by Weston Ochse
She reached out and turned the object in his hand 180 degrees. “Those aren’t three nines.”
He looked at them in the new configuration. “Three sixes.”
“Six Six Six,” she said. “That’s your new team.”
SEAL Team 666? He’d never heard of such a thing. The U.S. government had played fast and loose with numbering over the years. They’d created SEAL Team 6 long before they had a Team 4 or Team 5, just to make the Soviet Union think they had more SEAL teams. Even now, SEAL Team 6 still existed, but under the name DEVGRU, which stood for United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group. Although the reality was supposed to be highly classified, the truth of the matter was plastered all over the Internet. If that couldn’t be hidden, how could something with a name like SEAL Team 666 be kept a secret?
He couldn’t help but laugh. “No really. What does it mean?”
She raised a single eyebrow, much as Leonard Nimoy famously did on the original Star Trek series whenever Captain Kirk said something funny.
“Seriously,” Walker prodded. “What does it stand for?”
“Knowledge of SEAL Team 666 is governed by a special access program, or SAP. SEAL Team 666 is a highly classified special unit under the direct command of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, with direct oversight from the Office of the Vice President and the President. The classification of the group is compartmentalized Top Secret SAP.”
“You’re serious.” He sat forward. “What’s the mission?”
“You’ll get a mission brief shortly,” she said, pointing toward the airfield below. They hadn’t gone all the way to San Diego, just to the other side of the island. “I had the liberty of having your things packed and sent over.”
“Thanks, but most of them need a good cleaning. Maybe by next week I’ll—”
“No. You don’t understand. You’re going to get a mission brief from the team leader. You leave in less than an hour.”
Walker looked at his hands and legs. They were filthy from the surf and physical training. “Can’t I just clean up?”
“Jesus, Walker. You’re a SEAL, not a princess. Act like one.”
He was so startled by her tone and delivery that he barely noticed they’d landed until she exited the helicopter, running low beneath the whirling blades. He ran to catch up.
5
NORTH ISLAND NAVAL COMPLEX AIRSTRIP. NOON.
The FNG walked up the ramp of the C-141 Starlifter as if he were late for the first day of elementary school. To Senior Chief Petty Officer Tim Laws, who’d lived and breathed the movie industry while growing up in Hollywood, the kid was one part young Steve McQueen and another part Ryan Phillippe. The FNG, perennial military term for the Fucking New Guy, wore a buzz cut of blond hair topping a face made of angles and deeply set blue eyes above a mouth whose usual form, Laws guessed, was a smile. Now it was doing everything but smiling. This was the sort of man who wore his heart on his lips.
“Stow your gear and get out of those UDTs. This isn’t a swim meet. This is an op.” Lieutenant Commander Sam Holmes gestured to an empty space of bench along one wall of the interior of the aircraft. A rucksack with weapons stacked on top of it. “That’s your gear. No time to personalize it. You’ll just have to make do.”
Alexis Billing, the Sissy administrator, came next, a phone plastered to the side of her face. She plopped down near Holmes, but made no notice of him.
Laws watched as the new guy dropped his seabag and shoved it under the bench, strapping it to the wall for flight. Good. At least he’d been aboard an operational aircraft before. Laws had been with SEAL Team 666 longer than anyone. He’d seen seven members come and go. Four had left under their own power; the others had left in body bags. He figured he’d do the same when the time came. There was no other place he’d rather be.
The boy sat down and stared at a manila envelope in his hands. He rubbed something through the paper, then folded the envelope roughly, bent over, and stuffed it into his seabag. When he straightened, he grabbed one of the weapons on top of his rucksack—a Stoner SR-25 sniper rifle. To the kid’s credit, he broke it down, inspected the barrel and bolt assembly. After he snapped it back together, he checked the ammunition.
He was probably acutely aware that everyone’s eyes were on him, even if like Fratolilio they pretended not to notice. But he didn’t act as if he knew it. Instead, he acted the opposite, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He seemed to have recovered from his previous nervousness. Laws had to give the boy praise for having the chops to insert himself into such a close-knit group.
Like he had a choice.
When the administrator chose you, that was that. How and why a person was chosen was up for grabs. No one really knew. Sure, there was speculation. Every member knew that the rubric was based on some of the questions in screening and selection, but which ones? The two days were loaded with what would you do if scenarios that individually seemed fairly mundane. But perhaps together with other questions they served to form a more three-dimensional vision of a person.
Laws had long ago given up trying to figure out why the people who’d been chosen had been chosen. In the end, they seemed like naturals.
Tony Fratolilio was your classic Brooklyn Italian. He had joined the Navy instead of jail and made himself into quite the computer specialist. His street savvy never really left and he found himself breaking into all sorts of sensitive networks if there was a payday involved. Of course he’d been caught, but the boy’s charisma and natural affinity for animals had the administrator sending him through BUD/S training class 243 as her own personalized U.S. Navy SEAL.
Johnny Ruiz was another who didn’t fit the mold. He was a Mexican from West Virginia and spoke English with such a cracker accent that it was suspected he was just trying to pull one over on everyone. Ruiz had come from SEAL Team 3 with deployments to Yemen and Somalia. A graduate of Underwater Demolition Training as well as BUD/S training class 237, he was the team’s explosives expert. That he talked funny was just a bonus.
