SEAL Team 666

34

Five o’clock came earlier than it should have. Upon their return from the mission yesterday afternoon, they’d had a mandatory debrief. This time it was Holmes who conducted it. He’d been cleared by the board and was his own stern self, acting as if nothing had ever happened, critical of each step of the mission. When he learned that they’d wasted time with the sniffer when they probably could have gotten the same result from the NVGs, he was initially angry. But as he railed against it, he conceded that the video-game solution Walker had devised had most likely saved the SEALs from being wounded. This concession surprised not only Walker, but Ruiz as well, who elbowed him in the ribs when Holmes wasn’t looking.

When they got to the details surrounding the tattooed skin suits and the women, Ruiz interrupted. “They were using the women for sacrifices, weren’t they?”

Holmes considered it. “It looks like it. Not sure how it works, but blood magic generally imbues a person or thing with the strength of the giver.” Seeing Yaya’s incredulous expression, Holmes added, “Not the physical strength per se, but the spiritual strength.”

Yaya had been silent through the entire debrief, but now he finally spoke. “I hear you talking, boss, and I understand the words, but I don’t understand how they go together. Blood. Magic. Sacrifice. Homunculi. I mean W-T-F, over.”

Walker offered Yaya a friendly smile. “I was sitting in your place just the other day saying the same sorts of things. Crazy, ain’t it? And it’s only going to get better from here.”

“The suits worry me,” Laws said.

Ruiz turned to Laws. “How so?”

“I get their use. It’s a sort of blood magic used to create some sort of spiritual shield. The suit will protect the wearer. Looks like the same guy who owned the ship we took down ordered one.” Laws, who had been staring at the floor the entire time, looked up. “So why all the other suits? Are they making an army?”

“Even one skin suit is bad news. Whether they’re being made for an army, or the leaders of the world’s organized crime, it suggests a broader knowledge of the supernatural and a desire to tap into it. Our job isn’t going to get any easier anytime soon.”

Holmes let the words sink in for a few moments. Then he crossed his arms and gave his full attention to the newest SEAL. “Think you’ll be able to hack it?”

The other SEALs turned to Yaya as well, curious to hear his response.

“Oh, I can hack it, all right. It’s just going to take some getting used to.”

Holmes shifted his gaze to Walker. “And what about you, Walker? I heard you had another episode.”

Walker felt the heat of embarrassment. He’d been trying to keep it in the back of his mind. Trying to think it never happened had been working so well until now. “I’m fine,” he said.

“What I heard is that you were a deer in the headlights and couldn’t have moved if there was a train coming. Is that about right?”

Walker nodded. He licked lips that had suddenly gone dry. “That’s about right.”

“What are we going to do about it?”

Jack felt blood rush to his face. “I don’t know. Why not ask Ms. Billings? I was her idea, remember?”

“Easy, Jack,” Laws said.

“Hey, I didn’t ask for this gig. I was asked for. This”—he was at a loss for words—“shit that happens to me is beyond my control. I don’t want it to happen ever again, but I know it will and it scares the fuck out of me to think of what kind of danger I might put you guys in.” Walker found that he was almost standing by the time he finished. He sat back hard in his chair, his eyes flashing with anger.

Everyone stared at him. Holmes was the first to speak. “You better hurry up and figure out a way to control it, then.” Holmes uncrossed his arms and stepped up to the conference table. “Tomorrow morning we have a mission brief. Everyone needs to be ready.”

They broke up after that. Although Fratty’s room had been cleared, Yaya was still unwilling to move in. Instead, he pushed his bags into a corner of the immense room and claimed one of the couches as his own.

Later they ordered Chinese food, only afterward laughing at the irony of it. A few beers in their guts, then each of them made their way to bed.

The next morning, Walker forced himself out of bed at five. After a quick run on the beach and a breakfast of yogurt, juice, and a hard-boiled egg, Walker joined the others in the conference room. He’d tried to arrange a meeting with Jen last night, but she’d been busy. When he entered the conference room, she was taping several pictures to a board. She wore a knee-length dark blue skirt with a white blouse. He couldn’t help but smile as he watched her work. Then he noticed Holmes staring at him with the same stern expression he gave to beegees or a Girl Scout selling cookies.

Walker went to his seat and sat. Everyone was there except Ruiz, who came in last, carrying a breakfast burrito the size of a Yule log.

When Jen finally turned, she gave Walker a quick wink that was lost to no one. He tried to use his tunnel vision, but he couldn’t help but see Yaya, Ruiz, and Laws all winking dramatically at him. What almost shocked him senseless was when Holmes did the same. As subtle as it was, it was more extravagant because the man seemed to never joke around. Ever.

