Atlas (10 page)

"The Navy Brass has ordered us to make more MOTHs. That means they're letting more of you into our training, but it does
not
mean we're going to pass any more of you. We haven't changed our testing process, not in the least. We're not going to graduate substandard guys. We can't. It defeats the whole purpose of the training. If we did that, you think any of the Teams would want our graduates? They need to know that the man beside them went through the
exact same thing
they did. That the man beside them is reliable. That he's a
brother
.

"BSD/M, Basic Space Demolition / MOTH training, is designed to teach us about you, but it's also designed to teach you about yourself. What are your limitations? What are you truly capable of? When you step out of here,
if
you step out of here, you'll have unshakable confidence, and an unwavering belief in yourself and the guy who stands beside you. You'll know with absolute certainty that he'll cover your back. You'll know without question that he'll die for you if he has to. He'll be more of a brother than a brother by blood. Family is important, don't get me wrong, but what we form here is
tighter
than any family. You'll eat, sleep, and drink together. You'll fight together. You'll die together.

"Still interested? It's a tough school. You can quit at any time. Just come to me or any one of the instructors and say 'I quit,' or grab the gavel and tap out. Three little hits. We don't have a quota. You either make it or you don't. Though if you want the truth, you'll probably wash out. Twenty percent of students make it through to the end of First Phase. You see the guy sitting next to you? And the guy on the other side? Neither of them are going to make it. Statistically, it isn't very likely that you're going to make it either."

He surveyed our ranks, letting his words sink in. "I see a lot of potential here. Some great warriors in the making. Unfortunately, the guys who
look
like they'll make it are usually the first to quit. I'm always surprised by who's left standing in the end. Always. Anyway, do your best, never give in, and you will succeed. How's that for a motivational speech?"

He folded his arms. "All right. Let's get you guys in the tank. It's time to repeat the Physical Screening Test."

And so the real training began.

* * *

The next three weeks of Orientation were a blur of activity.

Each day started off with swim lessons in the tank. After that we sprinted a mile to the mess hall and had a seven minute breakfast (I usually was able to stuff down a few pancakes and sausages and that's about it). Then we ran across the base to the O-Course. A real obstacle course, not like the 'confidence' course we had
back in Basic. Parallel bars, tires, low wall, high wall, barbed wire low crawl, sixty-foot tall cargo net, balance logs, climbing ropes, the "twiner"—a horizontal set of bars we had to twine our bodies between, a rope bridge, and on and on. Swivel-mounted Visible Spectrum Lasers were placed at strategic points, their beams rotating over the different obstacles. While harmless in and of themselves, if you let one of those rotating beams touch you, then it was back to the start of the O-Course for you.

After the O-Course we sprinted back to the mess hall for lunch, and then it was off to the beach for PT. Instructor Piker usually led us. Beneath his chin, he had this long spade-like goatee. I remember the first day he had us doing pushups and various types of lying kicks right there beside the ocean.

"Put out you weaklings!" Instructor Piker said. "I can tell when you're not putting out. And I hate that more than anything in the world. Hayward, get those arms up. Hayward! Push! If you can't survive this, there's no way you'll survive First Phase!"

Damage Controlman First Class John "Haywire" Hayward was our leading petty officer because he was the senior enlisted in our ranks. He reported directly to our class leader, Jaguar, and was a frequent target of extra instructor attention because of his rank.

"Push, you bastards! Push!"

I finally couldn't take it, and collapsed to the sand.

Instructor Piker came over and surprised me by sitting down right on my back. "What's wrong with you, sir?"

"Nothing, instructor!" I said.

"Name and rank?"

All the instructors had implanted aReals—Instructor Piker could've just accessed my embedded ID. But he wanted me to say my name and rank for everyone to hear.

"Astronaut Apprentice Rade Galaal, instructor!" I said.

"Astronaut
Apprentice
Galaal!" He made his voice sound whiny when he said
apprentice
. "You're not putting out,
Apprentice
! Why is that? Give me a pushup, now!"

"But you're on my back, instructor!"

"I know I am."

I couldn't do it. I tried, I really did.

"Give me a pushup you worm!" Instructor Piker said. "Or the whole class suffers!"

