When one of the men blocking the window stepped aside, he saw the terrified eyes of Ritchie, Lasher, and Mancini, who were squatting along the opposite wall. Their mouths were covered with tape and their hands were tied behind their backs.
A light of some sort beamed from the back of the room. Everyone’s attention seemed to be directed to the front. When the man standing with his back to Crocker shifted, he saw that they were all looking at Jabril.
He’d been tied naked to a chair so that his arms were behind him and his genitals exposed. A soldier stepped into view and hit the doctor across the face with a stick. His head snapped back, splashing blood across the wall and floor.
Crocker had to restrain himself from busting through the window right then. He was shocked, offended, and knew he had to move fast—before Jabril was beaten to death, or his men executed or moved somewhere else.
A peal of automatic-weapons fire went off in the distance. Crocker ducked below the window. He heard the squealing cry of an animal, followed by more gunshots, men shouting.
Hearing steps approaching along the back of the building, he hurried to the ladder and slid down, his hands wet with sweat. The steps were coming fast. On reaching the ground he turned to face the sound. An animal lunged at him, claws first. It was big, quick, and black—a dog? a hyena? He pivoted left and ducked so that it sailed past his shoulder and hit the ground, losing its footing and skidding on its side. It gathered its feet under it and turned, reared onto its back legs, and bared its teeth as if it was about to charge.
Crocker grabbed a chunk of concrete off the ground and faced it.
I dare you! I fucking dare you! his eyes blazed.
Hearing something behind it, the animal turned to look, and tore off.
Crocker took a deep breath, then hurried to the end of the barracks and circled back, retracing his steps. He found Davis hiding behind the dumpster, holding a four-foot length of lead pipe.
“I heard shots,” Davis whispered. “I thought they got you!”
“I’m fine,” he said, his chest heaving.
“Then what the fuck was that?”
“Hyenas, I think.”
“They must have crawled through the fence.”
“Maybe,” Crocker whispered, catching his breath. “I saw our guys. I know where they’re holding them.”
“Who? Where?”
“Ritchie, Mancini, Lasher, Jabril.”
“What about Akil?”
“I didn’t see him.”
“Where are they?”
Crocker pointed. “Second floor of the barracks. But I didn’t see the van.”
“I did. It’s behind that shed.”
“Which shed?”
Davis pointed to his left. “That one over there. But the doors are locked.”
“Shit.”
Davis unwrapped a rag he held in his hand. “Look what I found.”
In the light of the half moon Crocker saw a rusted jigsaw blade, a plastic lighter, a section of metal wire, an empty bottle, and several large rocks.
“The lighter works?”
“Yeah.”
Crocker’s mind was processing fast. “You see any more bottles?”
Davis pointed to the dumpster. “I think there are more inside.”
“Grab a few extras.”
“Now?”
Crocker nodded as he formulated a plan.
Davis hoisted himself up into the dumpster, handed Crocker two soda bottles, and climbed out.
“Good.”
“What now?”
“They don’t know we exist. We’ve got one chance to surprise them. Show me the van.”
“Now?”
“Go!”
They ran in a crouch, Davis first, Crocker right behind him. Around the back of the warehouse, past a broken-down tank painted with graffiti to where the van was parked under sheets of tin rattling in the breeze.
The canister of UF6 lay in back, but their weapons and gear were missing. And, as Davis had said, the doors were locked. So was the lid to the gas tank.
Crocker grabbed the container of extra fuel strapped to the rear door.
“Help me get this down,” he whispered.
They undid the latch, set the container down, untwisted the cap.
Crocker said, “Now set down the bottles.”
He lifted the container, filled the bottles with gasoline, then ripped the rag Davis was carrying and stuffed the pieces into the necks of the bottles as fuses.
Davis grinned at the three Molotov cocktails. “Nice.”
“Now,” Crocker whispered, “we need a gun.”
“Unlikely we’ll find one lying around.”
“Follow me,” he said.
Again they made a wide arc past three trashed transport trucks and the edge of the shooting range to avoid the barracks and the other soldiers.
Crocker stopped behind a concrete structure with a flagpole in the center that stood thirty feet from the four white pickups. On the other side of the trucks was the middle entrance to the barracks.