After the running test, the CSTs faced a brutal CrossFit workout in full gear—forty-plus pounds of weight—and Scottie watched as they attacked the chin-up bar. Then the trainers decided to test the women’s limits a bit more, and moved the group to a twenty-five-foot rope that was dangling from a rafter in the gym. “Now,” Scottie announced, “this is a warm-up for fast-roping that will come later. Saddle up and get in line.”
“I don’t think a lot of you will be able to do this,” one of the trainers commented. “But let’s give it a try.” He demonstrated the technique, calling attention as he climbed to the coordinated movement of his arms and legs and the way they worked in concert. Then he nimbly descended the thick, braided rope, using the same technique but now in reverse. It looked simple enough.
Now it was the CSTs’ turn.
The first girl, a fit soldier who had always prided herself on her strength, started up the rope but fell quickly back to the floor after making it less than a third of the way up. She shook her head as she landed. “Shit,” she muttered, then stepped away as the next girl grabbed the rope and began climbing. She made it to the halfway point, but ran out of strength, too, and dropped to the ground. The third soldier, long and lean, but with less upper-body strength, started her climb strong but then stopped as her arms refused to carry her further and her inner thigh muscles buckled. Weighed down with so much gear, she dangled on the rope for a moment or two, then finally peeled off. And then it was Ashley White’s turn.
Marks expected little from the one he dubbed the “megatron quiet blonde,” or as one teacher whispered, “sweet enough to be a Disneyland greeter.” The cherubic young Ohioan with the American-as-apple-pie cheeks stepped up to the rope without saying a word and slowly, and with great focus, began climbing. Up, up, up she went. She reached the top of the rope, touched the ceiling, then scampered back down. Most astounding: she did it all using only her arms. She reached the bottom and then repeated the climb up, touch, and descent. Then, for good measure, she did it a third time. Returning to the floor beneath the rope she wiped the sweat from her hands onto the pant legs of her uniform and nonchalantly returned to her place in line.
Holy fuck, Scottie thought to himself. His Ranger buddies were looking on with a mix of awe at Ashley’s talents and amusement at Scottie’s reaction.
Ashley saw the startled reactions from her instructors and teammates, and suddenly felt self-conscious. “I couldn’t figure out how to use my legs,” Ashley explained, referring to her improvisational style. “Easier just to use my arms.” She shook her legs out as she spoke to relieve the muscle cramping, and looked down at her white ASICS tennis shoes.
“Well, well, well, White, shocking us all,” Marks commented, then faced the CSTs who hadn’t yet attempted the climb. “But listen up, everyone: you should use your legs, otherwise you’re going to get tired out there when you’re fast-roping. Don’t try White’s technique at home! Who’s up next? Okay, let’s go.”
For a moment the others just stood there, speechless, then Tristan stepped toward the rope and the exercise continued. Amber, Ashley’s PMT roommate, came up and patted her on the back. “Man, Ash, I didn’t know you could do that,” she said. “If I could climb like that I’d be telling everybody!”
The one person who wasn’t surprised by Ashley’s display of strength was Leda, who had been quietly monitoring Ashley’s progress since March. All along she knew that this was a young soldier with special talent that had yet to be fully tapped. She was glad to see that the other CSTs were impressed by Ashley’s prowess and observed that Ashley’s confidence was surging. Finally, it seemed, Ashley was realizing that she did indeed deserve her spot in this nest of high achievers.
Leda herself fared less well in the fast-rope two days later, when the trainers led the women onto a testing ground that more closely resembled real-world conditions. Wearing body armor, she stepped onto the sixty-foot-high platform—roughly equivalent to the top floor of a several-story building—and prepared to descend. But for an instant adrenaline got the best of the veteran soldier and instead of grabbing the rope and sliding steadily downward as she had in previous trainings, she jumped off and barely caught the rope in her hands as she flew down its length, smacking hard onto the ground below. Marks raced over, saw bones in her leg jutting out at a decidedly unnatural angle, and thought to himself, Broken, for sure. But years of war had made the urgent situation his natural habitat, and he never shed his combat mindset.
“Looks like you’re fine, Leda,” he said reassuringly, as the medic who had been standing by ran toward them.
Leda, looking pale, tried to assess the situation.
“Don’t look at your leg, Reston,” Scottie commanded in a gentle but forceful tone. “Tell me what you had for lunch.”
“Chicken,” she immediately answered in a calm voice, but through clenched teeth. “I’m really sorry about this, Sergeant. I’ll be fine.” She, too, had been to war and knew how crucial it was to steady her nerves and keep her composure, no matter how dire the situation.
The medics carried Leda off and Scottie turned back to the rope. “Okay, next one up!” he shouted to Lane, who was standing on the platform awaiting her turn. Without hesitating she grabbed the rope and stepped off, but halfway down she peeled off the rope. This time Marks was ready; he saw her hands begin to slide, and swooped in to catch her just before she hit the ground. What the hell is going on here? he thought to himself. Next came Tristan, who made it almost the whole way, but ten feet from the bottom she too fell off the rope. She suffered a minor concussion but was back on her feet within a few minutes.
