Ranger School
Title: Ranger School
Author: fleurlb
Fandom: Leverage
Rating: PG (language)
Characters: Eliot
Word Count: 3050
Spoilers: None - set pre-series
Warnings: Um, there’s a snake. Also, my motto is 'never let the facts get in the way of a good story', so I may have possibly taken some small liberties with how Ranger training words.
Disclaimer: I own nothing here (besides Charlie Mac) and am just having some fun.
Author’s Note: So, ziplocless very graciously donated money for help_pakistan in exchange for a story from me. She gave me some great ideas, but the story just refused to be written. Then, my baby ate my life and I embarrassingly fell further and further behind. Now that I’m slowly getting a small fraction of my life back, I realized that the reason I couldn’t write the story I wanted to write was because I had to write this story first. Downside, ziplocless’s story is still depressingly and mortifyingly late. Plus side, at least I’m make progressive even if I can’t make promises on when the ‘real’ story will be finished.
Summary: His Ranger buddy has a major personality flaw, but maybe, just maybe, Eliot will be able to get through the training without hurting the guy.
Eliot rolled into Ranger school confident that he could make it through the grueling experience. He wasn’t being cocky. He was being realistic. In his unit, he’d been known as Steamroller: single-minded and unstoppable. Eliot knew that all he just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other no matter how much his body wanted to quit, and he’d have his tab.
In the holding area before they were assigned their Ranger buddies, Eliot sized up his fellow servicemen. He was able to instantly identify the guy that he absolutely didn’t want to get lumped with. The guy was gangly and awkward with a lopsided grin, a shock of white-blonde hair that was somehow unkempt even though it was shorn close, and a mouth that never stopped. The joker held court like he was at an amateur stand-up night. Eliot rolled his eyes. He would put money on that guy being the first to crash out.
The training captain stepped out into the holding area. He tapped his clipboard against the wall a few times and all the Ranger candidates fell silent, all except that yapping fool. Eliot already felt a rage burning inside him, directed toward that unstoppable mouth. He tried to to keep himself centered on his father’s advice about keeping his anger leashed and muzzled.
After a brief welcome speech that focused on how many of them were going to crash out in the next three days, and for the lucky few that persevered, it would be two long, intensive months of brutal and exacting training. Soon, the training captain called out the names of the randomly assigned Ranger buddies. The candidates would pair up, shake hands, and head outside to line up for the first in a long series of physical fitness tests.
“McCarthy and Spencer.”
Eliot stepped forward, scanning the crowd to see who would be his partner in training. He heard the joker before he saw him.
“Hey man, really great to meet you, I’m Charlie McCarthy but you can call me Charlie Mac.” He grabbed Eliot’s hand and sandwiched it between his own. Eliot noticed that his fingers were long, almost fragilely skinny, and his skin was too soft for an Army man. The devil on his shoulder wondered idly about breaking one of those fingers to shut the guy up but Eliot just grimaced and extracted his hand, turning on his heel to head out to the exercise yard.
“Oh, man of few words, that’s cool. I can dig it. Strong silent type. I bet they called you John Wayne in your old unit. I liked that dude’s movies. You always know what you’re gonna get when you rent a John Wayne movie.”
Eliot wheeled around quickly and muscled the guy against the wall.
“Listen, you and me, we ain’t friends. I don’t even know you and already I want to break your fingers. What say you just keep your damn mouth shut and we concentrate on not washing out, okay?” Eliot poked a surprisingly muscular chest several times to punctuate the point.
Charlie Mac threw up his hands.
“Okay, okay. I got it, brother. No worries. I’ll take a vow of silence, right here, right now. Ah sure, it’ll be grand.” A faint Irish accent permeated Charlie’s words, something Eliot hadn’t noticed before. But he wasn’t going to ask. He headed out to the exercise yard, hoping that being saddled with such an annoying buddy wasn’t going to hurt his chances.
Charlie Mac’s vow of silence lasted exactly forty-seven seconds. When they hit the exercise yard, he’d started a running monologue of observations on the other Ranger candidates, the training captain, and the Ranger instructors. Eliot hissed at him several times to knock it off, but Charlie Mac seemed unable to stop himself.
