Akil shouted, “He’s leading us to an underground chamber.”
“Where?”
“Follow me!”
They walked in a cluster, pushing through the wind, to a concrete ramp with a set of steps beside it. At the bottom was a metal door that was bolted shut and locked. Pasted on it were warnings in Arabic, French, and English.
Sandra: “This is the same one we inspected two months ago.”
“Who has the keys?” Crocker asked.
“NATO command,” Sandra shouted over the wind. “We’re waiting for the toxic materials to be removed and disposed of.”
“Who’s responsible for that?”
“The NTC.”
“Alright,” Crocker said turning to Akil. “Show the guard the map Dr. Jabril drew of the metal fabrication plant. Tell him we want to take a look at that, too.”
The man studied the map as fine dust swirling around them made it hard to breathe. Sandra appeared to be suffering. Ritchie wrapped his kaffiyeh around her head.
Crocker said, “Hand her a bottle of water. Make sure she wets the scarf and ties it over her nose and mouth.” Then he turned to Akil and shouted over the roar, “What did the guard say?”
“He says part of the facility is destroyed. What’s left of it is on the other side of the hill.”
“How far?”
“Five minutes at the most.”
“Let’s wait down here.”
After twenty minutes the wind started to abate. Crocker said, “Sandra, why don’t you stay here with Ritchie? We’re gonna go look at the metal plant, then come back.”
He turned to Akil, who looked disappointed, and said, “Let’s go.”
It was like midnight, with dust and sand swirling everywhere. Crocker, Mancini, Davis, and Akil tried to keep up with the guard, but he was fast, scrambling up the embankment and hanging a right, then circling a mound of sand whose top they couldn’t see.
“Where’d he go?” Davis asked.
Akil: “Beats me.”
Crocker located him near a forty-foot-long rectangular building, waving his scarf. Through the clouds of dust it appeared that windows were broken and the roof had partially caved in.
The guard smiled with broken teeth, then led them around the other side of the building to another stairway and ramp that descended into the ground. The door to this chamber was blocked by sand, so they had to clear it by hand. Then Mancini went to work on the rusted lock with his electric saw.
Inside they found napalm bombs and white phosphorus shells that Akil was able to identify by the warnings painted on them in Arabic. The SEALs had no way of telling how long they’d been there, or if they were still live.
They did a quick inventory, then wrapped the chain around the door and fixed it with a new Sargent and Greenleaf hardened-boron-alloy lock, which was almost impossible to pick, saw, or cut with a torch.
Crocker turned to Davis and said, “Run back to the truck and use the sat-phone to call Remington. Tell him what we found.”
“Yes, sir.”
They left the site as the storm started to pick up again, negotiating what they could see of the road until they found the highway.
Feeling a sense of accomplishment, the five men and one woman told stories and joked as the Polish driver struggled to keep the vehicle on the road through the wind and sand. Most of the stories had to do with their various scrapes with the law. Crocker’s were the most outrageous—numerous arrests for fighting, drunk driving, and resisting arrest as a wild teenager growing up in northern Massachusetts.
Sandra’s one legal infraction was less serious but far more provocative—a misdemeanor charge for nude sunbathing. All of them quickly imagined it, including Crocker, who said, “That cop was an idiot.”
“Yeah,” Ritchie said, “he should have left an ideal situation alone.”
By the time they arrived back at the NATO base the wind had let up and the sky had turned a strange shade of purple. When the truck turned into the compound, Crocker saw Major Ostrowski and his soldiers unloading a group of five prisoners from the back of two SPG Kalina armored personnel carriers.
“We used the storm to surprise them,” the major crowed. “While they keep shelling the base, me and my men circled around and attacked them from behind. Killed about a dozen and captured these guys.”
Crocker noticed that one of the tribesmen was badly wounded in the chest. He and Akil carried him into the compound, where they applied blowout patches. But the kid had lost so much blood that all they could do was try to comfort him as he spent his last minutes clutching the large silver amulet that hung around his neck and praying.
Afterward they joined the major, who loomed over the prisoners sitting on the ground looking hungry, thirsty, and scared. Ostrowski ordered his men to bring water and bread. Then he turned to Akil and said, “Tell the prisoners I’ll let them eat and drink, and will treat them well, if they answer a few of my questions. Otherwise I’ll drop them in the middle of the desert to be eaten by buzzards.”