SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper (17 page)

I carried the Heckler and Koch MP-5 submachine gun with a SIG SAUER 9 mm on my right hip. I kept a thirty-round magazine in the MP-5. Some guys like to carry two magazines in the weapon, but our experience was that the double magazine limited our maneuverability, and it’s hard to do a magazine change. I carried three magazines on my left thigh and an extra three in my backpack. We test-fired our weapons off the fantail, on the back of the ship.

Although we had sixteen guys in our platoon, one would remain as a sniper in each of the two circling helicopters. That left only fourteen of us to take down the entire ship—two more helos with seven assaulters in each. Mine would be the lead helicopter.

The helicopter crew members were familiar faces—I’d served with their squadron, SH-7, during my earlier navy days as a SAR swimmer. As ropemaster, I sat inside the helo door in the middle of the coil of the rope with my left hand on the part leading up to the hoist mount sticking out of the helo. When we became airborne, I felt the outside wind try to pull the rope away from me. I closed my eyes and took a rest.

“Fifteen minutes.” The air crewman’s voice came into my headset, relaying information from the pilot.

I opened my eyes and relayed the message to my Teammates. “Fifteen minutes!” Then I closed my eyes again.

“Ten minutes.”

I was used to the routine.

“Five minutes.”

Getting close now.

“Three minutes.”

We had approached the ship from the rear, slowing from 100 knots to 50 knots.

“One minute.”

Flaring the helo’s nose up at an angle, the pilot put on the brakes. As we leveled out to a hover over the ship, I had enough daylight left to see the deck. We were in position. I kicked the 90-foot rope out the door and called, “Rope!” It hit the fantail on an area too small to land a helicopter.

“Go!” Wearing thick wool inserts in my gloves, I grabbed the rope and slid down it like a fireman’s pole. With more than 100 pounds of gear on my back, I had to grip the rope tight to prevent myself from splattering onto the deck. Of course, with six guys behind me waiting in the helicopter, one big hovering target, I didn’t want to descend too slowly, either. My gloves literally smoked on the way down. Fortunately, I landed safely.

Unfortunately, our pilot had a hard time holding his position over the ship in rough seas with darkness falling and gusts of wind blowing. To add to the difficulty, the pilots weren’t used to hovering over a target while a 200-pound man and his 100 pounds of gear come off the rope—causing the helo to suddenly gain altitude. The pilot would have to compensate by lowering the helo for each man who dismounted the rope. We had practiced with the pilots earlier, but it was still a tricky maneuver. Without the pilot’s compensation, the first operator would slide off the rope with three feet of rope on the deck, the second guy with only a foot, and the third guy with the rope off the deck—it wouldn’t take long before some poor bastard dropped ten feet through the air with nothing to hold on to, the metal deck giving a lot less cushion than dirt. Even for the more experienced Black Hawk pilots, it’s a tricky maneuver. The helicopter pulled away.
Crap.
There I was, in the middle of a war, in the middle of the Red Sea, on a strange enemy ship by myself. I felt naked.
If this goes really bad, I can fight my way through it. If this goes really, really bad—Mother Ocean is right there
.
Kick, stroke, and glide.
The helicopter had to circle around, reestablish visual, make another approach, and hover again. It probably only took two minutes, but it felt like two hours.

I scanned the area with the muzzle of my MP-5 while my platoon fast-roped down. Once we were all together, we set our perimeter. Mark, who was our team leader, and DJ, our communications (coms) guy, took a group to the wheelhouse for command and control. Two shooters went to after steering to disable the ship—making it dead in the water. My team went to the cabins to get the crew.

Inside the ship, we approached the first cabin.
You’re soft until you’re hard.
Stay quiet for as long as possible. If I’d heard a shot or a flashbang, I’d be thinking,
Aw, crap. Here we go.
From then on out I’d be hard. Kick in every door and flashbang every room. Manhandle everyone. Violence of action turns up exponentially. We try to match the level of violence to the level required for the situation. No more, no less.

I opened the door, and four of us slipped in quietly while two stayed behind in the hallway to cover our rear. Speed is key, as is moving together. Two of us cleared left and two cleared right. The two crew members inside froze. We dominated the area. They couldn’t speak English, but we knew some Arabic:
Down.

They assumed the position.

Another SEAL and I stood next to the wall covering while two SEALs said, “Moving.”

“Move,” I answered, controlling the room.

They cuffed the two crew members on the deck.

I shouted, requesting to know if the hall outside was secure for us to come out. “Coming out?”

“Come out,” came a reply from the hall.

We took our prisoners out into the hallway and moved on to the next door. Most rooms averaged two crew members. Some rooms were empty.

In one room, we went in and cuffed the crew. I said, “Coming out?”

“No,” the two shooters in the hall replied.

The four of us stayed put with our two prisoners—waiting. I could hear arguing in the hall.

“Wasdin,” one of the guys in the hall called.

I stepped into the hallway and saw a crew member standing in a T-intersection at the end of the hall. In his hand was a fire extinguisher. One of our shooters was about to cap him for noncompliance.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“This guy won’t listen,” the shooter said.

Maybe he thinks we’re sabotaging the ship.
“Down,” I said in Arabic.

The crew member spoke Arabic. “No.”

I looked in his eyes. He seemed confused, not like he was being hostile for the sake of being hostile. Thinking it was simple miscommunication, I lowered my MP-5 submachine gun a little.

He lunged at me with his fire extinguisher.

Damn.

I sidestepped just as the fire extinguisher glanced off the side of my head. Back then, we weren’t wearing assault helmets. If I hadn’t sidestepped, the blow would’ve caught me straight in the face.

Wow. He almost killed me with a fire extinguisher. How would that look? Try to be nice and get taken out with a fire extinguisher.
I was furious. I caught him sideways and buried the muzzle of my MP-5 under his right ear, pushed him back, then gave him a butt stroke for good measure.

