“Get up! Now!” our drill instructor yells through the barracks. “It’s my favorite week! And what’s my favorite week called?” His assistants are throwing us out of bed. Just fast enough, I pull on my pants and step into my boots.

“Sir, Hell Week, sir!” we all shout at the same time.

“Exactly!” he shouts back, laughing diabolically. “For the next five days, your asses are mine!”

They chase us outside, to the courtyard, where we gather in formation. The DI paces back and forth in front of us. “You all think you’re hard-asses, but I give you twelve hours before the first of you gives up. All you need to do is ring the bell to put yourself out of your misery. Two thirds or more of you will not get through Hell Week. There’s no point fighting it. The next five days are going to break you. Do us a favor, little girls, and don’t waste our time.” He turns to march in the opposite direction. “We always love to see first-day quitters. Any takers?”

Nobody moves. The DI comes over to Killian. “What about you, pretty boy? Want to ring the bell and go back to your mommy?”

“Sir, no, sir!” Killian screams.

The DI gives him a condescending look, as if he’s thinking, We’ll just see which of us is more stubborn.

After he walks us over to the beach, we have to carry dinghies up above our heads, lift tree trunks the size of telephone poles, and do push-ups in the sand. Day and night. In five and a half days, we’re only allowed four and a half hours of sleep. The only thing we get plenty of—which is a real improvement over boot camp—is food. To beat the cold, we need to chow down. And if a guy doesn’t, they force him to.

It’s for these same reasons that I haven’t been trying to build more muscle recently. Muscle drags you down like lead. I have put on some fat, which insulates you against the cold and gives you a better chance of survival. Besides, I can still get my six-pack back after BUD/S.

In our first night alone, we lie in the cold water, the surf torturing us. We swim in the ocean for hours, hypothermia our biggest enemy. More push-ups, more dinghies, more crawling through the mud, more rolling around in the sand.

This is about testing us to see how much we can take, how we deal with excessive physical training, how tolerant we are to pain and cold. Up to 80 percent of us are going to give up. Only those who really want this will get through Hell Week.

We are constantly in motion, running, doing push-ups, swimming, paddling… We never get a quiet minute, and we learn that we can only survive as a team. How could you lift a tree trunk the size of a telephone pole alone? We are a team, and we have to get through this together.

And then we have to stand still. Our hands, faces, and uniforms caked with mud, we stand up to our hips in water, the cold wind driving tears into our eyes.

The salt water burns inside all my scratches and wounds, and I shiver, freezing. I’ve never been so cold in my life. I don’t think I’ll ever be warm again.

“Texas?” I say quietly.

“Yes?”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

I hear some murmuring, but most of us are quiet. Saving our strength to make it through Hell Week.

We hear the command to grab some food and sprint out of the water, shoving our way through the crowd, trying to be the first inside the mess hall. Totally spent, I’m almost falling asleep as I start shovelling peas and mashed potatoes into my mouth.

“That’s it, children. Back outside! Move!”

One last bite and we’re running outside again, getting into formation in the courtyard with the giant bell.

“Nobody giving up yet?” the DI asks, sounding gravely disappointed. “You want more? I got more!”

So we do it all again. We run through the sand with the dinghy, without the dinghy, with the tree trunk, without the tree trunk. We paddle the dinghy through the surf and out into the water. After twenty-four hours, we’re so exhausted we could sleep for a week. Rivers nearly falls into the water with fatigue, and I have to grab him and hold him inside the boat.

Then they put us back in the water for hours on end. In the cold, we tread water, trembling. When we’re allowed to come out again, they make us do more push-ups, torture us in the surf, and make us crawl through the mud some more…

And then the bell sounds for the first time.

Shock runs through me. What does that mean? When I look up, I see our first comrade admitting defeat. But it seems more like a victory for him, because he’s walked back to the beach and handed donuts and coffee, while we’re still suffering out here.

The DI walks through the rows of our formation with a megaphone, trying to convince us to quit, parading donuts in front of us, showing us how great it would be to step out right now. I grit my teeth. I don’t want to give up. I cannot give up. I want Mac to be proud of me. I want to be the man she deserves.

When our second night begins, I have never been so tired, so exhausted, in my entire life. That is the only thought drifting through my body. It feels like all my brain cells have died off. This is the worst thing I’ve ever experienced. Every fiber of my body is screaming. It is complete and utter madness to force so much pain and suffering upon yourself. Voluntarily.

