Ashley looked at him. She’d had no idea… “Really?”
Bull snorted his disdain. “That’ll never happen.”
Ashley shot him a hard look. “You don’t know that.” She turned to Clark. “I think that’s a great aspiration.”
“I think you mean pipe dream,” Bull said.
“I think you need to zip it,” she shot back at him.
“I know one way you can get me to zip it,” he said. “Although it starts with unzipping a different it.”
Nope, not going there. Ashley looked at their SEAL instructor, who again was looking back at her. “May we continue? I’ll go next. I’m Ashley DeWitt. From San Felipe, California—it’s near San Diego. I’m a lawyer for a family law practice that specializes in protecting women who are victims of domestic violence.”
Bull laughed. “Of course you are.”
“I hope to gain… confidence,” Ash said.
Bull grabbed himself again. “I got a confidence injection for you right here, baby-cakes,” he said.
Clark had had enough. “You know, you read as pathetic,” he told Bull. “You’re not funny, you’re just stupid and ignorant—”
As Bull bristled, Ashley leaned slightly against her brother. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “Just… pretend he’s not here.”
“Does that really work?” Lieutenant Slade asked. He was still watching her. He’d been watching her since this gathering had started. No doubt ready for her to quit and walk away. “Because in my experience… well, I’ve never been able to just wish an adversary away.”
“Can we finish here?” she asked in response. “I’d like to get back to my camper. I’m still working on my recovery from my jet-lag.”
“We need to elect a team leader,” Bull pointed out. “In fact, I nominate Ashley.”
“I second it,” his friend Todd said.
And before Ash could begin to form the N for no, Kenneth and Clark, not realizing what they were doing, chimed in with “Third!” and “Fourth!”
“Good, so that’s decided,” Bull said with a smirk. “You’ll get a packet of info that tells you what you have to do—it’s mostly just taking attendance, and bringing us coffee in the morning.”
What? Ashley looked at Lieutenant Slade, who was shaking his head. “No, to the coffee, but yes to the packet,” he said.
“Yeah, but lowest scoring team member has to bring the morning coffee,” Bull pointed out. “Since that’s gonna be her, anyways…” He smiled at her. “I was trying to give you an out, TL—that stands for team leader. If I had to choose between bringing coffee because I was team leader, or because I sucked…”
“I’ll bring the coffee,” the lieutenant said.
Bull shrugged. “Sir, yes, sir! And now I suppose I should do the intro thing, even though I’m pretty sure you all know who I am. Bull Edison, from Indianapolis, Indiana. Assistant manager of finance and sales at a Fortune Five Hundred company that shall remain unnamed. This is the third time I’ve come to camp. This time I’m hoping for a balls-deep experience.”
He was looking right at her, so Ashley instead focused on her wine glass, hoping he was done.
He wasn’t. “I mean, I really wanna plough my way through the next two weeks, go at this thing hard and rough and—”
“Thank you,” Lieutenant Slade interrupted him. “Todd?”
Todd worked with Bull, and he was looking to improve his paintball game score.
Paintball. Great. Ashley was going to suck at paintball.
“Well, since you seem to have come to an agreement about your team leader…” the SEAL lieutenant said, again as he looked at Ashley, as if waiting for… what?
She was certain that being team leader was going to be awful—confirmation coming in that packet of info—but if it wasn’t her, then who? No way was she subjecting Clark and Kenneth to Team Leader Todd or—God help them—Bull.
“We voted,” Todd said. “The chick’s it.”
“I do believe we are done here,” Bull said. “Boom. Bull out!”
He and Todd laughed as they got up and walked away.
Ashley stood, too. She had to get out of there—God forbid she start to cry. “I’ll see you guys in the morning.”
* * *
Jim followed Ashley out of the mess hall and into the heat of the Florida night. Tropical insects were making a racket in the trees, and the air was thick and humid. “Wait up. I’ll walk you.”
