SEAL Team 666: A Novel

Ruiz and Laws stood to one side. Fratty was closest to the box, but his stance made it obvious that he wanted to get away from it.

“What’s going on?” Holmes asked.

“Inside the box,” Ruiz said, failing to suppress a shudder.

“In that one?” Holmes looked back and forth at his men. “Fratty, I thought I told you to search that fuckwad.”

Fratty gave the box a long look, then asked, “Can I shoot it first?”

“What? The box?”

“Yeah.”

Then they heard the scratching, like from the claws of a large animal. The box shuddered. Once. Twice.

“Yeah. Go ahead and shoot the box,” Holmes said, narrowing his eyes and frowning.

Fratty raised his Super 90 at about the same time the crate’s side exploded in a hail of splintered wood. A monster now crouched in the opening.

The size of a pony, the beast had six legs, a thick, muscular body, and the head of a prehistoric saber-toothed cat. Spikes jutted from its body and head as if it were a dinosaur. Except it wasn’t a dinosaur, it was something that should never have existed.

The creature didn’t pause to be admired. It reached out with a talon-tipped paw and swiped at the nearest moving object—Fratty. The swipe took off the left side of his face, sending ribbons of blood arcing across the hold. The SEAL fell on top of his weapon, blood pulsing out of his ruined face.

Laws opened fire first. Nine-millimeter rounds slammed into the creature with little effect.

Holmes joined in, as did Ruiz and Walker, all firing virtually point-blank at the fell beast. Its body shuddered with the impacts of the rounds, but otherwise it ignored them. It turned baleful eyes at them and swiped again.

The SEALs kept out of the way.

Laws’s magazine emptied first. He ejected it and slid another in place without breaking rhythm.

Holmes did the same.

The noise inside the hold was deafening. Cordite and dust filled the air. At first, the rounds didn’t seem to have any effect, but bits and pieces of the creature began to fly off with the multiple impacts.

When Ruiz ran out of ammo for the 12-gauge, he dropped it, pulled out his SIG Sauer P226, and fired at the beast’s head.

Walker, Laws, and Holmes reloaded and continued firing. Damage to the beast was evidenced by larger and larger pieces of it falling away.

Finally the beast fell to its knees, snarling. It tried to get its legs back under it, but it couldn’t seem to manage.

Everyone took a step forward.

Laws was the first to run out of ammunition. He dropped his weapon and let it hang. He snatched up a length of wood and began to beat the creature on the back.

Walker ran out next, but managed to pull Fratty’s weapon free from beneath him. He fired as he drew it level, then kept firing.

Finally Holmes inched up to it, shoved the barrel of the MP5 into the beast’s mouth, and let loose his last magazine, screaming at the top of his lungs as he did it.

The beast lurched to the ground, held up only by the spikes jutting from its side and head.

The silence was shocking after the violent assault.

The thing lay still. Whatever it was, it was no longer a threat.

Holmes ran and knelt beside the downed SEAL and turned him over. Fratty’s face looked like raw meat. His eyes were fixed.

“Ah, hell! Ruiz, give me a hand. You two, Laws and Walker, get this ship under way. All this shooting couldn’t have gone unnoticed. We still need to do a search and the army’s going to be down on us any fucking second. Got it?”

Both men nodded numbly.

“Wait? Where’s Hoover?” Holmes asked.

They spied her under the stairs, tail between her legs, terror in her eyes as she stared at the dead beast.

They coaxed the dog out and let her smell the corpse. When Laws and Walker left the hold, Hoover gladly followed them.

23

SOUTH CHINA SEA.

It took both of them a good ten minutes to remove the anchor lines. On the bridge, Laws was only able to start one engine. He got the ship moving away from the dock just in time. They could see police cars speeding in their direction, lights flashing. Laws pulled a walkie-talkie out of his cargo pocket, but it was silent. Whatever frequency the police were using, it wasn’t the same one the guards had tuned in to.

After checking to ensure there were no recording devices, they removed their masks, slipping them around so they rested on the backs of their heads.

“We got about twenty minutes before they get their shit together and get a boat in the water or a bird in the air to come after us. We need to do forensics on the computer,” Laws said, “but Fratty isn’t going to be able to help us any time soon.”

“He’s not going to be able to help us at all,” Holmes said, coming onto the bridge with the dead SEAL hanging over a shoulder. He laid Fratty down gently, then removed his own mask.

Hoover went to Fratty and whined. She lay down and rested her head on his chest.

Ruiz came in behind him. He took off his mask, revealing a dour expression. “I checked another crate. It had another of those creatures but it was made of stone.”