Suffer in Silence

by David Reid

  “Who needs a corpsman?” Senior Chief Lundin asked as they dropped their boat in the sand. “It looks like you could use a Band-Aid, sir,” he said, nodding at Grey’s bleeding wound.

  “It’s nothing.” Grey looked toward the ambulance. “How’s Warrior doing?”

  “Who knows? Looks like a fairly serious break. Don’t plan on seeing him again for a while.” Grey’s face fell, and Lundin immediately added, “He wouldn’t have made it anyway, sir. Not with those stress fractures he was developing. I’m surprised the docs even let him start Hell Week in the first place.”

  First Ramirez, then Warrior. How many do I have to lose? Grey didn’t have long to feel sorry for himself. Instructor Heisler slammed the door of the ambulance shut and ran back to the group. He looked nothing like his normal upbeat self. His spiky blond hair looked menacing rather than comical. His usually friendly eyes blazed beneath a furrowed brow.

  “Drop the fuck down!” he yelled, spittle flying from his mouth. “Push ’em out!”

  Grey dropped into the push-up position and started counting out repetitions.

  Heisler looked up at the instructors still perched on the rocks. “Call them off! No more approaches until the ambulance gets back!”

  Grey cursed his bad luck. While most of the class bobbed offshore munching candy, his boat crew would enjoy the collective attention of a dozen bored instructors. Sure enough, once the approaching boat crews turned and stationed themselves safely offshore, the instructors climbed down from the rocks and surrounded Boat Crew Six. A short distance to the north, the group that had landed before them was lying in a shallow puddle, trying not to attract any extra attention by shivering excessively.

  “Well, well. What have we got here?” Redman asked.

  Furtado ran his metal tongue stud across his moist lips. “Looks like a sorry shipwrecked crew to me. You sailors get lost in the storm? Scared by the big waves? Awww,” he cooed. “We’ll make you feel better.” He glanced around at the group of instructors. “What do you say, guys?”

  “Fuckin’ put ’em in the surf,” Osgood grunted. “Get ’em wet.”

  “They’re already wet enough,” Heisler said. “I think a little PT might be just what they need, but I’m willing to compensate. How about some four-count flutter kicks in that puddle over there.” He pointed to the north and did a double take. His eyes narrowed to slits as he squinted in the darkness. “I almost didn’t notice that other boat crew, they’re so quiet. They can join in the fun, too. We love everyone equally here, boys and girls. No favorites.”

  “Fuck that,” Osgood grumbled, “I hate you all equally, and I do have favorites.”

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” Heisler nodded toward the puddle. “Get busy.”

  Grey climbed to his feet and ran to the puddle. It was just deep enough so that when he lay down he had to extend his neck to keep his mouth above the water. The tourists, decked out in their fancy clothes, watched with interest from the other side of the yellow line as the students started flutter kicks. Their legs moved up and down methodically, churning the stagnant water like eggbeaters.

  “Listen up,” Senior Chief Lundin began from his perch on a rock. “I’m going to tell you why you don’t want to be a SEAL. While you’re doing flutter kicks, I want you to really concentrate on the words that are coming from my lips. I’m the closest thing to a friend that you guys will ever have here. I have a reputation as a pretty nice guy. Maybe a little too friendly, according to some of my colleagues.” He looked to the other instructors for affirmation and received nods all around. “Like I said, maybe a little too nice. But I’m not going to sit here and feed you a bunch of bullshit about how glorious it is to be a SEAL. I won’t tell you how great it is to free-fall from thirty thousand feet or how exciting it is to blow some poor bastard away with an M-60. That’s all Hollywood, gentlemen. If you think you’re going to spend your days doing that kind of stuff, you’re sadly mistaken. Sure, you might get the occasional jump, and you definitely will spend a lot of time at the firing range, but the bulk of what you will do is not glorious at all. In fact, it just sucks.”

  He paused for effect. Grey suspected he had delivered this monologue more than a few times.

