SEAL Team Six Extra-Sized Holiday Bundle Page 3

  He hit the forty-second push-up well inside the two-minute mark and sprang to his feet on the cold sand. He was covered in a sheen of sweat that was rapidly chilling in the pre-dawn cold. But his chest and arms were warm and pumped full of blood from the activity; the punishing series of PT drills that every SEAL repeated daily, and sometimes twice daily. They went through the drills like breathing. If The Chief wasn't there, they'd do it anyway, and with the same full-on attack. Some SEALs were so hardcore they had to be ordered not push too hard.

  In the weak early morning light, the other guys in his squad stood at ease, as Heath was cooling down. They were lined up just beyond the gentle surf lapping up on the beach that ran along the Dam Neck Naval Air Station. The station was home to the team. Manny, Re-Pete, Flame, Pig, and Chili were all breathing easy and maintaining; staying focused. All were dressed in white workouts: tank tops and shorts, sneakers and socks. They all made their forty-two inside the two-minute limit.

  Standing at ease was not an easy task with Master Chief Duncan Abruzzi pacing before them, eye-fucking them; measuring them like beef on a hook. He was five-seven and looked like he was carved of tattooed oak, with no spare fat anywhere. He wore a Navy sweatshirt cut off at the sleeves, ball cap for a cover, sweatpants, non-reg Docksiders, a stop-watch on one lanyard around his neck, and a brass whistle on another. He was anywhere from forty to pushing fifty; it was hard to tell from looking at his tanned-leather face, creased by all the years of sun and salt. Old Navy to the core. Some say he went way back and broke his cherry in Grenada, kicking Cuban ass. Others say it was Operation Just Because, bringing Manuel Noriega out of Panama. Still others say he was in Desert Storm, taking down Saddam's anti-air sites. No matter how old he was, he looked like he could do it all over again without raising his resting heart rate.

  "So, you made the minimum," Abruzzi said. "Congratulations. But I still see weakness. And I hate weakness. God hates weakness."

  MC Abruzzi and God shared a lot of pet peeves. Cowards, shirkers, blame-artists, barracks lawyers, and fuck-offs. No one was safe. Not even Re-Pete, with the crucifix that his mama gave him hanging around his neck, was safe from the Chief--and the Lord's--wrath.

  "Well, you may be SEALs but you don't stay SEALs unless I say so. And I don't say so yet. Some runnin' and jumpin' and fartin' around tells me nothing. Fags with football scholarships can do that. You wanna be gunfighters? You wanna go back to wasting bad guys? You can't have any defects! Taxpayers don't want to waste money on half-steppers. No stones unturned and no balls un-busted. So we're gonna have to do what SEALs do, aren't we?"

  No one answered. They'd seen this routine and knew what was next. Their ballsacks were already shriveling in anticipation. Their faces betrayed nothing but the indifferent calm of predators at rest.

  "And what is it that SEALs do, Re-Pete?" Abruzzi turned his back on them.

  Re-Pete smiled to buy him time to swallow the speech impediment that gave him his nickname. Smiles were rare. Most of the time Re-Pete bore an expression that someone in basic thought looked like "a sad horse." Re-Pete was E-6 Shawn Gregory Haarden, and he topped out at 6'6" of lean muscle that prevented all but the most inebriated from mocking his slow, deliberate way of speaking.

  "They swim, Chief. Swim."

  "That's right," Abruzzi said with a thin smile.

  He turned to the six men and pointed to a platform floating atop the swell fifty yards or more from shore. It was moored out there with chains and concrete anchors, and rose and fell with the incoming tide. The water looked cold. The water was cold.

  "Swim out and climb aboard," Abruzzi said. "When all six of you are on board and acknowledged by my whistle, you swim back. And I don't want to see any sign of you on the way there or the way back. Full stealth crawl. A rip going in and one coming out the other end and not even a bubble between. Do we have an understanding, ladies?"

  "Aye, aye, Chief!" the six shouted in unison.

