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  SEAL Team 13

  ( SEAL Team 13 - 1 )

  Evan Currie

  It’s been ten years since a mysterious incident in the South China Sea annihilated a US Navy destroyer and its Navy SEAL team. Only one man survived this horrific tragedy. Now, as more of these strange, supernatural events are happening around the world — with deadly consequences — the US Navy calls on sole survivor Harold “Hawk” Masters to put a stop to the evil forces behind these crimes.

  Masters reluctantly returns, dispatched to lead an elite team of soldiers like him — all survivors of the terrifying, evil deeds of “the other side.” As these frightening events escalate at an alarming rate, SEAL Team 13 is put to the test, battling malevolent undead creatures that threaten the security of the nation — and the world.

  But not everyone supports the government’s new interest in facing off against the unnatural forces that threaten the welfare of its citizens. Could Hawk Masters’ secret military force also be forced to fight shadowy opponents from within?

  From world-building author Evan Currie, SEAL Team 13 is a dark, riveting, and action-packed tale of military intrigue and supernatural horror.

  Evan Currie

  SEAL Team 13

  PROLOGUE

  SOUTH CHINA SEA

  TEN YEARS AGO

  The rain was beating down, almost drowning out the roar of the twin outboards that pushed the small craft away from the Chinese coast. The blue waves were building on them, but the pilot of the boat kept the throttle open as his passengers scrambled about in what could easily be mistaken for sheer panic.

  “What the HELL was that thing?!”

  “Mother of God! I’m seeing things!”

  “If you are, we are, so shut it and stay focused, sailor!” the commander growled.

  Lieutenant Harold “Hawk” Masters kept his eyes fixed on the ocean ahead of him, one hand on the wheel, the other pushing the throttle as far as it would go. They crested a wave at better than fifty miles per hour, the trained responses of the team causing them to hunker down as the rubber boat left the surface of the water, becoming momentarily airborne.

  Two of the men covered their primary, a Chinese national who’d been flipped by a CIA deep cover agent and now needed extraction, pushing him to the bottom of the boat just before the craft came crashing back down into the water, the whine of the motors becoming a gurgling roar as the props once more found something to bite into.

  “Keep us right side up, Hawk!”

  “Don’t worry about me, Commander!” Hawk yelled back. “Just nuke that sucker!”

  Lieutenant Commander Alexander Johnson “AJ” Webster didn’t respond as he came up to one knee and swept the sea with a cold hard gaze that belied the tight knot in his gut.

  The extraction mission had been going by the numbers, Hawk thought as he tried to stay focused on his task, just as smoothly as anyone had any right to expect, which he supposed should have been their first clue. They’d penetrated the Chinese coastal defenses just after 0300 local time and landed on the target beach without any problems. The pickup had gone off without a hitch — no sign of local police or military as they packed their primary into the boat and took off.

  Everything went nuts after the continental shelf dropped out from under them. At first Hawk had thought they’d struck a whale — the impact had nearly capsized the small craft, and three men had been thrown clear. While the men were swimming back, though, it became clear that whatever it was, it was no whale.

  Two of the men had been sucked under by whatever it was, and while they’d managed to pull the third aboard, he was missing the bottom half of his leg, and he bled out on the deck of the boat. AJ had ordered them to keep moving just seconds later, when it became clear that their two mates weren’t coming back up.

  Had to be one mother of a shark, Hawk had supposed, inwardly cringing at the thought. Getting eaten alive was no way for a SEAL to go out. No damn way at all.

  Now, though, he wasn’t sure what the hell it was. No shark on the planet would chase a damned boat at better than fifty miles per hour. No way, no how. Must be some kind of Chinese marine weapon, but damned if he could imagine anything that could do this.

  The sound of small-arms fire erupted around him, but he kept watching the water. Somewhere out there the Fitzgerald was waiting, and then they’d see who had the bigger guns.

