by Don Mann
“That’s a fifty-eight Edsel Corsair,” Mancini answered. “The first car to come with a rolling dome speedometer, push-button transmission, and warning lights.”
Crocker heard a siren approaching and pulled over as two red fire trucks sped by going in the opposite direction.
“Someone at the clinic pulled an alarm,” Mancini conjectured.
Crocker: “You’re probably right.”
When they reached a traffic circle, he took a road that brought them within a block of the coast. The houses and businesses were more spread out and dilapidated and the few people on the sidewalks looked indigent and spaced out on either booze or drugs.
“I see the beach,” Akil said, pointing to the right.
“How do you feel about swimming back to Florida?” Mancini cracked.
A white police car with blue-and-red lights flashing turned on the avenue and took off east.
“What do we do if we hit a roadblock?” Suárez asked.
Crocker spotted a sign for the Havana Yacht Club ahead—an elegant building surrounded by lush green grounds. “Check it out.”
“My uncle told me about this place,” Suárez said. “Back in the fifties, it was the scene of fabulous parties with movie stars like Rita Hayworth and Marlon Brando.”
“Looks like a sleepy-ass retirement home now.”
Crocker saw three armed guards at the entrance, which caused him to change his mind about entering.
“How’s she doing?” he asked Akil in back.
“She’s moaning and moving. I think she’s about to wake up.”
They had left the city and were passing a large mural with Fidel’s grinning face on it and a revolutionary slogan painted in red. Traffic was even more sporadic. A glance at Crocker’s watch revealed that it was 0713. A white-and-blue helicopter flew past in the opposite direction.
Beyond palm trees on the right, he saw a series of canals with pleasure boats and an entrance.
“What’s that?” he asked.
Suárez shrugged.
The sign read MARINA HEMINGWAY.
Crocker drove past the entrance and stopped along the beach. He put the van in neutral, stuck the silenced .45 under the back of his black T-shirt, stuffed the radio in his pocket, and said, “If you don’t hear from me in five minutes, keep driving along the coast until you find a boat you can hijack. Key West is about a hundred miles north.”
“Where the hell are you going?” Mancini asked.
Crocker was already out and climbing a rusted fence at the edge of the marina. He hurried along the closest parallel canal, which was lined with cruisers and sailboats, looking for an opportunity. As he approached a twenty-seven-foot Carver Santego named Seas the Day, he heard a woman’s voice speaking English. He jumped aboard, ran down three steps, and entered the door to the galley.
A middle-aged man and woman sat at a table eating scrambled eggs. He said, “Excuse me for barging in. Are you Americans?”
The man looked up warily. He had sharp features and thinning blond hair. “Maybe. Who are you?”
“Me and my associates just rescued a kidnapped girl. We’re working with the U.S. government and need assistance.”
The man groaned, stuck a forkful of eggs in his mouth, and swallowed. “Look,” he said, “my wife and I arrived yesterday to do some marlin fishing. We’re on vacation.”
His rail-thin wife said, “We’re neutral when it comes to governmental matters. You should try someone else.”
Crocker wasn’t sure what she meant. “I can shoot you both here and take your boat, or you can help me.”
The man rose to his feet like he was about to start something. Crocker grabbed him by the front of his T-shirt and pointed the .45 at his chest.
“This isn’t up for debate,” Crocker said. “A young woman’s life is at stake.”
“They’ve got our passports,” the man said, pointing outside. “They monitor everything.”
“Who?”
“The guardias and dockmaster. They’re nice guys, but all business.”
“Don’t worry about your passports. I’ll get you new ones,” said Crocker. “What’s your name?”
“Darrell,” the man answered.
“Okay, Darrell,” Crocker offered. “You’re gonna start the engine and act like you and your wife are taking a little excursion down the coast.”
The red light on Crocker’s radio flashed. He answered it. “What?”
It was Mancini asking him if he was okay.
