Seal Team Seven by Keith Douglass Page A

tracks of his rank gleaming in highly polished gold on his collar, his eagle-trident-pistol badge shining above two rows of colorful ribbons. The only concession he’d made to the morning’s workout was his boondockers, identical to the footgear worn by the recruits. Dress shoes did not stand up well to sand and salt water, nor was it a good idea to run in them. The boondockers were spit-shined, however, until they shone like dress Corfams. Murdock had made a point of running with the trainees throughout the past weeks, effortlessly pacing them without showing a wrinkle, without showing even a single stain of sweat in his uniform as the recruits struggled to match his pace.
    The other instructors wore blue staff T-shirts and olive drab shorts as they harried the trainees. “Get in step there! Hup! Two! Three! Four! Pick up your feet, you tadpoles! Come on , come on! Get together!”
    Tomorrow, the boat crews would start running with their instructors as passengers in the rubber boats, paddling the air as they shouted “encouragement,” standing up, moving around, and in general doing everything they could to upset the crews’ physical and mental equilibrium.
    Keeping the recruits off balance was a key part of the program. Reveille that morning had been a dark, smoky, and piercingly noisy chaos of automatic gunfire, smoke grenades, and flash-bangs detonating outside the barracks windows as the instructors screamed confusing, often contradictory orders into the ears of the dazed recruits. “Fire! Fire on the quarterdeck! Fire party lay to the quarterdeck! Down on the deck! Give me one hundred! Outside! Outside, you pussies! Get wet! Into the surf! Fall in on the grinder in boondockers and jockstrap! Move! Move! Movemove move ! ” They’d stampeded from the barracks into the night, most of them half dressed, as a SEAL chief petty officer fired bursts from his M-60 over their heads.
    For these recruits, those able to stick it out anyway, the next five days would be an endless and agonizing round of mud, exhaustion, pain, and humiliation, a grueling trial of fitness and stamina during which they would be lucky to get a total of four hours’ sleep.
    Hell Week. This was the end of BUD/S Phase 1 training, the culmination of weeks of running, boat drills, running, push-ups, running, swimming, more swimming, and running, running, and more running. Phase 1 was partly for physical conditioning, of course, but far more than that it was deliberately designed to eliminate the quitters, to weed out that seventy percent or more of each SEAL class that did not have the peculiar twist of mental conditioning, stamina, and determination that was vital for service with the Teams. It had been suggested more than once that BUD/S training was two-percent physical and ninety-eight-percent mental.
    â€œLadies,” Murdock had told the class during formation the evening before, “the next five days and nights have been lovingly crafted to make you do just three things: quit, quit, and quit! We are going to do our level best to make all of you see the error of your ways and give up this crazy idea you have that you could actually become SEALs. We’ve lost a few people already, but hey, we were just getting warmed up with them. They were the lucky ones, sweethearts, the guys who looked deep down inside their souls and realized that they just didn’t have what it takes to be a Navy SEAL.
    â€œI can promise you that we’re going to lose a hell of a lot more of you before this week of fun and games is over. The United States Navy invests something like eighty thousand dollars in each and every man who finally pins on the trident-and-pistols.” For emphasis, he’d tapped his own SEAL pin as he walked down the line of young, skin-headed recruits standing rigidly in their underwear in front of their racks.
    â€œIt is our solemn duty to ensure that all those taxpayer dollars are not wasted