"Home Base, Buzzer Twelve. How wide is the penetration of the NKs on the east side of the line?"
"Five to ten miles on most of it."
"Okay, then those must be friendlies down there. I'll get further north. Thanks."
CAG held on. It would take another two hours to shepherd the last section of the flight to targets and back home. His job. He'd do it. Yeah. Then tomorrow the Tomcats would head out. Sleep? Maybe sometime next week. He reached for the caffeine pills. Two more wouldn't hurt. His eyes went wide as he gulped them down with a shot of cold coffee. He held up the cup, and somebody took it and refilled it. The techs just came on fresh at midnight. Bright and eager and so damn young. But they were good at their work.
The speaker broke into his thoughts, and he hit the handset and went back to work. Gunner's Mate First Class Miguel Fernandez ran to his sleeping compartment and rushed inside. It was for six men, and the other five bunks were full. At least Douglas was in another compartment. He stripped to his underwear and slid into the bunk.
For a moment his teeth chattered. They did that when he was so angry he couldn't control himself. That damn Douglas. The asshole could get them both kicked out of SEALs.
He hadn't worked all the way through BUD/S and been ground down until he wanted to scream and ring the bell at least fifty times, just to be slammed out of the SEALs because of some stupid shithead like Douglas. Couldn't the JG see what was going on?
No, he couldn't. He didn't know.
Fernandez loved the SEALs. He'd tried four times to get in, and had finally made it. No way he was going to fuck up and get booted. No way.
That first week at BUD/S had been so shocking and traumatic that six men rang the bell and quit. The next week ten more decided the price was too much to pay.
The shock of BUD/S was overwhelming. First there were the extensive physical tests that had to be passed just to get in the fro nt door. He had shuddered when he looked at the list, but he had worked hard and passed. He'd had to swim five hundred yards breaststroke or sidestroke in twelve and a half minutes. Then rest ten minutes and do forty-two push-ups in two minutes.
After a two-minute rest he'd had to do fifty sit-ups in two minutes. Two minutes more of rest, then do eight continuous pull-ups without a time limit. Next came a ten-minute rest before he went on a 1.5-mile run wearing combat boots and trousers. He'd had to make it in eleven and a half minutes.
He had trained for six months before he attempted the physical tests, and just barely passed them. Then he went through six weeks of physical training and orientation to the Naval Special Warfare way of life before the real SEAL training began.
That was the beginning point. The BUD/S six-month course was carefully designed to test the physical and mental capacity of the candidates. They ran everywhere they went in the loose sand around the Coronado, California, base.
The First Phase of BUD/S training was mainly conditioning, with more soft-sand runs, full-out sprints, swimming, a little trick called drownpoofing, calisthenics, and martial arts. Always there was the mental hazing, taunting the candidates to quit and ring the bell. Forcing them to complete harder and harder physical workouts.
SEAL training concentrated on mental stress and water. If the men couldn't take the hazing, the physical exertion, being in classes and swims and runs for twelve hours a day, then they would never last six months to become SEALs.
Water was the clincher. Early in the training the SEAL candidates were put in a ten-foot-deep pool. It was done to be sure that the men were comfortable in and under the water and didn't panic.
Fernandez remembered this torture especially. He'd never been a strong swimmer. Now he had to be. The men had their hands tied behind their backs and their ankles bound together. Then they had to sink to the bottom of the pool and come back up. This was done repeatedly; then they had to do somersaults in the water and retrieve a diving mask off the bottom with their teeth. This was all done while tied hand and foot. About ten percent of the candidates for SEALs never get past this waterproofing.
Hell Week, all the training including going in and out of the Pacific Ocean's breakers in the small inflatable boats, had been one long and continuous strain for Fernandez. Early on he'd been yelled at by all the instructors, called spic and greaser and wetback. He had learned to let it all roll off his back and grin.
The tough training, and the working closely together, had bred SEALs out of mere sailors. They had learned to support each other, to rely on each other, to trust their lives to the hands of the men working with them. Working as a team became second nature.
Now, after all of his hard work in getting through BUD/S and his two years in SEALs, he wasn't going to be rooted out of the team by some snot-nosed, shit-faced Douglas prick. Before Fernandez went to sleep he made up his mind about one thing. He would never react to any of Douglas's remarks or looks. He'd ignore the jackass. He'd stay a SEAL no matter what happened to Dirty Dog Douglas. That decided, he slept.
10
Murdock came awake groggy and unrested. He checked his watch. Past 1020. His feet hit the deck and he groaned. When was he going to learn how to wake up bright and alert? He could do it on patrol or a mission where it counted. Without a mission it was groggy time.
Murdock made it to the officers' mess in time to eat, and sat there a target of opportunity when Don Stroh walked in.
"How goes the war?" Murdock asked as Stroh sat down with his usual two cups of coffee.
"Can't tell yet. The Eighth Army is glad the Monroe's fifty-eight planes are set up to make ground attacks. Been a big lift for the Air Force guys." He paused. "Didn't catch you when you got in last night. How did it go?"
"Wet. We got in, did the job, and got out without anyone wounded. That's good news for us."
"Great. I guess by this time you've figured out that you SEALs are firemen on this mission. Bound to be a lot of small fires to put out on a dumb-assed war like this one. Fact is, it isn't even a war. The President and the Congress haven't said it is. What we're doing is responding to an attack on a treaty ally, and supporting this ally with all of our capability." He frowned. "Well, not with all of our capability. No nukes are going on this one."
"Good. Now what is that little twitch under your right eye all about? Usually it means something is afoot."
"Afoot? You're kidding. I haven't heard that word since I was in the seventh grade in Connecticut. Mrs. Ambrose always used it. We got tired of hearing it."
"So, Stroh, what?"
"Hate to tell you. I told Eighth Army it was an Army job for a team of sappers. Some bird colonel said they had tried three times. It's a bridge across a river. No way around this river for ten miles each way."
"The NKs have tanks on the far side and they own the bridge and want to bring the tanks over when they get their resupply, right?"
"Yeah, you hear something?"
"Just the wheels grinding around in your head. Stroh. Why can't the Army blow up a bridge?"
"High ground. The NKs have the high ground on the north side. It's two hundred feet above the south side of the river. They just blow away any try our guys make for the bridge. They control a quarter of a mile with their machine guns and some fancy quad-fifties they have."
"I thought the Air Force had smart bombs."
"Oh, yeah, they do. The Navy has laser-aimed bombs too, but somehow they won't do the job right. The Army doesn't want to blow the bridge into kindling. Just disable it so the NKs can't get across it."