Seal Team Seven by Keith Douglass

be.
    Sometimes, though, that could be cold for the families who’d been waiting back in the world of bridge clubs and shopping malls, of the formal functions and the politics of naval social life.
    How many times had he been over at the Cotters’, barbecuing ribs on Vince’s backyard grill, drinking beer and swapping stories with SEALs and SEAL wives. The formal gulf between officers and enlisted that existed through most of the rest of the Navy was all but nonexistent in the Teams. Vince and Donna Cotter were his friends. Damn, he couldn’t lie to her, not about this.
    And he couldn’t tell her the truth either.
    â€œDonna,” he said, choosing his next words carefully. “If the munchkins say he died in a training accident, then as far as I’m concerned that’s exactly what happened. But I can also tell you that Vince was the best warrior, the best leader, the best officer, the best friend I’ve ever known. He was a hero, and I’m proud to have known him.”
    The woman started to say something, then stopped, her face creasing with iron-held grief that could no longer be denied. “Oh, Mac, Mac, what am I going to do without him?”
    MacKenzie opened his arms and enfolded her in an embrace, holding her close as she sobbed, the flag, Vince’s flag, trapped between them. After a while, June came up and put her arm around Donna’s shoulders, leading her away up the hill.
    MacKenzie turned his back on the tombstones and spent a long time after that just standing there on the grass, staring at the Washington skyline.
    Damn. Third Platoon would never get another CO as good as the Skipper. DeWitt might pass inspection, but he didn’t have enough time in grade for promotion to full lieutenant. That meant they’d bring in someone else, an outsider.
    He wondered who the newbie was going to be.

6
    Monday, 9 May

0620 hours (Zulu—8) SEAL Training Center Coronado, California
    Hell Week had begun that morning at precisely 0001 hours—one minute past midnight—and the men of BUD/S First Platoon, class 1420, were running. The sun was just beginning to cut through the chill that had lingered over the Silver Strand throughout the predawn hours, and the surf was breaking in long, emerald-green rollers that sparkled enchantingly in the morning light. First Platoon was less interested in the picturesque beauty of the ocean, however, than in remaining upright.
    Organized into six boat teams of seven men each, the platoon numbered forty-two men, and they were running along the beach through soft sand that shifted unpredictably beneath their boondockers. Each team carried an IBS—an Inflatable Boat, Small—balanced on their heads, a black rubber craft that had long been a mainstay of both the SEALs and the old UDTs. Twelve feet long and six feet in the beam, the boat could carry seven men and one thousand pounds of gear. Fully equipped, as they were now with everything save motors, each weighed 289 pounds.
    Each boat crew struggled to run together, supporting the balky mass of its IBS on their heads, bracing the boat unsteadily with arms aching from endlessly repeated push-ups earlier that morning. The shorter men in each team held empty coffee cans wedged between their heads and their boat so that they could carry their share of the load. The exercise appeared to be mindless harassment, but it had the positive benefit of providing yet another excuse for the recruits to learn to work together . . . or else.
    As did nearly every other aspect of BUD/S training.
    Lieutenant Blake Murdock trotted easily alongside the lead boat crew. Tall, lean, powerfully muscled, he paced the recruits with an easy gait in deliberate contrast to their exhausted stumblings. In a malicious addition of insult to injury, while the recruits wore shorts and white T-shirts already drenched with sweat, Murdock wore a khaki uniform, flawlessly, crisply pressed and creased, the railroad