Chapter Text
“Kree!! KREEE!!”
What the hell does ‘kree’ mean anyway? Lieutenant Kevin Elliot wonders as he stands at attention somewhere within the tunnels of Cheyenne Mountain. ‘Get it together, you idiots?’ ‘Listen up, you idiots?’ ‘What the hell are you doing here, you idiots?’
Kevin figures the last part is a given, based on the tone. Not that he minds. He’s been getting screamed at by instructors since Air Force enlisted basic training over a decade ago. Then it was training and serving as a special operations tactical air controller including in the 75th Ranger Regiment for six years, before a somewhat annoying five-year ‘vacationʼ at the Air Force Academy.
At this point, heʼs just glad to be back to some real work. The hundred-pound rucksack and body armor dig in through his BDUs. So he figures heʼs in the right place. Well, they got here by cross-country rucking for twenty-two straight hours from the Air Force Academy. So hopefully he’s in the right place.
Only, when past instructors have yelled at him like this, it’s been in a language he knows.
“Shor KREE!” The square-jawed sergeant in a black commando uniform flops off his rucksack and starts running in place. So Kevin starts running. They eventually go for miles like that, just lifting boots off the concrete.
“Alap KREE!” Apparently, that means squats with the hundred-pound ruck lifted up, so Kevin lifts his up and starts going. “KREE, qor, KREE, qor, KREE!” Over and over again.
“Dorap KREE!” The instructor drops into the pushup position and starts banging them out effortlessly.
Kevin drops his ruck again and starts doing pushups beside it in relief. Pushups in just body armor are like rest time. At first.
“Katra KREE!” Flutter kicks. Kevin swings his paint-round rifle off his back and onto his stomach. Not a problem. At least, the first few hundred or so aren’t.
It goes on in an endless cycle. Alap, katra, dorap, shor, alap, dorap, shor, until the meanings etch indelibly into Kevin’s tiring mind. Squat, kick, drop, run, squat, drop, run. What a way to learn a new language.
Oleb means water. Plaka means rucksack. Yas means faster. Who the hell knows the word for slower. Or food, for that matter.
Theyʼve been at this for hours. Lots and lots and lots of hours. Kevin doesnʼt know how many—they took his watch. And his notepad, not that he really needs it.
Dorap. Shor. The lights inside the fortress dim and brighten seemingly at random. Katra. They don’t get any food. Katra. They continually run out of water.
Alap. But only a handful of guys out of the hundred or so give up. Dorap. That’s the only way to mark time inside the bunker, by guys quitting. Shor. They might have been down here for five hours, then maybe ten. Fifteen?
Everyone here is a trained commando. They all know itʼs just getting started. Alap. They know this is to stress and exhaust them before the test.
Katra.
Whatever the test is. Dorap. They’ve already had two fitness tests. They’ve barely slept.
And it’s to disorient them.
Katra. The lights dim again.
They’re still getting smoked with only these four exercises. It’s mind-numbing. Shor. The treatment just isn’t worth it to some guys anymore. Alap. He hasnʼt heard English since they got here.
“Shor, shor, shor!!” Suddenly the sergeant instructing them jumps up and starts sprinting. Actually sprinting, not in place. Kevin drops his ruck and scrambles after him. He slips and slides across the sweat and dried salt on the concrete. The instructor bolts down the corridor. His rifle shifts onto the back of his body armor.
An unknown distance run. Kevin gets jostled by nearly one hundred guys as they all try to funnel into the hallway. Their accordioning formation manages to catch up to the instructor, who leads them through a labyrinth of underground tunnels.
They run and run for miles and miles until Kevin is truly and completely lost. He hopes there’s no land navigation portion to this thing. The complex must be five miles of tunnels at least, and they’re still running.
In what seems like a blink of an eye, the instructor deposits them topside into the pouring rain of a Colorado June. He sprints down a muddy trail still yelling at the top of his lungs.
The weird part is the sun is rising behind those clouds. Theyʼd finished their day-long ruck march just a few hours before sunrise. Has he really been at this for a whole extra day already? Or only a few hours, somehow? It’s like a time warp.
