He entered the building with Davis at his side. The lobby was littered with the injured and bleeding. Blood was smeared everywhere. A lot of the lights were out. Smoke. A Muzak version of “Copacabana” by Barry Manilow played over the PA, adding a surreal element.
People were screaming, moaning, crashing into things, asking for help.
The two SEALs followed the sound of gunfire past the lobby, down a hall to the other end of the building. Turning left, they entered what looked to be a brasserie-type restaurant that faced a pool and, beyond that, the beach.
Because it stood at the back of the building, the restaurant seemed to have escaped damage from the explosion, but tables had been overturned and people were hiding behind them. He saw bodies in the corners.
“What the—”
Before he could complete his question, an explosion threw Crocker against the back wall.
He landed on his right shoulder, picked himself up, and found Davis near a banquette, holding his head, looking woozy.
“You okay?”
No answer.
“Davis, can you hear me?”
He couldn’t. So Crocker did a quick inspection of his head and neck. Saw no external injuries, but his eyes were dilated and unfocused, indicating that he might have suffered a concussion.
There wasn’t anything Crocker could do for him now. He said, “Wait here.”
Gunshots went off and ricocheted off the walls and floor. Glass flew everywhere. People screamed. He ducked behind a table and slithered on his belly through air thick with the smell of cordite and smoke.
Reaching two NATO soldiers in light blue uniforms who lay in a heap along the right wall, he discovered that neither was breathing or had a pulse. He relieved them of their weapons—some sort of automatic pistol from one, an MP5 with a collapsible stock from the other. Both were loaded and seemingly in working order.
He peered through the shattered windows facing the back and saw men by the pool spraying the brasserie with bullets from automatic weapons held at their hips. Rambo-style, he thought. Black turbans, scarves hiding their faces.
Fucking cowards!
He watched a bearded man in a black T-shirt remove the pin of a grenade with his teeth. Before he had a chance to throw it, Crocker took aim and cut him down at the knees. The man fell backward as the grenade exploded, throwing him into the pool.
When the smoke cleared, he saw the man’s legless body floating next to a woman who was facedown in the blue water. Her dress billowed out like large pink fins.
Holly’s image flashed in his head, reminding him that the dead woman in the pool was someone’s wife or girlfriend. This added to his rage.
Sons of bitches!
Spotting the shadows of the armed men retreating, he aimed and fired. One man stumbled and slid. Crocker ran across the patio to the far side of the pool, knelt on the terra-cotta tiles, and fired again. A group of attackers had turned right and were running in the direction of the marina. Crocker suspected that a boat or truck was waiting to pick them up and help them escape. He wasn’t going to let that happen.
Smoke rising from the fire behind him, he brought down two of them with bursts from the MP5. A little dark-skinned teenager in a sleeveless T-shirt crouched beside him and toppled another. The scrawny teenager turned to Crocker, smiled with a mouthful of jumbled and broken teeth, and flashed a thumbs-up. He had big eyes that caught the light. Beside him were three other young men, all dressed in T-shirts and jeans. The black tee of one had SURFER printed on it. They were holding AKs that looked almost as big as they were.
Crocker had no time to ask them who they were and which group they were affiliated with. He was glad that, like him, they were trying to stop the terrorists, who probably outnumbered them three to one.
A helicopter circled around the hotel tower and swooped over the water. Its spotlight illuminated roughly a dozen men armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades escaping down the beach. One of them stopped, took aim at the helicopter, and fired his RPG before Crocker could take him down. The rocket whooshed and smashed into the copter’s side. The resulting explosion splashed everything with white light and numbed Crocker’s ears. The copter’s rear rotor continued spinning in the sky as the cockpit plummeted into the sea.
Pieces of hot shrapnel screamed through the air, stuck in the sand around them. One of the teenagers fell. He started moaning and kicking wildly.
“Where was he hit?” Crocker asked.
One of the other teens ran over to help his injured friend and was struck in the back by a volley of bullets.
Crocker shouted, “Stay down! Stay down!” as he lay facedown in the sand and returned fire. He asked himself, “Where is security? Where the fuck is NATO? How come we’re the only ones shooting back?”