SEAL Team 666: A Novel (17 page)

“Why’d he do that?”

“You’re an ass licker.”

“Tatay?” Daddy.

“Fuck a duck.”

“Ibalik mo sya.” Make him come back.

“Suckie suckie on the rubber dubber duckie.”

“Tay, parang awa mo na.” Daddy please.

The door opened slowly, almost of its own will. Jackie’s father was already backing away from the sight of his child, the lascivious look of hunger curving his little lips into something inhuman.

“Fuck a duck, Daddy. Fuck a duck.”

It would take three months for the father to find a way to get his son back, and in saving him, he’d find his own demise.

31

KADWAN. TWO MONTHS EARLIER.

The shipment from Temple of Heaven Importers had arrived. He’d had a dozen men bring the thin, man-sized box into the room he’d spent the last six months preparing. The walls, ceiling, and floor bore the results of his creation. A single brazier mounted in each corner of the room provided a dull glow.

While he sat languidly in lotus position, becoming one with the room, the men placed the box in front of him and hurried out, their eyes flashing their naive fear. He waited for the scurry of their steps to diminish, then resumed listening to the screams that were just on the edge of hearing. The power and energy of the women’s pain mixed inextricably with the swaths of their blood that he’d finger-painted upon the cold stone walls. He’d added the crushed petals of flowers to the mix, creating alternate pigments that breathed life into his work. So instead of a mere abattoir, he now had six planes of hand-painted hell, created through the agony of one hundred and fourteen women, three boys, seventeen men, and an elephant. What had once been a universal red had been transformed into an elegant multicolored creation of geometric slashes and curls, as if his artistic command of their lives had caused the blood to reshape into its own outraged intelligent designs.

With the mad screams of the dead loud in his ears, he opened the box before him. It took a while. The Chinese loved their knots and used them to keep both good and evil at bay. Finally he lifted the lid and stared at the thing that lay within the luxurious gold satin interior.

It glistened below him, telling the story of so many people who’d allowed their bodies to be colored. A tattoo of a snake here, a dragon there, a garish anchor with a naked Western woman next to the letters of someone’s long-forgotten lover, and a hundred more, all stitched together with thread stolen from the mandala rugs of Tibetan monasteries.

Touching it with a trembling finger, he felt its paper-thin fragility. Yet no matter how fragile it seemed to him, to the other it would be like a suit of titanium Kevlar. The men and women who’d gone into the creation of this wonder would keep the creature from latching onto his soul. It would allow him to survive the channeling and give him power over the one who’d been speaking with him all these months.

Trust me
, it had said.

But he knew better. The suit of tattooed skin would be his commentary on the being’s desire to be trusted.

He unfolded his legs and stood tall. His angular shoulders and hips pressed against his rib-thin, naked brown body. His skin was a road map of self-discovery, crisscrossed with charts from thirty years of self-mutilation.

As he stepped into the suit of other people’s skin, he was delighted to hear the screams grow louder.

32

GOLDEN BUDDHA. IMPERIAL BEACH. LUNCH.

Walker and Ruiz sat in the ratty vinyl booth comparing birth dates on the Chinese zodiac. They were dressed in loose-fitting cargo pants, Hi-Tec boots, T-shirts, and hoodies. The hoodies hid the 9mms in quick-draw shoulder holsters. Their cargo pockets were filled with magazines. Each also had an MK3 knife strapped to his left calf. Walker’s T-shirt was from a restaurant in Salt Lake City called Steaks and Bitches, and had a prominent picture of a cowgirl with a steak on the end of a long fork. Ruiz wore an Old Navy shirt.

“You’re a cock,” Ruiz said.

“And you’re a goat.”

“But you’re a cock.” This time his smirk was in full force.

Walker shook his head. “It’s a rooster.”

“They’re the same thing. ‘Cockerel’ is the term for a young male fowl. We call them cocks for short. ‘Rooster’ is the slang term for a mature male. They made you a cock. Not me. Anyway, don’t blame me, blame the Chinese zodiac.”

Walker stared at Ruiz as though he’d just answered a Double Jeopardy question as the young Chinese waitress delivered their hot tea and bowls of steaming hot and sour soup. Ruiz dug in right away. Walker waited until the waitress left, then reaffirmed, “I’m a rooster.”

