by Cindy Dees
He blinked, momentarily looking startled. For an equally fleeting moment, respect passed through his hard gaze. “Yes. That’s an order. Oh, and speaking of orders, the admiral says not to fuck this up.”
She saluted smartly, snapping her hand up to her brow and back down. Sarcasm dripping in her voice, she responded, “Yes, Chief. No fucking, Chief.”
Openly smirking, Vidmeyer lifted his chin. Without ire this time, he said, “Best get going, Lieutenant Tate.”
Whoa. That was the first time he’d broken his asshole persona with her, and the first time any of the instructors had referred to her rank since she’d started BUD/S.
Thoughtfully, she walked back to her room. By the time she got there, the mud had mostly dried and was caking off her clothing. She knocked the worst of it off and gave her hair a good scrub with her hands. She worked on it until she could run her fingers through it. She’d learned the hard way that too much dirt clogged up her shower drain, and then she had to go without showers for several days until the BUD/S instructors got around to asking someone to come unclog it for her.
She went into her bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Beneath the dried mud, she was sunburned, and her left cheekbone had a lump on it that gave her eye a distinct squint. Her lips were cracked. Her clothes were filthy. And with bits of mud still clinging in her hair, she looked like a crazy homeless lady. In point of fact, she suspected most homeless people were significantly cleaner than she was now. How in the heck she was going to cover up the toll of BUD/S and make herself over into the recruiting poster in an hour, she didn’t know.
She eyed her shower, then looked back at her reflection. Looked back at the shower.
If she was ever going to be accepted by the SEALs as one of them, she was going to have to start acting like one of them. And that did not include dressing up, primping, and prancing around like the Barbie doll they so loved to accuse her of being.
Without even passing a washcloth over her face, she marched out of her room and went downstairs to wait for the staff car, mud and all.
The driver’s eyebrows shot straight up to his hairline when she climbed in beside him, but the guy said nothing as he delivered her to the back door of the base theater.
Schneider, the public affairs officer, was not so restrained. “I told them to let you have a shower and get cleaned up before you came over here! I have your makeup kit and clean uniforms for you. Crap, crap, crap. Now we’re going to be late. The admiral’s going to be pissed. He has another meeting after—”
“Schneider. Stop.”
He stared at her, not comprehending. She explained. “My instructors did give me time to clean up. I chose not to.”
“You… What?” he sputtered.
“I’m doing the press conference like this.”
“Are you crazy? I can’t put you in front of cameras looking like that!”
“Why not? I’m in the middle of a training day, and this is what I look like in the middle of a training day.”
“No, no, no. This isn’t what the Navy Public Affairs Office has in mind at all. I got explicit instructions from headquarters—”
“It’s not open for discussion,” she interrupted gently. “I do the press conference like this or not at all.”
She didn’t give Schneider time to consider that choice, but instead walked past him. She knew where the stage was and headed directly for it with him running along in her wake, panicking. He actually wrung his hands as he ran backwards beside her, arguing every step of the way.
Ignoring him, she strode right out onto the stage.
The journalists were talking among themselves, checking sound, and talking with their cameramen, since the press conference wasn’t due to start for another fifteen minutes.
But as members of the press corps spotted her, silence spread quickly across the large space. Shocked stillness settled over them all. She stared at them and they stared back, taking in her rather dramatic appearance. Personally, she relished her all-over shade of beige, caused by the thin layer of mud residue.
She spoke into the microphone. “If you all can start early, I have places to go and things to do.”
It took a minute or so of scrambling, but the lights went on, and when she got thumbs-ups from the camera crews, she spoke into the microphone. At least this time Schneider hadn’t bothered writing down prepared remarks for her.
“Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for coming out today to check in on me. As you can see, I’m still standing. In an effort to keep this short so I can get back to my teammates, I’m going to make a quick statement and try to anticipate most of your questions.”
She noted movement in the back of the theater as a silent row of SEAL instructors filed in, much like last time. Except this time she could put names with the faces. She knew who the jerks were, who the decent guys were, who the skeptics were, and who her silent supporters were.
Dryly, she said, “Yes. BUD/S is hard. No, I don’t like it. Nobody does. Yes, I get along fine with my teammates. No, I don’t get along with my instructors. Nobody does.” That got a laugh out of the reporters.
She continued, “I’ve had a few minor injuries along the way, which is perfectly normal. No, I don’t feel particularly discriminated against, nor do I feel singled out or favored. I’m just another trainee, which is a tribute to the professionalism of my instructors and fellow trainees. The hardest part is always the next training evolution, and as SEALs are fond of saying, the only easy day was yesterday.”
There. Griffin had just slipped into the back of the auditorium. She didn’t even have to look up from the reporters to feel his presence.
She finished up with, “I have every reason to believe I’ll make it through the remainder of Phase I. Particularly since I would rather die than quit. Let’s see. What else? I don’t know where I fall in class ranking. I don’t care. I’m giving it my all, and that’s what matters to me. That and doing my best to see my teammates make it through, too. That’s all I’ve got for you today.”
