SEAL Team Six: Hunt the Fox by Don Mann, Ralph Pezzullo

of the vehicle.”
    “We considered it.”
    Mancini asked, “Boss, what’s going on? You look like you got a lot on your mind.”
    “We need to get ready to deploy into Syria tonight.”
    “How?” the always practical Mancini asked. “What’s the plan?”
    “There is no plan, as of yet. We just have an objective and a timeline, but no approval.”
    “Let’s not do what we did in southern Mexico,” Mancini commented. In that case, with the minutes ticking down to a deadline, Crocker and his men had launched a raid before they’d gotten White House approval. Fortunately, they had saved a U.S. senator’s wife in the process, otherwise Crocker might have been drummed out of the service.
    “Hopefully Oz will have more intel when I find him.”
    “He’s getting his head polished,” Akil joked.
    “Not funny.”
    “Seriously, boss, some cultural advice,” Akil offered. “Don’t get impatient. Turks don’t like that. Pride and honor are important to them.”
    “Thanks.”
    He hurried down to the end of the long hall. All the offices and rooms were empty, except for one in which a man with his feet on his desk was reading a report.
    “Excuse me, do you know where I can find Colonel Oz?”
    The Turkish soldier picked up a phone and called someone. After he hung up, he led Crocker over to the window and pointed to a low adjoining building on the left.
    “
Kahvalti
,”
he said in Turkish.
    “I don’t understand.”
    The Turk mimed sipping a cup of coffee. “Colonel Oz…”
      
    The Turkish orderly led them across an empty cafeteria and entered a private dining room where Colonel Oz sat at a round table with Mr. Asani and Logan watching a TV propped in the corner. Logan looked bored and uncomfortable.
    Seeing Crocker and his men, Oz stood and pointed to a buffet set up on a table along the wall and said,
“
Buyrun, takilin
”
(Help yourselves). Before the SEALs had heard the translation, they were filling plastic plates with boiled eggs, cheese, green olives, sucuk (dried sausage), and börek (thin dough filled with meat, cheese, and chopped vegetables).
    “These people know how to eat,” commented Akil as he bit into a piece of börek .
    “Good,” Mancini said. “Check out the baklava.”
    “Isn’t baklava a Greek word?” asked Davis.
    “No, Turkish. Dates back to ancient Mesopotamia.”
    They found places at the table and filled cups from white pitchers of Turkish coffee and green tea. Colonel Oz’s eyes never wandered from the TV, where a buxom blonde with elaborate makeup and a tight lavender outfit was interviewing a bearded man in a white suit.
    “Who’s the babe?” Crocker asked as he sat next to Logan.
    “Don’t know.”
    Crocker couldn’t understand what the man on TV was saying, but he noted his extreme self-importance and theatricality.
    “What about the guy in the white suit?”
    “His name is Harun Yahya.”
    Crocker had never heard of him. “Who is he?”
    “Harun Yahya? The messianic leader of an apocalyptic Islamic sex cult, and a close friend of Prime Minister Erdo ğ an.”
    “Really?” Crocker asked in disbelief. “I never thought I’d hear the words Islamic and sex cult in the same sentence.”
    “Harun Yahya is an important man in Turkey and considered one of the most influential figures in Islam. Kind of a cross between L. Ron Hubbard and Hugh Hefner.”
    “Who’s she?” Davis asked from the other side of Logan, pointing to the woman in lavender.
    “Don’t know her name, but she must be one of Harun Yahya’s so-called kittens. He’s into kinky sex and cocaine, and has written something called the Atlas of Creation
,
which espouses some weird form of creationism, that he’s sent to academics and biologists all over the world. Those who have bothered to read it dismiss it as pure BS.”
    “Sounds like your kind of thing,” Crocker said to Davis. “You ever hear of it?”
    Davis shook his head.
    As they watched, one of several