SEAL Team 666

13

Half an hour later, Walker drove one of the team jeeps across Coronado and pulled in front of a building with a sign out front that read SPECIAL PROJECTS GROUP. The lights were on inside and cars were still parked in the lot. That it was near midnight meant nothing to the mission. He parked, ran up the stairs, opened the door, waved a hand at the secretary, and was down the hall into an office.

A slim woman with red hair and a splash of freckles turned toward him when he entered. She didn’t have time to say anything before she was swept into his arms. Walker kissed her deeply. At first she had her hands on his arms, trying to push him away, but soon she relaxed and hugged him tightly. She returned the kiss and they remained that way for a long passionate minute.

When they separated, her face was so flushed that her freckles were almost hidden. Her blue eyes were wide.

“I was wondering where you were,” she said. “You landed hours ago.”

His mouth opened. “How did you…? I was coming to tell you about my assignment.”

She pushed him away gently and walked to her office door and closed it. “Come on. Since when have I not known what’s going on? SPG has supported SEAL Team 666 off and on for more than a decade.”

“You knew about them, Jen?” But of course she knew about them.

“I know a hundred other secrets that you don’t know, Jack. You know how it works. Need to know, and until today, you didn’t need to know.”

“But now—”

“Now you’re the newest member of SEAL Team 666.” Her smile fell as she got serious. “It’s a dangerous assignment.”

“Being a SEAL is dangerous.”

“Not like this. This is more than just run-of-the-mill SEAL danger.”

Walker grinned at the phrase—run-of-the-mill SEAL danger.

His girlfriend of the last twelve months punched him in the chest. “I’m serious, Jack.”

He caught her hand before she could punch him again. “I know you are. I’ll be prepared. That’s what careful really is, right? Being ready for anything.”

She cupped his face and seemed about to kiss him; then her phone rang. “Hold on.” She went behind a desk that held two large-screen monitors and sat down. Three different telephones were arrayed side by side. They were differentiated by colored stickers. Green was for unclassified, red was for secret, and yellow was for top secret, which was the phone she was using now. A nameplate on the desk read JENNIFER COSTELLO, PROJECT CHIEF.

She didn’t say much to the person on the other end, just occasionally acknowledged something that she heard. Once she flicked her gaze at Walker, but otherwise she kept looking at the desktop. After two minutes, she put down the phone.

“Wait here, will you?” She stood. “I have to go do something real quick.”

She pecked him on the cheek, left the room, and closed the door behind her.

Walker decided to sit for a few minutes. He’d been going since first bell, at 5 A.M. Half an hour after a mad scramble to get dressed and in formation, he’d been running on the beach with Class 290, trying desperately to send his shin splints to a place beyond the finish line. The pain had been excruciating but he’d long ago learned to ignore it.

“Screams are just pain leaving the body,” Instructor Reno loved to shout. “Scream all you want, just don’t give in to the pain.”

And Walker never did. He’d known pain before and wouldn’t succumb. Holding out the palm of his left hand, he stared at the starlike scar in the middle of his palm. Like the Patpong hooker had told him as he plowed through a gallon of Mekong whiskey, “Looks like your life line exploded.” That simple statement had meant more than she knew. He could almost remember the pencil that had plunged through his tiny hand, but he didn’t remember how it had gotten there, although sometimes a flash after a night of drinking or in the early-morning hours would reveal that it had been his own demon-spawned inertia that had delivered the blow.

Even now, after more than twenty years, the pain still lingered. Yes, he knew pain. They’d been traveling companions for a long time.

He felt his lids growing heavy as this and a hundred more thoughts tumbled off cliffs in his mind. By his mark, it had been sixteen hours since he’d slept. Three for training, four to travel to San Francisco, four to conduct the operation, four to return to base, two to brief and be introduced to the Mosh Pit, and a half hour to change, shower, and get over here. Now, nearing eleven, he was sitting in his girlfriend’s office while she was out working.…

His eyes slammed closed as his body shut down. His dreams immediately took on an underwater quality. He smelled the sweatshop. Sweat, not only from labor but the vinegar-tinged sweat of fear. A vile stench insinuated itself into everything. Coffee burned somewhere on the bottom of a pot. The scents of Chinese food, old and rotting from the kitchen next door.

