by Tawny Weber
Marc heard the warning in the Training Officer’s voice. “Is she here?” He tacked his copy of the roster to the clipboard in his hand and turned to the M’s, scanning the page. No Miller.
“Did you know?”
It had been all over the news and the Chief of SEALs had called yesterday. She was coming in under Congressional order and with Admiral Dann’s blessing.
But that’s not what Hugh meant.
“I didn’t know it would get this far.” He thought he’d have to spend his time consoling his wife about not being allowed to train with the Navy SEALs.
He waved in the instructors standing around on the blacktop grinder and they formed a loose huddle.
“How do you want to handle this?” Hugh asked.
All the instructors looked to Marc for guidance. “With kid gloves,” he answered carefully. He went around the circle, looking each man in the eye. “It’s our job to harass trainees, so we harass. That doesn’t mean sexual harassment. If you don’t know the difference, here’s my definition—you don’t do anything to my wife that you wouldn’t do to your own sister. Other than that, I want her out of here yesterday.”
Marc strode toward the formation of inductees, his men following. “Sunglasses,” he hissed, putting his on. Instant intimidation. “Scowl.” Instant anger. “Just add water...”
“Instant asshole,” Hugh finished the little ritual.
“Come on, let’s go meet the boys.” He slapped Hugh on the back, then picked up his own pace to hurry them along.
The familiar sight of shaved heads lining the grinder in uneven rows met them. Marc moved to the front of the formation and tried to keep his gaze from drifting to the one trainee he knew intimately.
“Attention! Dress right, dress!” Hugh put the sailors in order.
“Armstrong!” Marc bellowed.
“Here, sir.”
Marc pointed left and front. Keeping trainees in alphabetical order and giving them a number made things easier. “You’re billet number one. Becker...Beeman...” he continued, repeating the process with each trainee. “Cha—” He choked on the name. His head snapped up.
She stood at the back of the crowd. Her beautiful hair gone. It’ll grow back. It was a completely irrational thought. He should be wondering what the hell she thought she was doing. Not what in the hell happened to her hair. Or why in the hell she wasn’t using his name.
“Chapel,” he called her forward. She took her place beside Beeman. “Number four.” He showed no outward emotion. It wouldn’t do to let the other inductees see he wasn’t in control. “For now.”
Nervous laughter echoed around her after his comment. Marc read through the rest of the roster and launched into his welcome speech.
“I am the Marquis! Your royal pain in the butt for the next twenty-five weeks. Most of you won’t last long enough to repeat my name. The rest of you will learn to hate me. And my name will become a curse on your lips...”
He’d never realized it before, but he’d adopted a speech amazingly similar to the Toad’s. I am the Toad Prince, your royal... After the warm reception, he turned the trainees over to Hugh, who in turn, would hand them over to the Master Chief for buddy assignments.
“Make sure she gets Montgomery. Gummy Bear.” He’d been through twice and hadn’t made it past Hell Week.
“Chapel, my office.” Marc summoned over his shoulder, heading to HQ. He didn’t wait to see if she followed. But knew she did. He took the front steps two at a time. Strode down the passageway and through reception. “Preach, the Lieutenant’s service record.” He held out his hand in passing.
Perry stood motionless, then he started searching through the growing piles of service records on and around his desk. He handed Marc the appropriate file just as he reached the door to his own office. Marc stopped and ushered Tabitha in ahead of him.
“When Hugh comes in, ask him to wait,” he instructed Perry, closing the door.
To Tabby, he said, “I’m sure this is going to be a good one. You can start any time.” Rounding his desk, he flipped open her folder, ripped out the copy of her orders and read them.
She stood just inside the door at attention.
He looked up. “What? Nothing to say? Then why don’t we drop this Commander-Lieutenant shit. After all, we are husband and wife. We should have something to say to each other.”
At her silence, he continued. “Let me see, last week you were running from me in an airport. Then there was a single phone conversation. And now you’re back here for SEAL training. It seems as if I missed a whole hell of a lot between the honeymoon and today!” His face couldn’t be any redder than his vision right now.
