Seal Team Six Hunt the Wolf(25)

The closest cover: their Humvees, parked thirty feet away along the two-lane asphalt road.

Seemed like the best option.

“Let’s go!” Crocker shouted, getting into a crouch.

He grabbed Akil by the shoulder and started to run. His feet pushed down into the soles of his boots as they gripped the ground. Adrenaline surged through his veins, making him stronger, braver, smarter.

Hot air brushed past his bare arms and face. Then he was hit. His flight interrupted. One-two-three-four times.

Crocker somersaulted forward and landed on his side. Bam!

His heart reached up into his throat until it was strangling him. Somewhere below his navel, just under the body armor, life was draining out of him. He knew he was going to die.

Not now! He had things to do. People to take care of.

He couldn’t even remember the name of the country he was in as his blood seeped into the thirsty ground.

What will they tell my wife? My daughter? Like it mattered.

He had awakened in his sleeping bag in a cold sweat, thinking about his family and the risks he took daily.

Now, picking his way through the snow and ice, he thought back to some of the real nightmares he’d been through. Like the time in Panama, humping through the jungle on a Special Forces Reserve–led mission in the San Blas Islands. Birds calling, howler monkeys screeching from the canopy of trees, on their way to capture a General Oliverios, who had worked for the drug-dealing dictator General Noriega.

General Oliverios, who in addition to running drugs and illegal guns, and forcing young girls into prostitution, had recently decapitated one of his maids.

Nice guy.

Leading the mission was an out-of-shape, cigar-chomping SF major named Malone. A loudmouthed asshole.

Crocker pointed out that they needed to establish a loss-of-communications plan. The smart-ass major replied: “In the army we have comms that work,” because Crocker was in the navy.

A day later, during the hump over the mountains, the horse carrying all their comms fell off a cliff to his death. Which meant no comms for the remainder of the mission.

At the time, Crocker was hugely pissed off at the incompetent SF major. But now, for some reason, he was thinking about the horse. Remembering the horrible brays and thumping as it fell down, then the cries of pain and helplessness as it took its last breaths.

The result of one act of stupidity and one false step.



The sun had started sinking past his shoulder, which turned the sky a deeper, stiller blue and the snow-covered bank in front of him various shades of gold.

The others were lagging farther behind in the increasingly thinner air. Crocker sensed that they were ready to set up camp, but he didn’t want to stop. There was another campsite just 800 feet higher.

He’d wanted to push himself more, until he felt completely spent.

They had reached 23,300 feet.

“Boss! Boss!” He turned to see Akil pulling on the rope behind him, trying to catch up.

During training, Crocker often told his men: “Blood from any orifice.” In other words: Push yourself to your limits, and every now and then go past them. Otherwise, how will you know your full potential?

For years, Crocker would regularly take twenty-mile midnight runs. Then wake up the next morning at 0430 hours and ride his bike another forty miles before going to work.

Sometimes after a long run, when he stepped off the trail to urinate, he’d piss a steady stream of red. The first time he saw blood coming out, he went to see the SEAL doctor, who explained that constant trauma to the urethra had caused the bleeding.

People called him an obsessed maniac.

Truth is, he admired maniacs. Maniacs were prepared to face the shit. Like his SEAL buddy Joe M., who on a mission to Iraq saw a car full of insurgents pull alongside the vehicle he was riding in and start firing AK-47s. Most people would have panicked, but Joe kept his cool. Realized he had to protect his driver if he wanted to get out of there alive.

Sitting in the backseat and wearing body armor, he positioned himself behind the driver’s head to act as a shield while screaming at the guy in Arabic to hit the gas.

Over two hundred rounds were fired into that SUV. Two hundred! A good number slammed into Joe’s body armor. Three slugs found their way below it and landed in his flesh. The bullets were removed, and Joe survived to continue chasing bad guys overseas.

Like Crocker often told his men: The more sweat and tears you put into training, the less blood you’ll shed in time of war.

You never knew what you would be called upon to do.



That night, after they had set up camp on the mountain’s massive shoulder, the weather changed and a storm blew in fast. First rain fell, then it turned to snow. Winds tore across K2, bringing a blizzard.

They huddled in their two-person nylon tents, wrapped in their parkas inside their sleeping bags. Every hour on the hour, Crocker, Davis, and Akil went out and shoveled the snow off the tents so they wouldn’t get buried. Sleep was pretty much out of the question.