"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.