SEAL Team 13 (SEAL Team 13 series) (8 page)

That was just insanity, though. A fantastical nightmare, nothing more.

In the real world, the dead didn’t rise. In the real world, zombies didn’t exist.

Leland gripped the steering wheel nervously.

Right?

He laid on the horn and the gas at the same time, determined to get himself out of whatever the hell he’d gotten himself into, no matter what it took. The Tahoe leapt forward, charging the mob ahead of him, but the figures didn’t so much as flinch. As he roared into them, Leland saw no sign of them tensing to move, no hint of fear, and he realized then that he was about to mow down a whole pack of people when he’d only been attacked by two.

He lost his determination, throwing the wheel hard to the left at the last second, putting the truck into a spin on the slush-and-ice-covered ground. Honestly, it was the only thing he could have done, he realized as the Tahoe spun toward the derrick rig, which was pumping serenely in its path. The Tahoe struck the pump, whiplash snapping Leland Griffin’s neck as the vehicle came to a jarring stop with enough force to snap the derrick and send black oil gushing skyward.

It rained down all around the car as the rotting crowd watched silently from a distance.

Finally, a woman’s voice rose above the sound.

“The dark has deepened sufficiently,” she said. “Go to the other fields, go to the town. Do as you desire.”

The crowd slowly dispersed, heading off in different directions as she calmly walked over to the machine shop and fetched a road flare from within. It snapped to life, illuminating her grotesque features harshly against the dark of the night sky. Her face was drawn back, leather stretched over bone, a permanent sickly grin exposing her teeth as she tossed the flare underhanded into the oil spill.

It sputtered for a moment, almost seeming to go out, and then, with a roar that shook the ground, a plume of flame erupted against the dark. The woman turned around, shielding her eyes from the glare as she walked off the compound and turned north to town.

COAST GUARD BREAKER, BEAUFORT SEA
USS
NORTHERN DREAM

“Captain, we just received an emergency call from Barrow.”

“What’s the situation?” Captain Ronald Tyke asked, glancing over as the mate walked in.

“Riot.”

The single word was delivered in a disbelieving tone, and Tyke didn’t blame him. He stiffened, looking over at the man. “A what?”

“That’s what the call said.…A riot has broken out in Barrow.”

Tyke thought about it briefly, frowning. “Was there a Greenpeace protest scheduled or something?”

“No, sir, nothing of that kind. Summer season has passed; most of those hippy types don’t hang around for long once the temperature starts to drop. The low light this time of year makes for bad photo ops, anyway.”

Tyke grunted, but nodded in agreement. “All right, well, how big is it?”

“Apparently there have been fatalities, and the local police can’t shut it down.”

“Crap.”

“Yes, sir.”

After thinking quietly for a moment, Tyke said, “Have our course changed to take us to Barrow, shortest route. And relay the call to Alaskan Command. I think they’re the only ones with enough warm bodies to break up any serious fight.”

“It’ll probably be over long before either of us get within a hundred miles of the place.”

“I know. We’ll make the calls anyway. We don’t want things to get out of hand.”

“Yes, sir.”

ELMENDORF AIR FORCE BASE, ANCHORAGE, ALASKA
ALASKAN COMMAND (ALCOM) HQ

“General, a strange call just get kicked up the chain.”

Brigadier General Alphonse looked up as his aide walked into his office with a printed communiqué. “What is it?” he grunted.

“Civilian request for aide in Barrow, sir. There’s a riot in progress.”

The general blinked. “What?”

“Just what I said, sir.”

“Not our jurisdiction. Kick it over to the state troopers.”

“Yes, sir, I did. They don’t have any way to get enough people up there.”

“How many people could they need?”

“Apparently it’s a big riot.”

“Fine, we’ll give them a plane. We can do that much without stepping on any toes.” The general paused for a moment, then frowned. “How big?”

“I was wondering the same thing, so I put in a request for some recon photos,” the sergeant admitted, looking a little guilty.

The general just chuckled—he wasn’t going to make a fuss about whether all the forms had been filled out right or the request had been cleared through the proper channels. He wanted the information too, after all. “And?”

“It’s a
big
riot, sir.”

The general stiffened at his sergeant’s tone. He’d never known the man to exaggerate, and he didn’t like how serious he sounded. Wordlessly he accepted the paper that the other man handed him, noting the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) symbol in the corner. He held it in front of him, taking in the satellite image of Barrow.

There were plumes of smoke rising from some of the buildings, clear fires burning in others, and ample evidence of destruction everywhere he looked.

“That’s not where it stops, sir,” the sergeant said, handing him another photograph.

Alphonse accepted this one with trepidation. Something told him it wasn’t going to be any better than the first.

He was right.

“Sweet Jesus, son. Tell me this isn’t—”

“Those are burning oil wells southwest of Barrow.”

