Age of Blood

43

They cleared the sewage-treatment plant with a combination of skill and a heaven-sent updraft that tossed them past the ponds, over a school building, and onto their designated landing zone—the soccer field. They were thankful not to have been drenched in other people’s feces, but realized one small problem that the map had caused. The LZ was flat, it was wide, and it offered them plenty of space to land… had there not been a soccer match and several thousand spectators watching what was an obvious rivalry game between two equally matched teams.

Holmes flared and landed first. No stand-up landings in these chutes. It was a parachute landing fall (PLF), used to absorb the sudden impact on the ground—feet, knees, hip, then shoulder. The chute came down on a young man in a yellow and red soccer shirt doing a bicycle kick. The fabric completely covered him and several other players.

Next came Yank, who tried to flare enough to stand and almost made it, going to one knee instead. He quickly unhooked the chute from the harness so he wouldn’t get dragged, then shucked the harness.

Walker and Laws hit at the same time. By the time they were standing and removing their chutes, the crowd was in an uproar. A referee and several players were running toward them, shouting and cursing. Walker grabbed his hat from his pocket and slung it onto his head, pulling the brim low so it rested on his sunglasses. The other SEALs did the same.

Holmes searched for a way out, then headed toward a goal. The others followed, and soon all four SEALs were running Indian style, one behind the other, passing the stunned goalie, crossing a parking lot, then diving into a concrete culvert meant to catch water during monsoon season. They left the shouts and cries of the soccer game behind, and also left their chutes as souvenirs of the day four men rained from the sky. The culvert took them down below street level. Open at the top, the left was bounded by a wall and a railing to keep the cars on the road. The right side had another sloping wall. The floor was littered with trash, dead animals, discarded clothes, empty bottles and cans, and other detritus of one of the world’s largest cities.

Holmes slowed to a jog and the others followed suit. As he ran, he checked the tablet and the moving map and noted they were less than two kilometers from their target. They could travel perhaps another five hundred meters in the culvert; then they’d have to leave it and join the rest of the world. Walker had to admit that running as if they were in a concrete half-tube made Mexico seem a lot less crowded. For those brief moments before they’d landed, it had felt like they were all alone in the universe. Then they’d landed and in the space of a moment, several thousand people were upon them. And now—back to this. Walker decided that he definitely preferred the wide-open spaces.

“This way, SEALs.” Holmes ran up the side of the cement wall at an angle, followed by Yank, Laws, and Walker. When they reached ground level they slowed to a walk. They had to find a way to appear inconspicuous. As it was, three physically fit white men and one black man all wearing tight black T-shirts, khaki pants, baseball hats, and glasses stood out in a nation of men where blue jeans and plaid shirts were the norm.

They split up. Yank and Holmes stayed on one side of the street, while Walker and Laws slid between honking cars and a mule pulling a no-shit apple cart to get to the other side.

The road ran almost to the buildings on either side of the street, leaving a thin sidewalk where people had to push past each other and the occasional vendor selling fruit, vegetables, or churros. Advertisements for Corona, Chiclets, and Bubbaloo leaped off brightly colored signs on the side of a Super Dulceria La Nueva. Pink-and-yellow signs advertising bullfights were plastered on telephone poles beside announcements for the political elections that were to be held in a few weeks. The blue sky was crisscrossed with hundreds of telephone and electrical wires running from roofs, windows, even straight into walls. As Walker moved past a woman walking a little boy to school, he was pleased they’d found an open space on which to land. Trying to navigate the chaos of the lines would have surely led to a hangup and possibly an electrocution. He doubted if the wires this deep in Mexico were coated with enough insulation to pass an electrical inspection.

They passed a pizza place, then a loan shark, then a taxi stand before they reached the corner of Alfredo del Mazo Oriente and Gregorio Montiel and turned right. A police stand was on the right side of the road. Walker and Laws paused to buy a Coke from a kiosk on their side of the street while they watched what would happen. If the police moved even a twitch to detain the other two, Walker and Laws would have to get involved. He wasn’t sure what getting involved would end up meaning, but they couldn’t have a local federale arrest a SEAL during an operation. It just wasn’t done.

Luckily, the policeman continued reading his newspaper and chain-smoking filterless cigarettes. Walker and Holmes dropped their Cokes in a trash can halfway down the block. They were about to cross the street when Holmes pulled up and faced the building. He stood beneath a butcher shop with several suspect carcasses hanging in the window.

Suddenly Walker heard Jen’s voice in his ear as Holmes added the rest of the SEALs to the feed.

“—unable to coordinate the stoplights, but that’s no longer an issue. The suspect vehicle has stopped moving.”

“What’s the location?”

“You’re less than a kilometer west of the vehicle. It’s a white panel van parked in the dirt on the west side of Via Jorge Jiménez Cantú. What looks to be a truck mechanic with yellow awning and signs is right beside it.”

Holmes began to move, as did the other SEALs.

Walker couldn’t help feeling worried and he saw his own feelings mirrored in the expression of the team’s deputy commander. Why had it stopped moving?

“Any sign of a driver?”

“None.” Even in that simple word, Walker knew her well enough to detect her anxiety. “One more thing.”