Eliot stared stonily ahead, confident that when the exercises started, the need to breathe would overpower Charlie Mac’s nearly pathological need to talk. Eliot had never met anyone able to talk so incessantly and unnecessarily. On the plus side, it meant Charlie was super fit, ridiculously so. On the minus side, Eliot was ready to rip out the guy’s tongue with his bare hands.
When they bounced up from doing sit ups, Eliot elbowed Charlie Mac hard in the ribs.
“Ouch man, what the hell was that for?”
“You’re....still.....talking.” Eliot hated that he had to pant while getting the words out.
“Sorry man, I can’t help it. I talk when I get nervous. And I’m about as nervous as a turkey on Thanksgiving. So I talk. Can’t help myself. My granny always said that every person only gets a certain number of words to speak on this earth and I’m going to use mine up before I’m 30.”
“Hope she’s right.”
“Come again?”
“I hope your granny was right and you run out of words, soon.”
---//---
By dawn on the second day, 127 candidates had washed out. Charlie Mac was still going strong, as was his goddamn mouth. Eliot felt his anger powering him forward, especially as Charlie seemed hellbent on setting a record for the number of punishment pushups assigned to a Ranger candidate. The fool was even keeping a running total.
“Wow, that makes 850, buddy,” he announced after they’d added 25 for Charlie Mac talking over a Ranger instructor’s directions.
“Wanna make that a cool thousand?” asked the red-faced instructor.
“No, Ranger instructor, sir,” replied Eliot before Charlie Mac could open his mouth. Eliot was learning that he had to be fast. He grabbed his buddy’s elbow and propelled him toward the line for the combat water survival test.
Any hopes that Eliot had that Charlie Mac might have problems in the water were summarily dashed. The guy was a damn fish. He explained that he’d spent every summer in County Donegal, Ireland, where apparently the only thing to do was jump in a freaking cold Atlantic Ocean.
Charlie Mac likewise had no problems with heights, and he flew through the combat water survival assessment. Eliot didn’t have a head for heights. It was the part of the training that he’d dreaded the most, but he could hear Charlie Mac shouting for him, between pushups, and it had goaded him on. No way was he going to wash out if that guy was still in the program. Ain’t. Gonna. Happen.
Night came and they were given a brief sleep break. Eliot fell asleep to Charlie Mac’s running mouth and woke a few hours later to the same.
“What the hell, man, did you even sleep?” Eliot was already grumpy and he couldn’t see the day improving any. He wasn’t even sure it could be called day given that it was still dark out.
“Yeah, I got a little sleep. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that I talk in my sleep.”
“Beautiful,” grumbled Eliot, pulling on his boots.
Outside the barracks, the Ranger instructors distributed a map, compass, list of way points, and flashlight to each Ranger buddy team. They had two hours to hit each of the way points and make it to the end point. They were not to use the flashlights except to look at the map.
Eliot jostled Charlie Mac as they both tried to share the map. He finally sighed and relinquished the map, choosing instead to memorize the coordinates for the way points. He picked up the compass and watched the needle spin before settling on a position for north.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Baby, I was born ready.”
“Don’t call me baby if you want to keep all your teeth.” Eliot set off at a fast trot. He’d gone about 30 feet before he realized that it was completely silent. Charlie was blundering in the opposite direction.
“Charlie!” Eliot shouted after him, but his buddy’s ears apparently didn’t work as well as his mouth.
Eliot managed to catch up with the bumbling figure just before he plunged into the woods.
“Hey, Eliot. What’s going on?”
“You’re going in the wrong direction, for one. For two, you’ve got our map with you.”
“I do have the map. But I’m not going in the wrong direction.”
“Give me the map.”
“I will, but only because you’ll see you’re wrong.” Charlie Mac reached into his pants and pulled out the map.
“Aw man, I’m not touching that. You open it up.”
Charlie Mac rolled his eyes and unfolded the map. Eliot put the compass down and pointed to the first waypoint.
