Age of Blood

by Weston Ochse

  “Sam?” Laws asked. He hated when his boss got this way. The mission plan was obviously fully formed in Holmes’s mind, all five paragraphs of the operations order were already written, and if it were business as usual, he wasn’t going to share until right before he absolutely positively needed to.

  The C-130 powered into a right-hand turn, sending Laws ass over head until he came up against one of the parachutes. The engine whined as it was suddenly powered for ascent.

  Scrambling to his feet, Laws was about to unleash a torrent of vernacular when Holmes noticed him standing beside the chutes.

  “Good idea. Everyone except YaYa armor up and strap on.”

  Jen and the other techs stood uncertainly, looking around for something to strap on to.

  “SEALs,” Holmes said. “Every SEAL except YaYa. Ms. Costello, you and the techs will meet the senator. YaYa, you’re in charge.”

  The Arab American SEAL made an act of looking relieved. “Thank Allah. I thought he was going to put the dog in charge.”

  “At ease that shit. I could still change my mind.”

  Hoover looked at YaYa, and if a dog could grin, she was doing it.

  Finally Laws couldn’t take it anymore. “Boss, your plan. Please.”

  Holmes joined them, putting on his body armor. When Yank began packing HK416 rounds into his vest, Holmes placed a hand on the young SEAL.

  “No HK rounds. We’re going into civilian-heavy Mexico. Mexico City has nine million at last count. We don’t need them thinking they’re being invaded by an American armed force. Knives and pistols only.”

  Walker held out his helmet. “What about nods?”

  “No nods. No Pro-Tecs. No vests. T-shirts and combat pants and baseball caps. Armor beneath the shirts. And let’s break out the bone-conducting commo gear. I want something no one can really see.”

  Developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency specifically for SOCOM, the BCCGs didn’t cover the ears, nor did they cover the mouths, freeing them of communications wires. Using Bluetooth technology, they came in three pieces. One transmitter, a quarter-sized listening device that fit behind the ear, and a piezoelectric vocalization square that fit beneath the lower jaw.

  Yank was the first with his gear on. “Please don’t tell me we’re going to parachute onto a police-protected moving vehicle using these cargo chutes.”

  “I thought the Marines used these,” Walker said, snapping down his legs.

  “Like I said,” Laws said, “cargo chutes.”

  “Dude,” Yank said, shaking his head and trying not to smile.

  Laws was getting pissed. He was supposed to be second-in-command. How could he provide input to a plan that was already in effect? But there was nothing to be done at this point. “So is that the plan?” he asked in the most even voice he could muster.

  The crew chief shouted, “Five minutes!”

  Holmes pointed at YaYa and the techs. “Tie everything down that’s not attached to the plane. That includes Hoover. I don’t want her jumping after us without a parachute.”

  The inside of the aircraft buzzed with activity.

  Holmes gestured for everyone to gather around. When they did, he produced his own tablet with a map of an area north of Mexico City. “Here’s the plan. Costello, contact your people and get the stoplights changed at this intersection and this intersection.” He pointed. “I’ll be in contact with you and give you a ten-second countdown.”

  She looked shocked. “You want me to arrange to have one of our government agencies break into a sovereign country’s transportation system and figure out the wire diagram for more than a million stoplights just so we can make it go from green to red at the appointed time?”

  “Yep. Can you do it?”

  She laughed suddenly. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Good.” He smiled for the first time. “Hopefully it’ll come off without a hitch.”

  Laws laughed, too. When did it ever work out like it was supposed to?

  They checked each other’s rigs and attached their static lines to a ring in the floor at the base of the ramp. They were two minutes out. They’d be jumping from four thousand feet. The wind was ten knots, and the pilot corrected based on their selected landing zone, which was a soccer field.

