SEAL Team 666: A Novel (2 page)

They cleared the rest of the second floor with no further interaction.

Outside, they could hear reports of gunshots from SEAL Team 6, as well as those of their sniper, but they couldn’t concern themselves with that at the moment. Whatever was happening outside would be taken care of by those assigned to that mission. For now, all they had to worry about was their target on the third floor, someone the entire world had been searching for over the past ten years.

They repeated the same method for breaching the third-floor door as the second, but the door swung open to an empty, dark hallway. They stepped carefully into the hall, hugging the walls and wishing their NVGs were still working. Only two doors exited off the hallway. From the week of practice they had in the mock-up, constructed based on intelligence from the interrogation of an informant at Bagram Air Force Base Detention Facility, they knew the one on the right was a storage room. Their target was through the door on the left. Still, the storage room had to be cleared. Two of the SEALs did so, while the remaining SEALs and the dog made the left-hand door their universe.

Once the storage room was cleared, SEAL Team 666 converged on the last door.

The lead SEAL checked. It was unlocked.

They exchanged glances; then the SEAL turned the knob and pushed the door, which opened into a bedroom suite. The only light in the room came from a fire burning in a brazier on a central table. Behind this sat the man they’d come to kill. But instead of concerned, he appeared unfazed, drinking from a silver goblet.

“Down on the floor!” the SEALs shouted, first in English and then in Arabic.

The man made no move to comply.

Two SEALs moved into the room and searched the corners. They each raised a hand signal that meant clear.

Hoover stalked forward, growling, one stiff leg at time.

The lead SEAL kept his MP5 trained on the man. “If you won’t get down, then stand the fuck up.”

The man placed the goblet on the table and slowly got to his feet. He was very tall, with a graying beard that flowed to the center of his white-robed chest. His face had an almost cherubic quality that could have inspired a smile had it not been universally known that he was the mastermind of thousands of innocent deaths.

A shriek erupted as a woman charged from the inside of a wardrobe. She struck one of the SEALs in the back with the blade of a knife, but it snapped against his Kevlar body armor. The SEAL spun and caught her on the side of the head with the barrel of his Super 90. She fell to the ground, unconscious.

Another shriek erupted, this time from the other side of the room. Another woman leaped free of a wardrobe. This one took two bullets in the leg. The SEAL who shot her then kicked the knife free from her grip. It skidded across the floor and stopped beneath the bed.

The tall man started to change after the failed attack from the women. His face contorted. His features shifted and reshifted, changing the architecture of the human face into something else entirely.

The lead SEAL opened fire, but the bullets had even less effect on this figure than they’d had on the demon one floor below.

The other SEALs opened fire as well, unloading every slug and round they had into the creature. The MP5s ran out of ammo first. The SEALs let them fall on their slings. They opened metal canisters filled with holy water and doused the newly formed creature.

Where the water hit, smoke rose. A multi-octave scream filled the room, the sound of hundreds in agony coming from the mouth of one.

The lead SEAL knelt and withdrew an ancient blade from where it was secured in Hoover’s tactical harness. The blade was black with age. Etchings from a dead language adorned the surface. The shape was a like a tongue of flame, and as he held it toward the creature, the creature recognized the blade and showed fear for the first time.

The SEAL and the beast clashed in a mad jumble of punches, blocks, and kicks. One was fueled by the righteousness of his mission and thousands of hours of practice, and the other was fueled by the infinite darkness that had filled its soul.

The remaining SEALs stood aside as their leader fought. Their hands flexed, each teetering on the balls of his feet, eager and ready. Even Hoover waited, her only dissent a constant growl of frustration for not being allowed to join in.

Somewhere outside, they heard a cry for help, then a gurgling scream. Whatever it was, there was nothing that could be done. Their mission was in this room, and until the beast was down, none of them would leave.

The combatants fell to the ground, but their new position did nothing to halt the frequency of their blows. Then suddenly the fighting stopped. The lead SEAL shot rigid, a taloned hand gripping his neck, his tongue jammed out from blue lips. One of the SEAL’s hands came up to pry away the hold on his neck, slipping down to the creature’s wrist to try and wrench it free. But the hold was too tight.

