Seal Team Six Hunt the Wolf(46)

He ran barefoot, making a long arc around the house, through the woods.

All the time he was thinking: The French firefighters won’t call the police until they find the bodies.

Not that he felt in any real danger. But he didn’t want to be detained and have to answer questions. The local CIA station and U.S. diplomats would go ballistic. Bureaucrats were always highly sensitive to anything that upset the local authorities—like American operatives doing violence on their turf.

They reached the road about fifty meters in front of the car, with scratches on their chests and arms.

Crocker ran to the BMW and checked the Arab driver still taped to the passenger seat. He’d pissed his pants.

“Where’s your fucking manners?” Crocker asked as he started the engine. He spun the car around.

“He doesn’t have any,” Akil growled from the rear seat, backhanding the driver across the side of his head. The driver groaned.

Later, Crocker would have to decide whether shoot him in the head and dump him somewhere or hand him over to the French police.

Now he pushed down on the gas as Akil reached around the prisoner and checked the glove compartment.

Akil reported that the car had been purchased two months ago from a dealer in Nice. The driver’s name was Marcel Saloud, with an address in Cap d’Antibes.

“Easy come, easy go, right, Marcel?” Crocker said to the driver, who squirmed in the leather bucket seat. The heavy tape gave him little room to move.

At the junction with the D-455, the road was empty except for emergency vehicles coming from both directions. Crocker pointed the car west and picked up speed.

“They found the bodies,” Akil said from the back, with the wind in his face.

“Donaldson is gonna be pissed.”



Crocker’s heart burned with outrage as he thought about the four girls. But when his attention shifted to the dead men, his anger morphed into satisfaction.

He was thrilled that they’d killed them. Almost ecstatic.

Entering the outskirts of Marseille, he pulled over into an empty parking lot and checked the trunk. He was looking for something to throw over his bare chest—a T-shirt, windbreaker, anything—but found instead a box of large plastic garbage bags, a pick, and two shovels.

“You know what those were for, don’t you?” he asked, looking at Akil.

“Looks like you saved my life.”

Crocker caught sight of the Arab driver through the back window.

Akil asked, “What do you want to do with him?”

“Let’s pull the tape off his mouth and find out what he knows about the sheik,” he instructed.

Crocker kept an eye on the passing traffic as Akil questioned the driver in French. The Arab swore up and down that he didn’t know anything about the activities at the farm. He’d simply been doing Rafiq a favor, and offered to drive some of his friends.

When Akil responded, Crocker recognized the French word for liar, menteur.

Crocker said, “Tell him that if he tells us what he knows about Cyrus and the sheik, we’ll let him live.”

The driver started blubbering and talking a mile a minute. Crocker slapped the side of his head. “Shut the fuck up!”

The driver composed himself, then turned to Akil and said in French, “I know nothing about the girls. I didn’t know what these men were doing. I swear.”

“What did he say?”

“He claims he doesn’t know anything.”

Crocker leaned into the car and punched the driver in the face, breaking his nose.

“Fuck you.”

Then they retaped his mouth, wrists, and ankles, and threw him in the trunk.



Returning to their hotel past midnight, Crocker dialed the number he’d committed to memory. The woman with the British accent answered on the third ring. “Yes.”

“We had some problems with the vehicle.”

“Meet me at the same location. Fifteen minutes.”

“Thanks.”

He summoned Akil from the bathroom, where he was taking a shower, and the two men returned to the corner of Rue Lafayette and Rue Marcel Sembat. The same attractive North African woman sat behind the wheel of the Acura SUV, as composed as before.

“How can I help you?” she asked.

“We’ve got someone for you. He tried to kidnap us when we went to the Club Rosa.”

“What’s his name?”

“His car is registered to a Marcel Saloud, who resides in Cap d’Antibes.”

Akil handed her the car registration papers. She scanned them with fierce, dark eyes.

“What’s his relationship to Rifa’a Suyuti, aka Rafiq?”

“He admits to nothing, but they were working together.”

“Where is he now?”

“In the trunk of his car.”