SEAL Team 666: A Novel Read online

  He struck the first limb with his thighs. It didn’t hurt as much as he’d anticipated. Then he struck another, and another. Stomach, head, neck, head, arms, back … he was ricocheting to the ground like a human pachinko ball.

  Then he was snapped up short so hard that he dropped his rifle. He hoped he was far enough above ground that the drop line would save it. If it hit the ground, his optics would be toast. He heard a crack from above. He craned his neck to see what it was. He saw the tree limb as it began to fall. Then he closed his eyes and scrunched his neck together in anticipation. A moment later, everything turned to night.

  49

  TREES ABOVE THATON. LATE AFTERNOON.

  The dog whined.

  “I got you, girl.” Yaya was snagged in a tree. He could pull out his knife and release them, but he needed to see how high he was first. No sense in jumping out of an airplane with a parachute only to die in a fall from a tree.

  He toggled his MBITR. “Ghost One, this is Ghost Three, over.”

  No response. Not even static.

  He’d struck the tree several times on the way down. He’d have to check the system in his helmet, but if he was a betting man, he was sure he’d find a short somewhere. Hopefully it was something he could fix.

  But first things first.

  Above him the canopy was thick with twisted limbs and green leaves. Hoover was rigged to his chest, so he couldn’t see beneath him. He kipped his legs to begin swinging so he could see the ground below. He gauged it to be about twenty to thirty feet. Just enough to break a leg.

  He thought for a moment. If he’d been in an American chute, he’d have a reserve that he could deploy to use as a rope. Chinese cargo chutes didn’t need reserves. After all, cargo couldn’t activate them.

  Looking around again, he spied a tree with sturdy limbs about six feet to his right. It only took him a moment to decide what to do.

  “Okay, girl. This is what we’re going to do,” he said, looking into the soulful eyes of the Malinois. “I’m going to lower you down. You won’t be able to reach the ground, but there’s good reason for it. One, if I fall, you’ll be that much closer to the ground. Two, I need to be able to use my arms to see if I can save us.” He petted the dog. “Inshallah, we’ll be down in a few moments.”

  The dog whined again, then seemed to catch herself. She licked Yaya on the cheek and resumed panting.

  Yaya ensured Hoover was secured to the drop line, then unclipped her from the rigging. There was a moment of release when her weight left his chest, but he caught it with his arms.

  “See you in a bit, girl. Keep your head down.”

  He gently lowered her to the end of the tether. The other end of the line was clipped to the harness on her back, so there was no worry of strangulation, although he was aware that when he began swinging toward the tree, she’d swing as well.

  He felt her weight the way a boat would feel an anchor. To gain momentum with his hips, he kipped his legs and began to swing away from the tree, then toward it. Back and forth he went until his fingers brushed the bark of his target. Two more kips and he managed to grab a protrusion with the tips of his fingers. He felt himself slipping backwards and reached out for a vine he’d spied earlier. But as his hand grasped the slender green vegetation, he realized it wasn’t a vine.

  But it was already too late. He swung backwards and brought the object with him. The snake wrapped itself around his wrist, its head rising to appraise him. He wasn’t a herpetologist, but he knew a tree snake when he saw one. Many of them were venomous. This one opened its pointed head and revealed a cotton-white mouth and two slender fangs.

  Yaya did what any SEAL would do. He shook his arm furiously and screamed. The snake fell away and it was only too late that he realized that Hoover was below him. He squirmed to see the snake land squarely on the dog’s back. Hoover snapped at it and shook her body, much as the SEAL had done. The snake fell to the jungle floor. Hoover looked up at Yaya, none too pleased.

  “Sorry, girl!”

  Yaya’s pendulum movement had almost stilled. So he kipped again to get it started. This time as he gained momentum, he searched the tree for any more unexpected fauna. Thankfully, there was nothing. He was able to grasp a limb, cut away from his risers, and climb down the tree. Once Hoover’s feet hit the ground it became easier, because Yaya no longer needed to hold the weight of the both of them.

