Seal Team Six Hunt the Wolf(59)

“You’re sure about this?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a tanker, isn’t it?” Crocker asked.

“A not very big one.”

Mancini, who had climbed halfway up the fence, shouted over his shoulder, “I don’t see any tankers here, boss.”

“This is messed up.”

“What you mean?” Samir asked.

“Bad, Samir. Not good.”

The night manager twisted his mouth into a curious half-smile. “Why? You have friend on the ship? You are expecting something?”

Crocker slapped the side of the van. “Where the fuck did it go, then?”

The Norwegian and the five Americans waited the better part of an hour at the gate, trying out various theories, while the night manager went inside to see if he could ascertain the Syrena’s current location.

As the minutes ticked by, defeat wormed its way into Crocker’s head, started slowly eating away at his confidence. I screwed up. What have I done?

This would be the second or third really bad decision he’d made in the past month. The first was letting Zaman slip away. His CIA handlers would probably report their displeasure to SOCOM in Tampa, Florida, and Naval SpecWar in Coronado, California.

Complaints would be filed. Disciplinary action taken.

Holly was annoyed at him, too. She’ll be even madder if she finds out that I’ve been court-martialed.

He imagined various responses to that possibility—hiring a good lawyer, writing a detailed report that explained all his actions, retiring and finding other employment, even leaving the States to work with Klausen in Norway. But none of them seemed to dampen his growing sense of dread.

“Where the hell is Samir?” Crocker asked out loud.

At half past two the moon was high in the sky, and they were running out of time. Reiersen, who was the only one with the credentials to get past the sleepy guards, went inside to check, grumbling to himself in Norwegian.

Fifteen minutes more of standing around and yakking about college football, and Ritchie shouted, “Here they come!”

Three men strode toward them—Reiersen, Samir, and a guy in a white robe. Samir waved something over his head.

“What he’s got?”

He had news. The Syrena had in fact bypassed Salalah, where it was scheduled to stop, and docked at Port Sultan Qaboos, some 540 miles up the coast instead.

“Where’s Sultan Qaboos, exactly?” Crocker asked.

“Right outside the capital of Muscat.”

“And the ship’s still there?”

“According to the latest communications, yes,” Reiersen answered. “But Qaboos doesn’t know for how much longer.”

Now what do we do?

Crocker, who had led his men way out on a limb, wanted to get to Muscat asap. But there were myriad complications. Like the fact that he and his team didn’t have the visas that were required to enter Oman. Secondly, the pilot of the Gulfstream V had been hired only to fly them from Karachi to Salalah and back. Third, Akil was running a fever.

Reiersen offered a solution. “We can all travel in the plane I flew in on.”

It was something.

So an hour later the six men crammed into the single-engine plane, which puttered up the Gulf of Oman coast. Dawn was breaking when they touched down in Muscat. A majestic glow from the east turned the faces of the minarets and white buildings of the capital gold.

Reiersen had radioed ahead for help: SEAL candy, aka 800-milligram Motrin for Akil. Weapons. A satellite phone.

They were met by two SUVs and a Norwegian who called himself Jakob and had spent two years at USC as a member of the track and field team. He looked like a Trojan. Square jaw, wide shoulders, a close-clipped mustache and beard.

They sped to the port as fast as the vehicles could take them—only to find that the Syrena wasn’t at Sultan Qaboos, either.

“You got to be kidding!” Like some kind of cosmic joke.

According to the port manager—a Muslim from Bangladesh named Mohammed—it had left at 11 p.m. Approximately eight hours ago. His records showed that the tanker had docked at two in the afternoon, received two hundred gallons of diesel fuel, and left for the Persian Gulf.

“What’s its current destination?”

“Bushehr, Iran.”

“Iran?”

“Yes.”

That posed a whole host of other complications. First and foremost, the Iranian government—a declared enemy of the United States—would never give Crocker and his team permission to enter.

“Did anyone disembark in Qaboos?” Crocker asked.

“What do you mean, sir?” Mohammed asked back, smoothing his black handlebar mustache.

“Did your people see anybody leave the ship while it was docked here?”