Age of Blood

by Weston Ochse

  One by one they were hauled in. Once all were inside, Holmes greeted the senior man aboard, Major Carlos Navarre. They’d worked cross-border operations near Arizona less than a year ago and had a grudging respect for each other’s work. Navarre had owed Holmes a favor, though, for letting several federales go free who were knee-deep in a Zetas cartel plan to use chupacabras to transit drugs across the border. The release of the federal cops hadn’t sat well with Holmes, but then the politics of Mexico were different from the politics of America.

  The Pave Low was a retired U.S. Special Forces helicopter, capable of carrying thirty-seven soldiers with a top speed of two hundred miles an hour, around the world if air-refueled by C-130s. In this case, they had enough fuel to make their destination. They also probably wouldn’t need the firepower, which was too bad. It was always sad to waste the potential violence of three M134 miniguns, each one capable of raining six thousand 7.62mm rounds on a target.

  Ramon was the only one not at all happy. His white Cubavera slacks and shirt were covered in blood, soot, and dirt. Not that there was a men’s clothing store around. He’d have to stay in them until they reached civilization.

  Laws, Yank, J.J., and Walker sat on the floor, alternating one side of the helicopter or the other. Their legs almost reached the other side. Ramon joined them, letting himself down easy on the perforated metal floor.

  Walker’s comment, “Welcome to the SEALs,” was met with a sour grimace and anger-filled eyes.

  Each SEAL still had his SIG Sauer P229 and HK416. Navarre provided reloads for these, along with reloads for Walker’s SR-25. Vitamin packs and energy drinks were passed around, while Laws checked the unit’s MBITR communications equipment.

  Holmes, who’d previously called SPG and NSW to coordinate a reissue of equipment at Alamos to replace what they’d had to leave behind, contacted Billings and brought her up to speed. She was on her way to a meeting at Langley to provide them more support and would let him know the results.

  In the rear of the Pave Low, far away from the others, Yank got Walker’s attention. “Can I have a second?” he asked, speaking low and eyeing the others.

  “Don’t even have to ask, Yank. What’s up?” Walker had his Stoner apart on his lap and was wiping sand from the parts.

  “The mission—is it always like this?”

  “Like what? Filled with crazy supernatural shit?”

  “Yeah. Like that.”

  Walker reattached the barrel, then the sound suppressor. “If it was a regular mission, then they’d use regular SEALs.”

  “But we are regular SEALs.”

  Walker glanced at Yank and smiled. He’d thought the same thing many times and had only recently come to terms with it. “I see it like this, Yank. Do you remember screening and selection?”

  Yank nodded, thinking of the three-day battery of questions and exercises each man performed prior to selection to become a U.S. Navy SEAL.

  “There were so many questions no one remembers what they asked. But the psychs had a method to their madness. I’m not sure what it was. Maybe they try and figure out which ones of us have the capacity to accept the supernatural. Maybe they’re looking for folks who won’t freeze, because even a SEAL might freeze if he comes face-to-face with a vampire.”

  “Have you seen a real vampire?” Yank asked with awe.

  “No. I’m just using that as an example. The point is, they decided based on our answers to their questions that we were the best candidates for this special unit.” He finished snapping the Stoner back together. “There’s another side to that argument.”

  “What is it?”

  “What if we’re the ones who answered the questions wrong? What if all the really good SEALs go to the teams and Triple Six gets us. The rejects. Sort of like Kelly’s Heroes.”

  Yank’s gaze touched briefly on the other men before turning back to Walker.

  “That was something Laws said to me,” Walker said. “It makes a certain amount of sense.”

  Yank nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “I guess my point is that we’ll never know. We just have to Charlie Mike until Holmes says quit.”

  “Everyone hold on,” Holmes yelled. “We have incoming rounds.”

  Yank and Walker stared at each other for a moment, then scrambled for a handhold.

  20

  SOMEWHERE DARK AND PUTRID.

