by Weston Ochse
Laws flashed a grin. “Still, he doesn’t know. I can tell.”
“Okay,” Holmes said, staring thoughtfully at the prisoner. “What about the ship?”
“All he knows is it’s something big. There’s been a buzz about it for months. Some guy reached out and offered them a shit-ton of money for one of these suits.”
“He said ‘shit-ton’?”
“In his own way. This mystery guy gave a demonstration to the head honcho, which impressed the hell out of him.”
“What was the demonstration?”
“No idea.”
“Where’s the ship?”
“Macau.”
“Any other information about this ship?”
“None.”
Holmes glanced around the room and nodded slowly. Finally he said, “Okay, SEALs. Let’s pack it up. Ruiz? Call in the cleanup.”
9
KADWAN. FOUR MONTHS EARLIER.
He was a god. He’d spent the last few months being the hands of an unseen architect whose knowledge of the universe was unfathomable and perfect. He’d been told where to dig. He’d been told what to build. They’d explained the process of accumulating power. More importantly, they’d detailed the procedure for the creation of a special kind of chimera. There were steps he still couldn’t take until he had his protection, but that had been arranged. Once he had it, he’d be warded against immolation. He’d already seen how his partner had been burned from the inside out when he’d channeled the spirit from the other side. The power of the other had been so great and pure and blinding that it had consumed the pathetic structure that composed the human body. Served him right for trying to steal what wasn’t rightfully his. No, he’d wait until the shipment arrived before he moved on to the next step. Until then, he’d continue the act of creation and preparation with the knowledge that the world was so close to being his. After all, it wasn’t a matter of whether or not it would happen.
It was only a matter of when.
10
C-141 STARLIFTER. NIGHT.
Holmes had treated him like a little kid and had made him stand in the proverbial corner. In Manila, they’d done the same thing to him, progressing past that to real corners, then real closets as he proved to be just short of incorrigible. He’d always preferred the term “unbroken,” but the older he got, the more people mistook that attitude as arrogance.
How could he explain to them that there were times when he just knew what to do and his body took over?
Like Holmes’s itch.
The team sat on benches on either side of the aircraft. Walker tried not to glower. He’d thought it was probably obvious to everyone that it was because of his attention to detail that they hadn’t been shot by the enforcer. Laws sat next to him, busily cleaning the barrel with a rod tipped with gauze.
Fratty and Ruiz sat opposite them, their heads leaned back to catch some sleep.
Hoover was sprawled in the middle of the floor.
Holmes and Billings had their heads together. Holmes seemed to be providing a laydown of the mission and his thoughts, while Billings relayed information via a video feed to a room filled with analysts to provide direct support to the team.
“You know he’s right, don’t you?” Laws kept his voice low. He removed the rod from the barrel and took apart the trigger housing to wipe down each piece, then applied a thin coat of oil.
“Who? Him?” Walker pointed with his chin toward Holmes.
“We operate as a team. If you see something, you communicate that to us.”
“I had a clear opening.”
“You walked into my line of fire, FNG,” Fratty said without opening his eyes. “You’re lucky you aren’t wearing twelve-gauge tattoos.”
“My body armor would have stopped it.”
Fratty opened his eyes and stared. “Fucking unbelievable.”
“What?” Walker glanced at Laws, but he seemed to be engrossed in putting his MP5 back together.
“We either work together as a team or we don’t work together at all,” Ruiz said. He opened his eyes and began disassembling his Super 90 after laying a clean piece of cloth across his lap.
This drew Walker up short. He’d felt that this was a Him vs. Holmes situation, not a Him vs. the Entire Team situation. He glanced toward the front of the plane and found Holmes looking at him. The team leader stared for a long moment, then turned back to Billings.
“What about the guy in the bathroom?” Walker asked softly.
“You want a medal?” Laws asked. “I have plenty. I’ll give you one.”
