SEAL Team Six Hunt the Falcon(25)

He sat alone in the rear seat of the lead SUV going over everything in his head, checking to ensure that he hadn’t forgotten some contingency. Daw drove, Cal sat beside him, and Ritchie and Mancini occupied the middle seats. Anderson followed in the second vehicle with Davis and Akil.

Within an hour the sun started to rise and Crocker saw that they were passing through a peaceful grove of evergreen trees. The violence of what they were about to do struck him.

“That river we’re following on our left is the River Kwai,” Mancini remarked as though he was a tour guide.

“The River Kwai from the movie?” Cal asked.

“Yes. Kanchanaburi was the setting of the David Lean movie starring Alec Guinness, The Bridge on the River Kwai. But the movie was shot in Sri Lanka.”

“Whatever,” Ritchie groaned, checking the chamber of his Benelli M4 Super 90 twelve-gauge shotgun with a laser illuminator mounted on the rail interface system on the barrel.

“Kanchanaburi was the location of the real POW labor camps,” Mancini added.

“What camps?” Ritchie asked.

“You never saw the movie?”

“It was a long time ago. I forget.”

Crocker’d seen it. It was one of his favorites, along with The Godfather, Pulp Fiction, and Lawrence of Arabia.

“The Japanese moved 61,700 allied prisoners—Brits, Americans, Aussies, Dutch—from POW camps in Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia to build a railroad from Thailand to Burma,” Mancini explained. “The conditions they had to work under sucked, especially during the 1943 monsoon. And the Japs treated them like shit. Over sixteen thousand allied POWs died from sickness, malnutrition, and exhaustion.”

“Did they ever finish the railroad?” Cal asked.

“Even though the prisoners had few pulleys, derricks, or other equipment, they managed to complete what became known as the Death Railway in about a year.”

Daw pointed out that the town of Kanchanaburi became a popular tourist site after the movie came out in 1957. “Two museums were built,” he explained. “But what the tourists who came here really wanted to see was the bridge. The problem was that the actual bridge didn’t cross the River Khwae. It crossed a parallel river known as the Mae Klong. So what do you think Thai officials did to solve this problem?”

“You know the answer?” Ritchie asked Mancini.

“No, wiseguy.”

“They switched the names of the two rivers,” Daw said with a smile as he drove.

The road followed a limestone cliff covered with green foliage that ran along the river. Low tin-roofed buildings clung to the shore, indicating that they were entering the town. They passed temple caves, an elephant park, and even a tiger temple, where visitors could pet real Bengal tigers. But they hadn’t come for the attractions.

The farm they were looking for sat on lower land on the opposite side of the river, so they crossed a narrow bridge. Rain started to fall as they turned off an asphalt road onto a mustard-colored dirt trail pitted with water-filled holes. The sun was trying to fight its way through dark clouds.

Crocker imagined that a rainbow would appear soon as his heartbeat sped up. He felt the tension building around him and heard the guys doing last-minute checks of their comms and weapons.

“You sure we’re in the right place?” Ritchie asked as they bounced along.

“The entrance is over there, up ahead,” Daw said, pointing to the right as he braked the vehicle to a stop.

Crocker said, “I’ll hide on the floor. Manny, you, Daw, and Ritchie get out here.”

Cal took the wheel and maneuvered the vehicle around a bend to a fence overrun with vines and weeds. He turned in the entrance, which had no sign, drove another two hundred feet through a patch of mango trees, and stopped about 150 feet from the house. The springs under the chassis creaked. A bird screeched.

Crocker waited about a minute, until he heard Akil’s voice over the handheld radio telling him the men were in position. Then he slapped the back of the seat twice, which was the signal to go.

Cal left the engine running and the wipers slapping from side to side and got out. Crocker heard his footsteps on the wet dirt, then pulled himself up behind the seat and watched.

It was a low-slung, dilapidated structure painted pale yellow, with a porch in front and a rusted tin roof. A shed or garage with a red door peeked out from some bushes to the right. No cars, trucks, or motorcycles were visible through the light rain.

Through the earbud connected wirelessly to a tiny microphone in Cal’s shirt pocket, Crocker heard a door creak open and Cal speaking in Thai. Then he heard a screen door snap shut.

“It looks like Cal has gone inside,” Akil reported over the handheld radio. Anderson had joined Akil and Davis behind bushes on the right side of the house. Daw, Ritchie, and Mancini waited in front.