The creature climbed stiffly to a standing position, dragging the SEAL with it. As they stood, the SEAL brought his other hand upward, embedding the blade so deeply through the bottom of the creature’s chin that the point erupted from the top of its head. It stood for one long, mad minute, choking the life out of the SEAL as tightly as it could, then toppled. As the creature fell, it pulled the lead SEAL with it.

The other SEALs worked to lever open the thing’s hand from their team member’s neck. It took great effort, but they finally managed, and as they did, the SEAL took in a lungful of air.

“Mother of God,” he rasped.

They grabbed a blanket from the bed and rolled the creature into it, then rushed it downstairs and out the door. Bodies littered the yard. By the looks of them, they were reinforcements who’d been trying to assist the creature SEAL Team 666 now carried. The team’s sniper lay in the corner. Half of his face had been torn away. His single remaining eye stared into the Pakistani night. Something terrible had happened here and it had happened to one of their own.

But there was no time to mourn. They took him, exiting through the hole in the wall, and crowded aboard the second helicopter. They placed the demon on the floor of the aircraft and strapped their deceased sniper into a harness as the doors snapped shut. One by one, they removed their masks, sweat and grime coating their faces. The members of SEAL Team 6 were eager to assist where they could. With their target achieved, the SEALs rose into the air, leaving the first chopper behind. A hundred meters up and the first chopper exploded, denying it to the enemy. Once SEAL Team 666 returned to Bagram, a joint FBI-CIA forensics team videotaped the creature from all angles and took DNA samples. Afterward, SEAL Team 666 escorted the body to the USS
Carl Vinson
in the Arabian Sea, where they disposed of the demon in a private ceremony.

Only then did SEAL Team 666 appreciate their accomplishment.

Only then did they mourn the loss of their sniper.

Before the next mission, they’d need a new one.

1

KADWAN. SIX MONTHS EARLIER.

The evisceration of the woman was majestic to behold. He’d delighted in her screams, relished the way her mouth opened so wide that it could have eaten the world. Her pathetic gestures as she begged for her life had almost spoiled it. Not that it had evinced any empathy on his part, but it had marred his journey to the spiritual plateau he’d been striving to reach in order to prepare himself for the transformation.

It was at once funny and sad that he’d been living such a life of somnambulant grace, pitifully ignorant of the creatures and beings that coexisted in their shared universe, kept at bay only by a paper-thin film of civilization and ignorance. If he’d only known sooner, maybe he wouldn’t have wasted half his life pretending to be someone who cared about his fellow man.

2

CORONADO ISLAND. MORNING.

Petty Officer First Class Jack Walker felt like the crap had just been beaten out of him. Then again, he’d felt like that for the last twenty-one weeks. Since the first moment of Indoc, when Instructor Alberto Reno had slammed the door and commanded them to their feet, through the ten thousand push-ups, the twenty thousand flutter kicks, the one hundred and twenty continuous hours of training in Hell Week with only four hours of sleep each night, to the bone-numbing cold of Coronado Bay, his body had been beaten, cracked, and remolded. The pain was there when he got up in the morning. It was there when he drank his coffee. It was there when he went to bed at night. Walker pretended not to notice it, but the pain was persistent.

Which was what it was doing now—being persistent.

Instructor Kenny ran up to him. “What is it, Walker?”

“Nothing, Instructor Kenny. It’s just pain leaving the body.”

“If you’re going to scream, then do it standing up. Get on your feet, Walker.”

Walker crawled out of the sand and onto his feet. He’d just completed the final timed four-mile run. He and the other members of SEAL Class 290 had come in under twenty-nine minutes, and for the first time, they’d all made it. Part of it was that those who couldn’t make it mentally and/or physically through the training had either been rolled back or had rung the bell—Dropped on Request, or DOR. Another part was that they were working together as a team. Several of his mates had seen the way he was pulling up and had helped him as the shin splints soared with the pain of running seven-minute miles. And then there was the fact that the end was in sight. He had four weeks before he could finally graduate. One week more of training, then off to San Clemente Island for the final live-fire exercise.

Instructor Howard ran up and got in his face.

“How’d you make it this far, Walker? Did you have sex with the president or did we collectively just forget what it takes to be a SEAL?”

“I didn’t have sex with the president, sir.”

“Why not? Isn’t he handsome enough for you?”

“No, sir. I mean yes, sir.”

“Make up your mind, SEAL.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So answer my question, Walker. Do you know what it takes to be a SEAL?”

