Chapter 11
THE first night didn’t go so well, at least as far as sleep was concerned. Victor had kept all of them up telling outrageous stories of his sexual conquests, each one more graphic and bizarre than the already twisted story he’d just finished. After an hour or so he ran out of steam and called them all a bunch of faggots for not reciprocating. Victor then proceeded to launch into a symphony of unabated flatulence for a quarter of an hour before eventually falling into a deep, snorting slumber.
Rapp placed his pillow over his head and tried to block out the noise, but it didn’t work. It was in those much-needed, sleepless hours just after midnight that Rapp began to explore the idea of getting rid of Victor. At first he considered getting up and throttling the idiot, right then and there, but knew it would only result in further punishment from the instructors and disdain from his fellow recruits. Still, the thought of spending the next six months with the lout was something that presented a very real problem. A guy like Victor could easily drag someone down with him, and Rapp had an undeniable feeling that the two men were on a collision course. And not one of those collisions that could be avoided if one or both of them changed their behavior. It was inevitable. It was the kind you needed to brace yourself for. Either drop your hips, lower your shoulders, and make the other guy feel more pain than you, or he would do the same to you and you were toast.
There was something undeniably odd about the man. The idea of his participating in a covert op was preposterous. If he could ever walk among the enemy undetected it would be a miracle. Rapp wanted this new vocation with every fiber of his body, although he was smart enough to know that saying he would never quit and actually never quitting were two very different things. He also knew he would be tested in ways he’d never imagined. He’d be pushed to the full extent of his physical and mental abilities, and it was likely that at some point, when he was really in the hurt bag, that pang of doubt would creep into his mind. Could Victor create a climate in which, at his lowest point, he might consider quitting?
Rapp didn’t want to find out. Somewhere in the middle of the night, as he was lying on his back watching bats dart around the rafters of the barn and listening to the snorting Victor, Rapp decided the moron would need to quit, and if he didn’t do it on his own, and do it quickly, Rapp would have to find a way to subtly nudge him in the right direction.
They were up before the sun. Two of the instructors came in and cursed, yanked, kicked, and slapped them out of bed. Luckily for Rapp, he was half awake and heard the door open. His feet were on the floor before the DI could dump him out of his cot. He’d guessed this was how the morning would start, but the yelling was nonetheless unsettling. In between the barking and smacking Rapp tried to make out exactly what it was that he was supposed to do. Somewhere in the middle of it he heard the words, line and PT. He threw on his workout gear and running shoes and was out the door like a shot. The lawn was covered with a thick morning dew and the sun was only a gray veil in the east. They weren’t allowed watches and there were no clocks in the barn, so Rapp guessed that it was somewhere in the vicinity of 5:00 A.M. The air temp had to be in the midseventies and the humidity was pasty. It would be another hot one.
As Rapp came to a stop on the line he was aware that he was the first and only one out the door. He figured to start with, there were certain things where it was smart to be first and others where it wasn’t. Getting out of bed and getting on the line was an area to be first. Hand-to-hand combat and fighting drills he would never hold back on, but the endurance stuff like running and PT he would. He needed to stay healthy and hold some things in reserve. These guys didn’t need to know he could run like the wind.
As he waited for the others, he caught a whiff of coffee and turned to look at the house. There, standing on the porch, was a new face, a blond-haired guy who looked to be in his midthirties. The man was staring intently at Rapp. Rapp returned the stare and even at a distance of several hundred feet noted the blue eyes. The guy was in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. He was leaning against one of the porch columns sipping his coffee and making no effort to conceal his interest in Rapp. There was something different about the guy. Rapp could tell he was in shape, but he was way more relaxed than the other DIs who were marching around and that sadistic little cuss who’d tried to neuter him.
One by one the guys tricked out of the barn and fell in. Victor was last, which was becoming a common theme. Sergeant Smith was walking quickly beside him giving him an earful in a hushed voice. They had all been warned that there would be no yelling on the line. This wasn’t the only place on the lake, and voices carried across the water. Inside the barn with the door closed, however, the decibel level went through the roof. Victor fell in at the far end from Rapp.
Sergeant Smith stepped out in front of the seven recruits and with a clenched jaw said, “You puds better get your shit together, or I’m gonna start knocking some heads. I’ve seen Cub Scouts do better than this. This is damn sloppy. It shouldn’t never take you morons more than sixty seconds to get your ass out of bed, dressed, and on the line. When you go to bed, you make sure your shit is ready. You lay it out on your footlocker so it’s ready to go. We start PT at five every morning.”
Rapp watched the DI’s eyes shift to the opposite end of the line. He leaned forward and saw Victor had his arm raised.
“Sarge, when are we supposed to take a piss? I gotta go so bad I’m about to drown.”
