairs to try to locate his family.
Time flew past, with more wounded arriving by the minute. Then, as though someone had turned off a tap, the flow of incoming stopped and the entire hospital and all the people in it seemed to relax.
Crocker was leaning over a gurney applying a cold compress to a minor burn on an old man’s arm when Hakim tugged the back of his shirt. From the expression on his face, Crocker could tell that he had found his family.
“Where?” Crocker asked.
“Floor three. Room 312.”
“Good. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Ten minutes later, he climbed the steps and found a large rectangular room packed with beds and cots. Some patients rested on mats on the floor. The Syrian family stood beside a bed in the far corner by a window covered with old mustard-colored curtains. The sun through the curtains cast a golden hue over their heads and shoulders.
Mother and father greeted him with hugs and kisses. Both pointed proudly to their daughter, lying on her back with her eyes closed. An IV drip fed her right arm, and her left foot was wrapped in bandages, indicating that the doctors had treated it in time.
Crocker nodded with relief and turned to the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Gannani beside him, each clutching one of his hands and smiling and weeping at the same time.
“I’m very glad,” he said.
“Allahu akbar,” the father muttered. God is great.
“Yes, Allahu akbar,” Crocker repeated. It didn’t matter that he was Christian and the Gannanis Muslim. They were all giving thanks—whether they were referring to a divine creator, karma, or random good luck. The Gannanis had no home to go back to, no country, and little more than the clothes on their backs, but they were grateful to be together with their children and alive.
Through Hakim, the parents asked Crocker about his own family and nodded with affection and muttered blessing to Allah as he described Holly and Jenny back in Virginia.
After he had confirmed with a Turkish doctor that the girl’s foot had been saved and she was out of danger, it was time to say goodbye. Mrs. Gannani insisted on pressing a little white embroidered handkerchief into his hand as a token of thanks. They hugged and kissed him again. He wished them well and walked back to the military compound feeling fulfilled in an important way.
Maybe what Jared had said back in the Meşale Café was right. Maybe larger commercial interests really were pulling the strings. But he lived by his own code, and that included protecting humble people like the Gannanis wherever they lived in the world, even if that made him naive, or romantic, or a renegade in some people’s eyes.
Chapter Seven
Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.
—Anonymous
With a renewed sense of purpose, he huddled with Logan, Colonel Oz, and Mancini back at the military headquarters to plan the mission. They quickly decided that the men of Black Cell would need some kind of cover to give them the best chance of reaching Idlib without resistance. Mr. Asani suggested that they play the role of foreign humanitarian workers delivering medical supplies to the besieged city, which the clinics badly needed.
“That will work,” Crocker said. “But we’re going to need uniforms, medical supplies, and the proper kind of trucks to pull that off.”
Logan used the phone and fax in one of the offices to commu
nicate with Ankara Station. Returning to the conference room, he reported four things: One, Anders was on his way to Yayladaği. Two, Ankara Station would coordinate with the Canadian consulate to produce identities, passports, other documents, and even appropriate clothing for the five men. Three, the president still hadn’t approved the mission. And four, FSA Elite Battalion soldiers under the command of Captain Zeid were on their way from nearby Reyhanli to help escort Black Cell into Syria.
“What do you know about Captain Zeid?” Crocker asked.
“He’s a former Syrian Army 17th Regiment soldier who defected in early 2012,” Colonel Oz answered. “One of about five hundred. They formed the core of the armed resistance against Assad.”
“Can he be trusted?”
“As much as you can trust anyone fighting in Syria,” Oz answered.
“How much is that?”
“About sixty percent.”
By 1500 local time, the men’s physical dimensions were recorded and photos were taken and sent back to Ankara. By 1720 hours a helicopter had landed at the back of the compound, with the required uniforms, passports, documents, and other gear. Also aboard were Anders, Mr. Talab’s assistant Fatima, Janice, and the young engineering student named Hassan who had shot the video of the soldiers carrying the sarin canisters into the tunnel.
