Chapter 9
F.O.B. Kilo - Eight Days In Country
Eight days into the embed, and Rachel still hadn’t earned more than a grunt from most of the team. There were no nods over morning coffee or shared glances in passing, just the unyielding wall of silence that came with being the outsider, a barrier these men had no intention of lowering.
It wasn’t about orders. It was trust, and trust here felt like a locked gate she had to try and pick.
Each morning started with stiff muscles and the weight of her vest biting into tender shoulders.
Her legs carried the dull ache of miles climbed on uneven ground.
Her palms had toughened. She had honestly never been this tired and sore before in her life.
She had documented the aftermath of war for years. The mass graves, burned-out villages, women digging through rubble with torn hands while gunfire echoed in the distance. She had stood in craters still warm from explosions.
This, however, was different. She’d never been embedded with a SEAL team before. The rhythm these men moved with didn’t leave room for outsiders. You had to sync to the rhythm of the team without disrupting its shape.
The days stripped her down. Sun that scalded and pushed heat through her vest. Nights that dropped cold fast enough to sting down to her bones. Dust clung to everything.
When the team moved, she followed. Over ridgelines. Through narrow valleys. Pack heavy. Sweat cutting lines down her back. Her steps never faltered. She asked for nothing and expected nothing. Praise wasn’t part of the deal, and she knew it.
And even by day eight, the silence around her held firm. The SEALs weren’t impressed.
***
Day 10 In Country
They stopped along a narrow rise just off the trail, where the desert rolled out in flat, colorless waves. The quiet settled into the dust with them, thick as the heat, leaving every breath hanging too close to their skin.
Exhaustion was setting in. Ghost saw it clearly, Rogue's slumped shoulders, Reaper working stiffness from his hands. Torch wiped sweat away and forced a grin for Rachel that didn't nothing to hide how wiped he was.
Rachel lifted her canteen and finished what little was left before clipping it back to her belt. Dust had worked its way into every crease of her gear, her lashes, vest, the line of her jaw. Her shirt stuck to her back, boots swallowed in sand, but she kept her stance sure.
“She’s still upright,” Rogue muttered.
“More stubborn than smart,” Reaper said.
Brick adjusted the sling on his rifle. “Thought she’d have tapped out halfway through yesterday.”
Ghost watched her from behind mirrored lenses, the glare off them hiding the fact that he was studying every small tell.
Ten days under a sun that normally chewed people to pieces, and she still hadn’t given him the signs he expected.
There was no hesitation, no slack in her step, nothing that said the desert was too hard.
Most civilians cracked early, but not her.
A strand of hair stuck to her cheek, catching a dull flash of copper under the grime.
She should’ve looked rough, all of them did, but somehow she didn’t.
Her cheeks were flushed, a slow shine of sweat gathering along her collar, and Ghost looked too long.
Let the thought drift elsewhere, imagining that same flush in a different context entirely.
He shut it down hard. Wrong place, wrong timing, too dangerous in more ways than one.
Rachel turned and caught him watching. “What?” she asked, voice steady, not giving him room to sidestep it.
Before he could answer, Torch jumped on the silence.
“Keep slamming water like that, Parker, and you’ll be pissing behind a Humvee in an hour. That’s the glamorous part no one puts in the brochure.”
Rachel didn’t miss a beat. “You can demonstrate. I’ll judge your form.”
Torch barked a laugh. “If you’re grading, I’ll even let you measure it.”
Rogue laughed, “I’ll show you something worth measuring”
Brick snorted.
Echo shook his head. “You morons flirt like you have heat-stroke.”
Torch only grinned wider. “I’m providing transparency, that’s all.”
“You’ll get smoked if you keep running your mouth,” Reaper said.
Ghost walked past and clipped Torch on the back of the head, sharp enough to make the point, not enough to hurt.
“Knock it off.”
Torch winced, still grinning. “Worth it.”
Rachel’s smile faltered the moment she glanced up and found Ghost’s eyes on her.
He drew a hand to his face and lifted his sunglasses, brushing dust from the lens, but the motion felt too deliberate to be just that.
For a breath his eyes were uncovered, and the look he gave her landed hard.
It was intense, heated, and edged with jealousy.
It flickered through before he could lock it down.
The sight of it pulled something tight inside her, a sharp drop low in her stomach, because it meant he wasn’t untouched by this thing dragging between them.