Kevin collides with the sudden wall of heat and water. He keeps running. How far could they possibly make him run? Is he going to run a marathon today? They’ve already done a hundred-pound marathon just to get to the mountain, but he guesses that was yesterday.
Two men pass him at a steady clip, splashing onto his boots. Is he pushing hard enough? Too hard? With an unknown distance and an unknown time hack, there’s no telling. Maybe he should speed up. Or maybe he should dial it back.
No. No. One step at a time, Airman. He knows better. This selection course is only open to special operators who’ve been selected and trained for years as commandos and have fought on real battlefields. He doesn’t even know why it’s so restricted yet. But there are a lot of senior sergeants here. And they all know better than to get stuck in their own heads. Focus on the one-meter target.
So Kevin runs on and on. Well, it’s probably only another four miles. But soaked to the bone his twenty-somethingith hour of being awake, it unsurprisingly feels like a lot longer.
Kevinʼs buddy Yash is a Navy SEAL. SEAL candidates run two hundred miles in one-hundred-and-twenty hours during Hell Week. They sleep for less than four. Total. Their workouts last at least twenty hours a day for five days straight. It’s really more about grit than training. Maybe this is Hell Week?
Or maybe it’s Ranger School. Kevin slept—if he slept—like three hours a night, usually on one or two meals a day, for two months while in Ranger School. Two months.
And then the shooting starts.
Kevin drops to his stomach automatically, splashing into a puddle for cover. He shoulders his weapon and returns fire. A cadre sergeant in woodland camouflage stands up and points a simulator rifle above his head. “Tu est mort!” The sergeant draws a hand across his throat and points back down the trail.
Kevin curses. He’s dead, clearly. But does he really need to run all the way back up the mountain?
Wait. Was that just French? Has he really spent over twenty-four hours living in a mystery language he didn’t realize was just French?
“Gibst du auf?” The sergeant’s deputy questions politely. He points at an enclosed humvee idling welcomingly on the hill. It’s pretty damned obvious if Kevin had been paying enough attention to his surroundings. The sergeant smiles warmly.
Kevin blinks. German? Dutch? He only speaks some Academy Russian and very rusty high school Spanish.
Then it dawns on him: they don’t speak that language outside the mountain. What the hell is that language?
“Gibst du auf?” the sergeant repeats, evidently thinking Kevin is considering giving up.
Kevin sighs. This place may feel like the Tower of Babel, but he knows a cadre taunt when he hears one. He looks back at the humvee. No way is he giving up a multi-mile run for a dry, cozy ride and probably some hot chow. He’s no quitter. “No thank you, Sergeant.” Kevin turns around and starts running back around the mountain. Splash, splash, splash, splash on every footfall. Only eight thousand or so to go. For now.
After what must be like two hours of running total, Kevin finally rounds the last crest back on Norad Road. He’s greeted by a large puddle of rucksacks and men who’ve outrun him. They’re all huddled against in the still-misting rain and sleeping or treating their feet. Feet are the most important part of a commando’s body after his brain; they have to be taken care of. Kevin busts out the foot care kit from his ruck and does the same. “Any orders yet?”
“Nothing in English. My guy just asked me in Arabic if I wanted to give up.”
Kevin nods to the Green Beret sergeant that answered. “What languages you all speak?”
Virtually every guy knows a language, but some of the more heavily recruited polyglots speak up.
“Russian, French, and Czech.”
“Mandarin and Tagalog.”
“French and Pashto.”
“Spanish and Indonesian.”
“French, Farsi, and Kurdish.”
“Portugese and Spanish.”
“Vietnamese, Thai, and Laotian.”
Kevin nods. “Any idea what they were speaking under the mountain?”
Everyone shrugs. “No way, man. Lieutenant.”
Kevin sighs. “Alright. Everyone should really inventory their gear then, make sure nothing got messed with during the run before we sleep.”
“Already done,” a couple of the sergeants fill him in as they change into mostly dry socks.
Of course. “Ah, good.” Kevin starts doing it for himself. Sometimes he really regrets killing five years at prep school and college instead of staying on as a commando sergeant. He could be a solid team leader like these guys by now. Instead, he’s an out-of-practice, bottom-of-the-officer-pole lieutenant. Heʼs not even a trained Special Tactics Officer yet; that takes another almost two years. But someone high up really wanted him as an officer. So he’ll just have to show them how well he can do this.
