SEAL Team 666: A Novel

He glanced up at her. “I guess there’s something to be said for a little ceremony, huh?”

She gave him a tight smile. “You’re a SEAL inside. No ceremony will make it any different.”

He was struck by the raw truth of what she said. It sounded like something Instructor Kenny or Instructor Howard would say. It was very odd to hear it from a person who wasn’t a SEAL.

“And the three nines?” he asked.

“The what?” She turned knitted brows toward him.

He held up the badge. “This brass thing with the three nines.”

She reached out and turned the object in his hand 180 degrees. “Those aren’t three nines.”

He looked at them in the new configuration. “Three sixes.”

“Six Six Six,” she said. “That’s your new team.”

SEAL Team 666? He’d never heard of such a thing. The U.S. government had played fast and loose with numbering over the years. They’d created SEAL Team 6 long before they had a Team 4 or Team 5, just to make the Soviet Union think they had more SEAL teams. Even now, SEAL Team 6 still existed, but under the name DEVGRU, which stood for United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group. Although the reality was supposed to be highly classified, the truth of the matter was plastered all over the Internet. If that couldn’t be hidden, how could something with a name like SEAL Team 666 be kept a secret?

He couldn’t help but laugh. “No really. What does it mean?”

She raised a single eyebrow, much as Leonard Nimoy famously did on the original Star Trek series whenever Captain Kirk said something funny.

“Seriously,” Walker prodded. “What does it stand for?”

“Knowledge of SEAL Team 666 is governed by a special access program, or SAP. SEAL Team 666 is a highly classified special unit under the direct command of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, with direct oversight from the Office of the Vice President and the President. The classification of the group is compartmentalized Top Secret SAP.”

“You’re serious.” He sat forward. “What’s the mission?”

“You’ll get a mission brief shortly,” she said, pointing toward the airfield below. They hadn’t gone all the way to San Diego, just to the other side of the island. “I had the liberty of having your things packed and sent over.”

“Thanks, but most of them need a good cleaning. Maybe by next week I’ll—”

“No. You don’t understand. You’re going to get a mission brief from the team leader. You leave in less than an hour.”

Walker looked at his hands and legs. They were filthy from the surf and physical training. “Can’t I just clean up?”

“Jesus, Walker. You’re a SEAL, not a princess. Act like one.”

He was so startled by her tone and delivery that he barely noticed they’d landed until she exited the helicopter, running low beneath the whirling blades. He ran to catch up.

5

NORTH ISLAND NAVAL COMPLEX AIRSTRIP. NOON.

The FNG walked up the ramp of the C-141 Starlifter as if he were late for the first day of elementary school. To Senior Chief Petty Officer Tim Laws, who’d lived and breathed the movie industry while growing up in Hollywood, the kid was one part young Steve McQueen and another part Ryan Phillippe. The FNG, perennial military term for the Fucking New Guy, wore a buzz cut of blond hair topping a face made of angles and deeply set blue eyes above a mouth whose usual form, Laws guessed, was a smile. Now it was doing everything but smiling. This was the sort of man who wore his heart on his lips.

“Stow your gear and get out of those UDTs. This isn’t a swim meet. This is an op.” Lieutenant Commander Sam Holmes gestured to an empty space of bench along one wall of the interior of the aircraft. A rucksack with weapons stacked on top of it. “That’s your gear. No time to personalize it. You’ll just have to make do.”

Alexis Billing, the Sissy administrator, came next, a phone plastered to the side of her face. She plopped down near Holmes, but made no notice of him.

Laws watched as the new guy dropped his seabag and shoved it under the bench, strapping it to the wall for flight. Good. At least he’d been aboard an operational aircraft before. Laws had been with SEAL Team 666 longer than anyone. He’d seen seven members come and go. Four had left under their own power; the others had left in body bags. He figured he’d do the same when the time came. There was no other place he’d rather be.

The boy sat down and stared at a manila envelope in his hands. He rubbed something through the paper, then folded the envelope roughly, bent over, and stuffed it into his seabag. When he straightened, he grabbed one of the weapons on top of his rucksack—a Stoner SR-25 sniper rifle. To the kid’s credit, he broke it down, inspected the barrel and bolt assembly. After he snapped it back together, he checked the ammunition.