by Don Mann
Akil, twenty yards to Crocker’s right, watched a little twister climb the hills to the east through a long-distance night scope. “All clear,” he said over the radio.
Crocker: “Good. Let’s get this over quick.”
Mancini: “You want me to try to disassemble the satellite dish and communication component?”
“No time. Just detach the Hellfires from the missile pylons.”
“Roger.”
Crocker looked up at the darkening sky and realized that the helicopter hadn’t returned yet. “Where the fuck is the helo?” he asked.
“Maybe they found a falafel stand and stopped,” Akil wisecracked back. All he seemed to think about was food and willing young women, and he had an unquenchable appetite for both.
Crocker turned to the commo man, Davis, to his left and said, “Contact the pilot and tell him he’s clear to land.”
“Roger, boss.”
“Might want to set it on that patch over there past that clump of scrub,” he added, pointing to the spot. “Remind him to keep the engines running.”
“Will do.”
Akil: “Tell him we plan to be out of here faster than a knife fight in a shithouse.”
Their job was to retrieve the Hellfires, then destroy the wreckage, which they’d do as soon as Ritchie (the explosives guy) landed with the C-4. Northern Syria wasn’t a location Crocker felt like hanging in. Major cities had been turned into rubble by the Assad army as the rest of the world watched. Lately, Assad had attacked his own people with chemical weapons. Still the UN had done nothing but talk. Like Somalia and Rwanda all over again, which would probably yield another anarchic state that the United States would have to deal with one way or another. Global politics made him sick.
This mission had been a last-minute emergency call as they were packing their gear and getting ready to leave the secret base in Israel for home. Lately he and his team had been spending a lot of time launching ops against Hezbollah and the Quds Force—both controlled by Iran. Dangerous, seat-of-their-pants ops in unfriendly territory.
Here they were again; friggin’ Syria this time. Crocker heard a high whining sound past the hills, followed by a loud metallic noise that echoed and faded.
“What the fuck was that?” he asked, sweat forming under his helmet from the dry desert heat.
“Didn’t sound good,” Mancini said.
An understatement, to say the least.
Akil: “Maybe it was a camel fart.”
“Or an explosion.”
Crocker asked, “Where’s the Black Hawk? Anyone see it?”
“Fuck, no. Don’t hear it, either.”
“What happened? Somebody tell me something,” he said, growing anxious.
Mancini: “No flash of light, no flames.”
Davis shouted urgently, “No response from the pilot, either.”
“You try the copilot? Cal? Ritchie?” Crocker asked, hoping it wasn’t what he thought it was.
“I did, yeah. Tried all three.”
“And?”
Davis shook his head.
Crocker’s stomach sank. Grimacing, he glanced at his watch. The time-on-target (TOT) was already approaching ten minutes, which was too damn long, especially with enemy in proximity. Also, the explosion, or whatever it was, was sure to attract attention. He’d operated practically everywhere in the Middle East before, with the exception of Syria. Given the Assad regime’s longstanding support of Palestinian terrorists and friendship with Russia, it was never a place he wanted to go.
“You sure that piece-of-shit radio is working and you’re getting no signal from the helo?” Crocker asked.
“Positive, boss,” Davis answered.
“Try again!”
Davis did with a frown and shook his blond head.
Crocker groaned. “All right, you stay here with Mancini. Akil, come with me.”
Chapter Two
We meet our destiny on the road we take to avoid it.
—Carl Jung
The landscape had turned a thick, almost furry dark. And the moon hadn’t risen yet. All they had to navigate by was their NVGs, which proved awkward because the two SEALs were moving fast over rocky, uncertain terrain around the crest of a hill. They weren’t following a path, just picking their way over loose rock, sand, and gravel at a thirty-five-degree angle, carrying their packs and weapons.
Crocker hoped they’d find the helo intact with maybe some minor mechanical problem, or hear over the radio that for one reason or another, the pilot had had to turn the helo around and had returned to Israel.
