The soaring blue sky that makes you think big. The golden light settles down from the sun onto everything like a magic dust that awakens beauty in the most mundane. A strong sniff of salt in the breeze makes you squint your eyes looking out at the Pacific Ocean as it expands to the horizon. The sand cliffs rise sheer up vertically as a hard edge with a suggestion of softness that you can almost feel sand drizzling down the side or threatening to crash all at once. They are the separation. Above are lush palm trees, lawns, and the city. Below is an entirely different world, soft powdery sand underneath the feet and towels of kids with families and sunbathers with their glitz of bare skin, colorful swimwear, and reflective sunglasses. Welcome to Orange County!
You'd park your car at the edge of the subdivision of homes for professional - stylish clean outside but meticulously designed houses to maximize square footage. The parking posts make a tricky puzzle with three or even four signs on each explaining the rules of contradictory and confusing parking rules. The selfish locals hate to share their beach, going to community meeting after community meeting to add more draconian measures to keep anyone else from enjoying their beach. Walking and stalking to key cars and leave threatening paper notes on the windshield, they channel all their seething anger against outsiders.
If you did find a parking spot right along the cliff and left your windows rolled down for any would-be thieves to inspect your car for belongings without smashing the window, you'd find a tiny sand path among the ice plants leading down the cliff. The ice plant grows fat leaves like succulants and its roots hold the cliff together. The sandy path is narrow and slippery from loose sand on top of hard-baked surface. The path weaves precariously down the near vertical cliff face, finding every little indentation and crack to create a foothold.
Halfway down, there is a little side path that leads to an outcropping with a circular bench and makeshift wooden roof over it at prominence that reaches away from the cliff and over the ocean. The locals call it the Pirate Lair. The surfers fiercely protect their spot with knives and throwing rocks. The surfers are known to knock outside visitors hospital ripe while the police helplessly watch from the distance. A gnarly bunch who lives of petty crime and violence to support their surfing habit.
But if you'd make it through all these challenges to where your foot dips and sinks into deep, soft, warm sand, you'd feel like in heaven. The way how the waves roll on already big from the depth of the Pacific only to grow even larger as the sandbank underneath pushes them higher and higher. Your eyes are so drawn to watching the anticipation of the waves breaking, eagerly trying to predict the very instant the top crests white and then slams down in a thunderous display of power and carnage. Having seen that repeat a thousand times, the amazement at the wall of water so immensely wide lifting again at that steady pace draws you in all over. Then you want to lean back into the embrace of the sand as the warm tingles of the sun tell you that all is okay.
This day, however, you walk down the beach towards Mexico in the far distance. The top of the cliff changes from the subdivision to multimillion-dollar villas, expensive houses with plenty of space around them to create privacy. They each have their own steep staircase down to the beach, where it ends at the bottom with the foundation severely eroded from the ever-licking ocean. You can feel money, so much money, so much exclusivity, and everything made so beautiful, while you are the little speck walking below the high water line, the spare space reserved for the public.
As the distance grows, the beach becomes emptier. None of the families with kids drag their offspring this far through the sand. Older, more mature people lay here in the sun, sweating and applying sunscreen. Finally, the red buoy and black flag indicate the end of the city beach - the end of rules and lifeguard patrols. From here on out, it's a county beach with little rules and supervision but also emptiness from its remoteness.
A group of four lies right in the borderland of sand and water. Their heads are tipped towards the water so that every wave washes over their faces and makes them spit out water after it recedes back. They hold onto each other with their arms tucked tightly together to link up. The waves wash them a little up the beach and the pull them back out again. They were blue army fatigues and combat boots. Every once in a while, one of them will lift his head. And then a fifth man standing over them will step on his face to push it down into the water with those big hard, rubbery, black soles of the boot, sand scratching between the bare skin and the boot. Their bodies shiver, having been semi-submerged for half hour. The Pacific Ocean draws a cold current directly down from the arctic ice, betraying the appearance of warmth.
Lieutenant Alex "Ghost" Reynolds is one of the men in the slush of sand and saltwater. He doesn't see the sky. He sees himself an honorable warrior charging into the fire and hostility in foreign, exotic places. He stands for strength, discipline, and ferocity of action. And this is his forge. Every challenge and trial will make him tougher and meaner. Every shiver of his body, every pang of pain in his head from hypothermia, and every aching for air when stuck in a big wave will bestow him a little bit more strength and warrior spirit. And he's taking his brothers and the one sister with him by holding onto their arms hard. He knows that they depend on him to lead by example to find their own strength.
A few paces away, right where the sand dips from flat down to the water, where the high water mark roughly is, where three cuties in their mid-twenties. You'd be forgiven to think of them as your generic Orange County surf culture hotties: Long hair down all the way to the small of the back, slender bodies, surgically enhanced breasts to be full and popping, and swimwear from the typical surf fashion brands: Roxy, Billabong, and O'Neill. A warm demeanor for their image and a cold reception for anyone throwing them a smile.
However, they were individuals. Mia "Sunset" Sanchez grew up in Huntington Beach. Her family owns a surf store. From a young age, she got used to waking up early to hit the glassy waves at sunrise. Saltwater is literally running in her veins. She's always out on the ocean. Her eyes are bleached blue. Her skin has a permanent dark complexion. Her soul has taken on the steady calm of the ocean and the fierce battle of a storm when need be. On her calm days, she paints beach scenes with water colors and does yoga. On her fierce days, she protests environmental destruction.
