Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL (14 page)

The morning got off to a bad start when a Russian “fishing vessel” appeared four miles off Cape Canaveral and took up station within the submarine’s launch area. This innocent trawler bristled with antennae and communications equipment; it was in fact a Vishnya-class AGI, a Russian intelligence ship equipped to monitor the launch. The launch was delayed half an hour, then another half an hour when one of the P-3s patrolling the first-stage impact area reported a second Russian trawler loitering in the vicinity of the splashdown point. Both of the trawlers were in international waters, and there was nothing to be done except marvel at the alacrity of the intrepid Russian fishermen. It was obvious that they had our number, and I wondered at the time why no one seemed to make a big deal of it. We flew around in circles north of the Bahamas as the submarine was shifted slightly closer to the cape, and the decision was made, somewhere, to just fire the missile and let the Russians watch.

We had been airborne for nearly two hours when the launch at last occurred. We saw nothing and heard little until it was reported that the booster section had impacted well north of the recovery zone—nearly a hundred miles from the place we were orbiting. The Pave Low was immediately directed north, and in the helicopter we readied for the water drop. We sprinted north at 150 knots, and the P-3s reported that the trawlers were converging on the drop point as well. The AGI off Cape Canaveral would not be a factor, but the second trawler was under twenty-five miles from the place the booster had splashed down. I did some quick math. The trawlers could not be expected to make any better than 15 knots, which would put the Canaveral boat six hours away from the motor section, but the closer trawler was an hour and forty minutes from the impact spot. At 150 knots, we could expect to be in the area of the splashdown in forty minutes, plus the time it would take to find the motor, not insignificant given that the sections had floated barely three feet above the surface during our practice recoveries. This was quickly turning into a race. The Military Sealift Command ship that would take aboard the motor section was a full fifty miles south of the point of impact. Clearly, we could expect no help from her.

Mr. Murphy had been active all morning, and as we closed in on the motor, he got busy with our end of the operation. The pilot was an air force bird colonel, and he called me up to the cockpit when we were about fifteen minutes out. “You guys ready to jump?” he asked.

I told him we were.

“We’ve got a little complication on this end,” he said.

“How little?” I asked. I watched the copilot look away.

“We’re getting a little low on fuel. We’ll be able to insert you, but we won’t have enough to hang around until the recovery ship gets there.”

This wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “Is there another helicopter?”

“Just us,” he said breezily. “I figure we can put you in and head back to Grand Bahama to refuel.”

“Then what?” I asked.

“We’ll come back and pick you up.”

That was the plan? This may have been my first rodeo, but I wasn’t going to bite. Nonetheless, I had to be careful, or at least I thought I did; only later would I learn how to deal with air force colonels. For now I had to tread lightly but firmly. I was an ensign and he was a full colonel, but his big idea was a man killer.

“How are you going to find us?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“We’ll mark the position on the GPS.”

I was rapidly becoming aware of the difference between the air force and the navy. “Look, Colonel,” I said, “I can’t put my guys in the water unless you stay with us.”

“Why not?”

“Because the impact point is in the Gulf Stream. There’s a three-knot current running north. You might mark the position, but we’ll be miles away from there by the time you get back.”

“You have a boat, right?”

“That boat’s small and black.”

“We’ll find you,” he said with a bit of a sniff.

“Nothing personal, sir, but I don’t think you can. I’m not going to put my guys in the big ocean, tethered to a damaged motor section that might sink, and hope that we’ll be found after a brief search.”

He was pissed. And so was I. I thought I was kissing my SEAL career good-bye, except I wasn’t even a SEAL yet. Here I was calling bullshit on an operation, and not just any op—I was calling bullshit on my first independent assignment.

“You’re aware that a Russian ship is closing in on the motor?” he asked.

“Yes sir. That’s another reason I don’t want to get left out there.” He gave me a “What are you afraid of?” sort of sneer. I continued as evenly as I could. “Six guys in an inflatable boat won’t be able to stop the Russians if they want to take the motor.”

“You have weapons?” he asked, still looking at me like I was his daughter’s prom date.

“Pistols.”

“We’re out here to recover the motor section,” he said.

“I can’t risk my team and hope you find us.”