Finally they finished with the fast-roping, which had been as stressful for Scottie as it had been for the soldiers. Over dinner in the dining hall that night, he confessed his anxiety to a group of CSTs, including Tristan, Sarah, and Kate. “I’ve done over twelve combat deployments, and I have never been more scared than when I tried to teach you guys to fast-rope. My balls were in my throat the whole time!”
Sarah whispered to Kate, “Now they’re going to say, ‘See, girls can’t do this.’ I just hope they realize that all we need is more training, at least more than a day. This is just the first time some of us ever got to try it. So what if a few people got hurt? I know guys get hurt doing this all the time. No one ever says that means all men can’t fast-rope.”
In fact, it was only a few months earlier, on the bus to Fort Benning when they watched Black Hawk Down, that the CSTs had been reminded how deadly fast-roping can be. A Ranger goes to fast-rope out of a helicopter that is facing rocket-propelled grenade fire, slips, and falls to the ground below, leaving him bleeding in the middle of streets full of hostile fire. The accident was the first in a string of calamities that plagued American forces on a tragic day that ended with eighteen soldiers killed in action.
The next day began with a few hours of “dry fire”—shooting guns without ammunition—and learning the “three F’s,” for fit, form, and function, a sequence that ensured their weapons worked properly and as expected. The women would train on the M4 assault rifle and the M9 pistol, the guns that Rangers take on mission. The rifle was their primary weapon and the pistol the backup in case things went south while they were in a small or enclosed space such as a living room and they found themselves suddenly under attack.
Then they hit the firing range, a desolate spot in a broad field filled with patches of dirt. The women took their places underneath a bright blue North Carolina sky, stood before their targets of brown and tan paper silhouettes, took aim, and started firing.
Scottie began by demonstrating the correct stance and the proper foot placement for firing the M4. Then he went down the line correcting his students. He told Lane to place her feet wider apart and to keep her left hand wrapped tight around the hand guard just beneath the barrel while quickly reloading the magazine with her right. “Try it again,” he said, then moved down the row of CSTs to check on the others and demonstrate proper technique.
When he had worked with them all, he returned to the top of the line and was surprised by what he saw: Lane was going through the motions just as he had told her to. “Wait a minute, Mason,” he blurted out, “what’s going on here? You’re doing it right! What’s up with that?!”
“This is easier, Sergeant,” she matter-of-factly replied, as taken aback by his question as he was by her adherence to his instruction.
Whoah, Marks thought to himself. This is a new one. They actually listen and then they do it right.
For years Scottie had taught would-be Rangers on the firing range and watched as they did exactly what he told them not to. He long ago had come to the conclusion that all these young soldiers learned to shoot watching Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, and therefore had no idea how to correctly fire a weapon. America’s young men, he decided, were convinced they knew three things by heart and from birth: how to shoot their gun, drive their vehicle, and make sweet love to their woman. Scottie only needed to teach them one of those lifesaving skills, but it took him twice as much time as it should, and squandered much of his precious patience to boot. Now he found himself on the firing range with soldiers who required exactly one adjustment, followed by a lot of practice, before they started improving their skills and became decent marksmen. That was it. There was no ego to contend with, no pushback about how, “well, my dad taught me this so it must be right.”
Unbelievable, he thought to himself.
The CSTs paired up and, crouched on the ground with their notebooks out as if they were interviewing the women they would meet, they prepared for a scenario in which the woman turns out to be a man in a burqa and they have to draw their weapon and shoot. Over and over he had them repeat their moves, starting from a seated position, moving to their haunches, and then drawing to defend themselves from the ground.
Fighting their instincts was Marks’s first challenge.
“Drop the pen,” he yelled at one CST as he pretended to overtake her. “You have a pistol, draw it, aim, and fire!”
Some, like Cassie, Kate, Kimberly, and Sarah, were comfortable with the Beretta M9 pistol because they had trained on it for years as MPs. But Marks quickly saw that he would need to spend more time with several others who had logged a lot fewer hours handling a gun.
Ashley, whom by now Marks thought “the sweetest girl in the world,” was still struggling with the close-quarters technique. She may have been stone quiet and incredibly nice, but Scottie saw in her eyes the flint of a real soldier and he wanted to draw out that “killer” in her. Ashley was wrestling with the pistol, but he thought it was the newness of close-retention shooting that was throwing her off; she seemed plenty comfortable firing a weapon. He just needed to help her attack the source of her concern and do enough drills to make her feel confident in her own abilities. He worked to build the muscles in her hand, instructing her to hold the gun with just her thumb and middle finger, then keep pulling the trigger. After forty-five minutes of that, over and over, Ashley asked if she could please take a quick moment to stretch her cramping forearm. Marks gave her a moment to stretch, then had her back at it. “You gotta build your forearm muscles, White,” he said. “All right; thank you, Sergeant,” Ashley answered through clenched teeth.
But still there was something missing. Then, in a flash, Scottie remembered a special technique he learned from Mike Seeklander, a friend and expert shooter who had written a number of handgun training books and specialized in close-quarters shooting.
