Deathrace

6

Kat Garnet had been up since 5 A.M. She frowned. No, that would be 0500 Navy time. She had to immerse herself totally, unrelentingly, in Navy now, specifically Navy SEALS. She could do that. She had a fast breakfast, then tried on her clothes. They almost fit, probably the smallest that the Navy issued. Not exactly from some fancy downtown store. She grinned when she looked at the beige boxer shorts. So they were a long way from Jockey ladies' briefs. She pulled them on. They nearly fit.

She rolled up the cammies legs two narrow turns, then put on the Navy bra and the cammie shirt. It didn't nearly fit. She stuffed it in the pants and tightened the belt, then looked in the mirror and saw silver bars on her collar. She took them off and put them in her shirt pocket. The black jungle boots came next, with the socks rolled down over the tops to keep them from snagging. Like the boxers, the boots almost fit. Somebody must have checked. She realized she'd be spending a lot of time walking and running in those boots, so they better fit right. She'd know after the first day.

She put on the cammie-splotched floppy hat and took another look. It would have to do. She picked up the plastic-enclosed pass she had been given, and an ID card, also sealed, and put both in the big front-flap shirt pocket.

Kat paced the floor of her small quarters a minute, saw that her waterproof wide-plastic-banded watch set for military time showed that it was 0730. Time to move.

She pushed open the door and headed for the main gate, to go across the highway to the SEAL headquarters on the other side of the road.

When she stepped into the SEAL "quarterdeck," she found it to be only a lobby for the headquarters. She showed her ID card to a sailor behind a counter and he snapped a salute.

"Good morning, Lieutenant. I'll have a man take you down to SEAL Team Seven, Platoon Three."

At once a sailor in blue dungarees appeared at a locked door to her left and motioned to her.

"This way, ma'am."

For a moment, Kat felt almost pampered, but she knew that wouldn't last. She had to become "one of the guys" to make this mission work. She had made up her mind about one thing She was going to be so damn tough nobody would question her, and she wasn't going to get herself or anyone else killed on this mission.

A short walk later and she was shown into a building and to an open door. She stepped inside an office.

"Lieutenant Garnet, we were just talking about you," Murdock said from behind his desk in the eight-by-eight-foot room. He didn't get up. Two others were in the room. She knew one was the other officer in the platoon, DeWitt. The third was an enlisted man she remembered seeing. They all wore desert cammies.

"Good morning, Lieutenant Garnet," Murdock said.

"Good morning," she said, trying to keep her voice even, neutral.

"One suggestion, Kat. While we're at the base and in training, we all wear our rank. For you it will mean a certain amount of on-base respect, and some protection. The regular Navy likes to know who is who. Do you have the bars?"

"Yes." She took them out, and DeWitt pinned them on for her.

"As I said, we've been talking about you, Kat. You must have figured that out. Lieutenant DeWitt has been assigned as your personal trainer. He'll turn you into a SEAL so fast you'll wonder why you run those marathons."

He handed her an HK MP-5SD. It was almost two feet long and weighed a ton. She reconsidered — maybe five or six pounds.

"This is called an MP-5. It's a Heckler & Koch submachine gun. It can be set for single-round, three-round fire, or fully automatic. Don't be afraid of it. This weapon is going to be your constant companion. You'll work with it, shoot it, swim with it, hike with it, sleep with it if you want to.

"The first priority for you is to learn to fire this weapon, to get good with it so you can hit what you aim at. This is a form of insurance for you, and for the rest of the SEALs who will be with you. That's first up for you this morning — lots of weapons training, and live-round firing. DeWitt."

"Right this way, Kat. We've got packs waiting." They left the office and picked up backpacks.

"Usually we don't use these on a mission, they're for training. Oh, carry that weapon in both hands with the muzzle facing left at a forty-five-degree angle across your chest. Easiest way to carry it, and it's ready to use in a half a second." She lifted the pack.

"Only ten pounds, Kat. Mostly ammo. Want to get you started off easy."

