Chapter 6.
THE TRAINING BEGINS
The training camp that was to be their home for the next session of months was located in Parris Island. After that they would be moved to Thomas Jefferson Training field in Langley to begin training with the vehicles. The training facility consisted of one main building with sleeping quarters, kitchen and dining room, a few offices plus a large gym. The complex was surrounded by different training routes and there was also a lake nearby-
Matt arrived early and was on hand on the front yard to say hello to the recruits when they arrived. The first man to arrive was a tall man in his forties, brown-haired with a thinning hairline, and a weathered down craggy face. Not what 'Mayhem' would describe as a top soldier. He noted that Matt was eying him and extended his hand.
"Hi, I'm Hal Everett, heavy equipment operator." he said with a low gravelly voice. "My friends call me Bishop."
Matt accepted the hand.
"Pleased to meet you, Bishop. I'm Matt Trakker. So, where do the name Bishop originate from?"
"From a role I played in a drama at school." Bishop replied with a small smile. "The name has stuck since then."
Closely in Bishop's footsteps followed Hondo McLean, a man built like a rock, clean shaved face, and short trimmed hair. He was the one who had scored best results during the tests, and Matt figured that this was not a man that should be taken lightly.
Bruce Sato and Buddie Hawks arrived together and came up to shake Matts hand.
"Good to see both of you here." Matt told them.
"I was surprised to get the call." Buddie revealed. "But it was positive to see that I could still keep up to the requirements. I was so certain that I would fail after being inactive for so long."
"You will never know how sharp a sword is unless it's drawn from its sheath." Bruce explained and got a glance from Buddie.
"Quite right, Bruce." Matt laughed. "I think we both now know that our swords were sharper than we feared. I wasn't that certain myself to be honest."
Afterwards came the married couple Paul Knight and Gloria Baker walking hand in hand as well as Brad Turner, the cat-burglar from a few years ago. He was lean young man with light-brown hair and dark sunglasses. Dressed in a leatherjacket, loose shirt, and jeans.
"Hi man." Brad greeted. "I haven't had the chance to thank you for suggesting me for this. I think it will be a blast."
"I'm glad you made it." Matt said. "You had some difficulties I understand."
"Actually." Brad confessed. "This saves me from some time in jail. I took part of a street race a few weeks back and that was the last straw for the law."
"I warned you about those ventures of yours." Matt reminded, patting him on the back. "Adventure is one thing, but you must stay out of trouble."
"Yeah. I figured I owed you for not handing me over to the authorities that time in Chicago, so here I am."
A few minutes later, the recruits were standing at attention, perfectly lined up in front of the main building on the yard. Matt and Sergeant Stillman stood in front of them.
"I'm Matt Trakker." Matt introduced himself. "Assigned commander to the Special Missions Force. I'm happy to see so many of you here today. This training course will last for fourteen weeks, of which you will spend six out in the field on exercise. We will have some of the most advanced weaponry at our disposal once the team is operational, but equally important is your skills and attributes."
He took one step back, then added.
"Although I am assigned as the team leader, Master Sergeant Stillman here will be the one who will run all the exercises, together with a handful of other instructors that you will meet later."
Stillman walked forward, he had assumed the role of the tough drill instructor.
"I am Master Sergeant Neil Stillman, your Senior Drill Instructor. You are now all brothers and sisters in the same family, The Special Missions Force." He walked along the line of soldiers, examining them closely. "Suck in that gut, boy."
He jabbed his swagger stick into the stomach of a round-faced man in his thirties. Not hard, but enough to make the man straighten up.
"Anytime you think I'm being too tough, anytime you think I'm being unfair... QUIT!" he said, grabbing the shades of Brad and threw them away. "I am hard, but I am fair! Your training here will be similar to the training the marines are going through, and as some of you might know, the marines are the best-trained soldiers in the country. You will have to be even better! This will not be a summer camp!"
And he quickly proved that it was no summer camp. No sooner had the trainees been shown to their quarters before they were ordered to change into training fatigues and was put into training, everyone including Matt Trakker.
Stillman had them running the obstacle track, climbing ropes, nets and ladders. Hand over hand the soldiers swung along the 'Arm stretcher'.
"It shouldn't take you more than ten seconds to make it through this obstacle!" Stillman barked from the ground.