“You know why I ran—”
“But I don’t know why you wouldn’t talk. I don’t even know when our marriage ended. Is it over?”
“That’s not fair. And you know it. You deliberately kept your study from me, knowing how much—if you didn’t know how much it would hurt me, Marc, you had no business marrying me.”
“You’re right.” He’d known. He just hadn’t wanted to admit it. “But I’m right about this—you need to quit. Right now.” For us.
“No.”
“Our marriage can’t survive this.” If she lasted one day, she’d hate him by the end of it. This was a test program, but the Navy didn’t normally allow one spouse to be in charge of the other’s training. “Who did you marry, Marc?”
He knew a trick question when he heard one. The woman he’d married was standing in front of him, bald and in his face. But he wisely kept his mouth shut.
“Look at me, Marc. This is who I am. This is who I’ve always been. Maybe you married an image of the woman you wanted me to be.”
No! Tabitha Chapel was not a bald and angry Navy SEAL. Tough was a part of the package, he knew that. But she was more. She was soft. And she was his.
“I can’t be your instructor and your husband!” He scanned the Page Two entries in her file. “You never recorded our marriage?” She’d taken the marriage license just for that purpose. Otherwise he would have done it.
She wasn’t even wearing his ring! Or his last name, he reminded himself.
“I know. I’m sorry, Marc...” her voice faded.
I want to be your husband. His throat constricted around the admission. She’d chosen. “Consider us legally separated.”
Slipping off her dog tags, she removed her wedding band from the chain and gave it to him. He took off his and fisted them both. “You’ll get your chance to prove yourself. And I’ll get my chance to break you. I should’ve just screwed you and been done with it.”
“You did, remember?”
1100 Thursday
NAVAL SPECIAL WARFARE CENTER
Coronado, CA
“Off your knees. And on your toes.”
He tapped her knee with his booted toe. Tabby’s gaze drifted up the length of him, taking in combat boots, bare legs, T-shirt, sunglasses and cap.
Her husband.
Wearing men’s swim trunks and a plain white T-shirt, she adjusted her position. He wasn’t her husband, she reminded herself. He was her SEAL instructor. She’d made her choice. And it hurt worse than the pebbles digging into her palms from the cement pool deck.
“Seven...eight,” he counted her push-ups. “Six... seven...” He subtracted, and she lost count.
She just kept pushing her aching muscles, lifting her body. She pushed and pushed until her arms shook and she couldn’t push anymore.
“One more!”
She gritted her teeth and forced her shaking arms to extend. Then collapsed where she lay. Hell Week for Tabitha Chapel started the day she walked in the door.
Chapter 21
2100 Sunday
SEAL BARRACKS
Coronado, CA
An hour before taps and lights out, Tabby sat on her rack quietly writing letters to her family, which carefully explained her extended study without saying she was an actual trainee. There’d never been time for th
at phone call to her father. Thank goodness her parents had been out of the country for an extended vacation during that press conference. The media had soon lost interest but it was picking up again.
They’d set her apart from the men in a big empty bay all her own. To everyone’s chagrin, especially Marc’s, she’d made it five weeks.
An explosion of artillery fire rocked the building. She pushed aside paper and pen. Scrambling from the room, she met up with Gummy outside. The piercing sound of sirens filled the air. Confusion reigned as trainees ran toward the blacktop grinder.
The Commander’s voice, distorted by a bullhorn, shouted, “Move it! Move it! Move it!”
Hell Week had begun.
Trainees arriving without swim buddies were reprimanded and sent back, learning the hard way SEALs never left a man behind. Trainees arriving in full fatigues were told to take off their shirts and caps and deposit them back at the barracks.
The uniform of the day was boots, pants and T-shirts. Those in proper dress were shoved to the ground on their bellies in the mock battle zone.
A hand gripped Tabby’s shoulder and pushed.