“Yeah it’s south. We’re headed south.”
“No, we’re headed north. Look at the arrow on the compass.”
A blush rose in Charlie Mac’s cheeks. “Maybe you should take the lead on this task.”
“Ya think?” Eliot pushed past his Ranger buddy and started jogging, trying to make up for the time they just lost.
“You seem to know your way around a map and a compass. Were you a Boy Scout? I bet you were an Eagle Scout, even though you don’t seem to be the type to help old ladies cross the street.”
“I’m the lead on this task, right?” asked Eliot, stopping abruptly enough that Charlie Mac crashed into his back.
“Absolutely. One hundred and ten percent. My fearless leader.”
“Then shut up. That’s an order.”
Eliot walked on, making buzzing sounds every time Charlie Mac attempted to say something. WIthin fifteen minutes, he finally shut up entirely. Eliot thought this might be his favorite task yet in Ranger school.
When they crossed the finish line, Charlie Mac wasted no time in opening his big mouth.
“Hey man, three minutes to spare. Pretty good navigating. Where did you learn to read a map? You know some day, all this will be obsolete? Satellites will make all this map reading completely unnecessary.”
“Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
Charlie Mac grinned. “You know, now that I think about it, you must be coming around to liking me. You could’ve just let me march off into the woods.”
“You had our map,” grumbled Eliot as he rolled his eyes. “Now seriously, shut up.”
---//---
By day three, Eliot was in a daze of exhaustion, but he was still holding steady, for the most part. He was sticking to his original game plan of just putting one foot in front of the other. Of course, that plan was made more difficult by having to endure Charlie Mac’s never-ending monologue, which by itself might not have been such a hardship. Eliot was well able to tune the guy out, after all.
But it was Charlie Mac’s jokester attitude that repeatedly landed them in hot water. Their punishment pushup total was a four-digit number that Eliot, for his own sanity, could not keep in his head. He’d realized around number 1,117 that he had to do the pushups, then let them go. Dwelling on them only made him furious and that was energy he could ill afford to expend right now, when the forced march loomed ahead of them.
A fifteen-mile march, while carrying full equipment, was all that stood between him and the next phase of Ranger training. He blinked as he realized that when he pictured himself crossing the finish line, Charlie Mac was right there next to him. Damn guy was even invading his day dreams now. At least he’d been silent.
“What’re you smiling about, buddy? My joke wasn’t that funny.”
“What joke, man? I wasn’t even listening to you. You’re like a car alarm that won’t stop going off - for my own sanity, I’ve tuned you out.”
“Oh look, it’s Spencer and McCarthy, gossiping like old women instead of getting ready for the march. You know what do, boys. 30. And keep the rucks on.”
Charlie’s mouth opened but Eliot elbowed him before he could buy them any more pushups. They finished the pushups and then fell in line for the march.
“How about that? Those 30 were definitely your fault, for once.”
“Yeah, well, don’t say I never gave you anything.”
Charlie Mac chuckled. “You’re kind of funny, Spencer, when you want to be.”
“You know what I want to be right now, Charlie?” Eliot looked over at his Ranger buddy.
“What?”
“Done with phase one. So what say we shut up and git’er done already?”
Charlie Mac hitched his ruck up higher and held out a hand for a high-five, which Eliot gave ungrudgingly. When the march started, they fell into an easy rhythm and Eliot was surprised to find himself asking his Ranger buddy the occasional question. When Charlie Mac wasn’t trying to fill every silence with a wall of words, he was actually a pretty entertaining guy.
It would be an overstatement to say that the 15-miles flew by, but they did pass more quickly than Eliot had expected. When they crossed the finish line, they were among the 37% that had completed the first phase of Ranger training. They were sweaty, dirty, and exhausted but relieved to have made it through.
“Now comes the hard part,” said Eliot, still doubled over from the exertion of jogging over the finish line.
“Oh man, why do you have to do that? Why do you have to bring me down when I’m finally happy about something?”
“Someone’s gotta do it, Charlie Mac. Hold your feet on the ground. What else are Ranger buddies for?”