Even if that meant he and the other four SEALs were marooned in Syria for the time being, he’d take that outcome over the more ominous alternative. He was already planning how they could hunker down and defend themselves until relief arrived.
“You see anything?” he whispered back at Akil.
“No, but I smell fuel.”
Not a good sign, but Crocker saw nothing burning. And no lights.
He sniffed the air. “Fuel?” he asked. “You sure you’re not smelling your cheap-ass Egyptian cologne?”
“I’m a Ralph Lauren man all the way. Classy shit.”
“Shit is right,” Crocker said. “Your big nose must be better than mine. Which way is the smell coming from?”
Akil licked his index finger and held it up to determine the direction of the wind. He pointed up the far side of hill. “This way.”
“That’s west.”
The next gust of desert wind carried the unmistakable scent, which sickened Crocker even further. Richie and Cal had recently healed from injuries sustained chasing some Quds Force operatives in South America. Ritchie, in particular, had suffered a nasty bullet wound to his jaw, which required extensive plastic surgery. He was scheduled to get married at the end of the month. All the guys on Crocker’s team were like brothers. He didn’t have the stomach for more wounds and broken bones.
The higher they climbed, the stronger the stench of fuel.
He slapped his headset and addressed Davis. “Alpha Two, Alpha One here. You hear anything from the guys on the helo?”
“Negative, Alpha One.”
Squelching the fears running through his brain, he focused on the uneven ground ahead. Then he heard Davis’s voice through the headset, more urgent this time: “Alpha One, looks like we’ve got something approaching.”
Another unwelcome complication. “What’s that?”
“Vehicles,” Davis reported from near the Predator. “Still too far away to ID them. All we see are headlights. What’s your status?”
“We smell fuel but haven’t established visuals.”
“Helo fuel?”
“Possibly,” Crocker answered. “You got anything in terms of number of vehicles or whether they’re armed or not?”
“Negative. But I’ll update you when we have more info. Over and out.”
Crocker stepped around Akil, who had paused to take a swig of Powerade. Akil was a beast and a former marine sergeant who spoke multiple Middle Eastern languages. If Mancini was Crocker’s right arm, he used Akil like his right leg. In fact, he depended on them all, completely, which was why they made an especially lethal and useful team. Six of the best warriors on the planet acting as one.
JSOC, SOCOM, the CIA, and the White House requested the services of Black Cell so often, they had them operating overseas up to three hundred days out of the year. Not that Crocker was complaining. It was good to be appreciated, and to be doing the work you were born to do with men you admired and respected.
He climbed another three yards, stopped, held on to a gnarled branch poking through some slatelike rock, looked back at Akil, and asked, “You coming?”
“It’s that friggin’ plantar fasciitis acting up again,” Akil said, holding his right foot. He’d injured it during an op inside Iran.
“Stop whining.”
Crocker turned and in his right periphery spotted the tail rotor of the UH-60M Black Hawk slowly turni
ng against the backdrop of a shade-lighter sky. His heart clutched in his chest. He took a deep breath, pointed to the location, and grunted, “Akil, look!”
Together the two men ran the approximately thirty yards, Akil’s plantar fasciitis be damned. The stench of fuel grew stronger with each step. So did their sense of despair.
The scene was eerily quiet. No moaning, or screams for help; only the wind rattling the dry leaves around them and the creak of the damaged tail rotor. The Black Hawk lay on its side like an elephant taking a nap. The moment Crocker saw the smashed cockpit and the dark outlines of two bodies by the side door, his medical training kicked in.
He wasn’t a team leader or friend anymore, he was a SEAL corpsman doing his job. Ignoring the spilled fuel and the danger of the whole damn thing igniting any second, he removed his NVGs and illuminated the red lens flashlight that he kept on his belt. Then he hurried from one man to the other, checking for vital signs, starting with the pilot, who lay across the seat with his forehead and the top of his head smashed in. Purple-gray brain matter spilled across the sides of his head like a Halloween wig.
Still, Crocker checked for a pulse. Negative.