  “Just to illustrate my point, I’m going to tell you about what I did for two years in South America. It might give you an indication of just how unglamorous and downright frustrating life as a SEAL can be. I was sent down to a country, whose name I can’t reveal, to train a foreign military in counterinsurgency. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Teach a bunch of new recruits how to shoot guns and set ambushes? Well, the first day we got there I realized what our first obstacle was. The guys we were supposed to train were between fourteen and twenty years old. Sure, there was the occasional twenty-five-year-old, but for the most part we were dealing with kids. They didn’t want to fight. They were drafted. Most of them had never seen a gun before in their lives. That was a big enough obstacle in itself, but on top of everything else, these guys were all sick. They had the shits, they were tired all the time, they were just generally in horrible shape. So what do we do? We give them antibiotics, of course. You should have seen the looks on some of their faces. It was like they were reborn. They had never felt so good in their lives. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to accept the idea that a certain dosage was optimal. A bunch of guys wolfed down all the pills we gave them at once, making them even sicker. Others discovered that they could sell the pills in the cities for more money than they received in their annual paycheck. Worst of all, we had to turn away hundreds of women and children who had heard about the miracle drugs and lined up outside the base every day to beg for help.”

  Grey’s stomach was starting to cramp up from the flutter kicks, but he was so cold he hardly noticed. Occasionally he would lower his head into the water to rest his neck. Lundin’s voice faded into the background as Grey’s ears dipped below the surface.

  “And clothes—these guys had no uniforms. No shoes! We issued them all boots, but to our disgust nearly everyone came down with jungle rot within one week. We couldn’t figure it out. We never had any problems with our own feet. Well, after walking through the barracks one night, I caught on real quick. These guys refused to take their boots off at night. They wouldn’t air out their feet because they were afraid someone would steal their boots. It turns out that owning a pair of boots raised them at least one level on the societal ladder—they were no longer peasants—and they weren’t about to risk losing their newfound wealth by saving their feet.”

  He’s playing good cop, Grey thought to himself. He gets all buddy-buddy with us, then he tries to sap our motivation with depressing stories. Nice try, old guy.

  “And the operations…” Lundin glanced over at the crowd of tourists, who probably couldn’t hear a word he was saying. “I can’t really tell you about the operations, but I will leave you with this thought: forty-five days to train a bunch of kids to kill like SEALs. On graduation day they could barely hold their M-16s, let alone use them effectively. The missions were, well … interesting.” Lundin looked down at the students kicking away madly below him and shook his head. “Why you would work so hard for this kind of a life is beyond me. It doesn’t get easier in the Teams, gents. It’s different, but just as hard.” With that he jumped down from the rock, spat into the puddle, and stalked away into the darkness.

  “Well, that’s fucking depressing,” Murray mumbled. “That’s not like Lundin at all, telling us all that shit.”

  Grey closed his eyes and tried to tune out the grunts and groans of the other students. The effort of keeping his face out of the water quickly surpassed the pain in his abs. His neck cramped up, but every time he relaxed he swallowed a mouthful of water. The instructors had devised a clever system to keep students from cheating.

  “Man your boats!” Osgood yelled. The ambulance was back, minus Warrior.

  Boat Crew Six ran to their raft and manned their positions. Grey stood awkwardly at the back
of the raft. Because they were missing a crew member, only four men would paddle. Ideally, a boat crew would have six paddlers and one coxswain. They were seriously undermanned.

  “I dunno.…” Kurtz moaned softly, hugging his arms across his chest. “I just dunno.…”

  “Not again,” Murray grumbled. “Stop your blubberin’, Kurtz.”

  “Now we only have five.… We can’t land with five.… I dunno.…”

  Grey could tell he was going to quit. If he was having such doubts on the first night of Hell Week, he would never survive when things got really interesting. He didn’t want to encourage the kid to quit, but he also didn’t want to handicap his boat crew with someone who didn’t want to be there.

