SEAL Team 666: A Novel

The remaining SEALs stood aside as their leader fought. Their hands flexed, each teetering on the balls of his feet, eager and ready. Even Hoover waited, her only dissent a constant growl of frustration for not being allowed to join in.

Somewhere outside, they heard a cry for help, then a gurgling scream. Whatever it was, there was nothing that could be done. Their mission was in this room, and until the beast was down, none of them would leave.

The combatants fell to the ground, but their new position did nothing to halt the frequency of their blows. Then suddenly the fighting stopped. The lead SEAL shot rigid, a taloned hand gripping his neck, his tongue jammed out from blue lips. One of the SEAL’s hands came up to pry away the hold on his neck, slipping down to the creature’s wrist to try and wrench it free. But the hold was too tight.

The creature climbed stiffly to a standing position, dragging the SEAL with it. As they stood, the SEAL brought his other hand upward, embedding the blade so deeply through the bottom of the creature’s chin that the point erupted from the top of its head. It stood for one long, mad minute, choking the life out of the SEAL as tightly as it could, then toppled. As the creature fell, it pulled the lead SEAL with it.

The other SEALs worked to lever open the thing’s hand from their team member’s neck. It took great effort, but they finally managed, and as they did, the SEAL took in a lungful of air.

“Mother of God,” he rasped.

They grabbed a blanket from the bed and rolled the creature into it, then rushed it downstairs and out the door. Bodies littered the yard. By the looks of them, they were reinforcements who’d been trying to assist the creature SEAL Team 666 now carried. The team’s sniper lay in the corner. Half of his face had been torn away. His single remaining eye stared into the Pakistani night. Something terrible had happened here and it had happened to one of their own.

But there was no time to mourn. They took him, exiting through the hole in the wall, and crowded aboard the second helicopter. They placed the demon on the floor of the aircraft and strapped their deceased sniper into a harness as the doors snapped shut. One by one, they removed their masks, sweat and grime coating their faces. The members of SEAL Team 6 were eager to assist where they could. With their target achieved, the SEALs rose into the air, leaving the first chopper behind. A hundred meters up and the first chopper exploded, denying it to the enemy. Once SEAL Team 666 returned to Bagram, a joint FBI-CIA forensics team videotaped the creature from all angles and took DNA samples. Afterward, SEAL Team 666 escorted the body to the USS Carl Vinson in the Arabian Sea, where they disposed of the demon in a private ceremony.

Only then did SEAL Team 666 appreciate their accomplishment.

Only then did they mourn the loss of their sniper.

Before the next mission, they’d need a new one.

1

KADWAN. SIX MONTHS EARLIER.

The evisceration of the woman was majestic to behold. He’d delighted in her screams, relished the way her mouth opened so wide that it could have eaten the world. Her pathetic gestures as she begged for her life had almost spoiled it. Not that it had evinced any empathy on his part, but it had marred his journey to the spiritual plateau he’d been striving to reach in order to prepare himself for the transformation.

It was at once funny and sad that he’d been living such a life of somnambulant grace, pitifully ignorant of the creatures and beings that coexisted in their shared universe, kept at bay only by a paper-thin film of civilization and ignorance. If he’d only known sooner, maybe he wouldn’t have wasted half his life pretending to be someone who cared about his fellow man.

2

CORONADO ISLAND. MORNING.

Petty Officer First Class Jack Walker felt like the crap had just been beaten out of him. Then again, he’d felt like that for the last twenty-one weeks. Since the first moment of Indoc, when Instructor Alberto Reno had slammed the door and commanded them to their feet, through the ten thousand push-ups, the twenty thousand flutter kicks, the one hundred and twenty continuous hours of training in Hell Week with only four hours of sleep each night, to the bone-numbing cold of Coronado Bay, his body had been beaten, cracked, and remolded. The pain was there when he got up in the morning. It was there when he drank his coffee. It was there when he went to bed at night. Walker pretended not to notice it, but the pain was persistent.

Which was what it was doing now—being persistent.

Instructor Kenny ran up to him. “What is it, Walker?”

“Nothing, Instructor Kenny. It’s just pain leaving the body.”

“If you’re going to scream, then do it standing up. Get on your feet, Walker.”