Seal Team Six Hunt the Wolf(77)

Back in the hallway, Bahrami saw the blood on Crocker’s hand and threw his arms up in disgust. “I asked you to be reasonable! This is an outrage, sir. Totally unacceptable!”

“He tried to stab me,” Crocker explained, handing him the bloodied pen.

Fortunately, Cyrus’s colleague down the hall wasn’t as well informed about the protections of Omani law. This young man, who was recovering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the right foot, a shattered collarbone, and a dislocated shoulder, claimed he was a poor former Pakistani policeman who had been hired by Cyrus in Karachi to provide security for Sheik Rastani.

He gave up the following to Bahrami with very little persuasion: One, Sheik Rastani had not been a passenger on the ship; he had met them when they docked in Muscat. Two, Cyrus deferred to an older, serious man with a thick black beard who rarely left his cabin and seemed to be the leader. He didn’t know the man’s name or nationality. Nor was he able to understand what the man was saying, because he didn’t speak Arabic, only his native Urdu.

Three, the ship was run by a small crew of Middle Eastern men and Filipinos. Also on board were a half-dozen men who exercised on deck and prayed often, kept to themselves, and could be some sort of commandos. Four, he had been hired to accompany Sheik Rastani from Muscat to Kuwait. From there, he was supposed to fly back to Karachi.

Five, he said he wasn’t aware that Brigitte and Malie were on board until they disembarked in Muscat. Six, he claimed that he had taken the job to help his wife, who was suffering from cancer of the bladder.

The question Crocker faced: What to do now?

It was nearly two o’clock in the morning. The celebration on the third floor seemed to have ended. Chief Warrant Officer Crocker found Akil and Davis helping the nurses clean up empty wine bottles and cans of soda.

“Where’d everyone go?” Crocker asked.

“Klausen and Anders went with the Norwegian ambassador to look in on Malie. The others scattered.”

“Where is she?”

“The critical care ward on four.”

Ironically, the kidnappers and their former victim were recuperating on the same floor.

“You know the room number?”

“I’ll show you,” volunteered the African nurse with the scars.

The half-dozen men gathered in front of the door reminded him of excited teenagers stealing looks at pictures in Playboy. They were taking turns peering through the six-inch-square window in the door.

“Crocker, you want to look?” Mikael Klausen asked.

The room was dimly lit and bigger than the others, the walls a dirty yellowish color. A nurse and a doctor blocked his view of the bed. When they moved away, Crocker saw Malie sitting up, wide awake.

Her skin gave off a pink healthy glow, and her blue eyes sparkled. Seeing his eyes through the little window, she smiled as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Her composed serenity took Crocker’s breath away.

“She looks well, doesn’t she?” Klausen asked.

Crocker took a second look to make sure. “I’d heard that Norwegians were hearty people, but I never expected a recovery as fast as this,” he remarked.

“The doctor thinks that in another day or two she’ll be able to return to Oslo,” Klausen said proudly.

Seeing her like this suffused the American with renewed energy. “Before you men disperse, there’s something important we need to discuss.”

“What?”

Klausen, Anders, the Norwegian ambassador, Akil, Davis, and Bahrami followed him to the nurses’ station in the middle of the hall.

“Here’s the situation…” It took great mental concentration for Crocker to recount what he had learned from the former Pakistani policeman and bend his mind around the reasons why the ship posed an impending threat. Exhaustion, pain, and a sense of dislocation had taken their toll.

The Norwegians weren’t interested. They’d gotten what they wanted and were pulling away from the group, which was disappointing but understandable. But the American and Omani participants immediately grasped the threat the ship might pose to commerce in the Persian Gulf, which accounted for roughly 25 percent of the world’s crude-oil supply.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer, was particularly important. One of al-Qaeda’s long-standing goals was the overthrow of the Saudi royal family, who controlled the holy mosque in Mecca.

Jim Anders was struck by the new information about the commandos aboard the ship and their bearded leader. He and Bahrami agreed that in the little time they had before the Syrena either disappeared from sight or completed its mission, they needed to establish its current location and either warn the Saudis or secure the necessary equipment and permissions to board the vessel and inspect it.