by Weston Ochse
Following her instructions, it wasn’t long before they had a connection established through the satellite uplink.
“I’m running this through an isolated server just in case there’s a failsafe.” Two minutes later they were past the log-in screen.
Laws began to read the characters on the screen.
Holmes came over. “What’s your status?”
“Looks like there’s a captain’s log as well as a link to the navigation system.” Laws began clicking the mouse and bringing up different screens. He turned in his seat and looked around. “See a printer in here?”
Ruiz found himself standing next to a printer, an ancient dot matrix. He said as much, then turned it on.
It was soon printing one line at a time, making a sound like the world was ripping apart.
“Recovery vehicle says we have to get moving. They have aircraft inbound in ten mikes.”
“I could write faster than this printer,” Walker said, tearing off one page.
“Can we upload to your server?” Laws asked.
“We’re not set up for that,” Jen said, “But let me check.”
Holmes went into action. “Ruiz. Set the charges for seven minutes, then meet us at the bow. Laws, you’ve got exactly two minutes to get what you need out of that computer.”
Laws glared at Holmes, then shrugged. “Tell your girl thanks,” he said, standing up. He jerked out the power cord to the computer, then pulled his knife from its sheath. He jammed it into the back of the computer and pried off the side panel. After a moment of sawing and breaking, he came out with the hard drive. “Possible capture by the People’s Liberation Army is the mother of invention.”
“Save it for the inspirational poster. You all ready?”
Laws and Walker nodded.
“Do you need me anymore?” Jen asked from across the world.
The sound of her voice made Walker long for home. Given a proper evac and recovery, he’d be there soon enough. “Leave the light on,” he said.
“Wilco,” she replied. Then, “And be careful, honey.” Then she disconnected.
Laws broke into a grin from ear to ear.
“Don’t say it,” Walker growled.
“I wouldn’t dream of it … honey.”
Walker rolled his eyes, but couldn’t help smiling. But that evaporated as he noticed Holmes standing over Fratty’s body. “I’ll carry him,” Walker said, hurrying over. He flexi-cuffed Fratty’s hands and ankles together the way he’d been taught, which would make him easier to carry both in and out of the water. Then he lifted the body and arranged the weight on his left shoulder.
Holmes watched him through the whole process. Then he went to the controls and checked the speed and direction. “Okay, let’s go. Masks on.”
They donned their masks, and then the three of them moved down the stairs together, Holmes in front and Laws in back, Walker in the middle with Fratty’s limp arm around his neck. The ship was about a mile out and they could still see the lights of the police cars on the wharf. There were more than a dozen of them now. The cruise ship was off the port side of the ship and less than a thousand meters away. Drunken revelers on the deck waved and shouted to them. They were close enough to be seen and maybe even recorded. But Twitter and Facebook, in addition to all the other social networks, would be scoured by the Ladies in Blue Shoes—a name for a special unit consisting of wives of SEALs past and present, who used state-of-the-art software to wipe evidence from public Internet spaces. They loved their jobs and treated each mission as if they were storming the beach themselves.
When they reached the bow, Holmes secured a rope and dropped it over the edge. Ruiz came running over a moment later.
“Three minutes,” he said.
Holmes, who’d removed the canine harness from Fratty earlier, secured Hoover in the harness, then went over the edge. The dog had been thoroughly trained in water operations and accepted the treatment like a professional.
When they were all safely in the water, they formed a square with Fratty floating in the middle. They kick-paddled away from the boat. They weren’t frantic, but they were efficient, each knowing that if the ship went up, they needed to be a safe distance away.
Walker began to feel a strange current beneath them, as if something large, some leviathan from the deep, had come up to glimpse the night air. He could almost feel its weight as the water was relocated beneath him. And when it touched his foot, he was ready for the submarine to take them home.
24
SUBIC BAY. TWENTY-SIX YEARS EARLIER.
