IRVING, TEXAS,
AUGUST 14, 2:20 P.M. CDT
Todd Wells was in agony.
The hot, dry air seared his lungs as he gasped for oxygen. His legs were engorged with lactic acid, making both his quadriceps and his hamstrings feel as if they were about to tear with each step he took. His heart rate was in the red zone.
Yet disbelief nearly dwarfed his agony. The rookie—the no-name—was winning. Beating the toughest, fittest man on the planet. That’s what Wells was, after all. He’d proven it by winning the Crucible two years running.
And the rookie was not just beating him; he was smoking him. In fact, the last event wasn’t even close. The rookie had finished the forty-by-forty-yard shuttle run a good nine seconds ahead of Wells. Impossible.
But he’d prevail still. One event remained in the Crucible, a five-day competition created by a former German decathlete who’d graduated to a career as an operator in GSG-9, the vaunted German counterterrorism unit. Convinced that other extreme physical competitions tested only a limited range of physical prowess, he developed the Crucible to measure every aspect of physical fitness.
The Crucible included multiple sprints, 5K, 10K, and marathon runs, a variety of obstacle courses, surface and underwater swims, graduated power cleans, dead lifts, squats, and reaction drills, all with barely a pause between events. The competition was capped by a series of one-on-one fights, consisting of three one-minute, no-holds-barred contests, scored on a point system: the Cauldron.
It was this last event that Wells was depending upon. It had provided his margin of victory the last two years. The rookie, Tom Lofton, presently held a seven-point lead in the overall competition. In six years of competing in the Crucible, Wells had never lost a Cauldron match. As he stood hunched over, he looked at Lofton. Though he appeared exhausted, his expression was placid and his body relaxed. But his eyes had an intensity Wells found somewhat unsettling. No matter. Lofton would be toast in the Cauldron.
Mike Garin, the man known to the other competitors as Tom Lofton, was doing the math. He held a seven-point lead on the reigning champion with only the Cauldron remaining. The winner of the fighting competition would get ten points, the runner-up seven, third place five, fourth three, and fifth one. Therefore, all Garin had to do to win at least a share of the championship was to come in fourth place or higher in the final event. But if he did that, with all of the attendant notoriety of being champion, someone might discover that Tom Lofton was actually Mike Garin, former Omega special operator.
So, quite simply, he’d make sure to come in no higher than fifth. In other words, he had to lose. Not something he relished doing.
Garin rose upright, placed his hands on his hips, and scanned the sidelines, ringed with TV cameras, judges, and support team personnel. The other competitors had three or four team members each. Garin’s support consisted only of Luci Saldana, and that was sufficient. She was already jogging toward him with an ice pack and a bottle of diluted Gatorade, looking cool and comfortable in white shorts and T-shirt.
Luci draped the ice pack over the back of Garin’s neck and handed him the Gatorade.
“You didn’t pace yourself, Tom,” she admonished. “You need to have something in reserve for the Cauldron.”
“How much time do we have?”
“First round starts in twenty minutes. You need to get out of the sun. Go into the tunnel to the locker room. That’s the coolest place in the stadium. They’ve got examination tables you can lie down on. I’ll rub you down to keep you loose.”
Several of the competitors were beginning to make their way to the tunnel. “Thanks, but I’ll stay here—too crowded in there.”
“That’s crazy, Tom. The sun will take it out of you. They’ve already taken four people to the urgent care.”
“I’ve been in worse.”
All of five foot three, 105 pounds, Luci Saldana looked up at Mike Garin with a stern expression. “No self-respecting support member would let their competitor do that. You could get heatstroke. Go into the tunnel. Right now.”
“I’ll be okay out here, Luci. Besides, it’s going to smell like a zoo in there.”
“I don’t care. Go in there.”
“No.”
Luci was furious. “Then just remember, if you don’t win the competition, it’s because of this boneheaded decision.”
And that’s precisely what Garin was hoping Luci, and everyone else, would think.