They all hunched down in a tight circle. “Sloane, what’s this about?”
“It’s about not ending up dead in the next seven days,” she said, giving the other women a wary glance.
“Did they tell you the reason behind it?”
“No,” she answered sharply.
Laying his hand on her arm he squeezed, pulling her attention to him instead of the trees she kept scanning just like a SEAL would. She either did it instinctively or her father had taught her a few things growing up.
“Keeping secrets from me isn’t going to help. It’s us against them. What’s the objective of this exercise?”
“I told you, staying alive, Lieutenant.”
He glanced at the redhead, who gripped her ankle, no doubt already swelling inside her boot.
Winston attempted to inspect his little lady’s foot, and she gave him a scowl. “Next time, you go without me,” she growled at him.
A slow, easy smile lit across Winston’s lips. “A team doesn’t leave a member behind, Kate.”
A flicker of unease washed through the young woman’s eyes. “Those were live rounds. You could have been killed slowing down for me.”
Winston tilted his head and surveyed her. “Did they explain this exercise?” he asked, massaging her calf with a gentle hand.
Kate swallowed heavily and looked toward Sloane. The tiniest shake of Sloane’s head and the gal buttoned down and pushed Winston’s hand from her leg.
“No.”
It was going to be hard going for Kate with an injury this early.
“Your answer’s the same, I suppose?” Damon asked the blonde squatting next to Sloane.
She nodded sharply. Even though she looked very young, she too wore a determination that was out of character.
Damon raised his hand to signal silence. Movement to their left had all three men scanning where the sound originated. Possibly a squad of men advanced to their left. Another eight men to their right came at them as loud as a herd of elephants.
They were pinned, the trees too sparse to hide an exit without being seen. If he’d known what was coming next, he would have fought his way out. But as the two squads of men appeared, zeroing in on them with weapons drawn, he kept his small group together and still.
Something felt wrong about all this. A SEAL’s instincts grew over time, or a SEAL ended up dead. After years of missions, he was still walking upright.
Navy SEAL training maintained respect around the world, mostly because they added a realism during workups before deployment. You could be killed as easily in training as you could in the theatre.
If that was the case here, they’d know it soon enough.
* * * *
Damon noted the women didn’t complain when they were roughly manhandled by soldiers and separated from their partners. The grunts kept their weapons directed at Winston, Randeen and himself, but didn’t get close enough to interact. Smart.
Within minutes, Damon knew where they were headed, as did the other SEALs. Shuffled into canopied Army trucks, they left Warner Springs and crossed the road toward the next mountain range. They’d all been through here as part of BUD/s training, and Damon had returned as an instructor during the last year and half. This place could break the strongest man’s mind, and it often did.
Entering the encampment, he spotted the small cages lined up. Loud, obnoxious music blared from several speakers. The soldiers corralled the women and herded them in front of the cages.
One big bastard of a soldier took a position in front of the women. The music stopped. The hard look on his face meant this was all business.
“What’s the word?” The Army brat yelled in Sloane’s face, eliciting a kneejerk movement in Damon to protect her. The circle of soldiers surrounding him tightened, and they raised their weapons.
“Seaman Austen, 787801,” she shouted back.
Word? What the hell was the guy talking about?
“See those cages over there, Seaman Austen? That’s going to be your home for the next seven days. You’re going to be cold, wet and tortured. Is that what you want?”
“Seaman Austen, 787801.” She glared back at him.
“Just say the word, and you’ll be in a nice, air-conditioned car going home.” He yanked her forcibly by the neck, drawing her out of the line of women.
Damon twitched again.
The soldier shoved his face to within an inch of hers and roared, “Make it easy!”
Sloane didn’t waver, grinding him with a look that held no other meaning than fuck you.
The soldier waved at two guards. “Strip her.”
Jesus Christ!
Sloane didn’t fight when one soldier grabbed her around the throat while the other ripped off her clothes, down to her bra and panties.
Holy shit. Damon caught sight of a soldier pulling a high powered water hose toward the women. That fucking thing hurt like hell.
“Stop this, now,” he roared, turning the big soldier’s attention on him.
“Are you her partner?” the big bastard asked.
Damon knew how to play this game. All SEALs had a specialty, as did he. Give your captors nothing was the rule.
“Tell her to give me the word and you both go home,” the soldier bellowed at him.
“What fucking word?” he boomed.
A solid hand came down on Damon’s shoulder, and he didn’t hesitate. His elbow shot back with a quick powerful jab into the guy’s face, sending him stumbling backwards and falling on his ass. The others moved in, but the lead soldier yelled out a cease order just as one of them was ready to ram his gun butt into Damon’s lower back, probably aiming for the kidneys.
“She knows.” The soldier in front of Sloane called back, then jerked his head, and they dragged her toward one of the cages.
“Seaman Austen, 787801,” she said in a loud voice as they shoved her into the cage.
Damon darted a stony look at Winston and Randeen, both wearing a deadly expression of their own. They remembered this part of the training. Who could forget it?
The SEALs trained to the extreme, and this part had been the worst in his opinion. Torture so brutal, many men went crazy, ringing the bell and giving up, although they’d almost made it to the end of the initial BUD/s training before moving on to other qualification training, and a trident waiting for them at the end of the day.
