Age of Blood

by Weston Ochse

  Then came the mission against Geronimo. They still didn’t know who or what had killed Chong, but they’d taken the body, along with the body of HVT1, out of Pakistan. Leave no man behind. They’d brought Fratty back as well, but Ruiz hadn’t been so lucky. That he’d evaporated in the explosions of a dozen MOABs (massive ordnance air blast bombs) made Holmes confident that the enemy didn’t have him. Still, he wished he’d been able to return the SEAL’s body to Coronado.

  And there were the others: Ling, Evans, Close, Smith, Forsythe, Unger, and Jensen. Each had gone down in the service of a nation who knew nothing of their sacrifice. Classified Code Word, the missions of Triple Six would remain unknown to the public probably long after America ceased to be a nation. Only a few select members of Congress and those who passed through the revolving door of the White House ever knew what a team of five dedicated, unheralded men were doing for their country.

  Which was as it should be.

  “Everything okay, boss?” Laws asked, poking his head into the room.

  Holmes gestured for Laws to join him. As the other sat, Holmes silently acknowledged how lucky he was to have someone like Tim. Not only was his eidetic memory of incalculable worth to the team, but he was a true polymath. Like Leon Battista Alberti, the fourteenth-century Renaissance man who was at once an architect, an artist, an historian, an astronomer, and an athlete capable of jumping over a man’s head from a standing position, Laws had a sum of parts which seemed so much greater than his whole.

  “What’s shaking, Kevin Bacon?” Laws asked, slipping his feet onto the table and leaning back. He wore a smile that he should have trademarked.

  “Remind me how long I’ve been doing this?”

  Laws leaned forward. “Uh-oh. It’s one of those conversations.”

  “Just remind me.”

  “Five years, three months, seventeen days, six hours, and about eleven minutes.”

  “How many missions?”

  “Forty-seven.”

  “And how many SEALs have we lost?”

  “Ten.”

  Holmes was silent for a good minute, digesting the figures. He knew they didn’t really mean anything. Can one measure patriotism with math? Can numbers really represent the value of the well-being and peace of Americans? Still, he hoped for an algorithm, or maybe an equation that he could populate with these numbers to determine if it was all worth it.

  “It won’t add up, Sam,” Laws said. “Stop trying to make it work out. We’ve done our best. And I wouldn’t have anyone else lead the team but you.”

  Holmes waved away the compliment as he stared into the past. “I get that. No need to blow smoke up my ass. It just gets old sometimes.” He glanced up at Laws. “This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about moving on, you know.”

  Laws nodded thoughtfully. “This isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation. I’m not going to remind you what we told Yank today.”

  Holmes sighed and leaned back. “Another new guy. Another Type A personality I have to mold and forge.”

  “It’s in your blood. You love it.”

  “Do I? I mean, do I really?”

  Laws steepled his hands. “What would you do if you weren’t doing this? Do you really think you could go back to the teams?”

  Holmes looked pained, as if the decision were too much to even contemplate. What he was experiencing wasn’t self-doubt, it was more the result of being in one place for too long. How many times was he willing to roll the same patriotic wheel through the mud just to get the same result?

  “I do love it. With two failed marriages behind me, the only successful relationship I’ve ever had is with the SEALs. Billings told me that if I ever want to move on, I’d have a position on her staff.”

  “Would you take it? Would you work for her?”

  “She’s sharp and she’s smart. I just might.”

  “So this is it? You’ve made a decision?” Laws’s patented smile returned. “You’re ready to go out to pasture?”

  Now it was Holmes’s turn to smile, only where Laws’s grin always held the idea of a punchline, Holmes’s held the promise of pain. “Maybe not just yet. Let’s see about the senator’s daughter first, then I’ll make a decision.”

  Laws stood. “Just let me know. We’ll need some time to pool enough money for a hearing aid and walker.”

  “Very funny.”

  Laws grinned from ear to ear. “I thought so.” He pushed out of the chair and left.