“You don’t have to.” She barely glanced at him. Her voice was calm but her shoulders were tight.
“We’re going in the same direction.”
“Yes,” she said with the slightest of sighs. “I noticed that I was assigned the RV between yours and Lieutenant King’s. That wasn’t necessary. I don’t need protection.”
“You sure?” Jim asked. “Because that was pretty passive back there. I kept waiting for you to do something, and you just didn’t.” He’d purposely tried not to step in—although a few times Bull pushed him too far. Still, he’d waited and waited and waited for Ashley to defend herself. But she hadn’t.
She finally looked over at him, her face a pale blur in the mostly-moonlight that lit their way, but again her voice was even. “I’m sorry, you think my being passive is the problem…? Not Bull’s language and behavior…?”
“So you do want my protection,” he countered.
Ashley laughed a little. “That’s not what I said.”
“Isn’t it?” he poked. She had to be furious with him, or at the very least massively, crushingly disappointed, but aside from the tightness in her shoulders, she let none of that show. And, in fact, as he looked more closely at her body language, her tension seemed to be more about bracing for another attack than righteously brittle anger.
As they approached her RV, she ignored his question as deftly as she’d ignored Bull and Todd back in the lounge. “Please don’t walk me to the door. I’d prefer no one mistake your misguided chivalry for impropriety.”
He stopped there, at the fork in the trail. “Although that would be one sure way of convincing Bull and Todd to keep their distance.”
She looked at him sharply, and he realized that she’d misunderstood, and quickly added, “I’m not suggesting we actually, um, hook up. That wouldn’t be… No. I mean, the implication would be an easy solution. Just to make them think that—”
She cut him off. “That’s your idea of a solution?”
Jim shrugged. “They’re Neanderthals. It would work. Put a little fear into ’em.”
“Fear of you,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, sorry, I don’t think they’re ever going to fear you,” he told her.
“I’m not looking for fear,” Ashley said. “Just respect.”
“I get it,” he said. “But I doubt you’ll be able to change them.”
“Boys will be boys…?” she said.
“Sadly, yes. I mean, I don’t agree with that, of course, but that’s how the world works.”
She surprised him then. “I don’t accept that it can’t be changed.”
“Then you’re going to have to do more than ignore them,” Jim told her. “It’s an uphill battle—wow, we are just dropping the clichés, here, aren’t we?”
Ashley smiled, but only because she was polite. “It’s uphill, because the idea—the massively offensive idea—that a woman needs to belong to a man so that she’s treated with respect is acceptable to, well, you. If you really believe that, you’re a part of the problem. Think about your suggestion—and what it really means. A woman on her own is fair game to idiots like Bull, but he’ll back off if he thinks someone else possesses her. But he’s not treating her with respect. No, the respect is man to man—right over the head of the woman. I won’t treat your woman like shit out of deference to you, Brah.”
Jesus. He’d never considered… Still, “That’s a pretty good imitation of Bull, but I don’t think deference is in his vocabulary.”
Frustration flared in her eyes, but jus
t for a very brief moment before she tamped it back down. “Good night, Lieutenant,” she said, heading for her RV.
“You know, sometimes it’s okay to get pissed off,” he called after her.
“And do what? Kick you in the shins? That’s really not my style.”
“As opposed to running and hiding?” he said.
His words struck a nerve—she practically flinched. But when she turned back, her voice stayed even and calm. “I’m tired—it’s been a long day. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to continue this discussion, because sorry, but I’m not quitting.”
“I’m not even close to sorry about that,” Jim said. “No one here wants you to quit. Well, those of us who aren’t Bull and Todd.”
But she laughed again, just a little, and he knew she didn’t believe him. “Good night,” she said again.
And as Jim watched, she used the keypad to unlock her door, and went inside, not looking back.
CHAPTER FIVE
Ashley awoke with a start. Someone was pounding on her door, shouting, “Team Leader DeWitt!”