  “Look, Kurtz, you’ve got to pull yourself together. Yes, it’s true you might get hurt, but that’s part of the deal. If you want to stick it out, we’d love to have you. But I need you to make up your mind. Are you going to do this thing, or aren’t you?”

  Kurtz’s eyes darted back and forth between Grey and Murray. His lower lip trembled. “I dunno—”

  “Fuck this!” Murray said, shaking his head. “The guy’s going to get us killed with his half-assed attitude. Let him go.”

  “Well?” Grey asked, “What’s it gonna be?”

  “If that’s what you want … fine…”

  “Fine, what?” Grey’s patience was waning.

  “I’m gone.” Head bowed, Kurtz approached Instructor Osgood. Seconds later he was gone, ushered away into the darkness. Osgood walked over to the boat and sized up the crew.

  “You shitbirds think you can get through the surf with four men?” He was looking at Grey.

  No way. “Of course, Instructor Osgood.”

  “We’ll see about that.” His intense stare made Grey uneasy. “Here’s what I want you to do. Make a few good landings with four men, and I’ll give you two solid guys when you get back.”

  “Aye, aye, Instructor Osgood.”

  “What’s this ‘Aye, aye’ shit? You sound like Popeye.”

  “Sorry,” Grey said stupidly.

  Osgood climbed onto the pile of rocks and peered out to sea. He turned back toward the beach. “Walk north past the rock pile and enter the surf there. Once you’re clear of the breakers, paddle south and rejoin the boat pool.”

  “Up boat!” Grey ordered. The four of them hoisted the boat onto their heads and trotted north past the rock pile. The surf was still huge, judging by the explosive rumbles that shattered the stillness of the night. They waded into the ocean without uttering a word. Tension hummed in the air. With the surf so big, getting out safely would be a miracle.

  “Murray, I want you to get an approximate interval on these waves. I’ll try to figure out how frequently these sets are rolling in.”

  The other boat crew paddled out into the darkness, and a short while later their overturned craft rushed toward the beach without them. Osgood wouldn’t be happy that Grey was trying to wait out the set, but he didn’t have much of a choice. It was his only chance. Murray counted aloud as they stood their ground.

  “I’ve got about ten seconds for wave interval—”

  Grey held up a hand to silence him. “Wait.” He strained his eyes as he searched the surface of the ocean for incoming swells. A six-foot crusher rushed toward shore, the whitewash dissipating as it rumbled along. “Now!” Grey yelled.

  Grey and Jones jumped into the stern and paddled furiously while Murray and Jackson stroked from the bow. The blackness of the night made the journey terrifying. It was virtually impossible to spot a wave until it was right on top of the boat. Grey held his breath and offered up a prayer. God, deliver us from broken backs and concussions, drowning and fractured skulls. Please save us. They stroked mightily but moved forward at an agonizingly slow rate.

  “Incoming!” Jackson yelled.

  Grey saw it a split second later. A sheer eight-foot wall of water loomed over the boat. For a terror-stricken moment, Grey looked up in awe and stopped paddling. As they surged up the face Grey regained his wits. “Stroke through it!”

  Their forward motion stopped at the crest of the wave, and Grey felt himself tipping backward.

  “Sweet Jesus, deliver us!” Jackson yelled, digging in with his paddle.

  Suddenly the boat flopped forward and the wave passed beneath them, dragging them backward several yards before releasing them from its grip.

  “Ten seconds,” Grey warned. “We’re not safe yet.”

  They paddled and paddled, rolling over several swells before coming to a rest offshore. The crew breathed heavily and collapsed in various positions inside the boat.

  “Dang. Forget surf torture. You want me to run home to momma, you keep throwin’ these waves my way,” Jones drawled. “I’m ’bout ready to retire.”

  Grey smiled and allowed himself a moment of happiness. What they had just accomplished was no small feat of seamanship, and Osgood would surely recognize their skill. Murray winked from the bow and put an arm around Jackson.

  “We don’t need six. We can kick everyone’s ass with four!”