Images of women with lips sewn together swam through his mind, merging with his boat crew from Class 290 and the beaching drills.

The orange-skinned homunculus ran roughshod through his childhood, jerking memories of both good and bad into a twisted braid of his life with its long orange arms.

Then suddenly his mind was a flat plane covered with television sets. Not the new flatscreens, but the old boxes, flipping vertically, blizzards of interference making the scenes almost unintelligible. One by one they snapped into focus, revealing a scene of a little boy, dancing like a maniac, barefooted atop a Manila trash dump. Every television displayed the same image. Then somewhere a radio crackled, Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon” sung by a Filipino with a tenor voice, stumbling over the words, barely intelligible if Walker hadn’t heard it in a hundred thousand other dreams.

He awoke with a start and almost leaped out of his chair.

But he was held in place by Jen’s strong arms. She’d been smiling, but when she saw the fear on his face she quickly grew concerned.

“Another one?”

Walker sat back. He breathed heavily and wiped sweat from his forehead. “Yeah.”

“Didn’t you talk to someone about them?”

“I was too busy, Jen. They don’t care about your bad dreams and bogeymen in SEAL training.”

She removed her hands and stood up straight. She waited a moment for him to say something. When he didn’t, she crossed her arms.

Walker knew he’d been short with her. He couldn’t help it. That fucking dream of the dump, or a version of it, came far too often.

She turned and walked behind the desk, putting the two and a half feet of pressed wood between them. He could reach across and grab her, but each second that passed sent her a mile farther away.

He jerked through the last tendrils of his nightmare and slid quickly around the desk and grabbed her. Her arms were still crossed and she had a frown on her lips, but he could tell it wasn’t full on.

“Sorry,” he whispered, offering her a smile. “It was the trash pile again.”

Her blue eyes dilated. “Where they found you?”

He nodded. “Tommy told me it means I need closure.”

She rolled her eyes. “Tommy? You’re going to listen to your old Navy buddy? The one who has three Filipino wives in three different ports?”

Walker grinned. He knew her feelings for Tommy. He’d never said such a thing, but anytime he invoked Tommy’s name she became so exasperated she forgot what she was really mad about.

“He doesn’t have three wives. He has four now. He married a delightful young Thai girl he found wandering around the streets of Patpong.”

Her eyes widened, then narrowed, and then she punched him in the chest. “Now you’re messing with me.”

He stole a kiss, silencing her.

“Forgiven?”

“For being an ass? Yes.”

He kissed her again.

“Who do you think I am, sailor?” she asked slyly.

“I think you’re my girl and it’s been a long time.”

“And what do you propose?” She glanced at her desk and laughed. “Here?”

Walker raised his eyebrows suggestively and grinned like a kid about to open his Christmas presents.

But just as she opened her mouth to say something, another phone rang. He didn’t recognize the ring. Hell, he didn’t even have a phone, but he was pretty sure it was coming from his jacket pocket. He reluctantly let her go, reached in, and found a cell phone. He flipped it open and put it to his ear. “Uh, hello?”

“Walker, where the hell are you?” came Holmes’s voice.

“I’m—”

“Never mind. Just get your ass back. We’re wheels up in sixty mikes.” Then the connection went dead.

Walker closed the phone slowly.

“I was going to tell you,” Jen said, putting her arms around his neck. “We’re the ones who found your ship.”

He stared at her. “How?”

“I told you that we support you guys. Billings requested immediate analytical and a targeting package. We’re normally here for NAVSPECWARCOM emergencies. When there’s no time to go through official Special Operations Command channels, we’re your support.”

“That’s where you were when you left?”

“Yeah, took us about an hour.”

“How long was I out?”

“About an hour.” She grinned.

Walker shook his head and laughed sourly.

“What?”

“Damn Holmes. Even my girl is jumping to his commands.”

“Hey! That’s not fair.”

“Nah, it’s okay. We got some kind of threat and need to find out what it is.” He spared a longing glance at the desk. “Next time for sure.”

She kissed him deeply and let him go.