---//---
Over the next several weeks, Eliot would have lost track of the days had Charlie Mac not been around to remind him. If Eliot was blessed with an internal compass, his Ranger buddy had an internal calendar. Days of the week meant nothing to them, but the accumulation of days meant everything.
They were making good progress in their training. Eliot had to grudgingly admit that had Charlie Mac not been needling him at the door of the airplane, he might not have found jumping out quite so easy. Nothing like having a guy making chicken noises in your ear to help you find your motivation to overcome your fear of heights.
Now, finally, they were finishing up the last few days of training. The dreaded Florida phase. A week of intensive rain and swamp training that culminated in a final raid. Eliot felt like he was running on the mere fumes of long-used adrenaline. The training had even taken a toll on Charlie Mac, whose mouth was still running, but not quite as unstoppably as in the first days of their training.
Now here they were, incredibly, undertaking that last mission. Eliot was in charge of their platoon and their mission was to secure the perimeter of the subject’s swamp hideaway while the other platoons raided the compound. He dispatched his team in pairs for the mission.
Even though he was in charge and could have selected anyone, he matched himself up with Charlie Mac, who had blessedly found the self-control to keep his mouth shut during missions. He also gave them the hardest, least desirable portion of the perimeter, a 100-yard stretch through waist-deep water at the back of the property.
The cold water was an effective way to keep them awake as they listened to the sounds of the raid going down. One bad guy tried to escape into the swamp but they easily disarmed him.
“Check your six, coming fast at you,” said Charlie Mac, a hint of barely disguised panic in his voice.
Eliot turned around but saw nothing although he could hear his Ranger buddy splashing through the swamp.
“Maintain discipline, soldier, there ain’t nothing there.” Eliot’s annoyance flared. They’d made it to the last day of Ranger training and now Charlie Mac was apparently losing his goddamn mind.
Charlie Mac arrived next to Eliot, his rifle turned around the wrong way and held out in front of him. His movements were steady and fast as he chopped at the surface of the water. Eliot finally saw the now stunned, possibly dead, body of a snake floating on the surface. “Shit. Is it poisonous?”
“Venomous,” corrected Charlie Mac as he pushed the floating body as far away as possible.
“Whatever,” grumbled Eliot.
“Yeah, it’s a cottonmouth. Aggressive bastards. Maybe we should move a little. You know, in case he wakes up.”
Eliot doubted the snake would be waking up any time soon, if ever, but he agreed that putting a few more yards between them was a good idea.
“Thanks, man. I didn’t see him at all.”
“What are Ranger buddies for?” Charlie Mac grinned. “Couldn’t have you getting bit in the ass on our last day of training. Be a damn shame.”
---//---
A few days later, Charlie Mac and Eliot were relaxing in the Gator Lounge with the other soon-to-be graduates of Ranger school. It was a Sunday, the Cowboys’ game was on the television, and life was good. Charlie Mac was entertaining almost everyone with a play-by-play, including of the commercials.
“McCarthy, if you don’t shut your trap, I’m gonna shut it for you,” growled Henderson, a Ranger from another platoon.
“Back off, Henderson, he’s just having a little fun. Focus on the game and you won’t even hear him,” said Eliot.
Henderson shook his head in disbelief. “Man, Spencer, you hate everybody. Why’re you sticking up for this fool?”
“Charlie Mac saved my life a few days ago. What has your lazy ass done for me lately?”
“To be fair, I didn’t save your life. Just your ass. And it’s what Ranger buddies are for,” said Charlie Mac.
“I don’t care what he saved. If my Ranger buddy had bought me over four thousand push-ups, I don’t think I’d be his buddy after training was over,” said Henderson.
Eliot shrugged. Two months ago, he would’ve said the same thing. But spending every living second with a guy, going through the same hardships, well, it changes you, smooths out your rough edges and teaches you to tolerate, even appreciate, what would have annoyed you in the past. As much as Eliot had wanted to break the guy’s fingers at the start of training, he knew now that he would do anything for him. It was a burden, a promise, and a comfort to know he’d always have Charlie Mac’s back.
