"Little early for that?" Heath cocked an eyebrow.

  "Fuck it," Manny said and popped the tops using an opener he'd welded to the Jeep's rear bumper. "We're on our own damned clock."

  Heath threw back and downed half the bottle in one pull.

  "Breakfast of champions," Manny said.

  "When you gonna set fire to this piece of shit and buy a decent ride?" Heath said eyeing the Jeep. It had so much body work and replacement parts it was hard to tell what color it was when it rolled off the assembly line in the last century.

  "Last time I checked my lottery number hadn't come in."

  "Like Pig and Flame. Did Pig really buy that Viper?"

  "No," Manny said. "He saw the sticker on one and decided his Mustang would do him just fine. He did pay off his mom's house."

  "How's Flame?"

  "He has some reconstructive surgery ahead of him. They're going to fit him with a carbon fiber plate in his skull."

  "Shit," Heath said and swirled the bottle. "He going to have to leave the unit?"

  "Not to hear him talk," Manny said. "He's going to come back if it kills him. You know how he is. Like a shark, always moving,"

  "Yeah," Heath said looked down at the bottle in his hand. "You buy some cheap ass suds, bro. Don't your people know anything about beer?"

  "We taught the Egyptians how to make it," Manny said. "You know how the Tribe be. Sold them their own rotten wheat back to them."

  "Liar," Heath said and squinted at the light flashing off the water. He wanted to talk. He needed to talk. But the words weren't there. What good were words anyway? They leaned on the tailgate and watched the rollers together.

  "What about you?" Manny said after a bit. "You coming back?"

  Heath swallowed then spoke without taking his eyes off the surf.

  "I'm not sleeping. Maybe an hour or two here and there. The doctors want to give me some pills but I won't take them. They got me in some kind of relaxation therapy but it doesn't help. Physically, I'm fine. But until I can sleep through the night they won't release me for duty."

  They watched pelicans skim over the wave tops heading north for feeding grounds.

  "We've seen a lot of bad shit," he said in a flat tone. "Bad shit that happened to friends. Bad shit that happened to strangers. Bad shit we've done ourselves. We see it and we take it in and we stow it aside to deal with later. We keep moving forward with no time to be remembering evil days. And all the time we know there'll be a reckoning."

  "Like that water out there. Nothing like it in the world. The Pacific Ocean rolling up on a beach in California. They write songs about it. So pretty and calm and cool. But underneath it's nothing but monsters. All we can see from here just hides a world of ugliness and hunger, you know?"

  Manny turned an eye to him. His brother was talking to himself now, working it out, his gaze to the horizon. No need to say anything.

  "I can deal with that. I know I can." Heath went on. "But that shit down in Mazatlan. Those days on that farm. That was some hard shit to deal with. Not the beatings. I grew up taking beatings. I laughed at those fuckers back at SERE. It wasn't even what they did to Reyes. That man didn't give them shit. That man stood tall even when...

  Heath's voice trailed away and he took a pull of the beer grown warm in his fist.

  "It's what I didn't see," Heath said in a growl. "It's what I could hear. That little girl screaming for her mother. That little boy begging them to stop. I heard that. I had to listen to that."

  Heath turned to Manny, his eyes welling.

  "I couldn't stop myself. I can't stop myself. Those sounds. Those voices. They made like a movie in my head. A movie I can't stop playing every time I shut my eyes. Those sick fucks got in my mind, bro."

  Heath was done but kept his eyes on Manny's.

  "So what do you want to do?" Manny said.

  "I need to see that video," Heath said. "I need to see those fuckers. Then I need to find them. And then I need to end them."

  "I got some leave coming," Manny said.

  SEAL TEAM SIX 4

  A Dynamite Entertainment Book

  CHAPTER ONE

  TUCSON, ARIZONA

  Nando blamed American television.

  Only a few years ago it was way easier to dope a girl than it was now. Back in the day, Nando would introduce himself at a club or poolside at a hotel and turn on the Latin charm, then offer to go to the bar and get some chippie and her girlfriend’s drinks on him. They’d always order the most expensive mixed drinks because a man was paying. That didn’t matter to Nando. He’d pay for the bebida and get paid back in pussy. Or even some cash if he decided to pass her along.

