SEAL Team Six Hunt the Falcon(67)
“It teaches that a true samurai should behave according to an absolute moral standard, one that transcends logic,” Tré answered. “What is right is right, and what’s wrong is wrong.”
“So the difference between good and bad and right and wrong are givens, not concepts subject to discussion or justification,” Crocker said.
“Correct.”
“Then how does one determine what’s right and wrong?” Mancini asked, playing devil’s advocate, which he liked to do.
“There are no set rules to determine that. A warrior should know the difference.”
Crocker could get on board with that.
Chapter Seventeen
For everyone who asks, receives; he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
—Luke 11:10
They landed at an airstrip on the governor of Chihuahua’s ranch a few miles south of Ciudad Juárez. Jim Randal, a young man with a bland, round face, met them wearing a Teflon vest under his tan safari shirt and surrounded by four armed guards. “Welcome to the most violent city in the world,” he said.
Crocker had heard horror stories about mass decapitations and the hundreds of women who went missing only to turn up dead and mutilated. Randal explained that since 2006 something like eleven thousand people had been killed in the city of a million as rival drug gangs fought for control of one of the most lucrative routes, a direct line to the U.S. black market for marijuana, cocaine, and meth.
Crocker’s own brother had once been a cocaine addict, and Crocker had seen drugs ravage the lives of countless friends and other members of his family. He’d also participated in the so-called War on Drugs in countries like Colombia, Panama, and Bolivia, destroying coke labs in the jungle and helping arrest financiers and traffickers. To him it wasn’t a war but an epidemic. The cure, he thought, lay in helping stem the desire for drugs, educating young people about the dangers of addiction, and providing treatment to users.
Their black SUV stopped at a house with a high white metal gate. Two of the armed Mexican guards got out and rang the buzzer. “Why are we stopping here?” Crocker asked.
“My boss wants to brief you,” Randal answered.
“Who’s your boss?”
“Lyle Nesmith. A brilliant analyst and tactician.”
“We didn’t come here to meet people.”
A maid wearing a white apron ushered them through a cool stucco house to a patio with flowering plants and a fountain. A buffet of enchiladas, fajitas, and tamales had been laid out on a long tiled table. A waiter asked what they wanted to drink.
Crocker was losing patience. “Where’s Nesmith?”
“He’s upstairs on a call,” Randal answered with a confident grin. “He’s coming.”
Twenty minutes later the agent-in-charge greeted them, a short, fit, bald man with a graying goatee and round rimless glasses. “You missed them,” Nesmith said as he and Crocker sat down across from one another at one of the round metal tables.
“Missed who?” Crocker asked, almost spitting out the food in his mouth.
“The Iranians. I just learned that the Toyota Corolla they were driving tried to cross the border at the Ysleta International Bridge.”
“What?” Crocker rose to his feet.
“Don’t worry, they were turned away by U.S. immigration agents who noticed that none of their names matched the name on the car’s registration.”
“Why weren’t they detained?” Crocker asked.
Nesmith calmly adjusted his glasses. “There was some sort of miscommunication between D.C. and here,” he said. “The ICE agents had the Iranian names on their detention list, not the Venezuelan names on their new passports.”
Crocker wanted to punch something. “What?”
“Calm down. I’ve got people out looking for them now. We’ll find them.”
“How long ago did this happen?” Crocker asked. “I mean, exactly when did they try to cross the border?”
Nesmith looked at his silver Rolex. “Roughly an hour ago.”
“Fuck!” Crocker crossed to the far corner of the yard. Looking up at the broken glass on top of the high wall, he wondered what to do now and whom to call.
He was joined by Mancini and Tré. The latter said, “A samurai master once said: True patience means bearing the unbearable. If that helps.”
Mancini added, “And abused patience turns into fury.”
Crocker spent the time playing fetch with Nesmith’s two black German shepherds—strong, sure-footed, beautiful dogs. An hour passed, during which the table on the patio was cleared and the blue sky clouded over.