Author: fleurlb
Fandom: Leverage
Rating: PG (language)
Characters: Eliot
Word Count: 3050
Spoilers: None - set pre-series
Warnings: Um, there’s a snake. Also, my motto is 'never let the facts get in the way of a good story', so I may have possibly taken some small liberties with how Ranger training words.
Disclaimer: I own nothing here (besides Charlie Mac) and am just having some fun.
Author’s Note: So, ziplocless very graciously donated money for help_pakistan in exchange for a story from me. She gave me some great ideas, but the story just refused to be written. Then, my baby ate my life and I embarrassingly fell further and further behind. Now that I’m slowly getting a small fraction of my life back, I realized that the reason I couldn’t write the story I wanted to write was because I had to write this story first. Downside, ziplocless’s story is still depressingly and mortifyingly late. Plus side, at least I’m make progressive even if I can’t make promises on when the ‘real’ story will be finished.
Summary: His Ranger buddy has a major personality flaw, but maybe, just maybe, Eliot will be able to get through the training without hurting the guy.
Eliot rolled into Ranger school confident that he could make it through the grueling experience. He wasn’t being cocky. He was being realistic. In his unit, he’d been known as Steamroller: single-minded and unstoppable. Eliot knew that all he just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other no matter how much his body wanted to quit, and he’d have his tab.
In the holding area before they were assigned their Ranger buddies, Eliot sized up his fellow servicemen. He was able to instantly identify the guy that he absolutely didn’t want to get lumped with. The guy was gangly and awkward with a lopsided grin, a shock of white-blonde hair that was somehow unkempt even though it was shorn close, and a mouth that never stopped. The joker held court like he was at an amateur stand-up night. Eliot rolled his eyes. He would put money on that guy being the first to crash out.
The training captain stepped out into the holding area. He tapped his clipboard against the wall a few times and all the Ranger candidates fell silent, all except that yapping fool. Eliot already felt a rage burning inside him, directed toward that unstoppable mouth. He tried to to keep himself centered on his father’s advice about keeping his anger leashed and muzzled.
After a brief welcome speech that focused on how many of them were going to crash out in the next three days, and for the lucky few that persevered, it would be two long, intensive months of brutal and exacting training. Soon, the training captain called out the names of the randomly assigned Ranger buddies. The candidates would pair up, shake hands, and head outside to line up for the first in a long series of physical fitness tests.
“McCarthy and Spencer.”
Eliot stepped forward, scanning the crowd to see who would be his partner in training. He heard the joker before he saw him.
“Hey man, really great to meet you, I’m Charlie McCarthy but you can call me Charlie Mac.” He grabbed Eliot’s hand and sandwiched it between his own. Eliot noticed that his fingers were long, almost fragilely skinny, and his skin was too soft for an Army man. The devil on his shoulder wondered idly about breaking one of those fingers to shut the guy up but Eliot just grimaced and extracted his hand, turning on his heel to head out to the exercise yard.
“Oh, man of few words, that’s cool. I can dig it. Strong silent type. I bet they called you John Wayne in your old unit. I liked that dude’s movies. You always know what you’re gonna get when you rent a John Wayne movie.”
Eliot wheeled around quickly and muscled the guy against the wall.
“Listen, you and me, we ain’t friends. I don’t even know you and already I want to break your fingers. What say you just keep your damn mouth shut and we concentrate on not washing out, okay?” Eliot poked a surprisingly muscular chest several times to punctuate the point.
Charlie Mac threw up his hands.
“Okay, okay. I got it, brother. No worries. I’ll take a vow of silence, right here, right now. Ah sure, it’ll be grand.” A faint Irish accent permeated Charlie’s words, something Eliot hadn’t noticed before. But he wasn’t going to ask. He headed out to the exercise yard, hoping that being saddled with such an annoying buddy wasn’t going to hurt his chances.
Charlie Mac’s vow of silence lasted exactly forty-seven seconds. When they hit the exercise yard, he’d started a running monologue of observations on the other Ranger candidates, the training captain, and the Ranger instructors. Eliot hissed at him several times to knock it off, but Charlie Mac seemed unable to stop himself.
