CHAPTER FIVE
Ashley awoke with a start. Someone was pounding on her door, shouting, “Team Leader DeWitt!”
Was it really morning already? But it was still pitch dark.
She grabbed for her phone in the darkness, to use the light from the screen to get her bearings, first to figure out where she was—SEAL World—and then to realize that whoever was pounding wasn’t hammering on the flimsy door but rather the side of the RV.
Also…? It was barely midnight.
She found the switch that turned on the interior LEDs, and pushed her hair back from her face as she unlocked the door and opened it a crack.
The young SEAL named Rio Rosetti was standing out there. “Good morning, ma’am,” he said in his almost-ridiculously stereotypical New Yawk accent.
Ash stared at him stupidly. The best her brain could come up with was, “Are you delivering my team leader packet?”
He’d been all smiles and even a bit flirty when they’d first met, but now he was all curt business. “No, ma’am. Hat, and boots if you got ’em, long pants, long sleeves, leave all technology behind. Team leaders’re meeting down by the mess in five, but you’ve already wasted two sleeping through my noise, so you got three. Tick tock. Ma’am.”
She closed the door and took several of her precious minutes to use the bathroom, then dressed quickly, slipping into jeans and pulling a lightweight button down shirt on over the T-shirt she’d worn to bed. She didn’t have boots—she’d brought a second pair of running shoes instead, and she jammed her bare feet into them. Her Red Sox cap was hanging directly in front of the AC vent—she’d sweated through it yesterday, and had rinsed it out right before bed.
She reached for it as Rio again started pounding on the RV, but it was still soaking wet.
“Time to go!”
There were SEAL World hats—boonie style—in the Gedunk. She’d been meaning to get one anyway. She could pick one up there, so she left her cap hanging, turned off the lights, and went out of the RV, checking that the door locked securely behind her.
Now Rio was clapping his hands at her, rather like she was a misbehaving puppy, so she headed toward the mess hall at a run.
Only to find the passenger van idling, headlights sending beams of brightness into the steamy humidity of the night. In the distance, thunder rumbled.
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” Lieutenant Slade was standing by the van’s door, and he opened it and motioned for her to get inside.
“Wait,” she said, stopping short. “What?” She pointed ineffectively toward the mess hall as the lieutenant herded her up and into the van.
Ashley wasn’t quite sure how he did it without touching her, but before she could say hat, she was inside and sitting, and he’d pulled himself up and in, too, closing the door behind him to take the seat beside her.
She’d only had a few brief moments to look around before the interior light went off with the closing of the door, but it had been long enough to get a full dose of smug impatience from the three other team leaders, who’d been waiting for her.
It seemed unlikely that they’d all woken up and gotten down here to the van in less than five minutes, and she realized that Rio had probably intentionally pounded on her RV last.
Probably on Dunk or even Lieutenant Slade’s orders.
But she had other things to worry about right now—like, where were they going?
All of the SEAL instructors were in the van, too. Including the medic—what was it called in Navy-Speak…? The hospital corpsman, Thomas King.
Dunk was behind the wheel, and as Rio climbed into the front passenger seat the vehicle moved out of the parking area and onto the long drive that led from the camp to the road.
The van lurched as they hit a pothole, and Ashley found herself pressed up against Lieutenant Slade’s shoulder. He looked down at her, his face even more craggy in the shadows, his eyes a flash of blue. She murmured, “Sorry,” and tried to steady herself by holding on to the seat back in front of her.
“For those of us, like, me, who are new here,” Slade then said loudly, as if he were addressing everyone in the van, “we’re heading out on the traditional night hike. Team leaders are paired up with team instructors, but it’s the TL’s job to lead the march back to camp. Dunk’s gonna drop us about five miles out—”
“Five miles?” Ashley murmured before she could stop herself.
But Lieutenant Slade spoke over her. “Like everything from this point on at SEAL World, it’s a race. First team in gets a head start on every activity over the next two days, which allows that team to continue to come in first and gain advantages for the entire week,” he continued. “Last team in gets literal shit—black tank evac duty for the RVs and trailers. For those of you who are RV-unfamiliar, the black tank is the one in your trailer that your toilet flushes into. And trust me, emptying black tanks is not fun.”
Dunk spoke up. “We’ll be dropping you with your instructor in the order in which you arrived in the van.”
Ashley laughed. Of course. She and Jim Slade would be dropped last.
“It’s likely that some of you will get very lost,” Dunk continued, “since we’re giving you neither a map nor a compass and it’s dark out there. If after three hours, you haven’t made it back to camp, we’ll find you via a GPS tracker that you’ll be given when you leave the van. Winners and losers will be determined by their distance from the camp. Farther from camp, the bigger the loser, so… good luck.”
Ashley looked at Lieutenant Slade who was watching her again. “Do instructors help with the black-tank-emptying thing…?” she whispered.
He laughed and shook his head. “Not a chance.”
* * *
“Put on your hat,” Jim ordered as he handed Ashley some bug repellent wipes as the van’s taillights faded into the night.
“Um,” she said.