He moved to the copilot, who lay on his stomach. Gently turning him over, Crocker saw a big dark wound below the copilot’s armored vest and the place near his groin where he’d been blown open. Tendons, bone, and flesh all in shades of red and pink. He had no pulse, either.
As surreal as the scene was, it was the strange serene smile on the copilot’s face that really struck him—as though he had seen something pleasant, or had actually welcomed death.
Moving to the middle of the wreck, Crocker saw Ritchie, and the tragedy hit him fully. For several seconds he had trouble breathing, because his buddy and teammate of eight years had literally been cut in half at the waist by a piece of the top rotor. His stomach, liver, and intestines spilled over the ground, and his dark eyes were wide open and protruding out of his head like exclamation points.
Crocker reached down and started to push Ritchie’s guts back inside him. When he heard Akil gasp behind him, he stopped, muttered a silent prayer, and closed Ritchie’s eyes.
Then he stood and backed away, taking care not to step in the big circle of blood, as though that might constitute some form of desecration. Looking over his shoulder, he saw tears streaming down Akil’s rough face.
Crocker muttered, “Oh, fuck.” Then, remembering that there had been four men on the helo, asked, “Where’s Cal?”
As combat-hardened and mentally tough as they were, they had hearts, consciences, and feelings. Akil’s mouth hung open, forming a big O, but no sound came out.
“Cal? Where is he?” Crocker asked, momentarily dissociated from his body.
Akil pointed to Ritchie. “You forgot to…to cover him.”
Crocker reached into his backpack for his E&E kit, in which he usually carried a tightly folded space blanket, then remembered that he hadn’t packed one this time.
“Where the fuck is Cal?”
He was about to climb into the fuselage when he saw Akil pointing to a body lying facedown under one of the wrecked T700-GE-701D engines. Crocker got on his hands and knees, ducked under the still-hot engine, leaned close to Cal’s ear, and whispered, “Cal.”
No answer.
Louder, he asked, “Cal, can you hear me?”
He carefully reached around to the front of Cal’s neck, located the carotid artery, and felt a faint pulse. A sign of hope.
Turning back to Akil, he said urgently, “Call Davis, tell him we found the helo. Three dead, one seriously wounded and in need of immediate medevac. We’re gonna need to evacuate the bodies. We’re also gonna need additional C-4 to destroy the Black Hawk.”
Akil choked back the contents of his stomach. “Boss…”
Crocker carefully ran his hands along the front of Cal’s body. He felt warm blood coming from a wound near his stomach and stopped.
“Akil, I need your help.”
When he looked back he saw Monica’s face where Akil’s used to be. The vision was so real and unexpected that he said, “I’m sorry, Monica. But…unexpected stuff happens.”
She opened her mouth like she was about to start shouting.
Instead he heard Akil ask, “Boss, who you talking to?”
Crocker blinked and, seeing Akil where Monica had been a second ago, said, “Come closer. I need you to help me turn him over.”
Akil wiped tears away with the back of his hand and said, “Yeah.”
“Hold him under the shoulder. On the count of three. Slow and careful.”
“Right.”
“One, two, three.”
The wound was higher than he thought. Feeling air being sucked into it, he said, “Reach in my med kit. Give me a blowout patch, QuikClot, and the plastic wrapper the QuikClot comes in.”
Crocker did a quick primary survey of Cal’s ABCs. Airway first. Cal was unconscious but breathing, which meant his airway was clear. Crocker cleared Cal’s mouth of blood and sand, then turned Cal’s head up in the sniffing position to facilitate breathing and made sure his tongue would not obstruct the airway.
Breathing: somewhat labored, although full and bilateral. Circulation: weak and thready.
Having completed the primary survey of life-threatening injuries, Crocker moved on to the secondary survey, including a full head-to-toe check.
Disability: Crocker saw no obvious trauma to the head or face. Cal’s pupils appeared equal in size and were reactive to light, and there was no indication of fluid oozing from his ears or nose. Next, Crocker felt gently along Cal’s neck and back and found no abnormalities in his spinal column.
