by Reed, N. C.
“Because I'm an adult, dammit,” he said to himself. “That's why I get to drink booze.”
-
While Clay came to his reluctant decision, twenty-one women were already running back toward the farm from the interstate, Tandi Maseo behind them. Several were in danger of falling behind, but the others adjusted their pace without a word, allowing those who lagged to stay in the group. Tandi nodded his approval without anyone there to see.
Sooner than they expected, the farm came back into view.
“We're half-way there,” Abby told the others from her spot near the front. “We can do it!” A few ragged cheers met her exclamation, but most saved their wind. They veered off the road and onto the beaten track they had forged over the last few weeks, the hard-packed earth feeling only slightly softer than the pavement. Around and behind the buildings of the Troy farm, they headed for the obstacle course that had served everyone on the farm since the spring.
There they would find tires to navigate, poles to walk, and walls to cross over as well as wire to crawl under, in mud of course, which made it harder to keep their rifles clean. There would be Dummy targets to butt-stroke with their rifles, more dummy targets to stab with their knives, and, of course, they would have to do it correctly with Nate watching them closely. Finally, they would move on to the range after a last hundred-yard sprint.
Shooting wasn't terribly difficult once you got the hang of it. Shooting when your breathing was coming in ragged gasps was much harder. It required the conditioning to steady your breathing quickly, and the discipline to wait for that to happen before shooting.
Abby, typically, was the first to fire.
-
Hearing gunfire, Clay made his way over to the range. A quick count assured him that all of the young women had made it this far. Checking his watch, he raised an eyebrow at the estimated time elapsed. Not bad at all.
He arrived just as the last woman finished firing and ejected the spent magazine, clearing her rifle for inspection. Nate walked down the line, looking for anything wrong or out of place. Satisfied, he climbed onto the golf cart beside Tandi and they rode to the targets, fifty yards away. As Tandi drove parallel to the target line, Nate inspected the targets one-by-one, counting holes and checking their placement. It took time for them to do all twenty-one of them, and that was time for the women to become nervous.
“Ladies,” Clay spoke from behind them, making all of them jump, including Abby, who he could hear cursing under her breath at being caught out.
“It looks as if you all made it in good order,” he complimented. “Any difficulty?”
“No, sir!” the reply was a little ragged, but spirited for all that.
“Want to do it again?”
“Hell no,” was the general consensus, and he laughed.
“Well, you will have to, just so you know,” he warned them. “We all do something similar to this at least once every two weeks, and we all do different parts of it every day. It's a necessity if we're going to stay in shape and be ready for whatever happens our way. So, assuming you passed, welcome to our world,” he smiled broadly. “Was it all you hoped it would be?”
“It sucked,” Samantha Walters replied at once, placing her pack on the ground and carefully laying her rifle atop it. Others soon followed suit when Clay didn't stop or chastise her for it.
“That was always my observation as well,” Clay agreed. “What was the hardest part?”
“Learning to shoot.”
“Shooting.”
“Obstacle course.”
“Definitely the obstacle course.”
“Obstacle course, no question.”
“So apparently we're running long on the obstacle course being the hard part?” Clay asked, and got a majority of nodding heads.
“You know, we didn't have all this when the boys had to go through training,” he indicated the obstacle course. “They had to run through the woods over different obstacles, and the guys would change them every two days or so, and not tell them,” he chuckled. “First time it happened, it was hilarious to see their eyes widen right before they hit the ground or got knocked off their feet.”
“But it taught them to expect the unexpected,” he pointed out. “It taught them not to take anything for granted. Not even something as simple as an obstacle course. You remember that, all of you. Don't make assumptions, don't take anything for granted. You check, you double check, and if you have to, you check again. Yes, there will be times when you have no choice but to act, but that's why we plan. We plan for every contingency we can think of, and we use that plan whenever the need arises. Everyone knows that plan, whatever it may be, and if everyone sticks to it, then we have far fewer problems in dealing with whatever issue we're looking at. Don't forget that. Discipline will save you when everything else fails. Discipline and the will to succeed.”
“What about courage?” someone asked. Clay didn't know who it was, and didn't ask.
“Courage is simply being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway,” he replied simply. “Don't put too much stock in courage simply for the sake of courage itself. Not worth it. A soldier can bravely charge a gun emplacement, knowing he can't defeat it, and get killed, without any kind of thought to it at all. That's not courage. It's waste. Waste of life, waste of training, waste of resources.”
“Courage means being afraid, but instead of doing something stupid, or wasteful, you find a way around whatever is in your way. It's perfectly alright to stab an enemy in the back. Some people say it isn't sporting, but this isn't a sporting event, so I call bullshit. If my enemy wanted sporting, he should have stuck with something like badminton, or some other dangerous activity like that.”
He got the expected laughter rolling down the line as the golf cart came up behind the women. He nodded to where Nate and Tandi were getting off the cart.
“Better pay attention,” he warned. “This is where the metal meets the meat.” All of them whirled to see the other two soldiers looking at them with long faces.
