Seal Team Six Hunt the Wolf(68)
“To cheer you up,” the Frenchman said with a wink.
“Thanks.”
“They’re from Brigitte’s parents,” he added, setting them down on the bed table. “They’d like to thank you in person.”
The SEAL chief warrant officer usually didn’t like thank-yous, but this time he welcomed any excuse to get out of the room. Moving slowly down the hall like a broken old man, he tried to look dignified despite the ugly bruises on his face and neck.
The door at the end was guarded by two serious-looking plainclothesmen with guns. Through the crack in the door Crocker saw large bouquets of flowers and bunches of balloons.
“The story of her rescue has been headline news throughout my country,” Mathieu whispered.
A week ago, French authorities had been mad at him and Akil for the raid in Toulon.
The second he entered, a middle-aged couple rose to greet him. Seeing the state of Crocker’s face, the pretty woman with a bob of graying brown hair covered her mouth with her hands and gasped, “Mon Dieu!”
Mathieu muttered something in French, and the woman, who was about to throw her arms around the American, stopped. Instead, she grabbed both of his hands in hers and kissed them.
Her husband joined her, a well-built man with a square, worn face. He was sobbing, too, muttering something in French that Crocker couldn’t understand. He grabbed the American’s hands and squeezed them so that the three pairs of hands were linked together.
A bolt of emotion traveled up Crocker’s arm into his chest.
They showed him to a chair by the bed. That’s when the SEAL focused on Brigitte—small and radiant, surrounded by white pillows. She looked like a sad little doll. When she opened her eyes, he saw that a very faint flame still burned inside them.
Despite the tube in her mouth she formed the words “Thank you.”
Crocker bit his lip and nodded. “It makes me very happy to see you with your family.”
Brigitte took his big hand in hers, which felt as delicate as flowers.
Crocker remembered all the psychic pain he’d endured to get to this moment—his turbulent youth, his mother’s death, his divorce, his training, all the violence he’d witnessed.
Didn’t matter if he was dismissed from the SEALs for his actions or given a medal. He had to stay focused, trust his instincts, overcome his fears. All that he’d learned, and everything he was, boiled down to that.
He asked Brigitte’s parents if he could ask their daughter a few quick questions before he left.
“Of course,” her mother said in French. “Please do whatever you can so that these horrible people are stopped.”
“Brigitte,” he asked. “You and the other girl, Malie, traveled on the ship together?”
She nodded yes.
“And you disembarked together here in Muscat?”
Yes again.
“And the two of you were together in the hotel suite.”
She nodded a third time.
“How many men were there?”
She held up five fingers, then pulled the tube away from her tongue.
“All Middle Eastern,” she said. “I think they were speaking Arabic. One man was in charge.”
“Cyrus?”
“I don’t know his name.”
“And Sheik Rastani?”
She winced. “A fat man with thick lips. I found him disgusting.”
No clues to the Norwegian girl’s location, but she had confirmed that he was on the right trail.
Walking back to his room, hoping that Klausen or someone would arrive with good news, Crocker felt something darker lingering on the edge of his euphoria, demanding his attention.
A scowling Lou Donaldson and Jim Anders stood in his room, waiting.
“We thought you’d escaped the hospital,” the CIA officer snarled.
“I was visiting the French girl and her parents.”
Crocker sat on the edge of the bed listening to their complaints, trying to figure out what was bothering him. They, too, like the officials from the embassy, seemed more concerned about the irked Omanis than about the fact that a girl’s life had been saved and a kidnapping ring quashed.
Apparently, maintaining smooth relationships was more important than protecting young women from predators.
“Did Davis and the others find the Norwegian girl?” he asked.
“I don’t think so, but they did stop the men who tried to escape from the hotel,” Anders answered.
That was something. “Are you sure they didn’t find her?”
Donaldson, in khakis and a rumpled blue blazer, groaned. “Listen, Crocker. Your men have created another huge headache.”
“How come?”
“Because they pistol-whipped a personal friend of the sultan’s. A Sheik Rastani, from Kuwait. And when Omani security forces tried to intervene, they fought them, too.”