He heard noise over the crash and swish of the surf and moved closer to the water’s edge to hear what Sherri was shouting.

She was singing. Every time her face emerged from a wave breaking over her, she belted out a line from a classic song about love being like a heat wave. Anna and Lily joined her. They moved on to a song about sweat. Then to the classic Pointer Sisters song about being so excited.

As the minutes passed and the women’s shivering turned into near-convulsions, their words became unintelligible, tuneless noise. But still the women sang. Their brains too Popsicled to think of complex song lyrics, they resorted to “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Reluctantly, Grif had to give them credit for sticking out the cold as their core body temperatures ticked down on Kettering’s tablet.

Ninety-four.

Ninety-three.

Ninety-two.

“That’s it. Ninety-one degrees,” Kettering announced. “Come ashore, my little singing minnows.”

Grif actually felt a stab of compassion for Sherri as she crawled out of the water, sodden fatigues sagging, on her hands and knees, too hypothermic for her leg muscles to function. She collapsed in the sand, shivering and twitching as heat slowly returned to her body.

He squatted in the sand beside her. “While you’re down there, roll around a bit. We like powdered doughnuts on the teams.”

One blue eye opened to peer up at him, clearly gauging whether or not he was serious. And whether or not she should attempt to kill him.

“You do want to be a SEAL, don’t you?” he asked lightly.

She rolled onto her back. Onto her far side. Back to her belly. Caked in white sand, stuck to every bit of exposed skin and wet clothing, she painfully pushed to her feet.

“I’m feeling like a jog to stretch my legs this morning,” Cal announced. “How about you, gentlemen?”

Grinning, the other men agreed, and they took off down the beach with the women. They all had to slog through the soft sand, which was work for Griffin, too. But he hadn’t pulled a grinder or gone for a dip in the winter ocean this morning. Of course, a run would have the side benefit of bringing the women’s core body temperatures back up into the normal range.

Kettering took pity on the women and only ran them two miles—slowly—down the beach before turning them around to head back toward the Jeeps.

They drove back to Camp Jarvis, and the women headed for the showers. While they cleaned up and finished warming up, Cal took the men into the cinder-block building that housed weapons and munitions to pull equipment for the next training evolution.