She fell forward on the blacktop, skinning the heels of both hands, Gummy lay beside her.
“On your backs, snakes!” the Commander screamed at them. “Hands behind your head. Ankles crossed.”
She didn’t even think to disobey. She just responded. Like everyone else. The piercing whistle of an incoming round sounded overhead as another simulator dropped into a sandbag-rigged barrel, serving as a grenade pit. An earsplitting explosion accompanied the ground-shaking detonation. Smoke billowed and curled.
Fog machines and glowing green chemical sticks lining the yard added an eerie surreal effect. Instructors fired blanks into the air. A shrill sound captured her attention. Tabby looked up at the man with the whistle.
The Commander blew twice. “Crawl!”
Crawling provided blessed relief from holding the same position for too long.
He blew three times. “On your feet!” Then, once. “On your backs!” The drill went on and on. One, two, three. Down, crawl, stand. “I can’t hear you!”
“Hoo-yah!” Tabby sounded her part of the collective response. Trying to keep up with the whistle became impossible. She tried just the same. Fingernails broke to ragged stubs, hands and arms were scraped by the rough surface. Three whistles sounded. Tabby stood. Then the instructors herded the formation double time toward the beach for water torture.
Tabby sat shivering in the cold water, arms linked with Beeman and Gummy.
“I’m soooo cold.” On Beeman’s other side, Armstrong’s teeth were chattering.
“Urinate,” Tabby hissed under her breath so he’d shut up before they were caught talking. She didn’t know what the penalty for talking was. But she sure didn’t want to find out.
“You want him to piss his pants?” Beeman was incredulous.
“Everyone does sooner or later,” Gummy whispered stoically. “It raises the water temperature. Temporarily.”
Beeman broke from the line. They tried to pull him back. Five, ten, twenty trainees followed. Just like that, they quit. Tabby linked her free arm with Armstrong—who was looking lost without his swim buddy—and squeezed Gummy’s arm, knowing how hard this was for him. His little brother had drowned in a mountain stream and Gummy had never made it past water torture before.
Tabby needed him to make it this time. She needed to make it. She looked up to see Marc staring at her.
Quitting was not an option.
“Follow the deserters! There’s not one of you that’s man enough to stay.” Marc shouted through the bullhorn, then handed it off to Hugh.
They each had a role to play. Kyle was the ultimate good cop, befriending the unsuspecting. Hugh was the voice of reason, calmly instructing the trainees. Marc badgered them to quit and made them angry enough to stay. That’s why he liked the part. But there was one woman he wanted to quit. How the hell she made it this far, he didn’t know.
“Out of the water,” Hugh ordered.
Marc walked down to the shoreline with the night shift doctor. “Pull her for hypothermia.”
Doc Brown, also a SEAL, nodded his understanding. Shining his flashlight down the line, Marc stopped at each man, while the Doc checked for signs of overexposure.
They had this down to a science. Twenty minutes in the water. Five minutes out. Worse than freezing to death, which was relatively painless, water torture could drive a man crazy. But it was the only way to teach trainees what their bodies could handle and what to expect during cold water diving.
He shined the light in Tabitha’s face. She blinked. “Overexposure,” Doc Brown said.
“Wh-what?” Tabitha barely got the word out. But the chill in her voice was nothing compared to the chill her eyes directed at him.
“Disoriented,” Marc agreed, staring his wife down. “Pull—”
“Sorry I’m late,” Nydia said, running up beside him. “We had a hard time finding you.”
“What?” It was his turn to be disoriented.
“My nurses and I are here to volunteer, Commander. For the duration of Hell Week. We’ll take shifts.” She pointed to three other women, standing on top of a dune.
“That won’t be necessary. Chapel’s showing signs of hypothermia,” Doc Brown supplied.
“Tabby, who am I?”
“N-Nydia.”
“That’s not hypothermia. That’s malpractice.” She stared down the doctor. “Women have a higher percentage of body fat. She could outlast every one of these guys. So unless you’re ready to pull them all...” She let the threat hang.
