Fat people on the support staff were relentlessly mocked. A soldier of Asian descent was called a “chink” to his face. The boozing in the team bays Delta Force Boosting inevitably degenerated into obstreperous roughhousing. “That’s it, we’re not fucking drinking anymore,” a sergeant major would bellow in frustration. “You guys are out of control.” But the dry spells never lasted long. “It was like they were trying to herd cattle,” said Williams, “or take care of a bunch of children.”

On two occasions that both Williams and Licea recalled, aggrieved women came on base and went to the front gate of the unit demanding to speak to the commander. One claimed that an operator had attempted to rape her at his apartment after a date. The other was an operator’s wife who had learned that her husband had married another woman while working under an alias identity in Jordan. On neither occasion did the commander grant an audience. The unit sent counterintelligence personnel to placate the women and pretend that something would be done about their complaints.

“There is zero respect for women in that community,” said Valeria Zavala, a psyops soldier who deployed to Afghanistan with JSOC. “I know this is specifically about Delta Force,” she said, “but it’s like this across the whole of USASOC.”

“‘I’m so frustrated with this fraternity-like mentality,’” she quoted Savard as saying. “But no one in their right mind would choose to leave Delta and go back to the regular Army,” Williams said. “Because at Delta, you didn’t have to be at work at nine. As long as you got your training, paperwork and pre-deployment stuff done, you just showed up whenever the fuck you felt like it. So even if they were sick of the culture, they’d vent to me about it, but they’d rather die than go back to the regular Army.”

One day over lunch in the dining facility, seated across the table from the commander of the intelligence squadron, Williams raised the possibility of deploying with the unit overseas, as support staff often do, and which would have been a boon to her professionally. Her boss’s reaction buy Delta Force Boost caught her completely off guard. He started laughing hysterically, hitting the table with his hands. “You’re not hired to be deployed with the operators,” he told her once he’d regained his composure. “You were hired for your assets,” he said, making a hefting gesture at chest level, “and if they want you to deploy with them, it’s because they all want to fucking run a train on you.”