Hunt the Falcon (15 page)

“My name isn't Crocker.”

“What are you doing in Barinas?”

“Me and some of my business associates stopped here on our way to scout an expedition into the jungle.”

The short man pointed to the dirty, tattered bandage on the left side of Crocker's head and asked, “What happened to your head?”

“I fell down some stairs.”

“You're a liar.”

The man's accent, short stature, air of self-importance, and the cold menace in his voice all led Crocker to conclude that he was Alizadeh, who he'd seen face-to-face in Tripoli the previous year.

“Are you lying?” the fat man asked.

“No.”

Knowing that Alizadeh was there heightened the stakes and Crocker's desire to escape. It also heightened his disappointment. The Falcon wasn't dead.

“If you answer one question correctly, I will have you moved to a room with a bed and maybe even give you clean clothes and a shower,” the fat man offered.

Crocker nodded.

The men at the table conferred in whispers, then the fat man in the middle sat back and spoke again. “I'm going to ask you one more time. Name?”

“Thomas Mansfield.”

Article Four: If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades.

“Nationality?”

“Canadian.”

“Occupation?”

“Businessman.”

“Liar,” Alizadeh said.

“I'm a Canadian businessman.”

“What's more important to you, Mr. Crocker, defending a lie or being able to ever make love to your wife again?”

The men at the table rose together and exited through the door to Crocker's right. As the door closed behind them, the guards on either side of him went to work. First they strapped him spread-eagle on a set of bedsprings on the floor. Then they took turns pissing on him. Then they beat the bottom of his feet with sticks. Then they burned the skin on his chest with cigarettes. Finally, they hooked up the metal bedsprings to a portable generator, threw water on his body, and turned on the current, which made his muscles clench to the point that he felt his body was squeezing in on itself.

His gums bled, his head and ass hurt, and he felt sick and exhausted.

Smoke rising from Crocker's body, the guards moved him back to the metal chair. The three interrogators reentered and asked him the same questions. Crocker repeated the same answers. He hated all three men, especially Alizadeh, on the left. The interrogators filed out and the guards hooked up the electricity again, this time applying it directly to his scrotum, nipples, and anus.

Another round of questions from the interrogators, then a session of waterboarding, which Crocker didn't mind as much, since he'd trained himself to hold his breath for nearly three minutes. When they strapped him on a slanted board and pushed his head under water and held it there, he came up pretending to be suffering although he wasn't.

Two more sessions of questioning and electricity, then Crocker was dragged back to his cell starving, exhausted, and barely conscious. He drank the greasy water, threw up, and defecated in the corner.

He knew in his heart that he would never give up information. They'd have to kill him. Maybe they would.

H
e fell
asleep and woke up with an idea. Feeling around in the dark and locating the bones in the corner of the cell, he selected two strong, thin, short ones. Holding them in his teeth because his wrists were still handcuffed behind him, he dragged them along the rough concrete wall for hours, until his neck, teeth, and mouth were so sore and tired that he had to rest. Ten minutes later he resumed, scraping for hours until the bones had been honed down to sharp, lethal points that were short enough to hide in his palms.

He covered the tips of the bones with his shit, hid them in his hands, curled into a ball on the bare cement floor, and fell asleep. He dreamt that Ritchie was telling him about a vintage Indian Chief Roadmaster motorcycle he had just bought. He explained that it was an exact copy of one that had been owned by his father—cream colored and beautifully detailed, with an inline four-cylinder IOE engine and four-speed overdrive transmission.

“My dad had an Indian, too,” Crocker responded. “Once he lost control of it on some ice and slid under an oncoming truck. The big front prevented him from being crushed.”

As he said these words, he experienced them. He was under the truck, smelling the gasoline and feeling the hot engine.

Ritchie grabbed him by the wrists and started to drag him out, which at first Crocker welcomed. But when the back of his feet started to burn from the scraping, he shouted at Ritchie to stop. That's when he opened his eyes and realized he'd been hallucinating and he was in the interrogation room again.

A guard slapped him so hard he saw stars. Opening his eyes, he registered the three men sitting behind the table. Blood dripped from his nose onto his bare chest.

Alizadeh said, “You keep this up and you'll be useless to anyone soon, Mr. Crocker.”

“My name's not Crocker. It's Mr. Mansfield.”

Alizadeh pointed at the guard, who slapped him again. Crocker lost consciousness, but remembered to keep the bones clenched in his fists.

When he came to, his interrogators were gone and the two guards were unlocking the handcuffs around his wrists.

“Water,” he muttered. “I need water.”

“No water,” the taller of the two guards growled, putting him in a headlock and dragging him over to the bedsprings for another session of shocks. Crocker moved his fingers to make sure the sharpened bones were still in his hands.
It's now or never
, said an authoritative voice in his head.

The voice was right, because when the guard let Crocker go his legs were so weak that he crumpled to the wet floor, hitting the side of his head. They laughed, then bent over on either side of him to pull him onto the bedsprings and chain him down.

