Weston Ochse - Age of Blood

Everyone stared at the burning airplane for a moment; then Yank went over and stomped it out. YaYa’s face held a small smile as he watched the flames disappear, but nothing he had said had been particularly funny.

Holmes snapped everyone back to the topic at hand. “Okay, enough about David Carradine. Let’s get back to it. So what do you think, Yank? Can you work something up?”

As Yank studied the film, his fists relaxed. “Sure. Probably something Filipino or Chinese. Either silat or wing chun. I can work up some flowing-hands movement that will allow us to counter anything we need to.” He nodded as he thought it through. “Wing chun for sure.”

“Good.” Holmes turned to YaYa and was about to say something when the door opened and Alexis Billings, administrator for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s (the Sissy’s) special projects division, of which Triple Six was a part, strode in. She wore a gray dress suit with black high heels. She was about thirty, slender, with red hair pulled back into a professional bun.

Walker recognized the look in her eyes. He’d seen it the day she’d jerked him out of SEAL training, marching right up to his drill instructors on the beach, handing over a letter from their commander, and marching away with him in her back pocket. There was a mission to be completed and she was delivering it.

Holmes started to stand and take her into another room, but she surprised everyone and waved him back into his seat. “No time. We have a problem.” She handed a thumb drive to YaYa. “Plug this in.”

While YaYa did as he was told, she addressed the team. “Emily Withers, daughter of Senator Christopher Withers, ranking member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence—my boss and the approval authority for the Top Secret funding line your unit has appreciated these last few years—has gone missing.”

She let the words hang for a moment, then added, “Perhaps ‘missing’ is not the right word. Chief Jabouri, are we ready?”

He selected a file and the zombie training scene was replaced with the black and white image of a beach somewhere. The perspective was from above, but not directly.

“Emily Withers was in Cabo San Lucas on holiday. That’s her.…” She pointed at the screen and a young woman walked into the picture. The woman removed her shorts and made a pile of her things on the sand before running into the water. The room remained silent as they watched her swim to the upper edge of the frame. That the camera didn’t move with her indicated that it was probably a static security camera. She floated on her back for a few moments, then apparently felt something beneath her. She turned and looked around; then it happened again and she began to swim. Then suddenly she went beneath the water. Everyone sat forward. Yank audibly gasped when she shot back to the surface like a bobber.

“What the hell was that?” Yank asked.

“Wait for it,” Billings said, her arms crossed, a frown burying her face.

The girl began to swim again, but was dragged down. Then their voices erupted as she rose from the water in the mouth of a creature that went on and on and on, nearly fifty feet in length, coiling and uncoiling across the waves until both she and the creature disappeared into the water.

“And there you have it,” Alexis said, flipping the back of her hand at the screen before turning and giving Holmes a hard look.

“Was that what I think it was?” Walker said.

“If you mean a sea monster, it sure the hell looked like it,” Laws said.

“We’re not sure what it is,” Billings said. “All we know is that it took the senator’s daughter.”

“Then this is a body recovery,” YaYa said.

“Not necessarily,” Billings responded.

YaYa pointed at the screen, a look of disbelief on his face. “We all saw what happened. She was floating in the water, along came a sea monster, and she became a snack.” Realizing his own words, he gulped and looked down. “I mean… she was taken.”

Billings had kept her eyes on Holmes the entire time. “What do you think?”

Holmes sighed. “Although I tend to agree with YaYa, there’s a window of possibility.”

Yank looked from Holmes to YaYa with visible incredulity. “Really? Please tell us, because I don’t see it. I’m with YaYa. I saw her taken. You saw her taken. Hell, we all saw her taken.”

Holmes looked at Laws. “Do you want to explain it to them?”

Laws nodded. “Sure.” He stood and walked to the screen. It had been rewound to where the creature was first revealed and zoomed in until it was almost completely pixellated. “What are the odds that in the whole wide universe, a single sea monster or whatever the fuck this is, just happened to be cruising the beaches of Cabo San Lucas, and just happened to find the daughter of one of the top five highest-ranking politicians in America?” He turned. “Walker, what do you think?”

“Pretty long odds, sir.”

“Pretty long, indeed.”

“And you, Laws?”

“What Walker said.”

“Could just be coincidence,” Yank surmised.

This answer engendered a broad smile from Laws. “Out of the mouths of babes. Coincidence, you say? That word is the reason Triple Six exists. We don’t believe in it. When someone else says it, we know it’s time to investigate.”

“So you think someone could be behind this? Someone arranged to snatch her?” Walker asked.

“Either that,” Laws’s smile faded and was replaced by complete seriousness, “or it’s mere coincidence.”

“Doesn’t matter what it is. We’re on mission. Everyone get ready. We leave in an hour.” Billings stepped forward. “One more thing. On an unrelated matter, a shipment from the Salton Sea warehouse was hijacked. We need to track the load.”

“You got GPS on it, right? Radio-frequency IDs?” Holmes asked.

“We do, but this is pretty sensitive. Several crates of chupacabra bones. We don’t want some local cop shop involved. We want to keep this in the family.”

Holmes thought about it and nodded. “YaYa, I’m sending you. Stop by Balboa after and get rid of whatever bug you have, then Charlie Mike and link up.” He turned back to Billings. “Anything else?”

“No, except I don’t have to reinforce how—”

“No, you don’t. If she’s alive, we’ll track her down. If she’s deceased, we’ll find her body.”

“Thanks, Commander.”

“Don’t thank me. It’s what we do. Come on, SEALs. Get your asses in gear.”

Everyone cleared the briefing room and headed to their bunks in the dorm. They’d been at the New Orleans NSW Training Center for nearly a week and had expected to stay a week longer, so no one was ready to go. Still, the nature of being in the military had taught the SEALs of Triple Six the ability to pack and move with little or no preparation. They had their go bags already packed and would most likely travel straight to the mission, which meant their personal items would be shipped back to their building on Coronado Island.

Yank hurried after Laws. “What did that mean? What you said back there.”

“What did I mean with what?”

“When you damned the faint praise.”

“Ah. That. ‘Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, and without sneering teach the rest to sneer; willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike.’”

“Sounds like Shakespeare.”

“More than a hundred years too late for that. Alexander Pope said it.”

“It talks about fear.”

“Not like you think.” Laws cracked a quick smile. “It talks about one’s inability to criticize because of a fear of what someone else might think.”