“Why are you covered in dirt?” someone shouted out.
“Because I left my teammates running relay races through mud flats, and I plan to rejoin them as soon as we’re finished here.” She caught movement in the wings stage left, and out of the corner of her eye spotted an admiral’s gold sleeve stripes.
For Admiral Duquesne’s benefit, she added, “You guys didn’t seriously expect me to get up every morning, put on makeup and do my hair to go play BUD/S, did you?”
That got a laugh out of the press, and she leaned toward the mic. “I have to confess, though, that the instructors do call me Barbie from time to time.”
The reporters loved that. On that high note, she said, “If you’ll excuse me, I really don’t want to miss any more training. My team needs me.”
Admiral Duquesne started out onto the stage, and she flat-out fled. Not only did she not want to have to pose for pictures with him, but she also didn’t want to get stuck here any longer than absolutely necessary.
Poor Schneider couldn’t chase after her because he had to introduce the admiral.
She burst out of the theater and looked left and right. There. Her instructors were just leaving the building. She ran over to them. “Any chance I can catch a ride back to my team?”
Peevy moved over in the back seat of a Hummer. “Hop in.”
Frankly, she was surprised they hadn’t forced her to run all the way back to the beach. Relieved, she tried to be invisible on the ride back while the instructors chatted and joked. With a nod of thanks at them, she jogged down the beach to her team. The Smurf raft had capsized, and her buddies bobbed in the water, helpless against the power of the surf. Waves slammed them against the rocks and then swept them back out to sea over and over.
Jab had made it ashore, and she helped him snag Smurfs one by one as they washed back
in over the next few minutes. The bottom had partially torn out of their boat, but that didn’t prevent them all from being sent back out into the water for one more surf passage and rock portage in the ruined raft.
Smitty shouted as they simultaneously hung on to the side of the raft and paddled for all they were worth, trying to get a wave to pick them up and carry them shoreward, “Never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad you’re back, Tate!”
“I missed you guys, too!” she shouted back.
They had no more breath to speak as they were unceremoniously dumped out of their raft and slammed into the rocks like the flotsam they were.
By the time Jab and another guy finally snagged her and dragged her ashore, she was more drowned than not. Thankfully, the evolution was secured, and they stumbled back to the chow hall to shove down as many calories as they could before they fell asleep in their food.
“How was the press conference?” Smitty asked.
“As short as I could make it. They loved my attire. Haute mud-mask couture.”
“You didn’t.”
She grinned back at her teammate. “I did. Admiral Duquesne looked none too happy about it, either. But he can suck my”—she finished lamely—“toes.”
Jab shook his head, tsking. “If you’re gonna be a SEAL, you’ve got to get better at swearing, kid.”
The remainder of the dinner conversation devolved into swearing lessons for her. She laughed hard at the Smurfs’ creativity, and a good time was had by all. Mostly, though, she was relieved they didn’t hold it against her that she’d been pulled out for a stupid press conference.
The next night, Vidmeyer announced the trainees would have all day Sunday off to rest…because Hell Week started Monday morning.
This was it. The ultimate test of whether or not she would make it as a SEAL. The fix could be in to graduate her as much as anyone wanted, but if she couldn’t hack Hell Week, the SEALs would know it and she would never be considered a legitimate member of the brotherhood.
It was a sacred rite of passage. Period.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t stack the deck in her favor a little.
Late Sunday morning, she gathered the Smurfs in her room for an unofficial team meeting. Afterward, grinning from ear to ear, they dispersed to do various errands. Two guys went into San Diego to obtain a tank of helium and hide it near the beach. When the instructors weren’t looking, they would fill the Smurf boat with it to make it lighter to carry.
Two more guys went shopping off base where they wouldn’t be spotted, and everyone helped them hide boxes of chocolate and bottles of brandy for several miles in each direction up and down the beach.
Sherri bought and handed out jars of the thick petroleum paste used by triathletes and ultra-marathoners to prevent chafing. Even though she embarrassed the men by saying so, she told them succinctly where to smear the stuff. She also warned them to wear bathing suits under their clothes and hide the suits during their forced showers to prevent their confiscation. Griffin had assured her that chafing and raw tender bits would be one of the worst agonies of the week.
Over supper that night, she gave the guys one last pep talk, sharing every hint she dared from Griffin without giving away that she’d been coached to death on how to survive Hell Week.
She encouraged them to save ten percent of their energy for helping each other. She told them that when they decided to quit, they should give it five more minutes before taking action. She warned them that the instructors would likely force them into survival situations that required them to attack each other and even beat the hell out of each other. She told the guys not to hold back because she was a girl, and she would do the same for them. She even told them she expected to share body heat with them, to sleep spooning with them, and to end up mostly naked with them a time or two.
And last of all, she exhorted them not to even think about quitting. To get it in their minds that they would die before giving up. They made a group pledge to stick it out as a team, come hell or high water. Pun intended.