One of Mr. Fire Extinguisher’s buddies, a skinny little man, put up his hands as if to take me on.

My Teammate was about to cap him.

“No, I got it.” With my left hand, I gave Fire Extinguisher’s buddy a karate chop just below his nose, backing him off. I put enough force into it that he probably needed to get his teeth retightened. He quickly became compliant, not wanting any more.

Then Fire Extinguisher got cuffed the
hard
way: arm bar, knee behind the neck, grabbing a handful of his hair, lifting him up by the cuffs until his arms almost came out of their sockets, and kicking him in the ass down the hallway. Our guys took him and the other prisoners to the holding area.

Blood trickled from my head down into my ear. Now I was really pissed.
Try to be a nice guy, and that’s what happens.
In retrospect, Fire Extinguisher should’ve gotten two to the body and one to the head. He’s a lucky sonofabitch.

We found most of the men in the crew’s quarters, which doubled as a chow hall—interrupting their Turkish tea and cigarettes.

We cleared nearly every inch of the ship, top to bottom, stern to bow. SEAL Team Six would take the same ship down with thirty assaulters. Since we had fewer guys and were not as specialized as Six, it took us two hours. My team stayed on the bow with the prisoners in the darkness. Mark commanded our platoon from the wheelhouse while DJ ran coms next to him. Nobody got hurt. Other than me being an idiot. Now the ship belonged to us. Warships surrounded us as we sat dead in the water. Rigid Hull Inflatable Boats (RHIBs) floated beside us carrying Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment (LEDET), the lead agency for apprehending drug traffickers on the high seas. To a large degree, the dangerous part was over.

We mustered the prisoners. The ship’s captain, up in the wheelhouse with Mark, sent his master-at-arms down to do a head count. We found out we were missing one of the ship’s crew.
Somebody’s hiding.

We asked the prisoners if they knew where he was.

Nobody knew nothin’.

So we had to clear the whole freaking ship again. Leaving four men to guard the prisoners, we went back to after steering and started over. We were beyond pissed, tearing through every inch of the ship we thought we’d already searched. Halfway through clearing the ship, I got a call that we’d found the guy. He had been hiding tucked up between some pipes in an engine compartment—scared.

We took him to join his comrades on the bow, and we cut the flexicuffs off all the prisoners. Except Fire Extinguisher. I made him sit on the capstan, which looks like a giant motorized thread spool, the most uncomfortable seat on the bow.

Meanwhile, Mark spoke through DJ to an interpreter on one of the ships in order to communicate to the captain standing next to Mark.

“Were you laying mines? Where were the mines? Where are you going? Where are you coming from?”

“We’re not laying mines.”

“If you’re not, why don’t you have any cargo? Why are you on a course going away from Egypt when you should be going home?”

These guys were not giving us the right answers. Something was definitely fishy.

Fire Extinguisher complained, “My butt hurts.”

My head was still pounding.
Sonofabitch, you’re lucky you can feel anything.

One of the prisoners on the bow reached for the inside of his jacket, going for a gun in his shoulder holster. The snipers in the helicopter aimed their infrared lasers at him as the rest of us clicked the safeties off our MP-5s, about to blow him away—but there was neither gun nor holster, just a white pack of cigarettes.

“No, no, no, no,” pleaded the prisoner. His eyes looked like two fried eggs. He was lucky we had such tight trigger discipline—not like the four policemen in New York who shot Amadou Diallo forty-one times reaching for his wallet.

One of the crew spoke English, and we translated through him. “No sudden movements. Don’t be reaching inside your clothes for anything.”

Fire Extinguisher whined, “My butt hurts.”

I hope you give me a reason to shoot you.

Later, a teenager burst onto the bow running. We took him down rudely and abruptly. After calling Mark, we found out the kid was the captain’s messenger coming to get the keys to something. Maybe whenever the captain gave him an order, he was supposed to haul ass, but we made it clear to him: “No fast movements, and no running.” I felt sorry for the poor kid because we took him down so hard.

The captain and crew still weren’t giving us the right answers, so LEDET, armed with shotguns, came aboard and high-fived us, and we turned over the ship and prisoners to them. They would sail the ship to a friendly port in the Red Sea, where it wouldn’t be the end of the story for the prisoners by any means.

Fire Extinguisher still had his cuffs on as LEDET took over. I hope he still has them on to this day.

Our job was done. The weather worsened, so we couldn’t take a helicopter out. Instead, we lowered ourselves on caving ladders and left the vessel on LEDET RHIBs. The RHIBs took us to the LEDET’s amphibious ship.

We boarded the amphibious ship in the early morning, having been awake for more than twenty-four hours. The last time we’d eaten was lunch the day before. Add to that the physical exertion and adrenaline dump—we were starving to death. In the chow hall, even though it was before breakfast hours, they brought out an amazing meal for all sixteen of us. I don’t remember exactly what they fed us, but it seems like they fed us breakfast and dinner: quiche, grilled ham, buttermilk pancakes with blueberry topping, orange juice, hot coffee, steak, creamed asparagus soup, steamed cabbage and white sauce, mashed potatoes, and hot apple pie.

The head cook came out and shook each of our hands. “I’ve made some of my secret recipes. Hope you like it.”

“Incredible,” I said.

“We just found out you guys were coming, and this is all we had time for.”

The debrief took place while we ate. All the officers on the ship seemed to be present. They treated us like kings. It seemed like everyone who could cram into the chow hall had come. People just wanted to meet, talk to, and be a part of us. Their hospitality meant a lot to me. Made me feel important.

Near early afternoon, our birds landed on the fantail of the amphibious ship, we waved good-bye, and flew back to the
Kennedy.