"What suggestion?" Matthew was the first to ask.
He had only heard Tom West and Kate Jeffrey at noon; instinctively he wondered if the two were plotting against him.
"Yeah, James," another actor called out loudly. "What kind of suggestion could make you feel you're dead meat?"
James McAvoy looked furious, his expression exaggerated. "Tom West thinks we're living too comfortably."
"Too comfortably?" Michael Kuliz cut in. "My bones were falling apart this afternoon!"
"Don't interrupt; let James finish," Michael Fassbender reminded.
Michael Kuliz shut up, and James McAvoy went on: "That bastard says the training isn't working. We have to ramp it up—move out of the hotel into the old Army Barracks by the Airport, eat canned food for every meal, crawl through mud, even sleep on cold, muddy ground…"
Hearing James McAvoy, many faces turned pale. This was London in November; doing that would literally kill them!
James McAvoy wasn't done: "Sleeping rough is only the start. He wants to raise the rucksack weight from thirty to forty pounds and stretch the march from three miles to five. And to help us think like soldiers, the last ten days we'll be quartered near the Pyrotechnics Test Site where they're blowing things up—three hours of sleep a night…"
The changing room fell silent; even Matthew felt a chill down his spine.
Pulling on a Sweater, he asked James McAvoy, "Did Gary Goetzman agree?"
"That's the worst part," James McAvoy said, dejected. "Gary Goetzman thinks it makes sense and told him to draft a new training plan."
"F@@#K!"
A loud voice cursed, then more joined the chorus.
Leaning against a locker, Matthew suddenly felt this might be about him.
But on second thought, Tom West couldn't design such an insane program just for him, could he?
Maybe the man really was a conscientious military advisor thinking only of the series.
Still, eating canned food, crawling through mud, sleeping on freezing wet ground in a British November—just thinking of it made him shudder.
"Inhuman… absolutely inhuman…" Matthew muttered, fanning the flames. "Simply inhuman!"
These days the marching, drilling, load-bearing, and push-ups kept increasing, yet the actors' favorite weapons and tactics training hadn't started. Claiming all twenty-five had no gripe with Tom West was impossible.
In fact, from the attitudes of Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Michael Kuliz and others—whether North American or British actors—it was clear: like Easy Company's dislike of Captain Sobel in the first episode, nobody liked Tom West.
An inevitable result of every overly harsh drill instructor.
Curses at Tom West filled the changing room again.
"Quiet! Quiet!" Matthew motioned downward. "Tom West's changing room is next door; we're dead if he hears."
James McAvoy waved a hand. "Relax! When I came in he'd already left with that madwoman Kate Jeffrey. The two are probably hooking up."
Those two often leave the Airport together after work; the whole Crew knows what's going on.
However,
only Matthew had noticed the pair's peculiar habit of rendezvousing in the warehouse.
Another British actor clearly held a grudge: "May those two bastards crash their car!"
"I like that wish."
Everyone knew Matthew had clashed with Kate Jeffrey, and he didn't hide it. "Best if the land rover's totaled too."
He put on a serious face. "Boys, brace yourselves mentally."
Michael Fassbender asked, "For what?"
"Suffering," Matthew shrugged, palms up. "Tom West's our instructor—what can we do? Grit our teeth; it'll be over soon."
James McAvoy shook his head. "Not everyone's built like you."
Matthew shook back. "So what? He's the instructor."
Michael Fassbender suddenly said, "If only he'd quit."
Someone chimed in, "The Crew should replace him. I don't want to roll in mud, especially in this weather."
"Let me remind you," Matthew said seemingly for their benefit, "Tom West is the Crew's specially hired military advisor."
"Pfft," Michael Kuliz sneered. "Guys like him are a dime a dozen in the army."
"Hmm." Michael Fassbender mused, "So many officers retire every year, and Tom West has no glittering Hollywood résumé. I'm sure he got this job through Kate Jeffrey's connections."
