SEAL Team 666: A Novel

He kept to the center of the road. He considered sloughing through the jungle, but the going would be slow and any attempt at speed would mean that he’d be heard well in advance. He kept his eyes and ears open for everything, lowered his head, and pretended he was back on the Coronado. For as bad as his legs had felt during his all-expense-paid vacation at the BUD/S resort, the stress and danger were nothing compared with this mission. On the island he’d been concerned with making it through each day. Here he was concerned about making it, period.

The image of Yaya’s expression of surprise as he was hauled into the trees bore through his attempt at concentration. He felt his cheeks burn, but ignored it as best he could. He made seven kilometers before he was forced to rest. He kept walking, but he couldn’t run until his breathing found a rhythm.

“You okay?” Jen asked over the radio.

“Sure.” Cramps in his stomach and legs were already tightening.

“You’ve stopped running.”

“Glad … glad you noticed.”

There was a pause. “I have an update. You ready?”

“Sure.” His breathing was coming around.

“In five hours Kadwan will be removed from the map.”

“What?” He stopped, hands on his knees, and stared at the ground. “What does that mean?”

“The strange cloud above the city is spreading. People are finally starting to pay attention and they’re getting worried. Nothing we have in orbit can penetrate it, which means we don’t have a clue what’s going on beneath. So, a squadron of Tornado jets are en route. After in-flight refueling, they’re scheduled to deliver bombs on target at 0800 hours local time.”

“So it’s 0300 now?”

“Check.”

“And how far do I have to go?”

“About ten kilometers.”

It was doable.

“Jack?”

“Yeah.”

“If for any reason you can’t make it, don’t get in the kill radius.”

“What’s the kill radius?”

“They’re dropping GBU-38 JDAMs. Do you know what that is?”

Joint Directed Attack Munitions. Five hundred pound bombs. “How many?”

“Four bombs per plane.”

Which meant forty-eight bombs—twenty-four thousand pounds of explosive on target.

“That gives you a standoff of five kilometers,” she said, her voice breathless. “Do you hear me, Jack? Do you hear me? Don’t go if you can’t make it.”

“I have to, Jen. I have to.” There was no way he could not try and save his friends. For too long he’d been fighting for the dead. Now he was fighting for the living and it had never felt more right. Wasn’t it she who’d told him that?

It took a few moments for her to answer. When she did, she said simply, “I know.”

“Going to go silent for a while,” he said. “Save batteries. I’ll contact you when I’m close.”

Then he turned off the set. The silence was at once welcome and foreboding. He began to run faster. He narrowed his vision. He thought about everyone he’d lost, from Yaya to Fratty, to Holmes, Laws, and Ruiz, to his father, his brother, and that little boy who’d done nothing to anyone except be taken by a demon sent by someone keen on getting back at his father. Walker thought of all of them and created a fuel by which he could run.

He began to whisper cadence, using his breathing to propel the air one syllable at a time.

One mile. No sweat.

Two miles. Better yet.

Three miles. Beat the jets.

Four miles. Shoot the rest.

And on and on he sang his barely audible motivational cadence, letting the mindless motivation push him forward. It was all he had.

60

KADWAN. EARLY MORNING.

A small hill overlooked the flat plane of Kadwan, all the way to the sea. A long narrow city with rolling hills to the east and the Gulf of Martaban to the west, it had once held a hundred thousand people. But that had been before all the buildings had all been destroyed.

Musso had told them that a direct translation of the original name of the land of the Karen—Kawthoolie—was “land burned black.” Now it seemed the only name this place deserved. Fire burned everywhere. A pall of acrid smoke gripped the length and breadth of the city, hanging low and thick. The occasional scream broke the silence, from what or whom Walker didn’t know.