The metal cage door clanked shut, and Sloane grabbed the bars as if to prepare herself. He watched, his heartbeat thumping hard in his chest. The soldier pushed the handle forward on the hose, releasing a blast of water that tore a hole in the sand. A warning, trying to intimidate her to give up some word.
What word? What did that have to…realization struck. The General said the women had a safeguard to stop this, and be pulled from the exercise. The word was part of it. It had to be.
The soldier lifted the hose, hanging on tightly so the force wouldn’t rip the nozzle from his hands.
“Last chance,” the big soldier roared at her.
She remained silent. The grunt backed up, and the other moved the forceful stream of water over her cage.
Sloane’s fingers curled tight around the bars, as the soldier aimed the barrage at her. Her body curled into a tight ball, and she tucked her head low.
That’s my girl. Damon knew how much it hurt, but she didn’t cry out.
“Enough,” Winston called out.
Two soldiers restrained Randeen and Winston while the soldiers dragged their partners toward the cages. The Army grunts screamed in their faces, but the redhead and the blonde wouldn’t give up anything other than name, rank and serial number, copying Sloane, making him more certain each one possessed a word that would release them from this, but why weren’t they disclosing it?
Stuffed in their cages, the girls gripped the bars. The soldiers didn’t waste time. The little redhead cried out the second the water hit her. The other woman, the petite blonde with Randeen, curled up like Sloane.
The b
ig soldier crossed the wet sand and took position in front of the men. “Convince them, or we’ll split their skin with those hoses. Release the SEALs,” he ordered.
“Sloane.” Damon knelt in a puddle of water in front of her cage. She gripped the bars, her knuckles white. He covered her hands with his, knowing even the little warmth from his palms would ease her distress. “Sloane, listen to me. I don’t know what they told you, but you don’t have to do this. Whatever they want, give it to them.” She wouldn’t raise her eyes to meet his. “Sweetheart, please.”
His words went against everything a warrior was taught being in a prisoner of war situation, but none of the couples had signed on for this degree of torture, especially the women. Most importantly, Sloane.
“Goddamn that hurt.” Red, angry skin covered her body from the force of the water. Her hand trembled under his. “How did you do it?” she whispered so quietly, he almost didn’t hear her.
“Do what?”
“Dad told me about this part of the training. How did you stop yourself from going crazy?”
Before he could answer, the water hit both of them. Lowering his center of gravity and hanging on, he resisted the pressure and kept his balance. Damon squeezed Sloane’s fingers until the sharp stream moved off to another cage.
A swipe of his hand slicked the droplets from his hair. “Your mind. Go deep in your mind. Every second is a second closer to the end. One second at a time.”
Sloane finally raised her gaze to his, her eyes filled with pain instead of the mischievous warmth he’d seen the morning she’d made him breakfast. Water slipped down her arms in little streams, and her eyes looked enormous with her wet, dark curls releasing small drops against her cheeks.
“Sloane, tell me what’s going on. What’s this about?”
“We,” she stammered, “will not give in.”
Restraining his frustration wasn’t difficult. Difficult was not being able to wrap his arms around her. Cold metal bars surrounded her instead of warm sheets and him. Freezing cold water tore at her skin like sharp fingernails, instead of her fingernails pressing into his back as he buried himself in her.
He had to convince her to give him the word. No matter what, he’d get her out of this exercise gone off the rails. S.E.R.E was part of BUD/s training. Torturing women without a logical explanation was unacceptable. Sloane and the other women wouldn’t be able to tolerate the extreme pain the guys had endured.
“Stop looking at me like that and get us out of here,” she said loud enough to carry over the blaring music from the speakers aimed at them.
Within a short time, ten more couples had been herded into the compound. They received the same treatment―the women stripped down and shoved into cages, while their partners were made to watch.
Damon had a huge disadvantage. Although some of the men knew the women they were with, he was pretty sure none of them desired the woman they’d chosen. He did, in the worst way, and every second that passed it got harder to watch, especially when her resistance caved and a cry finally escaped her mouth with the pressurized water thrashing her sensitive skin.
SEALs were trained for this. Emotions were put aside out in the field, but he couldn’t do it, not with Sloane caged and suffering like she was. He stayed with her, trying to coax her into backing out of the exercise. When she started to recite name, rank and serial number to him, he gave up.
For at least an hour, the women were tortured with the hoses. Each man crouched in front of their cages, refusing to leave them, reassuring them. The petite blonde to their left, partnered with Randeen, listened as he apologized, then she told him to square up, she could handle it.
What the hell was making these women resistant to putting a stop to this?
Suddenly, he was ripped from his knees, stripped and shoved into the cage next to Sloane. Only a foot separated them. He could reach for her, but she didn’t reach for him. She lay in a coiled silent ball with her back to him. He heard women crying and watched as the other men were shoved into the small prisons.
The bigger the man, the worse it was. For him it was bad, but he’d been here before and made it through. Twelve years had passed. Twelve years of missions had taught him and every other SEAL harder lessons than this. To them, this wasn’t suffering. Every SEAL knew the real meaning of suffering. They’d seen enough to know the difference.
