Copyright 2015 by the author. For private use only.
garystayton@yahoo.com
DISCLAIMER: For adults only. Not for minors.
Author's note: Comments and suggestions most welcome.
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Author's note: I feel compelled to admit that some scenic elements in this story are repetitions from earlier works of mine – just in case some reader recognizes a feeling of déjà vu. Such are the fixations of those of us who frequent the Authoritarian section. This time I'm hoping for a more character-driven and balanced story.
ELITE FORCE TRAINING
Josh Jaeger was of the belief that Christmas had come early. He skipped down the linoleum-floor of the barrack corridor at Fort Roland (he wasn't supposed to run on that polished surface) holding a fluttering piece of paper in his hand, hoping one of his roommates would be present in his four-man cabin. One was. It was Benjie. Benjie was lounging, reading a magazine.
This occupation of Benjie – lounging – was an eagerly pursued pastime. When Josh was at the gym, Benjie was lounging. When Josh went into town, Benjie lounged. Whenever Josh himself was of the lounging persuasion, Benjie could, in all likelihood, be found beside him, also lounging. Fort Roland made available all the healthy activities a young soldier off duty might want. There was an auto-club, and so on, yet Josh's friend Benjie found solace only in the sedentary pursuits, it seemed.
Josh had exciting news, and he fully expected Benjie to leap from his reclined position on his bunk and pump Josh's hand, and demand to read the letter, and propose a solemn toast – had the equipment for proposing toasts and drinking them been available in the barracks at Fort Roland. It was not. But still, Benjie would wish Josh all the best of luck for his future.
"Elite Force Training School?" Benjie said with raised eyebrows. Indeed, Private Benjamin McPhee was of the considered and certain opinion that people who engage with things containing the word `elite' and having the reputation of the named facility were "off their chops," in his own words. Benjie yawned. "I think there's a buffalo-wings special at the PX tonight. I know there is two-for-one beers at Stardust, but the doormen know we're under twenty-one."
"Benjie!" Josh said, waving the letter. "I'm in! I'm in Elite Force! This is it! I'm going to Fort Drexel!"
"When?"
"January!"
"Holy fuck! Josh... the weather at Coldbath Point is completely filthy at that time of year! It freezes! Everyone says it's the shittest place on Earth! Are you off your fucking chops?"
Josh glowed with pleasure. "I'm going to Coldbath Poi-oint! I'm going to Coldbath Poi-oint! I'm going to Elite For-orce!"
"Shutup you nutbag!"
Young Josh Jaeger was so energised with excitement that he hopped from foot to foot, and seemed to use his precious letter as a steering-wheel, gripping its edges with both hands and turning it before him as he bewildered his roommate.
"Sergeant Crawley will be jealous of me-ee! I'll show him a thing or two-oo! And so will Corporal Al-mez!" he sing-songed. "He's been trying for Elite Force for year-ears!"
"Josh," Benjie said. "I thought these guys were serious. So you got through that interview?"
"Yep!" Josh's grin split his face. "But I did the local test-course too! That was tough."
"Josh, get a grip! I just thought that interview would fuck you off the list. You? They took you?"
"They soaked me up, Benj. I just stood there and told `em how Elite Force would benefit from having me in it! It was a great speech! And how going to the gym and my swim training and judo should be put to good use! Elite Force, Benj! That's what it's all about!" Josh slapped Benjie's bunk. "And I'm going to Elite Force School!"
"Must have been a hell of an interview."
"There was this Sergeant. He looked me right in the eye and said `Son, Elite Force needs young men like you. Men who will..."
"Must have been one hell of a dumb Sergeant."
"I don't think he was dumb, Benj."
Josh didn't try to explain to Benjie how the hard, granite-grey eyes of that Sergeant had held him stilled on the painted line for six hours, or how the voice had murmured deeply in the pit of his belly. Those stern eyes, the sharply proportioned nose, and the hard-set mouth had made something inside Josh turn to jelly. When that powerful face regarded him, it was like being scrutinised to the bottom of the soul.
The guy was a solid rock. That was how Josh remembered him – like a rock – and if that was what Elite Force School offered, then Josh wanted to go there. The neat-pressed enclosure of the Sergeant's green uniform had been filled with hard, large-sized arms and a wide, shelved chest. You didn't need to see under the clean fabric to know how formidable the man was.