  Holmes had given Laws the map, while he and the other SEALs inspected each other’s chutes. The light near the ramp switched to amber. The crew chief pressed a button and the ramp descended. The rush of air overtook all sound as the ramp dropped level. Laws stepped out with one hand on the ceiling of the Hercules. He checked the ground for comparison to the map on the tablet in front of him, searching for landmarks. The plane was heading downwind and he didn’t want to overshoot the field. He seemed ready to give up when he saw a factory and a pond that matched exactly what was on the map. They had six klicks left. Doing the math, he realized they had less than twenty seconds before they had to jump.

  “Ready, SEALs.”

  One last check to ensure the static lines were secure. He stashed the tablet in his cargo pocket.

  “Steady.” He nodded to the crew chief, who turned the light from amber to green.

  “Go, go, go!”

  And as one, four SEALs embraced the Mexican air and were sucked free, letting their static lines deploy their chutes and jerk the meters of fabric from each pack.

  Almost at once, all the SEALs were jerked sideways; then they swung beneath their deployed canopies. Laws spied their drop zone far ahead. By his measure, they weren’t going to make it. He was used to much faster chutes and was worried he might have misjudged. Instead, it looked like they were headed straight for a sewage plant.

  His heart sank as he realized that the circular ponds beneath him were pools of Mexican nastiness and the last place he wanted to begin swimming. He pulled on his risers and began to bicycle madly with his feet.

  43

  ATLACOMULCO DE FABELA, MEXICO.

  They cleared the sewage-treatment plant with a combination of skill and a heaven-sent updraft that tossed them past the ponds, over a school building, and onto their designated landing zone—the soccer field. They were thankful not to have been drenched in other people’s feces, but realized one small problem that the map had caused. The LZ was flat, it was wide, and it offered them plenty of space to land … had there not been a soccer match and several thousand spectators watching what was an obvious rivalry game between two equally matched teams.

  Holmes flared and landed first. No stand-up landings in these chutes. It was a parachute landing fall (PLF), used to absorb the sudden impact on the ground—feet, knees, hip, then shoulder. The chute came down on a young man in a yellow and red soccer shirt doing a bicycle kick. The fabric completely covered him and several other players.

  Next came Yank, who tried to flare enough to stand and almost made it, going to one knee instead. He quickly unhooked the chute from the harness so he wouldn’t get dragged, then shucked the harness.

  Walker and Laws hit at the same time. By the time they were standing and removing their chutes, the crowd was in an uproar. A referee and several players were running toward them, shouting and cursing. Walker grabbed his hat from his pocket and slung it onto his head, pulling the brim low so it rested on his sunglasses. The other SEALs did the same.

  Holmes searched for a way out, then headed toward a goal. The others followed, and soon all four SEALs were running Indian style, one behind the other, passing the stunned goalie, crossing a parking lot, then diving into a concrete culvert meant to catch water during monsoon season. They left the shouts and cries of the soccer game behind, and also left their chutes as souvenirs of the day four men rained from the sky. The culvert took them down below street level. Open at the top, the left was bounded by a wall and a railing to keep the cars on the road. The right side had another sloping wall. The floor was littered with trash, dead animals, discarded clothes, empty bottles and cans, and other detritus of one of the world’s largest cities.

&n
bsp; Holmes slowed to a jog and the others followed suit. As he ran, he checked the tablet and the moving map and noted they were less than two kilometers from their target. They could travel perhaps another five hundred meters in the culvert; then they’d have to leave it and join the rest of the world. Walker had to admit that running as if they were in a concrete half-tube made Mexico seem a lot less crowded. For those brief moments before they’d landed, it had felt like they were all alone in the universe. Then they’d landed and in the space of a moment, several thousand people were upon them. And now—back to this. Walker decided that he definitely preferred the wide-open spaces.

  “This way, SEALs.” Holmes ran up the side of the cement wall at an angle, followed by Yank, Laws, and Walker. When they reached ground level they slowed to a walk. They had to find a way to appear inconspicuous. As it was, three physically fit white men and one black man all wearing tight black T-shirts, khaki pants, baseball hats, and glasses stood out in a nation of men where blue jeans and plaid shirts were the norm.

