SEAL Team 666: A Novel

spoiled by a dozen scrambling figures with impossibly long arms.

Ruiz, Yaya, and Walker were in the best positions, with their backs against the walls. The wave of homunculi swept past them and onto the four agents who’d tagged along. Four beasts attacked each person, ripping and wrenching with claws, biting and jerking and pulling. The room was filled with human and demon screams, one in agony and the other in ecstasy.

The SEALs waded in.

Walker found himself assisting Agent Stephens, who had a homunculus attached to his face, chewing furiously at his nose. He grabbed the back of the beast and was astonished at its weight. Although it looked like a doll, it weighed as much as a pit bull. He stabbed it sideways with his knife, skewering it through the back.

It let out a shriek unlike any other sound it had made so far; then it died. His knife must have pierced whatever the damn thing had as a heart. But the shriek hadn’t gone unheard. The other homunculi attacking Agent Stephens shifted their attention to Walker.

Out of the corner of his eyes he saw Agent Stephens fleeing back up the stairs. Walker backed away, waving his arms and kicking his feet in a furious imitation of the spiderweb dance.

But still they came on. One latched onto each of his legs while another leaped toward him.

Walker brought his knife up more in panic than skill and managed to skewer his second long-armed imp. He grabbed it by one of its arms and ripped it free from the blade. Then he used its body to hammer first at the beast on his left leg, then the one on his right. He stunned the one on his right and sent it flying with a kick. The one on his left leg still clung to his thigh, staring one-eyed up at him with a furious grimace on its ugly mug.

Kneeling, Walker let go of the dead homunculus, wrapped his left hand around the living one’s neck, and peeled him off. His leg was bleeding from a dozen wounds, but there was nothing to be done about that now.

The orange creature spat on his hand, making the skin pop and sizzle, but Walker still held on. He brought his arm up, then down as hard as he could, slapping the beast into the ground over and over and over until it felt like nothing more than a sack of wet bones.

Once it was past dead, he tossed it aside and stood. He was breathing heavily. Sweat poured down his brow. He surveyed the living. Surrey was fine. The older ICE agent was fine. The younger ICE agent was on the ground, facedown.

Walker ran to him, knelt, and checked for a pulse—nothing.

That left the FBI agent. Last time he’d seen him, he was running for the stairs.

Walker spied his supine figure on the stairs. Atop it sat two homunculi. At first they seemed to be just sitting, but on closer look they were … eating.

“Aw hell,” he said, over his MBITR. “Two left.”

Walker reached down and grabbed a piece of wood, then advanced on the stairs. He was able to coldcock the one nearest him with a thwack on the back of the head. The other leaped free, dragging what could only be part of the agent’s intestine behind him before dropping it. Then it rappelled down the stairs and onto the floor. It sped across the floor toward the pirates’ cave, winding through legs, and leaping debris. Everyone tried to hit it or kick it, but it was just too fast. Just as it seemed as if it was going to make it to the relative freedom of the cave, a knife impaled it into the drywall.

Ruiz stepped carefully over the debris, ripped his knife free, cleaned it on the fabric of his pants, then replaced it into its sheath.

“Okay boys,” Laws said, his breath coming heavy over the MBITR. “Everyone scream, this time as loud as you can.”

“What?” Yaya asked.

“Just do it.”

It took a moment, but finally everyone figured it out. Screams went up from six mouths, then howls, grunts, shrieks of pain and fear, as if they were being eaten alive by the homunculi. The clamor lasted for twenty seconds, then died to nothing.

All they heard was their own breathing as they stood and waited for their next command.

When it came, they were ready.

“Fucking charge,” Laws whispered.

Yaya went through the hole in the wall first. Moving in a combat crouch, he sped toward the back of the cave, double-tapping until his magazine was empty.

Behind him came Laws, then Ruiz.

Laws did the same and didn’t spare any ammo.

Ruiz posted between the first and second caverns.

Walker came in with a bead on the first cavern.

On three, Laws and Ruiz took the middle; Yaya fired through the cot-built barricade and took the first.

Six enforcers were already in heaps along the floor. A single Hispanic woman, her mouth stitched, tears pouring from her eyes, stood in the far corner. Beside her, stretched on a bone-made frame, was a fully finished tattoo skin.

Walker put his hand on the back of her head and pulled her down gently but firmly. “Tranquilo. Silencio. Shhh,” he whispered as he scoped the rest of the cavern. It only went back about thirty feet. The walls glistened with dampness. Green moss carpeted them in differing layers. The woman stared at Walker, the red ChemLights reflected in her eyes. He smelled the sea, urine, and the unmistakable coppery scent of blood.

He dragged the woman behind him and met Surrey at the entrance to the cave. He passed the woman off, then turned to help Yaya, who took two in the chest as he was running toward Walker. The first one punched him back, the second one knocked him down.

Walker had no time to check the other SEAL. He scrambled back to the cot barricade in time to see daylight from the end of the cavern. Even as he watched, a man was sliding into a circular hole in the floor. Walker fired. He caught the figure in the back, but the man kept going.

With the light streaming from the opening, his NVGs were no good. He slung them away and began to pull the cots down as fast as he could. He finally got enough of them out of the way to rush in. Four more enforcers lay dead, as was a woman. He checked the hole and found it was an access to a culvert that drained into the ocean. There was no sign of the man.

Walker jerked his head out of the hole and checked the woman. He could tell without touching her that she was dead. He slammed his back against the wall and held in place. Her eyes stared at him accusingly and seemed to ask, Why me? She’d been ripped open from chin to pelvis in a ragged cut. Her insides had all but slid free. Next to her lay the same bone-made rack, but in this case, the suit was missing. If only she’d been in the first cavern, she’d still be alive. Whatever fate put her here had something else in mind for her.

Within moments, Laws was calling the all-clear. Three more enforcers had been killed in the middle cavern, but the woman who was with them was unharmed except for the stitches in her lips.

Yaya rejoined them, grinning sheepishly as he knocked on his body armor. He’d be bruised, but he was alive.

There were two enforcers left alive. Both had been shot, one through the gut, the other through the chest. Neither would survive long without medical attention and they both knew it. So when Laws began to talk to both of them where they lay against a cavern wall, it was interesting to see their reactions. While the one on the left, a scar beneath his left eye, seemed relieved at the opportunity, the one on the right, who had a snake tattooed on his bald head, wanted nothing to do with answering questions. And when he realized that his fellow enforcer was going to answer, he tried to reach his hand into the other man’s stomach and hurry the man’s death along.

Ruiz grabbed him and pressed him to the floor with a boot on top of his wounded chest. “You should just leave that other bad Chinese man alone and let him talk,” Ruiz said, with all the aplomb of one man talking to another as if they were on a main street waiting on a bus.

Walker paused to watch Laws in action, but soon tired of it. Unlike the previous interrogation, Laws wasn’t taking the time to translate into English, so Walker had no idea what was going on. He moved on to the surviving women. Surrey had checked them and reported that they were unharmed, except for the stitching.

The ICE agent and Surrey helped the women out, then returned with reinforcements from outside, now that Laws had cleared the scene. Men came in disguised as a hazardous-materials team dressed in orange rubber suits with square enclosed headgear. They first disposed of the homunculi, cutting them into pieces and slipping them