Page 37 of Finally Mine
The cheering from the tire flip zone caught his attention, and he pulled out his field glasses to watch Luke hefting a truck tire that came to chest height. “Nice job, captain,” Aldo announced through his bullhorn.
All around him, men and women challenged themselves with physical feats of strength. Gritted teeth, dirt and sweat mingling on skin of every color. Accented “fucks” and “son of a bitches” rose up from the desert floor.
Shared suffering, he thought with satisfaction. It cemented relationships, built teams. These soldiers had each others’ backs by the nature of their deployment. But sweating through the dusty desert duty, the physical discomfort of deployment, missing everyone and everything that was important “back home” forged a different, deeper bond. They were brothers and sisters in a camo colored, duct-taped family that battled both boredom and life and death situations.
Aldo took this connection as seriously as he did the rigorous Guard training. To him, a good soldier didn’t only know how to tear down and rebuild their M-4. A good soldier loved the unit, thrived on the discomfort, and pushed all the harder because of it.
He set the example that he needed his team to live up to. Strength, positivity, loyalty. A whistle blew, and a cheer roared through the rag-tag crowd gathered at the finish line. O’Connell, a long-legged, battle-tested Irishman whose credits included amateur mixed martial arts titles, crossed the finish line six feet in front of the next closest competitor as he’d been favored to do.
Toward the end of the requisite thirty minutes of rest for the winner, the chant began.
“Mor-et-ta. Mor-et-ta.” The crowd increased and the chanting grew louder. This was their version of fun. A half-mile obstacle sprint in eight-million-degree heat under the unrelenting sun.
Aldo had a title to defend. Once every month or so during deployment, he organized the course, and he challenged the winner to a rematch. And he won. Always. Not because he was the fastest or the strongest. But he never let the possibility of losing enter his stubborn mind. He believed in victory.
His athleticism was well-honed, his body toned and trained or performance. It was as much a part of him as his loyalty. He was fast, strong, and ruthless. Characteristics, capabilities that served him well in all areas of his life.
It was his job to be the best, to set the example.
He crossed the hundred yards of dust and rocks, rolling his shoulders, stretching his chest as he went. O’Connell met him with a grim handshake. There were no trophies at stake. Just pride, which, to Aldo, was worth more than any award.
Second Lieutenant Steph Oluo gave them both a nod. “Gentleman,” she began grandly into the megaphone. “Once through the course. First one to cross the finish line wins. Any questions?”
There were none. Neither competitor wanted to waste their oxygen on words.
The crowd, half exhausted from 12-hour shifts and the other half just getting ready to begin another monotonous day, picked their favorites, alternating between cheers and trash talk.
He wouldn’t change a damn thing.
Aldo went through the course once more in his head. It was a circle, ending where it began, but between start and finish was a half mile and six obstacles. Aldo gave his quads one final stretch, feeling the muscle fire up under the strain.
He toed the dirt line with his boot next to O’Connell and let the crowd noise fall away. He could hear his breath, his heartbeat steady in his head. Instead of a pistol start, they went for drama, and two NCOs chucked lit flares into the dirt. Aldo shot off of the line like a bullet. He was a big guy. Speed didn’t come naturally. It came through constant hard-fought battle.
O’Connell was snapping at his heels as they rounded the first turn. Aldo’s body warmed and sang with the pace. His hands carved a knife-edge swale through the sweltering desert air, his arms pumping like a metronome. The Jeep tires were first. Two sets of tires, two-by-two. Aldo lifted his knees and jogged through them, fueled by his competitor in his peripheral vision.
They cleared the tires at the same time, taking off into dead sprints toward the Over Under Over, a pair of five-foot walls sandwiching a low crawl. He easily cleared the first wall, but the rocky desert floor was murder on his knees in the crawl. The pain motivated him.
Taking a sharp stone to the palm, Aldo pulled himself out from under the netting a second after O’Connell.
He made up time scrambling over the second wall and let his legs eat up the distance between them.
They hung together, neck and neck, swapping for the lead, never more than arm’s length from each other. O’Connell’s high school athleticism was showing, but so was his youth. His breath was coming in sharp heaves as he pushed himself into the red zone. Aldo would wait him out, make his move at the end when the twenty-something was gassed.
“You gonna puke?” O’Connell groaned as he heaved himself over the first sawhorse.
Aldo jumped it and the second one with gazelle-like grace. “Nope. You?” He took great pride in the fact that he didn’t sound winded.
“You’re playing with me, aren’t you, LT?” O’Connell gasped. He landed hard and came up running.
“I want you to feel that you’re doing well,” Aldo said conversationally.
“I really hate you, LT.”
Aldo laughed and launched himself at the last obstacle between them and the finish line. A ten-foot wall with ropes. He ignored his rope, running straight up the wall, and just when gravity kicked in, his fingers closed over the top. He pulled himself up and over and dropped into a crouch waiting until he heard O’Connell hit the ground next to him before taking off.
One hundred yards to the finish. His legs churned, arms pumped, every cell in his body fired to do its job and carry him across the finish line.
He was fucking alive and strong. And a winner.
