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  Now, on day thirty, she wasn’t sure it was possible, because Kyle was just that damn good. But it was the last day and she’d give it her all.

  Yeah. Good goal for the day. Reeves, your tight soldier ass is mine! She wondered if there was a department of the Army where she should file her claim—they had a department for everything else under the sun. The name would be something obscure that you’d never associate with what it was: Department of Acquisition of Rear Echelons.

  DARE, girl! Dare to be great and kick his ass.

  Sergeant Major Maxwell, the head instructor of the Delta training cadre, called them to order. He had always made the rules of what was expected absolutely clear, if you only listened and didn’t try to interpret. There wasn’t any deeper level. They told you what they wanted you to know—no more and no less.

  “Final day,” he announced once they’d formed up in a ragged line. Delta wasn’t big on formality, and there weren’t enough of them left to call for forming in ranks. “Time for the Forty-Miler.”

  It deserved capital letters. There’d been rumors of it, even on the outside. It was the only thing in Delta that wasn’t done in metric. Almost everything else in the U.S. military had converted over to aid interoperability and joint-operations communication with other national forces. Even Liberia and Burma were flipping, which left U.S. civilians as the only ones still using English units.

  But the “Forty-Miler” was tradition even as Carla’s brain automatically converted it to sixty-five kilometers. Sixty-five klicks with a full ruck. Definitely time to pony up, girl. This wasn’t going to be any cakewalk along some fire road like the early days of Delta Selection. She was going to be chasing Kyle’s ass over rough territory.

  “Twenty kilos, forty miles, folks,” in yet another of the brilliantly screwed-up double-unit standards that thrived in so many corners of the U.S. military. “You have your map and compass. No roads or trails except when approaching or departing an RV.”

  The training cadre always set up rendezvous points where they could drive in a truck to haul away those who voluntarily quit.

  “As usual, there is an unspecified time limit to this exercise, so you don’t want to be strolling. I will mention that the terrain is no more pleasant than usual.”

  They’d spent the last twenty days crisscrossing the Uwharrie National Forest, which nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains thirty klicks northwest of Fort Bragg. She now knew it would be brutal without being told. If there was a single piece of non-ugly terrain in the entire forest, they hadn’t found it. The twenty days of Stress Phase that they’d spent here had intimately introduced them to the very worst elements of these rugged hills.

  His wry comment earned a weak laugh and several groans from the group. A selection-process hike meant swamps and mountains and brambles and… Didn’t matter. One day. She could do one more day.

  Night.

  It was zero-dark-zero now, which meant the first six hours of the hike would be in darkness. No way to scout the route visually; this would start as a pure map-and-compass job from the start..

  Kyle shot her a cocky salute.

  She gave him the finger and a grin. He absolutely knew that she’d be coming after him this time.

  He wasn’t a big man, just an inch over her own five-eight; no soldier still remaining was big. Delta didn’t select for towering and broad-chested—though Kyle had the broad-chested part down cold. They selected for tough and more tenacious than a Tasmanian devil.

  That was the part she had down cold.

  Over the last month, there had been a lot of reactions to her. After feeding that guy the outhouse, the physical crap (pun intended) had stopped.

  She never thought she’d be thankful for those last two years of high school spent working nights and weekends as a bouncer in her cousin’s strip club—a job she’d initially gotten because of how much time her father spent there. She’d learned most of her early manhandling skills fending off Dad’s “pals” and dragging his drunk ass home. It had paid off innumerable times in the military. Who knew.

  The more typical reactions to her only continued through the first week. They were split between those trying to harass her and those trying to curry some sort of favor. The first group, she was pleased to see, went away because they didn’t survive that heavy first cut at the end of week one.

  The guys who were trying to curry favor through unexpected niceties learned: first, that it made no impression on her, and second, they were soon too tired and sore to think about anything other than themselves.

  In regular Army, the guys were always offering to press her uniforms, teaching her how to use a heat gun to expand her boot’s leather to take the polish better, or hiding chocolates and mash notes in her bunk. Scanty lace undergarments were also a common gift. The next time she saw them, she would thank them, return the note or the underwear—though she ate the chocolate—then walk away. Didn’t matter if it was in front of the guy’s buddies, a drill sergeant, or a bird colonel. Confused the shit out of most of them and made it stop pretty quickly.

  Sergeant Kyle Reeves had done none of that. He’d simply been steady. She felt the heat every time his eyes lingered, but otherwise he treated her no differently than any other candidate. Perhaps friendlier, but he was one of those naturally friendly guys who seemed to know everyone’s life story within minutes of meeting them. Not something she’d ever been good at, not even close.

  “Also per usual,” the Sergeant Major continued, “you may not speak to or assist another candidate unless they are critically injured and unable to help themselves.”

  That was the rule that had weeded out over twenty candidates in the second week. They didn’t know how to be self-reliant, how to function outside the structure of a military team.

  Delta Lesson Number Kajillion Four: You gotta be able to do it alone against all odds.

  “Remember, create a small fire in an open area if you’re hopelessly lost and voluntarily withdrawing. Do not use your radio unless it is a matter of imminent death and we need to get a medevac extract team to you. You’re good to go.”