Days passed at Fort Roland. The sun shined on the neatly cut grass and the fresh-painted pointer signposts of a typical military base. Private Benjamin McPhee tried to talk some sense into his pal and colleague, Private Josh Jaeger.
"Josh," he said while the pair was snipping weeds in the vicinity of the Enlisted Ranks' Galley. "You've really got to shape up. Come out tonight with me and get some buffalo-wings."
"No can do, buddy," Josh said happily. "Gotta get to the gym and get pumped!"
Benjie sighed. When would this madness stop? Josh had been floating around in a daze ever since he'd received that letter. While Benjie secured an agreeable duty (for them both) cleaning the pool at the NCOs' Mess, Josh was signing up for submerge-training at the Enlisted indoor facility.
Submerge-training? What the fuck was that? Josh was off his chops, and of that fact there could be no doubt.
Private Jaeger was summoned to the Supply Store where he was issued with a pair of boots by order of Fort Drexel. The Private and Corporal Storemen behind the counter eyed him with respect. They knew the source of the order – Elite Force Training School. The boots were combat-specials with big, steel studs nailed to the undersoles and long, long laces of hide-leather. They came accompanied by two directives printed on Elite Force letterhead.
One: The boots were to be fully worn-in by their new owner using drill-track procedures.
Two: They were to be shined to parade-standard.
Josh ran with the white, cardboard box under his arm back to his cabin, his heart lurching in his throat. Rattling heavily in the box were those brand-new possessions. They felt substantial, their weight carrying much import.
It may not be a well-known fact, but the black leather of newly issued boots is nowhere near parade-standard, and Josh felt he should field his new footwear for the first time only after some polishing work. Hereby the preoccupation of the paraded, booted soldier is learned.
The equipment is a teaspoon, a cigarette-lighter, a very soft cloth, and a nugget of black Parade Gloss from a small tin. A crumb of the fine polish is melted in the teaspoon using the lighter. Already we are given to the images of the drug-trade, and indeed, the little, fizzing amount of liquid Parade Gloss is a potent mixture. It penetrates the porous leather and is rubbed in hard with the cloth. The other ingredient is spit. The spit must be used with the oily gloss in generally equal quantities, and all the chemical sciences attached to this process were completely lost on Private Joshua Jaeger. But we may know this; he knew what he was doing. The toes of those boots began to achieve their mirror finish.
He exercised them on the South Gate Road with his dinky little flip-floppy running-shorts. Benjie playfully wiped those tiny shorts into the marble-hard crack from behind – his hand running like a card in a slot – when the sweating, track-drilled Josh had returned from his run. A wrestling-match was initiated. The cabin was hot with the smell of fresh sweat, and hard, slippery muscles responded to Benjie's attack with eager vitality.
"Wait!" Josh cried. "Don't scuff-up my boots!"
So during this time, Benjie's cabin-mate became somewhat boring, not even wanting to watch TV. In the afternoons he was out jogging, and at night, it was the polishing of those boots.
It may be little known among the population of Benjie and his type, but within the infantry, the shining of boots can become an obsession. The more one rubs with the cloth stretched over one's finger – in squeaking little circles on the lustred surface – the shinier the shoe becomes. Shinier and shinier. One sees one's face in the toe, and adds more spit and polish and is pleased with the result.
But it is not among the habits of nineteen year-olds to be industrious one-hundred percent of the time. Josh was out running, his boots making their rhythmic clack-clack-clack on the South Gate Road with their steel studs. Alongside in the canopied fir plantation there appeared a certain Private with whom Josh had exchanged certain looks at the gym. The habits of nineteen year-olds are not always to be discussed in polite company, those habits sometimes being pursued in a ditch under the cool canopy of a forest. The other Private was a tidy little stud, and Josh fucked him neatly, rutting quickly and without discussion.
They did it kneeling, the other boy in Josh's lap, his hair in Josh's fist. The young private reached around behind to grab the lunging, fucking Josh, desperately trying to hold the bucking formation together while a squirrel watched curiously at a short distance.
They panted in unison as Josh thrusted proficiently, with leaves sticking to his sweat and his open, huffing mouth raised to the branches which reached across the sky overhead. He squirted happily inside the warm, slippery hole, and withdrew perspiring more profusely than before.
