SEAL Team Six Hunt the Falcon(94)

“Then…we get the fuck out of Dodge.”

“Everybody’s gonna need to wear earplugs and a gas mask when we get inside,” Mancini said.

“Why?”

“I got something planned.”



The whole scenario seemed damn unlikely as Crocker articulated it and played it back in his head.

Maybe it would have been better to wait for another opportunity to hit them at the arena.

It was too late to second-guess himself, so he stopped, looked up at the sky, and let the little drops of water pelt his face, which felt like some sort of cleansing.

He’d been challenging himself since he was a teenager, doing crazy stunts on motorcycles and trying to outrun the police. He’d broken practically every bone in his body during one scrap or another but had always managed to escape.

Crocker said a silent prayer asking God to look after Holly, Jenny, his father, sister, and other relatives and friends and keep them safe. “If you find it in your heart to deliver me from this, too,” he added, “I promise to always be your faithful servant, never back away from danger, and do what I believe is right.”

At 0955, he screwed the silencers on the ends of both of his weapons, then saw a flash of light illuminate the sky. Thirteen seconds later thunder rumbled overhead, and he slapped Akil on the shoulder and pointed to Quds Force headquarters.

Crocker went first, on his belly, until he got within four feet of the edge. From that angle he could see three Iranian soldiers with their backs toward them and automatic weapons slung over their shoulders. They stood under the front lip of the guardhouse, smoking cigarettes and looking down at the street.

Lightning flashed again, and just as his uncle had taught him to do when he was six years old, he counted the seconds on his watch until the thunder came. Ten seconds. It was moving closer.

“Next time there’s lightning, I’m gonna jump,” Crocker whispered into Akil’s ear. “If the soldiers don’t notice me, give me a couple of seconds to start around the other side of that structure, then start taking them out.”

Akil nodded.

With the next flash, Crocker got his feet under him, cradled his weapon across his chest, ran to the lip of the roof, and jumped. He hit the Quds Force HQ roof, flexed his knees, slid on the gravel, and somersaulted over his right shoulder as lightning cracked overhead. Springing back up onto his toes, he knelt behind the base of a satellite dish on his left.

When no shouting or gunfire ensued, he continued to the back of the sand-colored cement structure. As he reached the back left corner, he heard the phewt-phewt-phewt of suppressed automatic fire.

Crocker spun and continued to the front corner, knelt, aimed, and fired. A stream of nine-millimeter bullets cut down an Iranian standing with his back to him. Another bent over his wounded compatriot beyond the opposite corner. Crocker squeezed the trigger and took him down, too.

Then he hurried to the wounded soldier, who was holding his chest. The man started to shout a warning that was cut off by the two bullets Crocker pumped into his head.

Seeing another flash of lightning, he entered the structure and located the door that led to a metal stairway. Akil limped up behind him holding his ankle and wearing a gas mask.

Crocker pointed to the steps. Akil slapped his arm and pointed to his ears.

Crocker had forgotten his earplugs and mask. He quickly fished them out of his pack, along with another thirty-round magazine for the Kashtan that he stuck in the back pocket of his pants. Ritchie and Mancini ran up behind him with masks in place and guns ready, pushed past, and entered the dark stairway.

Their footsteps echoed off the metal steps down to the fourth floor. At the landing Crocker squeezed past them and entered a hallway with Akil at his elbow. About fifteen yards away he saw an older man in dark pants and a white shirt who was holding a brown folder. Mancini rolled a grenade across the carpeted floor that exploded and obscured everything with thick purple smoke. They were in.

Crocker felt his way along the wall in the direction of the office in the far corner—the one that, according to the diagram, belonged to General Suleimani. Another grenade went off. Even with the mask in place, he caught a whiff of a sickening smell, then passed a kitchen of some sort where he saw a woman doubled over, puking against the wall.

A siren blasted so loud it literally stopped him in his tracks and hurt his chest. He heard what he thought was Akil’s voice announcing in Farsi that there was an emergency that required everyone to evacuate the building immediately.

Someone stumbled into Crocker, who bashed him in the face with the butt of his weapon as the siren produced by a black fourteen-by-fourteen-inch device Mancini had brought continued to screech in ungodly 150-decibel short blasts.