She slipped into the pack, adjusted the straps, and held the submachine gun the way she had been told.

They walked away from the buildings, through a gate and onto the sand. A sand dune had been dozered up to replace the sand ripped out by winter storms. They went down to the hard sand along the water and turned south.

"We've got about three miles down to a spot we use for live firing. Since time is important, we'll run. How about a six-minutes-a-mile pace."

"That I know about," Kat said. She had resolved to talk as little as possible, to record everything, and to remember everything. She started off at the six-minutes-a-mile pace, and was soon glad it wasn't a five-minute mile he wanted. The pack bounced and jolted on her back until she worked out a slightly different stride to move with its sliding motion.

DeWitt looked at her and smiled. "Yes, you know what a six-minutes-a-mile pace is. Can you do that for twenty-six miles?"

"Not with this pack on, for damn sure."

DeWitt grinned. "Good, you're human, after all."

Twenty minutes later they stopped at a twenty-foot-high sand dune with grass and shrubs growing on the top. The face of it had been bulldozed out almost vertical to set up a safe twenty-yard shooting range. DeWitt got down to business.

"At this point we don't care if you can field strip the MP-5 or not. All we want you to be able to do is shoot it, and hit what you're aiming at. That's our job this morning. This weapon has a folding stock so you can hold it close or, if you have time, pull out the stock for a better aim. It has a thirty-round magazine, and will fire single-shot, three-round bursts, or fully automatic. However, we like to think that SEALs are better shots than to have to hose down a spot with thirty rounds to hit one man."

He watched her. She had a slight frown, and seemed to be memorizing everything he said.

"Understand yesterday you fired a weapon for the first time. First a forty-five pistol, and then the G-eleven. This isn't quite so hot as the G-eleven. But it will do the job. Now, let's do some dry firing for position."

Back in the office of Third Platoon, Murdock had tried again to lay out a training schedule. He and DeWitt had worked over it since seven that morning, and it still didn't look right.

"This whole thing might be useless if Stroh says we have only ten days to get on that plane," Jaybird Sterling said.

"Not a chance. Stroh saw how serious I was. I'll call the President direct if I have to. No sense slaughtering a whole platoon and still not get the mission accomplished. We'd just show our hand, and the Arabs could throw a division of troops around wherever the factory is and make it impossible for any outfit to get in there."

"So, we keep the same sequence for Kat weapons, fitness, water training and rebreather, then jumping?"

"Still looks the best. We can modify it as we go along. After her individual training, we still need two weeks to work her in with the rest of the troops."

"At least. In our combat formation, where does she walk?" Sterling asked.

"With our squad. Lampedusa out front, then me, then Holt with the radio. You're behind Holt and right in back of you is Kat. You'll baby-sit her."

"Figures. By the time Mr. DeWitt gets her trained, I hope to hell she'll be able to work right along with the rest of us."

"To be prayed for. Now for the rest of the troops. Get them up and ready — we're hitting the obstacle course. No tadpoles over there this morning. Every man gets timed. Anybody who doesn't do it in ten minutes, drops, and does a hundred pushups. Ten minutes later he does the course again — until he's under ten. I'm the first one out of the chute."

Two hours later, all but two of the men of Third Platoon had done the beast of an obstacle course in under ten minutes. Those two ran it again. This isn't any ordinary course. It includes the usual barriers, plus a twenty-foot vertical wall climb, a go up and down a sixty-foot-high cargo net, a rope climb, a shinny up a sixty-foot tower, a slide down from it on a rope, the stump jump, parallel bars, a rope climb up a wall, a thirty-foot barbed-wire crawl, the weaver, a rope bridge, the log stack, the five vaults, and the swing rope combo. When the men finish, they are told their time, then drop, and do twenty push-ups.

Murdock gave the last two men through the obstacles a five-minute break, then he stood.

"Gentlemen, let's go for a little run."

