but what we had in common was a willingness to sacrifice our time and even our lives for a greater good.
In the team room, the guys made us introduce ourselves and give them a brief bio. Charlie, the bully, was the first to speak and he barely got out his name before he was met with a chorus of boos and jeers from the senior guys.
“Shut up,” they yelled. “We don’t care.”
It went that way for all of us. But afterward, the guys were shaking our hands and helping us get our gear unpacked. It was all in fun and, besides, everybody was too busy to worry about it. There was a war going on and no time to be wasted with petty new-guy treatment.
I felt at home.
This was the kind of command I’d wanted to be a part of since I joined the Navy. Here, there were no limits on how good you could be and what you could contribute. For me, all of the fear of failure was now replaced with the desire to perform and excel.
What I had learned during the three-day screening more than a year ago was even more true in the squadron: just meeting the standards wasn’t good enough.
As I unpacked my gear, I realized I had to prove myself all over again. Just because I got through Green Team didn’t mean shit. All of the other guys in the room completed the same course. I made a promise to myself that I would be an asset to the team and that I’d work my ass off.
CHAPTER 3
The Second Deck
A few weeks before we were scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan, I printed out the packing list. It was 2005 and I was preparing for my first deployment to the central Asian country. While at SEAL Team Five, my only combat deployment had been to Iraq. Standing next to the printer, I watched as the paper rolled out. Six single-spaced pages later, I started to gather up my gear. The suggested packing list basically told us to bring everything.
We worked under “Big Boy Rules” at the command, which means there wasn’t a lot of management unless you needed it. Since getting to the team, I prided myself on being independent. For the last three months, I had trained hard and tried to be an asset. I learned that it was OK to ask questions if you have them, but you didn’t want to be the guy who didn’t know what was going on and was always asking. I didn’t want to make a mistake on my first deployment by not packing something, so when I saw my team leader in the team room I asked him about the packing list.
“Hey,” I said, grabbing a cup of coffee. “I was getting my kit together and the packing list basically wants me to load everything.”
He was sitting at the granite countertop sipping a cup of coffee and going over some paperwork. Short and stocky, unlike some of the other guys who had longer hair and thick beards, he was clean-cut, with a short haircut and a close shave. He also wasn’t the most talkative guy and he had been at DEVGRU for much longer than I’d been in the Navy.
He took “Big Boy Rules” seriously.
“How long have you been in the Navy?” he said.
“Going on six years,” I said.
“You’ve been a SEAL for six years, and you don’t know what you need on deployment?”
I felt like an asshole.
“Dude, what do you think you need to bring for deployment? Load it,” he said. “This is your guide. Bring what you think you need.”
“Check,” I said.
Back at my cage, I laid out my gear, called “kit.” Each operator at DEVGRU had a cage, sort of like a locker big enough to walk inside. It was the size of a small room, with shelves that lined the walls and a small hanging rod that ran along the back wall to hang uniforms.
Bags of gear filled with everything I needed for the different missions we could be called upon to perform rested on the shelves. One bag had everything I needed for CQB. Another had my HAHO (High Altitude, High Opening) or “jump gear.” My combat swimmer or “dive kit” was in a separate large green gear bag. Everything was color-coded and ready. My OCD was definitely in overdrive, and I had everything perfectly organized and separated.
But some of the gear, like a Gerber tool, came in handy on most missions. Back at SEAL Team Five, you were issued one Gerber tool, which had a knife blade, screwdriver, scissors, and can opener.
You were also issued only one scope for your rifle.
One fixed blade knife.
One set of ballistic plates.
That meant sorting through multiple bags to find the single item that you needed to transfer to a new bag containing the specialty gear for a given mission. It was a hassle and was not very efficient, but it was the U.S. government and I’d gotten used to it.
But it was different at DEVGRU.
My team leader came by my cage later that day to double check how I was doing and saw my load-outs in the color-coded bags. Off to the side, I had an extra bag with the gear I thought I’d need for most missions, including a Gerber tool.
“Go down to supply and get a Gerber for each bag,” my team leader said.
I looked at him confused.
“I can go get four of them?”
“Yeah, you got four different mission load-out bags. You need one Gerber for each bag,” he said.
My team leader signed my request form and I walked down to the supply office. One of the support guys met me at the window.
“What do you need?”
I showed him the list. It was basic stuff like flashlights and other tools, but I wanted four of each.
“OK,” he said without hesitation. “Be right back.”
In a few minutes, he came back with a plastic bin full of everything on the list. I had to fight to keep from smiling too much. This was a dream come true. Back at our previous teams, guys spent thousands of their own dollars buying kit we needed for work.
The armory was even better. Above the door was a sign: “You dream, we build.”
For a gun geek like me, it was heaven. I had them set up my two M4 assault rifles, one with a fourteen-inch barrel and one with a ten-inch barrel. I got an MP7 submachine gun and a collection of handguns, including the standard-issue Navy SEAL Sig Sauer P226. My primary weapon that I used daily was a suppressed Heckler & Koch (H&K) 416 with the ten-inch barrel and an EOTech optical red dot sight with a 3X magnifier. My H&K 416 with a fourteen-inch barrel I set up for long-range shooting. It was also suppressed, and on top I mounted a 2.5X10 Nightforce scope.
I also set up my fourteen-inch H&K 416 with an infrared laser and a clip-on thermal sight that allowed for more precise night shooting. I didn’t use the gun much because my primary weapon, with the ten-inch barrel, worked for most missions, but it was nice to have a gun ready with a little more range if I needed it.
I ran with a suppressed MP7 submachine gun on a few missions, but it lacked the knockdown power of my H&K 416. The submachine gun came in handy during ship boarding, in the jungle, or when weight, size, and the ability to stay extremely quiet were needed. Several times we shot fighters in one room with a suppressed MP7 and their comrades next door didn’t wake up. The H&K 416s didn’t compare to the MP7 when you were trying to be extremely quiet.
Rounding out my guns were two pistols—the Sig Sauer P226 and an H&K 45C. Both were suppressor capable and I typically carried the 45. I also carried an M79 grenade launcher, which was called a pirate gun because it looked like a blunderbuss. Our armorers cut the barrel short and modified the stock into a pistol grip.