“I don’t want … Never mind.” He closed his eyes for he didn’t know how long. He wasn’t stupid but he felt like it right now. He had to get his thoughts in order. He’d never wanted to be jerked out of training. He’d been so close to finishing he could almost taste it. All he’d wanted to do was become a SEAL, join a team, and live the life. And it was a glorious life to be lived. Whether he would be stationed in Guam, Virginia Beach, or Coronado, it would be a life of fresh air, exercise, shooting, and being part of a brotherhood. He’d be on call to do the bidding of the president. He’d be a real live action hero, whose life was one long video game. He’d be that guy everyone else pretended to be, sitting day after day in their easy chairs, doughnut boxes and beer cans stacked around them as they shot, fought, and killed, using a video version of himself.
This unit wasn’t exactly what he’d thought of when he’d wanted a brotherhood, though. A regular SEAL Team consisted of six platoons and a headquarters element. Each platoon had thirteen enlisted men, led by a chief and an officer. There were also SEAL Delivery Vehicle Teams, Underwater Demolition Teams, and Naval Special Warfare Teams, each offering support in their own way.
Looking around at the five of them, seven if you counted Billings and the dog, their team was awful short of a regulation unit. There was supposedly analytical support, a group of top-secret nerds to parse their information and provide them with the next target, but he didn’t know who or where they were.
Fratty leaned forward and petted Hoover behind the ear. “This isn’t like any other team,” he said, as if he could read Walker’s thoughts. “We allow for a certain amount of individuality. But we need to get to know you first. We have to be able to trust you not to do something that’s going to get us all killed.”
“But I—”
“Don’t need to comment on this anymore. It’s over and behind us. Now our job is to rest, clean up, and be ready for the next mission.”
Walker took the hint and disassembled his own weapon. He loved the Stoner. It was so much more portable than the Barrett 50 he’d used on the Somali pirate last year. As he broke the Stoner down, he removed the rotating bolt carrier group. It was virtually the same as the piece-of-shit M16, which fired 5.56mm, but the Stoner was bored for 7.62mm as opposed to the 12.7mm of the Barrett. And also like the M16 and the AR15, the Stoner used a gas-impingement system to automatically move the bolt back and forth, enabling semiautomatic fire down the twenty-inch barrel. Rather than the regular floating barrel, the Stoner was reworked to incorporate the URX II Picatiny-Weaver Rail System, allowing for better application of any mounted hardware such as laser sights, telescopic sights, reflexive sights, tactical lights, and forward grips. It was a sweet weapon for sure and one that Walker was happy to have. Too bad he’d never had a chance to fire it. Still, he wiped it down and re-oiled it, just as he would have had he used it, just as he’d been trained to do.
When the weapon was put back together and racked into the weapon carrier on the wall above him, Walker asked, “Is it always like that?”
Laws had pulled out a comic book and was lying on his back and reading it. “Do we always kill beegees?”
“No. I mean the … things.”
“Like the homunculus? We get all sorts. About half the time it’s nothing, something that any other team could have handled. But the other half is a challenge.”
“So that’s our specialty. When you said
it before, I didn’t really believe it. But now that I’ve seen it…”
“We’ve been down some gnarly rabbit holes,” Laws told him. “We have a mission log back at the Pit. When you get there, you can read all you want, that is, if it won’t scare you too bad. It’s like if Stephen King wrote nonfiction.”
Walker chuckled. “What’s the Pit?”
“Home sweet home.” Fratty grinned. “It’s our office, team room, and hooch. It’s where we live, work, and play when we’re not off staking some otherworldly beegees.”
Ruiz laughed and shook his head. “Y’all are so Hollywood. You make everything sound so grandiose. What he means is that Pit stands for the Mosh Pit. It’s your new home.”
The pilot announced that they were descending, then ran through a pastiche of a commercial flight mantra, to include recommending that tray tables be put away. The members of the team checked their weapons in the brackets, buckled in, and leaned back as they prepared for landing.
