SEAL Team Six Hunt the Falcon(41)
She had soft green eyes and an easy smile. “If I were trying to get in, I’d approach from the back, the side that borders the golf course.”
“Thanks,” Crocker said.
Neto added, “Stay on the radio. Let us know if you see the visitor exit.”
“Sanchez is relieving us in an hour,” she reported. “He’ll be on a motorcycle and get a flat, which he’ll take his time to repair. We have another team following after him.”
Crocker liked her immediately. “Good,” he said. “Pass on the message about informing us if the visitor leaves the property.”
“Yes, sir. I will.”
“Let’s go,” Crocker ordered.
“Where?” Neto asked.
“Inside the club.”
“How?”
“We’ll figure something out.”
It turned out to be not all that difficult. Neto flashed his diplomatic credentials to the guard at the country club gate and said they were meeting the American ambassador for lunch. An outright fabrication—luckily, the guard didn’t bother to check.
They entered through luxurious grounds past strolling peacocks, flowering plants, and women in golf carts, and parked near the stately sand-hued clubhouse.
“Classy setup,” Ritchie commented as he got out.
Mancini, who was carrying a black briefcase, said, “It’s the opposite side of the social spectrum from what we saw last night.”
“How many of the residents of Petare would you guesstimate have memberships here?” Crocker asked facetiously as they walked past the pool, which overlooked the city.
“Zero,” Neto responded with a grin.
He led them to the edge of the golf course, along a stone path to the fifteenth tee. The fairway was a beautifully cared-for brilliant green carpet bordered by bushy twenty- to thirty-foot trees. A mustached man in a blue blazer stopped them and asked where they were going.
Neto told him that Crocker, Mancini, Cal, and Ritchie were golf course engineers from California who were inspecting the layout of the greens.
“Es esplendido,” Crocker said in gringo-accented Spanish.
“Gracias,” the man responded, then sent them on their way.
They waited for a foursome of men to tee off and drive away in their carts before they entered a grove of trees to the right of the fairway. Approximately a hundred feet down where it doglegged left, Neto pointed out a large two-story house past the trees on the right. It was separated from the golf course by an eight-foot stone fence topped with metal spikes.
Mancini snapped some digital photos. Ritchie determined the best place to climb the wall. Crocker took mental note of the deep second-story balcony facing the fairway, the lone soldier with a submachine gun lazily patrolling the yard, the antennas on the roof, and asked, “How sure are you that the visitor is lodging here and not in a hotel?”
“About eighty percent,” Neto answered.
“Let’s grab some surveillance equipment and return after dark.”
There was no problem entering the club this time, because Neto got an embassy officer who was a member to invite them to dinner. The four SEALs, Neto, and the officer—a man named Skip Haffner—sat outside on a patio near the pool feasting on carne asada and shrimp.
Not a bad life, Crocker thought, watching the sun set beyond the mountains.
“Skip here used to be a professional golfer,” Neto said out of nowhere.
“I was on the team at Duke,” Skip offered with a smile. “Right after I graduated, I joined the amateur tour, then turned pro.”
“You must have been good,” Crocker said.
“Good wasn’t good enough, but I had fun.”
Ritchie asked, “You ever party with Tiger Woods?”
“Closest I got to him was in 2002, when he entered the clubhouse at Congressional as I was being escorted out.”
“What’s the highest you ever placed in a tournament?” Cal asked.
“I won some amateur and college tournaments, but the highest I got in a PGA event was twenty-fourth.”
They waited until the city lights glittered in the distance and stars shone above. Crocker checked his watch, which read 9 p.m.
He said, “Thanks, Skip. It’s been fun.”
“If any of you guys want to play tomorrow, I’ve got a tee time at eight fifteen.”
“Thanks, but we’re busy.”
“Another time, then.”
While Skip settled the bill, Neto moved the Pilot to an empty lot near the golf course, and the SEALs stripped off their shirts to the tees underneath. Dressed all in black, they geared up and deployed, seeking cover in the trees along the fifteenth fairway and behind the high wall separating the course from Colonel Torres’s house.