Page 204 of The Black Trilogy

Nate came with us, his usual happy self. People had obviously been informed of our arrival because a small crowd gathered to watch.

“Why is there an audience?” I asked.

“The last woman to attempt this got picked up by an ambulance before she got halfway around,” Nate told me. “I guess they’re looking for some entertainment.”

As I stood around at the start, wearing a pair of woodland BDUs tailored to fit me, I heard people whispering. It made me nervous, something I was unaccustomed to.

“She’s tiny—no way she’s getting round,” one guy said.

“What’s this? Barbie does Navy?” another commented.

“She’s with Black,” a third put in. “Would he have brought her if she didn’t stand a chance?”

And so it went on. “Are they running a pool on me?” I whispered to Black.

“I’ve just bet a hundred bucks that you’ll get around in twelve minutes.”

Great, no pressure or anything.

“Go,” Black said.

First came the parallel bars. I had to shuffle along them, hop through a bunch of tyres, then vault over a wall higher than my head. And they called that the low wall? At least there was a rope to help me over the aptly named high wall that came next, but my arms burned by the time I reached the top. I got a mouthful of sand as I crawled under the barbed wire that came after it and headed for the cargo net.

“Two minutes,” Black called from behind me. The git wasn’t even puffing. The net stretched into the sky, almost as high as Riverley, it seemed like. Thankfully, I’d had some practice climbing up and down the balconies to avoid Alex and his boxing gloves.

The balance logs were easy, but the next obstacle not so much. That involved swinging from one rope to another via a hoop in the middle, but my arms weren’t long enough. In the end, I leapt for it, grasping the ring by the tips of my fingers.

“Four minutes.”

Next up came the beams that earned the course its moniker. I had to hop from one to the next, but if the gap was close enough to jump, the next log was too high. A series of wild leaps and a lot of luck got me over them. I glanced back in time to see Black and Nate springing between them gracefully, barely breaking a sweat.

The weaver was next, an arrangement of horizontal beams I had to wriggle under and over a few feet off the ground. I cracked my hip off one and didn’t bother to muffle my curse.

Black laughed behind me. “Get on with it.” What did he think I was doing? “Six minutes.”

The rope bridge gave me a welcome break—I’d come across worse than that in the kiddie park in London—but the climb up a series of four platforms, each one six feet higher than the last, nearly killed me. Being shorter than the average SEAL left me at a definite disadvantage. To get down, I slithered along a zip line on my stomach. Navy men, it seemed, weren’t allowed the “zip” part.

“Eight minutes.”

The monkey bars came next, and I paused to wipe the blood off my hands. I’d cut my fingers on the rope, and if I wasn’t careful, the wetness would cause me to slip.

The second lot of tyres and the wall I had to traverse sideways wouldn’t have caused me a problem if I’d had to tackle them at the beginning, but looking up at the vertical surface after the horrors I’d already been through, I almost quit. I doubled over, hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath.

Black paused beside me while Nate carried on. “You can do it. You’re not stopping now.” He crouched beside me. “I’m not carrying you.”

No way would I suffer that indignity. I straightened up and leapt across the wall before stumbling over the finish line in…

“Ten minutes.” Black turned to the crowd. “Pay up, boys.”

I leaned against a log, panting a sigh of relief that I hadn’t needed medical intervention or let womankind in general down. I wanted to collapse, but that would have made me look weak.

One of the Navy instructors came over and clapped me on the back, nearly bringing me to my knees.

“I suppose you’re planning to keep her?” he said to Black.

“Yes,” he replied, the king of one-word answers.

“Shame. I’m sure the people at your old unit would be interested in offering her a job.”

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