Was it really morning already? But it was still pitch dark.
She grabbed for her phone in the darkness, to use the light from the screen to get her bearings, first to figure out where she was—SEAL World—and then to realize that whoever was pounding wasn’t hammering on the flimsy door but rather the side of the RV.
Also…? It was barely midnight.
She found the switch that turned on the interior LEDs, and pushed her hair back from her face as she unlocked the door and opened it a crack.
The young SEAL named Rio Rosetti was standing out there. “Good morning, ma’am,” he said in his almost-ridiculously stereotypical New Yawk accent.
Ash stared at him stupidly. The best her brain could come up with was, “Are you delivering my team leader packet?”
He’d been all smiles and even a bit flirty when they’d first met, but now he was all curt business. “No, ma’am. Hat, and boots if you got ’em, long pants, long sleeves, leave all technology behind. Team leaders’re meeting down by the mess in five, but you’ve already wasted two sleeping through my noise, so you got three. Tick tock. Ma’am.”
She closed the door and took several of her precious minutes to use the bathroom, then dressed quickly, slipping into jeans and pulling a lightweight button down shirt on over the T-shirt she’d worn to bed. She didn’t have boots—she’d brought a second pair of running shoes instead, and she jammed her bare feet into them. Her Red Sox cap was hanging directly in front of the AC vent—she’d sweated through it yesterday, and had rinsed it out right before bed.
She reached for it as Rio again started pounding on the RV, but it was still soaking wet.
“Time to go!”
There were SEAL World hats—boonie style—in the Gedunk. She’d been meaning to get one anyway. She could pick one up there, so she left her cap hanging, turned off the lights, and went out of the RV, checking that the door locked securely behind her.
Now Rio was clapping his hands at her, rather like she was a misbehaving puppy, so she headed toward the mess hall at a run.
Only to find the passenger van idling, headlights sending beams of brightness into the steamy humidity of the night. In the distance, thunder rumbled.
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” Lieutenant Slade was standing by the van’s door, and he opened it and motioned for her to get inside.
“Wait,” she said, stopping short. “What?” She pointed ineffectively toward the mess hall as the lieutenant herded her up and into the van.
Ashley wasn’t quite sure how he did it without touching her, but before she could say hat, she was inside and sitting, and he’d pulled himself up and in, too, closing the door behind him to take the seat beside her.
She’d only had a few brief moments to look around before the interior light went off with the closing of the door, but it had been long enough to get a full dose of smug impatience from the three other team leaders, who’d been waiting for her.
It seemed unlikely that they’d all woken up and gotten down here to the van in less than five minutes, and she realized that Rio had probably intentionally pounded on her RV last.
Probably on Dunk or even Lieutenant Slade’s orders.
But she had other things to worry about right now—like, where were they going?
All of the SEAL instructors were in the van, too. Including the medic—what was it called in Navy-Speak…? The hospital corpsman, Thomas King.
Dunk was behind the wheel, and as Rio climbed into the front passenger seat the vehicle moved out of the parking area and onto the long drive that led from the camp to the road.
The van lurched as they hit a pothole, and Ashley found herself pressed up against Lieutenant Slade’s shoulder. He looked down at her, his face even more craggy in the shadows, his eyes a flash of blue. She murmured, “Sorry,” and tried to steady herself by holding on to the seat back in front of her.
“For those of us, like, me, who are new here,” Slade then said loudly, as if he were addressing everyone in the van, “we’re heading out on the traditional night hike. Team leaders are paired up with team instructors, but it’s the TL’s job to lead the march back to camp. Dunk’s gonna drop us about five miles out—”
“Five miles?” Ashley murmured before she could stop herself.
But Lieutenant Slade spoke over her. “Like everything from this point on at SEAL World, it’s a race. First team in gets a head start on every activity over the next two days, which allows that team to continue to come in first and gain advantages for the entire week,” he continued. “Last team in gets literal shit—black tank evac duty for the RVs and trailers. For those of you who are RV-unfamiliar, the black tank is the one in your trailer that your toilet flushes into. And trust me, emptying black tanks is not fun.”