"Fuck!" he yipped. "My boots are scuffed!"
Josh was thereby introduced to the bane of those who must maintain a high, parade-standard shine. The toes are unprotected, and when activities are conducted on the knees, boots are best unlaced and left standing by on the ground, waiting for their master to complete his business.
Josh returned to his occupation of rubbing those boots, and Benjie sighed as he watched his cabin-mate stick his tongue from the side of his mouth in concentration, narrow his eyes to slits, and spit-polish assiduously. Josh was a lost cause. The boots had consumed him. Their lustre reflected the light of a hundred suns into the soul of the boy who had been accepted to Elite Force School. More than that, they represented the uncompromising directive of the Sergeant who had sat at the trestle-table during the final interview. The letter which had arrived with the boots somehow carried the rich, resonant timbre of the voice that had strummed the strings of Josh's belly. So he shined, eschewing TV and video-games and expeditions to get pizza. The boots became a masterful work of art, and Josh worked them with a cyclic clackety-clack on the South Gate Road until they were soft and fitted his feet like old friends. That's what the letter had said to do.
The hard reverberation transmitted from the road, through the steel studs, to the soles of his feet and upwards. His running shorts wrapped and clung, and followed him by working into the moist crack. At night, he pumped his cock and layered his bunk-sheets with wetness.
He was summoned to Captain Ball's office.
"So you're going to Elite Force School."
"Yes Sir."
"Clearly you're a very fit young man."
"Yes Sir."
"I've seen you in the gym. I like your style on the leg-thrust. I'm sure your glutes are... admirable."
"Er... yes Sir."
Papers shuffled.
"I guess we'll be sorry to see you go, Private Jaeger. You know Elite Force Training School is called `Hell School' don't you?"
"Yes Sir."
"Six weeks of Hell. I heard Captain Diaz in the Officers' Mess say that you don't get to sit down once, and that they pin your dog-tag to your nipple to avoid the choke-hazard of the chain."
"Yes Sir."
"Have you heard that, Private Jaeger?"
"Yes Sir."
"Fort Drexel isn't all that bad. I was there a couple of years ago on a posting to the Joint Operational Support Unit. Do you know what the Joint Operational Support Unit does, Private Jaeger?"
"No Sir."
"It organizes the communications networks for submarines exercising in the Northern Area. It's very technical. Anyway, good luck, and I suppose I'll see you in the gym a few times before you leave. It's a pity I never got time to ask you for some tips on the leg-thrust."
"Yes Sir."
Private Josh Jaeger could not figure out why Captain Ball seemed to want to tell him about submarine communications, and how he "liked his style" in the gym. And what were glutes? Never mind. There was a spring in his step and a whistle at his lips as he made his way back to the Enlisted Barracks. Elite Force Training School awaited.
Coldbath Point partially enclosed a wide bay. It bristled with windblown scrub and rocky outcrops, and the occasional dotted tin-shed – evidence of human habitation. The seaward side of the point was dashed by a black, heaving ocean. Set back on the widened base of the peninsula was Fort Drexel, a large, multipurpose facility supporting naval operations in the bay and many military training objectives.
The Elite Force School was a simple, bare concrete provision within the larger municipality of the fort. It was an open square surrounded by a high wire fence. Within were symmetrically arranged cement bunkers and a wide-open square with painted markings. It looked like a toy parade-ground – except for the yellow mobile crane with its big rubber tires positioned on the smooth asphalt, pointing its extended arm up into the black firmament where ice-shards danced and dazzled in the raised floodlights.
Captain Damme gripped his parade-stick with a leather glove, and used the other hand to hitch his buttoned collar higher against the cold. Outside the fence-line, all around, there were off-duty soldiers from other units, evidently more curious than cold. It was approaching midnight. Captain Damme and the entire company of the Elite Force Test School were present, zipped into foul-weather jackets and assisting with the arrival.
The harsh white of the lights over the fenced, concrete school made a bright stage where the colorful fragments of ice flew in the night, flicked and tossed by a wind straight off the sea. The officers, NCO's, and soldiers were muffled tight to their necks, burying their noses in their collars.