  Hoover began to growl and snap. But Yaya’s grip on the tree was too precarious for him to look. He shimmied down as fast as he could. When his boots hit the ground, he jerked his 9mm free and swept the jungle. Then he saw Hoover.

  The dog stood with the snake in its jaws. It strode to the SEAL, deposited the reptile at his feet, and looked up as if to say, That’s how it’s done.

  “All right, girl. You done good. Now let’s make the rendezvous.” Yaya pulled out his compass and his tablet and oriented himself to the scrolling map. After a moment, he gestured in a direction.

  “Point,” he commanded.

  Hoover took off like a shot.

  50

  CIRCUS WAREHOUSE PERIMETER. NIGHT.

  When Walker had finally regained consciousness he had been upside down and about a foot from the ground. Beneath him raced a division of ants, making it seem as if the ground was moving. He’d puked, a sure sign of a concussion.

  But he’d made the rendezvous with the others just fine. With the exception of the bad luck of their coms breaking down, the insertion went without a hitch. Of course, all hell could be breaking loose Stateside and a comet could be plunging into the Atlantic but they’d never know about it. He’d hoped that the twenty-four-kilometer trek through the jungle would clear his head, but it only served to make him feel worse. The faster his heart beat, the more his head throbbed. The fact was they were too deep in enemy territory for anything to be done about it.

  Once outside the warehouse compound, the SEALs conducted reconnaissance using both infrared and night-vision devices. Their only thermal imagery came from the Leupold scope attached to Walker’s sniper rifle. They hadn’t counted on being out of coms with support. NRO had deployed a geosynchronous satellite above to provide the SEALs with real-time imagery intelligence across all visual spectrums. The SEALs didn’t detect any evidence of habitation. The guards that had previously been stationed around the site were no longer there. It appeared to be deserted.

  Holmes ordered Yaya to find a way to fix their coms. Both Laws’s and Walker’s ComTac headsets had been ripped and crushed in their descents. Holmes had his data mode and voice cables ripped free and his uplink wasn’t functioning, although there was no visible evidence of damage. Ruiz’s set had lost its cipher fill, which meant although it would work, it couldn’t talk to anyone. And Yaya’s receiver unit had been punctured by a branch. He had an ugly green and purple bruise beneath it to show how lucky he’d been.

  They hadn’t been prepared for the LALO. Had they had more time, they would have protected the equipment better. As it turned out, they were lucky the only damage was to the communications gear. Yaya was able to scrape together two complete systems that could talk to each other, but had no uplink capability. Holmes took one; the other he gave to Laws. There was talk about Walker taking it in his role of sniper, but Holmes was against that. He wanted to split the four remaining SEALs into two teams and he wanted to be able to synchronize activities.

  Walker was reminded of the stories he’d heard about Camp Rhino. In the earliest days of the war in Afghanistan, a drug smuggler’s outpost was chosen to become the coalition’s first firm foothold on Afghani soil. Air Force special operators HALO’d in and secured a drop zone. SEALs arrived next to ascertain evidence of enemy personnel. Back then everyone in Afghanistan was an enemy, whether it be some poor trader with a camel or a fighter with an RPG. The SEALs were from Delta Platoon, SEAL Team 3. They were essentially one hundred nautical miles from friendly forces and experienced intermittent communications. Walker remembered talking to a guy about how
when the coms went out they kept wondering if the mission might have been called off and they didn’t know it. Back then the Task Force K-Bar commander was operating by the seat of his pants. The plan was to fly three hundred marines in from the Fifteenth Marine Expeditionary Unit by helicopter. The SEALs were to observe until then. The decision to postpone the insertion of the marines by twenty-four hours was made by the task-force commander, but no one informed the SEALs. During the last twelve hours of their mission, they had lost all coms and couldn’t help but wonder what was going on.

