Age of Blood

42

Twenty minutes away from landing and it looked like Walker might have made up for being an ass with his girl. Laws watched as they sat together, uber-aware that they were the center of attention, their hands resting beside them on the bench, barely touching. Where she wouldn’t even look at him before, Jen was now at least giving him the time of day. Not being able to hear what they were saying, Laws created his own dialogue:

I’m sorry.

You’re an idiot.

I’m sorry.

You’re an idiot.

Over and over and over.

He could almost make the words fit as he read their lips. The idea that they might be saying what he was thinking made him smile.

Holmes scooted down and relaxed beside him. “We got a problem.”

“Jesus Christ on a Big Wheel, what now?”

“Do you want the good news first or the bad news?”

“Fuck it. It’s been a long day already. Between a fake sea monster, a cult of people who wear other people’s skin, a Mexican Monty Python Revival Tour featuring We are the Knights who say Virgin, fucking homunculi, a sorcerer who can make my skin rot, and a fucking attack by some misguided Mexican cartel, I feel like a combat Alice way the fuck down the rabbit hole.”

Holmes stared at him. “Are you done?”

But Laws was just getting started. “And it is a rabbit hole. We’re on a one-way trip down a Mexican slip-and-slide, following a fucking Zeta assassin werewolf who looks so much more like Ricardo Montalbán every time I see him that I want to start yelling, ‘De plane! De plane!,’ just like Hervé Villechaize did every fucking episode of Fantasy Island.”

“Now are you done?”

“Hardly, Sam. I’m just getting started. I—”

“We found the girl.”

All heads turned to Holmes.

“You what?” Laws used a hand to close his jaw, which had dropped open.

“We identified the truck. Emily Withers is inside.”

“Hot damn!” Walker cried.

Yank and YaYa high-fived.

“Please tell me she’s alive. Please tell me that’s not the bad news you’re going to give.”

Holmes nodded. “She’s alive.”

Laws held up a hand. “Wait, do we have any other proof of life?”

“Only that their confidential source provided the information.”

“Confidential source?” Laws laughed. “I’ll give you two guesses who that is. I’m telling you, I don’t trust him.”

“Me neither. But we have to trust this until we have other information.”

Laws shook his head. “Then what’s the bad news?”

“Ms. Billings and Senator Withers are inbound on a private jet. They’re scheduled to land forty-two minutes after we land. Our orders are to wait and escort him to the embassy, where he’ll be reunited with his daughter.”

“What about the girl?” Jen asked. “Who’s going to secure the girl?”

Laws nodded. “Costello is right, Sam. We need to make sure the girl is secure.”

“She should reach the embassy about the same time we do. She’s under guard and has a police escort.”

“It seems too easy,” YaYa said.

“Yeah, and if it seems too easy,” Walker added, “then it is too easy. Something’s not right here.”

“Do you feel it too?” Holmes said, voicing his own worry.

Everyone nodded. Hoover growled as if she were answering, too.

“Then what do we do, boss?” Walker looked at Holmes.

“Have any great ideas?” Laws asked.

Holmes gritted his teeth, his mouth a thin, worried seam. “Not as long as we’re locked aboard the plane.” Then a light brightened his eyes. He stood and walked over to where the crew chief was dozing. Holmes woke him and they had a quick conversation. The Mexican sergeant seemed to be arguing, then acquiesced. He immediately moved to a locker and began pulling out parachutes.

Everyone stood, watching as he stacked four huge packs in the middle of the floor. Laws recognized them: T-11s. State-of-the-art if you wanted a nonmaneuverable parachute, but pretty fucking crappy if you wanted to actually plan on where to land. They were even slower than their predecessors, the T-10C. The T-11s allowed for a descent of nineteen feet per second, while the T-10Cs allowed for a descent of twenty-four feet per second. Not something he wanted to strap on unless the plane was burning, and even then… “Uh, boss? If you have a plan, sharing is caring.”

“Musso, go up in the pilot’s cabin and help vector them in to the senator’s daughter.”

Just as Musso stood, the plane hit a pocket of air and shook with the turbulence. He looked a little green as he caught his balance. One of the other techs handed him a tablet, and he made his way to the front.

“Sam?” Laws asked. He hated when his boss got this way. The mission plan was obviously fully formed in Holmes’s mind, all five paragraphs of the operations order were already written, and if it were business as usual, he wasn’t going to share until right before he absolutely positively needed to.

The C-130 powered into a right-hand turn, sending Laws ass over head until he came up against one of the parachutes. The engine whined as it was suddenly powered for ascent.

