SEAL Team 666: A Novel

Walker reached down and snatched the cell phone from the young man’s trembling hands. “You won’t be needing this anymore.”

“You … you … you…” the man stuttered.

Yaya approached from behind. “I think this one speaks English.”

“At least one word of it,” Walker said. “Let’s see if he knows any more words. Got a name?”

“Ed … Eddie.”

“Okay, Ed-Eddie,” Yaya said, kneeling next to the man’s head. He pressed the 9mm hard into one ear. “Where’d you take my friends?”

“I can’t tell you,” he whimpered. “He’ll kill me.”

“Who? Chi Long?” Walker asked, hoping that Laws had been right.

As soon as he said the name, Ed-Eddie’s face blanched. “You know?”

“Of course we know. We’re U.S. Navy SEALs. We fucking know everything,” Yaya said.

Walker couldn’t help but grin at his friend’s aplomb. “Almost everything. Where are the others? Where are the other SEALs?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bullshit!” Yaya twisted his face into something monstrous. “Total fucking bullshit!”

Ed-Eddie’s eyes rolled toward Walker, who knew instinctively that he’d have to be the foil for Yaya’s bad cop. They didn’t have Laws’s interrogation experience, but it would have to do. In conversations on the safety of American soil, he’d always proclaimed that he’d never resort to torture. Now he’d have to put that assertion to the test.

“No, Yaya. Maybe our friend here just wants to help. I mean look at him. He’s not like those others.” As he said it, Ed-Eddie shook his head. “He wears American clothes and American shoes. Hell, look at his shirt. For all intents and purposes, he might just be American.”

Yaya stared at Walker for a moment, then smiled slyly. “He’s the farthest thing from American. A shirt and shoes don’t make you who you are. You know what we say, clothes don’t make the man.”

Walker shrugged. “You’re right about that. You can dress the part, but you can’t act the part. An American wouldn’t let another American get hurt. In fact, an American would make sure he’d do anything in his power to help his fellow American.”

“Why not let me take him out in the woods,” Yaya said, digging the pistol into the man’s ear. “He’s not American. He’s just a pretender. He’s just a slave of Chi Long.”

Ed-Eddie began to cry. “I want to be an American,” he sobbed. “I want to help. I do, but he’ll kill me.”

“Who’ll kill you, Ed-Eddie?” Walker asked.

The man sniffed. “It’s just Eddie.”

“Okay, Eddie. So who’s going to kill you?”

He squirmed on the floor, trying to see both Yaya and Walker. “You know,” he whispered. “Him.”

“Him?” Walker pointed at Yaya.

“Or him?” Yaya pointed back at Walker.

“No,” Eddie said, his voice going low. “Chi Long.”

“Ahh,” both Walker and Yaya said at the same time. “Him. Is that where you took our friends? To Chi Long?”

Eddie nodded.

“Are they alive?”

Eddie nodded again.

Walker felt an immense surge of relief. But he couldn’t dwell on it. They needed to know more.

“I wouldn’t worry about ‘him,’” Walker said, using finger quotes. “Yaya has a magical device that makes us invisible. He can’t see us.”

Eddie’s eyes narrowed.

“No, really. That’s how the other soldiers couldn’t find us. Just as ‘he’ has magic,” he said, using finger quotes again, “we have magic, too.”

Eddie craned his neck to look at Yaya, who until that moment had been looking imploringly at Walker. Walker shrugged and grinned at his friend.

“Go ahead and show him the concealment device,” Walker urged.

Yaya looked around, then reached into his side pocket. He pulled out the old cable he said was from World War II and held it up. “You mean this old thing?”

“That’s it.”

Eddie looked at it and narrowed his eyes. “How does it work?”

This time it was Yaya’s turn to smile. “You put it in your mouth. Here, Walker will show you.”

Yaya handed the cable over to Walker, who reminded himself that Yaya needed a good asskicking. Walker took it, grinned at Eddie, then placed an end in his mouth. It tasted like tar, cigar ash, and an old wig, but he kept it in his mouth.

Eddie looked from one to the other. “But there are two of you.”

Yaya nodded in agreement, and looked at Walker. When Walker’s grin grew even larger, Yaya’s nod turned into a shake.

Walker pulled his out of his mouth momentarily and said, “We both have to have it in our mouths.”

He put his back in and offered Yaya the other end. Yaya put it in his mouth and frowned only a little at the taste. The cable was almost at its limit as it stretched between the pair. Yeah, revenge is a dish best served with old cable.

“But I can see you,” Eddie said matter-of-factly.

Walker removed it from his mouth. “Of course you can. You aren’t a demon. This only works on demons. You know, like him.”

Eddie stared at Yaya, who still had his end in. After a moment, he narrowed his eyes shrewdly. “Not as good as a suit.”

Walker and Yaya exchanged a look.

“What kind of suit?” Walker asked.

“You know,” Eddie said, touching the skin of his arm. “One made from people.”

“You’ve seen this?”

Eddie glanced toward the dead soldiers. “I’ve seen one.”

56

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