He held his flashlight overhead so that it lit both of their faces. And yes, the resigned look she was giving him was heavily tinged with No, I didn’t bring my hat.
“Seriously?” he said. It was going to rain—at night, in this part of Florida, that was inevitable. And that was going to suck even worse for anyone without a hat brim to shield their face.
“My lack of hat isn’t our biggest problem,” she told him as she used the light to read the directions on the packet before tearing one open and rubbing the wipe down the sleeves of her shirt and the legs of her jeans. “It’s the five miles—more than that, if we go in the wrong direction.”
“I don’t know why you think that’s a problem,” Jim answered. “You can walk ten miles, easily, if you have to.”
“I can run ten miles,” she responded with a tartness that was refreshing. “In fact, I call that Tuesday evening after work. It’s not me I’m worried about—it’s you.”
Jim was surprised. “Me?”
“Yes, Mr. Braces-on-Both-Knees,” Ashley said. “I’m worried about you.”
“Well, don’t be,” Jim said brusquely. “Five miles is nothing.”
“More if we go the wrong way,” she reminded him.
“Then don’t go the wrong way,” he countered.
“No map,” she reminded him. “No compass.” She looked up at the sky, which tended to be hazy in the humid tropics, even at the best of times. Now, however, thunder rumbled ominously in the distance. “No stars to follow, assuming I could even find the north star with all these trees. Assuming I also knew if we were north—or south or whatever—of the camp.”
The narrow sand-and-gravel road they were standing on was surrounded by a mix of pines, palms, and banyan trees, the latter with their vast collection of trunks that started out as curling vines snaking down from broadly-spread branches to take root in the earth below.
This would’ve been a relatively pleasant place to hike—in the daylight. Assuming the overpowering smell of dead-fish-hiding-somewhere-in-a-damp-locker-room faded in the sunshine.
Ashley turned to look down the road in the direction they’d approached while still in the van. “If we follow the road back that way, we’ll eventually get to the camp,” she said, obviously thinking out loud. “Except we made so many turns and stops and… I’m pretty sure we went in a big circle. And the van left going that way.” She pointed down the road where the van had vanished. “So there must be something down there…”
Jim waited as she looked back down the road in the other direction, clearly undecided.
“Do you have another flashlight?” she finally asked, turning to focus her gaze on him.
“No, they only gave me this one.” Hint, hint. Gave me. Jim knew Ashley had a very big brain. She just had to wake up enough to use it.
“Okay,” she said with a sigh, “you better keep it then. But turn it off for a sec, so my eyes can get used to the dark.”
Jim had to wonder about that you better keep it—what was she thinking…? Still, he obliged and they were plunged into the kind of moonless darkness that was suffocating in its absoluteness. It descended around him, heavy and wet against the bare skin of his face and hands.
Ashley must’ve been having the same reaction. “Shhhhhit,” she breathed, the word barely voiced.
“Let your eyes get used to it.” His own voice was a rumble in his chest as his other senses kicked in more fully. There was a raucous battle going on between tree frogs and locusts, and Team Locust was winning.
He could hear the sound of Ashley breathing, too. Her inhales were too shallow—she was breathing too fast.
“Easy,” he murmured.
“Nothing about any of this is easy,” she muttered.
“Rumor has it that Bull Edison wept and wet himself before his team leader night-hike was over,” Jim told her.
She laughed. “Telling me that is inappropriate. And mean.”
“Or I’m creating a false narrative to bolster your self-confidence.”
This time her laughter was a short burst of air but no less musical. “You mean you’re lying to keep me from weeping and wetting myself.”
“I’m convinced that weeping and wetting yourself is something that you would never do. Ever,” he emphasized as his own eyes adjusted and she turned into a dark shape standing on the road beside him.
But she sighed heavily again. “This isn’t going to work,” Ashley said.
“What isn’t?”
“I thought I could run ahead—leave you here with the flashlight. I thought if I could move fast, I could see where this road leads—if it’s an obvious route back to the camp—and then run back to let you know if I’m right. But there’s no way I can run without a light. This darkness is dizzying.”
“So take the flashlight,” he suggested.
“I’m not leaving you alone in the dark.”
“Navy SEAL,” he pointed out.
“I don’t care,” she said.
“Really, Ashley, I’ve been left alone in the dark a lot.”
“Well, I’m not gonna do that to you. Not tonight.” She was absolute, which was interesting. Apparently she was capable of standing her ground—when someone else’s comfort and safety were at risk.
He heard more than saw her shift, but was still surprised when her fingers lightly bumped his shoulder.
“Sorry,” she quickly said.
Jesus. If someone followed this woman around and recorded everything she ever said, the word-cloud created would feature Sorry smack in the middle, in a size four hundred font.
She cleared her throat. “May I have… Are you allowed to let me have the flashlight? You did say I could take it…?”
“Here. Yes.” Jim caught her reaching hand and pressed her fingers around the thing, making sure she had it firmly in her grasp before he let it and her go. Funny, her fingers were cool despite the night’s heat. Cool but not as fairy-princess soft as he’d imagined. She clearly used her hands to do hard work. Huh.
