"Ladies," Murdock had told the class during formation the evening before, "the next five days and nights have been lovingly crafted to make you do just three things: quit, quit, and quit! We are going to do our level best to make all of you see the error of your ways and give up this crazy idea you have that you could actually become SEALS. We've lost a few people already, but hey, we were just getting warmed up with them. They were the lucky ones, sweethearts, the guys who looked deep down inside their souls and realized that they just didn't have what it takes to be a Navy SEAL.

"I can promise you that we're going to lose a hell of a lot more of you before this week of fun and games is over. The United States Navy invests something like eighty thousand dollars in each and every man who finally pins on the trident-and-pistols." For emphasis, he'd tapped his own SEAL pin as he walked down the line of young, skin-headed recruits standing rigidly in their underwear in front of their racks.

"It is our solemn duty to ensure that all those taxpayer dollars are not wasted in this new era of government fiscal responsibility," he'd continued, "that those of you who finish this course — if any of you finish this course — are truly the elite, the very best men in body and spirit we can produce. In short, ladies, SEALS. Of course, I very much doubt that any of you have what it takes to be SEALS."

It was a canned speech, one that Murdock had delivered numberless times before to numberless SEAL recruits. He'd been stationed with the Training Division at Coronado for almost two years now.

When, he wondered, was he going to get his transfer? He wanted a combat platoon, had been applying for one for the past six months. He strongly suspected that the dread hand of his father was somehow involved.

Blake Murdock had been a SEAL for five years now, but he was one of the unlikeliest SEALs in the Teams. Eldest son of a wealthy Virginia family that had gone into politics three generations ago, he'd long since grown tired of the questions leveled at him almost every time he came aboard a new duty station. "Murdock? Are you any relation to Charles Murdock?"

"Yes," he would always answer, a little wearily when he admitted to it at all. "He's my father."

Blake had grown up on the rambling Murdock estate outside Front Royal, half a mile from the banks of the slow-flowing Shenandoah. He'd attended local private schools, then Exeter, with the clear expectation that he would go on to Harvard, followed by a career in law or politics. Indeed, from the very beginning he'd had the feeling that his entire future, from school to marriage to career to internment in the St. John's Episcopal family vaults, all had been carefully planned out with all the care and attention to detail of a well-crafted military campaign.

Murdock knew exactly when he'd begun wanting more, needing more than the stuffy wood paneling and elitist snobbery of Exeter's hallowed halls. It had been during the summer before his senior year, when he'd somehow ended up in the mountains of Colorado with an outward Bound group. At school he'd been a star track and field man, as well as making first string on the football team, and he'd thought he was in pretty good shape, but a summer of long hikes, rugged climbing, and orienteering through the Rockies had convinced him otherwise.

And, of course, that was where he'd met Susan.

His parents had never quite accepted her. She'd been Jewish, for one thing, and for another she came from a military family. Her girlhood had been spent growing up in such diverse places as Yokosuka, Subic Bay, and Pearl Harbor; her father had been a Marine gunnery sergeant who'd lost a leg at Da Nang, her oldest brother a Navy chief stationed aboard an attack sub.

Not exactly the sort of people the Murdocks could easily seat at a dinner party with the landed gentry of Warren County at their Front Royal estate, or worse, at the Chevy Chase Country Club inside the Washington Beltway.

By the time he'd graduated from Exeter, he'd decided that he didn't want any part of Harvard, and Susan had had a lot to do with that decision. Certainly, Outward Bound had generated in Blake a fierce and burning need to keep proving himself physically, and in more challenging ways than joining Harvard's football or track teams.

His parents had not been happy with his decision to join the Marines. There'd been considerable discussion on the matter, ending at last, in the best tradition of Washington politics, in compromise. Blake would attend Annapolis and become an officer in the U.S. Navy.

That would never have been possible, of course, without the direct intervention of his father, Congressman Charles Fitzhugh Murdock, former Virginia state legislator and a three-term member of the House of Representatives. A member of the House Military Affairs Committee, the elder Murdock had considerable leverage both on Capitol Hill and among the higher echelons of the Navy establishment. He'd all but guaranteed Blake a comfortable and promising military career, as a line officer in the fleet, as a Pentagon staff officer, even one day, possibly, as a military liaison officer to Congress. "We want nothing but the best for you, Blake," his mother had told him the day he'd left for Annapolis. "The Navy's lucky to get you. Why shouldn't your father pull a few strings to help smooth the water?"

Why not indeed? All Blake Murdock knew was that suddenly, somehow, his life was being planned for him again.

Turning sharply away from the surf, the platoon trotted inland, struggling over the crest of a dune, rubber boats still balanced on their heads. Over the top, they descended onto a muddy flat, where a number of logs lay in ominous rows. Each was a section of telephone pole, soaked in creosote and weighing three hundred pounds.

At an instructor's bellowed orders, each boat crew lowered its IBS to the sand, then filed into line behind one of the logs. They'd begun this exercise during the first week of Phase 1, and all the men knew the drill by now.

"Okay, ladies," Murdock shouted. "I think some of you are still a bit sleepy. You need some warm-up exercise to make the day go right. One!"

At each log, seven men in line stooped and seized it.

"Two!"

As a unit — more or less — each team straightened upright, hoisting the log to waist level.

"Three!"

Up the log went to shoulder level.

"Four!"

Muscles bulging, backs straining, teeth gritted in seven-times-repeated agony and concentration, the team shoved the log aloft. There was some wavering, but no one collapsed. No one gave up.

"One!"

The logs dropped back to shoulder level.

"Two!"

Waist level.

"Three!" Onto the ground... and woe to the man who straightened up without waiting for the command to be given.

"One!" It started all over again, but with interesting variations. "Two! Three! Four! Three! Four! Three! Four! What's our creed?"

They shouted the answer back at him. "Sir, the only easy day was yesterday, sir!"

"Anybody want to quit? The bell's right over there with Petty Officer Simmons. All you have to do is walk over and ring it."

No answer.

"Three! Four! Three! Four!"

Murdock watched the boat crews heaving their telephone poles, but his thoughts were on Susan. He'd been thinking about her a lot lately, probably more than was healthy. The only easy day was yesterday? Right... Somehow it seemed to keep getting harder.

Susan had been killed on Route 50 when a seventeen-year-old kid with a Corvette and a cocaine habit had jumped the median barrier and taken her out head-on. She'd been on her way to attend his graduation ceremony at Annapolis, three days before they were to have been married.

"I know it's hard, dearest," his mother had said after the funeral. "But you know, it must all really be for the best somehow. Susan was a nice girl, I'm sure, but I'm afraid she just wouldn't have fit in. I still don't think she would have been happy in our family."