  The stench was unbelievable. Part roadkill, part earthy loam, the odor had been with her for days. She could neither see what it was nor touch the source. They’d kept her blindfolded, even in the dark. They’d thrown her in the trunk of a car, then moved her onto what felt like a ship. She’d retched uncontrollably for hours, the combination of the rolling darkness and the constant smell sending her into fits of purging. Her own vomit fueled even more retching until she was shaking and dehydrated, too weak to move away from her own mess. She was stable now. Sometime between when she’d been sick and now, she’d passed out. When she’d awoken, she was clean, wearing a full-length, lightweight dress, and lying on a flat, unmoving surface.

  But her hands were still tied.

  As were her feet.

  And even clean, with fresh clothes on, the stench was unbelievable.

  She understood what had happened. She’d been kidnapped because of who her father was. She could also make out some of what her captors were saying. Her mother had taught Emily her native Spanish before she’d passed away from breast cancer. Emily had been too keen on trying to be as white as her blond-haired Barbies to pay attention to her mother’s instructions. She regretted she hadn’t been a better student, not to mention a better daughter.

  With little else to occupy her mind, she’d thought about the events of her capture for a long time. A giant sea creature had taken her. What it was, she didn’t know, but it hadn’t hurt her. It had merely taken her a mile or so down the beach and left her adrift, where a boat had picked her up, disoriented, and crying.

  Why hadn’t they just taken her from the beach? Why not from her hotel room? It made her wonder if it wasn’t a signal for her father.

  With little else to do but think, she twisted and wound around the problem, her mind going in a thousand directions.

  Anything to keep the smell at bay.

  Anything to keep the fear away.

  21

  SOMEWHERE OVER THE SEA OF CORTEZ. DAWN.

  The MH-53 Pave Low bucked like a wild mustang. The SEALs had grabbed on to the netting attached to the sides and locked their legs together, but Ramon wasn’t so lucky. He was tossed about before he was able to grip the netting. The Pave Low slewed to the right, then dived down.

  Walker shut his eyes to hold off the dizziness.

  The copter’s M134 miniguns ripped the sky wide open as they made life miserable for someone in the water somewhere below.

  “What the hell is going on?” Yank yelled to no one in particular.

  Walker wanted to know the same thing.

  Holmes listened to his earpiece, then said, “Smuggler boat. They have a fifty-cal.”

  A fifty-cal wouldn’t do much damage to the Pave Low, not unless it got a lucky shot. Although Walker wasn’t sure of the altitude, they were probably nose on the target now, the M134s still blazing away.

  The whine of the engine changed as the Pave Low turned toward the sky. The miniguns ceased firing and they heard several pops from the belly of the Pave Low.

  “Antimissile measures.” Holmes’s eyes widened. “Hold on—incoming!”

  Walker was reminded once more how vulnerable he felt. Flying in a helicopter always seemed like riding in a tin can. At least on the ground or in the water he had some control over his life. But here in the sky, surrounded by metal that someone else was driving, he might as well be rolling downhill in a barrel.

  An explosion rocked the Pave Low to one side, almost sending it tumbling. Everyone’s legs left the floor. What they didn’t hold on to flew into the wall, including their rifles, their pistols, ammun
ition, and anything else that wasn’t tied or nailed down.

  Ramon spun in the air, howling.

  When the helicopter righted, everything that had been slung into the air came back down. The SEALs growled in pain. Yank especially, as the butt of his rifle came down within an inch of his manhood. This time Ramon was able to grab hold of the netting. His eyes were wild. His face was sea green.

  Then the Pave Low spun in a one-eighty so fast it made them dizzy. The miniguns opened fire again, shoving several thousand pieces of lead into something that very quickly exploded.

  “Mistral missile just missed,” Holmes said. “Launched from a smuggler security ship.”

  Walker tried to remember which missile was a Mistral. It was French. It was manpackable, and could be fired from the back of a boat. It also had high-density explosives with tungsten balls. Pretty awesome little system that could very easily bring down a Pave Low and ruin everyone’s day.