He was young and impulsive. "If Tom West really comes up with the training plan James mentioned, we have to do something about it."
James McAvoy agreed. "If he actually makes me eat canned food and sleep in the mud every day, I'll be the first to kill him!"
"Calm down, all of you! The new plan isn't even out yet," Matthew stepped in again. "Even if it is, we can tough it out for a few weeks and it'll be over."
Many shot him looks of disdain; in their eyes Matthew seemed exceptionally good at enduring—he'd even put up with that crazy woman's arrogance at the entrance, so a bit of training hardship was nothing to him.
James McAvoy shook his head at Matthew once more. "You, you're just too good at putting up with things."
Michael Fassbender stood, clapped Matthew's shoulder. "In weather like this you could easily fall ill. Filming starts soon; if someone comes down with pneumonia, is the Crew really going to wait for us?"
Matthew had nothing to say; he realized he barely needed to do a thing. These hot-blooded youngsters simply didn't like someone like Tom West.
It made sense—they were actors chasing stardom, not soldiers. Most had never endured physical hardship, so being drilled like soldiers was bound to dampen morale.
Masochists are a tiny minority in this world.
After venting about Tom West, the actors filed out of the changing room. Matthew still walked back to the hotel with Michael Culitz and Eion Bailey. At the makeshift Airport exit, Matthew deliberately patted his pocket.
"Damn it!" He frowned. "I left my phone in the locker. I'll go grab it."
Michael Culitz stopped. "Should we wait?"
Matthew waved them off. "You two head back; meet me in the hotel restaurant."
With that he returned to the changing room, took the deliberately left-behind phone from his locker, then stepped next door to Tom West's door. He pulled on the rubber gloves he'd prepared earlier, checked that nothing looked amiss, and slipped inside.
Like the actors' rooms, the men's changing area wasn't locked; Tom West's was no exception.
Matthew opened several cupboards without disturbing anything, but in the last wardrobe he found a large box of condoms. Judging by the production date, it had been bought recently.
Only Tom West had used this room lately, so Matthew figured the condoms were one hundred percent his.
He noted the box's exact position and orientation, took it out, opened it—three were missing, matching exactly the number of times he'd seen Tom West and Kate Jeffrey head to the warehouse.
Looking at the box, Matthew suddenly recalled a piece of news he'd once read on a smartphone and thought it worth a try.
If it worked, the parties involved would be in for a nasty shock; if it failed, he lost nothing.
Mind made up, he replaced the box exactly as he'd found it, glanced around the rest of the room for anything useful, found nothing, then slipped out, making sure he left no trace. He peeled off the gloves, stuffed them in his coat pocket, phone in hand, and left the dormitory building that housed the changing rooms.
After dinner at the hotel, Matthew took a cab into central London, bought several boxes of the exact same condoms from a large supermarket—carefully choosing ones with the same production date—then went back and studied them, confirming his locker-room idea was feasible.
Over the next few days, while keeping up with training, he continued observing Kate Jeffrey and Tom West, discovering the pair slipped off to the warehouse every other day at noon like clockwork.
Sure enough, what James McAvoy had predicted came true: under orders from the Crew and Gary Goetzman, all twenty-plus actors moved into the run-down barracks on the training base. Luckily they didn't have to sleep on the floor—two actors per dorm room.
Because Eion Bailey had already asked Michael Culitz to room together, Matthew ended up bunking with Michael Fassbender.
The old barracks were far less comfortable than the hotel, and with Britain's lousy weather—damp and chilly—Tom West increased the training load while the Crew's meals turned into military rations. They looked fine but tasted awful.
The new training plan rolled on. In Tom West's words, to achieve authentic footage the actors had to give one hundred percent, so the Crew even remodeled the training ground. Right beside the formation-drill field they'd dug several Mud Pits that were now being filled with water.
Though this part hadn't started yet, the Crew had already assigned a full medical team to stand by, yet the actors still grumbled nonstop, their resentment toward instigator Tom West growing by the day.