They said it was a Hantu Kabor—a grave demon. Sometimes he could still feel its oily fingers slithering through his thoughts. The feeling was so acute, it felt as if it had never left. And in those panicked moments, he experienced the return of the helplessness that had so consumed his life in the months it had owned him.
He’d been walking home from school when it had entered him. He remembered the day perfectly. School had let out. He’d ended up leaving late because of detention. The streets were empty except for the occasional passing car, and even then, the windows were so heavily tinted that he couldn’t see the people inside. The feeling of being alone crept up on him, until finally it was the echo of his own footsteps against the brick-walled buildings that brought his fear alive.
The sky hung heavy with the threat of rain, lugubrious gray clouds ready to let go. The crisp air swirled with a cold wind that carried trash down the street in blustery gusts. Jack remembered the feeling of being watched. He’d turn around to check, but there was no one else there. Where the feel of invisible eyes touched him, it left spots that glowed with cold.
Then came the whispers. At first they were unintelligible. Multilingual, he could catch snippets of Tagalog, English, what sounded like German and Chinese, plus thousands of other words. Always on the edge of comprehending, he found himself trying desperately to understand as the whispers chased him down.
The first time he tripped, he blamed it on the uneven sidewalk. He fell hard to his knees, skinning both of them so that blood seeped from the dirt-encrusted wounds. He climbed back to his feet and began to run. The whispers grew louder. He thought he heard a single word—Jackie. Then he fell a second time, the pressure of an invisible hand between his shoulder blades propelling him forward.
He got up slowly as the wind increased and the voices grew louder. Now and then he could pick out a word he recognized, but he couldn’t string enough together to figure out the meaning. He’d begun to cry, although he wasn’t sure when. His knees and hands burned with fresh wounds.
He’d dropped his books somewhere behind him and now he staggered toward his home. His hands were out in front of him and dripping blood; he had only two more blocks to go when the whispers and the wind stopped so completely it was as if the world had just been paused.
Jack stopped himself and turned. He saw only buildings with gaping empty windows, the forlorn street, piles of trash and leaves as still as if the world had become a snapshot. He was entirely alone.
Alone.
Except for the breathing.
Imperceptible at first, the sound grew in strength. Low huffs from a beast, the sounds emanated from right behind him. Afraid of what he might see, he still couldn’t help turning around, trying with increasing desperation to see what wasn’t there.
Then he felt the other, as if a greasy hand was laid on the back of his neck. He screamed and tried to shake it off, but it increased in weight and ferocity. Suddenly it shoved him to his knees. His head slammed against the ground. His back arched and the greasy hand slid inside the back of his head with an explosion of pain so great his jaws couldn’t make any sound.
Then his universe exploded like a sheet of black glass and fell away.
At that moment he could understand the voices. They’d been telling him to run. They’d been telling him to get far away. Most were sorry that he’d joined their ranks. But there were some who were happy to have his company. Locked insi
de the limitless mind of the grave demon, they were eager to live again. Jack represented a newness they could eat and consume, and they would take his memories and make them their own until there was nothing left of little Jackie Walker or until eternity burned away.
25
STARLIFTER. OVER THE PACIFIC OCEAN.
The peregrination back home had been one of tired solemnity. Fratolilio was laid in state in the middle of the Starlifter that had picked them up from Guam. It had taken six hours for the submarine that had recovered them to rendezvous with the aircraft carrier USS George Washington. Both the sub commander and the carrier-group commander had wanted to relieve them of the body, but Holmes and the other SEALs vigorously ignored the attempts to get them to relinquish their teammate. They’d never left a SEAL behind and they wouldn’t start now. The mission started at Coronado and it would end at Coronado. For Fratty it would end there forever.
