"Damn you, Mac. If you think I'm going to buy that old 'training accident' line, you're nuts. Was it that thing in Iraq the other day? It was, wasn't it?"

Operation Blue Sky had rated a page-two couple of columns in Wednesday's Washington Post, with a shorter follow-up yesterday. All that had been said was that Iraqi troops had tried to stop a UN inspection team from leaving, and that U.S. military forces had rescued them. An unnamed member of the inspection team had told the press they'd been rescued by "American Special Forces." Iraqi sources claimed that the UN people had been released, the situation resolved "in the interests of international peace and cooperation," but that American aircraft had nevertheless bombed a school outside of al-Basra, killing two students and wounding a third. The Navy SEALs had never even been mentioned.

Which, of course, was exactly the way they preferred it. When their C-130 had touched down at NAS Oceana on Wednesday, there'd been no one waiting to meet the grim coterie of commandos as they filed off the transport, a thirteen-man honor guard to a lone, flag-draped coffin. No press, no cheering crowds, no speeches.

And that was as it should 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.

"Donna," 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.

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 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! Move-move-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, pushups, running, swimming, more swimming, and running, running, and more running. Phase I 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.