Eliot stared stonily ahead, confident that when the exercises started, the need to breathe would overpower Charlie Mac’s nearly pathological need to talk. Eliot had never met anyone able to talk so incessantly and unnecessarily. On the plus side, it meant Charlie was super fit, ridiculously so. On the minus side, Eliot was ready to rip out the guy’s tongue with his bare hands.
When they bounced up from doing sit ups, Eliot elbowed Charlie Mac hard in the ribs.
“Ouch man, what the hell was that for?”
“You’re....still.....talking.” Eliot hated that he had to pant while getting the words out.
“Sorry man, I can’t help it. I talk when I get nervous. And I’m about as nervous as a turkey on Thanksgiving. So I talk. Can’t help myself. My granny always said that every person only gets a certain number of words to speak on this earth and I’m going to use mine up before I’m 30.”
“Hope she’s right.”
“Come again?”
“I hope your granny was right and you run out of words, soon.”
---//---
By dawn on the second day, 127 candidates had washed out. Charlie Mac was still going strong, as was his goddamn mouth. Eliot felt his anger powering him forward, especially as Charlie seemed hellbent on setting a record for the number of punishment pushups assigned to a Ranger candidate. The fool was even keeping a running total.
“Wow, that makes 850, buddy,” he announced after they’d added 25 for Charlie Mac talking over a Ranger instructor’s directions.
“Wanna make that a cool thousand?” asked the red-faced instructor.
“No, Ranger instructor, sir,” replied Eliot before Charlie Mac could open his mouth. Eliot was learning that he had to be fast. He grabbed his buddy’s elbow and propelled him toward the line for the combat water survival test.
Any hopes that Eliot had that Charlie Mac might have problems in the water were summarily dashed. The guy was a damn fish. He explained that he’d spent every summer in County Donegal, Ireland, where apparently the only thing to do was jump in a freaking cold Atlantic Ocean.
Charlie Mac likewise had no problems with heights, and he flew through the combat water survival assessment. Eliot didn’t have a head for heights. It was the part of the training that he’d dreaded the most, but he could hear Charlie Mac shouting for him, between pushups, and it had goaded him on. No way was he going to wash out if that guy was still in the program. Ain’t. Gonna. Happen.
Night came and they were given a brief sleep break. Eliot fell asleep to Charlie Mac’s running mouth and woke a few hours later to the same.
“What the hell, man, did you even sleep?” Eliot was already grumpy and he couldn’t see the day improving any. He wasn’t even sure it could be called day given that it was still dark out.
“Yeah, I got a little sleep. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that I talk in my sleep.”
“Beautiful,” grumbled Eliot, pulling on his boots.
Outside the barracks, the Ranger instructors distributed a map, compass, list of way points, and flashlight to each Ranger buddy team. They had two hours to hit each of the way points and make it to the end point. They were not to use the flashlights except to look at the map.
Eliot jostled Charlie Mac as they both tried to share the map. He finally sighed and relinquished the map, choosing instead to memorize the coordinates for the way points. He picked up the compass and watched the needle spin before settling on a position for north.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Baby, I was born ready.”
“Don’t call me baby if you want to keep all your teeth.” Eliot set off at a fast trot. He’d gone about 30 feet before he realized that it was completely silent. Charlie was blundering in the opposite direction.
“Charlie!” Eliot shouted after him, but his buddy’s ears apparently didn’t work as well as his mouth.
Eliot managed to catch up with the bumbling figure just before he plunged into the woods.
“Hey, Eliot. What’s going on?”
“You’re going in the wrong direction, for one. For two, you’ve got our map with you.”
“I do have the map. But I’m not going in the wrong direction.”
“Give me the map.”
“I will, but only because you’ll see you’re wrong.” Charlie Mac reached into his pants and pulled out the map.
“Aw man, I’m not touching that. You open it up.”
Charlie Mac rolled his eyes and unfolded the map. Eliot put the compass down and pointed to the first waypoint.
