She glanced over the heads of the rows of reporters at the line of BUD/S instructors who had filed into the hall quietly when the bright lights went on, and who stood still and silent across the back of the theater. Thought she wouldn’t notice them, did they? Hah. She was getting darned good at situational awareness these days.

Their expressions were unanimously stony, their crossed arms shouting their disapproval of her.

Someone called out from the audience, “When does your training begin?”

“As soon as I can get out of these blasted pantyhose and high heels.”

Another laugh. Then the next question, “Are you worried the instructors won’t give you a fair shot?”

She speared the row of silent warriors in the back with a stare. “BUD/S instructors are in the business of identifying operators they would trust with their lives and whom they’d like to work with. My job here will be to prove I’m one of those people.”

She caught the snorts and rolled eyes from the men in the back. Whatever. She’d made a believer of Griffin, and he’d been dead set against her initially.

She lifted her chin faintly to the boys in the club, positive they would know the gesture for the challenge it was. And then she threw down the gauntlet. “After all, BUD/S instructors are bright guys. Only someone stuck firmly in the past would fail to see the potential benefit of women in today’s Special Forces.”

As a group, the line of instructors froze. What? They didn’t expect the girl to have any guts? Surprise, boys.

Someone shouted a question about what BUD/S training entailed, and Schneider hurried out to field that one, walking the press corps through a PowerPoint presentation that would be made available after the press conference. It broke down BUD/S into its pretraining pipeline, called INDOC, and three actual BUD/S phases—Physical Training, Sea Warfare, and Land Warfare.

She used the time to observe the guys in the back. God bless Cal Kettering for exposing her to a bunch of SEALs before she got here. Otherwise, all that menace rolling off them might have actually made her nervous.

Another instructor slipped into the auditorium, joining the line of men. He wore camo pants and a navy-blue T-shirt with the yellow UDT/SEAL INSTRUCTOR logo over his heart. Griffin. She would know that silhouette, that set of shoulders, the quiet, contained movement anywhere.

So. He was going to infiltrate her instructors? Good to know. She yanked her attention to the question being directed at her. “…how far through the program do you think you can go before you wash out?”

There it was. The subtly dismissive, misogynistic dig she’d one hundred percent expected before this circus concluded.