His head still reeling, Crocker turned to the guard on his right, who was holding him by the back of the head, and focused on the guard's neck. Locating the carotid artery, he cocked his arm at the elbow and drove the bone into the artery with all the strength he had left. The guard screamed, went into immediate toxic shock, and collapsed.

The second guard reached for his gun and hurried over to his colleague. Crocker moved quickly, grabbing him by the front of his uniform and pulling him to the ground. Then he shifted the second bone into his right hand. The guard saw the crude weapon coming and shielded himself with his arm, deflecting Crocker's thrust just enough that the bone drove into his windpipe instead. He fell backward and shouted something in Spanish.

Hearing someone moving toward him, Crocker spun. On the floor he spotted the chain the guards were about to use, picked it up, and swung it wildly. It struck a third guard who had run into the room, momentarily stunning him. As Crocker scrambled to his feet, he saw the man who was doubled over reaching for the pistol in his holster, then realizing he wasn't moving fast enough to stop the chain that hit him in the face with a loud crack. His right eye exploded and he screamed desperate pleas in Spanish that ended when Crocker wrapped the chain around his neck and tightened it until he stopped breathing.

His heart beating wildly, Crocker grabbed his pistol, a knife, another pistol, and a set of keys from the belt of the first man he had killed. Then he stripped off the guard's olive uniform, and pulled it on. Still barefoot and with no time to button the uniform, he opened the door behind him, slipped out, limped down the hallway as fast as his bruised feet would take him, breathing hard, not knowing where he was going.

He came to the end and a bare cinder-block wall. A single light bulb hung from the ceiling, illuminating another hallway. Crocker was disoriented, but thought the cell he wanted was located to the right. From the opposite direction came muffled voices shouting behind him. His head pounding, he checked to make sure the pistol in his hand was loaded, then shook the first metal door.

“It's Crocker. Who's in there?”

“Boss?” the weary voice responded.

“Yeah, it's me. Hold on.”

Crocker's hands were covered with blood and his head was messed up, but he kept it together long enough to try seven of the dozen keys until he found the one that fit. The cell was dark and emitted a horrible stench. He found Mancini huddled in the near corner and helped him up. His face was badly bruised and he had trouble standing.

Mancini mumbled something, then repeated it. “Sanchez is dead.”

“Lean on me. How do you know?”

“They shot him in front of me, then cut his dick off…”

Crocker shook him and whispered urgently, “Manny, listen. Listen. I need your help.”

“Yeah, boss. What?”

“I need you to stand on your own. Can you do that?”

“I'll try. They killed Sanchez.”

“I know. You told me. Now, take this pistol, and lean on the wall if you have to. I need you to guard the entrance to the hallway while I get the other guys out.”

Mancini nodded, grabbed the pistol, stumbled naked to where the main hallway branched off, and waved. Crocker saw burn marks covering his torso. He waved back, then unlocked the next cell, where he found Davis lying on the ground unconscious. He dragged him over to the bucket and splashed dirty water on his face.

Davis struggled wildly to pull free. “Stop!” he growled. “Let go!”

Crocker slapped him. “Davis, it's me!”

Everything happened fast. One moment he was holding Davis, the next the two of them had located Neto and Cal in another cell. Cal, who was slipping in and out of consciousness, had to be carried. They heard a pistol discharge behind them. Mancini fired back, then shouted, “They're coming, boss! They're here!”

Davis: “Oh, fuck!”

Neto peered down the murky passageway in front of them and pointed, saying, “I saw a stairway down this way.”

Davis, numbly: “A stairway?”

Crocker waved vigorously to Mancini and shouted, “Cover us, then run! Can you run?”

“I'll try!”

Crocker slung Cal over his shoulder and they moved as fast as their broken, exhausted bodies could take them, down the hallway, to a door with safety glass that Crocker had to punch out with the butt of the pistol so he could reach through and undo the lock from the other side.

“Watch the glass! Feet! Watch your feet!”

None of them had shoes, and all were naked except Crocker. They stumbled up the concrete stairs, pushed open a metal hatch, and tasted fresh air.

Pain emanated from every part of Crocker's body. He leaned against a metal lamppost for a few seconds. Neto, panting beside him, pointed at the sky and muttered, “Look.”

“Yeah, stars.”

“Where's Mancini?”

Crocker considered going back for him, but seeing someone standing near a truck at ten o'clock, placed his hand over Cal's mouth. He motioned to the other men to hide behind some plastic garbage bins to the right. The soldier was sixty feet away and had his back toward them. He turned and shone a light in their direction. Curious, he took several steps forward.

From behind one of the bins, Crocker watched him raise his rifle. He was aiming it at Mancini, whose big head had just emerged from the stairway. Before the soldier had a chance to pull the trigger, Crocker rose and shot him three times in the chest.