Scrambling to his feet, Laws was about to unleash a torrent of vernacular when Holmes noticed him standing beside the chutes.

“Good idea. Everyone except YaYa armor up and strap on.”

Jen and the other techs stood uncertainly, looking around for something to strap on to.

“SEALs,” Holmes said. “Every SEAL except YaYa. Ms. Costello, you and the techs will meet the senator. YaYa, you’re in charge.”

The Arab American SEAL made an act of looking relieved. “Thank Allah. I thought he was going to put the dog in charge.”

“At ease that shit. I could still change my mind.”

Hoover looked at YaYa, and if a dog could grin, she was doing it.

Finally Laws couldn’t take it anymore. “Boss, your plan. Please.”

Holmes joined them, putting on his body armor. When Yank began packing HK416 rounds into his vest, Holmes placed a hand on the young SEAL.

“No HK rounds. We’re going into civilian-heavy Mexico. Mexico City has nine million at last count. We don’t need them thinking they’re being invaded by an American armed force. Knives and pistols only.”

Walker held out his helmet. “What about nods?”

“No nods. No Pro-Tecs. No vests. T-shirts and combat pants and baseball caps. Armor beneath the shirts. And let’s break out the bone-conducting commo gear. I want something no one can really see.”

Developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency specifically for SOCOM, the BCCGs didn’t cover the ears, nor did they cover the mouths, freeing them of communications wires. Using Bluetooth technology, they came in three pieces. One transmitter, a quarter-sized listening device that fit behind the ear, and a piezoelectric vocalization square that fit beneath the lower jaw.

Yank was the first with his gear on. “Please don’t tell me we’re going to parachute onto a police-protected moving vehicle using these cargo chutes.”

“I thought the Marines used these,” Walker said, snapping down his legs.

“Like I said,” Laws said, “cargo chutes.”

“Dude,” Yank said, shaking his head and trying not to smile.

Laws was getting pissed. He was supposed to be second-in-command. How could he provide input to a plan that was already in effect? But there was nothing to be done at this point. “So is that the plan?” he asked in the most even voice he could muster.

The crew chief shouted, “Five minutes!”

Holmes pointed at YaYa and the techs. “Tie everything down that’s not attached to the plane. That includes Hoover. I don’t want her jumping after us without a parachute.”

The inside of the aircraft buzzed with activity.

Holmes gestured for everyone to gather around. When they did, he produced his own tablet with a map of an area north of Mexico City. “Here’s the plan. Costello, contact your people and get the stoplights changed at this intersection and this intersection.” He pointed. “I’ll be in contact with you and give you a ten-second countdown.”

She looked shocked. “You want me to arrange to have one of our government agencies break into a sovereign country’s transportation system and figure out the wire diagram for more than a million stoplights just so we can make it go from green to red at the appointed time?”

“Yep. Can you do it?”

She laughed suddenly. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Good.” He smiled for the first time. “Hopefully it’ll come off without a hitch.”

Laws laughed, too. When did it ever work out like it was supposed to?

They checked each other’s rigs and attached their static lines to a ring in the floor at the base of the ramp. They were two minutes out. They’d be jumping from four thousand feet. The wind was ten knots, and the pilot corrected based on their selected landing zone, which was a soccer field.

Holmes had given Laws the map, while he and the other SEALs inspected each other’s chutes. The light near the ramp switched to amber. The crew chief pressed a button and the ramp descended. The rush of air overtook all sound as the ramp dropped level. Laws stepped out with one hand on the ceiling of the Hercules. He checked the ground for comparison to the map on the tablet in front of him, searching for landmarks. The plane was heading downwind and he didn’t want to overshoot the field. He seemed ready to give up when he saw a factory and a pond that matched exactly what was on the map. They had six klicks left. Doing the math, he realized they had less than twenty seconds before they had to jump.

“Ready, SEALs.”

One last check to ensure the static lines were secure. He stashed the tablet in his cargo pocket.

“Steady.” He nodded to the crew chief, who turned the light from amber to green.

“Go, go, go!”

And as one, four SEALs embraced the Mexican air and were sucked free, letting their static lines deploy their chutes and jerk the meters of fabric from each pack.

Almost at once, all the SEALs were jerked sideways; then they swung beneath their deployed canopies. Laws spied their drop zone far ahead. By his measure, they weren’t going to make it. He was used to much faster chutes and was worried he might have misjudged. Instead, it looked like they were headed straight for a sewage plant.

His heart sank as he realized that the circular ponds beneath him were pools of Mexican nastiness and the last place he wanted to begin swimming. He pulled on his risers and began to bicycle madly with his feet.