Sherri rolled her eyes. “Do either of you know what he has against thongs?”

The brunette grinned widely in response. “Did you pack some anyway?”

“Of course. Out of general principle,” Sherri retorted.

Laughing and joking about male fixations on female undergarments, they stepped into the Quonset hut. The back half of the space was stuffed with stacked, rusted metal bed frames, wooden desks, and office chairs straight out of the 1940s, their vinyl seats shredded with mildewed stuffing hanging out.

The front half of the space was appointed like a typical military barracks, the walls lined with single beds, a footlocker at the bottom of each, and a center aisle down the middle. Six beds were neatly made up.

“Are there other women here?” Sherri asked, looking around for more candidates to fill the beds.

“Nope. Just Anna and me,” Lily answered. “Our guess is Kettering plans to end up with a half-dozen women here.”

As she claimed a bed and footlocker, into which she transferred her uniforms, plus plenty of workout gear, Sherri asked, “What did Commander Kettering tell you about this program? I know practically nothing except the Navy wants to train women SEALs.”

Anna replied, “Lily has the dirt on that.”

Sherri looked expectantly at the petite blond, who said shyly, “My brother works in the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He heard a rumor that the new Secretary of Defense, Rita Chilvers, ordered the Navy to graduate a woman from BUD/S and put her into the SEALs. Apparently, she declared it past time to tear down the last male bastion.”

“The SEALs can’t be happy about that,” Sherri replied.

Lily snickered. “Oh, they’re livid. If they got their way, they would never let a woman play in their sandbox.”

Sherri privately disagreed with Lily. If a woman was strong enough, fit enough, and mentally tough enough to play with the big boys, there wasn’t much the SEALs could do to keep a woman out of their hallowed ranks…except kill her.

Which she might not put past the SEALs to do, if push came to shove.

“Personally,” Anna added, “I don’t mind getting paid to run around in the woods for a few months. I was already training for the CrossFit games. Now I’m getting paid to do it full-time, and with a bunch of hot guys thrown in. Win-win for me.”

“What hot guys?” Sherri asked with interest.

“Kettering says a SEAL team is going to help train us.”

“As in they’re going to run us through BUD/S here?” Sherri asked, startled. Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training was only taught at Naval Base Coronado in San Diego.

“That’s what I hear.” Anna’s dark eyes sparkled as she flipped back her luxurious black hair. “Most of the SEALs I’ve seen are hawt.”