Chapter 7
Donovan
Cole had them formed up outside the bunkhouse right after breakfast.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “In order for you to solve complex problems, you need to know what tools you have available. That is why we will take account of all your gear. I want every single piece of gear you were issued laid out neatly in front of you so we can conduct an inventory.”
They looked at one another. Nobody moved.
“Now,” I said.
They ran. Back to the bunkhouse, through the door, and out again, hauling rucks and loose gear in their arms. They were slow about it and loud about it, but they got there.
Twelve tarps went down in a ragged line, and the contents of twelve rucks came out after them in varying states of organization.
Cole stood at the front with the list. Andrew and I moved through the line, walking among the rangers, reviewing their layouts as we went.
“Here’s how this works,” I said. “We’re going to call out each item on your issued gear list. When you hear it, you hold it up at arm’s length in front of you. If you don’t have it, you stand there with empty hands.”
Cole held up the list. “Weapon,” he said.
Twelve rifles came up. Thank God they all have their rifles, at least.
“Canteens. You were issued two.”
Most held up a pair. A few held up one. One ranger held up nothing at all and stared at his own palm like the canteens might still materialize.
“First aid kit.”
Nine. Three missing.
“Knife.”
Ten. Two gone.
Cole kept going. Poncho, compass, flashlight, radio battery, rations. The list was long, and the results didn’t improve. By the time he reached the end, he lowered the page.
“Before we started this, I told you something, and I’m going to say it one more time so it’s clear. If you cannot keep track of your own gear, you cannot be trusted to keep track of the animals you are out here to protect.” He looked at the ranger with no canteens. “Where are they?”
“I can’t remember.”
“You can’t remember.” Cole glanced down the line at the others standing with empty hands. “Maybe we need something to help you all remember.” He nodded at Andrew. “Take down who’s missing what.”
Andrew walked the line with a notebook, stopping at each ranger who’d come up short. He wrote names and items without comment. When he was done, he tore out the page and handed it to me. Seven rangers. A dozen missing items between them.
Cole nodded at Andrew, who picked up the canvas sack we’d brought and upended it. River stones tumbled across the dirt, heavy, smooth, each one larger than a fist.
“Every missing item gets replaced with one of these,” I said. “Every morning when you ruck up for the march, these go in with the rest of your gear. They stay in your ruck until the missing item is found or replaced, and I don’t care if that takes weeks.”
I picked up two stones and held them out to the ranger who couldn’t remember where his canteens went.
“These are your canteens now. They don’t hold water.”
He took them reluctantly.
Andrew worked down the list, matching rocks to names. By the time he was done, at least a dozen rocks had gone out across seven rangers, and a few of them were reconsidering their life choices.
“This is how every morning starts,” Cole said. “Get used to it.”
I caught Zayn at the edge of my vision, full kit, nothing missing, nothing out of place. “Pack it up,” I said. “Rocks included. Everything in your rucks. You’ve got two minutes.”
They packed.
“Listen up,” Andrew said. “You’re marching to the baobab split on the southeast track. That’s about eight kilometers out. Cole’s driving ahead to meet you there. When you arrive, he inspects your kit again. Then you march back.”
“The sooner you get back, the sooner you eat lunch,” I said. “Chow closes when it closes. If you’re not back in time, you don’t eat.” The rangers looked from one to another. No one wanted to miss a meal, not when the job had so few perks.
“Andrew and I will be following behind in a safety vehicle,” I said. “In case anyone needs medical evacuation.”
“And Donovan is picking the music in the truck,” Andrew added with a chuckle. “So don’t think for a second that riding in the safety vehicle will be more comfortable than ruck marching.”
Cole climbed into his Land Cruiser and pulled out.
Zayn started at the front of the pack, and the others fell in behind him, forming two columns of six.
They stepped off into the morning heat. Baraka was near the front, his long stride eating ground.
Jomo was at the back of the right column, the clubfoot pulling at his gait.
Andrew and I gave them a hundred meters and then followed in the second vehicle, rolling slow, keeping them in sight.
Jomo fell behind within the first kilometer. The gap between him and the man ahead of him opened and kept opening. His bad foot turned his ankle with every stride.
“Do you think he’ll quit?” Andrew said from the passenger seat.
“I don’t know.”
“That foot has to be killing him.”
“It has got to be miserable.”