The team leader was Lieutenant Commander Sam Holmes. A graduate of the infamous BUD/S training class 201, he’d commanded SEALs in Teams 3 and 5 with deployments in Liberia, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Although he’d had some dicey missions he didn’t talk about, he was one of the best leaders Laws had ever had. That he was a big man always made it fun to go out to bars with him. He was a constant target for the drunk and insane, as if he were some sacred mountain that they had to try and climb.
Then, of course, there was Laws himself. He benefited from an audiographic memory. If he heard it, he remembered it. Period. This facility enabled him to learn several languages including Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and the Romance languages. While others called it skill, he felt more like it was a quirk of genetics because it was so easy. But he had to admit that it came in plenty handy when he was working straight human-intelligence operations and conducting interrogations in support of SEAL Team 1 and First Special Forces Group in the Golden Triangle.
Laws’s attention was drawn back to the new guy, and what he saw made him chuckle. The boy was told to change and changing he was. Even as the ramp closed in the back of the C-141 Starlifter and the engines spun up, the boy had undressed and stood naked in the middle of the plane.
Laws glanced at the administrator, who was pointedly ignoring the naked SEAL.
Rifling through the rucksack, the new guy found what he needed to suit up for the mission. He quickly put the uniform and vest on, and as the plane rose into the air, he laced up his boots.
Laws waited about half an hour to see if Holmes was going to introduce the new guy to the team. When it obviously wasn’t going to happen, Laws crossed to the other side of the plane and sat down on the bench beside the FNG.
“Tim Laws,” he said by way of introduction, holding out his hand. “Intelligence, deputy commander, and the team welcome wagon.”
The new guy shook his hand. “Walker, Jack. Sniper.”
> “What class are you?”
Walker looked at him in such a way that Laws immediately knew the answer. “You didn’t finish, did you? What phase were you in?”
“Three. We were about to go on Live Fire.”
Laws leaned back and laughed. “Four weeks to go and you were yanked. That’s got to suck big time. You must be something special.”
Walker shrugged. “I don’t know anything about … whatever this is.”
“This, my new friend and teammate, is the finest and baddest supernatural unconventional-warfare special-mission unit in the United States government inventory.”
“We’re the only one, Laws,” Fratolilio commented.
“Supernatural?” Walker grinned, then let his grin fall when it wasn’t shared by the others.
“Absolutely. Why, I could tell you—”
“Wait until mission brief,” Holmes ordered. He was leaning back against the fuselage and hadn’t even opened his eyes.
“Then I’ll wait until mission brief. Let me introduce you to the other members of the team.”
As Laws went about introducing Walker, he noted that the boy had begun to feel more comfortable in his new skin, which was good. If they were about to go on a mission and would require his backup, they needed to make sure that his mind was in the right place.
Finally, half an hour later, Holmes opened his eyes, brought out a folder, and gave the mission brief.
6
30,000 FEET ABOVE CENTRAL CALIFORNIA.
According to the big blond guy who was apparently the leader, they were going to Chinatown, where an anomaly had been identified. An interagency intelligence unit composed of operatives from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and the Defense Intelligence Agency had discovered what they felt was the nexus for organizing illegal tech transfer to China. Informants had infiltrated the area and come back with an entirely different story, one that included rumor of human sacrifice, mysticism, and some kind of cult.
“So we don’t really know what we’re dealing with here. It’s mainly an intelligence-gathering mission. We engage hot only when we are engaged or if there’s a justifiable threat.” He nodded to the administrator. “Miss Billings doesn’t want us making the national news. I don’t even want you making the local news. You aren’t supposed to be operating on U.S. soil, but you have to. It’s not like we have a local supernatural SWAT unit standing by to handle these things.”
“Maybe we should,” Laws said.
“What do y’all want to do, run a mobile training team and teach them the best and most efficient ways to kill a demon or dismember a ghoul?” Ruiz asked.
Laws grinned. “Sounds like fun.”
“Barring the Sissy authorizing that, we have to go in ourselves.” Holmes pulled out a map. “Based on current mission parameters, there’s no utility in deploying a sniper for overwatch, so Walker, you’ll stack with us inside.”
“Yes, sir.”
The rest of the mission briefing came and went. Everyone was given their mission particulars, including the dog. Walker had noticed the Belgian Malinois when he’d boarded the plane and thought of it as a mascot. But it seemed as if it was going to join them for CQB. This was something entirely new.
They were issued the primary and secondary frequencies for the MBITRs. They checked ammunition and tied, buttoned, snapped, and twisted anything that needed to be secured. When they were suited up in their helmets and gear, Laws came over.
“Excited for your first mission?”
“I’ve had other missions.”
“Not with SEALs, you haven’t.”