On that pledge, they dispersed to get one last night’s sleep before the next five days and nights of no sleep, demolition pits, obstacle courses, night drowning evolutions, surf passage, mud flats, two hundred miles of running, and whatever else the instructors could throw at them to break the will of any normal mortal.
Griffin came to her as soon as she turned her lights out.
As she settled in his arms, she murmured, “Any last advice?”
“Yes. When you think you can’t make it one more second, remember I’ll be waiting for you when it’s over. We’ll go hang out on my boat, and you can sleep about eighteen hours straight. I’ll have all the food you want, and I’ll have ice packs and massages waiting for you. All you have to do is keep going until you get there.”
She nodded, grateful for the mental image to hang onto.
Griffin’s last words, whispered to her just as she fell asleep, were “I believe in you.”
Chapter 19
Hell Week was…hell. If she took every miserable moment she’d experienced over the entire course of her training, magnified each one by ten, crammed them all together, and added sleep deprivation, mental torture, and completely inhuman pain to the mix, it still wouldn’t come close to the agony of it.
Griffin had told her if she could make it to Wednesday night, she could surely make it the rest of the week, for it would just be more of the same. She randomly remembered his observation while falling into a pile with her boatmates on the beach. They’d actually won a surf passage race, compliments of excellent teamwork, and had earned a five-minute nap. Which was manna from heaven.
Someone shook her awake, screaming in her face, and she stumbled to her feet, shivering violently. She was never going to be warm or dry again. Oh, wait. Griffin. Fuzzily, she tried to remember making love with him that magical day on his boat a lifetime ago.
They were off and running again, this time to the chow hall. She added butter to her coffee, gulped it down too hot and burned her mouth, and shoveled in as many calories as she could as fast as she could in the few minutes they were given to eat.
Jab fell asleep in his plate, and she poked him hard. “Wake up. Eat.”
“Right. Food,” he mumbled.
She actually picked up his coffee cup and poured it down his throat. Then the instructors slammed through the doors, yelling, and they were back outside, picking up their boat, hoisting it overhead, and running down the beach.
Griffin is waiting at the end of this.
Whether or not the helium they’d smuggled in and filled their boat with actually made it significantly lighter, the morale boost was considerable. The Smurfs grinned at each other every time they picked up the raft.
Same with their hidden snacks. Yes, the sugar of the chocolate bars helped, and a swig of brandy was bracing and warmed a soul from the inside out. But the psychological boost of getting away with something was substantially more important.
She glimpsed Griffin now and then and got the impression he was subtly keeping an eye on her. But he couldn’t help her this time. She had to do this on her own. She was grateful he understood and stayed away from her, merely supporting her from afar with his presence.
He made the suffering worth it, somehow. Oh, she knew that this was all a test of character at the end of the day; no matter how hard Hell Week was, she would encounter missions harder in the field. But seeing Griffin’s tall frame out of the corner of her eye, catching sight of his handsome face, reminded her what it meant to be a SEAL and what she was striving toward.
Whenever she was dead sure she couldn’t take another step, she thought of him. And it never failed to help her take that next step.
Wednesday night, Jabrowski missed the shore when jumping out of their boat and went down headfirst onto the rocks. He slipped under the surf, and Griffin and anot
her instructor dived in after him to pull him out of the water, unconscious.
By the time she and the other Smurfs clambered ashore, Griffin was out of the water, his clothes clinging wetly to him, outlining every contour of his spectacular body in wet cotton. Even in her advanced state of exhaustion, she couldn’t help but appreciate the sight. Two more days. And then she could have that body all to herself. Minus the clothing.
The instructors wanted to load Jabrowski into one of the ambulances standing by, but the Smurfs argued passionately as a group for him to get a chance to wake up and continue on.
Jab regained consciousness, and a medic declared him to have a mild concussion, recommending that he stop training. But Jab and the Smurfs made such a stink that he was given another shot at finishing Hell Week. Unfortunately, by midday Thursday, to the Smurfs’ dismay, he was hallucinating and had to be taken to the hospital. Griffin sidled over to her to mutter out of the side of his mouth that Jab would be rolled back a class and given another shot.
When she relayed that to her fellow Smurfs, they nodded and passed out, spooning together in the blessedly warm and dry sand of a dune near the beach. But then, so did she. She was so numb with exhaustion, cold, and physical agony, she had not one brain cell left to worry about anyone else except herself and her remaining teammates.
She honestly didn’t remember much of Thursday. She didn’t think she was delirious, but it passed in a strange fog of mental detachment. She watched her body being bruised and abused as she pushed it far, far beyond its limits. Pain still registered, but it didn’t even matter any more. She would keep doing the things the instructors told her to, stumbling forward from one evolution to the next until it either ended or she died. And at this point, she didn’t care which.
They lost two more Smurfs, one to a broken wrist, and one to voluntary withdrawal. Of one-hundred-sixty-two initial trainees, they were down to forty-four guys and a girl.