Andrew was quiet for maybe ten seconds, which for him was an act of restraint.
“So,” he said. “The redhead.”
“Don’t.”
“Do you think she prefers the Prince of Paris or the Marsh Man look she saw last night?”
I didn’t answer. Whatever Sarah Calloway had probably thought of me in Paris, last night had rewritten it.
“She may like the strong and silent type,” Andrew said, “but I think it would show great strength if you used your words to talk to her.”
“We have work to do.”
“Just think about it.”
We drove in silence after that. Ahead of us, Jomo kept the same grinding pace, alone on the track, the rest of the column long gone around the bend.
At the midpoint, Cole had the front-runners lined up and was already going through their rucks.
Jomo came in last by a wide margin, drenched through, his shirt stuck to his back.
He stopped in front of Cole, bent forward with his hands on his knees, breathing in long, shaking pulls.
We pulled in behind him and killed the engine.
Nobody had dropped a rock. Nobody had ditched kit along the trail. Cole checked Jomo’s ruck without a word. Everything was there.
Andrew and I drove back ahead of the column.
Cole followed in the rear this time. We spent the next hour scouting obstacle-course materials and found what we needed: two downed acacia trunks that would take four men to move, a stack of bald tires behind the bunkhouse, fifty meters of old rope in the vehicle bay, a cargo net under a tarp behind the vet facility, and three empty oil drums beside the generator housing.
We marked what we’d use and left it for the rangers to haul.
By midmorning, the first rangers started coming back in.
Baraka led the pack, barely winded. Three more came in close behind him.
Then a gap, and the middle of the group filtered in over the next ten minutes, sweating, breathing hard, a couple of them walking the last stretch with their hands on their knees.
We sent each one to drop their kit and get some chow.
Then a longer gap.
Andrew and I stood at the edge of camp and waited. The dirt road ran straight for half a kilometer before it bent behind a stand of trees, and for a while, there was nothing on it.
Then Cole’s Land Cruiser came around the bend, slow, rolling at a walking pace. And ahead of it, alone on the track, Jomo. Still moving. Still at the same pace.
He crossed into camp and stopped. Cole pulled up behind him and killed the engine.
“He never stopped,” Cole said, stepping out. “He’s got some spirit.”
Andrew and I had seen the same thing from the vehicle on the way out.
We’d all been through selection pipelines that washed out ninety percent of the men who tried. We knew what it looked like when a man’s body was telling him to quit and he didn’t listen.
The rangers who’d come in first had already eaten by the time Jomo crossed into camp. Chow closed when it closed, and he hadn’t made it back in time.
I saw Andrew catch him at the edge of the path. The limp was worse than it had been that morning. Andrew said something I couldn’t hear and pressed a protein bar into his hand, then walked away. Jomo stood there holding it, staring after him.
We formed everyone up after they’d dropped their kits and explained the plan for the afternoon. They were going to build an obstacle course. One they would love to hate.
“First things first,” Cole said. “We need materials. There are two downed acacia trunks past the vehicle bay. A pile of tires behind the bunkhouse. Rope in the vehicle bay. A cargo net behind the vet facility. Three oil drums by the generator housing. Bring all of it to the clearing south of the bunkhouse.”
They moved out in groups, hauling everything to a single staging area.
Andrew walked them to the first station, the acacia trunks.
“Balance beam,” he said. “One log, end to end, off the ground. Use the rope to lash your braces. I want it solid enough that a man can walk the full length without it shifting.”
He walked them to the next clearing. “Low-crawl lane. Cargo net pegged tight, six inches off the dirt. Peg spacing every two feet. If the net sags, you did it wrong.”
At the third site, he pointed at the stacked logs. “Ten-foot wall. Lash it tight, no handholds. You go over it as a team, or you don’t go over it.”
The fourth was the island crossing. He set three oil drums in the dirt with gaps between them and dropped two planks that weren’t long enough to bridge any of them on their own. “Figure out the sequence. I’m not giving you that part.”
Hauling the first log took eight of them. Zayn stepped in without raising his voice, put Baraka at the heavy end, spread the rest along the length, and the log moved.
Baraka put his back into it. The man was built for carrying, and when his hands were full and his legs were working, the mouth stayed shut. He shouldered weight that would have taken two of the smaller rangers and didn’t make a show of it.