training. And I've never trained a woman. Neither have any of the boys. This ought to be . . . interesting.
Terry had considered and rejected the time honored method of inflicting hell on the new recruit. It wasn't that he or his boys objected in principle; after all, they'd all been through it so many times and so many ways that most of them had lost count. Rather, it was just that to get any good effect from a hell week simply took time, a week or two. And they didn't have it.
Instead . . .
'Fifteen minutes to get into running gear, Miss Potter,' Terry said. 'The boss said you were probably fit enough. I want to make sure. You can change in the house.'
When Phillie finished throwing up, about one hour (plus the six minutes' changing time) and seven miles later, one of Terry's teammates was standing by with an assortment of guns, some of them taken from Stauer's little armory, but rather more than that from the boys' own collections.
'Miss Potter,' announced the very broad shouldered and very black Master Sergeant (Ret.) Robert 'Buckwheat' Fulton, 'there is no time to make you a marksman. Instead, I am going to familiarize you on these weapons, to include assembly and disassembly, cleaning, and use in close quarters battle. It is unlikely you will have to use any of these, or anything like them, except in close in, personal defense. Pay attention . . . '
Phillie's ears were ringing, despite the earplugs Fulton had insisted on, and every nail on her fingers was broken but for one. She was dirty, greasy, and pretty sure she smelled bad. It didn't seem to bother any of the men at the lodge, however. And she was so tired.
'This is a GPS, Miss Potter,' said former warrant officer Jose 'Little Joe' Venegas, standing perhaps five feet, five in his boots. Little Joe laid the device on the table in front of her. 'You may have something like it in your car. This will be different.' He next picked up a map, announcing, 'This is a one over fifty thousand scale map of this area.' Replacing the map on the table, he picked up a green cylinder with some projections. 'And this is a compass . . . '
D-118
They'd finally let Phillie get some sleep, sometime after three in the morning. And awakened her at five- thirty.
'This is a protective mask, Miss Potter . . . '
'All clear . . . GAS!'
'This is a knife, Miss Potter . . . '
'This is body armor, Miss Potter, and these are the ceramic inserts that supplement it. Put it on . . . '
'These are practice hand grenades, Miss Potter . . . '
'Miss Potter,' said Sergeant First Class (Ret.) Rob 'Rattus' Hampson, a Special Forces Medic, 'you are already medical personnel. I won't waste time, but you need to know how to do some things that are the same as done in an ER, but without the ER's facilities, and with a lot more injured folks than there are people to help them . . . '
D-118, San Antonio, Texas
' . . . the Magellan's surveyor is already looking the ship over,' Ed Kosciusko explained. 'It's fairly new; I don't expect his crew to find any problems.'
'You're absolutely certain you can get the landing craft down into the water with the just the one crane?' Stauer asked.
'It's technically a gantry, Wes. And, no, when you have one of anything then there's always the chance of failure. But every other ship Gordo and I came up with that had more than one was suboptimal for launching aircraft. Those things get in the way. This is the only one we found that was available, at a reasonable price to lease, for a reasonable time, that was also long enough to create an airstrip atop the containers.'
'Crew?'
'Gonna join me in Hong Kong,' Ed replied. 'And no, they don't know anything except that I asked them to crew for me.'
'Okay. Scares me, though, just one . . . '
The door to Stauer's apartment flew open, showing darkness lit by streetlights beyond. In walked Phillie. She was dirty. Her face had several abrasions. Both knees of her pants were ripped, and the left one hung down several inches. Reilly, standing near the door made a waving motion under his nose, so apparently she stank, too.
'Fuck you all,' she said, loud enough to be heard over the entire place. Without another word, she began walking straight to the master bedroom. The sound of running water began and didn't stop for a long time.
'How'd she do, Terry?' Stauer asked as Welch followed her in by about a minute behind.
Welch smiled broadly. 'Not bad for the time we had. Give us a few months and she could find a place on a B Team. She's a good girl.'
'Thanks, Terry. You're boys ready to move out to Myanmar?'
'Yeah, all set. I was concerned about evacuation, but Cruz is going to get the best Hips, piloted by him and his Russian pal, sitting on the Thai side of the border until we call. If Inning's lawyer will play along-and I am betting that Victor picked his lawyer based on his utter lack of principle-then it should be okay.'
Ralph Boxer took Terry's hand and placed in it a card. 'Memorize this and destroy it. It is a valuable contact within Burma.'
Stauer was waiting when Phillie finally came out of the shower. She seemed like a sleepwalker. He stood, being a gentleman and all, and said, 'I'm told you did pretty well. To the extent it was a test, and it mostly was, you passed.'
She shambled over to him, put her arms around his neck, laid her head against his chest, and began to cry. 'Oh, Wes, it was awful.'
CHAPTER TEN
There is another huge structural problem for UNHCR,
for every agency, and that's the relief budgets.
The emergency budgets are always easier to get than
development. So you can get the emergency money
with hardly any trouble. Development funds are much