  But every SEAL knew that unless specifically told otherwise, they were to continue on with their mission. For the SEALs of SEAL Team 3, their mission was to observe and secure until the marines arrived. For the SEALs of SEAL Team 666, their mission was to try and discover the command and control network involved with the movement or nonmovement of the chimeras to America.

  So it was Charlie Mike—continue mission.

  The single-story warehouse was about seventy meters long by twenty meters wide. It had a tin roof and tin sides, which appeared to be affixed to a two-by-four frame. A dirt parking lot was in the front. It held several local vehicles and a five-ton cargo truck. The left side of the compound held several outbuildings that contained broken equipment and a small charcoal stove. The back, which had access to the front by a dirt road, had several open bays and a covered landing under which rested fifty crates identical to the ones they found aboard the cargo ship.

  Infrared, night vision, and thermal all proclaimed that the site was deserted. But as they sat in the jungle, the noise of strange insects and animals surrounding them, Walker couldn’t help feeling that the whole thing was too easy.

  “It’s Echo Platoon all over again,” Laws said, mirroring Walker’s thoughts. “This is a sensitive site exploitation, pure and simple.”

  “You were at Prata Ghar?” Yaya asked.

  “I was.”

  “I was in Echo three years later. They still talk about the pucker factor on that one.”

  “I heard there were no casualties,” Holmes said.

  “Wasn’t for lack of trying.” Laws shook his head. “There were fourteen buildings. The Germans took the largest one and we took the remaining thirteen. We named each one after a major U.S. city. Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles—you get the idea. We had some Feebs, Air Force SOF, a pair of EOD boys, and fifteen SEALs. I don’t mind shooting at bad people. In fact, I prefer it. And I don’t mind CQB. But Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and all the farm animals, we cleared three hundred and fourteen rooms. There could have been a beegee behind each door, so we had to be ready. My ass was puckered so hard I think I shit Silly String for a week.”

  “Not many rooms here,” Walker pointed out.

  “And it looks like there are no beegees,” Yaya added.

  “Which makes it worse. Now we have to be ready for anything, all the time. Wired tight. Always on.”

  “Maybe you’re getting a little too old for this,” Ruiz said.

  “Fucking hell,” Laws snapped. “I’ll give you too old. SEAL can’t even bitch for a minute to get it out of his system?”

  Everyone was silent for a while.

  Finally Holmes asked Laws, “Is it?”

  “Is it what?”

  “Out of your system.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Then let’s go.”

  They deployed Walker fifteen meters inside the tree line. He found a tree that provided him with a set of low branches to establish a nest. He switched his scope to thermal and watched as they progressed in two teams to either side of the structure. Worried about traps and IEDs, they left Hoover behind. The dog whined gently at the base of the tree, her eyes on Yaya’s back as he departed.

  Walker turned to scan 180 degrees. Other than a few monkey screeches and birdcalls in the trees, there was nothing living.

  51

  CIRCUS WAREHOUSE. NIGHT.

  Ruiz moved stealthily behind Holmes. They’d reached the left side of the warehouse. Ruiz stared forward through the scope mounted on his Super 90. Infrared images were in black-and-white; the whiter the image, the more heat it was giving off. Right now he saw nothing but a field of gray. He wished he had access to a thermal scope like Walker had on his Stoner. Those handled more of the infrared spectrum and provided a color feedback, showing heat using the visible red spectrum rather than black-and-white. It was certainly more nuanced and had a greater degree of accuracy.

  He’d once taken his thermal scope back to the woods of West Virginia. His hometown had a yearly possum hunt in the local woods. Sometimes there’d be seventy dead possum at the end of the day. He hated the hunt. What had been a sport had been turned into a tournament. But he’d fixed them … for that year, anyway. The night before the hunt, using his thermal imager, he’d tracked down every single possum and had relocated them to an abandoned farm. One hundred and forty-three possum. The night of the big hunt there wasn’t a single thermal image larger than a squirrel in any of the trees. There were more possum lying dead on the side of the road than there were in the forest. For the first time in the history of the hunt, not a single possum was killed. Eventually he let it be known that it was him and that pissed people off even more. But he didn’t care.