  "Then, asses in the water!" Abruzzi shouted, and hounded them to the water's edge with sharp trills on his whistle.

  The six raced into the waves and, almost as one, dove into the breakers as soon as the depth would allow full coverage.

  Heath struck seaward, arms at his sides, and kicking hard and regular with his feet. He'd use his arms to scoop water toward him when there was more water between him and the sloping bottom. He maintained breathing discipline as he swam. He had cleansed his lungs, as the others did, back on the beach while the Chief was strutting. Sip air in, let some out. Fill your lungs, empty them. Drop your resting heart rate. You don't psyche yourself up for an underwater exercise; you psyche yourself down. Swimming's like walking. Natural as taking a piss. You can do this. Babies can do this.

  Blow your lungs flat heading for the water and take one last, long gulp just before your fingertips hit the foam.

  In the groove and making progress, Heath stretched first one arm and then the other, and began the pull into the dark water ahead. He didn't look from side to side to see how his brothers were doing. Just power on for the floating platform and don't lose your way--which was a whole different challenge. Orienteering under water is a bitch without any guidelines or lights. You just have to guess and go. The platform was maybe twenty-foot around but still way too easy to miss. Go too far--or not far enough--and risk blowing the exercise or, in combat, dying and getting your whole squad killed with you.

  Manny was ahead of him. Shortest man in the squad, E-8 Emmanuel Levitz was the fastest swimmer. Heath could see his buddy kicking and pumping away. Easiest path would be to follow Manny's bubble trail. But what if his bud was wrong? Even a couple degrees off and you could swim right past the anchor chains. Heath checked his progress as his powerful arms strained, grabbing water and pulling back.

  The little man was swimming away at an angle, fooled by the undertow rip. Heath didn't want to see Manny wash out because of a pogue fuck-up like that. But he couldn't catch up with the wriggling figure ahead of him unless he poured on some speed.

  Increasing his pace, Heath began to feel it in his chest. His body wanted to breathe. Too soon. Too soon. He was little more than halfway there. He was going to use up his air making this kind of speed. But he couldn't let Manny go back to regular Navy for simple shit like this.

  He torqued it down. He'd breathe when he was done. Heath concentrated on the path ahead, and swam even with Manny. He bumped the smaller man with his shoulder. When he had Manny's attention, he jerked a finger to his right and swam off on his original path toward where he thought the platform was. He didn't look back to see if his bud followed. He did all he could. Now it was time to make sure his own rating was secure.

  He reached the anchor chains and followed them up alongside the platform, breaking the water with a gasp. Pig and Flame reached down for him and helped him over the pontoons and up onto the canvas-covered plank surface. Re-Pete and Chili were already here and blowing out air on their hands and knees. Chili had puked up the power bar he chowed down before they left the barracks. Dumbass move. Never face the Chief on anything but an empty stomach. But Chili was a hurler. It's how he got his name.

  Heath looked around.

  "Where's," he took a sip of air, "Manny?"

  "Didn't see him," Pig said and sat back.

  Heath scanned the deck all around. He stood and looked out at the water beyond. No sign of anyone breaking surface. It was almost four minutes by his guess. Manny had to break surface soon even, if he missed the platform. Manny was hardcore and a born-again badass. But he wasn't so Navy that he'd drown rather than give the Chief the satisfaction of scrubbing him. Or was he?

  A gasp and a snort from the sea side of the platform, and palms slapped down on the edge of the canvas. Heath trotted over and clapped a big hand around Manny's forearm and yanked him aboard. Manny laid down on his back and sipped and blew, sipped and blew. His eyes were bloodshot and his lips purplish. He'd nearly starved himself of oxygen.

  "I told you which way to go, shithead," Heath said.

  Manny sucked in a lungful and held it a moment.

  "I'd take directions from you?" Manny said after a second. "You get lost on the way to the head."

  "You good for the swim back?" Heath asked.

  Manny nodded and pressed his lips together tight. His big pal pulled him to his feet.

