Seal Team Six Hunt the Wolf(40)

They zipped by the turnoff to Cassis, the place where Crocker had pulled over on the Triumph Legend less than an hour earlier.

The moment was screaming at him. Do something. Do something, goddammit!

But what?

“Who the fuck are you?” the driver asked.

“My name is Crocker. I’m a Canadian.”

“You work for your government?”

“No. I’m a climber.”

“What do you mean, a climber?”

“I climb mountains and train people who want to learn to climb.”

“Why do you want to see Rafiq?”

“I’m here as a tourist. I’m looking for a bike to tour through Europe. Figure I can really get to see the countries that way.”

“You’re a bad fucking liar.”

The driver nodded in the mirror to the man seated beside Crocker, who reached into the American’s pockets and located his wallet. Inside he found a thick wad of euros but no ID.

The two men spoke in Arabic, then the driver looked back at Crocker and said in English, “Now I know you’re a liar.”

Precious minutes passed. Above the smooth growl of the engine and the electronic dance music pumping over the stereo, Crocker heard a choking sound. Looking down and to his right, he saw two streams of yellowish puke shooting out of Akil’s nostrils, a pained exclamation in his eyes.

“You’d better do something. My friend’s going to choke!” he shouted in English.

The thug beside him smacked him with the back of his hand. “Shut up!”

Some of the vomit had splattered across the leg of the guy’s black jeans. He seemed more concerned about his pants than the fate of Akil.

“Cochon!” Spitting at Crocker’s teammate. Like choking on his puke wasn’t bad enough.

Almost simultaneously the driver screamed in Arabic, “What’s that horrible smell?”

Then things happened fast. The thug in the backseat kicked Akil in the stomach with his boot. And the driver went apoplectic, shouting, “My car! Motherfucker! Get that nigger out of here. Throw him in the trunk!”

He steered the car abruptly right and stopped on the shoulder in a cloud of dust.

It took both men—the thug in the passenger seat and the dude in back—to pull Akil roughly out, the driver all the time screaming instructions in Arabic. “Watch the leather seats! Clean it. Make sure you clean it all up! Get rid of that fucking smell before I kick your asses!”

Crocker noticed that the driver wasn’t holding a weapon.

So he propelled himself over the seat, grabbed the Makarov pistol that was lying on the console with his hands still taped together at the wrists, and brought his arms up with all the violence he could muster into the driver’s jaw.

One, two, three times, quickly. He felt the driver’s head snap back and heard a groan.

Then turned immediately and fired two shots through the open front door into the back of the thug who had occupied the passenger seat.

The punk screamed something Crocker didn’t understand and fell to the ground.

Simultaneously the guy who’d been sitting in back directed a salvo of bullets that tore into the rear of the front seat. He was firing wildly through the open rear door of the car.

Crocker countered, slithering out the open passenger-side door onto the ground and shooting upward into the guy’s crotch. The thug squealed like a cat on fire, twisted and jumped, holding what was left of his balls, then crumpled along the rear wheel of the car, writhing in pain.

Rough justice.

High on adrenaline, Crocker pulled himself up into a crouch, then checked to see that the driver was still unconscious. The other two were dead.

He quickly crawled over to Akil, who lay on his side, and turned him over, pulling the tape from his mouth and feeling for a pulse along his neck. Using his teeth, Crocker ripped the tape from his own wrists, then quickly cleared Akil’s mouth and throat with a finger sweep, pulling out a glob of yellow bile and mucus. His colleague coughed up more, started breathing freely, and slowly came to.

Thank God.

Crocker found a bottle of Evian in a pocket on the passenger’s door and quickly washed Akil’s mouth and face. The smell was awful.

“What happened?” the Egyptian American asked, his right eye swollen nearly shut. “Where the fuck are we?”

“Heaven. How do you like it?”

“Looks like a fucking nightmare.”

“How do you feel?”

“My head is on fire. My face aches like shit.”

“You’re still complaining. That’s good.”

Akil looked around him, taking in the bullet holes in the car and the dead bodies on the ground, the groaning driver still in the car with blood dripping from his mouth. “You did all this yourself?”