by Don Mann
Hearing the growl of approaching motorcycles, they grew quiet. A current of excitement passed through the air and hit Crocker in the stomach. He quickly measured the distance between where he stood and the SIG 226 in the truck’s backseat.
These guys were ISIS and AQ—in other words, Islamic terrorists. Part of him wanted to waste them right there.
The motorcycle engines stopped and were followed by shouts of Allahu akbar that sent shivers up Crocker’s spine. Boots squished the fresh mud as four jihadists hurried toward them with Zeid leading the way.
“We’re not letting them into the cab without a fight,” Crocker whispered to his teammates beside him. “Pass that down the line.”
Mancini nodded. “Got it.”
They’d disarm the bastards before they knew what was happening. Then they’d really be fucked.
Crocker took a deep breath. He stood facing a broad man wearing a thick black robe, his head covered with a black bandana with a jihadist slogan printed on it that hung down his back, ghetto-style. An AK-47 slung over his shoulder and a six-inch knife in a sheath on a belt across his chest. Their eyes met for an instant and Crocker recognized a grizzled, determined veteran who wasn’t afraid of anyone or anything.
“Sadiq,” the man grunted. Friend.
“Sadiq,” Crocker said back.
The man strode to the back gate of the Sprinter, which was now open. Crocker saw that the jihadists were unloading boxes and stacking them on the ground.
“We gonna let them take our cargo?” whispered Akil.
“Let’s see what they want first.”
Two of the jihadists handed their weapons to the others and lifted a dozen boxes, deep frowns on their faces as they walked by. Bandages and syringes mostly.
The last two stopped in front of Crocker, who was guarding the cab door. Captain Zeid stood behind them.
“Okay?” Zeid asked tentatively.
“Yeah. What’s this dude want?”
Crocker looked into the face of the leader in front, measuring the distance between himself and the man’s Adam’s apple, where he intended to thrust his forearm should he try to push past. Break the thing and leave the bastard gasping. The man’s face communicated both fierceness and exhaustion, from his gray eyes, to the droop of his broken nose, to the thick gray beard. But there was something in his frown-lined forehead and ironic half smile that made him appealing.
The militia leader muttered something in a hoarse voice, and Zeid jumped forward and pointed at Crocker. Crocker recognized the word balad (country), but couldn’t make out the rest.
The grizzled militia leader stepped closer until Crocker could smell the intense garlic on his breath. His ruddy skin, gray eyes, and other features made him look more European than Arab. Like a rugged alpine climber.
He waved his hands as if trying to communicate an important thought. “Fahima…kalla. Tabib?” he asked in Arabic. Doctor?
Crocker tried to follow. “What the fuck’s he want now?”
Zeid: “He wants to know if you’re a doctor.”
“Tell him no. I’m a medic.”
Zeid translated. The militia leader nodded, then reached out and put an arm on Crocker’s shoulder. If that wasn’t unexpected enough, he also rattled off a plea using thanks to God and min fadlak (please), and, surprisingly, khoya (brother).
“Did he just call me ‘brother?’ ” Crocker asked.
“He did, yes,” answered Zeid.
“Is he…Mohammad al-Kazaz?”
“Yes.”
The mission was getting stranger by the second. “This dude is serious ISIS and AQ. I don’t get it. What’s he want from me?” Crocker asked.
“He’s asking you to help him,” Zeid answered. “Someone he knows is wounded. As a humanitarian, a brother in arms, he asks you by the grace of God to accompany him to a house nearby to see this person.”
“Does he understand that I’m not a doctor, but a medic with limited supplies? Tell him that.”
“He knows already.”
“Tell him again.”
Captain Zeid did. Al-Kazaz puffed out his chest and nodded.
“If I agree to go with him, will he let us through?”
Zeid translated and came back with al-Kazaz’s answer. “He says he’ll even guarantee your safety.”
“If I can’t save this person, which could likely happen, will he hold me responsible?”
“No,” the militia leader said.
