SEAL Team 666: A Novel

“Ah, that. I kind of dug the homunculus. Little fuckers were easy to kill once you got a hold of them, but they’re ferociously strong.”

Holmes nodded. “The Triads like using them as servants for all sorts of things. They’re good at stealing things, but even better at sweeping and cleaning the floors.”

“Supernatural janitors,” Walker said, laughing around a piece of cantaloupe. “Just crazy.”

“You seem to be taking all of this in stride,” Ruiz said to Yaya.

“Supernatural has always been a heavy part of Islam,” Yaya said. “Not that we ever saw anything, but it was always understood that it could exist. Djinns have been around since time immemorial. I’m just sad I wasn’t able to help you with that one.”

Holmes shook his head. “You mean the mission from 2007? I see you’ve been reading the mission log. That wasn’t a true Djinn. An oil executive was possessed by one that had become attached to a knife he’d been given by some Bedouins.”

“You gave credit to SEAL Team 6 for that one.”

Holmes shrugged at Yaya’s comment. “We had to. We don’t exist.”

“And the other SEALs? What do I tell them when they ask me?”

“It’s a SAP, plain and simple.”

“Plain and simple?” Yaya drank his beer and shook his head. Doubt showed in his eyes.

“What about you?” Ruiz asked. “Did you know about us before you were asked to join?”

Yaya considered a moment. “I knew there was something going on. I knew there was no pest control service. I also knew that Holmes was involved in a SAP.”

“And you never asked?” Ruiz raised an eyebrow.

“I never asked. Okay, I see your point.”

“What about family?” Walker asked.

“What about them?”

“I mean do you have one?”

“A family?” Yaya laughed. “Sure, doesn’t everyone?”

Ruiz and Holmes glanced at Walker. The look wasn’t missed by Yaya. “What? Did I say something wrong?”

“They’re worried about me,” Walker said. “I don’t really have any family.”

Yaya’s eyes widened.

“Long story,” Walker continued. “I was asking you about your family.”

“I have the usual—I mean, a mother, father, two sisters. They live in Philly. My father’s a doctor there.”

“What about a wife?” Walker asked.

“I had one of those. She didn’t work out.”

“Isn’t that always the case?”

“Wasn’t like that. She didn’t care how much I deployed. She just wanted me to be more devout.”

“How devout did she want you to be?” Walker asked.

Yaya held up the half-empty beer bottle. “None of this, for sure.” Seeing their expressions, he shrugged and added, “Listen, there’s devout and then there’s crazy. My father raised us as American Muslims.”

Walker crinkled his eyebrows. He’d never heard the phrase.

“Think of me as a Methodist Muslim,” Yaya said. He downed his beer, tossed it into the trash, and grabbed a new one. He twisted the top off and leaned back to rest against the picnic table so he could stare at the ocean.

“Okay. Now you have me interested. What the heck is a Methodist Muslim?” Holmes asked.

“Someone who believes in Allah and the Pillars of Islam. I pray. I fast. I give. I travel to the holy places. I believe that Allah is the one God. All the rest,” he said, waving his beer absently to the universe, “is fashion.”

Ruiz snorted. “What? You mean the burkas?”

Yaya nodded and got to his feet. “Absolutely. Ever look at the robes worn by a Catholic priest and an Aram mullah? Same damn thing except one is made from satin and the other from wool. It’s all a circus after the word of Allah. A Pee-Wee Herman doodle time for the fashionistas to get us involved in pomp and circumstance of worshipping the right god the right way.”

41

THE MOSH PIT. MORNING.

Pain lanced through Laws’s brain from the sheer amount of concentration he’d exerted over the last twenty hours. Operating on energy drinks, espresso, and a secret stash of Jolt Cola, he was as wired as any meth addict. Still, he’d made progress. At first he hadn’t seen it. There’d been so much data, he’d felt like the first IBM computer getting stuffed with the grammar rules of the Chinese language. Because it was about grammar. It was about grammar and the differences between characters as they appear in modern standard and the more ancient usages.

He’d started out by plastering every available surface with pages upon pages of Chinese characters. He’d walked back and forth, staring at them, looking for a pattern, reading here and there. Some of the documents were technical schematics of different pieces of ship’s equipment. Once he discovered these, he ripped them free and threw them into a corner, only to replace them with new pages. He repeated this over and over until the entire floor and underside of the conference table was a graveyard of ship’s schematics and maintenance logs.