SEAL Team Six Hunt the Falcon(59)
Hours passed before three men in olive uniforms with black hoods over their heads entered. They dragged Crocker down a dark, narrow hallway to a larger room with bright lights. The men sat him in a metal chair facing a long metal table.
The light burned his eyes as he waited for perhaps an hour, with soldiers standing guard behind him. Then a door to his right opened and three more men filed in, also wearing black hoods but dressed in civilian clothes. The one with the big belly carried a gray folder, which he slapped onto the table as the other two took their seats on either side of him. The guards moved forward to stand parallel with Crocker. He noticed automatic handguns in the holsters on their waists.
The man with the big belly opened the folder, grabbed a pen from his pocket, clicked it, and looking up at Crocker asked in English, “Name?”
“Thomas Mansfield.”
“Name?”
Crocker had volunteered for SERE (meaning Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) training soon after he’d been assigned to SEAL Team One. At the age of twenty-four, he’d spent weeks in a mock POW camp in Warner Springs, California, where he was interrogated, deprived of food and sleep, and waterboarded. He had also served as a SERE instructor at the same camp a few years back. So he knew what to expect during an enemy interrogation, and had committed to memory the six articles of the military code of conduct.
Article Three stated: If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.
“Name?” the man at the table barked again.
“Thomas Mansfield.”
“If you tell us the truth, we can make this easy,” the man said. “Name?”
“Thomas Mansfield.”
“Nationality?”
“Canadian.”
“Occupation?”
“Businessman.”
“What’s the name of your company?”
“Balzac Expeditions.”
A shorter man at the left end of the table with a silver Swiss military watch on his left wrist cleared his throat and spoke with a Middle Eastern accent: “I know this criminal. His name is Tom Crocker, and he’s an assault team leader with SEAL Team Six, also known as DEVGRU.”
Crocker focused on the voice and the silver watch. The man said he knew him. Could it be Farhed Alizadeh, the Falcon?
The man with the belly asked, “Is this true?”
“No,” Crocker answered, trying to recall the names, faces, and voices of Iranian VEVAK and Quds Force agents he had run into during the course of his career.
“Mr. Crocker is a very dangerous man. A cold-blooded killer,” the man at the end of the table continued. “Why are you in Barinas, Mr. Crocker?”
“My name isn’t Crocker.”
“What are you doing in Barinas?”
“Me and some of my business associates stopped here on our way to scout an expedition into the jungle.”
The short man pointed to the dirty, tattered bandage on the left side of Crocker’s head and asked, “What happened to your head?”
“I fell down some stairs.”
“You’re a liar.”
The man’s accent, short stature, air of self-importance, and the cold menace in his voice all led Crocker to conclude that he was Alizadeh, who he’d seen face-to-face in Tripoli the previous year.
“Are you lying?” the fat man asked.
“No.”
Knowing that Alizadeh was there heightened the stakes and Crocker’s desire to escape. It also heightened his disappointment. The Falcon wasn’t dead.
“If you answer one question correctly, I will have you moved to a room with a bed and maybe even give you clean clothes and a shower,” the fat man offered.
Crocker nodded.
The men at the table conferred in whispers, then the fat man in the middle sat back and spoke again. “I’m going to ask you one more time. Name?”
“Thomas Mansfield.”
Article Four: If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades.
“Nationality?”
“Canadian.”
“Occupation?”
“Businessman.”
“Liar,” Alizadeh said.
“I’m a Canadian businessman.”
“What’s more important to you, Mr. Crocker, defending a lie or being able to ever make love to your wife again?”
The men at the table rose together and exited through the door to Crocker’s right. As the door closed behind them, the guards on either side of him went to work. First they strapped him spread-eagle on a set of bedsprings on the floor. Then they took turns pissing on him. Then they beat the bottom of his feet with sticks. Then they burned the skin on his chest with cigarettes. Finally, they hooked up the metal bedsprings to a portable generator, threw water on his body, and turned on the current, which made his muscles clench to the point that he felt his body was squeezing in on itself.