“No, but I spent the last five years with Kennedy Irregular Warfare Group,” Jack said. It was always the same. Everyone wanted to know where you worked and what you’d done. It was how you were measured and he’d done it many times. “I joined eight years ago. My first tour out of A School was as an intelligence specialist on the destroyer USS Forrest Sherman. I spent three years aboard, then was assigned to KIWG in Maryland. That put me on repeated deployment rotations to Iraq, conducting riverine operations against suspected insurgents, interdicting weapons from Al Quds, and collecting intelligence on Iran. I did that for almost five years. So, yes, I’ve had other missions.”
Laws grinned. “But those weren’t SEAL missions. Let me ask you again—are you excited for your first mission?”
Walker grinned. “Yeah, a little.” His heart was hammering in his chest.
“Sure beats doing push-ups and flutter kicks back in Coronado, doesn’t it?”
“Four weeks,” Walker said, holding out four fingers. “I only had four weeks left.”
Laws remained silent for a few moments; then Walker asked a question that had been bothering him. “Why is the dog coming with us?”
“She’s part of the team.”
“But it’s a dog.”
Laws grinned as he reached over and scruffed Hoover’s neck. “So what about it?”
“Shouldn’t the dog be lying on some front porch, or maybe smelling pot at some border checkpoint?”
“Not too loud or Hoover will hear you.”
“The team I saw on the USS Ronald Reagan had a Belgian Malinois, too. That dog looked like it could do some serious damage, but it was kept around to sniff out explosives.”
“They can do serious damage. They can smell explosives, drugs. They can smell illegal aliens. Hoover can smell all that plus fear. She can also sometimes smell something unsmellable—the presence of the supernatural.” Laws noticed that Hoover was staring at them, and reached down and petted her again. “Don’t you make no mind of this rube. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.” To Walker, he said, “This Malinois can also smell death before it comes. I won’t try and explain it, but you’ll see for yourself if you stay with the team for any period of time at all.”
Walker digested what he heard. He could almost believe what was being told to him, except for the part about how the dog could smell death and the supernatural. That was a little too much.
“One last question,” he said. “Why Hoover? You named a dog after a vacuum cleaner? There has to be a story behind that.”
Laws laughed. “No story at all. And it’s not the vacuum. It’s the president. This team has been in play since before the formation of our country and with it, in each incarnation, there was a dog, most often a Belgian Malinois, named after a president.”
“What about the first one?”
“What about it?”
“If the team was formed before the country was, then we didn’t have a president.”
“Give the boy points for paying attention. The first dog was named George.”
“As in King George?”
“The boy knows his history.”
“All right, girls,” growled the hulking team leader. “If we’re done with Dogs 101, it’s time to cut the chatter and focus on the mission.”
7
SAN FRANCISCO CHINATOWN. DUSK.
Everyone except Billings, who’d stayed put on the plane, was shuffled into a waiting cable-repair van when they landed. They were whisked from San Francisco International through rush-hour traffic and finally into Chinatown, where they now sat across the street from the target building.
Through the steel walls of the truck, Walker could hear multiple Asian dialects. A cracked window let in the signature aroma of Asian food. He knew that if he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine himself seven years old again and in the Philippines. His father had been in supply and had made and lost several fortunes selling U.S. government products on the black market. He had taken little Jack and his older brother, Brian, with him wherever he went. Not only had the boys been lookouts, they’d been his father’s alibis.
It struck Jack that it was only a few years after that memory that his life had gone to hell. His father died, his brother left; it wasn’t until his brother had joined the Navy that they got back in touch. By then, it was almost too late. His brother had become a SEAL while Jack
had been assigned to the USS Forrest Sherman. He’d received notice while on maneuvers in the Mediterranean that his brother had been killed on mission in Afghanistan. Over the years he’d asked around, but the most he’d ever learned was that it was a death that never should have happened, which begged more questions than it answered.
Fratolilio had earphones attached to a small tablet computer. He’d been pressing haptic buttons as they appeared on the screen since the van stopped, and finally he seemed satisfied.
He glanced at Holmes. “I got a lock into the landlines and used the receivers and transmitters. I’m not getting any conversations or background noise. Either the place is empty, or they’re waiting on us.”
“What else do we know about this building?”
“Other than it was built in 1932 and it’s registered to Yam Phat Distributors, nothing. I accessed the blueprints, even bounced them against the old Ma Bell trunk drawing, but there’s nothing to show that this is any more than what it appears to be.”
“What are you saying?” Holmes asked.
“I think this is a wild-goose chase,” Fratty stated frankly.
Everyone stared at Holmes as if they were waiting for him to call the mission.
“Wouldn’t be the first time the intel we got from AFOSI and DIA turned out to be squirrelly,” Ruiz said.
“We could always lay low for a day or two and let FBI see what they can see. If there’s a reason for us being here, then we’ll be ready,” Laws added.
“What you’re all saying is true and it makes logical sense. This lead came as a result of an interrogation of a Chinese tech smuggler by the Feebs. He could have said anything to save his ass. But…,” Holmes said, letting the word draw out. “I have an itch.”
“Oh hell, boss has an itch.” Fratolilio shoved the tablet into a Kevlar sleeve and stowed his headphones.
Both Laws and Ruiz checked their magazines. Laws carried an MP5 and Ruiz carried a Super 90.
“What’s that mean, he has an itch?” Walker asked.