good once we made entry. Without a doubt in my mind, we would have taken more casualties.”
I was quiet. I looked up to Jon and here he was saying we were lucky. A mistake had probably saved our lives. It was nothing but a bit of random luck.
After clearing the rubble, the ride back to the base in the Pandurs was quiet. We were hungry and tired. All of our faces were covered in soot. Usually there was more smack talking and excitement after taking down such a dynamic target. I let what happened start creeping into my mind.
As we rode, Jon’s words kept echoing in my head. Had the mission gone perfectly, we would have landed the Little Bird on the roof and entered the door on the second floor, only to come face-to-face with at least four heavily armed insurgents. A four-on-four gunfight with automatic weapons in a room no bigger than a bedroom never ends well.
By the time we parked back at our base, I had finished my mental gymnastics. I simply blocked out what could have happened and moved on to what I learned: Sometimes something random can save your life. And always dual prime a charge.
At the end of the deployment, I flew back to Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina, where Delta is based. When we got off the plane, members of their unit greeted me just like I was one of their own.
Before I boarded my flight to Virginia Beach, Jon handed me a plaque. It was a copy of a pencil drawing of a Delta operator and a Little Bird. It was framed with green matting and a Delta Force unit coin.
“I want you to have this,” Jon said. “Anybody who runs with this team gets one.”
Master Sergeant Randy Shughart, a Delta sniper, made the drawing, and the original was found after he was killed in Somalia. Shughart was awarded the Medal of Honor during the Battle of Mogadishu. When the Black Hawk crashed, he volunteered to defend the crash site until help arrived. He was killed by a mob of Somalis.
Before the attacks on September 11, Delta and DEVGRU were rivals. We were the two kids at the top of the block, and there was a raging debate over which unit was the best. With the war, there was no more time for rivalry and all that bullshit had gone away. They treated me like a brother during the deployment.
I shook hands with Jon and boarded my flight to Virginia Beach.
Back home at DEVGRU the next day, I met up with Charlie and Steve. They came over to my cage while I unpacked and got my gear back in its proper place. The squadron was just returning from its deployment in Afghanistan. Compared to my trip to Baghdad, their deployment had been relatively slow.
As much fun as I had in Iraq with Delta, it was still good to be back with the boys.
“Sounds like you were busy over there,” Charlie said.
“When are you moving down to Bragg with your Army brothers?” Steve said.
My jokes were weak, and I knew they were talking shit. It was great to be back.
“Ha-ha,” I said. “Good to see you guys too.”
I was looking forward to leave and then a trip to Mississippi to shoot. I knew the only chance I had to shut them up was on the range. Even though we’d all just gotten home, we weren’t scheduled to stay long. Two weeks of leave is all we had before heading out to train. It was a cycle we would repeat for almost a decade.
CHAPTER 5
Point Man
In December 2006, we were deployed to western Iraq. It was my third deployment at the command. I had spent one rotation working closely with the CIA. It felt good to be back with the guys instead of helping the agency plan and train their Afghan fighters. We worked with a lot of other units, but it was always better with the boys because we were cut from the same cloth.
My troop was working along the Syrian border and in some of Iraq’s nastiest towns like Ramadi, home to al Qaeda Iraq. Our job was to target high-level couriers that brought in foreign fighters and Iranian weapons.
The Marines in Al Anbar asked if we could help conduct an operation to clear and secure a series of houses in a village near the Syrian border. The village was a safe haven for insurgents, and several leaders were staying near the center of the town. The plan was for us to hit the houses at night and then the Marines would surround the village and relieve us in the morning.
Even with the team crowded into a Black Hawk, I was fighting to keep warm.
We had a combat assault dog with us. We used it to detect bombs and help track enemy fighters. I tried to get the dog to sit on my lap to warm me up. Every time I got him close to me, the handler would pull him away.
It was freezing when we landed about four miles from the Iraqi village. Shielding my eyes from the dust, I waited for the helicopters to leave. I could hear their engines fade away minutes later, heading east back toward Al Asad Air Base.
I stamped my feet and rubbed my hands together trying to get the circulation moving while we got organized to move out.
Even though I’d been to Iraq twice before, this third deployment was different. The enemy had evolved. So, like SEALs do best, we adapted. Instead of flying to the X like we did in the past, we’d started to land miles away and patrol in quietly. This way the enemy couldn’t hear the helicopters. We were transitioning from being loud and fast, taking the enemy by surprise, to being soft and slow and retaining the element of surprise for even longer. We could creep through their houses and into their bedrooms and wake them up before they had a chance to fight back.
But patrolling to the target wasn’t easy, especially in the cold winter night. The wind cut into our uniforms as we moved toward the village. I was near the front, acting as the point man for my team.
One of the key lessons learned early on in a SEAL’s career was the ability to be comfortable being uncomfortable. It was a lesson I first learned as a kid in Alaska checking the trap line with my dad.
When it got cold in Iraq or during Hell Week in BUD/S, my mind used to wander back to Alaska. I could always hear the roar of the snowmobile as my father and I headed toward the line of traps he kept miles from the village and deep into Alaska’s wilderness.
I remember how it felt like the snowmobile was floating through the fresh powder, and how as we turned it was like being on a surfboard cutting into a wave. The temperature hovered near zero, and our warm breath crystallized in the air.
On one cold winter day in Alaska, I was wrapped tightly in a tan Carhartt snowsuit, winter boots, and gloves. A beaver hat hand-sewn by my mother covered my ears and a scarf protected my face, leaving only my eyes exposed. I was warm except for my hands and feet. We’d been out for hours and I could barely feel my toes.
I tried to wiggle them in my thick wool socks, but it wasn’t helping. Huddled behind my father to block the wind, all I could think about was how cold my hands and feet were. We’d already gotten a couple of marten, a cat- size weasel with a bushy tail like a squirrel and a soft coat of brown fur. My father traded the pelts in the village to make a little extra money or my mother would make hats for my sisters.
But the biting cold took the thrill out of the time I was spending with my dad. Any fun I was having disappeared with the last feeling of warmth in my body.
I’d begged my father to go on the trip.
“Are you sure?” he said. “You know it is going to be cold.”
“I want to go,” I said.
I wanted to hang out with my father and didn’t want to be stuck back at the house. This was guy stuff, and he taught me how to shoot and hunt. As I got older, he trusted me to hunt and fish on my own, and I’d take the family boat up the river for a week at a time. In a way, it was my first taste of “Big Boy Rules” and I thrived. Plus, I wouldn’t have to sit at home with the girls.
I always wanted to be outside. I loved the outdoors, just not all the cold weather. I knew that if my dad let me come with him I couldn’t be the kid complaining about the cold. But now, a few hours into the trip, all I wanted were warm hands and feet.
“Dad,” I screamed into the wind as we drove. “Dad, my feet are frozen.”