Signal officers aboard the George Washington took possession of the hard drive from the target ship. Their job wasn’t to decode or decrypt any of the data, but to transfer it to SPG so that it could be worked on while the team was in transit back to base. Once extracted by SPG, the raw data would be analyzed for future target allocation, if possible. Reports from the submarine’s sonar crew, as well as local reports from Macau fire and rescue, told a tale of the ship aflame and sinking in the harbor.
Only the team and a few drunken revelers from the cruise ship knew the truth. One report of masked hockey players with a dog attacking the ship made it through the Internet lockdown, but that would likely die the death of a thousand spams as soon as the world read it, then dismissed it as a mad tweet from a drunken cruise passenger.
No one was in much of a mood to talk. The mission had left them numb. The constant adrenaline surge required to stay alive would send any normal person into a coma-like recuperative state. Even the SEALs with their hypermetabolisms found themselves leaden and exhausted, unwilling and partially unable to relive and recount the events that had just transpired. The electrolytes and intravenous nutrition provided on both the submarine and the carrier helped greatly, but no man-made drugs could ever repair the hole in their hearts and their idea of self, represented succinctly by the man lying in the middle of the aircraft.
Still, Walker had a lot of thoughts working in his mind, not the least of which was the reality that there were creatures and forces out there that had an intent to harm his great Red, White, and Blue, if not the world. He’d been preparing to fight other men only to discover that he was now fighting creatures whose existence could only be foretold in myth and legend.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Laws. “How you doing, FNG?”
“I’m not an FNG anymore,” Walker said softly.
“Why is that?”
“My first mission is behind me.”
Laws nodded. “Normally that would be the case. But you see, you’re the FNG until someone new comes to replace Fratty. Whether it’s a day, month, or year … until that happens, you’re the FNG.”
“Who made up those rules?” Walker asked.
“The great god of FNGs.” Laws leaned back and closed his eyes. “Now get some shut-eye. No telling what’s going to happen when we land.”
Walker remained silent for a long while. His head rested on a pile of cargo netting. Finally he prodded Laws in the shoulder. “Is it always like this?”
Laws opened one eye. “What do you mean?”
“Going out and fighting creatures that aren’t supposed to exist. All in a day’s work, right?”
“We don’t always fight creatures. Sometimes it’s the usual type of monster … the human kind.”
“But fighting the creatures … the monsters are a pretty common trend with Triple Six, right?”
“Sure.” Laws yawned. “Now get some sleep.”
But Walker was too wired to sleep. “I’m so damn juiced, I feel like Superman. I feel like I could fly if given the chance.”
Laws opened both eyes and propped himself up on an elbow. “Batman. Not Superman. You want to feel like someone, feel like Batman.”
“What?”
“Superman is bullshit.”
“What?” Walker asked, drawing out the word. “Superman is bullshit? What the hell does that mean? He’s the most powerful superhero ever created.”
Laws shook his head. “Nah, I call bullshit on the Man of Steel. Look … he’s so powerful because of Earth’s yellow sun, right? He doesn’t even have to try, as soon as he landed here, he was all-powerful.”
“And Batman has no powers. He had to do everything himself. Okay. I see.”
“Do you? Because the folks at DC went miles trying to hide the obvious.”
“Okay, now you lost me. What is this conspiracy involving Superman?”
“Hey, don’t roll your eyes at me. You’re the one who couldn’t sleep and had to keep talking.” Laws paused, flashing a menacing grin. “And yes, ‘conspiracy’ is a good word. It’s simple. The fact is that Superman should be fat. He should he a lard-assed superhero with flabby arms, a beer gut, and soft muscles.”
Walker laughed softly as he imagined that version of Superman. “Okay, man. You gotta explain that one. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Okay. Look at Batman. He’s buff, right?”
Walker nodded.
“And why is that?”
“Like I said, because he works out.”
“Like U.S. Navy SEALs, right?”
“Right.”
“Great. But when Superman bench-presses a Cadillac, he doesn’t even break a sweat. It’s like picking up a bag of feathers. Would Batman be buff if he bench-pressed feathers? Because that’s essentially what Superman does every day.”
