SEAL Team 666: A Novel (32 page)

He stared at it for a second like a pig looking at a wristwatch, then depressed the button on the side. “Jen, this is Jack. You there?”

“Jack!” Her voice broke.

“Jen, are you here? Can you see me?” He stared into the sky.

“We can see you. Listen, you have to get the motorcycle working. More of those creatures are coming.”

Walker glanced at the wreck.

“Jack, I’m dead serious. Hurry!”

59

ALONE IN THE JUNGLE. NIGHT.

He’d picked up a limp sometime after the wreck, two hours ago, and now Jen told him he was less than thirty clicks from Kadwan. Somehow, he’d righted the motorcycle and managed to get it started. The wheel on the sidecar was blown and both wheels of the cycle were bent, but it ran, albeit like a circus-clown funnycycle. Still, it moved faster than he could have.

So while he’d wobble-wheeled down the center of the deserted road, wary of a
qilin
appearing around every corner, he listened to Jen as she provided what information she could. Much of it was old news, but other parts were incredible.

“We’ve been tracking Hoover for the last few hours,” she’d said. “She’s within ten kilometers of your location.”

Walker had inadvertently slowed down when he’d heard that. “But how?”

“We have no visuals, but Hoover has an RFID broadcasting on ultrahigh frequency.”

“She’s following them?”

“Must be. By her direction of travel, she’s heading straight towards Kadwan. Holmes must have activated her homing beacon when he was captured. We believe he and the others might be still alive.”

“They are,” Walker said, then briefly told them about the information he’d received from Eddie.

Then Billings came on the line. Walker felt his posture tighten as she took command of the mission from ten thousand miles away. She explained how they’d seen the attack on the warehouse and the ambush. Then they’d lost coverage for a time. It took getting the vice president involved, but now they had another satellite to use for a short three-hour window. Not that it was doing much good. They were totally blind to the events transpiring in Kadwan. Inexplicably the advanced optics on the NRO satellite were incapable of penetrating the cloud cover. All she could verify was Holmes’s location, currently in the middle of a cricket field.

As he rode, they devised a way for him to intersect Hoover. The dog was moving at a steady clip, but traveling east of Walker’s position through the jungle. By their estimation, Hoover should reach Kadwan within an hour. If he was able to continue traveling by motorcycle, even at its reduced rate because of the crash, Walker would be there half an hour before the dog, which was plenty of time for them to engage.

But ten minutes after that calculation, the motorcycle stopped for good. Not only was it out of gas, but the rear tire had lost its air. Walker was now on foot.

He hung the improvised radio around his neck. He had his Stoner and a single AK with three magazines. The Stoner and the AK both used 7.62mm, although the diameter of the AK’s rounds was slightly smaller, so he tossed the AK and settled on the better rifle. Although the ammunition wasn’t what he was used to, what he’d lose in cyclic rate of fire he’d gain in accuracy and distance. If the
qilin
were any indication of what he’d expect, then it didn’t matter how many times he hit it if those shots weren’t on target. With the Stoner across his back and the 9mm in his thigh holster, his hands were free and he began jogging right away.

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.

That this virtually unknown group, lost to the whims of history, could be so powerful was unanticipated by all the analysts. But it shouldn’t have been. After all, it was the Karen who’d stopped the Mongols. It was the Karen who’d stopped Alexander. They’d once been as dominant a group as ever lived on the earth. But the centuries had taken their toll. Now they were a minority, scattered across several countries in the backwater of Southeast Asia, and it seemed that one madman was determined to bring them back to prominence. Saw Thuza Tun believed that for a new country to grow, the old one had to be destroyed. Their language was filled with double meanings. Kawthoolie meant both “land burned black” and “flowerland.” There couldn’t be one without the other. For the flowers to grow, the land of the Karen must be destroyed. And if Walker didn’t do something to stop it, they’d fertilize the earth with the bodies of dead SEALs and fill the world with
qilin
.

Walker searched the horizon and spotted the cricket field, or pitch, as it was called. This was where the others were. He staggered down the hill into a street below. Cars were overturned. Pieces of rubble, parts of homes, and personal possessions lay upon the ground like they’d grown there. Doll heads and kitchen utensils jutted from the ground like vegetables in a mad hatter’s garden. Pieces of brightly colored cloth whipped from the hard edges of scorched bushes. He’d seen the aftermaths of major attacks in Somalia and Iraq. He’d seen cities destroyed. But this was something more. This was as if the hand of an angry god had come down to sweep the city aside. The closest he’d come to this sort of devastation had been when Katrina had scraped entire communities from the Gulf Coast.