Hoover rolled over and scratched herself behind the ear.
“Been to sniper school?” Ruiz asked.
“Scout Sniper in Hawaii.”
“Just checking to see if they pulled you out of that early, too,” Ruiz cracked.
“Very funny,” Walker said.
“Didn’t you hear about the sniper took out the Somali pirates last year?” Laws asked. “This is that guy.”
Walker felt a twinge of pride, which immediately turned into embarrassment as everyone’s eyes suddenly turned toward him.
“The Maersk Alabama?” Fratty asked, his eyes narrowing. “I thought that was Chief Garton from the USS Boxer.”
“It was. Twitchy here wasn’t involved in the Alabama.”
“Please don’t call me Twitchy.”
Laws ignored him. “Remember the CNN reporter the pirates nabbed last year?”
Ruiz and Fratty nodded.
Walker did, as well as he remembered the shot. He’d been on the mast of a submarine with his Barrett 50. There wasn’t a SEAL within a hundred miles and he’d been ordered to take the shot if he had one. On six-foot seas with a twenty-kilometer crosswind, he’d watched through his scope as the pirates ripped off the shirt and pants of the CNN reporter the free world had seen reporting from any number of war zones, her pretty face delivering the tragedy of the human condition in a way that allowed Middle America to keep their evening meal down long enough that they could see commercials about bathroom tissue and cars with five-star safety ratings.
The pirates had popped up sixteen hundred meters off the bow of the cargo ship she’d been reporting from. Then, on an international news feed, they’d stormed the ship, shot her cameraman, and proceeded to tell the world their terms. Three hours later, the USS Tennessee, an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, arrived on station. Walker, along with seven others from the Kennedy Irregular Warfare Group, had been aboard ship, on their way back from Iraq. When the submarine commander had asked him if he could take the shot, there was no question that he had to try.
The distance was just over a mile. He could swim it in twenty-three minutes. He could walk it in twenty. He could run it in six and a half. But the .50-caliber round would arrive there 2.2 seconds after he pulled the trigger. Taking into consideration the velocity of the round, the curvature of the earth, the rise and fall of the bow of the target ship as compared to the rise and fall of the submarine that was idling perpendicular to the target, and the crosswind, it was an impossible shot. It was one he never should have tried. He just as easily could have shot the woman as missed the entire boat.
But as he’d watched the rape progress through the Leupold 4.5–14 × 50mm Mark 4 scope, he couldn’t help himself. His fingers automatically adjusted the parallax focus, windage, and elevation knobs on their own, receiving mental calculations of the geometry needed to take out the target. At that distance, he couldn’t hear her scream, but as her back arched and her body went rigid, it was as if he was standing right there beside her.
He fired twice.
Three seconds later, each pirate lost his head in mists of bone and spray.
All caught on international television and replayed by everyone over and over for the next several weeks.
Laws had narrated his memory for the other two. As the wheels bit the tarmac, Walker noticed a newfound respect in their eyes. At least they knew that he could back them up if needed.
When the plane came to a halt, the others stood and gathered their things. He joined them as they waited for the ramp to descend.
Holmes came up behind him. “Want to talk to you when we get to the Pit.”
11
CORONADO ISLAND. NIGHT.
They piled into a white twelve-passenger van with smoked windows and the letters CPC on either side. They ran through the naval complex, finally stopping at a hangar that had a sign out front declaring it to be CORONADO PEST CONTROL.
They ditched their equipment in the front room and entered a conference room, where Holmes went over the mission step by step, laying out lessons learned and establishing their methodology. He stood at the head of the table, a line drawing of the sweatshop basement projected on the wall.