Whatever the hell this is.
More men keep arriving, running a two-hour-something half-marathon on a mountain in boots and body armor after a full day of physical training and a marathon-long hundred-pound overland ruck march. Kevin counts some sixty guys before the cadre starts sending new runners away. Damn. They’re losing a lot of really strong dudes to this run. Kevin has never had to run a half marathon in selection before, much less right out of the gate as a drop-event. What the hell unit is this? He blinks his tired eyes.
“Stillgestanden!” Someone bellows.
Kevin jerks back alert. Guys are scrambling to their feet. He follows suit, only to see a hard-jawed Air Force colonel and his Army command sergeant major striding toward their puddle of misery.
“Stroit’sya!” The colonel announces. He stops in front of them and calls the command with his hand raised straight in the air.
Russian, finally a language Kevin knows. He grabs his rucksack and painfully rushes into one of the rows forming in front of the colonel. ‘O’Neill’, his dress blue uniform says, and a hell of a uniform it is. Special Tactics Officer, overflowing Purple Heart ribbons, multiple Prisoner of War devices, a former Army aviator... Kevin locks back in onto where the colonel is now pointing. O’Neill is gesturing angrily at a spot on the ground, the one that’s presumably reserved for the flight commander.
Kevin hurriedly recalls the ranks of men he’s seen so far. He himself is the only commissioned officer he noticed. Kevin hurriedly picks up his rucksack and steps forward. Mistake number one. He’s sure he’ll make plenty, but oops. Welcome to flight command, Lieutenant.
O’Neill, a Special Tactics Officer wearing a beret even more coveted than Kevin’s, looks the younger man up and down in disgust. Kevin has actually served under O’Neill (way under O’Neill) before, but right now he feels like slime under the colonel’s polished jump boots. Whatever this selection is for, it’s a big freaking deal to have a commander like him standing here.
“Glaza!” The colonel bellows.
“Vzor!” This answer comes from six senior sergeants that marched over with the colonel. They all snap their heads to face him. They wear epic-looking urban combat uniforms with the new body armor, tricked out M4 Commando carbines, the works. Their uniforms sport stacks of Ranger and Special Forces tabs, combat control and pararescue flashes, berets of various colors—a true joint special operations team.
“GLAZA!” Colonel O’Neill repeats his order, facing what is now Lieutenant Elliot’s flight.
Kevin and his fellow special operations candidates catch on. “VZOR!” They snap their heads to face him. Apparently whatever military they’re mimicking does that, even though they’re speaking Russian.
Colonel O’Neill and his tricked-out team immediately begin removing things from their uniforms. Off come the colonel’s Purple Heart and Prisoner of War ribbons, his Vietnam awards, his dive and freefall badges, even his beret. Off come the demo team’s own berets, their badges, tabs, ranks, even their service tapes. They cut the threading right out until they’re left with only their name tapes.
Don’t get Kevin wrong, it’s not like he’s never gone to a school in a sterile uniform before. But there’s something about this. About the ceremonial removal of everything he’s earned and even things he might earn in the future, that just hits him differently. Does he really want to do this? Suddenly he isn’t sure.
As with everything, the instructors only give Kevin and his flight a few seconds to strip off years—decades, for some sergeants—of key battlefield and training accomplishments. They stuff them hurriedly in their cargo pockets and return to the position of attention.
“Marsh VPERED!” O’Neill points forward. The demonstration team starts marching into the tunnel. Lieutenant Elliot does the same with his own flight, shuffling them with their hundred-pound rucks. They check in at the guard stations and reenter the mountain. Kevin checks the headcount of his men. Sixty-three commandos plus himself. The giant blast door locks behind them. Some day he’s going to find out what that giant door is really protecting. Or maybe what he’ll really be protecting.
“Obi TAN!” O’Neill’s transition from Russian back to…something…is seamless. The demonstration team halts.
“Obi TAN!” Kevin tries echoing the command. His flight smartly comes to a halt.