I pushed. I mean really pushed. I didn't want anyone to suffer because of me.

Amazingly, my upper body started lifting. I managed to get my hips maybe two centimeters off the sand, though it took every last ounce of strength I had.

I thought Instructor Piker would commend me. I thought he'd congratulate me for doing a pushup, minuscule as it was, with all his weight on my back.

Instead Piker got up and said, "See! I knew you weren't putting out, dumbass! You had enough energy left to push me when I was
sitting
on you! Pathetic! All we ask is that you give it your all, that you don't waste our time!
Don't waste our time!
Everyone has to do an extra sixty pushups because Astronaut Apprentice Galaal
wasn't giving it his all!
"

"Thanks Galaal," trainees muttered nearby. So much for not making anyone suffer because of me...

I forced myself to start doing pushups again, though my triceps were basically dead.

"Not you, Galaal," Instructor Piker said. "You're special. You get to run out to the surf, and when you're nice and wet you're going to roll around in the sand. Don't come back here until every square inch of you is covered in sand. I want you to look like a gingerbread man. Actually, belay that.
Everyone
go down to the surf with Galaal and come back looking like a gingerbread man."

I ran
down the beach with everyone else. "Thanks Gay-laal," someone said along the way. I didn't see who, though I thought it sounded like Ace.

I didn't make the mistake of not putting out again, and I promised myself I'd do my best not to stand out and draw attention to myself. Thankfully, there were more than enough students to draw Instructor Piker's wrath, and he chewed them out in turn. Unfortunately, he called "Gingerbread Men" each time and we had to run to the beach and come back covered in sand. "If one of you fails to give his all for the team, the whole team pays the price. Remember that when you're in the field."

Whenever someone collapsed from exhaustion, one of the Weavers would take a look at him. If the guy didn't get up after ten minutes of treatment from a Weaver, he would be medically dropped. By the way, "Weaver" was Navy slang for paramedic robot. We called them Weavers because they looked like gurneys with spiders at the back. From the control center protruded twenty jointed, retractable limbs whose cylindrical segments telescoped into one another. Each limb was topped by four spindly, double-jointed fingers. When a paramedic robot was working on someone, those limbs moved around in rapid succession, looking for all the world like a spider spinning its web. Hence the name "Weavers."

When PT was done, Instructor Piker made us do a four mile run on the soft sand. I was thoroughly exhausted by then, and the wet sand from all the "Gingerbread Men" sessions was abrading my crotch and armpits. I suspected I was going to have a rash later (and I did).

Running on soft sand was different than on any other surface. The trick, I found, was to make sure my foot hit the sand at a completely flat angle. I passed the tip on to Alejandro and Tahoe, and it was whispered down the ranks.

The laggards got beat for a while, forced to do another set of pushups, while those who made a "decent" time got to stretch out and watch. I was one of the lucky ones.

And so it went for the rest of that week. Soft sand runs, O-Course, swimming and deep dive practice, underwater knot-tying practice, bay swims, PT, all punctuated by the phrase we had grown resigned to,
Gingerbread Men
. There were about two hours of classroom sessions each day, covering a variety of topics, such as combat swimming, nutrition, naval history, etc. Not even the classrooms were free of PT though. If you were caught nodding off, you had to drop and push 'em. If you didn't answer the question the way the instructor thought you should, you dropped and pushed 'em. Of course, classes opened with sixty pushups and ended with another sixty. All part of our conditioning, right?

Ace seemed undeterred by it all. I remember one night, when all of us were bitching during supper in the mess hall, he said, "This is what MOTHs do! You have to just brace yourself and plow on through, just like a real MOTH would. If you can't do that, can't dig deep and find the reserves and drive within yourself, well maybe you shouldn't be here you know?"

Ace quit that first week, before we'd even started First Phase. He didn't even tell me or Alejandro. Too ashamed, I guess. All I remember is waking up at 0400 one morning and he was gone.

