Seal Team Six Hunt the Wolf(55)

Crocker’s heart pounded so hard he thought it was going to jump out of his chest. His fists and teeth were clenched. All the hatred of authority he’d accumulated since he was in grade school rushed to the surface.

He looked up to see the defeat on Davis’s face. It was like a dagger pushed into his throat.



The three men were quietly packing their gear when Akil arrived from the port, looking pleased with himself. Sweat had formed two large Us under the arms of his pale blue shirt.

“What have you got?” Crocker asked.

In his big hand Akil clutched a quarter-inch sheaf of papers he said contained the lists of crew members and passengers who had passed through the Karachi port in the past eight days.

The four men abandoned their packing and tore through the lists, but found no Malie Tingvoll or Abu Rasul Zaman. Not that they had expected to see either name.

The dozen people listed as the crew of the Syrena were all men, mostly of what seemed to be Somali and Lebanese descent.

Davis did notice something—the ship was described as a tanker, not a cargo ship.

“What kind of tanker?” Crocker asked.

“I wasn’t able to find that out,” Akil answered.

“Hmm…”

“You want me to go back?”

Crocker stood looking down at the top of the table he had punched and cracked earlier, wondering how much it was going to cost to replace, when Ritchie walked in pulling a suitcase on wheels. Behind him followed a very tired-​looking Mikael Klausen, wearing a beige raincoat, a sky blue shirt that matched his eyes, jeans, and brown loafers, his straight blond hair sticking up.

In his cloud of frustration and regret, Crocker had forgotten about him.

Now the Norwegian stood before him, asking what they’d learned so far. It surprised Crocker how hard he found it to answer.

Klausen knitted his pale brow and listened carefully. His hand rubbed his jaw like he was hoping a genie would pop out.

“And your government turned down your request to proceed to Salalah? Is that correct?”

“Yes. Their main interest is Zaman, and they believe that the evidence linking the ship to him isn’t strong enough to justify the problems it could cause with the Omanis. Our contact, Mr. Donaldson, said he would pursue the matter with the government of Oman. I don’t know how strongly he’ll do that.”

Klausen folded his short arms across his chest. “Give me an hour or so to make some calls. I’m checked into a room down the hall.”

Minutes after Klausen left, Crocker was in the bedroom talking to his wife. He was interrupted by a knock at the door. It was Davis, reporting that Lou Donaldson wanted him to attend a meeting at the U.S. consulate in half an hour.

“Why?”

Davis handed the phone over. According to Anders, who was still on the line, the meeting concerned Abu Rasul Zaman.

“I’ll have a car waiting for you downstairs in ten minutes,” Anders said.

Crocker told Holly he’d call back, then reminded Anders that he was staying in the Sheraton, which was only a few hundred yards from the consulate.

“It’s almost impossible to enter the diplomatic enclave if you’re not in an official vehicle,” Anders explained. “Security here is very tight.”

“I’ll manage.”

“Dammit, Crocker.”

“See you in ten.”



Nine minutes later, a perplexed Tom Crocker was ushered into a video conference room and shown to a large leather chair in front of a crescent-shaped table that faced a wall displaying a series of TV monitors. At the opposite end of the walnut crescent sat Lou Donaldson talking to Jim Anders, who was beside him. Another gray suit stood behind them, leaning on the back of Anders’s chair.

A big woman with a pile of brown hair occupied the middle seat and spooned yogurt into her mouth when she wasn’t speaking into a cell phone. Next to her was a quiet, almost invisible Asian man in a shirt and tie, sparse black mustache, and black-framed glasses.

Donaldson frowned at Crocker and growled to the assembled, “All right, he’s here. Let’s get started.”

Anders picked up a phone from the console in front of him, and soon the lights dimmed and the monitors lit up. Serious-looking men and women appeared on five of the ten screens. They introduced themselves as the director and deputy director of the Al-Qaeda Working Group from CIA headquarters; the deputy director of the Counterterrorism Center (CTC), also at Langley; the CIA station chiefs in Kabul and Oman.

They were all business.

Crocker learned right away that the officials at Langley were taking the Syrena more seriously than he’d thought. The station chief in Oman reported that the Omanis were prepared to board and search the vessel as soon as it docked at Salalah.