SEAL Team Six Hunt the Falcon(40)

Through the large patio door he watched two big green parrots sail through a bolt of sunshine and land in the backyard. He thought he might be dreaming but realized he wasn’t when Neto walked in, leaned on his shoulder, and whispered, “I need to talk to you alone.”

Crocker took a last bite of the cold beef taco and wiped his mouth. As he walked over cool tiles in his bare feet, he noticed he still had on the same black polo and pants he’d worn on the raid last night.

They sat on a back patio with a view of big flowering hibiscus bushes. The last couple of weeks were becoming a blur.

“Did I tell you about the Iranian official who arrived two days ago?” Neto asked, his dark eyes searching Crocker’s face.

Crocker thought back to the conversation they’d had in the bar on Christmas Eve and the waitress with the metal ball in her tongue. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Rappaport didn’t mention it?”

“He might have, but I don’t remember. No.”

“Well, this Iranian big shot has been meeting with Colonel Torres and other Venezuelan officials. In fact, we think he’s staying at the colonel’s house.”

“Do you know the Iranian’s identity?” Crocker asked, standing and lowering his head in an attempt to get blood into his brain.

“All we have is what we assume is a fake name from the flight manifest. Cy Norath.”

“You get a photo of him?” Crocker asked, stretching his arms over his head.

“No, he arrived on a private jet.”

“He’s here in Caracas now?” Crocker asked, bending from the waist.

“Yeah, staying at Torres’s residence, which borders the Caracas Country Club,” Neto answered. “We’ve got a surveillance team stationed outside.”

“He could be important. Show me the house.”

“Now?” Neto asked.

“Give me a minute to shower and change.”

Crocker left Akil and Davis behind to coordinate with the station chief and inform him about new developments. He took the four Spanish speakers on his team—Cal, Ritchie, Mancini, and himself. Cal and Mancini were fluent; his and Ritchie’s version was rudimentary but good enough.

With Neto at the wheel of the Pilot and the GPS guiding them, they drove east along the autopista and entered a very upscale neighborhood of gated mansions, stately cedar trees, and manicured gardens. Colonel Torres’s estate stood on a small road off Avenida los Cedros. The red-tiled roof of the two-story house was visible from the street, but they couldn’t see the front gate because the access road was blocked by two jeeps and half a dozen uniformed soldiers.

The level of security was fitting, given that Colonel Chavo Torres was Chávez’s man in charge of SEBIN’s external operations, and the whole country was on alert. As he drove past the estate, Neto explained that Torres and Chávez had graduated from the Venezuelan military academy and served in that army’s counterinsurgency unit together.

“Back in the late seventies the enemy was local Marxist insurgents. But when Chávez read the works of Marx, Lenin, and Mao Zedong, he took a sharp turn to the left and founded a revolutionary movement,” Neto explained. “Colonel Torres followed in lockstep behind him. Unlike those of the president, it’s hard to determine the colonel’s true politics. What we do know is that he’s an opportunist who loves power and wealth, likes to inflict pain on people, and like Chávez and Maduro hates the United States.”

“Let’s go get him,” Ritchie said.

“We’re not here to start a war in Venezuela,” Crocker reminded him. “Our mission is to track and disrupt the activities of Unit 5000.”

“I know.”

A tall sandy-haired woman and a bald man from the station sat in a Toyota Camry parked at the end of the block, approximately four hundred yards from the house. While the man waited in the Camry, the woman got into the Pilot with them. Neto turned right at the corner and parked at the intersection of Avenida Lecuna, next to a man with a bicycle who was sharpening knives and scissors.

“The visitor has been inside since last night,” the female officer reported. “Colonel Torres left about an hour ago, but the visitor didn’t accompany him.”

“You sure about that?” Crocker asked.

She nodded. “Not only have we maintained twenty-four/seven visuals on the front entrance, but we also had someone attach a tracking device to his briefcase at the airport.”

“There’s no other exit?” Crocker asked.

“No, there isn’t.”

“What’s the best possible way to clandestinely access the house?”