  They split up. Yank and Holmes stayed on one side of the street, while Walker and Laws slid between honking cars and a mule pulling a no-shit apple cart to get to the other side.

  The road ran almost to the buildings on either side of the street, leaving a thin sidewalk where people had to push past each other and the occasional vendor selling fruit, vegetables, or churros. Advertisements for Corona, Chiclets, and Bubbaloo leaped off brightly colored signs on the side of a Super Dulceria La Nueva. Pink-and-yellow signs advertising bullfights were plastered on telephone poles beside announcements for the political elections that were to be held in a few weeks. The blue sky was crisscrossed with hundreds of telephone and electrical wires running from roofs, windows, even straight into walls. As Walker moved past a woman walking a little boy to school, he was pleased they’d found an open space on which to land. Trying to navigate the chaos of the lines would have surely led to a hangup and possibly an electrocution. He doubted if the wires this deep in Mexico were coated with enough insulation to pass an electrical inspection.

  They passed a pizza place, then a loan shark, then a taxi stand before they reached the corner of Alfredo del Mazo Oriente and Gregorio Montiel and turned right. A police stand was on the right side of the road. Walker and Laws paused to buy a Coke from a kiosk on their side of the street while they watched what would happen. If the police moved even a twitch to detain the other two, Walker and Laws would have to get involved. He wasn’t sure what getting involved would end up meaning, but they couldn’t have a local federale arrest a SEAL during an operation. It just wasn’t done.

  Luckily, the policeman continued reading his newspaper and chain-smoking filterless cigarettes. Walker and Holmes dropped their Cokes in a trash can halfway down the block. They were about to cross the street when Holmes pulled up and faced the building. He stood beneath a butcher shop with several suspect carcasses hanging in the window.

  Suddenly Walker heard Jen’s voice in his ear as Holmes added the rest of the SEALs to the feed.

  “—unable to coordinate the stoplights, but that’s no longer an issue. The suspect vehicle has stopped moving.”

  “What’s the location?”

  “You’re less than a kilometer west of the vehicle. It’s a white panel van parked in the dirt on the west side of Via Jorge Jiménez Cantú. What looks to be a truck mechanic with yellow awning and signs is right beside it.”

  Holmes began to move, as did the other SEALs.

  Walker couldn’t help feeling worried and he saw his own feelings mirrored in the expression of the team’s deputy commander. Why had it stopped moving?

  “Any sign of a driver?”

  “None.” Even in that simple word, Walker knew her well enough to detect her anxiety. “One more thing.”

  “What is it?”

  “The rear door is open.”

  All four SEALs sped up to the point of running. They tried to act as cool as they could as they moved by men sitting on stools, women hawking food, and children playing with little lucha libre dolls, but they still couldn’t move fast enough. They finally gave up all pretenses, dodged into the middle of the street, and ran as fast as they could, cars and trucks honking. Yank got there first, with Holmes and Walker second. Yank skidded to a stop by the rear door. Only he could see inside and his face blanched.

  “Damn.” He pulled his pistol from where it was hidden in his left pouch and trained it on the inside of the van. He glanced toward the other SEALs, his face a mask of concern.

  Walker planted his feet and slid into place beside Yank. Flies swooped drunkenly into a massive pool of blood inside the truck. Some had become stuck in the viscous, blackening substance. A head rested against the right wall, a body right behind it.

  Laws reached over to the head and grasped the hair. He held the head up and to everyone’s surprise, it wasn’t the girl. Instead it was a Mexican man who looked surprisingly familiar. Walker thought for a moment, and then it came to him—the other werewolf. This had been the man Ramon had been fighting out in front of the asylum. The one who had supposedly gotten away.

  “Madre de Dios,” came a voice from behind them.

  They turned to see an older man, dressed in mechanic’s overalls. He must have come out from the garage to see what they were doing.

  Laws glanced at the head, and dropped it.

  Walker felt his hand going toward his pistol, wondering what Holmes was going to require them to do. He didn’t want to shoot the old man.

  Then they heard a wimper. It came again, louder.