  It was as easy as pissing in a pool to slip a couple of tabs of roofies into his target date’s drink. The crowd. The music. The lights. Nobody even saw him drop the little green tabs into the glass and swirl them around with his finger as he bumped his way back to the table where his brand new fuck pal waited. Down the hatch and she’d say she was feeling funny after a few minutes. He’d offer to help her to the ladies' room or drive her home or escort her outside for some air. If her friends tried to jump in he’d lay a fifty on them and tell them to hold the table. He’d be right back once he made sure their friend was okay.

  Out the door and into his van and away to a motel out on the interstate or down near the airport. The Rohypnol made them compliant if not exactly lovey-dovey. When he was done he’d leave them off in a mall parking lot or, if he snatched one that was especially hot, he’d keep her dosed and hand her off to his compas for a couple hundred cash.

  What happened to them after that?

  Yo no sé, ese. Not my problem.

  But TV shows in America started calling roofies the “date rape drug” and pretty soon every cooze in the country had seen it in a movie or in a magazine or on some dumbass chick show. They knew not to let strange guys get them a drink. Even players like Nando couldn’t get anyone to take the bait of a free mojito after that fatass Oprah talked about how some dumb bitches got themselves fucked up and fucked over and they cried their eyes out on a million TVs. Nando’s business really went into the shitter when that stupid twat got herself doped and disappeared down in the islands and it was all over the news for months. After that the chippies would only take a drink from a bartender or order a bottled beer or cooler and open it themselves.

  Now Nando could only work bars where he could put a fix in with the bartender. That was harder to pull off and getting more expensive all the time. A couple of incidents, a few bitches waking up behind the Dillard's with a bleeding crotch and a bruised ass, and the heat would be drawn back to that bar and Nando would have to move on.

  Lately he was thinking of heading up to Phoenix for a while. There were more clubs there and more tourists. The plaza was there too, some old friends up from Sinaloa and doing good moving crystal. But Nando wasn’t into el narco. He was a pussy man. No one was killing each other over pussy. Not like they did over crank or coke or even grass, for Christ’s sake. He’d give Tucson another week then haul ass up US 10 for Phoenix and greener pastures.

  Right now he was eying up the talent at Nexus, a techno, hip-hop club up in the Casa Adobe hills. It was Friday night and the dance floor was packed with mostly chicas who were ripping it up after a week at work or college or, from the looks of some of them, high school. The guys lined the bars three deep. The long bars ran either side of the big floor and met at the bottom of a U-shape under a ten foot big screen showing video of go-go girls wearing next to nothing and moving to the pre-programmed beat. The booze flowed and the hormones oozed. The air was thick with anticipation. The hunt was on and Nando was the Big Bad Wolf.

  He eased onto the dance floor and was quickly immersed in a world of young flesh. The ratio was six-to-one women to men and he could have his pick of any one of them. His only problem was option paralysis. Would he fuck a blonde or brunette tonight? An Asian or a black? Anything but a Latina. His special talents didn’t work on them. They could see past the cheap clothes and expensive jewelry to the beaner Romeo underneath. He sidled through and bounced in time to the pounding rhythm with first this one, then that one. All he had to do was literally turn around and he was looking at a brand new set of tits jiggling in his face. Who to choose? How to choose?

  She had blond hair that shone almost white in the strobing lights from above. It was cropped short and swung and burst from her head as she moved back and forth, arms raised and fingers flexing to the hypnotic beat surrounding her in its sonic embrace. A spangled halter top strained to cover a pair of stargazer chichis and a leather skirt was cut just below her coochie and showed the cheeks of a fine, fine white ass bisected by a red thong. Tanned legs ended in tooled cowboy boots.

  Yeah, baby, you’re going riding all right.

  If she was eighteen it wasn’t by much.

  Nando was in love. At least he would be until his cock was soft and sore and then he’d sell her on to some of his hermanos in the plaza.

