“Sounds pretty clear to me,” Holmes said, looking at his team. “We have a mission. Transportation is standing by. We can leave in two hours.” He turned to Musso. “Do you have a target package ready for us?”
“I do. I’ll download it to your tablets.”
“There’s still the bit about Chi Long,” Laws pointed out. “How does he fit into this?”
“And the tattoo skin suits?” Walker asked.
Yaya nodded his head slowly. “My bet is that you’ll find them linked in some way. This Thuza Tun character is probably the mystery guy walking around wearing one of the suits. My guess is that we’ll find the truth at the end of the trail of circus breadcrumbs, so we need to be prepared.”
Walker nodded, but wondered how they were expected to be prepared for something they had absolutely no information about.
45
STARLIFTER. SOMEWHERE OVER THE PACIFIC OCEAN.
After two hours of discussing the targeting parameters, the other SEALs, including Hoover, curled up next to their gear for some shuteye. But Walker couldn’t sleep. He’d tried, but had immediately plunged into a memory of when he was possessed. As if from a third person, he saw himself chewing off the heads of roasted rats, sucking out their eyeballs, and spooning their brains into his mouth with the crook of a little finger.
Laws and Holmes both believed that the skin suits could be used to protect someone from a powerful spirit, the idea being that the spiritual residue of all the people who made up the suit would keep the wearer safe from the demon he or she was channeling. How anyone could ask to be possessed, or channel a demon, was beyond his ability to comprehend. Clearly the lust for power was stronger than the need for self-preservation.
He’d been an American boy in the Philippines possessed by a Hantu Kabor from Malaysian mythology, a grave demon. If people weren’t buried properly according to Malay custom, the demon would crawl through the graves and eat the souls of the dead. The Hantu was a collector of sorts. It had many souls within it. Walker remembered them and how at times they would scream at him, and whisper to him, an apartment building full of souls in a small boy’s head.
During screening and selection they’d asked him how he’d known that he’d been possessed—what was the first sign? Walker had to think back on it, because he hadn’t known he was possessed until it was too late. But as he delved into the memories he so desperately wished he didn’t have, he realized that it had been the whispers. Whether he was walking down the street or alone in a room, he’d begun to hear the susurrations of faraway voices. It was like someone saying something right on the edge of his hearing. He remembered being infuriated that he couldn’t understand, so he’d listened harder. By the time he did understand them, he realized that all along they’d been telling him to run. He just hadn’t understood until it was too late.
Finally he couldn’t take it anymore. He rolled over to where Laws was snoring gently. When he got next to him, the snoring ceased and Laws opened one eye. “What the hell, Walker?”
“I can’t sleep.”
“So you thought you’d share that affliction?”
“Sorry, it’s just that … Never mind. Go back to sleep.”
Laws sat up and grabbed a liter of water. “No. It’s okay. Ask away.”
“Okay, then. How are we going to take down Chi Long?” Seeing the judgmental look in Laws’s eyes, he hastily added, “I know how to kill a man a hundred ways. I can disable anything mechanical. There’s very little I don’t know how to do because of the training we’ve received. But neither A school nor BUD/S provided me with even an infinitesimal crumb of information regarding ghosts, goblins, or ghouls.”
Laws nodded grudgingly as he screwed the top back on the bottle. “Well said. Here’s what we know. A suit of tattooed skin was sent to the Karen. Historically, there’s only been one use for such a suit. Each piece of skin still holds an echo of the soul it once enclosed. Each piece of ink still holds an echo of the idea and thought someone put into it. When people get a tattoo, they usually expend a lot of mental energy planning it. Each one has its own special meaning. The wearer continuously looks at the tattoo and remembers why it was so important. This is akin to worship and imbues the ink with power. The combination of the pieces of skin and ink presents a problem set for a demon who was called to inhabit that body. Under normal circumstances, a demon’s soul would quickly burn out a person who hasn’t found a way to prepare him- or herself. And when I say burn out, that’s exactly what I mean. Suits of skin are one way to allow the wearer to survive the internal forces exerted by the demonic soul, the power shared by all the echoed souls who so recently owned each piece of skin.”
“So it’s like a suit of armor for the soul. I get that,” Walker said. “But how does one go about summoning demons?” When he saw the look on Laws’s face, he shrugged and spread his hands. “You’ll have to forgive me. All I know on the subject is what I’ve seen from movies, and for some strange reason I have the image of two young boys with underwear on their heads playing with Barbie dolls.”
“
“No specific way?”
“Well, there has to be a focus.”
“A what?”
“Focus,” Laws said more slowly. “Like a cross in a Christian ceremony.”
Walker nodded. “Like the Barbie dolls.”
“More like the underwear. Those would have been the focus for those boys. They wore them on their heads and used them to help them concentrate.”
“So if we find the
“Actually you do. I think you understand it pretty damn well. The focus might be a knife, or an amulet, or a ring. Very often it’s a piece of jewelry. And yes. I think it might short-circuit the connection between the human and the demon,
Walker nodded.
“Does that help?” Laws asked.
“Yeah. I think I’ve got it now.”
“Good. Now roll back over and get some sleep.”
Walker started to do just that when an alarm began going off in the cabin.
Holmes popped up and made a beeline for the crew chief, who’d also awoken and was already on a hard line to the cockpit. He spoke animatedly into the phone for what seemed like several minutes but could have only been a few seconds. When he was done, he addressed the team.
“We have weather. A cyclone is brewing and sending up thunderheads ten miles high. We have no choice but to fly beneath it. We’re talking about two hundred feet above the water. It’s going to be a rough ride.”
“We gonna have enough fuel to reach our rendezvous?” Ruiz asked.
“Negatron. Air refueler was already called back. We’ll be landing in the beautiful garden spot of Guadalcanal. NFI.”
Walker shook his head. Murphy was with them already. It wasn’t a good sign.
The Starlifter went into a forty-five-degree dive. Yaya and Ruiz fell on their rumps. The other SEALs managed to stay upright, although Walker’s stomach felt like it was still a thousand feet above them.
They made it to the benches and strapped themselves in. The plane began to shake as it coursed through the outer edges of the cyclone.
Walker grabbed onto his straps and forced his mouth shut so that the vibrations wouldn’t get his teeth chattering. Looking around, he realized that he wished there were windows. Not that there was anything he could do about it, but knowing that they were about to crash into the ocean seemed better than not knowing.
Ruiz, who was sitting beside him, pointed at his rucksack. The altimeter they would use for the HAHO into