  The man started to back away, his gaze pinned on the pistol in Yank’s hand. Even though Yank held it pressed against his leg, it was still visible.

  “Please,” came a woman’s thin voice.

  Walker gripped the side of the truck and leaped inside. He stayed to the left and saw her, huddled in the back left corner, her knees drawn up, her arms clenched around them, her face buried. He stepped over the blood and hurried over to her.

  “Emily Withers, we’re United States Navy SEALs. We are here to help.”

  She managed to get to her feet as he approached. Her wide eyes took him in as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Then she threw her arms around him and hugged him fiercely.

  Behind him, Walker heard Holmes giving commands. Then Walker felt someone get in the back and close the doors. He heard two bodies slam the cab’s doors as they got in the front seat.

  He pulled her carefully down to the floor and held her with one hand, while searching for a handhold inside. He found a tie-down pinion just as the truck lurched forward.

  A light snapped on. Holmes had a mini-Maglite in his teeth. He unspooled a length of the 550 cord each SEAL kept in their cargo pockets and tied it down to the pinion next to him, then crawled over and cinched it down to the pinion Walker was holding, creating a taut nylon line capable of keeping all of them from sliding into the blood. What it didn’t do was keep the body or the head from rolling into them, so Holmes sat with his back in the rear right corner, his legs extended. Every time the van slowed or took a turn, he and Walker kept the body parts at a leg’s length.

  Walker began to check Emily. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

  “Bruised,” she said.

  “And the man? Do you know who he was?”

  “The driver? Killed right in front of me.”

  “We’re sorry, Emily. But now you’re safe.”

  “We’ve got a problem,” Yank said through the coms.

  “Detail,” Holmes clipped.

  “We have traffic in front of us and a federale hot on our tail.”

  Walker paused to listen. “I don’t hear any sirens,” he said.

  “Lights flashing. They’re five cars behind us.”

  “Man must have called it in,” Laws said. “Can you lose them?”

  “This isn’t exactly a Porsche 911,” Yank said. “But I’ll give it a shot.”

  Centrifugal force threw Walker int
o the left wall. He cushioned Emily as best as he could, but she still grunted with pain. Holmes lost the light and it rolled into the blood, soaking the lens and turning the inside into a red-tinted hell. Just as Walker seemed to get his balance, he was flung the other way. The light spun madly and the head hit his leg and flew over it, impacting the wall. He held on to Emily, keeping her from flying loose. Holmes cursed as the head landed in his lap. He grabbed it by the hair to keep it from rolling.

  “What the fuck, Yank,” Walker growled.

  They heard sirens now, several of them.

  They were knocked around for thirty more seconds when Laws came on the line.

  “Prepare to dismount.”

  “What’s the 411?” Holmes asked.

  “Vehicle change.”

  The truck slammed to a stop, sending the body chest-first into the wall between Holmes and Laws. Then Yank began a series of turns, finally pointing them 180 degrees in the other direction. After that, he backed up and shut off the vehicle. The sound of booted feet running across the top of the van was followed by the sounds of two men leaping to the street before the rear doors opened.

  Light streamed into the interior. The blood was now everywhere. Emily and Holmes were covered with it. Walker had missed most of the flying blood because he’d been holding Emily, but the bottom of his pants were drenched in the stuff.

  Laws waved. “Come on. Hurry.”

  Holmes scrambled out first. Walker pushed Emily toward him, then ducked under the 550 cord that was threatening to clothesline him. Holmes pulled Emily into his arms and carried her like a child. She put her arms around his neck and sank her face into his shoulder.

  Walker pulled his pistol from his cargo pocket just as the sirens came upon them, skidding to a stop on the other side of the vehicle. Taking in the entirety of the scene, Walker admired how Yank had set them up. The truck had essentially plugged an alley that ran between two three-story brick buildings. The rear of the truck opened into a long alley which had another alley coming in perpendicular and forming a T. Holmes ducked around the corner into this one just as the police began to shout commands through their loudspeaker from the other side of the truck.