“Yeah it’s south. We’re headed south.”
“No, we’re headed north. Look at the arrow on the compass.”
A blush rose in Charlie Mac’s cheeks. “Maybe you should take the lead on this task.”
“Ya think?” Eliot pushed past his Ranger buddy and started jogging, trying to make up for the time they just lost.
“You seem to know your way around a map and a compass. Were you a Boy Scout? I bet you were an Eagle Scout, even though you don’t seem to be the type to help old ladies cross the street.”
“I’m the lead on this task, right?” asked Eliot, stopping abruptly enough that Charlie Mac crashed into his back.
“Absolutely. One hundred and ten percent. My fearless leader.”
“Then shut up. That’s an order.”
Eliot walked on, making buzzing sounds every time Charlie Mac attempted to say something. WIthin fifteen minutes, he finally shut up entirely. Eliot thought this might be his favorite task yet in Ranger school.
When they crossed the finish line, Charlie Mac wasted no time in opening his big mouth.
“Hey man, three minutes to spare. Pretty good navigating. Where did you learn to read a map? You know some day, all this will be obsolete? Satellites will make all this map reading completely unnecessary.”
“Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
Charlie Mac grinned. “You know, now that I think about it, you must be coming around to liking me. You could’ve just let me march off into the woods.”
“You had our map,” grumbled Eliot as he rolled his eyes. “Now seriously, shut up.”
---//---
By day three, Eliot was in a daze of exhaustion, but he was still holding steady, for the most part. He was sticking to his original game plan of just putting one foot in front of the other. Of course, that plan was made more difficult by having to endure Charlie Mac’s never-ending monologue, which by itself might not have been such a hardship. Eliot was well able to tune the guy out, after all.
But it was Charlie Mac’s jokester attitude that repeatedly landed them in hot water. Their punishment pushup total was a four-digit number that Eliot, for his own sanity, could not keep in his head. He’d realized around number 1,117 that he had to do the pushups, then let them go. Dwelling on them only made him furious and that was energy he could ill afford to expend right now, when the forced march loomed ahead of them.
A fifteen-mile march, while carrying full equipment, was all that stood between him and the next phase of Ranger training. He blinked as he realized that when he pictured himself crossing the finish line, Charlie Mac was right there next to him. Damn guy was even invading his day dreams now. At least he’d been silent.
“What’re you smiling about, buddy? My joke wasn’t that funny.”
“What joke, man? I wasn’t even listening to you. You’re like a car alarm that won’t stop going off - for my own sanity, I’ve tuned you out.”
“Oh look, it’s Spencer and McCarthy, gossiping like old women instead of getting ready for the march. You know what do, boys. 30. And keep the rucks on.”
Charlie’s mouth opened but Eliot elbowed him before he could buy them any more pushups. They finished the pushups and then fell in line for the march.
“How about that? Those 30 were definitely your fault, for once.”
“Yeah, well, don’t say I never gave you anything.”
Charlie Mac chuckled. “You’re kind of funny, Spencer, when you want to be.”
“You know what I want to be right now, Charlie?” Eliot looked over at his Ranger buddy.
“What?”
“Done with phase one. So what say we shut up and git’er done already?”
Charlie Mac hitched his ruck up higher and held out a hand for a high-five, which Eliot gave ungrudgingly. When the march started, they fell into an easy rhythm and Eliot was surprised to find himself asking his Ranger buddy the occasional question. When Charlie Mac wasn’t trying to fill every silence with a wall of words, he was actually a pretty entertaining guy.
It would be an overstatement to say that the 15-miles flew by, but they did pass more quickly than Eliot had expected. When they crossed the finish line, they were among the 37% that had completed the first phase of Ranger training. They were sweaty, dirty, and exhausted but relieved to have made it through.
“Now comes the hard part,” said Eliot, still doubled over from the exertion of jogging over the finish line.
“Oh man, why do you have to do that? Why do you have to bring me down when I’m finally happy about something?”
“Someone’s gotta do it, Charlie Mac. Hold your feet on the ground. What else are Ranger buddies for?”