  Holmes remained sitting for a time. He wasn’t ready to quit. Not just yet. Hell, maybe not ever. He just needed to hear the words out loud. Sometimes hearing what he was thinking helped put it all into context.

  5

  LOS ANGELES. DAY.

  YaYa felt like shit. On top of that he was traveling like a tourist. They’d hurried him to the airport and he’d suffered through a TSA screening and the subsequent pat-down after the shrapnel near his spine sent the machine off. Then he’d missed his connection in Denver. He’d had to wait in the terminal while a group of about a hundred professional zombie walkers, still dressed in their costumes and made up from their gig in Kansas City, practiced their zombie walks, both terrifying and exciting the other bored tourists. All YaYa wanted to do was shoot them.

  When he boarded his flight to L.A., he got bumped up to first class. He’d usually enjoyed the unasked-for treat. Free beer, free food, and premier attention by a hopefully foxy stewardess, but this time all he wanted to do was sleep.

  When the plane finally took off, he found himself returned to the primordial forest in Myanmar, where he’d killed a supernatural creature known as a qilin. He’d been with Walker on the mission to rescue the other members of Triple Six, who’d come under the control of an ancient Chinese demon. They’d crashed a motorcycle and one of the chimera monsters had dragged him into the woods. He’d been able to kill it with one of its own spikes, but it still left him ass-deep and otherwise weaponless in the middle of nowhere.

  He’d been wounded too. He still had scars from where it had grabbed him on his lower leg. He’d taken a week of comp time after the hospital had released him. His sister had asked what had caused the injury and had noted that it looked like something had bit him. He’d had to make up a story of a rabid Great Dane, because to tell the truth would have been to break the classification, regardless of whether anyone would believe him or not.

  He’d also hurt his left arm. At first he’d thought it was only a bite, or maybe a cut. His other wounds had healed, but this one was proving to be stubborn. What had been a very small wound had festered and grown until it had spread over the whole of his forearm, a mosaic of greens and purples. If he brought it to his nose he could detect a distinctly unpleasant aroma. So he didn’t do that. In fact, he tried to ignore it. He kept it wrapped and spent much of the time trying to forget about it.

  There’d been something about the forest. It wasn’t just that it was filled with exotic flora, it was something else. He’d thought about it every day since the mission. He’d replayed the event over and over until he wasn’t sure if it was something he’d invented or if it was reality as it had existed. Bottom line was that there’d been something wrong with the place. In his memories, there’d been almost no sound at all, except for the sounds from the monster that he’d fought and killed. The insects, animals, and birds could have been silent because of the qilin. Certainly, if there was an alternative, he didn’t know what it was.

  But he did remember the feeling of being watched. At first it had been an anomalous idea of something tracking him. But when he’d stop and look, instead of it going away, it stayed with him. Then it evolved into a certain curiosity. He’d felt that it—whatever it was—wanted to understand him. Just as he might watch an insect pick a path from one tree to another along the forest floor, so did this thing watch him.

  At one point the idea of twelve came to YaYa. It began with just the idea of the number. Twelve. Twelve. Twelve. But then it became more, once he exhi
bited a curiosity about the number. His unasked question was responded to in like manner as he had the idea of twelve eyes. Twelve eyes watching him. At the moment of that thought, he remembered vividly halting in the middle of a copse of giant Myanmar trees. He spun in the silent forest until he spied six birds sitting on a branch of a tree. The birds’ bodies faced the same way, their heads were turned the same way, and they were all watching him from pairs of inscrutable black eyes. He moved away from the birds and felt the weight of their stares. He moved left, then right, and each time the birds moved their heads in unison, tracking him as if they were mere appendages to one larger will.

  As he expressed his curiosity about it, he felt it in turn expressed an uncertainty to him. He wanted to know more about it. He wanted to understand what it was he felt, and how he was able to detect something he didn’t see.

  Then he’d lost time. He’d never know how much time had passed, but he knew it had. When he became aware again, his body ached. The light was different. The entire feel of the forest had changed. He heard insects, the scrabble of creatures in the canopy, and the calls of beleaguered monkeys from higher in the trees. The birds were still there, only now they weren’t looking at him. They were no longer in identical positions. They now moved and pecked along the branch as any bird would do. This time when he moved, they took to the air in an explosion of flapping wings.