The July day kept them warm, but the nights in these mountains chilled to forty-eight degrees or less. As the afternoon sun slid behind the mountain range, shadow covered the landscape. They were going to get cold, very cold.
A group of soldiers hovered near his cage.
“I want that one,” one of the soldiers said, turning a look over his shoulder and staring at Sloane.
Want? What the hell was he talking—No!
The soldier read his expression. “What’s the matter SEAL, don’t want to share? She’ll enjoy it.”
“You touch her and it’s rape, soldier.”
The guy’s eyes narrowed with the challenge. This grunt had no honor, he was a son-of-a-bitch, and he was getting off on seeing the women caged. He’d been one of the men holding the hose on Sloane, and Damon hadn’t missed the smile on the bastard’s face when he’d finally cracked her, and she’d cried out.
The soldier knelt in front of him. “I’ll tell you what she’s like afterwards. Would you like that?”
Sloane rolled to her knees. With a little daylight still left, Damon raked his gaze down her badly bruised and swollen body.
“I bet she’s one wet bitch,” the soldier said.
Rage tightened every cell in his body.
“It’s something you’ll never forget,” Sloane declared, drawing the soldier’s attention away from him.
“Oh, I’m betting on it.” The soldier chewed on a toothpick and pushed his helmet a little higher up his forehead. “I’m going to make you scream, beautiful.” He backed away with the promise lingering in his eyes.
“Sloane, you can’t escape,” Damon said, reaching through the bars to touch her.
“They won’t let them go through with it. They’re just trying to intimidate us, make us cave in.”
“Then cave,” he shot back. He wasn’t sure this was a bluff. “What’s the word they want?”
She hesitated and then rested a hand on his forearm. “I’ll be fine. Stop worrying.”
“Why would you take the chance?”
“Eight hours down, six days to go.”
Frustration finally took hold, and he couldn’t keep it from his voice. “Six days of hell and it’s only going to get worse. You can’t do this, Sloane.”
“I can and I will,” she argued back. She swept his hand from her shoulder. “Talk about something else.”
What the hell was he going to talk about? Reassure her that they hadn’t even begun to suffer?
The first chill shook her. Sloane’s body didn’t have a lot of excess fat. When they’d stripped her, even through his anger, he hadn’t missed how full her hips were, or how the deep sway of her waist led to her breasts, incredibly perfect breasts. The racy blue bra she wore pushed those perfect breasts to beautiful mounds and a matching thong with tiny satin ribbons at each hip wasn’t going to help deter that soldier. She was voluptuous but lean at the same time, and she wouldn’t be able to last long if hypothermia set in.
“How long do they keep that horrible music on?” she asked.
“The entire time. Block it out.”
“I’m going to destroy that friggin’ CD if I ever find it.”
“You’re not the first.” The swish of a hose on sand cranked his head. Another dousing before the cold night set in. “Hang on, Sloane.”
“Oh, shit,” she breathed.
Drenched, the floor of her cage a puddle of water, Sloane shivered hard. A tin plate was shoved between her bars with a tiny scrap of bread on it.
“Don’t eat it. Your body has already gone into starvation mode. You eat that and it’ll be ten times worse,”
he said.
Sloane shoved the plate past the iron bars, and with a sweep of her wrist, tossed it as far away as she could.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe his partner could endure what the General had planned. He heard the tinny clank of other plates being tossed.
Sloane was stubbornly hanging on. Damon wanted her to quit, and he would cease the second she did. The decision was in her hands. All he could do is talk her through this. He couldn’t hold her, but he’d stand beside his partner and keep the brunt of the torture directed at him any chance he could.
Chapter Eleven
For several hours, the soldiers repeatedly clanged the metal bars of the cages. The god-awful music held back sleep. Threats and more water torture silenced everyone. They all had to be feeling the pressure, even the men.
Sloane’s body quaked with cold. There wasn’t a single spot she could touch without wincing. The sway in the bottom of her cage cupped the chilled water refusing to drain through the hard-packed sand.
“How are you, Lieutenant?”
“Back to lieutenant, huh? I thought I’d graduated to Damon.”
She clutched her legs to her chest attempting to keep the heat, what little she had left, inside her. “No-good, SEAL”. It came out more with snark than a tease, and she hadn’t meant it that way. This wasn’t Damon’s fault.
“Think you should have given me the chance to prove you wrong,” he said gently.
“I’m not wrong.”
“What do you have against SEALs, anyway? I’m being sentenced with some other guy’s penance.”
“Don’t see any angel wings on your back.”
“In that case, all women are crazy bitches that stalk guys.”
“That is so not true.”
Their banter managed to drown out the music. Concentrating on the low rumble of his voice soothed her. Talking was better than being trapped in her mind while her body tried to taunt her into quitting. She turned to face him. He wasn’t screaming with insanity squeezed in the small confines of his cage, but he should be. Damon’s constitution had to be extremely strong.
“True, but I’ve been looking over my shoulder for the last four months because of one bad judgement call, and one crazy woman.”
Code Name_War 0f Stones Page 11