Beside Ace we lost fifty other people the first week of Orientation. Most quit during the night. Five left for medical reasons—two of those because of O-Course injuries. One guy lost his grip on the sixty-foot tall cargo net near the top when he was
hurrying away from one of those visible spectrum lasers, and he fell all the way to the ground, fracturing his thigh. I ran to him, but the instructors told me to back off. I still remember his screams, and how merciless the instructors were with him.

"Suffer in your head!" the instructors said. "If you're hurt in the field are you going to yell your ass off and reveal your position? Endanger the lives of your platoon brothers? Suffer in your head!"

We lost another thirty members the second and third weeks, so that when we finally classed-up to First Phase, we were down to ninety-eight trainees.

That Friday we moved from barracks 618 to 602, the barracks reserved for First Phase students. We berthed with our swim buddies, two students per room. My swim buddy was Alejandro of course, while Tahoe roomed with leading petty officer Haywire.

"Don't become too invested in your new rooms," Instructor Reed said before dismissing us that night. "Nor your roommates. You're only staying here until you complete Trial Week. Or rather, until you quit. And you
will
quit. There's no ifs or buts about it. As will your swim buddy." Though he addressed the entire class, Reed had the uncanny ability to make it seem like he spoke directly to you. "But I suppose congratulations are in order, Class 1108. You've made it to First Phase. You've done something ninety-eight percent of the population can't even dream of doing. Enjoy the feeling while it lasts. You have the weekend at liberty. The smarter among you will spend the time getting your new berths ready for inspection at 0500 sharp Monday morning, when the real fun begins. Dismissed."

While other students (most of them rollbacks, apparently) went to the city on Friday and Saturday nights for one last bender before First Phase, Alejandro and I spent the whole weekend preparing for Monday's room inspection. We polished the metallic racks of our beds, we shined the insides and the outsides of our lockers, we mopped and waxed the deck, we scrubbed the bulkheads (really just walls, but I blamed Basic for making me call them that). We polished our helmets and stenciled 1108 into the sides in big white letters. We stenciled our names on all our gear. We polished every exposed area of our leather boots, even along the welt line between the uppers and soles with spare toothbrushes we still had from Basic. We trimmed away any frayed ends on the boot laces. We ironed every single crease out of our clothes and beds.

All told, we spent about twenty hours preparing. But it was worth it, because we were going to pass the inspection with flying colors. The room, and our clothes, were literally spic-and-span. I wondered if we'd get to sit out the morning PT for doing such a good job.

Alejandro and I slept on the floor in our
underwear because we didn't want to ruin the work we'd done.

Monday came. We got up at 0400, shaved, showered, dressed, and did one last check of the room. I found a hair on top of the lockers, and Alejandro found a speck of dust by the windowsill. When we were satisfied that everything was as clean as we could possibly make it, Alejandro and I stood in the hall just outside our doorway, waiting for the inspection.

Two instructors I'd never seen before came in at 0500 sharp. One had a handlebar mustache. The other had a sharp aquiline nose and wore his hair in a fauxhawk. Our room was at the front of the barracks, so we were the first in line for the inspection.

"Wipe that
smug expression off your faces," Handlebar roared. He and the other instructor stalked into our room.

Alejandro and I exchanged a worried glance then followed nervously inside.

"What the
shit
?" Handlebar tore up my perfectly made bed, throwing the entire mattress on the floor. Fauxhawk did the same to Alejandro's bed. Instructor Piker came rushing inside and dumped a pail of wet sand all over our beds and possessions. The other two tramped through the sand and left a gritty trail across our painstakingly polished deck. Handlebar went to the lockers and toppled them. He tipped out the drawers in both our dressers.

"I've never,
never
, in my whole life, seen a messier, dirtier, room than this!" Handlebar said. "Fail!" The two instructors stormed outside.

Alejandro and I just sat there, mouths wide, staring at the mess that was our room. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. I was just stunned. We'd spent the whole weekend cleaning that room, putting every into it. We'd given it our all. I was heartbroken. I looked at Alejandro. He was blinking fast, and his lower lip was quivering.

I gave him a brave smile, and looked away. Nothing I hated worse than seeing a grown man cry. I was about ready to lose it myself. This was an injustice, I knew that. I struggled within myself, trying to understand the point of it all. Why tell us to ready our room for inspection, only to ransack it and tell us we fail?