  After his flight landed at LAX, YaYa left the terminal and found Special Agent Alice Surrey waiting for him at the curb. She had the same ability enjoyed by the actress Kathy Bates, to be able to look at once matronly and unassuming as well as professional. She wore black pants, black shoes, a white shirt under a dark blue jacket with the letters NCIS on the back.

  “You look like shit,” she said.

  Instead of answering, he leaned his head against the window.

  “I’m serious.”

  “About what.”

  “You look like shit. Are you sure you’re up for this?”

  He nodded. “Just have this cold I can’t shake. It’s nothing.”

  “Suit yourself. We’ve tracked the shipment to a warehouse in the City of Industry. Local PD has it under surveillance and is stopping anyone leaving the premises.”

  “Do we know how many are inside?”

  “No idea. But there are less than a dozen cars in the parking lot, if that helps.”

  “Do you have an issue for me?”

  “In the trunk. MP5, just as requested.”

  “And backup?”

  “SIG 226. I also have a set of body armor.”

  “Nice. Eager to get this finished and get back with the team.”

  YaYa leaned his head against the window and watched the traffic. Beneath the sound of the wheels on the road, he heard a voice calling to him. He strained to understand it, but try as he might, he could barely discern it. All he knew was that he was meant to listen to this and it was only for him.

  “What?” he asked, becoming aware that Alice had asked him a question.

  “Are you okay? I was talking to you and you didn’t respond.”

  How long had he been out? What the hell was going on? He pulled down the visor and flipped open the mirror. He had puffy bags under bloodshot eyes. His skin held a gray tinge. He did look like shit.

  “What’d you say?” he finally asked, putting the visor back in its place.

  “I asked how the mission with the tattoo suits went. Did everyone make it?”

  He stared at her for a moment. He’d forgotten about her help at the Chinese restaurant. They’d had to clear the basement and the subbasement of Snakeheads—Chinese mafia—as well as a healthy number of homunculi. An OSI and an FBI agent had died during the attack.

  “Yeah. We all made it,” he said, lying because the loss of Ruiz wasn’t any of her business. “Touch and go, but mission accomplished.” His forearm began to pulse. He rubbed it.

  “And the suits?”

  “All but one. We don’t know where that is, but I imagine it’ll turn up sooner or later.”

  She laughed. “You know you’re not the same as you were when I first met you.”

  “I was new to the team then,” he said. Flashbacks of the last mission snapped across his mind, including the demon that had almost killed them all. “I’ve seen things.”

  “I can tell,” she said.

  They drove in silence for another thirty minutes, then turned off the highway. After navigating side streets for ten minutes, she pulled into the parking lot of a generic warehouse in a row of similar warehouses. YaYa didn’t know what the City of Industry built, but if he was told warehouses, he’d certainly believe it.

  Under the gawking eyes of the local PD he removed his hoodie, slid into the body armor, then slipped back into the hoodie. He used a shoulder holster for the SIG and cinched it tight to eliminate the folds in the material. He checked the pistol’s slide, then the ammo. Satisfied, he grabbed two extra clips, and slid the pistol into the holster, all while being scrutinized by half a dozen officers who wanted desperately to know who this sickly Arab dressed like a bum was and why he was here. After inspecting the MP5 and running it through a series of dry fires, he nodded, grabbed five magazines, and declared himself ready.

  He and Surrey moved to a side door.

  “The PD will breach from the front and the back,” she said. “We’ll give them ten seconds, then enter.”

  YaYa didn’t like the plan. “What’s to keep us from crossing fire?”

  “PD isn’t going to enter farther than a few feet, enough to establish an inner perimeter. The only people in the middle of the room will be beegees. Did I say it right?”

  She’d used Holmes’s term for bad guys, beegees.

  “Yeah, you said it right.”

  “Should I give the go-ahead?”

  “Everyone waiting for me?”