There was a long pause. The helicopter’s engines droned and the rotors pounded.

“How long can you stay on target?” I asked.

“Thirty-five minutes, max,” he said.

“Okay, I’ll tell you what. You get us to the motor section, and I’ll put a swim pair in. We’ll sink it with a couple of socks of C-4.”

He gulped. “You’re going to destroy it?”

“You want the Russians to get it?” I asked.

Just like a movie, at that moment the trawler came into view, hull down on the horizon, heading north. It was another Russian AGI, beat up and rusty. We flew past it. Everybody on the flight deck knew that all the Russians had to do was track us on radar and we’d lead them right to the motor section.

The colonel continued to look pissed. “I don’t know why you’re refusing to deploy.”

“It isn’t safe,” I said. “Call range control and tell them I’m offering to sink the motor.”

“I’m going to tell them you’re refusing to go in.”

“Mention that I’ve got no water, no food, and six signal flares,” I said. “I’m not jumping into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and hoping someone can find me again.”

I went back into the troop compartment and sat on the boat. I felt like my party was over, but Gibby gave me a thumbs-up. He’d listened to our discussion on his headset. He bent close and yelled into my ear, “Fuck ’em. You did the right thing.”

I hoped so, but I had a bad feeling about explaining this one back at the Team area. Five minutes later, the crew chief came up and yelled into my ear, “Range control wants to know if you can guarantee that this thing sinks.”

“We’ll blow the shit out of it,” I said.

The crew chief spoke into his headset, listened, and then bent toward me again. “Okay, you guys are a go.”

We readied the charges, three socks of C-4 plastic explosive. The socks were olive-drab canvas sleeves, a foot long and three inches wide, each containing a two-pound rectangular-shaped ribbon of C-4. Sewn onto the outside of each sock was a three-foot piece of cotton line, a bit thicker than clothesline. At the other end of the sock was a flat metal hook into which the line could be fitted and cinched tight. The arrangement permitted the line to be looped around the target and pulled snug, ensuring good contact and more bang for the buck. The bottom of each sock had a small hole punched through the canvas to permit the insertion of a det-cord booster or blasting cap into the explosive. Without a blasting cap or other high explosive to initiate, the C-4 would not go off. By itself, C-4 is an incredibly stable explosive, meaning that it is not likely to be accidentally detonated. Although I’ve never seen it myself, it is widely said that you can shoot a block of C-4 with a bullet and it won’t go off. Definitely something I would not try at home.

The crew chief watched with some concern as I crimped blasting caps onto three sections of time fuse and screwed M-60 underwater fuse igniters onto each firing train.

“You guys know what you’re doing, right?” he asked.

“Sure,” Gibby answered. “We watched
Mission: Impossible.
”

We arrived at the splashdown coordinates and started a search pattern. It took an additional twenty-five minutes to find the motor section, floating sideways like a tree stump. Gibby tucked the C-4 into his wet-suit top, and I stuffed the time fuse, blasting caps, and fuse igniters into mine. C-4 might be incredibly stable, but it was standard procedure to separate the explosives and the initiators during a jump, even a small jump like a swimmer cast. The trawler was closing in on us as we prepared to jump off the ramp. Spray kicked up from the rolling swells as the Pave Low sank into a twenty-foot hover.

“Pilot says you have seven minutes,” the crew chief yelled as we stepped up to the ramp. Seven minutes was not much time to swim, set the charges, and get recovered by the helicopter. I wished we were taking the colonel with us.

Gibby jumped first, disappearing off the ramp and into the swirling spray blown up from the downdraft. I followed, stepping off the ramp and crossing my arms against my chest to further cushion the blasting caps. As I fell the two stories to the water, I straightened my legs and pointed my swim fins in preparation for impact. I splashed into the incline of a rolling swell, surfaced, turned, and flashed a thumbs-up to the helicopter. As Gibby and I swam for the first stage of the missile, the helicopter moved off slowly.