  With all six standing on the wavering surface, Abruzzi could see they'd made it, and without a single ripple of their passage. He sent a blast from his whistle over the water and, as a man, the six dove into the water for the less grueling swim back. They had the tide at their backs now, and a ten mile run on the beach when they got back to the Chief. This was only the beginning of their day.

  Still young men, their easy days were behind them.

  CHAPTER 5

  The men on the team came from all over the country, but the stories of how they came to the SEALs weren't all that different from one another.

  They were rebellious kids. The wild kind, that accepted any dare and pushed to be the toughest in their crowd. Not malicious. Not mean. Just running on pure energy, and intolerant of weakness in themselves.

  Re-Pete was the exception. He was orphaned by a tornado that ripped through his Iowa town when he was six. His family and his whole world vanished in an instant, and he found himself in the foster care system where he remained until he turned eighteen; bounced from one home to another with a stubborn speech impediment, and too withdrawn to encourage anyone to adopt him. He kept to himself, with books for company. Mythology and military history were his favorites. And the Bible. Even in foster homes without books he could usually find The Word.

  Those lonely years also taught him to stand on his own, and while he was in high school, he worked at a variety of jobs to pay for his own s
peech therapy. The only trace left was his habit of repeating the final words of any statement he made, to make sure he was understood. He was big and fit and wound up on his school's football team as a linebacker, because his coaches assumed he was an idiot. His teachers did the same. It wasn't until Shawn Haarden signed up for the Navy that early proficiency tests revealed a sharp mind behind that sad horse face. Smart, physically adept, and tough: he was a perfect candidate for SEAL training, and he attacked the year-long program and asked for seconds. The current team of guys were his one and only family.

  * * * * *

  Pig was out of Galveston and from a long line of Texicans; Texans of Mexican descent who were citizens ever since the Lone Star State was a republic. He was a rebellious kid named Angel; a name he never tried to live up to. He was a good-looking stud and the girls came and went. Angel only worked hard enough to keep his custom '99 Supra in gas and upgrades. His father wanted him to inherit the family's landscaping business. It was lucrative, and his dad had contracts with the county that were worth a fortune. But Dad soon gave up on his oldest boy and began grooming Angel's little brother instead.

  When Angel got his girlfriend pregnant, it was like a bomb went off in the middle of his life. His dad was mad. His mom was mad. The girl's Anglo brothers were mad as hell. His father said that he'd cover the cost of Angel's escapades, but only if Angel straightened his life out--and pronto.

  When the girl decided to have the baby, Angel opted to join the Navy. She wrote to him a few times but he never wrote back; never even opened the letters. It all seemed like someone else's fucked up life to him now. He promised himself, usually when he was drunk, that he'd get back to it someday, and make things right. But then morning would come and it was back to the world of fighting and survival.

  * * * * *

  Flame's path to the SEALs was more of a straight line. He grew up in Pensacola, where the soundtrack of his childhood was the roar and boom of Navy fighter planes streaking overhead day and night. He remembered the day they tested a daisy-cutter, the Mother of All Bombs, out on the testing range, and it rattled every window in town.

  Flame, called Randy by everyone outside the unit, just assumed that one day he'd be up there with the Raptors and Tomcats, looking at the world through a gun sight, with an array of hurt dangling from under his wings. He'd be a flying, life-taking, heart-breaking badass.

  But we have our plans and God has his, and the Navy quickly determined that Randy O'Donnell was not officer material and assigned him to gunnery school with an eye toward placing him on a destroyer. He got pissed off enough to sign up with the SEALs, and no one was more surprised than he was when he made it through both rounds of training to stand tall and receive his trident.

  * * * * *

  Unlike Flame, Chili never had a thought of joining the Navy. He was Willard James Repp; Billy Jim to the family. He lived far from the sea, on the family's soybean farm west of Skyline, Alabama. He couldn't swim and never gave a thought to learning. He worked alongside his dad and his brothers and his uncles, and his abilities with anything mechanical made themselves plain before he was ten. Mostly he maintained the farm's tractors, cultivators, and combines, and wasn't happy unless he was elbow-deep in grease, tearing down an engine or welding a chassis back together. He'd have been happy spending his life that way, working on the rigs and heading into Huntsville a couple of weekends a month to tear it up.

