SEAL Team 666: A Novel (7 page)

For the next thirty-five minutes, Laws interrogated the enforcer. He didn’t water board. He didn’t cause any pain. Several times he led the man to believe that he might get hurt. In fact, Laws kept two narratives running—one in English to explain to his team what was going on, the other in Chinese as he applied his techniques.

He’d wanted to use Hate of Comrades approach. “It’s best used when several people are captured together because you can play them off each other, but since Fratty made sure that absolutely no one survived, that option is not on the table.”

Fratty blew a kiss in response.

“But in the case of ‘Hong,’ here, I can talk about how incompetent he was and how his inadequacies caused him to get caught and the rest of the team to get killed. This we call Pride and Ego Down. If done right, it creates in our prisoner the need to defend his choices, behavior, and actions.”

It took a while for Laws to get the technique working. At first, the enforcer was pointedly trying not to pay attention. But soon, after considerable badgering and Laws openly laughing at him, the enforcer started to become angry. Eventually he began defending himself. Rather than ask him questions, Laws laughed at him. He told the team to laugh with him and they did, everyone laughing at the enforcer.

Walker had been so entranced with Laws’s dualspeak that he’d forgotten how angry he was with Holmes. But when they were all laughing, he’d glanced around at Fratty, Laws, and then Holmes, and the sight of the leader reminded him. He laughed, too, but it was hollow.

Then Laws performed a switch. He told the guy he wasn’t going to ask him anything else. After all, someone so incompetent couldn’t know anything important enough to interest a team of U.S. Navy SEALs.

But as he began to back away, Holmes jumped in as if it were choreographed. They argued for a few moments, with Holmes poking Laws in the chest. Finally it was Laws who returned to the enforcer.

He pulled up a chair and sat on it like a cowboy as he began to explain what he was about to do. But he kept his voice low, as if he was explaining something so miserable he didn’t even want to say it out loud.

“Now watch him,” Laws said. “Look how he’s going to begin shifting nervously, then he’s going to get visibly upset. It’s at that point, based on what I’ve been able to establish according to his baseline, that I expect him to tell me what he knows.”

Then Laws began speaking in Chinese. Low at first, it was as though he and the enforcer were old friends and he was forced to explain something he didn’t want to.

Walker watched with fascination as the enforcer displayed the exact behavior Laws had predicted. Then he glanced sharply at Holmes.

“I just told him what you said. Make sure you get this right, boss.”

Holmes rushed to Laws and grabbed him by the arm, lifting him out of the chair.

“You will fucking take him out into the busiest street in Chinatown and put a billboard over his head. I want the billboard to talk about how incompetent he is. I want it to tell everyone that he was so fucked up that he’s the reason everyone else got killed. Then I want it to say that the U.S. government thinks that he’s a hero because of all the help he provided.”

“But he didn’t provide any help.”

“Of course he didn’t, but only we know that.” He pushed Laws back toward the enforcer. “Now get back there and tell him what we’re going to do to thank him for being the only surviving member of his gang.”

Laws dramatically shook his head and sat roughly down. As he began to explain to the enforcer what Holmes said, the Chinaman sat forward and tried to explain himself. But Laws laid his hand on the enforcer and shook his head, pointing back at Holmes with a thumb.

This went on for a few more minutes; then Laws reached the point he’d been waiting for. The enforcer sagged in his char. Laws gave him a cigarette. As the enforcer puffed angrily, he told what he knew in order to prove he wasn’t as incompetent as Holmes thought he was. The last thing he wanted was to be a billboard dummy.

When he was done, Laws turned around. “Okay, here it is. The boy spilled his guts. There’s a limit to what he knows. He’s low-level. He’s not even an enforcer. He’s a soldier—a forty-niner—for Temple of Heaven Importers. Triad. So he only knows what he overheard.”

Holmes nodded. “Give.”

“I got some information about this place as well as something about a ship.”

“Where’s the threat?” Holmes asked.

“The ship, I think. This is nothing more than some hocus-pocus sweatshop, where they make special suits for Shan Zhu, or the Mountain Lord—Triadspeak for head of the gang. The women were brought over by the Shi Tou, Snakeheads, and were guarded by these men. Most likely the women were destined to be some random food server at one of the billion Chinese restaurants, but ended up here. Hoover’s little orange buddy here worked cleanup. The homunculus kind of freaked the men out, which is why they kept to themselves down here.”

“What’s up with the suits they’re making?”

“These are tattoos from dead folks. He says they get them from all over, but he doesn’t know what they’re used for. All he knows is that they are sewn onto silk, packed away, and shipped out.”

“Where?”

“He has no idea.”

“And they’re for the Mountain Lord?”

“Head honcho, yeah. But I think he’s just attributing it to the Shan Zhu. I don’t really think he knows. Kind of like us saying that we do it because the president wants us to.”

“But in our case that’s true,” Fratty pointed out.

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.”