sagged in his char. Laws gave him a cigarette. As the enforcer puffed angrily, he told what he knew in order to prove he wasn’t as incompetent as Holmes thought he was. The last thing he wanted was to be a billboard dummy.
When he was done, Laws turned around. “Okay, here it is. The boy spilled his guts. There’s a limit to what he knows. He’s low-level. He’s not even an enforcer. He’s a soldier—a forty-niner—for Temple of Heaven Importers. Triad. So he only knows what he overheard.”
Holmes nodded. “Give.”
“I got some information about this place as well as something about a ship.”
“Where’s the threat?” Holmes asked.
“The ship, I think. This is nothing more than some hocus-pocus sweatshop, where they make special suits for Shan Zhu, or the Mountain Lord—Triadspeak for head of the gang. The women were brought over by the Shi Tou, Snakeheads, and were guarded by these men. Most likely the women were destined to be some random food server at one of the billion Chinese restaurants, but ended up here. Hoover’s little orange buddy here worked cleanup. The homunculus kind of freaked the men out, which is why they kept to themselves down here.”
“What’s up with the suits they’re making?”
“These are tattoos from dead folks. He says they get them from all over, but he doesn’t know what they’re used for. All he knows is that they are sewn onto silk, packed away, and shipped out.”
“Where?”
“He has no idea.”
“And they’re for the Mountain Lord?”
“Head honcho, yeah. But I think he’s just attributing it to the Shan Zhu. I don’t really think he knows. Kind of like us saying that we do it because the president wants us to.”
“But in our case that’s true,” Fratty pointed out.
Laws flashed a grin. “Still, he doesn’t know. I can tell.”
“Okay,” Holmes said, staring thoughtfully at the prisoner. “What about the ship?”
“All he knows is it’s something big. There’s been a buzz about it for months. Some guy reached out and offered them a shit-ton of money for one of these suits.”
“He said ‘shit-ton’?”
“In his own way. This mystery guy gave a demonstration to the head honcho, which impressed the hell out of him.”
“What was the demonstration?”
“No idea.”
“Where’s the ship?”
“Macau.”
“Any other information about this ship?”
“None.”
Holmes glanced around the room and nodded slowly. Finally he said, “Okay, SEALs. Let’s pack it up. Ruiz? Call in the cleanup.”
9
KADWAN. FOUR MONTHS EARLIER.
He was a god. He’d spent the last few months being the hands of an unseen architect whose knowledge of the universe was unfathomable and perfect. He’d been told where to dig. He’d been told what to build. They’d explained the process of accumulating power. More importantly, they’d detailed the procedure for the creation of a special kind of chimera. There were steps he still couldn’t take until he had his protection, but that had been arranged. Once he had it, he’d be warded against immolation. He’d already seen how his partner had been burned from the inside out when he’d channeled the spirit from the other side. The power of the other had been so great and pure and blinding that it had consumed the pathetic structure that composed the human body. Served him right for trying to steal what wasn’t rightfully his. No, he’d wait until the shipment arrived before he moved on to the next step. Until then, he’d continue the act of creation and preparation with the knowledge that the world was so close to being his. After all, it wasn’t a matter of whether or not it would happen.
It was only a matter of when.
10
C-141 STARLIFTER. NIGHT.
Holmes had treated him like a little kid and had made him stand in the proverbial corner. In Manila, they’d done the same thing to him, progressing past that to real corners, then real closets as he proved to be just short of incorrigible. He’d always preferred the term “unbroken,” but the older he got, the more people mistook that attitude as arrogance.
How could he explain to them that there were times when he just knew what to do and his body took over?
Like Holmes’s itch.
The team sat on benches on either side of the aircraft. Walker tried not to glower. He’d thought it was probably obvious to everyone that it was because of his attention to detail that they hadn’t been shot by the enforcer. Laws sat next to him, busily cleaning the barrel with a rod tipped with gauze.
Fratty and Ruiz sat opposite them, their heads leaned back to catch some sleep.
Hoover was sprawled in the middle of the floor.
Holmes and Billings had their heads together. Holmes seemed to be providing a laydown of the mission and his thoughts, while Billings relayed information via a video feed to a room filled with analysts to provide direct support to the team.
“You know he’s right, don’t you?” Laws kept his voice low. He removed the rod from the barrel and took apart the trigger housing to wipe down each piece, then applied a thin coat of oil.
“Who? Him?” Walker pointed with his chin toward Holmes.
“We operate as a team. If you see something, you communicate that to us.”
“I had a clear opening.”
“You walked into my line of fire, FNG,” Fratty said without opening his eyes. “You’re lucky you aren’t wearing twelve-gauge tattoos.”
“My body armor would have stopped it.”
Fratty opened his eyes and stared. “Fucking unbelievable.”
“What?” Walker glanced at Laws, but he seemed to be engrossed in putting his MP5 back together.
“We either work together as a team or we don’t work together at all,” Ruiz said. He opened his eyes and began disassembling his Super 90 after laying a clean piece of cloth across his lap.
This drew Walker up short. He’d felt that this was a Him vs. Holmes situation, not a Him vs. the Entire Team situation. He glanced toward the front of the plane and found Holmes looking at him. The team leader stared for a long moment, then turned back to Billings.
“What about the guy in the bathroom?” Walker asked softly.
“You want a medal?” Laws asked. “I have plenty. I’ll give you one.”
“I don’t want … Never mind.” He closed his eyes for he didn’t know how long. He wasn’t stupid but he felt like it right now. He had to get his thoughts in order. He’d never wanted to be jerked out of training. He’d been so close to finishing he could almost taste it. All he’d wanted to do was become a SEAL, join a team, and live the life. And it was a glorious life to be lived. Whether he would be stationed in Guam, Virginia Beach, or Coronado, it would be a life of fresh air, exercise, shooting, and being part of a brotherhood. He’d be on call to do the bidding of the president. He’d be a real live action hero, whose life was one long video game. He’d be that guy everyone else pretended to be, sitting day after day in their easy chairs, doughnut boxes and beer cans stacked around them as they shot, fought, and killed, using a video version of himself.