I went to the hallway and noticed, to my relief, that the students in the room just across from us were receiving the same mistreatment. Beds were thrown out of racks, desks overturned, drawers emptied onto the deck, a pail of sand dumped in the center of the room.

The instructors moved methodically from room to room, enacting the same fervent theatrics, so that when it was done the entire barracks had become a mess of sand and overturned beds and tossed sheets, some of which spilled right out the doors. The names of the instructors were whispered down to us.

Handlebar was Instructor Peterson, and Fauxhawk was Instructor Brown.

Another instructor I hadn't met before appeared at the entrance to the barracks. He had a thick black beard and yellow eyes. A wolf of a man. He loomed there, seeming taller and meaner than any of the others. Definitely wasn't happy.

Someone whispered his name. "Chief Adams."

"What in the hell?" Chief Adams said, finally blowing his top. "You call this sty a barracks? Turn yourselves into Gingerbread Men, now! Double-time!"

We sprinted outside into the pre-dawn twilight, and waded into the freezing ocean, wearing our freshly polished boots, our perfectly ironed white shirts, our sparkly clean swim trunks. I sat down, and doused my head beneath the waves, gasping at the cold, and then hurried back on shore. I rolled in the sand with more than a little regret. When I was sufficiently covered in grit, I stumbled to my feet, my perfect clothes ruined.

Headlamps turned on nearby, and I shielded my eyes. The silhouette of an instructor walked into the light. He moved between us, inspecting. When he came near, I saw that it was Instructor Piker. He had a terrible scowl on his face as he stroked his spade-like goatee.

"What are you trying to pull Mr. Eaglehide?" He'd stopped beside Tahoe. "You're not properly sandpapered. Your whole right cheek is bare!" He spun around. "All of you do it again!"

And so we did. This time, when we rolled on the beach, we scooped up the sand in our hands and dumped it on our faces, using the light of the headlamps to make sure we all looked like walking sand castles. My eyes were burning because there was so much grit in them. I even felt sand in my gums, between my teeth, scratching away.

"What the hell are you maggots doing standing around?" Instructor Piker shouted. "To the grinder you sorry excuses for trainees!"

We rushed to the black asphalt at the center of the compound. The lights were off, so the instructors couldn't see our faces in the twilight, and we couldn't see theirs. But I recognized the voices.

"Take your places, now!" Chief Adams said.

There was enough light to see the outlines painted on the concrete, which indicated where each student should stand. I took the first free place I found and waited while others rushed to find a spot.

When we were finally assembled, Chief Adams said, "I've never seen such a disgraceful display in all my life. That little stunt your class pulled this morning in the barracks cannot be forgiven. Sand everywhere. Beds thrown about. There's only one way to pay for what you've done.
You're all going to die. Drop and push 'em!"

What followed was the worst PT beating I'd ever experienced in my life.

Over the next three hours we alternated from pushups to lying kicks to bar dips to pullups. This while being constantly sworn at and accused of being gay. My knuckles became rubbed raw from sitting on my fists for the flutter and scissor kicks. The blood and sweat caused me to slip sometimes on the pullup bar and get a further chewing out from the instructors. Around me, a few students were whimpering. Some were crying. These big, strong men who never cried for anything, weeping like babies.

The flint stone at the far end of the grinder flashed at least once every ten minutes as people quit. Three loud taps. Sometimes it happened several times in a row, as if people were just waiting for someone else to quit first before throwing in the towel themselves.

By the third hour of this beating, with no relief in sight, guys started to urinate and defecate themselves. Some vomited. It started to smell like a mix between a sewer and a pigsty. Instructors moved through the fray with a high-pressure water hose, spraying down whoever they felt like. One instructor sprayed the guy beside me, then doused my face and Alejandro's for good measure. It felt just short of getting slammed in the cheek with an icicle.

All I could think was that this was just day one. And it was going to get a whole lot worse.

I had to force those thoughts away, because I knew such thinking was self-defeating, I knew if I tried to look beyond this moment I'd get disheartened and just want to quit. And I wasn't going to do that.

I wasn't going to let myself.

I focused on breakfast. I was going to make it to breakfast.