Anyone who could not perform forty push ups in two minutes and fifty sit ups in two minutes would immediately be booted out of the team.
Stillman also had them do more standard training like doing pull-ups on the chinning bar or running.
"Six miles will be the minimum distance that you run under my command," Stillman barked as he kept pace with the soldiers. "If you can't run under forty-five minutes, you're out of the team!"
The first two weeks of the training would consist of a program of running, swimming, gymnastic training, and several trips around the obstacle course. The obstacle course had lots of equipment, including telephone poles of various sizes the trainees had to dash across, net and twenty-five-foot walls to scale and barbed wire to crawl under.
As they had completed the first days training, the trainees came back into their quarters for some hours rest.
"I'm going to watch some TV." Brent Sharpe said and walked out into the day room. He picked up the remote and begun switching the channels.
"What is this?" he asked in surprise and irritation. "We only got twenty channels!"
"Should be more than enough for us!" Dismissed Calhoun Burns who like Paul had a rather unkempt appearance with dark hair and a circle-beard. "We're not here to watch TV, but to train."
No one except for Brent felt for watching TV, so instead they sat down to talk and get more acquainted with each other.
"Stillman wasn't kidding when he said that this would be tougher than anything we ever done before." Dusty Hayes laughed. He was a southerner, very laid back with expertise in marine structural engineering. "I'm totally parched."
He was in on his third cola.
"So you're the assigned leader of this team then?" Another one of the recruits asked. His name was Marvin Rico, tall and muscular with a crew cut.
"That's right." Matt admitted.
"So how come that you have to get down and dirty like the rest of us?" Rico asked. "Why aren't you standing at the side line yelling at us like the first shirt does?"
Matt shrugged his shoulders.
"I wouldn't want to give an order that I'm not willing – or capable of doing myself, so I have to be in just as good condition as any of you."
"Will you get kicked out too if you're not good enough?" Tony Radcliffe asked. Although his name ringed American, he was born in Korea and had been adopted by American parents.
Matt scratched his hair, thinking.
"Yeah, I think that if the top brass finds my performance unsatisfactory, they might replace me with someone more adequate." His thoughts immediately wandered to Colonel Wolf who would welcome any excuse to replace him.
"Well, I think you're going to do just fine, Sir." Katrina Dabrowski praised. She was one of the three women that had made it into the training group. She was the direct opposite of the diminutive Gloria Baker, with short red hair, no make-up, no nail polish, absolutely no concession to her sex. "It's the attitude that tells if you're leadership material or not, and your modesty is important."
"Thanks for the confidence." Matt said. "I hope I will be up to the task."
"I think I'm more than qualified for being in the team," Rico boasted. "I scored best at every test back in my unit, and those tests were harder than the ones we did when we were chosen for this team."
"I heard that crap before." Hondo snapped. He had been very reserved up to now, keeping mostly to himself, but Rico's words seemed to provoke him. "Strength and stamina alone won't secure you a position in the team. It's what you got between your ears that matters"
Rico wasn't impressed.
"Aw, you either got what it takes, or you don't."
"You think you got what it takes?" Hondo challenged.
For a moment there were tension in the dayroom, there could be a fight, but Matt was quick to break it up.
"Settle down, men!" he ordered. "It's not me that you're going to have to impress to be selected for the Special Missions Force. There will be a group of experts from the World Unification Alliance who has the final say, all judging on your performance during these three months of training."
He let his eyes fall upon everyone present in the room.
"I'm going to fill you all in a little about what kind of people that will make it into this team." He said sharply. "It is not going to be the one with the loudest mouth, but the people who aspires to be the best they can be in the best team they can aspire to. You have to be able to work without supervision and work just as well in a team."
He fastened his eyes on Rico and Hondo and added with a voice sharp as a knife.
"The ones that does not fit in, will get sent back home with the next flight!"
Both Rico and Hondo lowered their gaze. For Matt this was important in more than one way. First and foremost, it had taken care of the possible fight, but equally important was the fact that he had immediately put respect into the trainees, so they knew who was in charge.
Next day the trainees were tumbling down the obstacle course in their training gear. Marvin Rico and Calhoun Burns raced.
"Trakker must have need of a second in command once the team is complete," Rico puffed. "I'm gunning for that position!"
"You heard what McLean said yesterday," Calhoun replied. "You got to have more than just muscle power to be suitable for that job."