“Yes, sir!” The pain laced up and down his legs, digging through his shin and scoring the bone from beneath. He’d lived with it for weeks now and would live with it for four more.

“I don’t think you know. I don’t think you know anything. I think your body is ready to give up, isn’t it Walker?”

“No, sir. This SEAL candidate is fit and fine!”

Instructor Howard leaned in and whispered violently. “What do you think I’m going to say next, Walker?”

Walker paused, then in a voice that was eerily calm said, “You’re going to say Hooya, sir, because this candidate is going to be a damn good SEAL.”

Howard hid the smirk that flashed across his face. “I don’t think that was what I was going to say.”

Instead of continuing the conversation, Walker hit the sand and pushed out twenty fast push-ups. When he completed them, he popped back up and said, “Petty Officer First Class Walker requests permission to rejoin the class!”

Walker eyed the others, who were already forming on Stumpy, the seventy-pound log with four handles that had become their classmate, never to be forgotten, never to be left behind. Despite the pain, despite the agony, he wanted nothing more than to stay with his class and put his arms around his best friend, Stumpy.

“Permission granted,” Instructor Howard barked.

Walker ran over to the others, happy to be out from under the watch of the instructors.

“Take ten,” Kenny called as he turned to Instructor Howard. Three visitors were walking down the beach toward them, including a tall red-haired woman, impeccably dressed in a gray business suit.

“How are the legs?” Meyers asked, kneeling and unlacing his own boots so he could adjust his socks.

Walker knelt to do the same. “Hurts like a big dog.”

“You gonna make it?”

“Is the pope Catholic?”

“Try and stretch the Achilles tendon more and it’ll give you some relief at least.”

Walker nodded at Meyers, who was a Navy corpsman by trade. If anyone knew how to get more from the body, it was him.

With his shoes retied, Walker stood and stretched, grabbing the bottoms of his boots with his hands and planting his face on his knees. While he was there, he took a moment to pray. He only had four more weeks. If they’d leave him alone, he could do them on his head.

If they left him alone, that is.

3

CORONADO ISLAND. MORNING.

Alexis Billings strode behind Navy Lieutenant Commander Scott and Marine Major Benitez. She’d been smart enough to wear closed-toe shoes; there was nothing worse than sand getting into the inside of Donna Karans. Still, she took high steps and placed her feet in the packed footprints of the two officers who’d been assigned as her escorts.

She spied the class and the instructors about a hundred meters farther down. They all wore the ultrashort UDT shorts, which looked like khaki versions of 1960s basketball shorts, and boots. The instructors wore black T-shirts and black baseball caps. The students wore OD green T-shirts and no caps.

This visit was pro forma, but it had to be done. Senator Withers had made it clear that he didn’t want her or the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), more commonly known as the Sissy, to be a faceless government organization. He wanted the Sissy to have a face, and in her case, a pretty one, especially when it had to do what it was about to do.

That her attractiveness was one of the things that had gotten her this appointment irked her. A graduate of Bryn Mawr and Princeton, she’d entered the working world with brains and a cache of connections.

“Don’t take it personally,” her friend and former classmate at Princeton, Lauren Rhodes, had told her shortly after her appointment. “Not everyone can have beauty, brains, and the family connection like you do.”

Who knew that her father had parlayed his success and social prominence at owning eleven car dealerships into a personal friendship with the senior senator from Pennsylvania? When his daughter told him she wanted to get into politics from the ground up, she was given an interview and an appointment as a permanent staffer for the Sissy, all at age twenty-seven. The Sissy commanded oversight of all intelligence and special-ops training and operations, from the CIA, the Department of Defense, and agencies in between. Not only were they charged with being good stewards of the American taxpayer’s hard-earned dollars, but they were also concerned with ensuring that all operations were conducted with the proper scrutiny. That’s where she came in. Her job had been to become the expert on all things special operations. If a vote was coming up on a new program or a budget cut, it was her job to advise the members of the Sissy regarding the efficacy, loss, and possible repercussions, if any, that might affect current and future special operations around the globe. She had a staff of six, consisting equally of Ivy League graduates and former special operators. Although she had been inexperienced when she took the job, hard work, an ability to remember facts and figures, her determination to get things done right the first time, and her constant respect for those she served had made her a known entity in the community, as well as someone to whom senior flag officers showed respect.