Turning to Davis, he said, “Grab his gun and his uniform, then meet us in the truck.”

“Okay.”

It was a two-ton military cargo truck with a winch in front. He and Mancini helped Cal into the bed and covered him with a tarp. “Stay with him,” Crocker instructed.

Then he hurried to the cab and found a single key in the ignition, but when he turned it and pushed down on the gas, the engine whined and died. He tried it a second time with the same result.

Crocker heard men behind them shouting in Spanish, pushed away rising panic, and noticed that the truck was parked on a slight incline. He told Neto and Davis to go to the back and push.

The shadows of men were emerging from the stairway. “They're coming,” Mancini warned through the open back window.

“Stay down!” Crocker growled back.

As the truck picked up a little speed on the narrow dirt road, Crocker shifted into second and pressed down on the accelerator. The truck lurched, and the engine coughed and started. Crocker shouted, “Get in!” as guns fired behind them and a bullet shattered the side mirror, spraying shards of glass across the front of his stolen uniform.

In the moonlight he saw they had a chance if they could make it to the bottom of the hill, where the road turned sharply right and was shielded by a stand of tall trees. More bullets slammed into the back of the truck. In spite of the mayhem, Crocker welcomed the sweet, pungent smell of eucalyptus, the fresh night air, and the moments of freedom.

“How's Cal?” Crocker shouted over his shoulder.

“He's still out, but his heart rate seems normal.”

Neto opened the glove compartment and found a pack of Marlboros and a BlackBerry.

“Don't use it,” Crocker warned.

“But we need to call for—”

He reached over with his right hand and slapped it away. “Don't!”

He spotted headlights in the rearview mirror.

“Boss!” Davis shouted from the seat beside him.

“I see them.”

The engine coughed, missed, and started again. The grove they had entered was dense and dark. He floored the accelerator but the truck didn't gain speed. Forty appeared to be as fast as it could go.

Crocker cut the headlights and turned onto a dirt path that continued for a hundred feet into the forest, descending sharply and becoming narrower and overgrown. He pushed the truck through and down a steep embankment that stopped at a dark body of water.

“Why are we stopping here?” Neto asked.

“Because this thing won't float.”

He had to jam the door into encroaching high bushes to get out. The canopy was so thick they couldn't be spotted from above. Moonlight shone off the surface of the water. Frogs croaked.

Rampant foliage cloaked the lake, making it a good place to hide. He thought,
A lake this size is probably fed by a stream or river, which means that there's some form of town or hamlet nearby.

He looked at Davis's gaunt, bruised face and said, “Help everyone get out. You'll wait here while Neto and I get help.”

He pocketed the BlackBerry, then released the truck's parking brake and with Neto's help pushed it into the lake. Turning to the four men, he saw they looked weak and dehydrated. He tried the water, which tasted clean.

“Drink,” he whispered. “We all need water.”

The water seemed to revive them. They circled right into even denser foliage and stopped. Cal, who Crocker had been carrying, continued to slip into and out of consciousness. His heartbeat seemed normal, but his pulse felt weak. No apparent fractures to his skull; no major wounds to his body.

Must be some sort of blunt force injury or concussion,
Crocker concluded, holding Cal up, giving him water, and washing the shit off his face.

Cal opened his gray eyes, blinked, and asked, “Boss, where are we?”

“You're gonna wait here with Manny and the others. I'm going to get help.”

“I want to come with you.”

Crocker smiled to himself. “No, you stay here.”

He led the way through the shallow edge of the lake to the other side, then up an embankment to a spot that was heavily wooded and defendable.

Cal looked around and asked, “Where's Sanchez? We forgot Sanchez. He was with us.”

“Sanchez is dead,” Neto said, clenching his jaw and looking down at his feet.

They left two of the pistols with Mancini and Davis. Crocker and Neto took the other pistol and the knife, slid down the embankment, and found the feeder stream, which they followed for half an hour to a small village.

Crocker said, “You take the knife and see if you can find a phone.”

Neto: “Where should I tell them to meet us?”

Crocker: “Tell them we'll be waiting by the path that leads into the forest. If you're coming from the prison, it's about thirty yards after the first big bend in the road. Tell them to flash their headlights three times and I'll come out.”

“Got it.”

Two and a half hours later, just as the sun was starting to light up the sky and men with dogs and flashlights were searching the other side of the road, Crocker saw three black SUVs stop about two hundred feet away. After the lead vehicle flashed its lights three times, he stepped out onto the road and waved. They pulled closer, and six heavily armed men dressed in black emerged to start loading them in. No questions asked; no words exchanged. They sped twenty minutes to an airstrip, where the four SEALs and Neto boarded a Gulfstream IV.

A half hour later, Crocker, Mancini, and Neto deplaned in Caracas. Davis and Cal stayed on the jet, which continued to Panama City, where the two men were taken by ambulance to Hospital Punta Pacifica.