  Delta Lesson Number Kajillion Four and a Half: You gotta do it exactly by their rules. You just wanna quit and you use the radio, then no nice-nice letter when they kicked your ass back down to the regular units.

  That was the problem with Delta rules. The trainers were Delta themselves. They never got upset and they never explained. They tell you to go for a brutal hike, you go. They tell you to go sit under a tree with your ruck, you go and sit under a tree with your ruck. They tell you to go take yet another psychological questionnaire, you take it—and they did that a lot. Weirdly, it wasn’t about blind obedience, though that’s how Carla had taken it at first. Instead, it was about doing what was needed without hesitation—right now.

  Only once in the last month did the day’s orders have anything to do with hygiene—a daily harangue in regular Army. They’d had a half day off, just one, after the shooting assessment. They’d been advised to clean up before going into town. That was it. She’d gotten a pizza and a soda and then spent the rest of her half day asleep, knowing they were far from done. Three guys had dropped because the next day’s march hadn’t mixed well with a crashing hangover. Good, she didn’t want any grunts with the play-hard, fight-hard mind-set beside her during trouble anyway.

  “Have a good ’un.” Sergeant Major Maxwell offered the standard Delta end-of-instructions. They each said it with an easy Southern accent, whether they were Yankee, Texan, or inner-city LA. She’d asked one of the training cadre about that after he’d cleared her to continue through an RV in the middle stage of a brutal hike that crisscrossed a mountain six different ways in a star pattern like a bad Jewish joke. Seems the saying traced back to the sergeant major who’d helped form the unit.

  “Have a good ’un.”

  And with just that much cerem
ony, they were ready. They were released at three-minute intervals. They had five RV points to hit on the hike, but how they got there was up to them. Shortest possible route was forty miles. Longest route? Depended on how lost you got.

  Kyle’s number was called first out. Figured.

  “Kiss ass,” she called out to him as he hauled on his ruck and headed out.

  “Whatever works…girlie.” Then he was gone before she could nail his cute ass to the trail.

  Later, she promised his retreating form.

  “Blue Five.” The number she wore today was nineteenth of twenty off the line.

  Fifty-seven minutes cooling her heels. She should have taken a nap.

  Carla hated it, but that was just something you learned to do. Cooling your heels was definitely Army Lesson Number One.

  * * *

  Kyle Reeves followed his first heading easily. The opening six kilometers of tonight’s hike was along a “trail”—which in Delta-speak meant something a Humvee could force its way down if you were being chased by a rabid horde of zombified Chinese.

  He was allowed to follow the trail, if possible, but he couldn’t get within fifteen meters of it. Fifteen meters into the thick Carolina brush, six klicks in a straight line. After the first week of brutal road hikes and then three more of orienteering, this leg was a piece of cake.

  He’d faced a lot of grueling workouts; Green Berets were good at that. His dad had been one too. A tae kwon do, kung fu, and weapons sensei who didn’t hesitate for a second to knock you down if your defenses were weak, not if you were his son and not if you were a teenage girl. He wasn’t brutal—he’d never hurt you more than a hard block and a tumble, maybe leave a black-and-blue mark or two—but he wore you down until you learned.

  Mom had a full-time office gig, so after school, the bus dropped Kyle at his dad’s dojo. There he got a snack, did his homework, and then hit the mats right through until the evening classes were done. Didn’t matter what the class was, he was in it. Advanced weapons at the age of six, white-belt introduction for first graders when he was fifteen and wearing black himself.

  Saturdays were in the dojo until two, then as often as not, they were out the back door and headed up into the fishing streams of Washington State. Mostly car camping, with tent and campfire. Those were the times he loved the most. He, Mom, and Dad standing in a glacier-fed stream together and pretty much doing nothing.

  The hard discipline of Delta was so familiar to him, between martial arts and Green Berets, that it seemed to make sense when he bothered to think about it.

  It was almost a shock when he reached his first marker of the hike, a sharp bend in a narrow but fast stream. He crossed it, getting wet to the thighs in the strangely warm water. He’d never get used to that—mountain streams were supposed to be so cold that just thinking about them made your balls shrivel.

  No training cadre member was waiting at the RV. For a moment he wondered if he was in the wrong place. They were always there to make sure you were on track and coherent enough to keep reading your map. Also to dispense their constant offers to quit.

  Not tonight. Tonight he and the others were on their own, though a trainer probably sat nearby watching him through night-vision gear even now. Might as well be alone, which was fine with him. No way to spot a Delta operator who didn’t want to be seen, though he’d bet on the snarled clump of bushes about ten paces out.

  He took a moment to drink water and check his map and compass. He refilled his canteen from the stream, dropped in purification tablets, and hung it back on his harness. It would get plenty of shaking as he walked. The next leg was three kilometers…if you were an eagle. Being merely human, it was a four-kilometer-long, brutal-looking ridge ascent then descent on a nearly direct line—or an eight-kilometer walk around. Only the RVs mattered—you couldn’t miss those. How you got there was up to you.