The initial, alarming arrival was completed with megaphones screaming obscenities and the threat of flying truncheons and bats. The trainees were roused from the dark innards of a transport-truck after a journey of ten hours spent on the bouncing metal tray. Into the bright-lit quadrangle of the yard they were kicked, squinting and yelping. Now, the sixteen new Combat-Operator trainees stood in a row, each over a drain at the center of the yard, three meters apart. They were all between nineteen and twenty-five years-old, and all healthy, prize younkers. Naked and poised like ballet-dancers, they strained on tip-toes and made elegant, curved postures with their arms reaching high above their heads – as high as they could – to where their wrists were shackled in handcuffs, close together, palms facing outwards, hoisted on stainless-steel ratchet chains to a horizontal iron pipe lifted by the crane.
Damme walked down the line, sniffing at the flesh on display and touching here and there with his wooden stick. The lat-wings flared expansively from exposed flanks, bearing fine bands of muscle laced with the ribcages. The plates of breast-muscle were spread widely and flattened, the brown nips as hard as bubble-gum, swelling in the biting cold. These youths were big and powerful. They swiveled and swerved as each tried to find his ideal stance on extended toes, winched upwards on the chain like prime slabs of beef in a butcher's freezer.
As if to prove the condition and vitality – and the nervous dispositions – of the naked flesh exhibited in the yard, male organs smacked and cuffed in numerous states of erection, curving and flaring and showing their pulsing undersides.
The administration had been done. The sixteen men had each been busted in rank to shit-kicking Private. Their heads had been zip-clipped to a prickling number-one, and the remaining hair sprayed bright yellow for visibility in the water. They were numbered 1,' to 16' from left to right, the big numerals stenciled in black ink, six-inches high in the middle of their breasts between the nipples. The numbers were repeated on their backs, and the doctor had marked respective notes with an indelible marker on each hard, left buttock.
"Toes together," they were told. "Chins up. Forty-five degrees. Suck in the guts. Clench the buttocks. Don't move. Don't speak unless spoken to. Use `Sir' at the beginning and end of every sentence."
The sixteen men stopped their chattering teeth. Their knees were tensed and locked, lifting their heels, and pushing upward toward the pipe overhead. They posed – stretched and secured – with fingers grasping overhead from the steel, military ratchet-cuffs.
They were arranged with the tallest at the ends, each elevated by an adjusted length of chain to the horizontal pipe on the crane. When one bounced on his toes, he shifted his comrades too, the suspended array of shackled trainees all shuffling and hobbling for purchase with their toes on the cold cement underfoot. There were more chains at the ends of the suspended rail, held by gloved soldiers who jerked the line of naked young men onto their designated row, facing the Quartermaster's Hut. Behind them, the crane-driver gunned the engine, lifting them an inch further, and improving his view of sixteen sets of outstanding butt-muscles.
It was noisy. There was yelling and megaphones and the diesel engine of the crane. A rotating orange beacon swept the yard.
"You big buck studs are makin' a fine impression already, with yer big hard-ons. You faggots must be in love with this place already! Good for you!"
"What about you, Twinky? You all cosy for your first night in Hell School?"
"Sir! Yes! Sir!"
A polished wooden parade-stick thumped hard into a muscled, sucked-in gut.
"What, fuckbag?"
"SIR! YES! SIR!"
"Not loud enough, Twinky-boy. Can't hear ya."
Captain Damme stood back as his men made their introductions to the new arrivals. Soon, a three-inch canvas firehose hissed and snaked on the concrete as it was charged with one-hundred and eighty pounds per square inch of pressure. The brass nozzle was a half-inch aperture, held by two men. There was a moment's silence as sixteen sets of wide eyes stared into the black, half-inch brass throat. Then the nozzle-spigot was opened on number 1. The belting shock was met with a massive hoot from the young man as the air was knocked from his lungs. He danced like a motherfucker, beaten and spun in his handcuffs. The soldiers gripping the chained ends of the hoisted pole shook the shuddering line as the water-assault thrashed home on the shrieking number 1. The dousing lasted one, two, maybe three minutes, then it moved to the next. Down the line the hose was trained, lashing bare skin raw with its hammer-force, ice-needle jet. Then, back up the line, from 16 to number 1.
This was no quick bath. It was a prolonged piece of fun. When the hose was not on him, each naked man hip-hopped desperately on his toes for warmth, raising his knees high and swerving his hips actively to the sides in a fast disco-dance.