“Okay, gals,” he said, “watch me closely.” Using Ashley as a model, he looked her dead in the eyes. “First, you gotta draw your weapon fast. White, you gotta be ready to kill me. Get mad, goddammit. Mad enough to punch me in the face and want me dead. Because if you don’t get me I am going to get you. Like this . . .” And with that he lunged toward Ashley.
“If someone is grabbing your gun you have to push their face away, wrap your arm around the back of your head, trace your body back down and around, and go underneath the gun to punch out and shoot in the pelvic area,” he said, addressing the entire assembly of buns and ponytails. “That way you avoid putting your hand in front of the barrel so if you’re pulling the trigger very quickly you don’t end up shooting yourself in the palm.”
Then he repeated the action, this time with real gusto. “All you need to do is sweep your gun underneath like this.” He now arced his gun back to brush his imaginary long, lustrous hair, then pulled his hands down the sides of his body where they met at his waist before he rapidly lifted them back up and aimed at his assailant. “Now you say, ‘I am beautiful and I love to shoot.’ Think of Charlie’s Angels and then pull the trigger!”
That did the trick. After they finished laughing, Ashley and the others repeated the sweep, professing their strength and taking down their assailant.
“Come on, White,” Marks taunted. “Get aggressive, push back. I am right here in your face!” he yelled at her. “Get serious. Shove me away and draw your weapon.”
“Roger that, Sergeant,” she said, now bellowing back. “I am beautiful and I love to shoot.”
“Angrier, White, can you handle it?”
Her cheeks and forehead began to redden and it was clear she had had enough of his goading. The next time he lunged at her the real anger showed. Her eyebrows narrowed and her mouth tightened as she shoved him back, hard enough to throw him off balance, and drew her pistol in four counts.
“That’s it, White!” he yelled. “Excellent! That’s what I am looking for. I knew you had it in you!”
One of Scottie’s biggest concerns was how hard the CSTs were on themselves. Whether it was out on the range or in the role-playing scenarios doing searching and questioning, his trainees grew racked by frustration if they didn’t improve quickly enough. It took him almost the full week to trace the source of the frustration, which at first he attributed to old-fashioned perfectionism. When he realized what was going on, toward the week’s end, he assembled the entire group for a pep talk.
“All right, I am watching you all beat yourself up out there and I finally got it figured out,” he said. “You guys have never been around a bunch of badass motherfuckers before who were as good as you are. Every single one of you is used to being the best female in the unit, hands down and no questions asked. And now all of a sudden you aren’t.”
A few of the CSTs nodded their heads without thinking.
“Listen,” he said, “every soldier we pick is a diamond. She is an athlete. She is awesome. That’s why you are here. This is just the first time any of you in all of your Army careers has ever found yourself in a pile of diamonds. You are pissed off, you feel lousy about the fact that the girl next to you is doing better at something than you are. But you’re now a diamond among diamonds. And you’ve gotta stop being frustrated with yourselves. You are going to fail at things. That is going to happen when you are around people this good. Someone’s better than you at something and you don’t like it? Figure out why and do it better next time.
“Now get back to work.”
Later on, walking back to his barracks and reflecting on his talk, Marks smiled to himself. Maybe, he thought, these girls aren’t so different from the men I fought with after all.
At night, when they were done, the women replayed the events of the day and discussed the work that was still to come. Before passing out from exhaustion, some of them critiqued each other—not their actions, but their attitudes, and particularly their lack of faith in their own abilities. One evening Cassie told Tristan she had to be bolder at the firing range.
“Tristan, you have just got to own it when you are out there,” she said in a tone bordering on disgust. “Man up. Stop acting like such a wuss.”
Kate, who roomed just across the hall from Ashley and Amber, often overheard Amber joking with Ashley and encouraging her to be more aggressive, clearly trying to draw out her inner alpha. Kate wondered how it had come to be that all of them equated the idea of toughness with the male version of the t
rait when Ashley was clearly plenty decisive when it came time to act. Here was someone who was athletic to the extreme and good at what she did. But they were so used to seeing competence accompanied by shows of masculinity and aggression that they worried whether their teammate would succeed in the theater of war. We’ve all bought into it, Kate thought. Ashley seems so comfortable in her own skin. And we are all razzing her for it.
Most of the time, though, the women reminded each other of their achievements: the run times, speed at drawing a weapon, push-up count, rope-climbing skills. At the end of one particularly difficult day, Kate summed it up: “Everybody has something that the other girl doesn’t. This is what makes us a team.”
As the week wore on the women grew closer to each other and to their instructors. They marched in full kit at night, shot guns, and suffered through burning workouts every morning. Marks’s other frustration, the one he never articulated publicly, was that he and his fellow instructors had so little time to prepare the women. So they stuffed a month’s worth of learning into less than two weeks: the role-playing, shooting, searching, questioning, getting the mind ready for war. While they did get a few hours of night-vision device training, he had to squeeze most of it in during the day.
Marks and the other trainers recognized that these girls wanted to be part of special operations with every part of their brains and bodies. They were now his team, Marks thought, just as all those aspiring Rangers he graduated to the next phase of selection were his guys. He felt as surprised as anyone by the very real sadness he and the other Rangers started to feel when the week wound down to its final day.
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