“Thanks,” she said. “Watch your eyes, Lieutenant, I’m turning it on.”
The fact that she’d thought to give him a heads-up was interesting, too. Dunk had given Jim and the other the instructors a variety of warnings about working with civilians, and the most dire involved the use of NVGs—night vision goggles. Be ready, the former senior chief had said, for some numbnuts to flip on the headlights and completely blind you.
Apparently, Ashley DeWitt didn’t fall into the typical SEAL World numbnuts subset.
And yet again, she was surprising Jim as he watched her through squinted eyes. He’d expected her to lead the way down the road in the direction that the van had driven off—at a walking pace so that he and his freaking knee braces could keep up. Instead she used the beam of the light to explore the area at the side of the road. She even shone the light up into the branches of a big banyan tree.
He laughed, and she glanced over at him so he said, “I have no idea what you’re looking for.”
“It’s going to rain,” she informed him as—right on cue—thunder rumbled. And yes, it was louder—the storm was closer—this time. “I was hoping this tree would provide at least a little shelter.”
“Shelter…?” Jim echoed.
She used the light to examine a rather impressive lump of a bench-sized tree root before somewhat gingerly sitting down on it.
“What…?” Jim laughed. “Wait…”
“Exactly,” she said, looking up at him. “That’s my plan. We wait.”
He found himself pointing down the road. “You don’t want to…?”
“Potentially put more miles between us and the camp?” she finished his question for him. “Nope.”
Now he was surprised for a different reason. “Wow, I didn’t peg you as a quitter.”
“I didn’t say quit,” Ashley said. “I said wait. We know we’re five miles from the camp, and we also know the GPS will go off in three hours. I’m banking on the fact that at least one of the other team leaders will go crashing off in the wrong direction and put himself more than five miles from the camp, which means that his team—not mine—will win the black-tank loser’s prize.”
“Sitting still means you definitely won’t win the, you know, winner’s prize,” Jim pointed out.
“Please sit down,” she told him. “I’m turning off the flashlight, both to conserve batteries and to keep mosquitos from being drawn to us.”
As he sat, she plunged them back into darkness as she continued, “I feel pretty confident that the winner’s prize is not within our reach. Realistically. I mean, come on. But not-losing—not coming in dead last—that we can do. With a little luck. Especially when that also means you don’t have to walk any miles tonight.”
“You need to stop worrying about me. I’ll be fine.”
He heard her turn toward him, even though he was surely as much of a dark faceless shape to her as she was to him. She asked, “You really expect me to believe that your knees won’t hurt after five miles—”
“My fucking knees hurt,” Jim snapped, “every fucking minute of my fucking life, regardless of whether I’m sitting still or walking.”
And… scene.
Except there was no curtain, and the frogs and locusts were still screaming their relentless chorus with that basso profundo thunder descant coming more often now. Could a descant be basso profundo, or did it always have to be a soprano line? Jim honestly didn’t know and he filed it under Things he’d Google later, when he was back in his RV icing his knees.
Meanwhile, Ashley’s silent response to his bratty baby-man outburst continued to rack up time on this conversation’s scoreboard.
When she finally spoke, it was to say, “I’m so sorry.”
“Oh, Jesus!” Her use of her favorite word pissed him off all over again. “You don’t have to be sorry for my freaking knees! What you should be sorry for is your bullshit acceptance of some deluded belief that just because you’re a girl you can’t win this thing!”
She countered his loud-and-angry with a voice that was super calm and in control. “I’m a woman, not a girl.”
“Yeah, no, sorry,” he said. “How did you say it?” He spoke in an obnoxiously bad imitation of a high-pitched little girl’s voice, complete with an Elmer Fudd-like speech impediment. “A wittle girl like me will never win a game against all those big stwong boys. Wealistically. I’m just too weak and dumb. I mean, come on.” Back to his real voice. “What the hell was that…? You know what you don’t have? You don’t have upper body strength. Big deal. You have a giant brain and legs that can run forever—”
“And a companion who just admitted he’s in constant pain—which I already knew. I could tell just from looking at your face,” she said, but her voice was still calm, contained. “That was me, doing what I thought a team leader was supposed to do—be aware of my teammate’s limitations. Because I also know that you’re lying, and your knees will hurt worse after walking five miles. I said we couldn’t win this thing, but if I were alone, trust me, I would already be running.”
“Then run,” he said. “I’ll keep up.”
“No,” she said. “But I will let you sit here in the dark. Flashlight’s going on,” she warned as she stood up. “Move into the road. I’m going to run out about a mile, and then I’ll come back. It’ll take me about fifteen minutes.”
Jim stood, too. “Yeah, I can’t let you do that. There’s really only one unbreakable rule for this particular exercise. Separation of team leader and instructor is that one giant no-can-do.”
Ashley stared at him in disbelief.
He shrugged and hit her with her favorite word. “Sorry.”
It was then, with diabolical timing, that thunder clapped almost directly overhead, and the skies opened up in a deluge.