“Dismissed.” They didn’t need Navy nurses hanging around. But Nydia was right. He couldn’t pull her now. Although sometime during Hell Week he would.
“Which of your men is going to give Tabby hygiene inspections?” Nydia asked. “Or would that be you?”
During Hell Week trainees stripped daily for inspection. Medical personnel checked for any festering sores and broken bones the wannabes might be trying to hide. He couldn’t humiliate his wife by checking her with the men. Or even alone. She’d be sore and bruised. Dirty and smelly. He hadn’t planned on her getting that far. But... Marc scowled. “All right. You stay. But don’t get in the way.”
“You go, girl!” Nydia cheered, running back up the beach to the rest of Tabby’s cheering section.
Now he was pissed off. Time for sugar cookie drills. Water torture and sand torture. Marc blew his whistle. Once, back. Twice, crawl. Three times, stand. Again, and again.
Tabby made it to her fourth Hell Week breakfast, piling her plate with scrambled eggs and bacon, biscuits and gravy, hash browns and cinnamon rolls. Food meant energy and substituted sleep. They were fed four times a day, breakfast, lunch, dinner and midnight rations. But they were only given four hours of sleep during the week.
She wolfed down boxes of dry cereal in line, then followed it with milk. “What? All your girlfriends eat salad?” she snapped at the guy standing behind her.
Gummy laughed and couldn’t stop laughing. After four nights without sleep, trainees alternated between hysteria and aggression.
Their fourth and final one-hour rest period for the week came after breakfast. Tabby crawled into the mudpit with the others, resting head and shoulders on the bank while bullhorns blasted noises, simulating an air raid.
Marc watched as she fell into the jerky movements of instant REM. He didn’t know how much more he could take. If she didn’t break soon, he would. He couldn’t stand to see her go through this. SEAL training had been hard on him. He knew it wasn’t easy on her, yet out of one hundred and twenty starting the class, sixty-three remained.
One of them his wife.
Rock portage came next—the most dangerous part of training. Trainees would practice landing a raft in the rocks and breakers just offshore near the Hotel del Coronado. Marc stood at the head of the classroom holding his breath against the stench of unwashed
bodies.
“Listen up. Get the wax out of your ears and the fog out of your brains. A misstep on the rocks could mean a broken back when that hundred-and-fifty- pound raft comes hurling at you.” He talked them through a proper landing. Made them repeat it back to him. Then showed footage.
The trainees filed out of the classroom. Marc watched his wife for a limp or any other excuse to pull her. She’d passed all her hygiene inspections, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t hiding something.
This was dangerous. It was the ranking officer’s job to tie off the boat. And this time he did everything in his power to make the drill easy on her. He assigned a boat crew that rallied around her. Gummy, Armstrong and four others who seemed uncaring of the fact they were led by a woman.
Tabby tied off in front of the Hotel Del, just as Marc taught her. Tossing the rope. Working with the breakers. The landing went off without a hitch. And her crew cheered and whooped on the beach while curious spectators dining at the hotel’s outdoor terrace observed.
The Commander gave the crowd the whole show, shouting at the crew, running them along the beach while they carried the raft on their heads. Tabby ran the sluggish pace of someone pushed too far. But she’d survived.
“Your crew is secure, Lieutenant.’’
It took Tabby a moment to realize he meant they’d passed Hell Week. In another life she would have been a spectator at the hotel, not the first female trainee. Her gaze drifted toward her husband. For the first time in six weeks she saw pride shining in his eyes.
Maybe they had a chance.
Armstrong grabbed her and hugged her. Followed by Gummy. She held on tight wishing it were another man she was holding. When she looked up, Marc was already moving down the beach.
Chapter 22
“The Commander told me I’d find you out here.” The Toad entered the barracks, letting the door slam behind him. He stood aggressively, hands on hips. It was a stance that might have intimidated a lesser man.
