SEAL Team 666

21

Fratty gritted his teeth so hard his jaw ached. The crazy fuck had the knife over his head and was screaming something in Chinese. One pull of the trigger would end it all, a 12-gauge slug ripping his screaming head free and leaving a wet spot on the wood behind. All he had to do was give just a little more pressure to the trigger and—

“Easy,” came Holmes’s calm voice. “Easy, SEALs.”

That the man was freaking Fratty out was an understatement. The man standing atop the circus box with the knife over his head and his tiny Asian pecker sticking out from the side of his stained underwear was an image that would take a case of beer and a thousand ice picks to dislodge.

Suddenly the man stopped screaming. The silence that rushed into the space was stark. Then he looked at Fratty and began to whisper in a rough, low voice, “Fratty, Fratty, Fratty, Fratty,” over and over.

“Boss? How the hell does this freak know my name?”

“Dunno. Just be easy until we find out what he’s—”

Holmes never finished his sentence. The man brought the knife down in a vicious arc into his own abdomen. He grunted as it bit through, but he didn’t stop there. He jerked upward, then across. Then control left him. The knife fell to the crate a moment before his intestines roped out in a gush of blood that emptied his gut. He fell face-first atop the crate, his eyes staring directly at Fratty.

Then silence.

“What the hell just happened?” Ruiz said.

“I think he just killed himself,” Laws answered.

“No shit.” Fratty poked the dead man with the toe of his right boot. “What gave you that idea?”

“Easy boys,” Holmes said, lowering the tip of his MP5 and looking around. “Be ready.”

“Loo-look at the bl-blood,” Ruiz stammered.

Fratty saw it move across the flat wooden surface as if it was all part of the same gigantic amoeba, some edges moving faster than others. The blood took on an oblong shape as it slid into several of the circular holes that had been cut in the top of the crate. He hadn’t notice them before, but the holes had been the least of his worries. Right now, he was more concerned with how the blood was moving of its own accord and why.

“That is not right,” Laws murmured.

Fratty couldn’t get past the fact that the man’s blood seemed to be alive.

“Fratty, check the body,” Holmes commanded.

A cold sweat broke out beneath Fratty’s shirt. “But it said my name!”

“I don’t care if it sang ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ Check the corpse,” Holmes commanded in an even yet firm voice.

They all heard Hoover bark at the same time. It wasn’t over the MBITR. It was close. Too close.

They all turned toward the stairs and stared out the hatch in time to see Walker, who wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near there, spin to face someone.