The motor section was a bit over six feet in diameter and maybe twelve feet long. Basically, its shape was that of a beer can with a short funnel stuck to its end. There were some void spaces and guidance equipment in the lower sections, just enough for it to have retained buoyancy, and the cylinder was slightly flattened from impact. Much of the first stage was made of carbon fiber, Kevlar, and in places where the motor’s housing had fractured, carbon filaments spread out from the cylinder like a fine mat of dense blond hair. These Kevlar strands were extremely strong, and we had to avoid being snagged lest the motor section go down and drag us with it.

Waves surged over the first stage as we tried to find places to affix the charges. Gibby dove underwater and applied the socks to the lower sections of the motor housing, tying them tight against the base of the rocket nozzle and what was left of the steering actuators. As he cinched the explosives, I grabbed a lungful of air and dove down. I slipped blasting caps and fuses into the end of each sock, straightening the loops of time fuse and making sure the fuse igniters were screwed tightly.

As we were heaved to the top of a swell, we caught sight of the trawler. She was bow on and coming at us as fast as she could, her forepeak plowing down and through the rolling waves. The trawler was less than a thousand yards off when I bundled the three fuse igniters into my fist and simultaneously pulled the lanyards. The M-60s popped loudly, and I caught a whiff of cordite as the fuses started to burn within their waterproof plastic sheaths. There was maybe five minutes per fuse, but they’d burn at different rates, depending on water pressure and a host of variables that I no longer gave a shit about.

“Let’s get the hell out of here!” I shouted to Gibby.

We put on the power and swam 150 meters from the booster section. It wasn’t far enough to keep us clear of the blast, but it was as far as I thought we could go and still get aboard the helicopter. I raised my right hand over my head and clenched my fist, the SEAL hand signal for “I am ready to be extracted.” Gibby put both his fists over his head and crossed them, the hand signal for “Extract me immediately.”

The helicopter came on, and a wire caving ladder dropped from a hatch on its belly. The Pave Low settled to an altitude of about fifteen feet and flew at us, dragging the ladder in the water. I took a position fifty feet behind Gibby. The downblast from the rotors put out near-hurricane-force gusts; the tops were torn from the swells and slashed our faces and eyes. As the spray swept over me, I watched Gibby catch one of the rungs of the ladder in the crook of his elbow—classic frogman technique—and he started to climb up hand over hand.

Soon he was up and through the hatch, and the helicopter was directly over me. The downgusts diminished sharply as the fuselage blocked out the sun. I caught the ladder and climbed. As I came away from the surface of the water, the trawler was closer than ever, and I could see a pair of her crew standing on her port bridge wing, pointing binoculars.

As I pulled myself through the hatch, one of the air force crewmen fired a flare off the stern ramp of the Pave Low. Dragging a ribbon of smoke, a red star cluster snaked into the water a hundred yards in front of the trawler. They got the idea, I think; the Russian vessel turned sharply to starboard as the helicopter climbed. Half a minute later, two loud thumps were audible over the roar of the engines. I made it to a window in time to see a pair of white geysers falling back to the surface of the water. Five seconds later, the final charge went off, throwing pieces of motor housing into the sky. Ripped stem to stern, the first stage sank tail first and disappeared in a whirl of bubbles.

We flew back to the cape. Our presence was not required at the NASA debrief. We returned to our crummy hotel and spent the evening drinking lugubriously at a joint called Big Daddy’s. The following afternoon we were cold-shouldered as we loaded out and flew another C-141 back to Norfolk. It was late evening when we arrived back at the Team area. I cut the guys loose, then sat down to write what I was certain would be my first and last operational summary. I then went to the Casino, arriving a little past midnight, and tied one on. As the jukebox played reggae, I watched a couple of lesbians shoot pool and drank like the soon-to-be unemployed.

Before officer’s call the following morning, the XO called me into his office. I gave my report and told him the story. He listened, his face showing nothing. When he finished reading the report, he asked if I wanted to add anything. I first thought to say nothing—“No excuse, sir” was the stock answer—but dread got the better of me. I said that given the circumstances, I’d made the best call I could. I said that I had been respectful to the colonel, even if he was a moron, and that I was sorry if I had done the wrong thing. The XO shook his head and told me to get out of his office. Later that afternoon, Mike Boynton came into ops and told me to clean out my desk. My heart froze; then he said, “You just got reassigned, sir. You’re the new assistant commander of Fifth Platoon.”