SEAL Team Six Hunt the Scorpion(3)

“What? You spot the Predator?”

“No, headquarters says abort.”

“Abort, now?” He thought it had to be a joke.

“Abort. That’s correct.”

“What do they mean, abort? Tell ’em we’ve got the terrorists in our sights.”

“I did already. They want us to pull back to the extraction site.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

Feeling like the wind had been kicked out of him, he asked, “Why?”

“No reason given. It’s a simple abort.”



Twenty-two minutes later, Crocker and his team had strapped themselves onto the benches of a Black Hawk helicopter and were cradling their weapons as it lifted off the desert ground.

Ritchie, his dark eyes blazing, sat to Crocker’s right.

“Boss?”

“Yeah.” Shouting over the helo’s engines.

“What just happened?”

“Beats the shit out of me.”

“Were we at the wrong compound?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“SOS, huh, boss?” Meaning same old shit.

“Yeah, SOS.”

“Crazy-ass way to fight a war.”

This wasn’t the first time this had happened. They’d spent the last five weeks on the Arabian Peninsula training, collecting intel, practicing for different ops, then being told to abort at the last minute. Adding to their annoyance was the fact that they missed their families and needed a break from the 24/7 pressure of being deployed.

Davis’s wife had a young baby and was expecting another. Ritchie’s new girlfriend was threatening to start dating other men if he didn’t return home soon. Crocker’s wife wanted some relief in dealing with his daughter, her stepdaughter, who had been living with them for a year. Mancini’s wife was looking after his younger, wheelchair-bound brother, who was suffering through the final stages of pancreatic cancer and about to die. Akil’s Egyptian-born father’s jewelry repair business was losing money.

Every one of them had myriad problems and concerns outside their jobs.

As Crocker unbuckled his helmet the copilot, in a camouflage flight suit and helmet, walked over and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Sir?”

“Yeah.” Holding on to the bench as the copter banked sharply.

“You Chief Warrant Officer Tom Crocker?”

“That’s correct.”

“Orders to fly you and your men to USS Carl Vinson in the Gulf of Aden.”

“What for?”

“We’re operating on a need-to-know basis here, sir. Those are my orders.”

“Received. Thanks.”



Fifteen minutes later they had safely landed on the deck of the Carl Vinson. A landing signal officer handed Crocker a bottle of water with the ship’s seal stenciled on it and underneath it the Latin motto Vis Per Mare—“Strength from the Sea.” She was strong, all right. A metal beast measuring 1,092 feet long with a capacity to hold up to ninety fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, she carried a crew of over six thousand, including airmen. She was one of a fleet of ten Nimitz-class supercarriers—the largest, most lethal warships on the planet.

He’d been up twenty-four hours and would have preferred something with a little kick, like black coffee, Red Bull, or a can of Diet Mountain Dew. But water was better than nothing, especially with the taste of the desert still in his mouth.

The last time Crocker had stood on the deck of the Carl Vinson was the morning of May 2, 2011, when he and his team watched the corpse of Osama bin Laden being disposed of in the ocean. As much as they’d wanted to kick and piss on that piece-of-shit terrorist, they weren’t permitted to. But they had cheered as his white-shrouded body was slipped overboard and devoured by sharks.

It seemed like a lifetime ago now. Since the death of the notorious al-Qaeda leader, Crocker and his team had been running ops almost nonstop. Over fifty in the last year, to places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan, and Somalia.

Still, Crocker managed to squeeze in a few races. Like the 150-mile, six-stage marathon across the Sahara in Morocco (called the Marathon des Sables) that he and his men were scheduled to compete in next week. They had been trying to build up to it with at least sixty miles a week, plus a thirty-mile run on their day off. Which explained why both his Achilles were tight and his knee and lower back were barking. Crocker was used to dealing with pain. He thought of it as weakness leaving his body.

The lean, white-shirted LSO led him briskly along the flight deck past one of the steam catapults (known as a Fat Cat) that was capable of accelerating a thirty-seven-ton jet from zero to 180 miles per hour in less than three seconds. The marvels of technology. As much as Crocker admired engineers and scientists, they still hadn’t invented anything that could replace the versatility and ingenuity of men on the ground. He and his men were arguably the most highly trained, battle-tested, and lethal fighting force in the world, prepared to deal with anything on sea, air, or land. Raids behind enemy lines, commandeering ships or airliners, rescuing hostages, assassinations, sensitive intel-gathering ops—all in a day’s work.