Fatima, on whom Crocker focused first, wore a tight olive uniform with no insignia. As she and Hassan retreated to a nearby office to confer via telephone with Mr. Talab, the rest of them discussed vehicles. It was assumed that Captain Zeid and other members of the FSA escort would be traveling in their own truck or jeep. The question then was, how many vehicles did Crocker and his men need, what was available, and of those available, which ones best suited the mission?
Mancini spelled out their needs. “Since we’re going in as humanitarian workers delivering medical supplies, we need delivery-type trucks. They also have to be big and strong enough to accommodate the sarin.”
“How many canisters are we talking about?” Crocker asked.
Logan, who had carefully studied Hassan’s video, answered, “Anywhere from six to ten.”
“Then we need two trucks,” Crocker responded.
“Cobras?” Colonel Oz asked. The Cobra was a Turkish-made armored vehicle.
“No,” Crocker said. “Armored vehicles will attract attention.”
“But they offer more in terms of safety,” Anders added.
“I’m thinking more along the lines of covered extended-cab pickup or transport trucks,” said Crocker. “Something that will pass for medical transport.”
“Yeah. One that doesn’t have visible ordnance mounted on it,” Mancini offered.
Oz: “We’ve got the Turkish-made 25 Kirpi 4x4.”
Mancini said, “I’m gonna have to see it.”
“Follow me.”
Behind the barracks, Colonel Oz pointed out various vehicles in a fenced-in, guarded lot. Crocker and Mancini picked out a mine-resistant, ambush-protected 25 Kirpi 4x4 and a 2.5-ton BMC covered transport truck. Then Crocker changed his mind and decided in favor of an extended-cab Ford F-250 pickup and Mercedes Sprinter van.
“Why, boss?”
“They’re more low-profile. If we’re going in in-alias, we gotta play that all the way.”
“But they give us no place to take refuge if we’re attacked.”
“We’ll manage.”
The Sprinter was beige, but the pickup sported military camouflage, which Crocker didn’t like.
“You have one in a neutral color?”
“You want leather seats and air conditioning?” Colonel Oz asked back with a grin.
“Yeah, tilt-back steering and moon roofs, too.”
Oz chuckled. “I’ll have my men check with the highway department. Their trucks are gray.”
“Solid. And find a cover for the pickup.”
“Canvas okay?”
“Aluminum is better. Slap some crosses on them if you can, so they look official.”
“You want petrol in them, too?” asked Oz.
“That would be nice. We’re also going to need to load them with medical supplies,” Mancini added.
“Medical supplies.…I’ll talk to Dr. Ebril.”
Crocker: “Who’s he?”
“Head of our medical department.”
“How many klicks to Idlib?” Crocker asked.
“Klicks?” Oz asked.
“Kilometers.”
“About one hundred twenty-four kilometers. Without delays, it should take no more than two hours.”
“That’s seventy-seven miles, boss,” Mancini said, doing the conversion in his head.
“He’s our combination computer, dictionary, encyclopedia, technical manual, and atlas,” Crocker said, nodding toward Mancini.
“Where’s Cape Arnauti?” Oz asked, testing him.
“It sits at the northwestern tip of Cyprus,” Mancini answered. “Nice beach and offers excellent snorkeling, but the roads suck.”
“Impressive,” responded Oz. “I could use someone like him.”
That task completed, Mancini went to the arsenal to look at weapons. He chose his favorite HK416 assault rifles, but these were the A5s, with the 5.56x45mm NATO-caliber ammo. He made sure they had M320 grenade launchers attached to the rails and AAC M4-2000 suppressors. Backing them up, he selected two MP5 machine guns, a Browning M2HB .50-caliber heavy machine gun, and a couple of Soviet-made RPG-7Ds with a variety of warheads—PG-7VRs for taking out tanks and armored vehicles, OG-7Vs for fragmentation, and Gsh-7VTs for penetrating bunkers. As sidearms, they’d pack the SIG Sauer P226s that they were familiar with.
