ask many questions when some scumbag shows up with a mysterious gunshot wound he got while ‘cleaning his automatic rifle.’” Her dad made air quotes with his fingers. “Your grandfather did the same thing when he ran the settlement, so don’t try to tell me different.”
Claire pursed her lips. “The settlement is neutral territory down there. That’s why they need me as a teacher. The local villagers know it’s safe to send their children for schooling so they can get an education, have a better life than what their parents had.”
“And do what? Move to the city where they can live in slums and pick over the garbage dump for food?” Dad shook his head. “Your mother and I had this discussion a million times. What if they are better off in the jungle, doing what their ancestors have done for thousands of years?”
“And what did Mom say? She was the one who grew up in the settlement.”
“Your mother was adopted into the tribe, knew the languages and cultures and was generally regarded as a world expert on San Lucas de la Selva, but even she didn’t know the answers. How do you expect to?”
This was what was so infuriating about arguing with her father. He had the politician’s trick of turning her argument back on her and twisting her words all around. She resorted to what did work: stubbornness. “I don’t expect to fix everything. I expect to go.”
“My God, you’re pigheaded.” He shook his head. “Just like your mother and grandfather. All right. You’ll go—if you pass the survival training.”
Claire protested but he held up his hand, his blue eyes blazing. “You are my only child, the only child of your mother, and I will be damned if I put you on a plane to the dangerous jungle when you can’t even make yourself kill a harmless spider here in Virginia. I’m willing to let you go, but not as some lamb to the jungle slaughter.”
“Fine.” Claire gritted her teeth and relaxed. She’d been a Girl Scout, knew how to build a fire, find out which way was north. This would be similar, only designed for a more tropical climate than central Virginia. “How hard can it be?”
Her dad smiled, but it was his sharky smile that Claire had never seen directed at her before. “How hard can it be?” he mocked. “I guess you’ll have to ask Sergeant First Class Luc Boudreaux. He’s the Green Beret soldier who will be training you.”
“OH, WOW. YOUR dad said ‘Green Beret Sergeant First Class Boudreaux’?” Claire’s best friend Janey Merrick stopped midjog and bit her lip.
“Yes, why?” Claire sucked in some oxygen, glad for the break. Janey was in much better shape than she was, being an army first lieutenant at the Pentagon attached to some general’s staff. She had gone through the Reserve Officers Training Corps at the University of Virginia, where she and Claire had met.
Janey pushed her light brown bangs off her forehead while Claire drank some water. “Green Berets are trained for anything and everything, but their specialty is working with and training indigenous forces. Back in the Vietnam War, they were the jungle warfare specialists—they called them the snake eaters.”
“Snake eaters?” Claire’s stomach pitched.
“They’ve branched out since, especially to desert and mountain warfare, but they are some of the toughest SOBs in the army.” Janey eyed her. “Well, if you have a Green Beret sergeant first-class training you, I won’t worry so much. Those guys know everything. You’ll learn how to take care of yourself or die trying.”
“Oh, Janey.” Claire staggered to a park bench and collapsed. “Why did my dad do this to me? Am I going to have to eat snakes?”
Her friend laughed. “Because he doesn’t want you to go, and yes, probably. But they taste kind of like tough chicken—so I’ve been told. Hey, and here I was complaining about a desk job.”
Claire sat up straight. When had she become a whiner? Whiners never won. “I’m still going to do it. I can eat snakes. I can survive in the jungle. I can do it.” She jumped to her feet and jogged in place, ignoring the burn in her thigh muscles. “Let’s go!”
Janey shook her head and smiled. “By the time you come back, you’ll be able to kick my ass. Come on, soldier girl. I’ll teach you some running cadences—they’ll help you breathe better. Repeat after me—okay?” She broke into a jog and Claire followed. “I wanna be an Airborne Ranger.”
“I wanna be an Airborne Ranger,” Claire managed to gasp.
“Live the life of sex and danger.”
“Live the life of—what?” Claire stopped again.
“Sex and danger, Claire, sex and danger. They go hand-in-hand for soldiers. The danger gets their adrenaline all revved up and they burn it off with sex.” Janey grinned. “Remember that time we were supposed to go shopping and I told you I had to work all weekend? Well, last year I’d gone out a couple times with this one marine right before he shipped out.”
“Yes?” Claire lifted an eyebrow.
Janey wiggled her eyebrows in return. “He shipped back in. In more than one way.”
“Janey!” Claire scolded.
“I know, I know.” Her friend didn’t look abashed at all. “But, Claire, he was so tan and buff—and eager, after a year in the desert. Social opportunities there are mighty limited.”
“So you took pity on a poor, lonely marine.”
“Believe me, I got as much as I gave.” Her friend got a quizzical look on her face. “I wonder if your Green Beret is fresh from the sandbox.”
“Sandbox?”
“What the soldiers call their Middle East deployments.”
Claire shrugged. “I don’t know, and I don’t care. Whoever he is, he’s probably some suck-up who thinks he can advance his career by doing a favor for a congressman.”
“If Sergeant First Class…you said Boudreaux, right? If SFC Boudreaux was an ambitious suck-up, he sure wouldn’t be in the Green Berets. Used to be Special Forces was a dead end on the army career ladder. Not so much anymore, but these guys are not your loudmouth glory hounds who go overseas with their general on fact-finding missions and brag how they heard gunfire from five miles away.” Janey frowned. “Man, I wanna go overseas. Riding a desk in D.C. is not what I had in mind when I joined the army.”
“I wish Sergeant Boudreaux would go back.” Claire knew she was probably pouting but didn’t care.
“He’s probably not any happier to do this than you are.” Janey did lunges to stretch her calf muscles.
“He’s either missing out on team training time or personal leave. Instead of hanging out in the woods, doing mock warfare with his buddies, or even better, getting laid and drunk, he’s got to train some squeamish chick who once spent two hours looking for her convertible in the Tysons Galleria parking lot.”
“So I’m directionally challenged—I came out the Macy’s door instead of Neiman Marcus,” Claire mumbled.
“Claire, your dad had dropped you off that day—you didn’t even have your car.”