The DI’s voice is soft as he offers us a way out of our pain. It sounds so tempting. So incredibly sensible. Just ring the bell, and it’ll all be over. One thought keeps me from doing it. Mac. I cannot give up, because it would not bring me one step closer to Mac. I have no idea whether this madness is going to impress her, but I have to try.

And, finally, it’s time for food again. Food! God, food! I have never heard a word so beautiful! We sprint inside the mess hall, though we were faster forty-eight hours ago. I put the fork to my mouth, and feel mashed potatoes on my tongue before I lose consciousness.

Killian nudges me. “Wake up!”

He drags me up and outside to the courtyard, where they make us do push-ups again. Back to the beach, back into the ocean, back into the freezing cold. But they ring the bell more and more often now, and every time, my mouth waters when I smell the coffee served to the quitters.

At the beach, somebody is having a party. There’s a campfire, laughter. The smell of charcoal and barbecued meat wafts over to us. God, what I wouldn’t give to be there with them instead of standing here. It’s right there a ways down the beach—I could just ring the bell and leave. It is my own decision. Nobody can force me to stay.

Now and then, the medics take a look at us, so nobody suffers any serious damage.

Again and again, the bell rings, and the sound is so sweet! It symbolizes the end of the pain, a hot shower, food, sleep… Every time I hear the bell, I want to give up, want to join my companions. I mean, it’s okay not to make it through this. Hardly anybody makes it. But every time I want to give up, I see two shiny brown eyes in front of me, soft, brown hair, and long, sexy legs in a beautiful little summer dress.

I don’t want to do anything but sleep—a sweet, blissful nothing—and maybe dream of her. And then have a steak. God, steak!

“Into the water!” the command comes.

I let myself drop into the water over the edge of the dinghy. We swim back to shore, lie in the surf, and crawling through the sand.

“I can’t do this anymore,” I hear somebody say next to me and look to see who it is.

Donovan is getting up. Even though my hand is so tired, even though every single one of my muscles is aching, every tendon is screaming, I grab his arm and drag him back into the sand. “Does a sailor give up when there’s a Marine still left in the race?” I ask him quietly.

He snarls and starts crawling through the sand again.

At long last, the call comes:

“Hell Week is secured!”

The liberating words! Five and a half days are over. My gaze seeks Killian’s, and I see the same pride there that I’m feeling. Hell, yeah! We have made it through Hell Week!

All I want to do is sleep. I don’t even want to take a shower first, even though I have mud stuck in every bodily opening and other places where it certainly does not belong. Sand is rubbing against the skin inside my ass crack, and I’m going to be so sore I might as well try anal. Which couldn’t possibly be worse than this. But none of that matters right now. All I want is sleep.

* * *

Hell Week has been hell. There’s no other way to put it. But it has also been an experience we’re going to benefit from for the rest of our lives. Seventy-five percent of our group gave up. The rest of us developed a really solid bond. Fuck, we survived Hell Week! I don’t think anybody’s ever been as proud as we are. The boys who got through it with us feel like brothers. It’s a new kind of camaraderie because we know now that we can’t survive without our team. I helped Rivers and Donovan, and Killian helped me. We only made it through this because our teammates didn’t let us give up.

Killian is named Honor Man because with his discipline and team spirit, he’s actually helped a lot of us. He was a shining example in the darkness of Hell.

However, my assumption that Phase Two would be easier is irrefutably wrong.

Okay, maybe we don’t have to crawl through the sand anymore, but we’re definitely still as soaked as we were during Phase One. Phase Two is basically seven weeks of combatant diving. I’m glad I’ve always been like a fish in the water—and glad for the head start we got in our earlier training. I don’t know whether I would have survived this otherwise. One thing is clear: The Navy is no less crazy than the Marines.

No wonder the SEALs say their program is the toughest in the world. It doesn’t just challenge you physically, but mentally, too. When you’re out on special missions, you need to be able to rely on your comrades one hundred percent. If there is even one unstable person in there, you risk everybody else’s lives.

Somehow, we manage to get through it together, and as we stand, facing the last seven weeks dedicated to land warfare, I realize that I’ve grown. Not physically, but as a human being. I’ve grown stronger than I was before. And I’ve learned that I can surpass even my former self. That I can rely on myself and my skills when the worst comes to the worst.