They hit the hard sand and ran south for a mile at a seven-minute pace, then moved into the soft sand and did another mile. When they were two miles from the gate, Murdock turned them around.

"Too damn hot out here today," he said. He led the twin line of SEALs into the surf, running, splashing along at the seven-minutes-per-mile pace in sometimes wet sand, sometimes a foot of swirling ocean water, depending on when the waves broke.

Within two minutes the SEALs were soaked to the skin from head to toe.

Murdock watched the men as he ran backwards. Yes, they were doing it, holding up. The three new men had settled into their places now that they knew an assignment was coming up. His wounded troops were responding as well. In two weeks they would all be hard and fit, and ready to try something new like working with a civilian woman on a mission where the smallest misstep could mean death to yourself, and some of your fellow SEALS.

It was entirely new territory. No woman had ever participated in a SEAL covert operation before.

By 0900, Kat's right shoulder was sore from firing the submachine gun. She had lost count how many 30-round magazines she had burned up. She liked the three-round burst. Only twice had she fired it on full auto. In two bursts she emptied a full magazine.

"All right, Kat. You have a full mag. We're hiking along this trail. I'll be behind you. Without warning we start taking enemy fire from the left. I'll say 'Fire from the left!' When I shout that, you drop to your stomach, have the MP-5 up, and return fire into the dune. Use up the magazine with three-round bursts. Got it?"

Kat nodded.

They moved back to the start of the range and began walking across the face of the big dune. DeWitt waited until they were almost across the mouth of the range before he called out.

Kat dropped to her stomach, broke her fall with her elbows, aimed, and fired at the carved-out sand dune within three seconds. She fired all thirty rounds, ejected the empty magazine, slammed in a new one, and worked the slide to push a round into the firing chamber the way DeWitt had showed her.

"Cease fire," DeWitt said. He squatted beside her. "Yes, Kat. Good. I didn't even tell you to change magazines, but that's a basic. In any firefight you keep a loaded magazine in your weapon at all times. If you can change from a partly used one to a full one, do that. Never get caught with an empty magazine, or you and half the platoon could be dead."

"Got it," Kat said.

They did the firing on command six more times, three from each side so she learned how to twist her body to return fire to the right. Each time she did it quickly and the right way.

DeWitt sat down across from her and stretched out his legs. He watched her. She looked at him.

"What?"

"Nothing. It's break time. In your pack is a canteen. I filled it with Coke and ice cubes before we left the Grinder. Strongest thing we have on base."

A grin flashed across her face as she grabbed the canteen and drank. She smiled. "Oh, yes, I needed this. Like Navy grog of old."

"Kat, I know you have a Ph.D. in physics. Any minors like law?"

"How did you know? I went into prelaw for two years, then switched."

"How did I know? You have a sharp analytical mind, I'd guess. What I've seen this morning is that I don't have to tell you or explain anything to you twice. You listen, you see, you learn, you memorize I'd bet, and then you do. Traits of a good trial lawyer. I had prelaw and then a year of law school before I went to the Academy."

"Still happy with your choice?"

"Remarkably. I'm so Navy that it hurts sometimes."

She nodded. "I can see that, DeWitt."

They worked on the canteens of Coke.

"What's next?" Kat asked.

"Easy, we have all day. You seem determined."

"I didn't really want this job. They told me I was the best person to do it. Now that I'm into it, I'm determined not to get anybody killed, and to get in and out, and stay alive myself."

"That's exactly our plan. So, you ready to work with a pistol?"

"I'll be carrying one besides the MP-5?"

"Right, we all have at least two weapons. Some of the guys also have a hideout, a little twenty-two or a thirty-two."

He reached in his pack, and took out a pistol. DeWitt gave it to her. "This is an HK P7. It fires a nine-millimeter round and holds eight of them in the magazine in the handle. It doesn't have the hitting power that the forty-five you shot yesterday does. But neither does it have the weight or the recoil."

She held it, careful to keep the muzzle pointing downrange.