"Boogaloo-loo-loo you big buckeroos!" the men shouted to the tangoing youths. "Yer big schlongs ain't so hard now!" They used their megaphones to be heard above the rush of the hose-jet and the appalled whoops of the boys in their sub-zero ordeal.
"GAH! GAH! GAH!" the young trainees shouted as they bopped and capered, fighting the freezing wait for their next turn under the hose, turning and jumping with their wrists held high overhead.
"Which one's the best boogie-dancer? Get the hose on Twinky again!"
Damme recognized the Number 14 Private from one of the interviews – the youngest one – nineteen and pretty. The boy was a tapered cut of dynamic human muscle working hard under the battering nozzle of the firehose. He danced like a desperate, crazed slut. Illusory high-heels were enforced by the stainless-steel manacles lifting him to his toes.
"Check out the Twink-Boy! I'm serious! Hey Twink-Boy! Shimmy hard yer purty little thing"?
The fight against hypothermia under the battering firehose took a great deal of vigor – driving, muscular momentum forced onto tip-toe by the overhead steel restraints. Under the floodlights, it made a spirited show, and the frantic energy of the dancing-boys in a row was joined by a sizeable crowd outside the wire. The spectacle attracted all ranks from the wider Fort Drexel, and many curious eyes hovered in the darkness, just beyond the reach of the floodlights.
It was a noisy piece of theatre. Sixteen healthy sets of lungs screamed for warmth, and more shouting megaphones merged with the din. And indeed, the introductory welcome for a new intake was a popular attraction. Thermoses of coffee were passed. Gloved hands were rubbed, and Corporals grinned.
Soon though, the show became repetitive. "GAH! GAH! GAH! GAH!" The hosed cadets shrieked. The megaphones squawked angrily, and the pounding hammer of the firehose continued, making swirling torrents on the concrete which the drains could hardly swallow. The soldiers stepped back, careful to avoid the freezing gushes. They muffled themselves more securely in their wool scarves as they watched the bare, shackled Combat-Operators battling in the center of the yard.
It was getting late. Captain Damme pulled his cap down low and headed toward the Officers' Mess. Sergeant McCloud watched as the numbers melted away to warm barracks and his sixteen men danced nakedly in a row, their arms raised and their knees lifting wildly. The kid at number 14 had that dark, determined wrinkle at his brow. His mouth pursed as it sucked and blew strenuously, the kid fighting the cold and slapping the concrete alternately with his toes, huffing hard and glaring straight ahead.
"Keep exercised and keep breathin'," McCloud said encouragingly to the shaking line of young men. "Don't hang in your restraints. Keep boppin' and learn to tough-out the cold. Your day starts at Morning Watch and we'll need you lads sprightly and lively."
The bright-lit arena of the Elite Force Test School made a distant podium for a few hidden eyes. Binoculars on tripods watched from behind windows in quiet messes and from hillside shacks on Mount Donnegan. Even at a range of two miles, the ongoing display was lively and self-motivated.
Later, during the very silent hours between zero-two and zero-three hundred, the Middle-Watchmen released the chains and unlocked the steel cuffs. The sixteen trainee combat-operators had been racked onto their toes in the yard for two and a half hours.
The only items of kit allowed from their previous lives were their boots – already worn-in and drill-ready. They had to be presented at parade standard for the inspection-muster at the start of Morning Watch. Small nuggets of hard, old boot-black were issued, and the trainees were given sixteen twelve-inch green-painted circles on the concrete upon which to stand. The circles were numbered 1' to 16'. Their feet were not allowed to stray outside. The boots were not allowed to touch the ground until the parade-ready mirror-gloss was satisfactory – so the sixteen trainees began their work.
Spit, fingers, black lumps of polish, and boot-leather were worked assiduously and economically. They were alone now, under the bright floodlights on their respective numbered muster-stands, concentrating on their task. There was no talking. Erections rose hard to their bellies and fell, ignored, the begging male organs sadly disappointed at the rubbing employment now occupying their owners as they worked on their boots.
The zero-four-hundred-hour Morning Watch was approaching fast, and the trainees knew that their boots had to fucking shine – reflecting in mirror-finish the faces of the officers and NCO's who would conduct the inspection. The first four-hour watch of Elite Force Hell School was closing. The sun was getting ready to rise, and the forty-eight hour Indoc-sector remained to be completed.
garystayton@yahoo.com