“What is it?”

“The rear door is open.”

All four SEALs sped up to the point of running. They tried to act as cool as they could as they moved by men sitting on stools, women hawking food, and children playing with little lucha libre dolls, but they still couldn’t move fast enough. They finally gave up all pretenses, dodged into the middle of the street, and ran as fast as they could, cars and trucks honking. Yank got there first, with Holmes and Walker second. Yank skidded to a stop by the rear door. Only he could see inside and his face blanched.

“Damn.” He pulled his pistol from where it was hidden in his left pouch and trained it on the inside of the van. He glanced toward the other SEALs, his face a mask of concern.

Walker planted his feet and slid into place beside Yank. Flies swooped drunkenly into a massive pool of blood inside the truck. Some had become stuck in the viscous, blackening substance. A head rested against the right wall, a body right behind it.

Laws reached over to the head and grasped the hair. He held the head up and to everyone’s surprise, it wasn’t the girl. Instead it was a Mexican man who looked surprisingly familiar. Walker thought for a moment, and then it came to him—the other werewolf. This had been the man Ramon had been fighting out in front of the asylum. The one who had supposedly gotten away.

“Madre de Dios,” came a voice from behind them.

They turned to see an older man, dressed in mechanic’s overalls. He must have come out from the garage to see what they were doing.

Laws glanced at the head, and dropped it.

Walker felt his hand going toward his pistol, wondering what Holmes was going to require them to do. He didn’t want to shoot the old man.

Then they heard a wimper. It came again, louder.

The man started to back away, his gaze pinned on the pistol in Yank’s hand. Even though Yank held it pressed against his leg, it was still visible.

“Please,” came a woman’s thin voice.

Walker gripped the side of the truck and leaped inside. He stayed to the left and saw her, huddled in the back left corner, her knees drawn up, her arms clenched around them, her face buried. He stepped over the blood and hurried over to her.

“Emily Withers, we’re United States Navy SEALs. We are here to help.”

She managed to get to her feet as he approached. Her wide eyes took him in as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Then she threw her arms around him and hugged him fiercely.

Behind him, Walker heard Holmes giving commands. Then Walker felt someone get in the back and close the doors. He heard two bodies slam the cab’s doors as they got in the front seat.

He pulled her carefully down to the floor and held her with one hand, while searching for a handhold inside. He found a tie-down pinion just as the truck lurched forward.

A light snapped on. Holmes had a mini-Maglite in his teeth. He unspooled a length of the 550 cord each SEAL kept in their cargo pockets and tied it down to the pinion next to him, then crawled over and cinched it down to the pinion Walker was holding, creating a taut nylon line capable of keeping all of them from sliding into the blood. What it didn’t do was keep the body or the head from rolling into them, so Holmes sat with his back in the rear right corner, his legs extended. Every time the van slowed or took a turn, he and Walker kept the body parts at a leg’s length.

Walker began to check Emily. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

“Bruised,” she said.

“And the man? Do you know who he was?”

“The driver? Killed right in front of me.”

“We’re sorry, Emily. But now you’re safe.”

“We’ve got a problem,” Yank said through the coms.

“Detail,” Holmes clipped.

“We have traffic in front of us and a federale hot on our tail.”

Walker paused to listen. “I don’t hear any sirens,” he said.

“Lights flashing. They’re five cars behind us.”

“Man must have called it in,” Laws said. “Can you lose them?”

“This isn’t exactly a Porsche 911,” Yank said. “But I’ll give it a shot.”

Centrifugal force threw Walker into the left wall. He cushioned Emily as best as he could, but she still grunted with pain. Holmes lost the light and it rolled into the blood, soaking the lens and turning the inside into a red-tinted hell. Just as Walker seemed to get his balance, he was flung the other way. The light spun madly and the head hit his leg and flew over it, impacting the wall. He held on to Emily, keeping her from flying loose. Holmes cursed as the head landed in his lap. He grabbed it by the hair to keep it from rolling.

“What the fuck, Yank,” Walker growled.

They heard sirens now, several of them.

They were knocked around for thirty more seconds when Laws came on the line.

“Prepare to dismount.”

“What’s the 411?” Holmes asked.

“Vehicle change.”

The truck slammed to a stop, sending the body chest-first into the wall between Holmes and Laws. Then Yank began a series of turns, finally pointing them 180 degrees in the other direction. After that, he backed up and shut off the vehicle. The sound of booted feet running across the top of the van was followed by the sounds of two men leaping to the street before the rear doors opened.

Light streamed into the interior. The blood was now everywhere. Emily and Holmes were covered with it. Walker had missed most of the flying blood because he’d been holding Emily, but the bottom of his pants were drenched in the stuff.

Laws waved. “Come on. Hurry.”

Holmes scrambled out first. Walker pushed Emily toward him, then ducked under the 550 cord that was threatening to clothesline him. Holmes pulled Emily into his arms and carried her like a child. She put her arms around his neck and sank her face into his shoulder.