  He cruised in on her, his decision made. The music slowed a quarter beat for a touch of nasty trip-hop; the closest thing to a slow jam this place ever played. Perfect timing, Nando thought to himself. It was like in a movie, like in a chick flick.

  Nando dropped in front of her and matched her easy rhythm as he caught her eye. Blue eyes so icy sexy cold that his heart skipped and his dick pressed against the fly of his jeans.

  “Tony,” he said and turned on the little boy smile; friendly but a little shy. Tonight it was Tony. Last night it was Enrique.

  “I’m Jesse,” she said and returned his smile with perfect American teeth.

  They danced a lot and they talked a little. He stayed with her through three changes and she nodded when he gestured toward the encircling bar.

  He shouldered through and made a place for them against the polished leather bar front. He gestured to his man Kyle who approached with indifference. The big man’s eyes showed no recognition for Nando. They said, we do not know each other and I have no idea where the fresh new Benjamin in my wallet came from.

  Nando ordered a Heineken and the girl asked for some trendy iced drink. That would cost him eight bucks but there was no problem. There was no way she’d taste the Rohypnol though that fruity mess. She was petite, less than five foot four. The dope would hit her like a hammer. She’d feel a little lightheaded and the next thing she knew she’d be ass up at the Motel Six on 77 until he was good and tired of her.

  Three long sips through those glossy lips and Jesse had to put a hand out to steady herself against the bar. Nando moved in closer, arm around her waist and cooing concern.

  “You all right?” he said and held her to him to keep her on her feet.

  “Little…tired, kind of,” she said. Her blue eyes looked up at him without focus. Turn this bitch over. She is done.

  “Some fresh air, eh?” Nando said and began piloting her away from the bar through the press. He was half walking/half carrying her as they made their way across the lot toward the van he had parked in the middle of a long row of cars and pickups. He balanced her against his hip as he fished in his pocket for the remote and pressed the button that caused the side door to slide open. She was dead weight by now and it was a good thing she was small. He dropped her limp on the back seat and folded her legs to fit inside and started to draw the door closed. He realized her little bejeweled purse had slid off her arm and fallen to the ground. Nando bent to pick it up.

  The sound of a boot sole on gravel made him turn.

  A man dressed all in dark clothes who was about Nando’s height was walking between the parked cars toward him. He wore a black mask that covered his head. Nando was deciding what to do next when a large powerful arm snaked around his neck from behind and jerked him back in a choke hold. Nando’s Tony Lama’s kicked the air.

  As the world turned into a black and white movie then mostly black, Nando wondered if this is what roofies felt like.

  “He pissed himself,” Heath said and dropped the skinny rapist to the gravel where he lay unmoving.

  “Smells different when they’re afraid,” Manny said. “Ever notice that?”

  “What do we do with the girl?”

  “Look in her purse. She had to park somewhere.”

  Heath’s big gloved fingers rooted through the tiny purse and came out with a pair of keys on a ring along with a remote and a little rubber Pikachu. He pressed the lock button and the two men heard the bleat of a horn from two rows over.

  Jesse, sixteen-year-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Carter Abrams, awoke the next morning in the back seat of her own V-dub parked in the lot of an IHOP with her thong still in place and no idea what a lucky girl she was.

  CHAPTER TWO

  NAVAL MEDICAL CENTER, SAN DIEGO

  Randall O’Donnell (E-7) lay unmoving in the high tech bed. Hoses and cables seemed to run everywhere. There was the slow rhythmic whoosh of a respirator and the steady beep from the heart rate monitor. Every now and then the blood pressure cuff would hiss to life on his arm. A pump kicked in now and then with a soft whirring noise to circulate cold water through a cooling mat beneath him. Keeping his temperature low was key to healing. The room was dim; only the lamp above the bed casting indirect light on the ceiling. The TV was off.

  He wasn’t missing anything.