  More rounds from the miniguns and more explosions. World War III was happening right outside the airship and they didn’t even have a window from which they could watch.

  Finally the miniguns stopped firing and whined down to nothing as they spun to a stop.

  Major Navarre sauntered out of the cockpit, grinning like the king of the world. “Pendejos thought they could take us on. Look at them now. Fish food.” He laughed and patted several of the SEALs on the shoulders. “I hope we didn’t scare you,” he added.

  Walker exchanged a glance with Yank. The FNG from L.A. looked terrified. Still, as Walker watched, Yank gulped back his fear, hid it beneath a mask of macho, and laughed with the others.

  Yeah, the FNG would fit in quite well. The secret was that it wasn’t about whether someone was afraid, it was more about how they dealt with their fear.

  Walker joined in with the others, laughing good-naturedly. He’d rather be punching the good major, but instead he laughed. Ha ha. Funny. Hilarious. Just don’t fucking do that again.

  22

  NORTH ISLAND NAVAL AIR STATION, CORONADO ISLAND. EARLY MORNING.

  YaYa had no earthly idea where he’d left Alice. He was pretty sure he hadn’t killed her, but he couldn’t be certain. Although there wasn’t any proof either way, there were flashes of memory and she was nowhere in them.

  Road-raging down the 5.

  Flashing a gun at a motorist from Minnesota.

  Stuffing his head into a bag of cheese curls in a convenience store south of San Clemente and barking at the clerk.

  Parking his car and running back and forth across the highway next to the famous sign of a father, mother, and child running across the highway, just north of the Border Patrol checkpoint near Oceanside.

  Snapping at the ocean, kneeling on the sand, his fists in front of him.

  Howling at the lights on the Coronado Bay Bridge.

  And now here he was, soaked to the bone and dripping water, outside of a building on Coronado Island with a sign out front labeled CORONADO PEST CONTROL. Where was he and how had he gotten here?

  His arm pulsed hard enough to bring him to his knees. He looked at it and saw that the infection had not only spread to his entire forearm, it now occupied the fulcrum of his elbow. It was green and blue and purple. Neither color by itself could be good. Together they had to mean that something colossally bad was happening.

  He looked up again. Pest control?

  Then he remembered. This was his home. It was where he both worked and lived. Inside was what they affectionately called the Mosh Pit. And he was wet because he’d lost his ID somewhere and couldn’t get on base the usual way. How far he’d swum or how long he’d swum was a question he couldn’t answer. He was a SEAL, so swimming was the least of his problems.

  He punched in his code and went inside. An Intelligence Specialist First Class sat slumbering behind the reception desk. He awoke with a start.

  “Oh, I didn’t know.” The guard glanced down at a line of photos. “Chief Jabouri, sir.” He stood stiffly.

  YaYa waved him back down and staggered through a door into the interior of the pit. He passed a glass-enclosed bookcase that held the logs of the unit. Across from it and around a corner was a cryptobiologist’s dream. Trophies from past missions and pieces of creatures adorned the wall like a supernatural big-game hunter’s wall of pride. Horns, heads, even a taloned six-fingered hand jutted from the wall.

  He staggered to one of the couches in the room and fell hard into it. He cradled his wounded arm and whimpered. A climbing wall stood behind him. Far above, near the skylights, was netting that they’d used to improve their balance. Dorm rooms were behind and to his right, while on top of these was a workout room and the kitchen.

  After staring at the wall for a good ten minutes, he forced himself to his feet, walked over and retrieved the six-inch claw. It had belonged to a qilin, one of the chimera creatures they’d encountered on the mission to Myanmar. He grabbed the claw in his right hand and placed it on the swollen tissue of his left arm. He gritted his teeth and sliced the skin open.

  The pain drove him to his knees. He cried out.

  The door to the Pit opened and the IS1 came running. “You okay, sir?”

