A crack sounded, and Mordet’s head bumped against Chris’s. The goblin gave up gobbling. Chris turned his head to find Mordet unconscious and Little Doc pulling the butt of his MP7 away from Mordet’s noggin. Mordet was lucky. Little Doc had only struck him with the butt and hadn’t shot him — they still needed to interrogate the beast in order to find Young.
The duct tape and eye were hanging from Mordet’s face, and his black hood lay on the ground next to him. He’d probably fallen on his face multiple times to loosen the tape. The zip ties had proven to be tougher, though, and Mordet’s hands were still bound. Little Doc calmly put Mordet’s eye back in.
The other SEALs fired their sound-suppressed MP7s, which emitted no flash, at the two squads. Chris faced inland and saw enemy muzzles flashing from multiple directions. The insurgents could hear the SEALs but couldn’t see them. With the red dot in Chris’s sight, he traced one muzzle flash to the upper body of a long silhouette. Chris squeezed his trigger once. Then again. The long silhouette sank.
Although the insurgents fired their AKs on full auto, the SEAL squad’s precise shots severed the tangos’ numbers — until the fight became mano a mano. Untamed power surged through Chris’s veins, and he felt like a wolf with his wolf pack, dominating the night.
The surviving tangos wised up — AK muzzle flashes focused on the SEALs’ direction, and mini sonic booms from passing bullets popped the air around him. He efficiently took the fear of the bullets and locked it into a tiny box. He had entered a zone, focusing even more on his next target. Chris eased his red dot on the nearest insurgent and downed him. The insurgent’s comrades fell, too — until none were left standing.
If the insurgents had been the target of this mission, Chris and his teammates would check to make sure they were all dead and search them for intel, but they weren’t the target, and a few hundred Syrian militiamen from Mordet’s village were probably en route to the frogmen’s position right now.
After making so much noise, there was no more need for stealth. Senior Chief barked, “Haul ass to the river!”
Chris picked the black hood off the ground and turned to make sure Beanpole and Psycho were following. Beanpole poked Mordet in the back, and he stumbled forward.
As they ran to the river, blood oozed from Chris’s bitten ear and down his neck. He didn’t know how much blood he’d lost, but there was no time to bandage himself now. When the SEALs reached the water, the SOC-R was waiting for them with its engines running. They boarded swiftly and took their designated positions. The pilot shoved the throttle forward, and the boat pulled away from the bank and accelerated to over forty knots, heading south.
“Status report,” Senior called to the SEALs.
Gorgeous sounded off first, reporting on any wounds and remaining ammo: “Gorgeous, okay, four magazines.” The others sounded off in succession. Then came Chris’s turn. “Reverend, got a nick on my right ear, three magazines.” Reverend was Chris’s call sign — given to him because when the guys went bar-hopping, despite relentless ribbing, Chris wouldn’t drink alcohol. Psycho gave the last report.
Beanpole made eye contact with Chris for a moment. Chris was pissed.
If you’d gagged Mordet properly, this wouldn’t have happened.
Beanpole looked away as if he could read his thoughts.
Little Doc came over to take a look at his ear while the guys with more ammo donated bullets to the guys with less. As Little Doc examined Chris, he calmly said, “Looks like they shot off half of your ear. Did you pick it up and bring it with you?”
Mordet had a grin on his face as he chewed on something.
Chris pointed to him and said, “He bit it off.”
“What?” Little Doc asked.
Mordet continued to chew.
Disgust and anger roiled in Chris’s stomach. “What the — damn, he’s eating it!”
“Eat this!” Little Doc slammed the butt of his rifle into Mordet’s face. The chewing motion stopped. Little Doc grabbed Mordet’s nose with one hand and his jaw with the other and opened Mordet’s mouth wide. “You sicko-freako-shit-sucking-no-life-mother—” He shook half of a chewed-up ear out of Mordet’s mouth. It was impractical for them to carry ice in the field, so Little Doc wrapped the piece of flesh in some gauze and put it in Chris’s shirt pocket.
They sat silently until Mordet regained consciousness. This time, Little Doc struck him so hard with the rifle butt that it probably knocked his IQ down twenty points. Little Doc gagged him again before Chris slammed the hood down around Mordet’s head.
As the SEALs continued their return trip, Little Doc disinfected and bandaged Chris’s ear.
Will my ear ever be the same again? I hope I don’t bleed to death.
His enlistment was near its end, and this wasn’t giving him warm, fuzzy feelings about re-upping. Then he realized that if he kept thinking about his ear and reenlistment, he might miss spotting an ambush and lose more than his ear. He focused his eyes and mind on the shore, scanning for threats.
The SEALs traveled unmolested to their base in Al Anbar Province, where they handed Mordet over to the civilian-clothed Agency interrogator and his assistants.
A hospital corpsman showed up soon after and escorted Chris away.
In sick bay, the surgeon greeted Chris, who took his piece of ear out of his pocket.
The surgeon didn’t have to examine it long to make a judgment: “This is too mangled. Even if I did sew it back on, it would remain deformed like this for the rest of your life.”
“Right now, all I want to do is find Young.”
“After I sew up your wound here, I can arrange to have you flown to the facial prosthetics lab at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. Their 3-D camera can produce images for a mold of your ear. I can even arrange for you to have a summer ear and winter ear with appropriate skin tones and an ear in camouflage.”
“Thanks, Doc, but I don’t have time right now to fly back to the States. That’ll have to wait until after we find Young.”
“I’ll just sew it up for now.”
Chris nodded.
As the surgeon went to work, Chris noticed his Yale diploma on the wall and remembered his sophomore year at Harvard. At that time, part of Chris had wanted to become a preacher and part of him had wanted to become a SEAL, but when 9/11 happened, the choice had become clear: he’d left Harvard and joined the Navy. Now he hunted evil men through fire and brimstone, and although he repeatedly reminded himself that he wasn’t a part of the bad guys’ underworld, he bore the scars of their world on his body and soul. He longed for light. He longed for a place closer to Heaven.
After the surgeon finished suturing his wound, Chris departed and hurried to the gator pit, where he found Hannah watching a live video feed of the interrogation. She was a raven-haired chameleon who shape-shifted between geek, Sampson, and Delilah.
Hannah’s eyes didn’t leave the video feed as Chris stepped up beside her. “What’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?” she asked with a sweetness in her husky voice.
He smiled. “Same thing a nice gal like you is doing.” He pointed to the monitor. “What is he doing?”
“Waterboarding Mordet,” she said.
“And?” Chris asked.
“Mordet hasn’t said a word.”
The interrogation booth was a small room made of plywood. A TV monitor on the wall was hooked up to a laptop on a table, so if Mordet began talking about Young’s location, the gator could have Mordet point it out on a high-tech map on the TV monitor. Mordet was tied on his back on a board the size of a door, with his feet elevated. A wet orange cloth was wrapped around his face.