---//---
Over the next several weeks, Eliot would have lost track of the days had Charlie Mac not been around to remind him. If Eliot was blessed with an internal compass, his Ranger buddy had an internal calendar. Days of the week meant nothing to them, but the accumulation of days meant everything.
They were making good progress in their training. Eliot had to grudgingly admit that had Charlie Mac not been needling him at the door of the airplane, he might not have found jumping out quite so easy. Nothing like having a guy making chicken noises in your ear to help you find your motivation to overcome your fear of heights.
Now, finally, they were finishing up the last few days of training. The dreaded Florida phase. A week of intensive rain and swamp training that culminated in a final raid. Eliot felt like he was running on the mere fumes of long-used adrenaline. The training had even taken a toll on Charlie Mac, whose mouth was still running, but not quite as unstoppably as in the first days of their training.
Now here they were, incredibly, undertaking that last mission. Eliot was in charge of their platoon and their mission was to secure the perimeter of the subject’s swamp hideaway while the other platoons raided the compound. He dispatched his team in pairs for the mission.
Even though he was in charge and could have selected anyone, he matched himself up with Charlie Mac, who had blessedly found the self-control to keep his mouth shut during missions. He also gave them the hardest, least desirable portion of the perimeter, a 100-yard stretch through waist-deep water at the back of the property.
The cold water was an effective way to keep them awake as they listened to the sounds of the raid going down. One bad guy tried to escape into the swamp but they easily disarmed him.
“Check your six, coming fast at you,” said Charlie Mac, a hint of barely disguised panic in his voice.
Eliot turned around but saw nothing although he could hear his Ranger buddy splashing through the swamp.
“Maintain discipline, soldier, there ain’t nothing there.” Eliot’s annoyance flared. They’d made it to the last day of Ranger training and now Charlie Mac was apparently losing his goddamn mind.
Charlie Mac arrived next to Eliot, his rifle turned around the wrong way and held out in front of him. His movements were steady and fast as he chopped at the surface of the water. Eliot finally saw the now stunned, possibly dead, body of a snake floating on the surface. “Shit. Is it poisonous?”
“Venomous,” corrected Charlie Mac as he pushed the floating body as far away as possible.
“Whatever,” grumbled Eliot.
“Yeah, it’s a cottonmouth. Aggressive bastards. Maybe we should move a little. You know, in case he wakes up.”
Eliot doubted the snake would be waking up any time soon, if ever, but he agreed that putting a few more yards between them was a good idea.
“Thanks, man. I didn’t see him at all.”
“What are Ranger buddies for?” Charlie Mac grinned. “Couldn’t have you getting bit in the ass on our last day of training. Be a damn shame.”
---//---
A few days later, Charlie Mac and Eliot were relaxing in the Gator Lounge with the other soon-to-be graduates of Ranger school. It was a Sunday, the Cowboys’ game was on the television, and life was good. Charlie Mac was entertaining almost everyone with a play-by-play, including of the commercials.
“McCarthy, if you don’t shut your trap, I’m gonna shut it for you,” growled Henderson, a Ranger from another platoon.
“Back off, Henderson, he’s just having a little fun. Focus on the game and you won’t even hear him,” said Eliot.
Henderson shook his head in disbelief. “Man, Spencer, you hate everybody. Why’re you sticking up for this fool?”
“Charlie Mac saved my life a few days ago. What has your lazy ass done for me lately?”
“To be fair, I didn’t save your life. Just your ass. And it’s what Ranger buddies are for,” said Charlie Mac.
“I don’t care what he saved. If my Ranger buddy had bought me over four thousand push-ups, I don’t think I’d be his buddy after training was over,” said Henderson.
Eliot shrugged. Two months ago, he would’ve said the same thing. But spending every living second with a guy, going through the same hardships, well, it changes you, smooths out your rough edges and teaches you to tolerate, even appreciate, what would have annoyed you in the past. As much as Eliot had wanted to break the guy’s fingers at the start of training, he knew now that he would do anything for him. It was a burden, a promise, and a comfort to know he’d always have Charlie Mac’s back.