SEAL Team 666: A Novel

you attended, Ruiz?”

“Total? Thirty-two. For my own team members from all my team assignments? Six. For SEAL Team 666? Two. You can see them on the wall. They’re the best America has ever made. Their only faults were to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and to not know how, or why, or fucking when a creature that the rest of the world doesn’t even know exists was going to reach out and snuff the life from them.”

Laws entered the room and grabbed a cup of coffee of his own. “Easy, Ruiz.”

“Fuck easy! This shit sucks.”

Walker nodded. It was the only thing he could do. As bad as he felt now having lost one team member, he couldn’t imagine losing six.

But Laws laughed, drawing angry glares from both Ruiz and Walker. “‘This shit sucks,’” Laws repeated. “It could be a T-shirt. It could be a slogan. Or maybe, ‘Don’t Die and Make It Suck.’”

Walker chuckled in spite of himself in recognition of Laws’s gallows humor.

Ruiz grimaced and turned away, but Laws wouldn’t let him get away so easily. “Come on, man. I know this shit sucks, but you can’t let it get to you.”

Ruiz turned farther away.

“Hey,” Laws pressed. “What is it you rednecks do in West Virginia when you’re mourning? Look at goat porn?”

Ruiz turned halfway back, seemed to think about it for a moment, then turned the rest of the way. He stared at Laws. “We blow shit up.”

Laws laughed out loud. “Hear that, Walker? Ruiz says he blows shit up when he’s sad. Fuck it. Let’s go blow something up.”

Ruiz’s face actually brightened. “Seriously?”

“Absolutely. Grab some clothes and some Semtex and we’ll go out and do it.”

Ruiz looked back and forth between Walker and Laws, waiting to see if it was a joke. After a minute, he took off.

After he’d gone, Walker asked, “Are we really going to blow something up?”

Laws nodded.

But Walker couldn’t make sense of Laws’s reaction. While everyone else was in a state of mourning, Laws seemed to be as nonchalant as if it were any other day.

Laws pointed a finger at Walker. “Don’t confuse my ability to compartmentalize with lack of caring. I deal with this in my own way.” He removed his shirt, revealing dozens of words written on his torso. At first they seemed to be in a strange language; then Walker realized that they were printed in reverse. They were names, indelibly etched into his skin with tattoo ink. Laws pointed to them. “These are—were— my teammates and classmates. Everyone I’ve served with since I’ve been into the teams. Your name’s going to go up here as soon as I can break away.”

Walker noticed that about a third of the names had lines through them. “And the lines through them?”

“Are the friends I’ve lost.” He pointed to the name Anthony Fratolilio. “This is for Fratty. I’ll cross him out after the wake. But crossed out or not, he’ll always be a part of me. I can see him and he can see me.”

“Why is it in reverse?”

“Most people wear tattoos as a statement to the world. Something they want someone else to notice. I don’t give a shit about that. These are for me. They’re for me to look at and remember.” Laws lowered his voice. “They’re so I won’t forget. Ever.”

Half an hour later they were in Ruiz’s red two-and-a-half-ton pickup and heading into what constituted the town of Coronado. They pulled an old wooden skiff they’d appropriated from BUD/S school. They stopped for a six- pack of Longboard and headed for Imperial Beach.

Imperial Beach was down the isthmus from Coronado. The southerly drive down the highway was bounded by state beaches and the Pacific Ocean on the right and military housing on the left. That soon gave way to marinas and then the low-slung buildings of Imperial City. Originally constructed as a place for farmworkers to go, its proximity to Tijuana made it a place where most San Diegans feared to tread. So other than the families and descendants of farmworkers from the Greater Imperial Valley, most of the population was composed of military members who’d lived and retired there.

A bronze statue of a surfer had been placed on the boardwalk and was a frequent target for graffiti artists and vandals. It was currently wearing a white and black polka-dotted housedress with a purple plastic lei. That a police car was parked nearby and the officers had made no effort to remove the clothes was a testament to what the city thought of the statue.

Laws, Ruiz, and Walker found the city boat ramp and lowered the skiff into the water. Ruiz paddled it out, while Laws and Walker parked the truck, then found a spot on the beach to observe the events that were about to transpire. Although it was nine in the morning, the beach was filled with tourists and families. Several pods of surfers gathered together where the waves hit the best, taking turns, and sometimes fighting over the waves as they tumbled in.

The beer was cold and hoppy. Walker drank half of his, then leaned back on an elbow and watched the women in their bathing suits. From young to old, they were all beautiful. He was reminded of Jen. He hadn’t been with her for almost three months. Something was always getting in their way. He needed to find the time to be alone with her, some time when he wouldn’t be called to mission, or she wouldn’t be called away to work. It occurred to him that now would probably be a perfect time. It was a Saturday morning, and although her schedule was a lot like his, chances were that she was off work.

But here he was on the beach, supporting the mourning rites of a teammate.

Just then, Ruiz waved to them. He was about fifty yards out. He’d dropped anchor and dove into the water. He didn’t surface until he was more than halfway back to shore, assisted in the distance by his flippers. By then he was in a crowd of people wading in the surf. He leisurely paddled the rest of the way in. Soon, he was plopping down beside them, grabbing a beer and drinking deeply.

They each finished a beer, then opened another. Ruiz pulled a small electrical device from his beach bag, which Laws had brought from the truck.

“For Fratty,” he said, the held out his bottle with the other hand.

Walker and Laws clinked bottles and repeated the toast.

Then Ruiz depressed the single red button set in the black plastic.

The boat went up in a ball of heat and red fire. The explosion stopped everyone in midplay. Tourists stood agog at the event, but the locals, those who knew that this was a place for SEALs and other Navy personnel to blow off steam, took it in stride.

The only ones who seemed to be concerned were the police, who began conferring with the lifeguard. It looked as if he was about to point them out, when a scream went up from the other side of the lifeguard station. The lifeguard leaped from his platform, grabbed his orange buoy, and ran toward the water, where a woman was holding a little boy’s limp body. As it turned out, it was a false alarm. Her son was just playing dead and ended up with a good scolding by the lifeguard. In the meantime, the three SEALs took advantage of the distraction and returned to the truck. Laws unhitched the trailer and left it in the parking lot.

28

THE MOSH PIT. AFTERNOON.

When they returned, Walker had planned on calling Jen, but a Navy seaman was waiting for him near the front door. He held a stack of papers. When he saw Walker, he impatiently beckoned him over. Ruiz and Laws continued inside, while Walker sidetracked into an office. Bureaucracy had caught up with him. After being chastised for going on mission before he filled out his paperwork, he was provided with a stack of forms to complete. He spent the next two hours filling out everything from emergency notification forms to hazardous duty pay allotments. He transferred his jump log and dive log, updated his EPSQ clearance forms, and filled out enough paperwork to eventually satisfy the gods of administrivia. Even the clerk seemed satisfied, but there was one form left. It was a simple piece of paper that asked a single question, and it had a space for the answer and a line on which to sign. What song did he want them to play at his viewing? He took the