Skylar "Seashell" Stone was a transplant. She arrived for college and fell in love with beach culture. So she stayed. Still a little awkward with her body and new to the workout obsession of Orange County, she makes up for it with her smarts. Her marine biology degree required her to take plenty of hard science classes, which she gladly put into her rearview as she focuses on studying turtles delivering eggs to the beach and the little baby turtles hatching to crawl into the ocean. It's so terrible how the lights of the city and other human activity confuse the cute little miracles of nature.
The last of the bunch was Riley "Wave Rider" Rainier. By day, she taught surfing to kids and yuppies. By night, she was an adrenaline junky. She cliff-dived into the blackness. She raced cars through the hills. The meager money she had, she spent on fashion. Wearing mismatched bikinis with rock-inspired jewelry was her style. The plenty of scars from her stunt added to her cred.
All three of them were sitting up. Their bare, smooth legs were glistening from the sun reflecting on the sunscreen. Their taught bellies showed clear abs definition lines. Their round breasts were so firm that a quarter would bounce right off them. And too-small bikini triangles left plenty of curves visible. Big, warm, lipstick-enhanced lips contrasted with the cold demeanor behind those black, glitzy-model style sunglasses. They keenly watched the muscular Navy SEALs, attracted by all the testosterone that they exuded. They had a giddy joy in spotting a big wave that would send the SEALs struggling to hold their breaths long enough until the water receded out again. They had a guilty glee in how viciously and exact the drill sergeant could punish them for trying to escape their misery by raising a head.
Master Chief Petty Officer Samuel "Iron" Mitchell had a lengthy service behind him at age 47. He had earned his reputation for being an exceptional trainer to develop fitness, combat, and leadership skills. However, his command had also warned him that his inability to recognize the limits of his trainees and empathize with their struggles was limiting his effectiveness. The way how he styled himself with a buzzcut and no personal decoration, he had cut away all emotion. Through years and years of hardship service, he had filed away any feelings to sit stoically and silently at dinner. Why couldn't his trainees follow his path? Why did they have to swallow, spit, shiver, and struggle? Couldn't they simply hit the off switch like he did?
Iron hit the whistle long and hard to let them know the exercise had been completed. The team jumped to their feet, the army fatigues waterlogged and heavy with big rivulets of water running out of them. The heavy cotton could hold onto pounds of water to be heavy, cold, and uncomfortable. He sent them on sprints up and down the beach through deep, energy-sapping sand and had them flip a truck tire along the beach for strength training. The goal was to warm up their body from mild hypothermia. The team leader Ghost told them to strip down to their swimwear to allow the sun to warm them up faster. Iron ground his teeth against the display of weakness but allowed it to proceed.
The young women loved seeing the bulging pecs and triceps unwrapped. The male, muscular curves titillated them. The display of raw strength made them quiver on the inside. The big jaws and kind eyes had them swooning. The way how Ghost flipped with tire with so much force that it didn't simply turn on its side but flew into the air was a rousing display. The lack of effort with how fast their legs flew on the sprints was a beautiful display of a male specimen.
The one odd thing among the SEALs was the single woman among them. Petty Officer Michelle "Raven" Rodriguez was only 27 years old. Born in Miami, Florida, she had a Cuban flair to her. She had a way of rolling a part of her uniform up or adjusting it to make herself look more fashionable. Her black hair was put in a bun with the minimal adoration like pins and a rubber band that the army allows, but within those limitations, she did her best to show her Latina attitude. She spat. She cursed under her breath. She scowled every time she was told to do something like she despised authority to the bone. She was small, compact, and agile. What she lacked in size and strength, she made up by being quick and adept at getting her body into the right position. When she pushed the tire, her body exploded so fast from a squat to an arms raised high stance that the tire didn't have any time to be heavy. She had a black military-issue wide bikini top with her metal dog tags bouncing on it with her intense action.
The beach girls liked that the SEALs stole glances at them, like right after coming up from a push-up they'd look over before breaking into a sprint. Soon the beach girls started a game of who could score the most looks. Mia started doing yoga poses. She bent down to wiggle her butt high in downward dog. Skylar sat over Riley's butt to apply sunscreen to Riley's back. Not to be outdone, Riley untied her bikini top behind her back and placed it next to her - allowing it to dangle for a while outstretched from her hand to make sure that SEALs noticed that she was topless.
Iron watched grimly. His team was losing focus. The times that he recorded on his clipboard were dropping more than they should from pure tiredness of repeating the drills. Those numbers mattered. His boss would go over the numbers at the end of the day. The way things were going, they were lowering his rating. Yelling at them to focus wasn't helping in the slightest. He could see how his trainees were stealing glances every chance they got, like when they turned around at the end of the sprint, their eyes would stay glued on those women for a few seconds.
So Iron walked over to the women. They sure looked stunning. Even he felt weak in the knees like all this perfection of skin, legs, arms, boobs, and cute faces created an energy field that distorted his ability to think.
"Ladies! We are trying to do a training evolution. You are very distracting. Can you move north on the beach?" he asked him. In his mind, he was polite and direct. To them, he was barking rude orders at them.
