For the most part, the other trainees were too wrapped up in their own misery to give a damn about her one way or the other. She suspected they counted on her washing out when they hit the actual BUD/S course anyway.

The instructors said little about her performance, merely writing down her times with silent disapproval. Of course, they disapproved of everything. They were like a bunch of grumpy toddlers who hated everyone. The notion privately amused her when one of them would really wind up into a tirade in her face.

She got up one morning, a year into the three-week indoctrination course, and jogged out to join the remaining trainees. They were down thirty-one guys out of two hundred so far.

“Today, lady and gentlemen, I give you the Playground!” the instructor in front of the formation bellowed.

Griffin had told her the obstacle course was sometimes called that. While they went for a warm-up run down the beach, she mentally reviewed the various obstacles the Reapers had built for her and the best ways to get through them.

The replica o-course at Camp Jarvis was as close to exact as the Reapers had been able to build. She had run it dozens of times and knew how completely wiped out her arms would be by the end of the thing.

Today, they walked through the course once while instructors demonstrated each obstacle. Then it was the trainees’ turn. She waited in line quietly, resting and breathing deeply.

“Tate, you’re up. And…go!”

Hand over hand across the parallel bars. Arms behind her neck to run through the tires. Jump onto the upended logs and then the hard leap up to catch the top of the wall in front of her. Big pull, legs up and over. Slide down the back of the wall, jog to the rope-climb wall.

The guy beside her, one of Grundy’s buddies, was going out way too fast and pulled ahead of her. From the top of the rope-climb wall, which she was just starting, he taunted, “What’s the matter, Tate? Girls can’t hack it?”

“I’ll see you at the finish line,” she grunted.

She ignored him, pacing herself steadily, taking advantage of her slender body to wiggle fast through the low crawl on her belly under logs and barbed wire. She moved all the way to the left side of the fifty-foot-tall net climb, right next to the frame where Griffin had shown her the cross ropes were most taut, and used her legs primarily to make the climb, giving her arms as much rest as possible.