Exposure: Crocker checked for an exit wound. But found none. He removed the clothing from Cal’s chest to get a good visual on skin color and feel for other problems.
With QuikClot and blowout patch in hand, he focused on the wound, ripping Cal’s uniform open, holding the jagged two-inch incision open, applying the QuikClot, then covering the wound with a blowout patch and applying pressure.
It didn’t look like a high-velocity wound, and hopefully hadn’t done too much damage, like puncturing an internal organ or the stomach and releasing poisonous digestive enzymes. Crocker knew that lung tissue was less dense and had more elasticity than, say, the liver, spleen, or adipose tissue, which have little elasticity and are easily injured.
All this information was burning through his head as he held the bandage down with one hand and applied pressure to the femoral artery with the other.
He looked up at Akil and said, “We’ve got to get him out of here, in case the helo catches fire.”
Akil nodded, but he still didn’t seem focused.
Crocker made sure the blowout patch and the plastic he had taped over the wound were secure, then rolled Cal toward him until he was on his side, positioned his top leg so that his hip and knee were at right angles, tipped his head back to keep the airway open, and with Akil’s help slid him clear of the helo engine. They carried him by holding him under the legs, hips, shoulders, and head to a relatively flat spot about two hundred yards away, and laid him down.
“He’ll be okay if we get help fast, his vitals remain stable, and he doesn’t go into shock,” Crocker whispered.
Akil removed his helmet and shook his head. “How the fuck did this happen?” he asked.
“What?”
“To the helo. Was it hit by enemy fire?”
“I’m not an air crash forensics expert,” Crocker answered. “Put your helmet back on. Make the call.”
“What call?”
“I told you to call Davis. We need medevac. We need to remove the bodies and destroy the helo.”
“Check.”
“Do it now!”
Crocker’s right hand shaking, he climbed into the helo and held on to the bar along the ceiling, using the red lens flashlight on his belt. He found no bullet holes or evidence of enemy fire. But that wasn’t what he was looking for.
Past twisted seats, under a couple of rolled-up blankets, he saw Ritchie’s backpack, which he recognized by the Shooter Jennings patch on top. The badass country singer’s version of “Walk of Life” had been one of Ritchie’s favorite songs. In his head Crocker heard Ritchie singing it in the shower at the base east of Tel Aviv like a drunken cowboy.
“He got the action, he got the motion…”
Hanging from the bar with one arm, Crocker hooked his boot under one of the straps and pulled it high enough to rest it on the side of the crushed seat. Then he reached down and grabbed it with his right hand.
The singing continued: “Oh, yeah, the boy can play…”
Outside on the ground, he checked to make sure that the C-4 and detonators were intact. They were. Seeing a smiling photo of Rich and Monica taped to the inside flap, Crocker bit his tongue.
Some things never get started. Some people die before they should. A cavalcade of images passed through his head—his high school girlfriend, Molly, who was killed in a car accident, his cousin Willie…
The taste of blood in his mouth, he climbed back inside to get the blankets and a tarp, which he used to cover the dead bodies.
Part of him wanted to hide under a blanket himself. War sucked. Life made no goddamn sense. You worked hard, struggled, did the best you could, then died.
As they dragged Ritchie in two pieces away from the helicopter, Akil threw up over his hands.
Next thing Crocker remembered was reaching into the cockpit and slinging the pilot over his shoulder and feeling his dead weight, and warm blood dripping down his back.
Akil knelt next to the bodies, then lowered his head to the ground. When Crocker gently slapped the side of his helmet, he looked up with red-rimmed eyes and growled, “I’m praying, goddammit!”
All Crocker could say was “Finish.”
Akil bowed again, stayed with his forehead to the dirt for twenty seconds, then mumbled some kind of salutation to God and got up.
“Okay.”
Crocker asked, “You feel better?”
“Not really.”
“Either way, I need you to stay alert,” Crocker said.