SEAL Team Six Hunt the Scorpion(85)
Farag pointed to a place in the aluminum fence where it had been cut and temporarily wired back in place. He undid the wires and rolled the fence aside. “You see?” Motioned for Crocker and Akil to enter.
After he stepped through, Farag let go of the fence so it rolled back into place.
The little Libyan led the way, following a faint trail beaten into the dirt. Past pathetic-looking shrubs and garbage—an old mattress, the twisted frame of a bike, an old sign advertising Canaba King Size cigarettes.
“Where the hell does he think this leads?” Crocker whispered to Akil’s back.
Farag stopped ahead of them, held a finger to his lips, and pointed to a spot in the ground. All Crocker saw was a round patch of earth. But when he focused harder in the low light, he was able to distinguish a round cover about four feet in diameter painted the same color as the dirt.
A dog howled in the distance as the three men quietly swung it open. Akil was the first to enter, holding a small flashlight that illuminated metal rungs along the side of a concrete tube.
They descended approximately thirty feet and reached the bottom, where they saw a concrete tunnel about twelve feet high and six wide that extended about sixty feet.
When they reached what they thought was the end, they saw that the tunnel curved left at a ninety-degree angle. The second leg was even longer. There was still no light, but they heard faint, muffled noises and proceeded carefully.
The closer to the end they got, the more distinct the sounds became. Voices at first. A man, then a woman whispering. Then what sounded like two people making love.
What the fuck?
They inched closer. A ribbon of light spilled out of a door ahead to their right.
The sounds of lovemaking grew louder. A woman approaching ecstasy screamed in English, “Harder! Faster! Yes!”
Fingers on the triggers of their weapons, they stopped. Farag pointed to the metal door and tried the lever. It wasn’t locked.
He nodded. Crocker nodded back, his heart leaping into his throat.
Farag lowered the lever and kicked the metal door open. Crocker pushed past him and entered with his MP5 ready. His brain picked up thousands of impressions at the speed of light—the size of the concrete room, the source of light, the number of occupants, the presence of weapons.
The second he saw one of them reach for his AK, he started shooting, raking the two men sitting with their feet up on an overturned table. Their bodies shook from the impact, bounced against their chairs, and slumped to the floor. They didn’t have time to scream.
But the sound of lovemaking continued. It was coming from a flat-screen propped against the wall, a DVD player on the floor beside it, wires snaking around.
A third man emerged from a room off a dark passageway behind the opposite wall, saw the three armed men and his dead colleagues, and started scrambling down the passage in the opposite direction.
Akil, his MP5 ready, started after him.
Farag reached out and stopped him. “No!”
Akil pushed the hand off his shoulder. “What do you mean, no?”
Crocker: “He’s right, Akil. Let him go.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
Akil used the flashlight to illuminate the passageway, which led to a ladder, just as Crocker thought it would.
Crocker removed the radio from his back pocket and said: “Manny, very soon you’re going to see an individual emerge from the ground somewhere on the field we just entered.”
“Anywhere on the field?”
“Affirmative.”
A few seconds later Mancini said excitedly, “Yeah! I see him.”
“Good.”
“You want me to grab him?”
“No! You and Mohi get in the Toyota and follow him. Don’t lose him, and don’t let him see you. I think he’s going to lead you to the rest of the group.”
“Ten-four.”
“Don’t fucking lose him. It’s important.”
“Don’t worry, boss. That’s not gonna happen.”
They spent the next few minutes rifling through the contents of the room and bathroom—half-empty bottles of Russian vodka, a box of crackers, several porno DVDs, two Glock pistols, a bag of pistachio nuts, a leather gym bag containing over a dozen cell phones, several grenades, two ski masks. Also a laptop and several thumb drives, which Crocker kept.
He went through the dead men’s pockets. One of them had a wallet containing a wad of dinars and pictures of him and his girlfriend. In the other he found a silver amulet like the one he had seen around the neck of the wounded Tuareg tribesman he had tried to save in Toummo.
“I think these are the guys we’re looking for,” Crocker said. “Let’s go!”
They climbed the steps at the end of the tunnel behind the bathroom and emerged in a corner of the field opposite where they’d entered.