“At this point, we have more questions than we had when we entered. We have a nebulous threat to the U.S. We have a sweatshop that was creating tattoo bodysuits, at least according to the cleanup crew.” He turned to Walker and looked at him for the first time. “Just so you know, we have backup teams when needed. This one was filled with reserve intelligence officers using a hazardous-materials team as cover. They’ve assembled all the items in a warehouse we have near the Salton Sea so that they can be studied. Also recovered was almost ten meters of skin and several finished full bodysuits. The women were also removed and will be debriefed and treated by doctors at the same compound. Hopefully we’ll get more intelligence we can act on. But that’s for another mission.” He turned back to the team. “Anything else?”
When no one said anything, he sat at the head of the table and folded his hands. He looked at them for a moment. They were big hands, tanned by years of outdoor exposure. “Before we go any further,” he said, “let’s talk about that thing that happened on the op.”
Walker watched as the other SEALs all stared at him.
“Do you mean when I shot the beegee?” Fratty asked, trying to ameliorate the moment.
“Fuck that. I meant the other thing.”
Walker stared at his own hands, unwilling to look up.
“He means when you did the kickin’ chicken,” Ruiz said.
“I know what he means,” Walker said. He said the next words carefully. “I just don’t know where it’s any of your business.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Laws lean back and glance at the others for a reaction. There wasn’t any. Just silence that dragged on for several minutes.
Finally Walker said, “Why do I have to tell you guys? This is private.”
Fratty shook his head. “Nice try, but that doesn’t fly. We’re a team and don’t have secrets if those secrets affect the mission.”
“And yours affected the mission,” Ruiz said. “Don’t get me wrong, it was in a good way. But that was this time. What about next time?”
“No offense, Twitchy, but I don’t want you on the Stoner doing overwatch and have you shake, rattle, and roll when I need fire.” Laws frowned and clearly wasn’t happy with having to say it out loud.
“There probably won’t be a next time,” Walker said softly. Then he added, “And don’t call me Twitchy.”
Walker waited for someone to speak, but they were all staring at him. Finally he acquiesced. “Fine. Okay. Here’s what I know: Nothing. It never happened before. It was … fucking terrifying for a moment there. When I opened my eyes and saw you guys there, I was so damn happy.”
“Billings believes that it’s the proximity to supernatural or evil that causes it to happen,” Holmes said. “What she was hoping for, what would be helpful, is if you can figure out a way to c
ontrol it. It might happen again.”
At it might happen again, Walker looked up. The very idea was a terrible one, not to mention it happening enough times that he’d actually learn to get used to it.
“Where’d it come from?” Ruiz asked.
“Ahh, that…” Walker rubbed his face, got up, and filled a glass with water. He drank it and refilled it again. This one he brought to the table and placed it in front of him. He stared at it as he told his story.
“My father sold Navy supplies on the black market when he was stationed at Subic Bay. He pissed someone off. That someone turned out to be some sort of witch doctor.” He laughed hollowly. “Evidently the witch doctor was so pissed off at my father that he summoned a demon and sent it into me. Anyway, that’s what they told me because a lot of it is a blank spot in my memory. I remember some of it, but a lot more came back to me on the op.”
Walker held his breath as he waited for their laughter, but there was only silence.
Finally Holmes said, “Go on.”
“Six months later, I woke up. I was told about some things. Memories pop up and I don’t know if they’re real or not. Most of the time they scare the shit out of me.”
“You were possessed?” Ruiz asked.
“Like Linda Blair but without the split-pea soup.”
Fratty nodded and grinned. “That’s kind of cool.”
Walker gave him an unbelieving look.
“Ever tried to use that as a pickup line?” Fratty asked.
Walker smiled weakly and shook his head. “Think it would work?”
“Most definitely.” Fratty stood and mimicked picking up a girl, using Ruiz as the girl. “My name is Jack Walker. I’m a Virgo and a U.S. Navy SEAL. I like long walks on the beach, poetry by Keach, and, oh by the way, I was possessed when I was a kid.”
“Can I have your baby?” Ruiz joked.
They all laughed, and as they did, Walker began to feel better about it all. He wasn’t going to be called on the carpet for his actions, and it seemed he might even be accepted into the group.