  He almost missed the bulge in the water ahead of them, as it appeared at little better than point-blank range.

  “Crap!” he snarled out. “Hang on!”

  The SEALs threw themselves down, wrapping arms into and around anything they could as Hawk spun the wheel and started to pray.

  USS FITZGERALD

  The USS Fitzgerald was an Arleigh Burke — class destroyer, one of the more advanced oceangoing weapon systems on the planet. She’d been under her current command for four years, and Captain Izerman was looking forward to another twelve before he retired, barring any promotions. He was settled into the command station, sipping his coffee as the crew went about their duties with the level of professional care he’d come to expect from them.

  They’d been cruising their current arc for two days, but that was about to end. The team was due for pickup soon, and then the Fitzgerald would be ordered to begin its sweep back to Pearl for a refit. Izerman looked out over the sweeping ocean ahead of them and smiled tightly as he held his mug. He did love his job, even the long hours of mind-numbing boredom that came with it.

  A young officer approached, more tentatively than Izerman would have liked from his junior, looking on for a moment before speaking. “Captain?”

  “What is it, Ensign?”

  “I think I have the team on approach.”

  Izerman grunted, glancing at the clock. “They’re early.”

  “Yes, sir. Coming in fast, sir. Very fast.”

  “Oh?” The captain rose up, walking over to lean over the screen. “Any sign of pursuit?”

  “Negative, sir.”

  “I guess they must have been in a mood to push it, then,” the captain mused, walking toward the large windows that looked out over the forward deck of the Fitzgerald. “NODs.”

  “Here, sir.”

  The yeoman standing the watch lowered the night observation devices (NODs) from his eyes and dropped them into the captain’s hand. Izerman raised them to his eyes, sweeping the dark seas in the direction the instruments said the team was coming from. For a long moment he found nothing, and then there they were, a dark spot on a dark ocean, showing up just enough for him to pick them out.

  He watched for a moment; then his breath hitched, and he dropped the NODs, eyes widening.

  “Commander,” Izerman called sharply.

  “Sir!” Commander Yvonne Sanderson called, stepping to his side in an instant.

  “Check me,” he ordered, handing her the NODs. “Four o’clock.”

  The petite commander nodded and took the device from him, quickly sweeping the night sea herself. She found the target quickly, and the captain saw her freeze as he had, her breath coming out in a whoosh as she dropped the NODs and looked over at him.

  “Small-arms fire, sir.”

  He nodded at the confirmation, pivoting on his heel. “General quarters! All hands to battle stations!”

  “General Quarters, aye!”

  Klaxons began to wail as the ship’s already-dark lights shifted further into the red, and the USS Fitzgerald went to war.

  * * *

  Hawk groaned as he picked himself up off the deck of the small craft, ears ringing from the impact and the sound of gunfire. An arm grabbed his shoulder, shaking him hard.

  He swiveled around and found himself staring into the commander’s face. AJ’s mouth moved, but no
sound seemed to come out. The commander shook him again, then looked behind him and shouted something else.

  Sound came back to Hawk in a rush, staggering him, but he held on tightly to the return of his senses and focused on AJ, who was screaming at him again. “Damn it, Hawk, snap out of it!”

  “I’m okay.…I’m okay, boss.”

  “Good man! Check the motors; we’ve got to get moving again!”

  Hawk nodded, crawling unsteadily back to the controls. He jammed his thumb down on the starter, but only received an ugly grinding sound in return. He winced, crawled back to the rear of the boat, and hauled up one of the outboards.

  When he saw the twisted wreckage of the prop, he swore loud and hard, dropped the motor back into the water, and yanked up the other one.

  Same sight, same desecration of the English language.

  “We are boned, Commander!” he called out, looking over his shoulder. “Both outboards are shot to hell!”

  AJ swore too, then nodded. “Grab your gear, Hawk, and if you see something moving in this soup, blow it away. Rankin! Tell me you’ve got the Fitzgerald on the comms!”