Crocker said, “I’ve got a boat. We’re gonna pull out of the marina in a couple minutes and head west. It’s a white cabin cruiser named Seas the Day.”
“What do you want us to do?”
“Follow us along the coast while we look for a place to load you.”
Crocker put the radio down and turned to Darrell, whom he was still holding by the shirt. “If we cruise up the coast, will that raise suspicion?”
Darrell looked at his wife, who shook her head. “We’ve got a fishing permit. Probably not.”
“Good,” Crocker said. “Let’s go.”
As he let go of Darrell, his wife said, “I don’t like this.”
“You’ll be doing a good thing.”
“Darrell,” she started, stepping into the doorway to block him. “Don’t.”
Her husband pushed by her and climbed the steps to the cockpit, where he started the engine and flicked on the transmitter.
“Tell me what you’re doing,” Crocker said as he knelt on the steps out of sight.
“I’m going to inform the dockmaster we’re leaving. You can listen if you want. He’s on channel sixteen.”
Turning back to the cabin, Crocker saw the wife reach for something in a drawer by the sink. “You want to die?” he asked, aiming the .45 at her. He pointed to a red-leather-covered bench on the wall opposite him. “Sit over there with your hands on your lap and keep quiet.”
She complied. Meanwhile, Darrell had steered the boat into the main channel. As they passed the dockmaster’s station, a man emerged waving a red flag.
Crocker asked, “What’s he want?”
“He wants me to pull over.”
At that same approximate moment, Crocker’s handheld flashed. “What?” he asked in a low voice.
“The girl threw up!” Akil exclaimed. “She’s choking.”
“Reach in her mouth and remove the breathing device. Then sit her up and clear her throat.”
Darrell steered the boat alongside the dockmaster’s station and idled the engine. A burly mustached man in a white shirt and blue shorts pointed to the ocean and shouted something in Spanish as seagulls circled over his head.
“Okay, boss. She’s better,” Akil said over the radio. “But she seems disoriented and is asking for her mother.”
“Calm her down,” Crocker whispered. “Tell her she’ll see her mother soon.”
Crocker watched from the steps as Darrell shouted back to the dockmaster, waved, and shifted out of idle. The boat puttered out of the channel.
Seeing the bay in front of them, Crocker asked, “What was that all about?”
“He was telling me that fish are biting farther west near Mariel,” Darrell answered, donning a pair of sunglasses and a white captain’s hat.
“West is good, but hug the coast.”
A mile or so later, he spotted a pier at the end of a stretch of beach and instructed Darrell to pull over. The SEALs loaded Olivia Clark aboard as some local fishermen watched. Then Darrell set a course north toward Key West.
Shortly after midnight Sunday morning, the C-12 Huron that Crocker flew on landed in Virginia Beach. Relieved, exhausted, and sunburned, he drove himself home and pulled into the garage. The light in the kitchen, which Holly usually left on at night, was off. He figured that she and Jenny were still in Charlottesville attending the high school state finals soccer tournament and the bulb had burned out.
So he hit the button that activated the device that automatically closed th
e garage door and climbed the wooden steps to his office. As he entered, he was confronted by a familiar thick, sweet smell, which reminded him of death and caused the little hairs on the back of his neck to stand up.
He had returned the .47 and MP7A1 to the CIA officials who had greeted them in Miami, so he was unarmed except for the Leatherman knife he carried in his bug-out bag. In the dark, he set the bag on the office floor, then crossed to his desk and opened the bottom right-hand drawer, where he kept a 9mm automatic and six-inch suppressor.
Something told him not to open the door to the kitchen. So he quickly screwed on the suppressor and retraced his steps down to the garage and out the side door. The three-quarters moon had turned the sky a dull shade of blue, and frogs croaked from the marsh behind his house.
At the rear left corner, he checked to see if the small backyard was clear, then peered through the glass patio door. The moon that shone over his shoulder illuminated the gray-tiled kitchen floor. On the right, between the island and the stove, he saw something dark, which he made out to be the head of his dog, Brando.