Crocker had dealt with all kinds of questionable characters in every dark corner of the planet. This time his instincts told him that al-Kazaz would be true to his word. Besides, if he didn’t accept the challenge, he and his men might be unable to recover the sarin, which might then fall into the jihadists’ hands.
His only other major concern was time. Quickly checking his watch, he figured that they had maybe two hours to spare.
“Just a minute,” he said, opening the cab door behind him and removing the backpack that contained his emergency medical kit. He slung it across his back and nodded.
“Okay. Tell him I’m ready.”
Al-Kazaz grinned and nodded.
“No, boss,” Akil warned. “Bad fucking idea.”
Mancini: “He’s a terrorist. What happens if he kidnaps you and holds you for ransom?”
“If he does, proceed without me.”
“Boss, fuck that. He wants to cut your head off.”
“It’s the only way they’ll let us through.”
“No, boss. The risk isn’t worth it.”
“Wait here. Behave yourselves. I’ll be right back.”
Chapter Nine
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.
—Ephesians 2:8
He clung to the back of the Yamaha 450 dirt bike as it ripped up a narrow path, rain pelting his face, like a teenage kid on a nighttime adventure wondering if the fat lady was about to sing. Maybe he was taking his last wild ride. Maybe he should have heeded Holly’s pleas and never gone on this mission. Maybe she was right when she’d suggested in one of their sessions with Dr. Mathews that he had a death wish.
No, part of him argued back. I love life. I celebrate it and defend the freedoms it offers.
Whatever the truth, it was too late now. He was heading into something he had no control over, holding on to the back of a motorbike ridden by the enemy.
Someone had once told him that people were divided between those who took action and worriers. The worriers were often more intelligent because they considered all the possible dangers and outcomes before they did anything. But those who took action got a hell of a lot more done.
He was definitely heading into something now, recalling all he had learned in hand-to-hand combat and at SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) school. No way was he going to be kidnapped, interrogated by some fucking jihadists, and held for ransom or beheaded—even if he only had a SOG knife on him.
Refreshed by the wet night air and exhilarated by his circumstances, he focused on the vague outlines of a house ahead. He saw yellow light peeking through windows half hidden by the branches of cypress trees.
He wondered how Holly and Jenny would manage without him. Pretty well, probably. Holly seemed like she was halfway out the door, and Jenny was only a few days away from high school graduation. It’s not as if they hadn’t considered the possibility before. They’d have a new house and plenty of money from his bereavement allowance and navy pension.
The strange things that pass through your head at times like these.
“Man plans, God laughs.” It was a Yiddish saying an ST-6 commander had repeated to him when they were pinned down on a beach during his first mission to Somalia.
He remembered it now as the bike braked and slowed to a stop. Two men ran out of the house to greet al-Kazaz. He pointed behind to Crocker. A tall man in a black robe and long black beard bowed to Crocker, then took his medical pack and led him inside.
So far, so go
od. They seem friendly.
At the door two armed jihadists frisked him and took his knife. One pointed to a cell phone and asked Crocker if he had one on him.
He shook his head. “Kalla.” No.
The main room was lit by candles. He saw dirty mattresses on the floor, a radio transmitter in the corner, PRKs and AKs propped against one wall and a framed and filigreed Islamic quotation leaning against another. Al-Kazaz waved him forward and ducked into another room.
It stunk of feces, paraffin, and rotting flesh. A man with a gaunt face was on his knees beside the mattress, praying. Past his shoulder, newspaper was taped over a window. An Arabic slogan had been scrawled in black paint across the wall.
If this is where the ISIS leader is planning attacks against the West, the West has nothing to worry about, Crocker said to himself.
Al-Kazaz stood beside him and pointed to the swaddled figure on the bed.
Ibn, he whispered.
Crocker thought it meant “son.” He nodded. Whoever it was, he was clearly important to al-Kazaz, who knelt beside the gaunt-faced man alongside the bed and started to pray with him. Their low voices merged into one.