  After taking a five-minute break, they made three successful landings in a row. Their fourth was a disaster. Jones dipped his paddle at the wrong moment, spinning the raft sideways as a big wave overturned them. Grey received a nice knock on the head, but he eventually managed to pull his crew together and get the raft over the rocks.

  “What the fuck was that?” Redman yelled. “Am I dealing with a bunch of crackheads?”

  “It was my fault,” Grey said. “My timing was off.”

  “You could say that again, sir,” Redman snarled. “You almost fucking killed your crew.” He glanced at the shivering group of students and shook his head. “Not that it would be a big loss. That’s a pathetic bunch you’ve got there.”

  Grey averted his gaze and held his tongue.

  “Get out here. Join your class.”

  The four of them lifted the boat onto their heads and jogged back to the puddle. The boat crews had arranged themselves in a line facing south, with the bow of each boat in the chain touching the stern of the boat ahead. Grey maneuvered his crew to the back of the line.

  “Short a few, sir?” Osgood asked, emerging from the darkness.

  “Yes, Instructor Osgood.”

  “Who do you want?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I asked you who you wanted, fuck nut.”

  Grey was taken aback. “I’m not sure.”

  “I’m not sure,” Osgood repeated sourly. “I give you a chance to create the ideal boat crew, and you’re not sure. Well, I guess I’ll pick them for you.” Osgood jumped up onto a rock. “Down boat!” he yelled.

  The crews simultaneously lowered their boats into the shallow puddle.

  “Give me a height line. Shortest man to the north. You have one minute.”

  The class erupted into a flurry of activity as students tried to arrange themselves in order of height. They were in trouble. It was taking far too long to accomplish such a simple task.

  “Too slow. Time to pay.” Osgood jerked a thumb toward the surf to the north. “Link arms up north, past the rocks.”

  With somewhat diminished enthusiasm, the class splashed north through the puddle, stopping on the beach a few yards from the water. Grey linked arms with Jones and Jackson, and the three of them shivered together, anticipating the bone-numbing cold.

  “Forward march!”

  Grey stepped out toward the water. He quickly noticed that the closer they got to the ocean, the smaller the students’ steps became. Soon they were hardly moving at all. Give me a break. Grey dreaded the cold as much as anyone else, but they were only asking for trouble by chickening out. Jackson snorted a quick laugh next to him.

  “I see I’m not the only brother who hates the cold,” Jackson murmured.

  “Get in the water, now!” Osgood screamed, genuinely disgusted. “Every second you delay is another ten minutes in the surf!”

  The class quickly
trotted into the ocean. Rivers of varying temperatures ran through the coastal water. They had just wandered into what felt like a strong Alaskan current. Grey fought back a wave of panic. The first minute was unreal. His body tensed up as his breath came in shallow gasps. Jones moaned softly on one side, and Jackson gripped his other arm with such force it felt like it would snap off. Grey wanted to tell Jackson to take it easy, but the words blurred into a feeble moan.

  “Hoo-yah!” The defiant, drawn-out cry came from somewhere down the line.

  One by one, the class picked up the chant, and Grey moaned along. At the very least it took his mind off the cold. Maybe it would even inspire the instructors to go easy on them and take them out of the surf.

  “Shut up!” Osgood yelled. “Shut up!”

  “Don’t listen to him!” Petty Officer Larsen yelled. “C’mon! Louder!”

  “Hoo-yah!” The class yelled continuously. Individually their voices were hoarse and weak from the cold, but the collective cry was mildly inspiring. Grey’s numb lips formed a smile. He squeezed Jackson’s arm, and Jackson squeezed back. After several minutes the class realized that they would receive no special treatment for their vocal efforts and faded into silence. Grey closed his eyes and was immediately transported to a world of blue-gray icebergs and frigid winter winds. He rose up into the air, gently moving skyward. As he turned his eyes back to Earth, he saw his own emaciated body bobbing in the surf. His lips were blue, his eyelids frost covered. Ice had formed in his hair, and the blue veins that snaked throughout his body pulsed weakly beneath translucent skin.