"Are you one of those big minds, Cal?" Rico asked.
"I'm a structural engineer an expert in urban environments." Calhoun pointed out. "My mind is trained to devise and polish plans for structures as well as strategies."
The two ran up a ramp, grabbed the ropes and swung across a ditch to a platform, there was one trap left until the course was complete. They prepared to leap.
"Coming through!"
Gloria Baker, her two ponytails spinning from her head, jumped over them from behind. Both Rico and Calhoun tumbled into the mud. They watched, chagrined, as Gloria reached the end of the course effortlessly.
She looked down at the two mud covered men and laughed, delighted with herself, and just to mock them a bit, she moonwalked on the platform in a form of victory dance.
Rico stared at her.
"That just bites it, man!" he said. "Beaten by a girl!"
"You either got what it takes, or you don't." Gloria mocked, before leaping down from the platform.
Later the same day the recruits were all gathered in the gym, they sat in a ring around a mat. A large muscular man with short brown hair walked out in the middle of their ring. Sergeant Stillman introduced him as Physical Officer Leon Hall.
"Yummy!" Katrina whispered to Gloria.
"Doesn't do anything for me." Gloria, who sat next to Paul replied.
"The physical fitness program is designed to make sure that all of you have the strength and stamina to safely perform your job." Leon explained. "Un-armed self-defence was part of your elementary training, but you will need to undergo specialist training that will equip you with the necessary basic skills to go on operations."
He looked around at the gathered trainees, measuring them up. His eyes fell on Jacques LaFleur. A Canadian trainee that was very tall, possibly over six foot two and very muscular. Like Hondo he did not talk much, but when he did speak, what he had to say was usually worth hearing. He was an expert in natural disasters and harsh terrain rescue operations.
"Do you think you got what it takes to knock me down?" Leon asked. "Come up here!"
Jacques got up on his feet as Leon crooked his finger at him.
The Canadian charged, but his first strike hit empty air, as the instructor sidestepped him. Leon grabbed Jacques arm in an attempt to throw him to the floor, but the trainee countered the manoeuvre. He side-stepped the instructor, pivoted and grabbed his right hand at the wrist with both hands. Continuing the pivoting motion, he drove his hip into the attacker's abdomen and flipped him forward by straightening his arm as he followed through.
"Very good." Leon said as he patted him on the arm. "Expertly done judo manoeuvre."
Jacques returned to his seat, while the other trainees applauded his performance.
"Enough demonstrating." Leon decided. "I'm now going to put you all into pairs. Sergeant Stillman, if you'd like to help me…"
They moved through the trainees, matching up partners. Gloria was paired up with Marvin Rico, who saw his chance to get even for the humiliation she had served him earlier on the obstacle course.
"I'll try not to hurt you to badly!" he told her.
"I'll appreciate that." Gloria replied.
The two got into defensive positions, but it was Gloria who was the aggressor.
She found a weakness in his guard and knocked his arms away. Before he had the chance to retaliate, she moved in, and hit him with a tsuppari – an open-palm sumo slap uppercut.
She took a step back, not wanting to do too much damage, but Rico were enraged and came at her with a vengeance. She blocked a series of roundhouses by up and down parries, then ducked under another haymaker and countered with a spinning back kick. She thrust her right hand and arm through under Rico´s armpit, then bent her upper body forward, pushing her hips back and pulled him down with both her arms over her right shoulder in a Seoinage – the back-carry throw. An expert judo manoeuvre.
Around them, all sparring between the other trainees had stopped. Everyone was checking this out. Matt had taken a step forward to intervene, but Sergeant Stillman detained him.
"Let them duke it out," he advised. "I'm a fairly good judge at these things and I would say that young Rico is over matched. This lesson could be vital to him."
But others moved in to break up the fight. Bishop, Paul Knight, and Buddie Hawks forced themselves between the two to separate them.
"Settle down!" Buddie hissed. "Do you want to get thrown out of the team or something?"
"I don't like to be bested by a chick!" Rico growled.
"That's not a welcome attitude in this unit, Rico!" Matt said sharply. "Any more outbursts like that and you can pack your gear and get on the first flight back to your own unit, do you understand?"
Rico caught the looks from his fellow trainees, the angriest one came from Paul Knight. He forced himself to relax.
"Yes, sir." He said. "I apologize. It won't happen again."