SEAL Team 666: A Novel

FROM THE DIARY OF LARRY WALKER.

It’s day three of the exorcism. My heart has broken so many times in the last seventy-two hours I can’t begin to tell you how much I hurt inside. One day you’ll read this and know that all your pain, all of your agony, is my fault.

Sometimes I wish that it was your brother they did this to. He’s older and stronger. I think he would have taken it better. Although I have to admit, you have absorbed so much self-mutilation and punishment to your flesh that I am amazed at what is survivable.

I don’t know how damaged you will be because of this. But if you survive, I know you’re going to hate me. So I leave this to you. After all, if you’re going to hate me, I want you to hate me for the right reasons.

Your mother called me an asshole. Not because I wasn’t a good provider, but because I was never there for her. I didn’t change after her death, either. I was an asshole to Brian and I was an asshole to you. My defense, if I’m even allowed one, is that there was only one way I knew how to provide a future for my family. Sure, I could have stayed like the other Navy chiefs and lived hand to mouth until I retired. But that’s no kind of life. That’s subsistence living. That’s one step above the poverty line and it isn’t fair that you kids should have to live a life like that.

So I made deals.

Some people say I stole. I never did. Everything I dealt I bought from the DRMO at auction. I have the receipts for everything if anyone ever asks. I’d buy a surplus of chairs from DRMO, sell them to a guy in Subic for a hundred cases of beer, then sell those to resorts in Mindanao who were having trouble getting local vendors because of all the Muslim separatists. I’d triple my initial investment this way and a hundred other ways.

Making deals wasn’t about what you were selling. It was always about who you were selling it to. It’s a personality game. You have to know people who know people, and I knew everyone.

Maybe that was the problem.

See, in order to make money, you have to take advantage of someone. To make a lot of money, you take a

lot of advantage of someone. Most of the times people realize it. After all, they’re still making a profit. Their problem was they didn’t have the means or know the right people to make the kind of profit that I did. And that usually left them feeling pissed.

But I wasn’t a good guy all the time.