Crocker wasn’t a big fan of prescription medication. To his mind, doctors often used it to deal with one set of symptoms without taking into consideration how it might affect the patient’s overall health. “How much?”
“Forty milligrams daily,” Holly answered.
“That sounds like a lot.”
“Well, you’re not here. And I don’t know what else to do, Tom.”
She was right. Changing his tactics, he said, “When I get back, I want to take you on a vacation.”
“I’d really like that,” Holly responded. “What do you have in mind?”
They had climbed Mount Kilimanjaro together, gone cave-diving in the Yucatán, trekked in Patagonia. A love of outdoor adventure was something they shared. “I thought we could go mountain biking and camping in Monument Valley,” Crocker said. The Navajo Tribal Park in Utah was not only breathtakingly beautiful, it also seemed to replenish his soul every time he visited.
“I think I’d prefer something a little more luxurious this time,” Holly replied. “Like skiing in Park City, or a beach somewhere.”
The vacation he had in mind was far from other people, in a place where he could clear his head. But he said, “Sure. Skiing could be fun.”
“Could be, Tom? You don’t sound enthusiastic.”
“I am.”
She asked, “You want me to start making plans now?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet?” She sounded disappointed.
“Soon.”
He slept soundly and woke in the morning refreshed. Melkasian filled them in on the latest intel as he drove them to the airport. The Iranians had spent the night at a motel in Chihuahua, about a five-hour drive south of the U.S. border.
The pilot of the Learjet 60XR had long gray hair that he wore in a ponytail. Mancini knew him from a mission they’d been on in Iraq, soon after the fall of Baghdad.
“A lot of shit has gone down since then,” the pilot reminded them.
Events moved quickly in the war against terror. Sometimes it seemed they were grappling with an octopus. You chopped off one tentacle and another sprung into action. Which made sense, given the fact that there were numerous Sunni and Shiite terrorist groups. Sunni groups included al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda Magreb operating in Northern Africa, and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula; Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines and Malaysia; Ansar al-Islam in Iraq; the GIA in Algeria; Asbat al-Ansar in Lebanon; Jundallah, Harakat ul-Mujahidin, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, all operating in Pakistan.
Shiite terrorist groups included the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Palestine Liberation Front, and others.
Some of them cooperated with one another. Others were rivals. Loyalties and leadership shifted.
It wasn’t Crocker’s job to keep track of the various Islamic terrorist organizations and their activities. Experts and analysts at CIA, NSA, NSC, Pentagon, Homeland Security, and FBI did that. Once they identified operatives and targets, Crocker and his men in Black Cell acted as the sharp end of the spear.
Outside the window of the Learjet, Crocker watched thin white clouds drift past like childhood dreams. He had spent many days and weeks as a boy playing good guys and bad guys in the woods behind his house in New England with sticks fashioned into rifles. The fact that he was now doing that for a living seemed preordained.
Looking at the sky and feeling the tight vibration of the plane as it cut through the atmosphere at 550 miles an hour, he experienced a moment of perfection, realizing that fate had put him in the right place, in a role he was suited for, and had surrounded him with men like himself whom he trusted and admired.
He knew exactly what they had to do: stop three Iranian men before they crossed into the States and disappeared, possibly only to be heard of again after they carried out their sinister mission, whatever that was. Only then would the Iranians have actual names and faces—like the al-Qaeda terrorists who killed more than three thousand innocent people on 9/11. Then their backgrounds would be discussed and their motivations speculated on in newspaper articles and on blogs.
Sitting back, he sipped from the plastic cup filled with ice water and listened to Tré beside him talk about Bushido—the ancient code of the samurai—which he said he had been studying and applying to his life. Tré named the eight virtues: rectitude or justice, courage, benevolence or mercy, politeness, honesty and sincerity, honor, loyalty, character and self-control.
Across the aisle, Mancini put down the book on naval warfare he was reading and asked, “According to Bushido, how does one determine the right course of action in a particular situation?”