O’Neill walks up to Lieutenant Elliot and hands him a notepad. He issues a simple order. “Rin nok in’trom popra cursorʼre a pel’tak.” He said simple, not comprehensible.
“Sir—” Kevin really wishes they were still speaking Russian.
O’Neill cuts him off and turns around to his demonstration team. “Shal kek.”
That team hustles to an elevator, which thankfully displays what floor they start and stop at. This is sublevel zero and they get off at sublevel four. Kevin writes it down automatically. Shouldn’t be too bad. He figures the order is to follow them.
O’Neill turns back around and repeats himself. “Shal kek.”
Kevin writes that down automatically too. Shal kek = [approx.] fall out / carry out my orders. By the time he looks up, the colonel has disappeared.
Kevin glances around at his flight. “Alright, single file to the elevator. Check that you and your wingman don’t leave any gear.” He does a headcount again as they split into elevator groups. Sixty-three commandos plus himself.
Kevin punches the down elevator button. The light comes on.
And immediately turns off.
He punches it again. It turns off.
He punches it again. He’s beginning to sense a theme.
“Alright, ground your rucks here and spread out in wingman pairs. Stay within shouting distance. Look for accessible stairways; check any potential doors. Any way down to sublevel four. Two guys stay here and keep clicking the button. And remember this is an active workplace.” Kevin doesn’t have an official time hack for this event—or a wristwatch—but if his three rounds of advanced selection and training prior to this mean anything, the answer is ‘fast’.
The guys work quickly and quietly, clearing every door as if itʼs an urban battle scenario, only with the same professionalism but no aggression. Kevin turns to his flight chief—the ranking enlisted man—who happens to be a Ranger sergeant major with more time as a commando than Kevin has shaving. “Sergeant Major, can you make sure this all meshes together? Don’t want to miss anything.”
The sergeant major looks him up and down and shrugs. “Yes, sir.” He sets off with his wingman to check the seams between scout pairs. Not that Kevin isn’t confident in the flight; these guys seem to mesh well even when they’ve just met. That’s why SOCOM was created after all.
And then the lights go out.
And by out, Kevin means out. You don’t know darkness until you’ve not-seen it underneath a mountain in a nuclear fallout bunker.
The darkness reveals Kevinʼs next mistake. He allowed his men to ground their rucks without establishing SOP for what should be on their gear harnesses. Only a few have their bulky issued flashlights at the ready, which weren’t required when they checked in. They automatically reorganize into flashlight teams, but it hurts their time hack. Kevin turns on his light and writes down the lesson. Always have light in the bunker.
“LT!” Someone hollers the abbreviation for lieutenant.
“Report,” Kevin responds.
“Looks like all the stairways are marked off, but we found a ladder hatch. Itʼs got some kind of cable system in it.” The voice echoes out of the darkness.
Kevin nods to himself. He calls out to his flight chief. “Sergeant Major Baxter, You think we can get everyone and our gear down four sublevels safely like that?” Kevin can rappel, of course, but he’s no ropes master the way the sergeant major must be. The last thing he wants is to drop something down a hole into potential oblivion. Or drop someone.
Sergeant Major Baxter walks over to the ladder and pokes around with his flashlight. He addresses the flight in an easy southern drawl. “Sound off if you ain’t good on urban rappelinʼ.”
No one answers. Kevin is understanding more and more why they only recruit seasoned commandos.
“Sound off if you’re a rappel master instructor.”
“Hinton.”
“Ozeri.”
“Fitzgerald.”
“Amidala.”
“Gar—”
The sergeant major grunts. “That’ll be enough. You four on me; letʼs check this out. No tricks gettinʼ by. Everyone else, form up in five sticks with your rucks beside the ladder hatch. Tie Swiss Seats with your webbing. Make sure your ruck straps are jump-ready. All you jumpmaster guys check ʼem off.”
“Three-sixty security.” Kevin gestures around the entire flight with his flashlight. He should’ve enforced that even before the lights went out. “Keep people out, but be nice to them. We don’t own this place, and we don’t have specific ROEs here.” He wished he’d managed to get a better ops order out of Colonel O’Neill. Not that he would’ve understood it. This is such a weird place under the mountain. Kevin has a feeling it won’t get any less so.