“Tell the troopers to get their people together, and we’ll send some of ours up with them,” the general said, looking up. “And get me the governor on the line—we may need to declare a state of emergency.”

“Yes, sir.”

Within hours, a motley group of state troopers and National Guard reservists were thrown together out on one of the runways, a C-130 warming up its engines just for them.

The briefing, such as it was, went quickly, as no one knew much of anything…and those who did know something were more concerned with getting in the air than talking on the ground. In all, about sixty men were shoved into the belly of the bird and sent on their way practically before they knew what was going on.

They were given more details once they were in the air, as much as anyone knew, anyway, and they grimly settled themselves in for a long ride with an unpleasant task ahead of them on the other side.

Elsewhere the oil companies were rushing firefighters into planes of their own, screaming for security escorts from the military, while ALCOM started to put together a long-term relief package and waited for a response team from the Federal Emergency Management Administration.

It was an unwelcome break from the routine, but by late evening of that night, General Alphonse was confident they had it all well in hand.

CHAPTER

CORONADO,
CALIFORNIA

“What the hell is this?” Captain Andrews growled, tossing a sheaf of papers across Masters’s desk.

He barely glanced at it, and didn’t look at her. “Requisition forms.”

“I know that!”

He could resist neither the wry smirk that cracked his face nor the words that came to his lips. “Then why did you ask?”

His sense of humor apparently didn’t hold much water with Andrews—her glare would have turned him to stone in another place, another time.

“Beowulf assault rifles, Auto Assault–12s, Smith and Wesson 500 revolvers?” she growled, eyes rolling. “Compensating for something, are we?”

That caught his attention, and he matched her eye roll. “You aren’t in on the mission brief, Captain. You’re not cleared for it, and you don’t know what we’ll be doing. You are here to help manage the administration of the team. So go administrate.”

“You’re treading close to insubordination, Commander, as always.”

“That’s a weak threat, Captain.” He shrugged. “I’m here on the admiral’s request and authority. He may have reactivated my commission, but I didn’t ask for it. You want to bring me up on charges, go ahead. You can’t burn my reputation any more that the government already has.”

She glowered at him for a long moment, then shook her head. “You can’t keep the details to yourself, Commander. That’s not how the Teams operate.”

“The Teams operate on need-to-know,” he countered. “My team already knows the details, and you don’t need to know.”

“That’s not how it works!” she snapped. “Command decides who needs to know what.”

“Not this time.” He shook his head. “Not for this mission.”

“Bullshit!” she snarled at him, infuriated that he’d gotten her to curse, then doubly angry when he just seemed amused by it. “I’m not putting these in until I get some answers.”

“That’s all right, I already did.” Masters shrugged, pulling a second sheaf of papers from a pile and handing them to her.

Captain Andrews blinked, grabbed them, and quickly scanned the pages. The single word “approved” stamped on the bottom glared back at her.

“No way in hell did you get these through so fast,” she breathed out as she shook her head. “No way in
hell
.”

Masters just shrugged. “You have a lot to learn about the Teams, Andrews. I had Admiral Karson copy us onto the testing division’s supply authorization. We’ll get whatever new gear is being considered for deployment.”

He stood up as she gaped at him, and then brushed past her on his way out of the office. “Don’t worry about it, Captain. Just think of all the time you’ll save by not having to fill out requisition forms.”

The hurled epithet that followed him out the door brought another wide smile to his face. He’d always wanted carte blanche to fuck with the brass, and as long as Karson needed him, there wasn’t a thing anyone short of another admiral could do about it.

They may have dragged his ass back in, but Hawk Masters was going to extract every ounce of value from the situation he could.

After all, he only had just so long before the whole thing fell in on him anyway. One way or the other.

“Well?”

“He’s begun recruiting.”

“Anyone we know?”

The young man shook his head in response to Percy’s question. “Mostly no. We know their names, but they’re drifters. Not expected to last much longer anyway.”

“Interesting,” Percy acknowledged.

“We do know one person on the list, however,” the young man added, frowning slightly. “Alexander Norton.”

Percy stiffened, thinking. “I know that name. I can’t remember where.…”

“He crossed over when he was eight.…”

“Eight.” Percy reached up and grabbed the paper the younger man was holding out to him. “That seems…highly unlikely.”

“Yes, sir.” The young man nodded, agreeing.

Crossing the veil at eight years old was practically a death sentence—there was just no way a child could hope able to defend himself against the things that would take notice of him. Heck, few adults survived the experience. Most were slaughtered within minutes, some within days, and the largest chunk of the rest went insane and killed themselves.

Children took the shift in reality with more equanimity, but physically they were meat for the grinder.

“He was taken in by Emilio,” Percy whispered, reading the paper. “The Black. Is he a practitioner?”

“We believe so, yes.”

Percy thought back to the matriarch’s orders and sighed, shaking his head. “All right, go. Send Robert back.”

