The next SEAL in line emptied his MP5 into the creature. But it wasn’t enough. The demon roared as it advanced. Pieces of its face had been blown away, revealing old black and brown pitted bone. An eye had disappeared in a burst of dust along with a batlike pointed ear. But even as the lead SEAL watched, the face began to re-form. First the cheek, then the eye, and soon the rest would be as it had been.
The SEAL who’d breached the door dropped to his knees and emptied his shotgun in the direction of the creature’s legs.
The other two SEALs ran forward. The other MP5 opened up, sending fifteen 9mm rounds into the thing’s face. The Super 90 unleashed seven 12-gauge shotgun slugs toward its knees. This combination was immediately duplicated by the first two SEALs, who’d had a moment to reload.
Under the combined damage of fourteen shotgun slugs and thirty 9mm rounds, the demon had no choice but to fall to its back as its soulless body fought to re-form.
Hoover knew what to do. She launched forward, landing on the demon’s chest. Digging herself in place with the claws of her back feet, she opened her mouth wide, then snapped it shut on the demon’s throat.
Behind her, the lead SEAL let his MP5 drop on its sling and pulled his MK3 knife free from the sheath on the side of his right thigh. He knelt on the demon’s outstretched right arm and began to saw madly at the wrist. The hand came away just as Hoover jerked the jugular free like a dirt-encrusted vine. While one of the SEALs opened a canteen filled with holy water and poured it in the empty space in the demon’s neck, another pulled out a flare and jammed it in the center of the unholy beast’s chest. A platoon of Vatican exorcists couldn’t have done a better job.
As the SEALs and the dog worked their way back down the hall, the demon burst into flame and was soon consumed, turning to an ashy reminiscence of its former shape before dissolving into nothing.
They cleared the rest of the second floor with no further interaction.
Outside, they could hear reports of gunshots from SEAL Team 6, as well as those of their sniper, but they couldn’t concern themselves with that at the moment. Whatever was happening outside would be taken care of by those assigned to that mission. For now, all they had to worry about was their target on the third floor, someone the entire world had been searching for over the past ten years.
They repeated the same method for breaching the third-floor door as the second, but the door swung open to an empty, dark hallway. They stepped carefully into the hall, hugging the walls and wishing their NVGs were still working. Only two doors exited off the hallway. From the week of practice they had in the mock-up, constructed based on intelligence from the interrogation of an informant at Bagram Air Force Base Detention Facility, they knew the one on the right was a storage room. Their target was through the door on the left. Still, the storage room had to be cleared. Two of the SEALs did so, while the remaining SEALs and the dog made the left-hand door their universe.
Once the storage room was cleared, SEAL Team 666 converged on the last door.
The lead SEAL checked. It was unlocked.
They exchanged glances; then the SEAL turned the knob and pushed the door, which opened into a bedroom suite. The only light in the room came from a fire burning in a brazier on a central table. Behind this sat the man they’d come to kill. But instead of concerned, he appeared unfazed, drinking from a silver goblet.
“Down on the floor!” the SEALs shouted, first in English and then in Arabic.
The man made no move to comply.
Two SEALs moved into the room and searched the corners. They each raised a hand signal that meant clear.
Hoover stalked forward, growling, one stiff leg at time.
The lead SEAL kept his MP5 trained on the man. “If you won’t get down, then stand the fuck up.”
The man placed the goblet on the table and slowly got to his feet. He was very tall, with a graying beard that flowed to the center of his white-robed chest. His face had an almost cherubic quality that could have inspired a smile had it not been universally known that he was the mastermind of thousands of innocent deaths.
A shriek erupted as a woman charged from the inside of a wardrobe. She struck one of the SEALs in the back with the blade of a knife, but it snapped against his Kevlar body armor. The SEAL spun and caught her on the side of the head with the barrel of his Super 90. She fell to the ground, unconscious.
Another shriek erupted, this time from the other side of the room. Another woman leaped free of a wardrobe. This one took two bullets in the leg. The SEAL who shot her then kicked the knife free from her grip. It skidded across the floor and stopped beneath the bed.
The tall man started to change after the failed attack from the women. His face contorted. His features shifted and reshifted, changing the architecture of the human face into something else entirely.
The lead SEAL opened fire, but the bullets had even less effect on this figure than they’d had on the demon one floor below.
The other SEALs opened fire as well, unloading every slug and round they had into the creature. The MP5s ran out of ammo first. The SEALs let them fall on their slings. They opened metal canisters filled with holy water and doused the newly formed creature.
Where the water hit, smoke rose. A multi-octave scream filled the room, the sound of hundreds in agony coming from the mouth of one.
The lead SEAL knelt and withdrew an ancient blade from where it was secured in Hoover’s tactical harness. The blade was black with age. Etchings from a dead language adorned the surface. The shape was a like a tongue of flame, and as he held it toward the creature, the creature recognized the blade and showed fear for the first time.
The SEAL and the beast clashed in a mad jumble of punches, blocks, and kicks. One was fueled by the righteousness of his mission and thousands of hours of practice, and the other was fueled by the infinite darkness that had filled its soul.
The remaining SEALs stood aside as their leader fought. Their hands flexed, each teetering on the balls of his feet, eager and ready. Even Hoover waited, her only dissent a constant growl of frustration for not being allowed to join in.
Somewhere outside, they heard a cry for help, then a gurgling scream. Whatever it was, there was nothing that could be done. Their mission was in this room, and until the beast was down, none of them would leave.
The combatants fell to the ground, but their new position did nothing to halt the frequency of their blows. Then suddenly the fighting stopped. The lead SEAL shot rigid, a taloned hand gripping his neck, his tongue jammed out from blue lips. One of the SEAL’s hands came up to pry away the hold on his neck, slipping down to the creature’s wrist to try and wrench it free. But the hold was too tight.
The creature climbed stiffly to a standing position, dragging the SEAL with it. As they stood, the SEAL brought his other hand upward, embedding the blade so deeply through the bottom of the creature’s chin that the point erupted from the top of its head. It stood for one long, mad minute, choking the life out of the SEAL as tightly as it could, then toppled. As the creature fell, it pulled the lead SEAL with it.
The other SEALs worked to lever open the thing’s hand from their team member’s neck. It took great effort, but they finally managed, and as they did, the SEAL took in a lungful of air.
“Mother of God,” he rasped.
They grabbed a blanket from the bed and rolled the creature into it, then rushed it downstairs and out the door. Bodies littered the yard. By the looks of them, they were reinforcements who’d been trying to assist the creature SEAL Team 666 now carried. The team’s sniper lay in the corner. Half of his face had been torn away. His single remaining eye stared into the Pakistani night. Something terrible had happened here and it had happened to one of their own.
But there was no time to mourn. They took him, exiting through the hole in the wall, and crowded aboard the second helicopter. They placed the demon on the floor of the aircraft and strapped their deceased sniper into a harness as the doors snapped shut. One by one, they removed their masks, sweat and grime coating their faces. The members of SEAL Team 6 were eager to assist where they could. With their target achieved, the SEALs rose into the air, leaving the first chopper behind. A hundred meters up and the first chopper exploded, denying it to the enemy. Once SEAL Team 666 returned to Bagram, a joint FBI-CIA forensics team videotaped the creature from all angles and took DNA samples. Afterward, SEAL Team 666 escorted the body to the USS