He felt it too, no matter how cleanly he tried to hide it.
Then the sunglasses were back in place, shutting her out again.
Ghost didn’t give her a second look after the shades slipped back into place. He shifted his rifle, set his stance, and let out a short breath that barely moved the air. Whatever slipped between them, he wasn’t about to let it sit there in front of the others.
“Gear up,” he said, voice low but carrying. “We’re moving.”
Torch straightened first, muttering under his breath as he adjusted his pack straps.
Rogue and Reaper fell in without comment, the heat swallowing whatever thoughts they might’ve had about the exchange.
Brick kicked sand off his boots and checked his weapon, a quiet clack as the latch clicked back into place.
Rachel adjusted the strap on her camera bag, pulse still not calmed, and fell in with the group. Ghost didn’t look at her again, but she could feel the shift in him.
***
Day 15 In Country
The wind hit in pulses, each whip of wind carrying with it the sharp sting of sand. It made the sand feel more like metal filings, biting through the weave of her scarf and clinging to the inside of her mouth.
Rachel crouched beside the dented crate, pressing herself into its shadow.
The metal vibrated with each gust, a dull rattle she felt through her knee more than heard.
Her legs had locked up hours ago, tendons straining behind her knees.
Parts of her back had gone numb, nerves giving up.
The camera strap had carved a groove into her shoulder, raw and burning, but she didn't bother adjusting it.
Her goggles barely helped. The surface was so scratched the world came through in streaks, the storm turning everything into smeared shapes. Dust still worked its way inside the seal, crawling along her cheekbones and sticking to her lashes until each blink grated.
The SEALs sat like shapes hunched in the storm-light, goggles dimmed by the sand collecting on them, their shemaghs wrapped tight over their mouths.
Ghost stood a few steps off, leaning one boot into the crate, he looked like a statue.
His arms were folded, shoulders broad beneath layers of dust-caked fabric.
He tracked the horizon in slow, measured arcs.
The storm didn’t seem to hit him the same way it hit everyone else; the wind slid off him, the sand stuck but didn’t seem to register.
He held himself like the world had to reach a higher threshold to even qualify as uncomfortable.
Frost nudged Brick with his elbow, sand sliding off his sleeve. “Last embed tapped out faster than this,” he muttered. “Wouldn’t leave the wire unless she had a Humvee waiting and dinner on the schedule.”
Brick didn’t disagree. “Yeah. Couldn’t keep her in the field past an hour.” His tone stayed flat, clearly it was an unpleasant experience.
Rachel didn’t turn, keeping her focus on the storm, but the comment settled low in her stomach, a quiet acknowledgement that they weren’t slotting her in with the reporters who needed escorts and curfews anymore.
“You boys done whispering about me?” Her voice came out rough, torn open by sand and hours of silence.
Torch huffed a laugh behind his shemagh, the sound breaking into static as the wind caught it. “Just surprised we’re not dragging you out by your boots yet.”
Rachel shifted enough to brace her elbow on her thigh, repositioning the camera so its weight pressed more evenly against her ribs. The movement sent a prickle of returning blood through her fingers. “This doesn’t even crack my top five.”
A few laughs slipped out.
Reaper flexed his gloved fingers, working the stiffness out. He gave her a brief look through his sand covered goggles. “She might be the real deal, folks.”
She smirked and rolled her eyes at Reaper, eliciting another round of small laughs.
The next gust shoved against her shoulders hard enough to rock her. She planted her boots deeper, grounding herself in the shifting dirt. Her knees trembled once, a quick, traitorous pulse she smothered immediately. Her lungs burned with every swallow scraped.
She reminded herself to keep breathing slow, controlled, even though each inhale felt like dragging dust through a cracked funnel. It was at this point she realized her scarf was useless. She quickly realized why the SEALs preferred the shemagh.
Rachel felt the weight of Logan’s attention long before she turned her head. When she finally lifted her gaze, he was already watching her. His eyes were clear despite the sand, holding hers with fixed intensity.
She tried to keep her face unreadable, trying not to give away how fast her heart was racing.
Torch finally pushed off his crate and trudged through the sand toward her, one hand digging into his pack. Sand clung to every seam of his gear. He stopped close enough that she could see the red chafing at the bridge of his nose.