Page 98 of Duty Preserved

Sarah

Two days of this now. Dawn to dark, nearly nonstop training designed to engrain muscle memory.

I stood at the edge of the clearing with my arms folded and my hip against the fender of the nearest Land Cruiser. Close enough to hear Donovan’s voice carrying across the open ground. Far enough that I wasn’t in anybody’s way.

In front of me, the rangers were working in pairs, buddy pairs I think is what Donovan had called them. The concept was simple enough to understand from where I stood: one man moved while his partner stayed put and covered him. When the first man reached his next position, he set up his rifle toward the threat and provided cover while his partner moved up and past him. Never both exposed at once. Always someone watching. It all seemed like a very aggressive game of leapfrog.

Zayn and Baraka were running the nearest pair. Baraka sprinted forward, covered maybe twenty meters of open ground, then dropped flat to the ground and set his rifle forward. “Set!” His voice carried across the clearing.

“Moving!” Zayn was up and running past him before the echo died, legs driving hard until he hit the dirt twenty meters ahead. “Set!”

And Baraka was up again. “Moving!”

“Reset.” Donovan’s voice cut the dust. “Make sure you guys are bounding in manageable distances. It should only be a few seconds that you are up and moving, at most. What was the ditty I told you to say in your head to measure the time?”

They all shouted it in unison. “I’m up, he sees me, I’m down!”

“Correct. Remember, fire without movement is wasted ammunition, and movement without covering fire is suicide.”

They ran it again. And again.

When the Citadel team had first arrived and started training these rangers, I’d watched from a distance like this. I’d stood near the vet facility and thought it looked aggressive. War games run on young men I’d gotten to know like family. I didn’t understand why they needed to crawl through mud and reassemble rifles blindfolded. It had felt excessive.

I was wrong. I knew that now.

What I was watching today was harder and more aggressive than anything those early weeks had produced. The drills from before had a looseness to them. Baraka could argue mid-exercise, Jomo trailing behind on the obstacle course while the others waited, even some laughter between repetitions.

There was no laughter today.

The vet facility stood behind me. What remained of it. The concrete block walls still stood upright, scorched black from the inside. The roof gone. The interior gutted down to the foundation slab.

The rangers had cleared the worst of the debris, but the charred timber and warped metal sheeting were still piled along the south wall.

Every man on that training ground could see it from where he stood. Every one could clearly see why this training was needed now.

Andrew had the second group on the far side of the clearing, running a different drill. His rangers stood in varying tactical formations that were new to them. With their rifles in hand, they would wait apprehensively for his signal.

“Contact left!”

Every man spun to his left, dropped to the ground, and aimed his rifle in the direction of the imaginary threat. Andrew walked among them, adjusting a shoulder here, repositioning a rifle stock there. Then he brought them back to their feet and reset them.

“Contact right!”

They spun the other direction and went down again. Between the contact drills, he walked them through firing positions—standing, kneeling, and prone—showing them how to stabilize their rifles in each one.

Their training before was almost a game in comparison. The men had competed with one another for the fastest time or the cleanest run, bragging rights at the mess tent afterward.

This had none of that. Every face was locked in concentration. They ran their pairs and reset and ran them again. Nobody celebrated getting it right because getting it right was the minimum. The stakes beneath the exercise were visible on every one of them.

Andrew jogged over to Donovan’s group. He spoke, too low for me to catch, and Donovan turned his head to listen. They stood together for a moment.

Andrew clapped him on the shoulder and went back to his group.

Donovan stayed where he was after Andrew left. Hands on his hips, eyes on the rangers running the drill in front of him. To anyone else, he looked the same as he always had. Steady and competent, holding the whole operation together with his voice and his presence.

But I’d been watching him for days, and whatever was eating at him, he wouldn’t talk about it.

He wasn’t sleeping well. I knew this because he was in my bed every night. Three nights running now, I’d woken up to him rigid beside me. Whole body taut from his jaw to his fists.