Today’s late-morning training evolution involved being dropped over the edge of a motorized rubber dinghy into the ocean to tread water indefinitely. Which wouldn’t have been too bad except for the fifty-five degree water—approximately the same temperature as a glass of ice water—and her combat boots and fatigues weighing her down, impeding her swimming motions.

The combination of cold and exertion took a toll on the mind, interfering with focus. And then there was the fear—a take-your-pick smorgasbord of what to be afraid of. Fear of drowning. Fear of freezing. Fear of sharks. Fear of being lost in this vast, featureless ocean.

Truth be told, Sherri was getting used to being scared to death. It was as if she was becoming numb to it. When a stressful event presented itself to her these days, she found herself coldly assessing the risks and challenges, assuming it would hurt like hell, and then diving in.

Huh. Maybe this training stuff was starting to work after all.

Or maybe she was simply too damned cold, tired, and half-drowned to care if she lived or died anymore.

A motorized growl approached from behind her, and she turned around to face the dinghy as it came back to pick her up. Praise the Lord and pass the potatoes.

There were two kinds of pickups: the relatively civilized one where a boat pulled up beside her and someone reached down to haul her over the big side-roll of the dinghy. And then there was the running pickup.

In that one, she stuck her arm up in the air, and the dinghy motored past at high speed. Someone in the vessel snagged her arm on the fly, jerked her violently out of the water, and tossed her into the dinghy at upwards of twenty miles per hour. It made her arm feel like it was being torn out of the socket, and all she could think of was that if they missed plucking her out of the water, that huge outboard motor would run right over her and chop her body into tiny pieces of chum for the sharks.

They’d already practiced static and slow-speed pickups today. Which meant this time the instructors would be gunning the dinghy right at her head. She waited till the vessel was about a hundred feet away from her and bearing down on her fast to stick her arm up. She angled her body the way Griffin had taught her and waited for the impact.

Griffin’s forearm slammed against hers, and then she was flying up and out of the water like a fish on a hook, twisting midair. She slammed into the rubber bottom of the dinghy, knocking what little air she had in her lungs clean out of them.

Griffin grunted under his breath, “You good?”