  YaYa roared, “Get out! Leave!”

  The IS1 stared at the bloody scene for a moment, then reluctantly hurried back to where he guarded the entryway.

  YaYa gasped as blood and pus seeped out of his arm. It smelled of sickness and death and made him gag. Instead of covering the wound, he squeezed the edges, trying to pump more of the nasty substance out of him. As bad as the arm and the pain made him feel, he felt better now than he had before he’d lanced the wound.

  He found his way to his feet and made it to the bathroom in his dorm room. He got in the shower fully clothed and let the warm water cleanse him of his journey. He held the wound to the water and watched as more and more pus slid free.

  He felt himself slipping. Something beyond his understanding was going on and he couldn’t stop it. And worst of all was that his team needed him. Even now they were probably hurling themselves into harm’s way without him. They might be wounded. They might be in need of his electronics expertise. They might just need his firepower. And here he was, standing in a shower back at base and crying over an infection in his arm.

  A few moments later he turned off the shower and stepped out. He slipped out of his clothes and stood at the sink, dripping. He grabbed a bottle of aspirin and opened it into the sink. With his right hand, he punched the pills until they were mostly powder. Then he grabbed a handful of the substance and wiped it on the open wound. It had an immediate dulling effect. Then he grabbed a length of gauze from the medicine cabinet and wrapped it tightly, taping the ends and the middle to ensure it wouldn’t slide or twist apart.

  Finally clean and dry, he changed into mission clothes. He got online and contacted SPG through their secure server to let them know he was mission ready. Then he sent an email to his father. His old man had never wanted him to join the military, much less become a SEAL. His father had wanted him to become a holy man like himself. He wanted him to better learn the teachings of Allah and live a better life.

  Allah is in our blood, he’d cried. You can’t fight against blood.

  Such was the old argument.

  YaYa believed that he could be a better man by being part of society. He also believed that the world needed positive Muslim role models. It seemed as if every time Mr. and Mrs. Caucasian or African American saw a Muslim, the first thing they remembered was the loss of the towers. The tragedy was certainly a horrific cultural mnemonic, but it shouldn’t serve to define all Muslims.

  So while his father would prefer they become reclusive and live among themselves, YaYa believed that they should open their mosques and reveal themselves as the peace-loving, God-fearing, good and caring people they were.

  Although he hadn’t actually spoken to his father in over a year, he’d started to write him. Since Myanmar they’d begun to email more. Even if it was mere bits and bytes i
nstead of actual spoken words, it was nevertheless a form of communication. At this point, YaYa would take what he could get.

  So he began his email with Dear Father. And then he sat there. What was he going to say? How was he going to describe his feelings?

  Dear Father, I think I am sick.

  Dear Father, I might be possessed.

  Dear Father, maybe you were right.

  Dear Father, I miss you.

  23

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA. CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY. MORNING.

  Alexis Billings sat in a chair outside the office of the deputy director for operations. Unlike the director, who was a political appointee and a very public member of cabinet, the deputy director of operations held the real power. Deputy Director McKinney was just such a man. A career CIA agent, he’d risen through the ranks as reports officer, desk officer, clandestine support agent, field agent, chief of station at half a dozen embassies. He knew the field. He knew the process. He knew the personnel. And most of all, he knew that someone in the agency had fucked up.

  To what degree, Billings didn’t know. All she knew was that she’d received a call late last night from the agency representative to the Sissy, asking her to meet with the deputy director regarding some information the agency had in reference to the missing senator’s daughter. Her agency counterpart, Sarah Pinborough, also of Bryn Mawr, had ended the call with the words “They want to explain why they knew about the possibility of a threat but never let anyone know about it.”

  All Billings had to do was let the senator know that the CIA had advance knowledge and didn’t do anything about it and he’d come down on the agency, the director, and their budget like a metric ton of bricks. Everyone knew it. Which was why she was sitting in Deputy Director McKinney’s waiting room at 5:45 A.M.