“Cock,” Ruiz said in between slurping his soup.

Walker ate a few spoonfuls. The taste was heavy with mushrooms, the way he liked it, and only had a bit of bite. He usually evaluated a Chinese restaurant by their ability to make hot and sour soup. This one was pretty terrific. It was going to be sad at the end of the day when they were no longer able to make the soup. But that’s what they deserved for housing a Snakehead sweatshop and way station in their basement, or so said the intelligence gleaned from the ship’s hard drive. At first, SPG wasn’t sure if it had any relevant information, but then one of the analysts began tracking the ship’s route of travel based on navigational buoy beacon responses along the coast and discovered that the ship had been anchored off the coast within ten nautical miles of the restaurant. What turned out to be a gold mine was a deeply hidden file with latitudinals and longitudinal, each with notations using the word “Pifu,” which translated roughly to “skin suit.”

When they finished, the waitress brought two heaping serving dishes of twice-cooked pork and Mongolian beef, along with a large bowl of steaming white rice. As he had with the soup, Ruiz dug in right away.

“You’re actually going to eat?” Walker asked.

“Sure, why not?”

Why not? Walker checked his watch. They were six minutes from making their move, that’s why. He looked around the restaurant. Five other tables were occupied. Three of those were regular customers. One table held a heavyset, mean-as-a-Rottweiler NCIS agent named Alice Surrey, and at the other sat Laws and Yaya. Holmes was still waiting for the board. He was forced to stay back and keep Hoover company. While Laws was yammering away at one thing or another, Yaya looked miserable. Or at least his eyes did, because that’s the only part of him that wasn’t covered in black fabric. Being the newest member of the team and conveniently Middle Eastern, he was chosen to wear the burka. Not only did it lend some authenticity, but it allowed for a lot of fabric with which to hide the weapons he had secreted beneath.

“Y’all might as well eat,” Ruiz said, barely intelligible around a bite of food.

“How can you eat at a time like this?”

“The food is good. Eat.”

“You’re a goat, all right.”

“Just being practical. You’re going to need the energy.” Ruiz glanced around without moving his head. “Plus, you need to look like you’re eating rather than sitting round scoping the place.”

Walker picked at the pork with his chopsticks. He slid one piece into his mouth, aware that they only had three minutes. His increasingly heightened tension made it taste like clay, but to keep up appearances he chewed the piece of meat until it was macerated into a paste.

Finally it was time.

Yaya, dressed as a woman, got up at the same time as Surrey. They both made a beeline for the bathroom. Surrey was there first, but Yaya pushed her out of the way, entered the bathroom, and slammed the door behind him.

Surrey tried to open the door, but it was locked. She began to bang heartily on the hollow wooden door. “It was my turn!” She began shouting at the top of her lungs, “Get out!” Each protest was accompanied by a thump on the door.

The entire Chinese waitstaff came running, shocked and dismayed by the ugly American antics. One of them, a petite waitress, put her hand on Surrey’s arm and was shoved away for her efforts. Meanwhile, Surrey had added
bitch
to her shouted mantra
Get out!

By now, everyone was on their feet. One of the tables of real customers, a father, a mother, and two daughters couldn’t take it anymore. They left, but not before the father threw a scalding look at the interior of the restaurant as he dropped a pile of bills to pay for their meal.

Laws acted the part of the confused husband as he approached the door. But instead of speaking English, he spoke Arabic, which confused the waitstaff and seemed to enrage Surrey.

Surrey whirled on Laws and threw a punch toward him. The waitstaff shrieked at this. Laws ducked aside, backing away with his hands out.

“You better run, Arab lover,” Surrey growled.

The remaining customers took off without paying.

Ruiz and Walker approached the group surrounding the door. “Can I help?” Walker asked, turning on his boy-next-door charm for the Chinese to see.

Surrey gave him a smoldering look. “Sure, if you can get the towelhead out of the bathroom so I can cop a squat.”

Those Chinese who spoke enough English to understand the vulgarity whispered harshly to the others. Two male cooks who’d been standing at the door came into the front room. One held a cleaver that looked as if it had been used in the Boxer Rebellion to decapitate British soldiers.