  But 9-11 changed that for him. He remembered his mom calling him back into the house early one morning. She was standing in front of the TV in the living room with a hand to her mouth. Her little Billy Jim stood by her and watched the second tower come down. He didn't realize until afterward that he'd taken his mom's hand and that he was squeezing until his fingers were numb.

  That night at the dinner table he gravely announced to his mother and father, three brothers, and two sisters that he was going to join one of the services and help find the people who attacked America that morning. His brothers laughed at him and his parents thought this was just the braggadocio of an eager fifteen-year-old boy.

  Dorian, his oldest brother, asked him what he was going to be; a Green Beret or maybe a Power Ranger? That got his siblings giggling harder.

  "A Navy SEAL," Randy said. "Like Chuck Norris in that movie."

  The righteous anger of that teenaged farm kid turned to resolve over the years, and Randy made good on his word that night in Abbottabad.

  * * * * *

  Manny and Heath were the city guys in the unit, but from opposite sides of the interstate.

  Indianapolis was Manny's home; his father owned a chain of dry cleaning stores in the city and a couple out in the surrounding suburbs. Papa Levitz wanted something for his son that he never had himself: acceptance. It was important to Manny's father that his boy be popular, and he encouraged him to go out for sports. But Manny was shorter than the rest of boys who signed up for football and basketball. He managed to get onto the JV football team because of his speed, and a real talent for placekicking.

  He was different from the jocks in another way. There were always two or three Jew-haters on any team, and they could be cruel and even violent, and the rest would go along, not anxious to call attention to themselves. The king jocks would single Manny out for special attention during practice and, when that failed to discourage him, they'd catch him on the way home and send him away bruised and bloody. He'd tell his dad it was a rough practice, and his father would beam. He could never let his family know what was really going on. His dad had a vision of his son as a beloved jock at school. Even when Manny spent most of the games on the bench, his father was pleased to see his son outfitted like the other boys, and being cheered along with the rest of the team when they trotted onto the field.

  Manny quit the team before the senior year season got started, but never told his father. He couldn't break the old man's heart. He couldn't face the nasty remarks and one-sided fights with the other boys, either. And he couldn't go home after school.

  He started to taking long walks and often around the campus of Purdue University. He'd always looked mature for his age, and no one took a second look at him. Manny dug the anonymity after so much unwanted attention at his own school.

  One afternoon he came across a dozen or so students practicing some kind of ritual on Lockfield Green. An instructor was demonstrating some punching and kicking moves, and the class imitated his every step. Manny sat in the shade of the trees and watched, as the instructor picked subjects from the class to demonstrate holds and punches and throws on a padded mat spread on the grass.

  When the class was breaking up Manny started to walk away, but the instructor called out to him. Manny turned to see the guy gesturing him over. Why not, Manny shrugged.

  "You interested in Krav Maga?" the guy asked. He was a big, buff blonde guy, with the deepest voice Manny had ever heard.

  "Is that what you were doing?" Manny asked. "Looked like karate or something like that."

  "It's a martial art with all the bullshit stripped away," the guy said. "It's what the Israeli army uses to kick ass."

  "You don't look Jewish," Manny said. "Where'd you learn it?"

  "In the SEALs," the guy said. "They sent us over to Israel for a two-month course."

  "Cool," Manny said.

  "Come around tomorrow. Join the class."

  Manny did come back the next day, and many days after, and lied to his dad that the fresh bruises and cuts and lumps were from a rough day at practice. But now he bore them with pride.

  The super-jocks caught him alone between classes long after football season had ended. He put all three in the hospital and not one of them would admit who did it.

  He graduated three weeks later and signed up for the Navy, volunteering for SEALs program as soon as he made his E-2 rating aboard the Lexington.

  * * * * *

  Heath came up harder than the others.