“I know, but this is something that will pass.”
“You always say that.”
“It’s always true.”
“All right. Go now, before the other units arrive. How many this time?”
“Only two.”
“Okay …”
Corrales nodded and floored it, kicking up dust in their wake.
Alberto Gomez was an inspector with the Mexican Federal Police with more than twenty-five years of service. For nearly twenty of those years he had been on the payroll of one cartel or another, and as he neared retirement, Corrales had witnessed him grow more cranky and annoyingly cautious. The inspector’s usefulness was drawing to an end, but for now Corrales would use the man because he continued to recruit others within his ranks. The Federal Police would help them finally crush the Sinaloa Cartel. It was good public relations for them and good business for the cartel.
“What are we doing now?” asked Pablo.
Corrales looked at him. “A drink to celebrate.”
“Can I ask you something?” Raul began, nervously stroking his thin beard in the backseat.
“What now?” Corrales fired back with a groan.
“You shot that guy. He might’ve been a good man. He had attitude. But we all did — especially in the beginning. Is something bothering you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you, I don’t know …mad about something?”
“You think I’m taking out some anger on these punks?”
“Maybe.”
“Let me tell you something, Raul. I’m only twenty-four years old, but even I can see it. These punks today lack the respect that our fathers had, the respect that we should still have.”
“But you told us that there weren’t any more lines, that everyone was fair game: mothers, children, everyone. You said we had to hit them as hard as they hit us.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, then, I guess I’m confused.”
“Just shut up, Raul!” Pablo told him. “You’re an idiot. He’s saying we have to respect our elders and each other, but not our enemies, right, Dante?”
“We have to respect how deadly our enemies can be.”
“And that means we have to rip their hearts out and shove them down their throats,” said Pablo. “See?”
“That guy could’ve been useful,” said Raul. “That’s all I’m saying. We could’ve used a punk with a big mouth.”
“A guy like you?” Corrales asked Raul.
“No, sir.”
Corrales studied Raul in the rearview mirror. His eyes had grown glassy, and he kept flicking his gaze toward the window, as though he wanted to escape.
Now Corrales lifted his voice. “Raul, I’ll tell you something …a guy like that cannot be trusted. If he mouths off to his boss, you know he’s always thinking about himself first.”
Raul nodded.
And Corrales let his statement hang. The punk he’d shot was indeed a lot like him—
Because he, too, could not be trusted. He would never forget that while he worked for this cartel, his parents’ blood was still on their hands.
10 INDOC AND BUD/S
On a cold night in October 1994, Maxwell Steven Moore was lying on his bunk in the special warfare barracks, a few seconds away from becoming a quitter at a place where men never said “quit.” In fact, if the word took root in your psyche, then you weren’t a Navy SEAL in the first place. Getting through BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) training would forever change the eighteen-year-old’s life. It had meant everything to him.
But he couldn’t go on.
The journey had started nearly two months prior when he’d arrived at the Naval Special Warfare Center to begin the INDOC course. The class’s proctor, the leather-faced Jack Killian, whose eyes were too narrow to read and whose shoulders seemed molded into a singular piece of muscle, had addressed Moore’s class with an oft- heard question at Coronado: “So I heard you boys want to be Frogmen?”
“Hooyah!” they responded in unison.
“Well, you’ll have to get through me first. Drop!”
Moore and the rest of class 198, some 123 candidates in all, hit the beach and began their push-ups. Since they were still only candidates, they were not yet permitted to exercise on the hallowed blacktop square of the BUD/S “grinder,” where only those who’d made it through INDOC could perform their calisthenics and other assorted forms of physical torture that were part of BUD/S training First Phase — seven weeks designed to test a man’s physical conditioning, water competency, commitment to teamwork, and mental tenacity. No man would begin First Phase without passing the two-week-long INDOC course. The initial endurance test included the following:
• A five-hundred-yard swim using breaststroke and/or sidestroke in less than twelve minutes and thirty seconds
• A minimum of forty-two push-ups in two minutes
• A minimum of fifty sit-ups in two minutes
• A minimum of six dead-hang pull-ups (no time limit)
• A run for 1.5 miles wearing long pants and boots in less than eleven minutes
While Moore’s upper-body strength still needed work, he excelled in both the swim and the run, routinely beating his classmates by wide margins. It was during this time that Moore was introduced to the concept of a “swim buddy” and the tenet that you never leave your swim buddy alone and that no man, alive or dead, is ever left behind. “You will never be alone. Ever,” Killian had told them. “If you ever leave your swim buddy, the punishment will be severe. Severe!”
Moore’s swim buddy was Frank Carmichael, a sandy-haired, blue-eyed kid easily mistaken for a surfer dude. He had an easy grin and spoke in a laid-back cadence that had Moore doubting this guy could ever become a SEAL. Carmichael had grown up in San Diego and had traveled a similar path to INDOC as Moore had, going to boot camp, then being recommended for the SEAL program. He said he wished he’d gone to Annapolis and become a member of the Canoe Club, the nickname given to the Naval Academy, but he’d goofed off too much at Morse High School and his grades weren’t competitive enough for admission. He hadn’t even bothered getting into JROTC. There were a number of other candidates who were officers — Annapolis graduates, guys who’d come out of Officer Candidate School as O-1 ensigns, and even those who’d served in the fleet for a while. BUD/S, however, leveled the playing field — every candidate had to pass the same tests, no special treatment for officers.
Moore and Carmichael hit it off immediately, middle-class guys who were trying to do something extraordinary with their lives. They suffered together through the four-mile beach runs they had to complete in less than thirty-two minutes. Killian seemed to punctuate every command with the phrase “Get wet and sandy.” The entire class would rush down into the freezing surf, come out, roll around in the sand, then, standing there like mummies, like the undead, they’d be sent into their next evolution. They learned immediately that you ran everywhere, including a mile each way to the chow hall.
This was 1994, the year