  Hawk blocked out their conversation, trusting his mates to do their jobs, and flipped open the compartment where he’d stashed his weapon. He pulled the German UMP-45 from the box, checking the action and breech on reflex, and turned back to the rear of the boat as he automatically shouldered the weapon.

  The tactical light lit off as his finger swept across the trigger, illuminating the sea just beyond the boat, and Hawk did something he had never done in his life, especially since joining the SEALs.

  He froze.

  Against all training, against his instincts, and against everything he’d ever considered himself to be, Hawk froze as his eyes slowly began to range upward, drawn inexorably to the column of…something that was rising from the ocean. It was only a few yards away, as thick around as the entire freaking boat he was in, and he felt his jaw slacken as he took it in. It towered above them, waving slightly like some monstrous vine hanging from a tree. Only it was hanging up, and it was far too large to be any kind of vine or plant or any other damn thing he could think of. His weapon slumped for a moment as he started, and nothing else seemed to exist for him just then.

  Then the moment passed and Hawk’s eyes widened as the thing began to topple.

  “Holyyyy…,” he said slowly, barely suppressing the insane urge to scream Timber! “Shit! Evac the boat! Now, now, now…”

  The men behind him swung around, guns lining up as they opened fire, but it was far too little and far too late. A few threw themselves aside in time as the enormous limb crashed down into the boat, splintering fiberglass and destroying metal as it drove the small military Zodiac below the waves.

  * * *

  “What are they shooting at?!”

  “I don’t know, Captain!” The beleaguered response came from a harried lieutenant. “There’s nothing on radar!”

  “Stealth ship?” Izerman asked instantly. The Chinese were rumored to be developing something along those lines, but they weren’t supposed to be anywhere near either the British or American programs, and he was pretty sure neither of them had ships in the open water yet.

  “If it is, it’s the tightest stealthing imaginable, sir!”

  “Sonar! Submerged contacts?”

  “We’ve got…something, Cap,” the sonar operator confirmed, but his tone was decidedly uncertain.

  “I need more details!”

  “I don’t have any! There’s something out there, but it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

  Izerman growled, pushing his way over to the station to take a look at the contact himself. He saw in an instant what the mate was talking about — the screen contact faded in and out, looking more like a living being than any submarine he’d ever come across.

  The closest thing the captain could connect it with was a pod of whales he’d once tracked along the Alaskan coast. Even that wasn’t a match, though, and he was as flabbergasted as his man.

  “Target a hundred yards behind the team,” he ordered, turning back to the weapons station. “Put a warning shot out there.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Out on deck the five-inch Mark 45 came to life, pivoting to bear on the distant target as the Fitzgerald surged under military power toward its wayward SEAL team. The gun roared out, flash lighting the deck and sea for a moment, sending its deadly payload down range.

  “Someone get me the team on the goddamned radio already!”

  * * *

  Hawk surged to the surface, gasping for air as he turned in the water and looked for others. Part of the team’s boat was bobbing a short distance away, a segment of the inflated rubber section, and he quickly swam over and hooked an arm on it as he pulled his UMP up and shook water out of the barrel.

  “AJ?!” he called out. “Rankin! Mercer!”

  A splash of water caused him to pivot hard, bringing the UMP around, and its light fell on the terrified face of the Chinese national whom they’d extracted. Hawk didn’t have time for the man, so he just grabbed him with one arm, practically throwing him up over the floating rubber section.

  “Hold on, and keep quiet!” he ordered as he turned away.

  “Hawk!”

  Eddie Rankin was swimming in his direction, pulling a body along with him. “Gimme a hand, Hawk. It’s the boss.”

  Hawk swore, but reached out and helped his friend and classmate pull AJ up to the floating part of the wreck. Between them they managed to manhandle the unconscious SEAL onto it, next to the Chinese national, who looked like he was in shock. Hawk checked the commander’s pulse and closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head when he opened them and saw Rankin looking his way.