Walker limped down the center of the street. He held his Stoner in his hands. The holster on his right thigh was unclipped. He was past exhaustion, walking into a universe he’d never been in before. He felt alert, but like a great brooding animal, unconsciousness lurked just beneath the surface. He’d run farther and faster than he’d ever thought possible. He’d stopped only once more, when he’d crossed a stream. He’d fallen to his knees and had thrust his head into the water like a beast, gulping, then puking, then gulping some more.

He walked for perhaps three blocks. He wasn’t sure. Here and there the streets had been wiped away. He saw a child buried in the rubble. He moved toward what looked to be a little girl, only to discover that it was a doll’s head. Not just any doll’s head, but the head of an Asian girl doll.

He felt a buzz beginning beneath his skin. He picked the head up gently, as if it were the head of a real child. Cradling it in his hands, he felt the buzz continue beneath his skin, but he ignored it. There were holes where the eyes had been. Its skin had melted in a fall of plastic tears. The buzzing increased. As he felt the seizure coming on, Walker squeezed the head in his fingers. He grunted and took several steps forward.

Then it hit him like an arcane fist.

His teeth chattered as he envisioned a taloned hand reaching into the doll’s eyes, the finger so hot and horrible that its mere touch caused the plastic to melt. It was the hand of a demon. It was the hand of Chi Long. For a moment Walker felt what it was like to be so powerful; then he was able to let go of the head and free himself of its power echo.

Suddenly the world changed before him. Gone was the scorched earth of Kadwan. It was replaced by Washington, D.C.
Qilin
crawled up the vertical surface of the Washington Monument, their talons tearing into the stone and concrete. The White House lawn was filled with
qilin
ripping men and women to pieces. In flashes of a possible future, he saw thousands of the beasts in every city, on the sides of every building, eating and killing everything that he’d ever known and loved.

He fell to his knees and retched. With his stomach almost empty, there was nothing to come up. Walker dry-heaved until the feeling left. When he stood, a long string of drool hugged his chin. He let it hang as he took a shaky step forward. Now he knew who had destroyed the city.

He turned on the radio as he stumbled forward. When it was ready, he called in to home station.

“Where are you?” came Jen’s voice immediately.

“In Kad … Kadwan,” he croaked.

“What’s wrong? Why do you sound like that?”

“Everything’s gone. The magic is … so … strong.” He stopped to grit his teeth. His body began to shake and he fought it back down. “Gotta … keep … moving.”

“Jack…”

“How … how long?”

“Forty-five minutes.”

“Hoover?”

“Almost there.”

“Uh … good dog.”

“Walker, this is Billings. I’m sorry I got you into this, but we need you now.”

“You got me,” he said, aware that his tongue had made it sound like
You goth me
.

“Listen closely. Musso discovered something. It looks like a man named Saw Thuza Tun ordered the tattoo suit from the Triad. Tun probably has a modicum of control. We don’t know how much. But you might be able to get through to him if needed.”

“Fuh … fuck that.”

“Exactly. So you need to find the focus. Do you know what that is?”

As Walker stumbled forward he remembered the conversation he’d had with Laws about the use of foci to channel and control spirits.

“Fo … cus?”

“Yes, Walker. A focus. It could be a ring or a bracelet or even a necklace. It could be
anything
.”

“Underwear. Bar … Barbie dolls.”

“What’d he say?” Billings asked someone.

“I think he said something about Barbie dolls and underwear,” he heard Musso say.

“Ceremonial,” Walker said, the word sounding like
Theremonial.

“What’s wrong with him?” Musso asked.

“It’s all the magic,” Billings said. “It’s affecting him like this. We can only hope that it goes away.”

“Gothes away,” he said, stumbling even farther forward.

Suddenly a
qilin
turned the corner and ran down the street toward him. Walker tried to raise his rifle, but he didn’t have the strength. It was as though the buzz of magic had replaced everything.

The chimera ran straight at him.

Walker screamed in a cracked and broken voice as the beast slid to a stop in front of him.