SEAL Team 666

46

As it turned out, they didn’t die.

The wide blue sky made a lie of the fact that a cyclone had just blown through. But the tattered palm fronds and coconuts littering the ground were a picturesque testament to the angry winds that had buffeted the South Pacific since creation. Still, after a few days of wind and another of rain, the Solomon Islands would be back to normal. They’d survived far worse than a simple cyclone. They’d survived bombardment from the Japanese and Americans as this small hunk of rock and dirt had been battled over until tens of thousands of men had bled out on the sand.

Walker was cognizant of this and more as he stared out upon the island. He’d just gone to the monument and was in awe of the place, just as he had been at Gettysburg. There’s a feeling at places where so much life has been lost, and Guadalcanal had it.

It also held some sort of magic. His skin was buzzing gently, as if a low current of electricity were running through it. But this was a benign sort of magic, perhaps created in the confluence of violence and death. A side effect of the battles, perhaps. Nothing like the malevolent ice pick he’d felt jabbing his psyche at the sweatshop.

He wiped sweat from his brow. They were essentially on the equator. The heat was stifling. He went shirtless above his cargo pants. He couldn’t imagine how the U.S. Marines had fought in such heat while wearing old wool uniforms. Even as relatively cool as Walker felt, moving was a little slow-motion. Wearing full battle rattle and in uniforms with a steel pot on one’s head had to be akin to walking on the bottom of the ocean in a diving suit. Fighting seemed an improbable occupation in this gloriously beautiful but terribly remote place.

He made his way back to the airstrip. The crew chief and ground personnel were talking off to one side, smoking cigarettes. Holmes, Ruiz, and Laws lay on their gear in the shade of the Starlifter. Down the runway, Yaya played with Hoover. This could almost have been a perfect moment. But it was the quiet before the storm. It was that single moment of peace before all hell broke loose. The Japanese had felt it before the marines landed. The marines had felt it as they huddled, wet and miserable in their foxholes, every morning that they held the island. And Walker had felt it aboard the USS Tennessee as he prepared his sniper rifle, with the sun, the wind, and the sea something out of a travel magazine rather than a Somali pirate sea adventure.

They were waiting for an agency jet. The initial infiltration plan had been High Altitude/High Opening—HAHO. They’d switched that to High Altitude/Low Opening—HALO. They’d changed it yet again to Low Altitude/Low Opening—LALO. The plan was for the jet to cruise in just above the jungle canopy east of the Thaton airport. SEAL Team 666 would jump out the back and land before anyone noticed their exit.

It was a simple plan.

But there were problems with it.

The United States had no diplomatic relations with the government of Myanmar. Among other things, this meant that no U.S. citizens or their conveyances were allowed into or around the country. Additionally, the government had made it known that they were pretty pissed at the posture of the United States against their regime and in support of the Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. In fact, a high-level minister was quoted as saying that he “wouldn’t spit into the mouth of an American, even if he was dying of thirst”—translated, of course. The bottom line was that they were not wanted and the Myanmar government would be on the lookout for any sort of American intervention into their internal politics.

Another problem was that neither Yaya nor Walker had ever done a LALO jump—a jump of less than nine hundred feet. Since it took three hundred feet for the chute to deploy, that left six hundred feet to steer the chute to safety.

They also had the wrong parachutes. The MC-4s were designed for free fall. They were highly maneuverable and agile, because the parachute canopies were relatively small. After all, it had more than thirty thousand feet to scoop air. But now they had less than nine hundred feet. They needed a much larger canopy. They also needed something they could leave behind that wouldn’t identify them as American.

The final decision had been to pair Chinese cargo chutes with drag chutes. The drag chutes would be deployed from an open air ramp. The wind would rip these back, thus drawing out the yards of material that composed the cargo chutes. Without the drag chutes, the cargo chutes wouldn’t have enough time to open. But with them, opening of the cargo chutes would be simultaneous to the SEALs’ exiting the aircraft. And when the cargo chutes deployed, they’d reduce their speed to almost nothing.

Then they’d flutter gently to the ground like a feather from the ass of an eagle.

Simple, Laws had said.

Piece of cake, Ruiz had said.

Deal with it, Holmes had said.

Walker watched Hoover play for a while. It was going to be toughest on the dog. Walker hoped the pooch was going to be okay. He had a feeling they’d need her before it was all over.

The sound of an aircraft reached him. He craned his neck and looked for it in the sky. Finally he spied it and tracked its approach.

Laws came up to join him. “You look nervous.”

Walker shrugged. “Always nervous before an op.”

“All the changes don’t help, either.”

“It is what it is,” Walker said flatly. He knew he was nervous. Talking about it would only make him more so.

Laws seemed to realize this, because he shut up until the plane was coming in for a landing.

It was a big cargo jet, painted yellow with red stripes and letters. Walker recognized the logo. DSL—WE DELIVER WORLDWIDE. He chuckled and shook his head. Count on the agency to find the sort of plane that would be able to land at an airport in a country that despised Americans. Not only was DSL not an American-owned company, it was essentially the mail, and even the most backwater, right-wing dictatorships liked to get packages filled with sleek Western merchandise. It landed and taxied to a stop near the Starlifter.

“Okay, SEALs. Get your gear and load up. We got a delivery to make.”

Walker did a double take. It appeared as if their fearless leader had just made a joke.

And you know what? It was almost funny.