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

the six stories were still intact, the whole structure looked about to collapse.
    Men from inside a basement floor were shouting in Turkish and waving pieces of clothing. Crocker and Akil knelt in the broken glass and lifted out a stretcher bearing a wounded man through the broken frame of a window. They handed it up to rescue workers, grabbed an empty stretcher, passed it inside, and got ready to take the next wounded individual.
    After the fourth one, Crocker’s arms were aching and sweat was dripping from his brow. “There are prisoners trapped downstairs,” he heard a woman behind him say in English.
    “Where?”
    “Over there.” She pointed to a pancaked section of the building to their right.
    He stood and acknowledged the woman in the blue Turkish EMS uniform. “Thanks.”
    Stepping over a chunk of smoldering, undistinguishable flesh, he pulled at Akil’s sleeve and pointed to the little space in the collapsed concrete where a man was attempting to pull himself through. His shoulders were stuck and he grimaced in pain.
    “Calm down,” Crocker told him. “We’ll get you out.”
    “American?” the trapped man asked, his face covered with white dust and vivid red blood dripping from the top of his head.
    “Canadian.”
    “Toronto Maple Leafs or Montreal Canadiens?”
    “The Leafs, of course.”
    Together, the SEALs used their legs to pivot a chunk of concrete to the right so it continued to hold back the debris above it but opened enough space for the man to worm through.
    He smiled and embraced them, even though his right foot was a mess. A relief worker with a Canadian patch on his shoulder led the man off. Weird coincidence, Crocker thought, his throat and nostrils clogged with dust and smoke.
    The space they had opened allowed more prisoners to squeeze out. Crocker was helping one with an injured arm when he recognized the face of the Syrian boy he had seen earlier with his family.
    “Hakim.”
    “My friend! My friend! Mr. Wallace.”
    He knelt in the rubble, cleaned and dressed a cut near the kid’s elbow, and asked, “Where’s the rest of your family?”
    “Hospital. They go to hospital.”
    “Good. What’s your last name?”
    “Gannani.”
    “Hakim, stay with me. You can be my assistant. Okay?”
    “Yes.” The boy smiled, revealing a large space between his upper front teeth.
    Crocker found Akil on his knees, still passing empty stretchers to the workers inside. Wiping the perspiration from his forehead, Crocker said, “I’m taking this kid to the hospital and will meet you back at headquarters.”
    “Who’s he?”
    “I’ll explain later.”
    “When?”
    “I’m going now.”
    “I mean, when will you be back at HQ?” Akil asked.
    “Soon as I’m finished.”
    “Remember, we’ve got a mission.”
    “I know. I’ll be no more than an hour.”
    He and the boy worked their way to the front of the building, stopping to disinfect and bandage wounds and clean faces. Crocker directed Hakim into the back of a blue-and-white medical van. A young female nurse with pale blond hair leaned on his shoulder and sobbed throughout the five-minute ride uphill.
    “You’re doing good work,” he said to her in English. “These people need you.”
    She nodded and wiped her eyes. “Nona.”
    “Wallace.”
    “Polish.”
    “Canadian.”
    Cute girl. No more than twenty-five.
    He lost her in the chaos of the hospital—a parking lot and entrance lined with stretchers; inside, stressed-out EMS workers, doctors, and nurses shouting orders in Turkish and Arabic and running to and fro.
    He saw a little girl lying on her back fully conscious, with her stomach, liver, and intestines exposed. He held her hand, grabbed a doctor, and locked his eyes on her dark-brown ones as they wheeled her into surgery—heroism and tragedy all around him. Everyone pitching in to save lives.
    Crocker worked his way down a green corridor, administering help where it was needed—setting one man’s broken femur,