For the first time since she arrived in Florida, Yona looked right at Lydia. Her eyes were wild, and intense, and scared. “Please, Lydia, don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t come tomorrow night!” Yona grabbed Lydia’s arms at the shoulder in a grip that was not nearly as firm as Lydia would have expected it to be. “Just — just go back to D.C. and forget about this, all right?”
Shaking her head, Lydia asked, “What did they do to you, chica?”
Yona looked away again. “Nothing. Look, just go.”
“I don’t get it. You were my mentor, chica. The dojo, the SEALs, DMS — I don’t do none of that without you. Shit, the first all-female fire team is ’cause of you. I know it was Martinez who took all the credit, but that was your project.”
“And where the fuck did it get me?” Yona turned angrily back at Lydia. “Martinez lost to some Republican asshole, she went back to her law firm, and I was unemployed. Your little SEAL team fell right off the damn radar after Betty left office. Dorian got her leg blown off, you and Luci both quit, Helene transferred, and Dayana got promoted. And the SEALs don’t do publicity unless they’re killing bin Laden, so nobody really gave much of a shit anyhow. And then Kaicho died, and I couldn’t even call you to tell you, and…”
Yona trailed off, the tears welling up in her eyes, and then she broke, her taller form collapsing against Lydia’s chest. Lydia held her up, wrapping her arms around her, feeling Yona’s body convulse with sobs.
“It’s okay,” Lydia whispered, letting her cry it out and hoping that, once the sobs subsided, she’d finally explain what the hell was happening.
When Yona stood upright, her cheeks were red and streaked with tears, her eyes puffy. “You don’t know, Lydia, you just—”
“Then tell me.”
“Not here. C’mon.”
Lydia got into her Mercedes and followed Yona’s Chevy Malibu to a bar a mile away.
Once they were seated in a corner table, tequilas in front of them, Yona finally spoke.
“I tried to fight back, y’know? Tried to get Ken to — to treat me and Ana the same as he treated Cliff and Phil. He — he kept saying they were tougher competitors, and he needed to see fire in our bellies. Not discipline, not self-improvement, but fucking fire. We tried, we really did, we did everything he said, but it just — it never got any better. And then — and then there was the Christmas party.” Yona lit up a cigarette. “We — we were all drinking. A lot. I–I went to the bathroom, and Ethan…” She took a long drag on the cigarette.
Lydia prompted: “He followed you in?”
She nodded, looking grateful that she didn’t have to actually say those words. “He — he told me that if I knew what was — what was good for me, I would stop giving Ken such a — such a hard time. And then — then he yanked up my skirt, and—”
Again, she broke. Sobs racked her again, and Lydia got up and sat next to her at the table instead of across, wrapping her arms around her mentor. “It’s okay.”
She wiped tears from her cheek with her palm-heel. “No, no, it’s not, it’s not okay, I couldn’t tell anyone what happened, Ethan is Ken’s total right hand, and they worship him! He gets you trophies, he makes you stronger, he’s a winner.”
“If you’re a guy.”
“Yeah.” She dragged on her cigarette, and that seemed to stop the sobs. “That — that wasn’t the — the end of it. After the party, Ken asked me and the other women to — to help clean up. Except he didn’t want help, he wanted us to do it all while the guys stood around and — and drank more. And then Ken — he pulled — he — God, he pulled down his fucking pants! Said if we did a good job, he’d let us blow him.”
“‘Let’ you?” Lydia stood up. “C’mon. We’re going back to that dojo so I can kill him.”
“Lydia—”
“C’mon. I’m a federal agent now, I can kill the cabrón and just make up a reason.”
“Lydia, stop! Sit down, please!”
Reluctantly, Lydia did so, grabbing her tequila and slamming two-thirds of it with one gulp.
“Please don’t do anything crazy. You — you don’t understand the following Ken has.”
Recalling her dive-bombing around the World Wide Web for stuff on the so-called grandmaster, Lydia said, “Yeah, I do. I just don’t give a shit.”
“Well, I have to. Fine, you go beat him up or shoot him or whatever. Then what? Even if you get your military buddies to cover it up, I’m still stuck here. Ethan and the other black belts will come after me.”
“Then fight them.”
“I can’t. Not all of them.”
Lydia stared at the woman who had been the source of her strength for her entire tumultuous adolescence. “Fuck, Yona, you — This can’t be fucking happening! When Mami died and Papi disappeared, you were there. You got me into the dojo, you got me out of trouble, you got me in the damn SEALs! You can’t be broken like this, you just—”
Yona put a hand on Lydia’s and looked into her eyes again. “Just go back to your life, okay?”
“And just leave you behind? Fuck that shit, chica. Kaicho may have been the teacher at the dojo, but you? You were my real sensei. At the very least, I want a piece of those assholes tomorrow night.”
“No, don’t, you’ll only make it worse. Remember what Kaicho always said? Once you get into a fight, you’ve already lost. Well, I tried fighting, and I lost.”
“Bullshit. There’s a way to win. Put his ass away.”
“And how do I do that?”
“How the fuck do you think? Fill out a police report. Then get your boss to go on TV and tell the nation how one of his staffers was molested by two black belts.”
“I–I can’t. They’ll crucify me, tell everyone that I was mad because I didn’t get a black belt and made up the accusation. They’ve done this before, Lydia.”
“So what? If nobody says anything, he’ll keep doing it.”
“He’ll keep doing it anyhow.” Yona looked away. “Just leave it alone, okay?”
“I can’t. Because you didn’t leave me alone when I beat the shit out of José Alvarez. You gave me another chance. Now it’s my turn for you. Tomorrow night, when he’s busy running the fighting class? Go to MPD HQ and fill out a complaint.”
Yona was shaking her head. “I can’t fight him.”
“Alone, no. But you’ve got a congressman for a boss, you’ve got me, and you’ve got the Miami Police Department, if you actually give them something to work with. Maybe it won’t work, but if you don’t make the effort, you won’t get the success.”
For several seconds, Yona just stared at Lydia.
Altogether, there are twenty-seven women in Martinez’s pilot program. The congresswoman is a realist: she knows that between 80 and 90 percent of the people who sign up for the grueling one-and-a-half-year SEAL training wash out. That’s why she’s only angling for a single fire team, which is usually four or five sailors. Eight fire teams in a squad, four squads in a troop, three troops in a team. She thinks this is realistic.
You think it’s nuts, and you don’t think you’ve got a chance.
But you also remember what Kaicho Bill said that first day at the dojo in Marathon: Without the effort, the success will never come.