The young man nodded, falling back before turning and leaving the room.

It was clear that Masters knew more about the actual situation than anyone had realized; otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to find someone like Alexander, who had survived across the veil since he was eight. No, for Masters to have contacted Norton, he had to know a great deal indeed.

That made him dangerous.

A few moments passed, and then Robert Black walked into the room. He was a nondescript sort of man, the kind you would miss in a crowd. Percy knew that that was one of his main skills, actually, and only that knowledge kept him from severely underestimating the man. Robert was five foot eight, slim, and had the sort of looks that left you trying in vain to remember anything distinctive. He had been working for the Line of the Clans for many years, and barely seemed to have aged in the fifteen that Percy had known him.

“Sir?”

“We have a target.”

Robert nodded. “Who?”

“Navy man, by the name of Masters,” Percy said, handing over the file. “He’s a security risk.”

“Immediate?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Percy replied. “We’re fairly sure he hasn’t talked yet, but he’s obviously in the know, and the navy is at least aware that he’s holding information they want.”

Robert nodded slowly, reading the file. He raised an eyebrow when he noted the location. “Coronado? You want this done on a base full of navy SEALs?”

“Is that a problem?”

“No.” Robert shook his head, smiling slightly. “It should be…fun.”

Hawk Masters rubbed his eyes, pushing the grainy grit around more than soothing them, tired of looking at sheet after sheet of paper. Even setting up a small squad entailed a mountain and a half of paperwork, despite the fact that they weren’t “official” at this point.

He pursed his lips as he signed off on another form, one that would get him some of the heavier ordnance types for the AA-12 shotguns he’d requisitioned, and then pushed back from the cheap desk as he looked around the base housing where he was now living. He already missed his cement walls and rammed-earth fortifications.

It was going to take time to get used to living on base again, Masters realized. It didn’t help that the sound of the ocean kept him from sleeping at night. He’d had nightmares for years after the
Fitz
went down, sleeping with a loaded shotgun because it was the only thing that offered him any comfort. Cold comfort, of course, since he knew that a twelve-gauge would provide as much protection against that thing as spitballs.

Honestly, it was a miracle he hadn’t blown his own head off, either accidentally or otherwise, those first couple years after being discharged. It had taken three more to find out just how deep the rabbit hole went, and another couple before he worked his way down to sleeping with a forty-five.

By then he’d figured that if the forty-five wasn’t enough to take out whatever was coming for him, it’d do a cleaner job on his skull than the shotgun. No reason to make it any messier than it had to be for whoever had to clean up.

In the SEALs, Masters had lived by the credo that the only easy day was yesterday. But he couldn’t remember any easy yesterdays, not since crossing the veil. The things he saw when he was out from under its protection, well…they didn’t exactly lend themselves to a decent night’s sleep.

The experience of having his eyes opened to the real world was not something he’d ever forget, any more than he could forget losing most of his team and an entire destroyer to that hellspawned abomination from the depths. He’d since learned that crossing the veil was invariably a traumatic experience, but for most it didn’t involve coming face to tentacle with a god kin.

Hawk slowly cleaned up his desk, putting away the requisition forms and materials he’d gathered as his mind wandered back to the past. There were a couple old sayings about ignorance. First that it was bliss, and second that what you didn’t know couldn’t hurt you.

Truer words were never spoken.

The veil was the only thing that stood between the modern world and the monsters of old, and when he’d learned about it, Masters had wanted to cry. It was like a cosmic joke that the ultimate defense against evil was powered by the ignorance of those it protected, and he felt like he was the punch line.

It flew in the face of everything he’d been brought up and trained to believe, making a mockery of his life up until that point, and utterly destroying him in more ways than one.

To this day, Masters questioned the sanity of those ancient bastards who’d deployed the veil in defense of the planet’s human population. Yet humanity might not have survived the Dark Ages without it. The best research he could muster on the subject was ambivalent at best, and completely contradictory at worst, but it didn’t seem as though humans would have had a chance at winning in an open conflict.

Finally worn out, in both body and mind, Masters flicked off the lights and prepared himself to try and get a few hours of forced sleep before work started again in the morning. It was only a matter of time before something else slipped through one of the growing holes in the veil and he fielded his team for the first time.

It was going to be one hell of a show when that happened.

He almost smiled as he settled himself into bed and closed his eyes. Through the terror, through the horror, there was still that small sliver of his soul that screamed for revenge. It was the last surviving part of the man who had become a SEAL fifteen years earlier.

It was going to be glorious to be that man again.

Sneaking onto a modern US Navy base actually sounded a lot harder than it was. As with most bases of its nature, the one at Coronado was designed more to withstand an assault or the curiosity of civilians than it was to block a single intruder. Against a man like Robert Black, the base’s defenses were entirely insufficient. The fact that he was a man of the Clans made it all the easier for him to gain entry.