“Let’s get started,” Jen said.

Other than Jen and the members of SEAL Team 666 there were two other members of SPG—a young man who looked like he knew every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and a young woman who could have been either a candy striper or a porn star. Billings sat in back.

“I’ve brought along Peter Musso and Liz Lake. Peter’s a specialist on the culture and geography of Southeast Asia, where you all will be going. Liz is new to our office. I brought her along to show her how these things are run.”

“If y’all need a private tour, I’m sure that I can provide one,” Ruiz said, true love in his eyes as he addressed the new girl.

“Chum in the water,” muttered Laws.

The girl blushed and turned away. But the young man seemed more than pleased and grinned from ear to ear, as if he was hoping that he could get the same invitation extended to him.

“Let’s get on with it,” Holmes said, as if he were being forced to sit amid a room of fourteen-year-olds.

“Okay,” Jen said. “First let’s discuss the telemetry information we got from the hard drive you brought from Macau. There were two significant findings. One was the GPS history of the ship. It originated in Rangoon and is owned by an export company with nineteen other ships. Now that we have their international identification codes, we can track them once they pass near any of our subsurface tracking buoys. Until then, we believe they’re still in their home-station harbor.”

“Why don’t we know this for certain?” Holmes asked. “Where’s their harbor?”

Jen turned to the SEAL team leader. “Yangon. You would have known it as Rangoon, Burma. The country is now called Myanmar. As far as why we aren’t sure? That directly relates to a lack of assets in the area. We can’t do a physical eyes-on, so we’ve requested an NRO overflight, but right now all satellites are operationally deployed to support CENTCOM in Afghanistan-Pakistan. We’re expecting a pass tomorrow morning. At that point we’ll know for certain.”

Walker thought about the creature they’d encountered in the hold of the old cargo ship. They’d lost Fratty and if it hadn’t been for them rocking and rolling the ammo until they were all but dry, it would have had them, too. Put that beast inside of a mall or on a busy downtown street and it would end in a bloodbath. The enforcer in San Francisco had alluded to a threat to America. If the threat had to do with the chimeras aboard twenty ships sailing to America, then people would be dead in the streets from Los Angeles to New York.

As if reading his mind, Jen continued. “If each one of the ships has the same sort of crates as the first one, and we truly are the target, then our red, white, and blue is in trouble. The CDC assisted us in projection modeling, and if each of these ships has fifty creatures, and if each one lands in a different port, there’s a seventy-six-percent chance that it could be the end of life as we know it within the continental United States. Based on your observations, we think we know how they transform from stone to flesh, but there’s too much missing data. Some of the variables are that we don’t know how they’re controlled, we don’t know how much they can eat, and we don’t understand how they can metabolize their energy.”

“Frankly, we don’t need to find this out,” Billings said from her place at the back of the room. “We’d prefer that the ships on this manifest be destroyed in place. Wherever they are. Regardless.”

“That’s clear,” Holmes said. “We’ll wait for reconnaissance, then launch.”

“Can I get a printout of all the documents?” Laws asked. “I’d like to check and see if there are any clues you missed.”

Musso’s eyes narrowed. He frowned as he said, “It’s in Chinese.”

Laws just looked at him. “That’s okay. I know Chinese.”

“Which dialects?”

“All of them … basically. But that doesn’t matter with the characters, now, does it?”

“We’ll get them to you right after the meeting,” Jen said, shaking her head subtly at her assistant.

Musso stood and made his way to the front. He gave Laws a wary eye. “All of them?” he asked again.

“Yep,” Laws responded. “I also speak Spanish, Italian, French, and half a dozen other languages.”

This gave Musso pause. Finally he turned to a map that had been taped to the wall. “Myanmar. It used to be Burma, but that was a colonial derivation of colloquialization of Bamer, which is the written word for the country. Rangoon is now called Yangon. Basically, all the names have changed.”

“What’s their military like?” Holmes asked.

“They’ve been embargoed since 1990, but still get support from rogue nation-states such as North Korea and Syria. Previously, they received support from Equatorial Guinea and Libya, but with the advent of the Arab Spring, we believe that these relationships will be changing, if they haven’t already.”

Walker found himself staring at Jen, who’d taken a position beside Musso. She was leaning against the wall. With three-inch heels, her legs seemed to go on for days. This evening they had plans. Dinner in the Gaslamp Quarter and maybe dancing at one of the clubs catering to upscale tourists. He could almost feel her in his hands.

He felt someone kick him under the table.

He returned his attention to the briefing. Musso was saying something about someone named Karen, or something like that. He listened dutifully for a moment, then noticed the way Jen had her hair pulled back and how a few stubborn strands fell across her eyes.