He tapped the glass, but Brando didn’t move, causing Crocker’s sense of urgency to rocket from zero to a thousand. He’d been trained and selected for his ability to remain calm in the face of danger, but this was different. It was his dog, his house, and his fucking family!
He couldn’t remember when Holly had told him she and Jenny were scheduled to return, or even if she had related that information.
Trying to contain his rage and figure out what was going on, he circled to the other end of the house, then crossed the eight feet of lawn into the woods. He crouched behind a tall oak tree and looked over his shoulder to the other side of the house and the driveway to see if Holly’s Subaru was parked there and he had missed it when he drove in. That was when the cell phone in his back pocket sounded, playing the opening of “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Stones.
He quickly pushed the silence button. The call was from Mancini, so he let it go to voice mail.
Instead of wondering why Mancini had called, he was relieved that the Subaru wasn’t there, which meant that Holly and Jenny weren’t home yet.
He waited a minute and listened, in case someone in the vicinity had heard the phone. But nothing moved or sounded, except for the leaves of the trees gently rattling overhead.
He moved stealthily from tree to tree until he neared Cherry Oak Lane. A silver Toyota SUV sat parked to his left in front of one of the houses being built on the cul-de-sac. He studied it from twenty meters away. Through the windshield he made out the dark shadow of someone in the front seat.
Remembering what Sheriff Higgins had told him in Guadalajara about the viciousness and reach of the Mexican cartel leaders, he thought he knew who it might be. It could also be a cop from Fairfax, or another foreign enemy. That didn’t matter now.
Calmly, he circled left through the woods, over an old fence, around the bare wood skeleton of the half-finished house, to a Porta Potti standing near the curb. From that vantage, he was three meters from the back of the SUV.
The man in the driver’s seat was smoking a cigarette. Crocker saw white smoke waft out the side window and closed the gap quickly with the pistol ready, safety off. When he was halfway there, headlights climbed the hill at the other end of the lane and lit up the street. He recognized the shape of Holly’s Subaru as it braked and turned left into the driveway.
The man in the SUV flicked the cigarette out the window and opened the door. As sparks skipped off the asphalt, Crocker grabbed him by the back of his collar, spun him around, and squeezed him so tightly around the neck that the young man’s eyes started to pop out of his head.
“Who the fuck are you?” Crocker whispered into the man’s dark eyes.
The man mouthed the words Fuck you.
In the moonlight Crocker saw the black-and-gold Mexican passport in the console between the two seats and thought he had his answer.
He raised the pistol, fired two bullets into the young man’s head, watched the life drain out of him, and let him go. And as the man slumped to the pavement, Crocker heard Holly telling Jenny to grab the suitcases out of the back of the car, and alarms went off in his head.
He ran as fast as his tired legs would take him through the woods in the direction of the house, screaming, “Holly, no!”
Crocker knew he was letting emotion determine his behavior, but he couldn’t stop himself. Just then someone opened fire from a position to his right. A bullet tore into his left arm just above the elbow, and he stumbled and fell face-first to the hard ground. Still, he had enough presence of mind to roll to his right, into an elderberry bush, as the two shadows moved closer.
He fired into them. A man screamed “¡Mierda!” and fell. Then he heard the explosion that lifted his whole body off the ground and knocked him unconscious.
When he came to seconds later, he saw the whole front of his house in flames. He pulled himself up desperately and ran toward it shouting, “Holly! Jenny!”
More shots rang out. A round caught him in the back of the thigh, causing him to stumble and drop the pistol. But he wouldn’t let it stop him. Ignoring the bullets whizzing past, he pushed himself forward.
When he reached the Subaru, he saw a bleeding, half-conscious Jenny lying near the rear bumper, trying to pull herself up. And in his left periphery, he saw a man with a pistol charging from the woods.
As the running man aimed the weapon at Jenny, Crocker screamed, “No!” and grabbed the hilt of the knife and threw it—the way he’d practiced hundreds of times as a kid. The knife flipped end over end and embedded itself at the base of the man’s neck, causing him to fall backward and fire wildly into the air.
