SEAL Team 666: A Novel

Weaving through the stones, they came back to the parking lot from a different angle. Hers was the last car. She went to the passenger door. He opened it for her and let her slide in. He closed the door, and as he walked around the back of her car, he noted that something had changed in their relationship. He’d never told anyone else about his family, especially his father. Which only left one secret, and that one he wasn’t about to tell her or anyone other than the members of his team. At least they had a frame of reference.

36

SUBIC BAY. 1985.

Little Jackie waited in the pile of trash. The liquid from banana skins, coffee grounds, and rain-soaked rags seeped through his clothes, making him shiver. His teeth chattered. Beneath the soft skin of his bare chest he felt what could have been gravel. A piece of rubber he’d seen thrown away by the hookers on Llollo Street in Barrio Barretto rested like a deflated sausage two inches from his nose. A wasp crawled inside, causing the skin of it to wriggle and jump. He felt rats crossing the backs of his legs. When they sniffed at his skin, he fought the urge to jerk as their whiskers tickled the soft underskin of his knees.

Feral.

Like a pig.

Or a dog.

He was wild and eager to gnaw on something that screamed.

Twice, old men shuffled by, coming home from a day spent at the dump.

Each time he screamed like a dying cat. “Hoy! Hoy! Tanda! Halika. Sayaw tayo.” Hey! Hey! Old man. Come and dance with me.

Whenever the men would look over, he could barely contain himself with glee. Although they looked right at him, he knew they didn’t see him. He was invisible. He was like the air.

But then came the old cripple, pulling himself along with one withered arm, a hand gnarled like the fingers of a twisted branch. His skin was the color of old chocolate. He had a few hairs on his face and even fewer on his head. His eyes were the colors of olive pits and were sunken into craters of wrinkles.

Jackie could barely contain his laughter as he leaped free of the trash and high into the air. Pieces of trash sprayed the cripple. Jackie screamed like a beast. He picked up an old hubcap and swung it as hard as he could. He caught the cripple in the side of the head. The cripple screamed. The slick metal slid off without doing much damage, so he brought it around again, this time coming straight down with the hubcap on the crown of the cripple’s head. Blood exploded outward, the sight of it fuel for another swing of the arm. This time it came around in a flat arch, catching the old man beneath the eye.

“Hoy! Hoy!” he cried. “Dance with me, you fool!”

The cripple fell to his side, his mouth twisted into a curl of fear as he whined miserably.

Jackie growled and peed on the man’s withered arm. Then he turned and ran, giggling all the way to wherever he was going, his bare feet slapping at the ground, all the way down La Union Street.

37

THE MOSH PIT. MORNING.

“Try that one. Feel anything?”

Walker didn’t feel a thing. He’d kept from touching the long ratlike tail, but now let his finger graze it. Still nothing. “Are you sure this was from a chupacabra?”

“Positive. I was there. Damn thing almost took Hoover apart. Gave her over two hundred stitches.”

“Then why doesn’t it work?”

Ruiz shook his head and put a fist under his chin. He looked up and down their trophy wall. He’d had the idea during the briefing the other day. What had started as a joke suddenly started to make a certain sense. He’d called it a spooky meter—the way Walker reacted to the supernatural. If they could somehow train it, or figure out a way to use it properly, they could have their own walking, talking supernatural-warning device.

Ruiz spied the pinky finger of a banshee they’d fought on the Isle of Man. He’d had to improvise a mini fuel air explosive bomb to kill her, sucking all the air out of the vicinity to protect them from her wailing. All that had been left was this pinky and a few unrecognizable chunks.

“Here,” he said, hurrying to the piece of wood to which the digit was affixed. The date and place they’d gotten it was on a little brass plate. He pulled the wood from the wall and brought it over to Walker. “Anything now?”

Walker shook his head.

“Really? Not even a buzz?” He held it closer to Walker.

Walker touched it with his hand. “None at all. Maybe it doesn’t work if they’re dead.”

“That can’t be right. We’re always dealing with artifacts that some beegee gets his hand on with bad intentions. Fuck!” He threw the wood on the nearest couch. It bounced up and slammed into the ground. The banshee finger went flying. Hoover, who’d been snoring in a stream of sunlight, leaped to her feet and scrambled after it.