"One interesting feature on this weapon is that it has no safety. Most pistols have a safety. You can't just draw and fire like in the old westerns. You have to push off the safety, then fire.

"This pistol has a unique grip catch in the front edge of the butt. When your hand grips this, it engages the trigger with the cocking and firing mechanism. That all means that to fire the weapon you simply grip the handle and pull the trigger. If you drop it, the weapon's grip catch isn't engaged, so it can't go off accidentally."

DeWitt stood. "Give it a try. It's loaded."

She stood, aimed at the sand dune, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

"That's an automatic," DeWitt said. "First you need to pull the slide back like you probably did on the forty-five. You need to do this on any automatic just after loading an empty weapon with a fresh magazine."

"Right," she said. She pulled back the slide and let it snap forward, then lifted the weapon, gripped the handle, and squeezed the trigger. It fired. She nodded. Aimed again, and fired. Soon the 8-round magazine was empty and the slide stayed open.

DeWitt handed her a full magazine. "How do I get the empty one out?" she asked.

"The magazine catch is at the left side of the butt, behind the trigger. Push it and the magazine drops out. Slide in the new one."

"Then I pull the slide back to chamber a round. Got it."

"Now hold your fire while I set up some man-sized targets." He went to the face of the sand dune, pulled six targets from a closed wooden box, and leaned them against the back of the carved-out sand.

Back beside her, he motioned at the targets twenty yards away.

"This is a common target distance, twenty yards. That's sixty feet, three times as far as the Old West gunmen liked to be for a gunfight. Twenty feet was plenty for those old six-guns.

"We'll move up to ten yards and give you a try. No weapon is any good if you can't hit what you're aiming at. Anyone we start shooting at won't be afraid of the sound. It'll take hot lead to discourage him. We use the point-and-shoot technique with pistols and handguns. It works.

"Just push out your finger and point at something. You'll do the same thing with the HK in your hand. When you are pointing at your target, pull the trigger. Give it a try on the first target. Hold the pistol at your side. Then lift your hand almost shoulder high and point at the target. When you're on target, squeeze the trigger."

Kat did. The first two shots hit the first target. Then she missed three, and the last three she hit.

"Yes," DeWitt said.

They fired forty rounds through the P-7 then tested two other handguns, both with 14-round magazines. Kat liked the HK P-7, without a safety to worry about.

They packed up, finished the canteens of rapidly warming Coke, and cleaned up the brass from the rounds they had fired. Then they headed back down the beach.

"Packs are a lot lighter this time," Kat said.

They ran back the three miles to the Grinder and dropped into chairs in Murdock's office.

"Boots," DeWitt said. "How do they feel?"

"Blisters," Kat said. "They're half a size too big. I need eight-and-a-halfs instead of nines."

"I'm on it," Jaybird Sterling said. "I'll pick up a pair this afternoon."

"How's the shooting eye?" Murdock asked.

Kat shrugged and pointed to DeWitt.

"Good. Point and shoot with the pistol was right on. Kat likes the HK P-7. We'll keep at it. The MP-5 is coming along. Didn't do much on accuracy. Down the road. What about longer guns? We still have that friendly rancher up by Boulevard?"

"Last time I knew," Murdock said.

"Think Kat and I'll slip up there in the morning for some work on the long guns. Kat, we want you to be able to fire any weapon we carry in an emergency. Not that you have to qualify, but you should be familiar enough to pick up one and use it if you lose yours or you run out of rounds."

"Sounds reasonable. What's next?"

DeWitt looked at Murdock.

"A run?"

"We did six miles already," DeWitt said. "What about the obstacle course? I'd like to try it."

"Not on your agenda," DeWitt said.

"You don't think I can do it," Kat said.

Murdock grinned. "Might be a good welcome to the SEALS," he said. "Yes, Kat, I'll lead you on a tour of the obstacle course. Any one of the stops you don't want to try will be fine."

"I'll do the whole course. Let's go."