  “Jesus,” Rankin swore. Then after a moment he hissed, “What the hell was that thing?”

  “No idea,” Hawk replied, gritting his teeth as he looked around. “You see anything?”

  “Not a damn thing. You think it’s gone?”

  “It followed us from China — hell no, it ain’t gone.”

  A whistling sound broke through the air just then, and the two SEALs paled.

  “Incoming!” Hawk shouted.

  The shot was beyond their position, obviously, because they’d heard the sound of the incoming freight train, but both men threw themselves as far as they could onto the wreckage to get out of the water before the round went off, just in case it was closer than they thought.

  The roar came from well past their position, however, and they didn’t even feel a rain of water come down on them, so they both breathed easier for a moment. Hawk craned his neck, looking around, and was the first to spot the source.

  “It’s the Fitzgerald!” he called out. “She’s here!”

  “It’s about frickin’ time!”

  Hawk fished around in his web gear for a moment, then pulled out a flare and popped it off against the wreckage. As it lit up, he waved it as high as he could get it, hoping to hell that someone was looking in their direction.

  * * *

  “Flare in the water!”

  Commander Sanderson’s call lit a fire under several people on the bridge, and Captain Izerman rose to his feet.

  “Send out the Seahawk, and pick up any survivors.”

  “Aye, Captain!” Sanderson said resolutely.

  Izerman looked around grimly. “Have we got any clue as to what’s going on out there?”

  Silence answered the question, though not at all to the captain’s liking. He shook his head, his face set in grim rigor. “Fine. Get the helo in the air, and all hands stand ready for antisubmarine drills.”

  “Aye, sir,” came the reply from one of his men.

  The only thing Izerman felt relatively confident of was the fact that there was something out there. SEAL teams didn’t go shooting up empty patches of ocean while on mission. While they were on leave, it might be a different story, but never on mission. If they had been shooting up the water for no reas
on, well, they weren’t going to be SEALs for much longer.

  “ETA to target location?”

  “Ten minutes, sir,” the sonar operator responded.

  Izerman nodded, forcing himself to settle in for the wait. Less than a minute later the beat of helo blades could be heard in the command deck, and those inside could see the LAMPS-III CH-60S flashing lights as it flew past the bridge and out into the night.

  “Someone had better tell me what’s going on here sometime soon, or I’m going to lose it,” Izerman growled, eyes staring out into the dark as his mind tried to make sense of the insane situation.

  There was an uncomfortable silence in the wake of his comment, and it stretched out until a warning sound came from the sonar station.

  “Now what?”

  “Incoming contact, Captain. It’s the same thing that was out by the team, sir.…I think.”

  Izerman wished the man sounded more certain. “I hope you have more details this time,” he said.

  “Yes, sir, but it’s still not totally clear—”

  “I’ll take what you’ve got.”

  “It’s moving fast, better than fifty knots, and closing in on our position.”

  “What?!” Izerman lurched to his feet again, knowing that nothing natural moved at that speed. “Torpedoes!”

  “Torpedoes, aye!” came the return cry.

  “Collision course!”

  Izerman grabbed the squawk, keying open the mic. “All hands, brace for impact!”

  He dropped the mic, then nodded to the weapons station. “Fire all tubes.”

  “Fire all tubes, aye!”

  Outside, on deck, the rush of exploding gasses vented across the ship as her two Mark 36 launchers fired their six Mark 46 ADCAPs into the rolling sea.

  “Fish in the water!” the sonar station called out. “They’re tracking! They’ve gone terminal!”

  “Already?” Izerman snapped, grabbing hold of a nearby wall. “Sound collision! Hard to starboard!”

  “Hard to starboard, aye-aye!”

  Alarms blared across the ship as the men and women on board took a second from their duties to make sure they weren’t about to be thrown across the decks, then immediately returned their focus to their jobs.