  Flame, as he was known to his fellow SEALs, was in a pharma-induced coma until he got over the trauma of wounds he received on a highly classified call-out in Mexico. He took a couple of blunt force trauma blows to the head. A fellow SEAL team member kept him alive with an emergency trepan. His buddy bored a hole in his skull with a power drill in the middle of a white-hot AO. He’d always have a triangular scar on his scalp for that bit of jungle surgery. There was a brand new titanium plate there. The corpsmen were keeping Flame in a drugged up netherworld to let his brain heal.

  Jungle surgeon Angel Bravos (E-7) swept into the room and swatted the soles of Flame’s bare feet. It was the second of his daily visits to room six in the ICU. There was no change. He didn’t expect any. His friend wasn’t going anywhere for a while.

  “Still in your hammock, asshole?” Pig, as the man lying unmoving in the bed called him, set a plastic Target shopping bag down on the table by the bed and began rooting through it.

  “MC Abruzzi is gonna have your ass when we get back East, Flame. Lying there letting all those muscles Uncle Sam built for you turn to flab.”

  Pig spilled the contents of the bag onto the table. He pulled the iPod earbuds from Flame’s ears. The battery was low. He’d recharge it while he was here. He ripped open a carton of lemon flavored swab and pulled the wrapping off one. He leaned over Flame and pulled his mouth open to run the swab around the man’s teeth. Flame was missing a few from the shots he took in Mexico. Pig was careful going over the fresh sutures where they had to close up his gum line after removing bone fragments and resetting Flame’s jaw.

  “I’d ask what you’ve been eating because your breath is foul, bro.”

  Flame was fed fluids intravenously and some kind of viscous mush through a feeding tube.

  “They treating you good here? Taking it easy? Catching up on soaps? Getting your short arm detailed by the nurses?”

  He tossed the swab into the medical waste container and opened a Blistex to smear it generously on Flame’s lips and around his nostrils. Flame was getting plenty of fluids through the IV drip but, lying here inactive, he wasn’t making much of his own saliva.

  “Manny took some leave. You believe that? Him and Heath took off to somewhere. Heath’s still dealing with all that shit he went through.”

  Pig checked the area around the trach tube in Flame’s throat. It wasn’t as inflamed as before. That was a good thing. He next looked at his hands and feet, circulation was good. The flesh under the nails was pink.

  “Looking good, bro. You sure you’re really asleep? I think you’re faking it. You tired of the Navy? You had enough of seeing the world from an asshole view and killing total strangers?”

  It wasn’t that Pig thought the docs and nurse weren’t doing their job for Flame. It wasn’t that he thought he knew better than they did. He’d been to the Goat Farm, the crash course for trauma care exclusive to Special Forces units, but he knew that didn’t make him any kind of doctor. Mostly it was that Flame was his friend. He felt responsible for his SEAL brother and he knew that in the touch-and-go of a massive brain trauma, more eyes on the patient and more care were better than less. And it gave duty nurses and staff a break they needed to look after other guys in need.

  “A shot to the head with a two-by and you’re laying there like you humped a grenade. They have guys downstairs doing PT with steel legs. You gotta man up.”

  Pig knew well that there were plenty of Navy men and Marines in this building who came back from downrange with shocking injuries—wounds that would have killed them on the battlefield only a few years ago. The level of trauma care and speedy transport available to the fighting men re-set the casualty ratio of dead-to-wounded that was a fact of life in warfare going back to David and Goliath.

  “We’re on downtime now after the last call-out. Chili says he has that feeling though; like they’re setting something up for us. We’re down to three, two with Manny on leave.”

  That’s why he spent a couple of hours in the morning and a couple more in the evening by Flame’s bedside. Pig did light maintenance, talked to him, watched TV with him and generally treated him like he was awake and acting like his normal annoying self. Flame was such a hyperactive dick all of the time that it was disconcerting to see him lying motionless and silent except for the occasional, involuntary sigh.

  “So, you gotta get ambulatory, Flame. If the team roster stays small they might reassign us. You don’t want me orphaned off to a pack of dickheads I’ll hate worse than you, do you? You wouldn’t do that to your beaner buddy, would you?”