“First, the good news,” Nate said solemnly. “All of you managed to pass the shooting part of the qualification. Some just barely, I will admit, but everyone did it.” He paused, more for dramatic effect than need, drawing things out.
“The bad news is that none of you finished in the time you were given,” he announced simply. “From first to last, the elapsed time was sixty-seven minutes to sixty-nine minutes, plus or minus some odd seconds.”
A chorus of groans and startled disbelief went up the line.
“Quiet!” Tandi snapped and all complaining stopped, though the crushed looks didn't go away.
“The other good news,” Nate continued, “is that the actual time for completing this drill was one hour and thirty minutes,” he announced with a broad grin. “Which means all of you passed. Simply put, ladies, I lied to you. I gave you that bogus time, knowing you had no watches, so you would push yourselves. And not only did you push yourselves and finish at least ten minutes under the wire, but you finished as a group, refusing to allow any of your fellow trainees to fall behind! That is outstanding teamwork! Well done to all of you!”
Stunned silence met his declaration.
“Well?” Nate asked them. “No one is happy about any of this?”
“You lied to us?” one incredulous voice asked.
“Of course, I did,” Nate nodded. “I'm your training officer. I was always going to tell you that you weren't good enough, that you had to do it again, that you had no business being here, anything that I could think of, really, to either motivate you to go further and do more, or else to quit before you got yourselves or one of your friends injured, being somewhere you didn't belong. That's my job. To make things so difficult that you either excel to show me up, or else quit because you can't take it. And I will add to my earlier compliments that as hard as things got, and as hard as we pushed you, I never sensed any of you breaking, or thinking about quitting. Some of you may have been think
ing about it, but it didn't show. Whatever weaknesses you may have had, you kept them to yourselves and you kept moving.”
“Which lets us know,” Tandi took over, “that you'll do that in the field, if it comes down to it. We have to be able to depend on you, just like you have to depend on us. Simple as that. This wasn't just about you,” he pointed out. “The two of us already knew you could do all this,” he waved to the obstacle course and firing range, then out to the road.
“This whole thing, while meant to train and condition you for work in the field, also serves to let everyone else know that they can depend on you're in the field. That's what this final exercise is really about. To show you, and to show everyone else, that yeah, you've got what it takes, and you proved it. For the people that it matters the most to, nothing else really matters at all. You can do it, and you proved it. To yourselves and everyone else. This is your graduation exercise.”
“I can't believe you lied to us,” was the only response. One voice from the crowd.
“I think some of you may be missing the point,” Clay spoke up, once again startling most of the young women, all of whom turned to look at him once more.
“And just what is the point?” Abby demanded, earning her a raised eyebrow from her uncle which shut down whatever else she was about to say.
“The point is that all of this is behind you, now,” Clay told them. “You're done. Finished. Yes, you'll have to continue to train, keep up your conditioning, and once you break down into teams you'll still have to work at learning the kind of small-unit tactics that fire teams depend on, but your basic training, arguably the most difficult part of any military training, is done. Not only that, but you passed, and with flying colors at that!”
“It means hit the showers, ladies, and you all have tomorrow off! Rest, relax, go fishing, read a book, sleep, do whatever you want. Now go! Clean those rifles, store those packs and then get gone!”
Suddenly it seemed to finally sink in that they were completely finished, other than cleanup. In a flurry of movement, rifles and packs were hoisted over shoulders and an excited, if tired, group of women took off for Building Two. Clay laughed as he watched them go, then turned to look at Nate.
“You almost got your ass kicked,” he noted.
“Ridiculous,” Nate waved his comment away. “I had it all under control!”
“Yeah, I could see that from way over here,” Clay shook his head as he snorted in derision. “I'm headed home. You guys should probably stay away from any of those girls until tomorrow at least.”
“You're exaggerating the problem,” Tandi shook his head.
“One of those girls is my niece, and I've known one or two of them almost as long,” Clay pointed out. “Maybe not as well as the rest of my family does, but I know them, or know of them. Trust me. Make yourself scarce the rest of the day, or at least give them a wide berth.”
“Yes, mom,” Nate stuck his tongue out. “I could stand a day off myself,” he stretched his arms over his head.
“Dream on, buddy,” Clay said over his shoulder. “Check the duty roster!”
“What?!”
-
“So how do you feel, now that you're done?” Gordy asked as Sam joined him on the porch. Gordy had been pushing himself hard to get back into shape and he was practically there. He had just ran the course himself the day before.
“I'm tired,” Sam dropped into the seat next to him. “That's how I feel. And mad.”
“Mad?” Gordy frowned. “What about? You passed didn't you?”
“They lied to us!” Sam exclaimed. “Told us we had less time to finish than we really did! There's no telling what else they lied to us about!”
“That's their job,” Gordy shrugged, echoing Nate without knowing it. “It's their job to push you as hard as they can, trying to break you down. If you can't cut it in training, you sure can't cut it in the field. So, they push you. And yes, lie to you. Things like 'if you can't do better than that you may as well quit,', when you've actually already done better than expected or necessary. It pushes you to try harder and do more. That's all.”