The still figure lay on his back, his face and head covered with towels. A simple brown blanket had been draped over his torso and legs. Kneeling beside al-Kazaz near the head of the bed, Crocker started to remove the coverings.
As he did the smell grew thicker and more intense. Setting aside layer after layer, he reached dried blood and the boy’s badly damaged and swollen face. His neck had been injured, too. He appeared young, maybe early teens, with thin wisps of mustache and beard.
First thing Crocker noticed was that the kid’s breathing was very shallow, because whatever had hit him had entered his neck, damaging his larynx. As with other gunshot wounds to the face he’d seen, there had probably been a substantial loss of blood. This was confirmed by the kid’s rapid, thready pulse and low body temperature. Fortunately, his cervical column and major arteries hadn’t been compromised. Still, he was a mess.
Crocker took a step back to assess the damage. Compressible hemorrhage, tension pneumothorax, airway and ventilatory damage were the leading causes of preventable combat death. He would have to close the wound, clean out the infection, and remove the bullet or shrapnel that seemed to be resting near the boy’s temporal bone along his right jaw if the kid were to have any chance of surviving.
It would be a delicate procedure, and judging by the kid’s weakened condition, there was a high likelihood that his body wasn’t strong enough, or he had lost too much blood, to withstand it. Also, since he was working with a DA-Med bag, the tools he had were limited. Nor was he in an operating room.
Al-Kazaz stopped praying and rested a hand on Crocker’s shoulder. “Labass?” (What do you think?)
There was no point trying to explain the challenges. His Arabic wasn’t good enough for that. Besides, he had accepted the assignment and had no choice but to see it through the best he could.
“Bad-a.” (I start.)
“Inshallah.” (By the grace of God.)
“I need clean towels and hot water,” he said in English, pointing to the aluminum sink in the corner and the dirty towel hanging beside it.
“Tahir! Tahir!” (Clean! Clean!) Crocker growled, grabbing one of the towels. “And the water…Harr.” (Hot.)
Al-Kazaz nodded.
“You understand?”
He nodded again, then barked orders at the gaunt-faced man, who hurried off on bare feet and came back five minutes later holding a basin of near-boiling water.
Crocker washed his hands, donned nitrile gloves, and proceeded. Using the cervical collar he had in his kit, he tilted the boy’s head back and held it in place. Then he used a clamp to hold his mouth open and inserted his middle and index fingers to sweep the mouth and throat for bone fragments. He located several broken teeth, removed them, and in the process noted that the kid’s tongue was swollen, indicating that it had probably been injured, too.
Crocker faced more immediate challenges.
The boy’s pulse remained rapid and his body temperature low, indicating that he was on the verge of going into hypovolemic shock. That meant he had to get some fluids into him, fast.
Among the supplies al-Kazaz had purloined from the Sprinter were several hypertonic saline solution drips. Saline wasn’t as effective as blood or plasma, but it would have to do. He hooked up one of the drips to a vein in the boy’s left forearm and monitored his pulse, which slowly started to stabilize.
“Hasan” (good), Crocker said, handing the bag to the gaunt-faced man and showing him how to hold it.
“Alhamdulillah” (thanks to God), al-Kazaz said.
Given Crocker’s limited supplies, the best he could hope to achieve was to remove the bullet, disinfect everything, and close up the wounds to the face and neck, providing adequate drainage. After that, systematic doses of penicillin and the body’s natural defense and healing mechanisms would have to do the rest.
What he didn’t want to do was tax the kid’s system to the point that he succumbed right in front of him. In part because of the lack of ventilation, Crocker had already sweated through his black shirt and pants.
A tall man offered him a glass of tea and another glass with water. Crocker downed the water, nodded to the man, and replaced the glass on the tray. “Shukran” (thanks).
The man bowed and backed away.
Crocker replaced the nitrile gloves with a fresh pair and considered the next problem—closing up the wound to the kid’s larynx. He decided to sew it up before he administered morphine, because of the respiratory-depressing effects of the drug. Inserting a rubber shuttle in the kid’s mouth, he showed al-Kazaz how he wanted him to hold the patient down by the shoulders.
