Strong will

They had one too many divers. They had selected eight men and one woman, and the woman was unable to dive with a rebreather. This made her the weak link, the General and the Priest agreed. She needed to go. The Colonel wasn’t so sure. Yes, her participation would add a layer of technical complexity. She would be slower and burdened with more equipment. She would need more bottles for each dive […] She had leadership qualities. He wasn’t sure if a sudden crisis would sap the motivation of the rest of the crew but something told him she would carry on in the face of any adversity. She was in her late 30s: feisty, funny, good-humored. On her resume she described herself as kind and happy. These were not the qualities of a person the Colonel would typically work with […] Most of all he noted a trait in her that was rare in any of the operatives or proxies he’d worked with. He drilled his agents until they had a mechanical routine, because routine helps suppress fear when things go wrong…