Dunk spoke up. “We’ll be dropping you with your instructor in the order in which you arrived in the van.”
Ashley laughed. Of course. She and Jim Slade would be dropped last.
“It’s likely that some of you will get very lost,” Dunk continued, “since we’re giving you neither a map nor a compass and it’s dark out there. If after three hours, you haven’t made it back to camp, we’ll find you via a GPS tracker that you’ll be given when you leave the van. Winners and losers will be determined by their distance from the camp. Farther from camp, the bigger the loser, so… good luck.”
Ashley looked at Lieutenant Slade who was watching her again. “Do instructors help with the black-tank-emptying thing…?” she whispered.
He laughed and shook his head. “Not a chance.”
* * *
“Put on your hat,” Jim ordered as he handed Ashley some bug repellent wipes as the van’s taillights faded into the night.
“Um,” she said.
He held his flashlight overhead so that it lit both of their faces. And yes, the resigned look she was giving him was heavily tinged with No, I didn’t bring my hat.
“Seriously?” he said. It was going to rain—at night, in this part of Florida, that was inevitable. And that was going to suck even worse for anyone without a hat brim to shield their face.
“My lack of hat isn’t our biggest problem,” she told him as she used the light to read the directions on the packet before tearing one open and rubbing the wipe down the sleeves of her shirt and the legs of her jeans. “It’s the five miles—more than that, if we go in the wrong direction.”
“I don’t know why you think that’s a problem,” Jim answered. “You can walk ten miles, easily, if you have to.”
“I can run ten miles,” she responded with a tartness that was refreshing. “In fact, I call that Tuesday evening after work. It’s not me I’m worried about—it’s you.”
Jim was surprised. “Me?”
“Yes, Mr. Braces-on-Both-Knees,” Ashley said. “I’m worried about you.”
“Well, don’t be,” Jim said brusquely. “Five miles is nothing.”
/> “More if we go the wrong way,” she reminded him.
“Then don’t go the wrong way,” he countered.
“No map,” she reminded him. “No compass.” She looked up at the sky, which tended to be hazy in the humid tropics, even at the best of times. Now, however, thunder rumbled ominously in the distance. “No stars to follow, assuming I could even find the north star with all these trees. Assuming I also knew if we were north—or south or whatever—of the camp.”
The narrow sand-and-gravel road they were standing on was surrounded by a mix of pines, palms, and banyan trees, the latter with their vast collection of trunks that started out as curling vines snaking down from broadly-spread branches to take root in the earth below.
This would’ve been a relatively pleasant place to hike—in the daylight. Assuming the overpowering smell of dead-fish-hiding-somewhere-in-a-damp-locker-room faded in the sunshine.
Ashley turned to look down the road in the direction they’d approached while still in the van. “If we follow the road back that way, we’ll eventually get to the camp,” she said, obviously thinking out loud. “Except we made so many turns and stops and… I’m pretty sure we went in a big circle. And the van left going that way.” She pointed down the road where the van had vanished. “So there must be something down there…”
Jim waited as she looked back down the road in the other direction, clearly undecided.
“Do you have another flashlight?” she finally asked, turning to focus her gaze on him.
“No, they only gave me this one.” Hint, hint. Gave me. Jim knew Ashley had a very big brain. She just had to wake up enough to use it.
“Okay,” she said with a sigh, “you better keep it then. But turn it off for a sec, so my eyes can get used to the dark.”
Jim had to wonder about that you better keep it—what was she thinking…? Still, he obliged and they were plunged into the kind of moonless darkness that was suffocating in its absoluteness. It descended around him, heavy and wet against the bare skin of his face and hands.
Ashley must’ve been having the same reaction. “Shhhhhit,” she breathed, the word barely voiced.
SEAL Camp Page 5