Hearing Gordy say the same things that Nate did made Sam pause a bit, and think.
“They did it to you guys, too?” she asked. Gordy snorted in reply.
“We wish that was all they did to us,” he laughed tiredly. “You guys went through a standard basic training regimen. We didn't get that. We were thrown straight in to their commando level of training because we were all supposed to be in good shape, being athletes and all.”
“What happened?” Sam asked. “I mean, you obviously made it,” she added.
“They kicked our asses all over this farm is what happened,” Gordy told her flatly. “What you guys did was conditioning and discipline training, for the most part. Giving you the basic skills you need to step up to the next level. For instance, before you went through this training, could you have run from here to the interstate and back?”
“No,” Sam admitted.
“Would you have known how to field strip a rifle, other than yours,” he raised a hand to ward off her objections, “clean it and put it back together? Even in the dark? Under pressure?”
“No.”
“I could go on, but you get the message,” Gordy stopped there. “Dozens of tiny details that are now ingrained in all of you, that you can call on and perform without a second thought. Without hesitation. In a firefight, time counts. You can't spare a second you don't have to.”
“I never thought of that,” Sam admitted. “Not like that, anyway,” she amended. “Everyone was mad in the shower. Nate and Tandi are not our most favorite people right now,” she almost growled.
“Then you better remember that Nate vastly outranks you, so does Tandi, and Tandi is the medic that will look after you if you're hurt in the field,” Gordy replied flatly. He couldn't bring himself to say 'shot', because he didn't want to think about her being shot.
“When you say it like that, it sounds pretty stupid,” she sighed. She stood, then bent down and kissed him lightly.
“Leon agreed to let us use his 'club' exclusively tonight to celebrate, so that's where I'll be.”
“Don't drink too much!” Gordy called as she stepped off the porch.
“You know I don't drink!” she called back.
“You just might, tonight,” he chuckled to himself as he leaned back again into his chair. While healed, more or less, his stamina still took a hit after something like running, which he had done today. Corey was even worse, but still close to being ready.
Close enough, the two of them had decided. Jaylyn Thatcher would have the last say, though, not them.
Meantime, they would work.
-
“Where did this bottle come from, anyway?” Abby asked, looking at the large bottle of bourbon sitting on the small bar in her cousin's 'club'.
“Nate brought it,” Talia Gray slurred just slightly. “Said it was a graduation present and we had earned it.”
“Damn straight,” Kim Powers had already had two shots, which were definitely hitting home.
“Hey, I want some!” Marcy demanded, pushing her way through to the front.
“You're under age,” Abby objected.
“Emancipated teenager!” Marcy declared as if it were some kind of talisman. “Grown up!”
“She has a point,” Gray nodded as she poured a shot for her. Marcy quickly downed the shot, which promptly took her breath away.
“Oh,” she breathed more than said as Gray handed her a glass of water. Taking it, Marcy very rapidly drank the water down, trying to cool the fire that the bourbon had started.
“That is harsh,” the 'emancipated teenager' declared. “I think I'll stick to something else,” she raised a hand against the bottle.
“Nate's trying to buy his way out of trouble,” Amanda Lowery said, her voice almost a growl. “When I get hold of him-,”
“Might wanna hold up on 'at,” Sam noted from the bar.
She had in fact started to drink despite her statement of temperance before leaving home.
“Why?” Lowery demanded, getting to her feet. “He's got it coming. Both of them do.”
“Well, first of all, we're kin'na in'na military kin'na thing, now,” Sam slurred slightly. “And Nate he really seriously outranks us and Tandi is like, the medic and stuff. Really better to have 'im on your good size, I mean sides. No, I meant side. Anyway, atop of all o' that, they're both comman'os who have been all over the world killing people, so the ass kicking would very likely be in reverse, though 'at's jus'a guess on my part,” she finished in one breath, mostly because she had to.
“She makes a solid point,” Gray noted. “We've allowed ourselves to forget who and what they are during all this. Remember, we volunteered for this. We can't complain when they give it to us, Mavis.”
“Who's Mavis?” Kim Powers asked.
“She is,” five different fingers pointed at a red-faced Amanda.
“Dammit, don't call me Mavis,” Lowery retorted. “I don't know why the hell I wanted to do all this, anyway,” she grumbled.
“You wanted, and I quote, 'to kick ass and take names',” Freda Fletcher said from the other side of the bar. “I remember it well.”
“I do recall hearing you say that,” Heather Patton nodded like a bobble head on the dash of a car. She had already imbibed a good deal of Nate's gift and was feeling it.
“I did say that,” Lowery nodded. “Fine, I won't be mad. Or try to get even. But I need another round, bartender, to get over the loss,” she extended her glass.
“That's the spirit,” Gray nodded as she poured Lowery another drink. Amanda held it up in a silent toast before downing it in one shot.
“I think I'm gonna si'down again,” she said. “Some o' you don't look s'good.”