Back in the conference room of the main building, Crocker started to feel the tension building in his stomach. Anders had brought Phoenix IR strobe beacons, grenades, SOG knives, Tri-Fold handcuffs, M3X weapon lights, tactical wristbands with a pouch that contained maps of Idlib and Arab-language translations, and INVISIO M4 in-ear conduction headsets. The latter used bone-sensing conduction to allow operators to whisper to one another, while eliminating ambient noise.
The last two items were black T-shirts with red Doctors Without Borders (DWB) insignia and Dragon Skin SOV-4000 Level V body armor, which was lightweight, tough enough to withstand up to twenty direct hits from an AK-47, expensive as hell, and not available to the general public. Each vest was made of overlapping ceramic disks enclosed in a sonic skin textile cover and weighed about five pounds.
Pointing to the DWB insignia, which featured a figure in motion, Akil said, “This dude looks like he’s running.”
“So?” asked Crocker.
“I don’t run from anything.”
“We’ll see what happens when the Syrian Army or ISIS is on your ass.”
Everyone assembled to listen to Hassan talk about conditions in Idlib and the location of the tunnel. He was in his early to mid-twenties, with round glasses, short bushy hair, eyebrows, and beard, and spoke perfect English, which he had learned attending one year of engineering school at the University of Delaware. Dressed in jeans and a striped Izod shirt, he looked like a nervous, determined grad student, Crocker thought.
“University of Delaware. That makes you a Fightin’ Blue Hen,” Akil said.
“How the hell do you know that?” Mancini asked.
“I dated a coed from UD once.”
“You mean you got her too drunk to notice your ugly mug and slept with her.”
“All right, guys,” Crocker warned, nodding toward Janice, who was still in the room. “That’s not funny.”
“No, it’s not,” said Janice.
“Sorry,” Mancini responded.
“He gets all macho when he’s not being browbeaten by his wife,” added Akil.
“Enough,” Crocker said.
“Fighting blue hens have a reputation for being ferocious cockfighters,” said Hassan.
“I’m not touching that,” said Akil.
“Me either,” added Mancini.
“When’s the l
ast time you were in Idlib?” Anders asked, turning to Hassan.
“Uh…two weeks ago,” he answered. “Two weeks exactly.”
Anders pointed to Janice, who hit a key on her laptop that projected a satellite map of Idlib on a screen at the front of the room. “Can you show us the exact location of the tunnel with the canisters?”
Hassan turned to Fatima, who was sitting to his left, shrugged, and muttered something in Arabic. She said something back.
“Is there a problem?” Anders asked.
“He never said the tunnel was inside the city of Idlib itself.”
“Then where is it?”
Anders knew this information already, but wanted to make sure Hassan’s story remained consistent.
“It’s located in the province of Idlib, farther southeast,” Hassan answered. “Near the town of Abu al-Duhur, inside the perimeter of the Abu al-Duhur military air base.”
Fatima nodded. “Can you show us on the map?” asked Anders.
Hassan moved the cursor on the laptop and zoomed in closer. Two long runways appeared against a flat green-brown landscape. A rectangular building rose in the distance, the only major building in sight.
“That’s the air base headquarters,” Hassan said, pointing.
“Where are the aircraft and barracks?” Crocker asked. “Where’s the control tower?”
“The control tower, I believe, is housed in the headquarters building,” replied Hassan. “The aircraft and barracks are contained in four large underground bunkers. Here, here, here, and here.”
“Is the base still operational?” Mancini asked.
Hassan looked confused. “If you mean, is the Syrian air force still flying planes and helicopters from there, the answer is yes.”
Katie at Ankara Station had told them the aircraft were no longer stationed at the air base. If they made it there, they’d find out who was right.
“What kind?” Crocker asked.
“MiGs and helicopters.”
MiG-25s and 29s; Mi-24 and SA 342 Gazelle attack helicopters,” Oz answered. The latter were small, versatile, French-made, and originally designed for reconnaissance, sometimes armed with HOT-3 antitank missiles. Crocker had seen them deployed by Saddam Hussein during the First Gulf War and by the Serbians in Kosovo.