Walker thought about it. The stronger you were, the more you had to do to keep that strength. SEALs weren’t muscle mammoths, but they were in elite shape, much like Batman. They went for strength rather than size. He did know that if he didn’t keep up the exercise, he’d lose it faster than it took to gain.
Walker thought on this for a moment. “Holy shit, you’re totally right. Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about this?”
“Conspiracy,” Laws whispered. “Now sleep.”
Walker laughed, then turned over and forced himself to close his eyes. Soon he was dreaming of Batman as a U.S. Navy SEAL, embracing old Stumpy with the rest of them.
26
SPECIAL OPERATIONS HANGAR. CORONADO.
They landed at 1 P.M., taxiing down the runway beneath an overcast sky. The Starlifter rolled to a stop at the restricted end of the base, where a formation of SEALs stood waiting. No sooner was the ramp lowered than six of the SEALs peeled away and came aboard with a wooden stretcher. They carefully slid it beneath Fratty, lifted him, and carried him out the ramp. Hoover kept close, sniffing the high-held body. The surviving SEALs followed, tiredly carrying their gear with them.
Billings met them on the tarmac. She wore a smart black business suit with a Wounded Warrior Project pin prominently on her lapel beside the U.S. Senate pin. Her eyes and nose were red, the only concession to her sorrow. She put a hand on Holmes’s forearm, stopping him and the other SEALs. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. Everyone nodded to her, acknowledging their shared loss; then she lifted her arm and the procession continued.
A hangar had been prepared. The only piece of furniture in it was a long table with a white sheet draped over it. At the head of the table was a helmet with an M4 rifle in a stand. Fratty’s dog tags hung from the front sights. Unlike most other service members, SEALs weren’t allowed to take them on operations. A tan U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer cap with a glistening black bill and gold anchor rested atop the barrel.
Once Fratty was laid on the table, his wound covered by a piece of linen, a door opened at the far end of the hangar.
Walker knew what to expect. He’d made the same walk during his training. All SEALs, those in training and those who’d already graduated, including those
who’d retired and were close enough to the base to make it, would walk past their departed brother. Those who’d served with the departed were asked to leave something that could be shared with the family. A picture. A memory. Anything. Those who’d never met the SEAL filed by silently.
As it began, music started on the hangar’s speaker system. Every SEAL chose the song they wanted to have played. It took Walker a few moments to recognize the old Aldo Nova song. When the sounds of the helicopters kicked in, the song suddenly seemed perfect. “Fantasy” was the name of the song and the electronic music filled the hangar to the rafters, the whining guitar like an anthem for the living.
The team stood solemnly at the foot of the table during the entire viewing. They never put down their gear. They remained covered in mission grime that even the ocean hadn’t washed away. Part of Walker felt devastated that he’d let Fratty down. That was a part of this, to vow never to let it happen again. But another part was to acknowledge the mission, the sacrifice, and the men who’d brought back their team member.
Walker recognized the members of his class when they came, led by Instructor Reno. His classmates looked questioningly at him, but he couldn’t answer. All he could do was nod and watch as they passed. Reno paused beside the body and looked hard at every one of them. Unlike the others, he had something to say to Holmes.
“I get them ready. You take them out. You bring them back. Just tell me, SEAL, is it mission complete?”
Holmes swallowed hard as he nodded. “They all came home,” he said, voice cracking.
“Good. Then I’ll keep sending you more.” Then Reno left, only pausing to touch each and every member of the team on the arm. It was a small touch, but it weighed heavily enough.
As Reno departed, Walker couldn’t help wonder what would have happened if Holmes had answered differently. No SEAL had been trained in recent memory without Reno. One had to wonder if a SEAL could even be trained without him. Walker watched him leave, feelings of fear, admiration, love, respect, and the desire to grow up and be just like him swirling in the midst of his abject thoughts.
