SEAL Team 666: A Novel

“Actually you do. I think you understand it pretty damn well. The focus might be a knife, or an amulet, or a ring. Very often it’s a piece of jewelry. And yes. I think it might short-circuit the connection between the human and the demon, if we can find it and if we can remove it from the host. You should read the mission log. There are quite a few missions whose success was based on a team member first discovering, then removing a focus.”

Walker nodded.

“Does that help?” Laws asked.

“Yeah. I think I’ve got it now.”

“Good. Now roll back over and get some sleep.”

Walker started to do just that when an alarm began going off in the cabin.

Holmes popped up and made a beeline for the crew chief, who’d also awoken and was already on a hard line to the cockpit. He spoke animatedly into the phone for what seemed like several minutes but could have only been a few seconds. When he was done, he addressed the team.

“We have weather. A cyclone is brewing and sending up thunderheads ten miles high. We have no choice but to fly beneath it. We’re talking about two hundred feet above the water. It’s going to be a rough ride.”

“We gonna have enough fuel to reach our rendezvous?” Ruiz asked.

“Negatron. Air refueler was already called back. We’ll be landing in the beautiful garden spot of Guadalcanal. NFI.”

Walker shook his head. Murphy was with them already. It wasn’t a good sign.

The Starlifter went into a forty-five-degree dive. Yaya and Ruiz fell on their rumps. The other SEALs managed to stay upright, although Walker’s stomach felt like it was still a thousand feet above them.

They made it to the benches and strapped themselves in. The plane began to shake as it coursed through the outer edges of the cyclone.

Walker grabbed onto his straps and forced his mouth shut so that the vibrations wouldn’t get his teeth chattering. Looking around, he realized that he wished there were windows. Not that there was anything he could do about it, but knowing that they were about to crash into the ocean seemed better than not knowing.

Ruiz, who was sitting beside him, pointed at his rucksack. The altimeter they would use for the HAHO into Myanmar was on top of it, the digital numbers rapidly running backwards. They were at twenty thousand feet and descending fast.

After a few moments, Walker closed his eyes. He decided it was better not to know. If death was going to claim them, he’d rather it be a surprise.

46

GUADALCANAL. MORNING.

As it turned out, they didn’t die.

The wide blue sky made a lie of the fact that a cyclone had just blown through. But the tattered palm fronds and coconuts littering the ground were a picturesque testament to the angry winds that had buffeted the South Pacific since creation. Still, after a few days of wind and another of rain, the Solomon Islands would be back to normal. They’d survived far worse than a simple cyclone. They’d survived bombardment from the Japanese and Americans as this small hunk of rock and dirt had been battled over until tens of thousands of men had bled out on the sand.

Walker was cognizant of this and more as he stared out upon the island. He’d just gone to the monument and was in awe of the place, just as he had been at Gettysburg. There’s a feeling at places where so much life has been lost, and Guadalcanal had it.

It also held some sort of magic. His skin was buzzing gently, as if a low current of electricity were running through it. But this was a benign sort of magic, perhaps created in the confluence of violence and death. A side effect of the battles, perhaps. Nothing like the malevolent ice pick he’d felt jabbing his psyche at the sweatshop.

He wiped sweat from his brow. They were essentially on the equator. The heat was stifling. He went shirtless above his cargo pants. He couldn’t imagine how the U.S. Marines had fought in such heat while wearing old wool uniforms. Even as relatively cool as Walker felt, moving was a little slow-motion. Wearing full battle rattle and in uniforms with a steel pot on one’s head had to be akin to walking on the bottom of the ocean in a diving suit. Fighting seemed an improbable occupation in this gloriously beautiful but terribly remote place.

He made his way back to the airstrip. The crew chief and ground personnel were talking off to one side, smoking cigarettes. Holmes, Ruiz, and Laws lay on their gear in the shade of the Starlifter. Down the runway, Yaya played with Hoover. This could almost have been a perfect moment. But it was the quiet before the storm. It was that single moment of peace before all hell broke loose. The Japanese had felt it before the marines landed. The marines had felt it as they huddled, wet and miserable in their foxholes, every morning that they held the island. And Walker had felt it aboard the USS Tennessee as he prepared his sniper rifle, with the sun, the wind, and the sea something out of a travel magazine rather than a Somali pirate sea adventure.