  “Of course. What would a party be without a U.S. Navy SEAL?”

  6

  SOMEWHERE OVER THE GULF OF MEXICO. DUSK.

  Walker sat with Yank in the middle of the C-140 Starlifter, remembering when he’d been the new guy, or FNG as they so fondly called it. He’d been the butt of all jokes until YaYa had arrived, a replacement for Fratolilio, who’d perished during the battle with the first Chinese chimera they’d discovered in the hold of a cargo ship in Macau. Now Yank was the FNG, although no one was really giving any good gibes to the SEAL.

  Part of it was probably because he could kick any of their asses. An expert in the Hawaiian martial art of Kapu Luailua, he also held varying ranks in Krav Maga, Gracie jujitsu, savate, pencak silat, wing chun, Muay Thai, Kali, and Jeet Kune Do. The latter was taught by Ron Balicki in Los Angeles, who’d had a significant impact on Yank’s journey to becoming a warrior. Not only had Balicki created his own MARS system, but by working with him, Yank had had the benefit of also working with his wife, Diana Lee Inosanto, and her father, Dan Inosanto, Filipino fighting master, escrimadora, and best friend to the late great Bruce Lee.

  Yeah, the team was a little in fear of Yank. But Walker couldn’t let that stick. Growing up in an orphanage, he knew what buttons to push. He knew the FNGs of the world had to prove themselves. Yank had to earn his way a little bit more. He had some FNG work to do.

  They were breaking down four HK416s that were still in the packing grease from the factory. The first thing Yank had done when assuming the job as the Triple Six weapons sergeant was to get rid of the MP5s. “Too much like a bunch of Crips driving by a bus stop, or Colombians crashing into a hotel room. This isn’t some South American drug deal, this is a military mission.” Although it was Holmes who’d kept the tradition of using MP5s, he hadn’t said a word and had let Yank have latitude to modernize their equipment. “These barrels weren’t meant to sustain the rate of fire we do,” Yank had said, referring to the MP5s. “The manufacturing processes used on these are twenty years old. That they haven’t jammed is a miracle. We’re switching before they have a chance to, boss.”

  And with that, e
very member of Triple Six had been forced to learn the HK416. Not that it was an issue. Everyone, with the exception of Walker, had worked with the weapon in the past. Similar to the M4, it was an easy transition. Walker hadn’t, because he hadn’t ever worked as a SEAL outside Triple Six. In fact, he hadn’t finished training until recently. Probably the only SEAL ever to be awarded a BUD/S device and go on mission before he’d actually graduated. Adjusting to the 416 wasn’t such an issue, however. Their models had OTB (over the beach) capability, meaning they could fire coming straight from the water. YaYa, who carried a Super 90, was going to be allowed to continue carrying the shotgun. Yank wanted the team to have the extra firepower if needed. But YaYa’s knowledge and ability with the 416 still had to be the same as the others. Just like Walker, whose primary weapon was the SR-25 sniper rifle.

  Produced by a collaboration with United States Delta Force and the German arms maker Heckler & Koch, the 416 used a proprietary gas piston system allowing for reduced time between firing and less cleaning by the operator. With the 10.4-inch barrel, it was as agile as the MP5, but had a greater round throughput and a higher cyclic rate of fire. The rifle used standard NATO 5.56mm ammunition, which had greater stopping power than a 9mm. The rifles were augmented with Tango Down front grips, Gen II 30-round magazines contoured to reduce the wobble, holographic diffraction sight, and an AN/PEQ-2 laser indicator with visible-spectrum, infrared, and IR-spectrum illuminator.

  Walker and Yank set about getting the weapons ready for action. Yank was deep in concentration, wiping each piece and setting it aside for re-oiling.

  “I heard you don’t like jumping out of planes,” Walker said. He glanced at Laws, who rolled his eyes. Walker had heard of Yank’s predilection for landing inside a plane rather than jumping out of one. Word gets around and such things are ammunition for the verbal sport of FNG baiting.

  “Where’d you hear that?” Yank asked, cool and easy. Too easy.