“Very good. Thank you.”
“I’m glad.” Crocker wasn’t much for small talk.
“Mr. Maguire is waiting at the hotel.” That would be Ritchie, the fifth member of Crocker’s team.
“Good.”
The Ramada Plaza Karachi was a long punt from the airport, nestled in an industrial zone. A standard semimodern structure inside concrete barriers manned by police.
The sky was turning dark by the time they arrived. The city of twenty million glowed in the distance like a murky orange dream, a polyglot of glass-and-steel business towers, colonial monuments, mosques, neo-Gothic cathedrals, Sikh and Hindu temples.
While the other guys checked in, Crocker went directly to the room he was sharing with Ritchie. He found him watching BBC World News and sipping from a can of Coke. The air conditioner groaned under the burden of the humid ninety-degree-plus August heat.
“What’s going on?”
Ritchie was a cool customer. Six feet tall, fit, straight dark hair, fierce black eyes, high cheekbones from the Cherokee blood on his mother’s side. He was a meticulous explosives expert and breacher who had a wild side that he kept well concealed. Mostly.
A couple of years ago he’d been arrested for murdering a biker who pulled a knife on him in a bar, a big dude with a beard and a skull and crossbones tattooed on his bald head. Ritchie had stopped there after work, to have a beer and flirt with the blond bartender, when this big biker and a couple of his buddies started giving Ritchie shit about a turquoise amulet he wore around his neck. Some kind of tribal thing that had been passed down from his grandfather.
The biker called it “faggot’s necklace” and tried to rip it off. Ritchie slapped the biker’s hand away and said he’d heard he liked to suck cock.
Whereupon the biker pulled a knife and lunged at Ritchie’s throat. Ritchie, who was fast and a lot stronger than he looked, redirected the force behind the blade back into the biker’s chest, under his ribs, into his heart. The biker died on the spot.
He was thrown in jail, but was later exonerated and promoted to master chief. His SEAL teammates thought it was funny in a can-you-believe-it kind of way. Ritchie? Easygoing Ritchie?
But Crocker knew. He ran with Ritchie three mornings a week through the forested lowlands near where they lived. Ritchie seemed like a laid-back guy until you challenged him. Then watch out.
Now he smiled at Crocker and shut off the TV.
“I’ve got all our climbing gear waiting in Islamabad,” Ritchie said. “Ice axes, climbing helmets, harnesses, ascenders, carabiners, trekking poles.”
“You get the carabiners I asked you for?” Crocker started rearranging the furniture. Desk by the window. Bed turned so that it faced the door.
“Locking and nonlocking.”
“Good.”
Unpacking, he laid out a black T-shirt and pants on the chair. He had multiples of each, exactly the same.
“The weather might be more difficult than we—”
The soft-spoken team leader stopped him. “I thought we’d get a clear window through September.”
“Just got a weather update from the German team that’s there. There’s a chance of high winds and freezing temperatures at base camp.”
“The weather hopefully won’t stop us.”
Ritchie got up and threw the bolt on the door. Then he punched on the TV again and cranked up the sound.
Crocker, who had stripped down to his underwear, noted the all-business look in the explosive expert’s dark eyes. “What you got?”
Ritchie pulled a large envelope out of one of the dresser drawers and threw it on the bed. Then pointed to a series of surveillance photos of a three-story apartment building.
Crocker stopped. “Where are we?” he asked.
“Kemari. The port area of Karachi. Near the railroad tracks.”
He knew the general vicinity. “Good.”
Crocker noted that the primitive concrete structure stood on a corner next to what looked like a car repair lot. Behind it stood an abandoned field littered with junk.
“What’s here?” Crocker asked, pointing to the opposite side of the street.
“A warehouse. It’s mainly a pretty rundown commercial area.”
Crocker nodded. “Okay. Call Akil. Tell him to meet us by the pool.”
The three men sat at a round metal table and drank from bottles of local Murree Classic beer, which was available only to non-Muslims after the ban by President Ali Bhutto in ’77. Broad-shouldered, tattooed Mancini swam laps in the pool. A couple of kids were trying to do cannonballs off the diving board. Davis—the most talented athlete on the team—was showing them how.
Crocker thought back to his wife and daughter in Virginia Beach. Both complained that he was away too much. Jenny, sixteen, had been having trouble adjusting to her new high school.