  Holmes began moving toward the front, leading with his MP5. He checked the corner, then knelt. Ruiz knelt as well, keeping the boss in his peripheral vision while he swept the rear and side.

  “Clear front,” Holmes whispered into his MBITR.

  Ruiz couldn’t hear the response, but when Holmes turned and moved toward the back, he imagined Laws had it clear on the other side as well.

  They made their way around the corner. Although it was dark, he could make out Laws and Yaya coming from the other corner. Both groups moved with care. Although there were no windows, they were approaching the area with open bay doors. Thermal imaging and infrared had its limits. If the steel was thick enough, a platoon of beegees could go undetected. Then there was also the fear of the chimera. They’d only encountered one on the ship, but they’d been well aware that the other crates in the hold had held hundreds of them … just as these crates probably did. They’d know soon enough. Part of the sensitive site exploitation would be to inventory the chimera and investigate their size, weight, and makeup. If there really was a threat to the United States, the information they’d provide could be critical to the defense of the country.

  The wooden crates weren’t arranged in any order. Some were stacked three high, reaching a height of twelve feet, while others were unstacked. It was as if a giant kid had just tossed his letter blocks on the floor. But before they could investigate the crates, they had to clear the building.

  Holmes moved in fast. Ruiz kept on his six. The interior of the warehouse was shrouded in darkness. Holmes and Ruiz checked their infrareds, but it was nothing but grays and blacks. They switched to night vision and the darkness was illuminated in an eerie green. They scanned the room. They could just see the opposite wall through the darkness. The center of the room was filled with more haphazardly stacked crates.

  “Moving left,” Holmes whispered into the MBITR.

  They moved forward, hugging the outside wall as best they could. Here and there were smaller boxes, tables, and chairs. There was a spot where three couches were side by side. On the center one rested an old engine, rusted beyond recognition.

  Ruiz continually scanned the room, his ears attuned for even the slightest sound. Not that he was trigger happy, but the longer they stayed in the room without being able to really see it, the more puckered his ass got. In fact, his skin began to crawl as he imagined a dozen fighters hidden behind the crates in the center of the room, just waiting to open fire on them.

  They reached the corner and turned.

  Ruiz remained in place, facing the center of the room as Holmes continued down the short side of the building. Moments ticked by as the SEAL team leader moved to the corner. When he arrived, he announced it into his MBITR, then gave Ruiz
a hand signal.

  Ruiz’s chest tightened. If it was going to happen, it would happen here. He began creeping to the center of the room. He opened his eyes as wide as he could. He switched back and forth from night vision to IR, just to make sure that there were no heat signatures. When he judged that he was three meters away, he stopped and went to one knee.

  Laws did the same to his right. Holmes was on his left. Which meant that Yaya was opposite him. They paused for a moment. Then both Laws and Holmes gave another hand signal. Ruiz closed his eyes tightly, but a moment later, even through his closed lids, he saw the surface of the sun simultaneously to hearing a tremendous bang. He opened his eyes and followed the flashbang grenade to the boxes, which were shoved together in a solid mass. Not even one beegee could have fit inside there.

  “Turning on lights,” Holmes said as he switched off the night-vision/IR scope and turned on the light attachment affixed to his MP5.

  Everyone else did the same. Four spears of light stabbed through the darkness. The room was empty.

  Not that Ruiz was trying to find things to worry about, but there should have been someone there. Where were the guards they’d seen on the imagery? Why wasn’t anyone there guarding the chimera? Unless …

  He moved to one of the crates and rapped against it. He was rewarded with a hollow thud.

  “Boss, these are empty.”

  Yaya rapped on several as well. “These, too.”

  “What the fuck?” Laws looked around. “Think it’s a trap?”

  Holmes knitted his brows. “Walker would have let us know.”

  “Hoover as well,” Yaya added.

  “Still…” Laws gestured toward the empty crates.

  “Come on, SEALs,” Holmes said decisively. “On me.”