Three hours, thirty-three minutes after we'd begun, the call finally came.

"Breakfast, children!" Chief Adams said. "You have an hour. Go!"

We jogged the mile to the mess hall, and by the time we got there most of us were too exhausted to even eat. I managed to get down a slice of buttered toast before the announcement came that our time was up.

"I thought we had an hour!" someone whined.

"Since when have you
ever
had an hour for breakfast? Ridiculous, you fecal maggot. Out!"

As we were running back to the grinder I vomited up the toast.

"Rade, you okay?" Alejandro said beside me, panting loudly.

And then it suddenly hit me.

I understood why they were doing this to us.

I started laughing.

"Rade," Alejandro said. "What is it
hombre
? You aren't going
loco
on me are you?"

"They want us to quit," I told him. "It's textbook shock and awe. Don't you see? They just want to scare us off. They want us to think it'll be like this every day. But it can't be. Of course it can't. No one would survive. No one would graduate."

Alejandro didn't say anything. I don't know if he believed me. But I was right. I knew I was. I had to be.

Three more guys tapped out the instant we reached the grinder.

"Well children," Chief Adams said. "It's time to start your next evolution. Get your asses over the sand berm and line up along the high water mark!"

We did as we were told.

"Turn around," Chief Adams said through the megaphone on the beach. We did, so that we faced away from the water. All the Instructors were assembled on the berm above us, drinking energy drinks. They had big smiles on their faces. I saw dipping tobacco lining the gums of more than a few of those mouths.

"Shoulder to shoulder," Chief Adams said.

"
Wooyah!
" We pressed ourselves tightly together.

Four Weavers rolled up over the berm. The sight of those medical robots felt somehow ominous.

"Your performance this morning was ridiculous," the Chief said. "Not one of you,
not a one
, deserves to ever call himself a MOTH. You're done for. We're going to get rid of your dumb asses once and for all. Call it a mass extermination." He lowered the megaphone to take a puff on his cigar. His yellow eyes gleamed with a sudden malicious glee. "Turn about!"

"
Turn about!
" we answered, swiveling to stare out across the gray ocean.

"Lock arms!" Chief said.

"
Lock arms!
" I interlocked my arms with Alejandro and the man on my right.

"For-ward mar-ch!"

"
Forward march!
"

We waded into the surf. I winced when a wave splashed my crotch.
You'd think the bay water would be warm down here in California, but it felt like it was fed by the arctic (I learned later that it was—damn ocean currents).

I kept expecting the Chief to order a halt, but he didn't. Deeper and deeper we marched into the ocean, the freezing bay water coming first to our knees, then our waists.

"Halt."

"
Halt
!"

Finally.

"Sit down."

"
Sit down!
"

Sit down?

We obeyed, and the freezing ocean enveloped us to the armpits. I gasped loudly. I wasn't the only one. I inhaled three or four times, trying to catch my breath through the shock of the cold. Alejandro and Tahoe shivered madly on either side of me.

After about a minute and a half:

"This is
loco
," Alejandro said with his teeth chattering. "I'm not built for this crap."

"Careful brother," Tahoe said. "Don't think beyond the moment. Therein lies the path to failure. Open yourself to the spirit world."

"The spirit world?" Alejandro said. "You mean the world of the dead? You're telling me I should just accept this and die?"

"No," Tahoe said. "Open yourself to the
spirit
world. Ignore all pain. Ignore all suffering. Transcend it."

"I thought you didn't believe in that crap?" Alejandro said.

Tahoe gripped me tight. "In times like this, I'll believe anything."

I tightened my grip on both their arms, trying to pull him and Tahoe closer to me.

"This is called sea immersion, children," Chief Adams said on the megaphone. "Enjoying it so far?"

"Wooyah," someone responded, weakly.

Around me, the sound of eighty chattering teeth brought an odd image to mind. I thought of a kid, running along a slatted fence with a stick. The chattering I heard was the sound of his stick as it hit each slat. A wolf chased that kid.

I was zoning out. That was bad. I had to stay in the moment. Had to stay aware.

"Everywhere we go-o!" I said, to an imaginary cadence.