  He’d been moving well so far, but he wouldn’t be able to count on that at the other end of sixty-five kilometers. The shorter route would be faster, just riskier. He was used to risk.

  He resettled his ruck, checked his watch.

  Fifty-six minutes. He was already sore, sweaty, and barely a tenth of the way done, at least in distance. Looking at the map, that first section was definitely going to be his fastest stretch of the night. Well, he wasn’t covering ground standing still. But just for the hell of it, he kept his eye on his watch, letting his body rest another forty-five seconds.

  There.

  Fifty-seven minutes.

  He strode out at exactly the same moment Carla Anderson would be taking her first step. He liked the feel of that, as if they were walking along together though they were six kilometers apart.

  Keep blowing wind up your own backside, Reeves.

  They weren’t walking together, as nice as that sounded, but apart. She’d be coming for his ass on this hike. Well, that only made it all the better. He dug in. She’d have to run to catch him, even with those amazingly long legs of hers.

  That woman did something to him. Well, she did something to every one of the guys. The way she looked, it was impossible not to. But the other guys mostly left off at the sexual fantasies.

  In addition to her poster-soldier-of-the-month looks, Kyle also liked her no-nonsense attitude. Guys would spend evenings in the mess hall or around the campfire if they were out in the wilderness, reliving the brutal day or the stupid psych test or griping about only getting a half-day shooting course.

  Didn’t they get that this wasn’t training? This was selection testing. Delta only let them shoot a half day because that was all it took to make sure you could at least handle and use a weapon without killing yourself or the guy beside you. They’d train you in their own way once you were through and into the Operator Training Course. That was the next prize, getting into OTC, but most guys didn’t seem to be looking much past today and maybe tomorrow.

  Carla Anderson did. She didn’t waste time with griping or complaining; she just got it done. One of only three to shoot thirty out of thirty—it just didn’t get any better.

  Though it was hard to imagine her as a regular-forces soldier. There was a core feistiness that he bet ran right over anyone in her way, which must have been ugly.

  However, to his best guess, that made her perfect Delta material. Go walk thirty klicks across impossible terrain with marginally sufficient information. She’d be the second one into the RV—hot on his heels despite his gender advantages.

  Now he was walking with her—though not with her—in the dark of the Uwharrie. He fought his way up the ridge, steeper than it looked by the map’s contour lines. More than once he unintentionally kicked a rock loose and listened to it bound down the hillside. He hoped no one was directly below, the sharp clack and clatter of each rebound the only sound other than his own harsh breathing.

  He made a bet with himself; Carla would also choose this shorter route over the ridge. He wanted to stop here, wait for her, make love on the hillside beneath the starlit sky.

  Yeah, and he’d ended up with boot prints right over his back as she raced toward the goal.

  What is your goal, Carla?

  Funny how little they’d actually talked. Some teasing, some Army—he was starting to suspect she’d seen a lot of action despite being a female in the regular forces—but nothing more.

  He crested the top of the ridge in forty-five minutes and thanked the sudden breakout of moonlight from the high clouds, which was the only thing that stopped him from starting the descent much more abruptly than he’d planned; it was a knife-edge ridge. It would be fifteen more minutes until her footsteps started crossing over his back at the bend in the stream.

  He liked being that much ahead but could feel the pressure of her closing in. He chose his route down from the ridge and pushed ahead hard. No one had ever caught him yet.

  And he had his pride. No one was
going to.

  Especially not a woman who kept tempting his thoughts off his route.

  He skittered down a scree slope of broken bits of mountain, moving in a diagonal crossing pattern to minimize the chance of starting a rock avalanche.

  Was that intentional, Carla’s constant distraction of him?

  No. The woman didn’t flaunt herself a bit, other than frying Ralph’s brain on that first day. Maybe that was the problem. Perhaps his own brain had been partially toasted in the backlash though he’d been an innocent bystander—his eyes drinking her in like a cool slash of water.

  Kyle had seen enough women “working it” in the Green Beret bars to know—women hunting a Special Forces husband knew how to take command of the room.

  If anything, Carla understated herself, which was one of her attractions. Take it or leave it, buddy. What you see is what you get.

  And he wanted to take it. Bad.

  So much so that he almost did a header off a short cliff near the base of the scree slope. He snagged a tree at the last moment and slowed his descent enough to make a clean transition to the lower slope.

  Barely.

  Damn her!

  “Get out of my head, woman!” he barked at the night, knowing it wasn’t going to happen.

  For one thing, if he was so angry at her, why was he smiling like an idiot eight kilometers into a brutal hike?

  Time for a new mind-set.

  “Bring it!” he told the night. “Just try to catch me, girlie!”

  He laughed and broke into a slow trot despite the heavy ruck as he circled to avoid a steep canyon, well worth the extra two kilometers.

  * * *

  By the time she hit the bend in the stream, Carla had passed eight of the eighteen ahead of her. There were those who believed in conserving energy at the start, but come on, dudes!

  She’d driven herself over the first ground and made good time. At the stream she didn’t even slow down except to scoop full an empty canteen as she crossed; the cadre observer back in the bushes had to dodge out of her way before she ran him down.