It was time. If the ICE and FBI agents reacted according to plan, the restaurant staff had been segregated from the Triad members in the subbasement. Communications had already been cut. A cell-phone jammer was positioned outside, as was an FBI QRF, in the event the cavalry needed to be called in. Walker hoped it didn’t come to that. If it did, it meant that their mission had failed and one or all of them were dead.

The door to the bathroom opened wide. But instead of the burka-wearing Middle Eastern woman, Yaya stood there in full combat gear. He swept a Super 90 toward the waitstaff. MP5s and other gear hung from his shoulders and neck. Surrey pulled a Walther from her purse and pointed it at the waitstaff.

“Everyone outside,” Laws said in both English and Chinese.

The waitstaff’s eyes had gotten as large as soup bowls. They complied meekly, moving as a single multi-limbed mob out the front door.

The cook with the cleaver bolted. He only got as far as Ruiz, who caught him by the neck. He disarmed him and soon had him in a choke hold.

The other cook held up his hands, ducked, and hurried toward the front door.

Yaya passed MP5s to Laws and Surrey. Ruiz, having deposited the unconscious cook into one of the booths, grabbed his Super 90. From a bag, he passed around enough NVGs and MBITRs for the team and Surrey.

Walker had his 9mm in hand and was poised at the door to the kitchen.

Laws made a commo check. Everyone acknowledged, including the two ICE agents who were undercover delivering food and the FBI agent who’d been busily pretending to be a health inspector. What had begun as a hastily designed, multiagency mission the previous evening appeared to be coming off without a hitch. It had taken some doing for the FBI to relinquish operational control, which they’d initially insisted upon because of the presence of the threat on American soil. But a phone call from Senator Withers of the Sissy to the director of the FBI had ensured that cooperation would be forthcoming. All they asked was to be allowed to participate.

With the restaurant staff safely outside, Laws, Yaya, Walker, Ruiz, and Surrey moved into the kitchen.

Laws reached into the fortune-cookie box, broke one open, and read it over the MBITR. “‘You will soon be surrounded by good friends and laughter.’”

“In bed,” Ruiz added.

“What’s that?” Surrey asked.

“One of our departed brothers used to say that at the end of every fortune in a Chinese cookie you could add the words ‘in bed’ and they’d make perfect sense,” Laws explained.

“Then it sounds like we have an auspicious beginning,” Surrey said. “Can’t wait until I’m surrounded by good friends and laughter.”

“In bed,” Ruiz added.

“In bed,” Surrey corrected herself.

FBI agent Stephens waited in the basement along with the ICE agents. They wore black ballistic jackets with their agency affiliation in big white letters. Each of them held a 9mm. Although they had MBITRs, they weren’t assigned NVGs. They seemed eager to get to the subbasement, but they weren’t eager to walk into the mouth of a dragon, even if it was sleeping. That was something better done by SEAL Team 666.

It was believed that the subbasement had only one avenue of ingress and egress, the stairs down from the actual basement where the restaurant kept its stock of supplies. Under cover of the preceding night, a Special Warfare support team had used ground-penetrating radar, originally designed for demining operations, to try and detect any tunnels. They’d found none.

One of the strategies they’d discussed was to flood the subbasement with gas. Without knowing what sort of ventilation they had and without knowing who they had down there, the fear of accidentally asphyxiating innocents like the sweatshop seamstresses convinced everyone that this strategy wasn’t the right one.

In the end, they decided to conduct a frontal assault. The power would be cut and they’d move in quick. They synced watches, then donned the NVGs. Ten seconds later, the power was out and SEAL Team 666 and Surrey spun up the green universe. They had about fifteen seconds before the backup generator kicked in.

Yaya was the first one down the stairs, with the rest of the team stacked behind him. The stairway opened directly into a large rectangular room filled with furniture and people. As soon as his aiming laser touched a Triad member, he let free two-round bursts.
PopPop! PopPop! PopPop! PopPop!
Four men went down hard.

Now in the room, the rest of the team fanned out behind him.

Laws’s MP5 snapped, the sound like rapid-fire dog barks.

Walker tracked the action, but held fire, just as Surrey did.

Ruiz’s Super 90 roared once.

When the lights snapped back on, they pushed the NVGs back on their heads.