Sergeant Smith walked over to Victor and got in his face. “Maybe if you had gotten your lazy ass out of bed when I told you to, you would have had time to piss.” He stepped back and looked down the line. “We’re going to do a quick warm-up. As much as I hate you idiots, the powers that be don’t want you ladies getting hurt until they see if you’ve got some potential. I have tried to dissuade them, as you are the biggest collection of shitlickers I’ve seen come through here in some time.”
“Sarge, I gotta go real bad,” Victor whined.
“Then piss yourself, you big idiot.” His head snapped to the group. “If you can’t take care of your business and get out here in sixty seconds, I’m going to have to treat you like a bunch of toddlers … so go ahead and piss yourself, Victor. The rest of you who need to go I suggest you wait until we head out for our run. You can pull over on the trail and take care of business. Now drop and give me fifty, and if I see any of you pussies cheating we’ll start over.”
They did the fifty push-ups, followed by one hundred sit-ups, fifty up-downs, and then a few minutes of scissor kicks and a couple of stretches, and then Sergeant Smith led them into the woods. Eight of them in a nice neat line, with Victor trailing. Rapp guessed they were moving at just under a six-minute pace. He could keep a five-minute pace for ten miles, so he was feeling good. They finished the five-mile run and found themselves standing in front of an obstacle course in the middle of the woods. The place looked like a relic from an abandoned Renaissance festival. Sergeant Smith had his stopwatch out and was clocking them.
Rapp positioned himself fifth in line, carefully placing one man between himself and Victor. He wanted to see how these other four guys navigated the course, guessing that they’d all done it when they’d gone through boot camp. His idea kind of fell apart when Sergeant Smith started sending guys at thirty-second intervals. The course started with a low wall. It was a ten-foot-tall wooden, moss-laden wall with two telephone poles stuck in the ground in front of it. The first telephone pole stuck out of the ground about a foot and a half and was four feet in front of the wall. The next telephone pole was two feet in front of the wall and stuck out of the ground three feet.
Rapp watched as the first recruit headed for the wall, picking up speed. Right before the telephone poles he did a quick stutter step and then as nimbly as you could imagine, he placed his left foot on the first and shorter telephone pole, using it as a step. His right foot then landed on the second telephone pole and he launched himself up and onto the wall, grabbing the top with both hands and pinning his knee to the wall just a few feet from the top. It was like a controlled collision. The recruit was up and over, dropping to the soft ground on the other side.
The second guy did it the same way, and the third tried something slightly different that involved doing a pull-up. After the low wall was a forty-foot dash to a fifteen-foot-high wall with ropes hanging on the face. There was nothing fancy about this one. You just grabbed the rope, put your feet on the wall, and walked your way up. Next in line was barbed wire. Again, pretty straightforward. Dive under, keep your butt down, and do an infantry crawl to the other end. After that was a forty-foot cargo net strung between two towering pines. Beyond that was a set of logs set up in a zigzag pattern about three feet off the ground. They acted as a sort of foot bridge to test your balance.
Rapp didn’t have a chance to see what came after the balance logs because it was his turn to start. He quickly dried the palms of his hands on his shorts, and then when Sergeant Smith gave him the signal, he ran toward the short wall, mimicked the exact steps of the first recruit, and threw himself up and at the top of the wall. He caught it, pulled himself up and over, and landed with ease on the other side. The second, taller wall was easy enough to navigate, and the barbed wire was about as primal as it got. If a guy couldn’t grasp the simplicity of crawling he should just quit and go home. The cargo net proved to be the first real challenge. About a third of the way up Rapp realized there was too much slack in the middle so he moved over to the side. After that it was easier. The balance logs were a breeze, the tires were nothing, and the transfer ropes were playground 101.
Then he came across something that looked like a set of uneven parallel bars, like the kind female gymnasts use. He paused, not sure how to attack the two horizontal telephone poles, and then almost on cue, one of the DIs was right there barking orders at him. Telling him what to do, and to do it quickly. Based on what the DI was telling him, it sounded like a great way to break a rib, but Rapp could see no other way, so he launched himself into the first pole and then the second and then it was more tires and a thing called the Burma bridge. After that there were more logs, ropes, and walls to negotiate and a sprint to the finish.
When Rapp crossed the line Sergeant Smith was staring at his stopwatch and shaking his head. He glanced at Rapp, contempt on his face, and said, “You suck.”
Rapp was doubled over with his hands on his knees, acting more tired than he was. He wanted to smile but didn’t. He couldn’t have done that badly. The guy in the number-six position had yet to finish. Rapp turned to see how the last two were doing. At the edge of the course, about fifty yards back, he saw the blond-haired guy he’d seen on the porch earlier in the morning. The man was standing at the edge of the woods staring straight at him, again making no effort to conceal his interest.