Starting to feel light-headed and trying to stem the blood pouring from the wound to his thigh, he saw Holly lying on the asphalt by the front of the car, holding her leg. Jenny stood beside him, her young face twisted into a mask of horror and desperation.
She pointed to the burning house and choked out the word: “Leslie!”
Crocker tried to find the strength to ask who Leslie was, then remembered that red-haired Leslie Ames was his daughter’s best friend and soccer teammate. The last realization he had was that Leslie had entered the house and set off the booby trap the Mexican had fixed to the kitchen door.
He told himself he had to rescue her. He pushed, tried, and cajoled. But his body wouldn’t respond and the scene around him wobbled. Then, feeling as though he was sinking to the ground, he passed out.
Five days later, armed navy security officers escorted Crocker and his daughter, Jenny, from the Navy Gateway Inns & Suites, where they were living temporarily, to a black Ford Taurus parked alongside the curb. As the car headed north on semirural Birdneck Road past the Owl’s Creek golf course, he sat deep in his own thoughts.
His sense of bereavement was profound. He and his family had lost their home, their dog, a majority of their personal possessions, and most importantly, their sense of security. His teammate Mancini had lost his brother. Holly remained in the hospital, recovering from the shards of wood and glass that had punctured her liver.
There was irony in that, he thought as he gazed out the window. But it gave him no comfort and taught him nothing, except to underline the fact that evil was an active force that had to be guarded against and eradicated.
As much as he thanked God for sparing his wife and daughter and tried to focus on the positive, his sense of violation wouldn’t go away. SEALs like him were trained to endure pain and difficult combat, but personal attacks on their families weren’t supposed to occur. Certainly, not by foreign criminals operating a few miles from ST-6 headquarters.
Again, he vowed to punish the people responsible and never let anything like that happen again. But the pledge felt hollow this time, and even as he made it, he wondered if he shouldn’t consider moving far away from Virginia Beach and finding a new line of work.
The car turned right onto Mill Dam Road and slowed in front o
f the high school. Feeling a combination of confusion and anger, Crocker turned to Jenny beside him on the back seat and saw that she, too, was deep in thought, probably remembering her late friend.
The strength and dignity Jenny had demonstrated so far had been incredible. Considering her young age and the fact that she had suffered from emotional difficulties in the past, he wondered how much longer it would last.
“You okay, sweetheart?” he asked, taking her hand.
“Yeah, Dad. I’m fine.”
He leaned across the seat and kissed her on the cheek.
“I’m proud of you, sweetheart,” he said as she opened the door and climbed out.
“Thanks, Dad.”
As she stood on the sidewalk and adjusted the straps of her backpack, Crocker saw that she was pausing to look at the flag that flew at half-mast and a large smiling photograph of Leslie Ames printed on a sheet affixed to the brick wall. Written underneath were the words “You’ll be in our hearts forever” and the letters “RIP.”
He worried that the weight of what had happened would hit Jenny again and she wouldn’t be able to continue. Kids milling under the portico and in the entrance became aware of her presence and stopped and turned silent.
As she lowered her head, a boy called out, “Welcome back, Jen!” Other kids started to applaud and the outpouring of emotion spread. Another boy offered to carry her backpack, and kids of various ethnicities and backgrounds gathered around to hug and kiss her and pat her on the back.
Seeing this filled Crocker with unexpected hope. It was difficult at times to understand whom specifically he and his men were fighting for and why they made the sacrifices they did. But when he saw these young people, he knew.
As one of Navy security officers put the Taurus in gear and drove away, Crocker thought of Ritchie. Sometimes the gap between the living and dead seemed vast and incomprehensible, and other times the dead seemed present, as Ritchie did now. Crocker sensed him in the shadows near the opposite window and imagined him saying, “Suck it up, boss, and fight on.”
Acknowledgments