With the kid immobilized on the bed, Crocker carefully cut away the damaged tissue around the larynx. Luckily, the cartilaginous skeleton was stable and the only serious damage was a fracture to the thyroid cartilage. Given the poor light, it was impossible to determine whether the projectile had done any damage to the kid’s vocal cords or the larynx nerve.
There was no wire in the basic Tac Med surgical kit contained in a pocket of the Med Pack, so Crocker used a needle and strong nonabsorbable CRS suture to repair the cartilaginous fracture. He wasn’t a surgeon, but he closed the fractured cartilage as well as he could.
Then he stood back and watched with satisfaction as the kid’s breathing returned to near normal. So far, so good.
He mopped the sweat from his own brow, then administered a shot of morphine, waited for it to take effect, and used a smaller-gauge suture to close the larynx skin. That completed, he took another drink of water and started working on the boy’s face, a chore that was much more painstaking. The projectile had traveled along the hard palate and done damage to the soft tissue along the jaw.
Crocker had to perform a surgical debridement to remove as much dead, damaged, and infected tissue as he could. As he did, he was careful not to dislodge any blood clots that might result in significant new blood loss. It was difficult, tense work. The closest experience to this he’d had was working on an injured goat when he attended Special Forces medical lab at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
The light wasn’t ideal and the conditions sucked, but Crocker worked his way along the palate to the mandible bone, where he located the bullet, a .22-caliber probably fired from a pistol and more or less intact. He disinfected everything and started to sew up the wound, al-Kazaz beside him, praying in Arabic, whispering encouragement, and even using a towel to mop the sweat from Crocker’s brow.
An hour after he started, he applied the last bandages to the boy’s face and neck, and rechecked his pulse and breathing. Both had improved. When he tried to straighten up, his neck barked. He cracked it, left, then right, and flexed his shoulders.
Miraculously, the kid appeared to be okay. Some luster had returned to his eyes. But the chances of him surviving in his current location were minimal at best
.
Crocker looked back at al-Kazaz, who was grinning broadly, and said, “That’s it. I think I’m done. Intaha.” (Finished.)
“Sadiq” (friend), the burly al-Qaeda leader said, pulling Crocker into his arms and kissing him on both cheeks. This was the savage terrorist who had beheaded many of his enemies and spread fear throughout Syria and Iraq.
Crocker pointed to the box of penicillin and used his fingers and watch to explain the dosage. “Two, every four hours.”
Al-Kazaz nodded.
“As soon as you can, move him to a hospital.”
He looked confused.
“Mustasfa” (hospital), Crocker said.
“Mustasfa, na’am.” (Yes.) Al-Kazaz nodded, embraced him again, and escorted Crocker into the living room, where he wrote a note on a piece of paper that Crocker hoped would guarantee safe passage through any ISIS roadblock, then handed him something wrapped in a blue velvet cloth.
“What’s this?”
Inside was a brand-new five-inch wooden koppo martial stick—a pocket self-defense tool.
“Ihsan” (gift), al-Kazaz answered. “Shukran, shukran.”
Wait till I show this to my teammates, was the first thought that came to him. As exhausted as he was, the irony still pleased him immensely. A terrorist has gifted me with a koppo martial stick. Imagine that!
Back in the Ford F-250, Crocker dreamt it was a beautiful spring morning. He lay in his bed in Virginia Beach listening to the birds chirp outside. Golden puffs of pollen swirled through fresh new leaves. He saw the green flash of a hummingbird and lifted himself to get a better look.
The bird represented good luck, according to Holly. Beautiful, he thought. The creative magic of nature; amazing variety and wonder.
The Ford hit a pothole and jolted him awake.
“What the fuck!”
He looked sternly at Akil, behind the wheel.
“Sorry, boss, but you kept calling me sweetheart, and the road’s real torn up.”
Through the windshield he saw that they were winding down from the hills onto a flat dry plain. A few lights sparkled in the distance through the mist.