SEAL Team 666: A Novel

“I expected nothing less, sir.”

57

ON THE ROAD TO KADWAN. AFTERNOON.

Walker and Yaya sat on the bench seat of the old five-ton truck as it rolled down the Yangon-Mandalay road, or Highway 1. Eddie drove. He had the magic cable on his lap. Twice, Walker had to order him not to stick it in his mouth. It was bad enough that they were on a civilian road. They didn’t need any more attention given to them.

Walker sat in the middle, while Yaya sat near the door. They both wore caps, pulled low over their eyes, from the soldiers they’d killed. Yaya could pass with his skin color, but Walker was the whitest thing on the road, so he sat in the middle scrunched down as best he could. He kept his 9mm in his lap, pointed at Eddie.

Yaya kept busy with Eddie’s cell phone. He had it apart and was checking the SIM chips.

They’d removed the bodies from the back of the truck and left them in the hole. They cleaned the truck bed as best they could, then reconnoitered the way to Kadwan. It was less than two hundred kilometers south of Thaton. Plus another ten kilometers, because they still had to get through the city, and they should be there within three hours, give or take, depending on traffic, which as it turned out was the definition of congestion. Motorcycles were the most popular vehicles by far. White mini-pickups seemed to be the cargo haulers of choice, although they passed several motorcycles balancing boxes stacked ten feet high.

Eddie worked the horn like a New York cabbie. He knew just how close to get to the other vehicles and how fast to go without killing anyone. At first it had been a fearful onslaught of sight, sound, and motion, but once Walker decided to treat it as an amusement-park ride, it became much easier.

Walker had realized early that they’d need money for gas, food, and bottled water. If he’d been an Army Special Forces soldier, he would’ve had a Rolex to trade. The SEALs didn’t issue Rolexes like their Army SOF brethren, but he and Yaya each had a hundred-dollar bill as part of their escape and evasion kit.

When they reached Mudon, the largest city south of Thaton, a promise that they’d give him the other hundred convinced Eddie to get a dozen gas cans, fill them and the truck up, and get some food and water for the trip. He got more than ninety dollars in local currency in change.

“Where’s my phone?” Eddie asked.

“I have it safe,” Yaya said, patting his pocket.

“I need to call my family. They’ll be worried.” He looked from Walker to Yaya.

“That doesn’t seem so bad,” Walker said. “We can make sure he doesn’t call anyone else. What do you think, Yaya?”

Yaya shook his head subtly.

Eddie grinned like a salesman. “Walker is right. It’s not so bad.”

“He can’t use his phone,” Yaya said flatly.

Walker raised an eye, but didn’t ask. He’d caught the other SEAL’s nonverbal, albeit a moment too late.

“Why can’t I?” Eddie asked Yaya. “Please, sir,” he begged, turning to Walker. “Can’t you make him let me use my phone?”

“Enough. Jesus.” Yaya pulled out the phone, or what had once been a phone. It now had several wires attached to it, as if the Borg had come down and added pieces.

Eddie screamed. “What have you done?”

“Seeing if I can repurpose this for our use,” Yaya said. He pulled out his 9mm and pointed it at Eddie. “Listen, Eddie. I think you forgot the process here. You drive the truck. We drive the guns.”

Eddie looked from the gun to his ruined phone. After a moment, he put his head down and skulked to the driver’s side. He climbed in and closed the door.

“Smooth move, Ex-Lax,” Walker said. He climbed in the cab of the truck. Yaya got in after.

Within seconds they were once again part of the bumping, swerving, honking mass on the road. No one spoke for a good twenty minutes.

“Is it going to work?” Walker asked.

“I got it to interface with the MBITR and the base station, but it’s a software problem. His phone isn’t a real iPhone. It’s a knockoff. It uses an old Android operating system.”

“Can you make it work?”

“I’m not a software guy, but I remember some of it. All I can say is I’m trying.” He pulled out the phone and began to type into it.

Eddie glanced forlornly at what had once been his phone. Walker watched the man’s face for a moment before turning away. Fake or not, it had probably cost the man a good chunk of savings. It was also probably a status symbol and the SEALs had taken that away from him.

Then Walker reminded himself that Eddie was part of the crew who had killed and/or captured the other SEALs. In fact, it was time they talked about that.

“So Eddie, let’s talk about your military friends.”

Eddie shifted in his seat.

“Who are they and where are they from?”

“Karen,” he said, only pronouncing it as kayin. “From Kadwan.”

“Are they from the Myanmar military?”

Eddie shook his head.

“Then where did they get the uniforms?”

“We made them.”

“So they wanted us to think it was the military. What was the plan—for us to get mad and attack?”

Eddie shrugged. “I don’t know plans. I know that him wants to rule again. He wants to be king.”

“I wasn’t aware Myanmar had kings,” Yaya said.

“We don’t.” Eddie hastily added, “Not anymore. Not yet.”

“Tell me about Kadwan.”

“Old capital of Kayin. Him has removed everything new.” Eddie paused to swerve around a bike pulling a cart with a mound of old plastic bottles. “Everything is gone. My mother lives there and her home is gone.”

“What do you mean gone? Was it bulldozed?”

“His qilin. They destroyed it for him.” Eddie’s jittery eyes glanced toward Walker. “Please, no more.”

“Not yet. We need to know about the qilin.” He described the creature they’d come into contact with on the cargo ship. “Is this one of them?”

Eddie nodded.

“How do you destroy them?”

Eddie gave a shocked look, then shook his head. “Can’t be destroyed. They are messengers from the gods.”

Walker and Yaya exchanged glances.

Yaya mouthed, Messengers from the gods?

Walker nodded.

“Which gods made the qilin, Eddie?”

“All of them.”

Walker didn’t like the answer, but he didn’t feel that having Eddie try to explain would help them much, so instead he asked, “What’s their message?”

“It is said that they come when a new ruler comes. Him has come.” Eddie looked down into his lap and grabbed the cable. He took it into his mouth and resumed driving. Clearly he wanted to be invisible for a time.

Yaya continued to work on the Android software as best he could. The bumping, jumping ride down the road didn’t help, but there was nothing to be done about that.