Walker pulled his pistol from his cargo pocket just as the sirens came upon them, skidding to a stop on the other side of the vehicle. Taking in the entirety of the scene, Walker admired how Yank had set them up. The truck had essentially plugged an alley that ran between two three-story brick buildings. The rear of the truck opened into a long alley which had another alley coming in perpendicular and forming a T. Holmes ducked around the corner into this one just as the police began to shout commands through their loudspeaker from the other side of the truck.

Peeking around the corner, Walker saw that there was less than a foot and a half between the sides of the van and the walls. If the police were going to come and get them, they’d have to either go over or under.

He took off after Holmes. As he turned into the cross alley, he saw Laws using some of his own 550 cord to tie the hands of a man in a delivery uniform. He was pressed against the hood of a yellow van with a picture of an ecstatic chicken on the side below the words POLLO FELIZ. After Laws finished, he spun the driver around. The man’s eyes danced wildly above his gag. Laws pulled out a bag and placed it over the man’s head. Then he picked him up, carried him over to a dumpster, and tossed him in.

Meanwhile, Yank started the vehicle and pulled forward. Holmes got in the back with Emily. Walker joined them, happy that the back of the truck was filled with cooked chicken instead of a decapitated body. Benches lined one wall and he sat by the rear door. His vantage was perfect. It wasn’t until after they pulled out that a rotund policeman ran around the corner. He glanced once at the truck, then dismissed it. Instead, he had his pistol trained on the back of the restaurant where the truck had just made a delivery.

They turned the corner and pulled into traffic.

“Shit, shit, shit.” Holmes tapped his ear. “I can’t get through to the others.”

“Hey Yank, want some chicken?” Walker yelled, checking on the trays of cooked meat.

“You asking me because I’m black?”

“I’m asking you because I’m hungry and you stole a chicken truck.” Walker reached under a piece of tinfoil and pulled a leg free. It had been slow roasted. The smell was succulent. The meat begged to fall off the bone. He was bringing the leg to his mouth when he noticed Laws frowning. “What?”

“You’re hungry?”

Walker grinned and cleaned the chicken from the bone in three fast bites. “I’m always hungry during an op.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Emily said, her face turning the color of a turtle’s underbelly.

“Walker, try and establish coms,” Holmes orderd.

Walker dropped the bone onto the counter and wiped his hands on his pants. “Roger.”

“So no news on the senator?” Laws asked.

The girl perked up. “My father? Is he coming here?”

Holmes nodded. “He was coming down to meet you.”

She smiled. “So that’s what the man meant—the man who killed the driver. He said he was there to save me and that he had a meeting with my father.”

“Who was the man who killed the driver?” Laws asked. “What did he look like?”

“Tall. Light-skinned. He was Mexican but more Spanish. He was wearing a white suit.”

“Know who that sounds like?” Laws said to Holmes, who nodded in return.

She squeezed shut her eyes. “It was really strange. I don’t know how he cut off that man’s head. I never even saw a weapon.”

“Didn’t you say that he had a meeting with your father?”

She nodded.

“How’d he even know the senator was coming? What sort of meeting is he going to have?”

“The sort of meeting where the senator leaves in the custody of someone else.” Holmes punched his leg. “You think Ramon had this planned the entire time?”

Walker suddenly got a weak signal. “—are in trouble… senator is gone.” He could barely understand Jen’s voice. There was a problem with the reception. “YaYa—oh my god, YaYa!” Then she began to sob, and the sound was so terrible and miserable that if he could’ve, Walker would have reached through the headset to make it stop.

Yank banged on the steering wheel. “What the fuck is going on?”

“Airport. Laws will give directions. Go now,” Holmes commanded.

Yank’s face showed stone-cold rage. “What the hell is going on?”

“Shut up and drive,” Laws barked.

“This isn’t like any mission I’ve been on. We were always briefed. We always knew. We—”

Laws cut him off. “This isn’t like any other mission because we aren’t like any other SEALs.” Then he added, “Take a left at the next light.”

Yank complied, but couldn’t help but cry, “Bullshit.”

“We’ve been over this. This is what being a member of Triple Six is about.” Laws shook his head and slapped Yank on the shoulder. “It’s not all crazy monsters and supernatural mumbo jumbo. It’s being able to make the best decision you possibly can without any thought whatsoever.”

Walker knew that there had always been speculation about selection to Triple Six. Every SEAL had three days of screening and selection consisting of interviews, role playing, and test taking. They compared their answers when they were drunk, but most of the questions had been individually purposed. No one could figure it out. If there were any common denominators, it was the ability of a Triple Six member to react on their feet and not be dedicated to the exact replication of a preplanned or prepracticed ideal.

Holmes once again proved to the universe why he was the leader. “Everyone calm the fuck down and stop jumping to conclusions,” he said in an emotionless, even-keel voice. “We’ll find out what’s going on once we get there. If this is all a misunderstanding, we’ll all have a beer and laugh about it. If this really is what Ms. Costello says it is, then we’ll have to postpone the beer and laughter until after we rescue the senator and save the day. Understand?”

Nicely done, thought Walker.

Yank nodded, then said, “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. This is just fucking with my head.”

Laws began to laugh. “This is nothing, SEAL. If you think this is fucking with your head, just wait. It gets better.” He laughed again. “It gets so much better!”