Chapter 33

Colonel James Foster stood motionless at the back of the briefing room, hands clasped behind him in parade rest—a habitual posture from thirty years of military service. Though his face remained professionally neutral, his mind was cataloging every detail of the scene before him with the precision that had carried him from Sandhurst to the command of Britain’s most elite special ops units.

The recording equipment hummed in the corner, documenting every word of Carter’s presentation. Foster had obtained permission for this, of course—both from his superiors and from Carter himself. The American had simply nodded when asked, unconcerned with being recorded. “It’s your resource,” he had said. “Use it as needed.”

Foster had initially harbored significant reservations about this entire exercise. When one of his lads, now working for Royalty and Specialist Protection, suggested bringing in a civilian—an American carpenter no less — to advise his lads on psychological resilience had seemed to him questionable at best. But the things he read in Carter’s book had resonated, particularly the sections on maintaining mental discipline during extreme isolation. It had aligned with gaps he’d already identified in their existing SERE training.

When he’d proposed the fifteen-day isolation exercise as preparation for Carter’s talk, he’d faced pushback from his superiors. “Unnecessarily harsh,” they had said. “Standard SERE protocols should suffice.”

Foster had persisted, arguing that without this preparatory experience, the men wouldn’t truly understand what Carter was addressing. “They need to feel it,” he’d insisted. “Not just intellectually but viscerally.”

Permission had reluctantly been granted, with stringent safety protocols in place—regular medical monitoring, psychological assessments, the absolute right of any participant to withdraw at any time.

None had withdrawn. But all twenty operators—men whom Foster had personally seen endure extraordinary physical hardship without complaint—had emerged from mere days of isolation looking haunted. Some of the most capable warriors in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces, reduced to hollow-eyed shells of themselves after an experience that Carter had endured for a year and a half as a teenager.

It had confirmed Foster’s instinct that this was a critical area of training they had underestimated.

Now, watching Carter work with his men, Foster felt a growing certainty that bringing him in had been the right decision. The American’s approach was nothing like the motivational speakers or psychological consultants who occasionally addressed military units. There was no artificial enthusiasm, no theoretical framework divorced from reality, no attempt to impress or convince.

Just clear, practical information delivered with the quiet authority of experience.

The beer and food had been an unexpected but brilliant touch. Foster had been taken aback by the request—alcohol was never served during official training sessions—but Carter had been correct. The men needed sensory grounding, not more military protocol. The food and drink had visibly helped them reorient and had created an atmosphere for actual learning.