American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History (12 page)

On this particular day, I was beneath the ship and had just planted my mine when something grabbed my fin.

SHARK!!!

Then I put my heart back in my chest, remembering all the stories and warnings about my brethren SEALs.

Just one of the guys messing with my head,
I told myself. I turned around to flip him off.

And found myself giving the finger to a shark who’d taken a particular liking to my flipper. He had it in his jaw.

He wasn’t a huge shark, but what he lacked in size he made up for in pure orneriness. I grabbed my knife and cut off my fin—no sense keeping it now that it was all chewed up, right?

While he was munching on what remained of it, I swam up to the surface and flagged down the security boat. I grabbed onto the side and explained that they were taking me in RIGHT NOW!! because there was a SHARK!! out here, and he was one hungry mother.

D
uring another training exercise—this one was before my first deployment—four of us were inserted on the California coast from a submarine. We came ashore in two Zodiacs, built a hide, and did some reconnaissance. When the time came, we all got in our Zodiacs and headed back out to meet the sub and go home.

Unfortunately, my officer had given the submarine the wrong grid coordinates for the rendezvous. In fact, they were so far off that there was an island between us and the sub.

Of course, we didn’t know that at the time. We just circled around, trying to make radio coms with a vessel that was too far away to hear us. At some point, either our radio got wet or the battery drained, and all hope of connection was lost.

We spent just about the entire night out on the water in the Zodiacs. Finally, as dawn approached, our fuel was nearly gone. My raft was starting to go flat. We all decided we’d just go back ashore and wait. At least we would get some sleep.

As we were coming in, a sea lion swam up, all friendly-like. Being from Texas, I had never really had much of a chance to look at sea lions, so naturally I was curious and started watching this one. He was a pretty interesting, if ugly, critter.

All of a sudden—
splop
—he disappeared below the surface.

The next thing I knew, he—and we—were surrounded by large, pointy fins. Apparently, a number of sharks had decided to make breakfast of him.

Sea lions are big, but there were way too many sharks to be satisfied with just him. They started circling closer and closer to the sides of my raft, which looked increasingly thin and perilously close to the water.

I glanced toward shore. It was very far off.

Holy shit,
I thought.
I’m going to get eaten.

My companion in the raft was a rather round fellow, at least for a SEAL.

“If we go down,” I warned him, “I’m shooting you. You’ll be something for the sharks to munch on while I swim to shore.”

He just cursed at me. I think he thought I was kidding.

I wasn’t.

T
ATS

W
e did finally make shore without getting eaten. But meanwhile, the entire Navy was looking for us. The news media started carrying the story:
FOUR SEALS LOST AT SEA.

Not exactly what we wanted to be famous for.

It took a while, but a patrol plane finally spotted us and an Mk-V was dispatched to pick us up. The commander of the assault boat took care of us and got us home.

T
hat was one of the few times when I was really glad to get aboard a boat or ship. Generally, when I’ve been out at sea I’ve been bored. Worrying about being assigned to sea duty was a big motivator during BUD/S.

Submarines are the worst. Even the largest feel cramped. The last time I was aboard one, we weren’t even allowed to work out. The gym was located on the other side of the nuclear reactor from our quarters, and we weren’t authorized to pass through the reactor area to get there.

Aircraft carriers are a hell of a lot larger, but they can be just as boring. At least they have lounges where you can play video games and there are no restrictions on getting to the gym to blow off steam.

In fact, on one occasion, we were specifically requested to go to the gym by the CO.

We were on the
Kitty Hawk
when they were having a problem with gangs. Apparently, some punk sailors who were gang members were causing quite a discipline problem aboard ship. The CO of the boat pulled us over and told us when the gang used the gym.

So we went down to work out, locked the door behind us, and fixed the gang problem.

D
uring this workup, I missed a dive session because I got sick. It was as if a light went off in my head. From that point on, just about every time diving turned up on our practice schedule, I came down with a very bad disease. Or I found a sniper-training trip that just
had
to be taken at that point.

The rest of the guys teased me that I had better ninja smoke than anybody.

And who am I to argue?

I
also got my first tattoo around this time. I wanted to honor the SEALs, and yet I didn’t feel as if I’d earned a Trident tattoo. (The official SEAL emblem had an eagle perched in an overwatch position on a trident that forms the crossbar of an anchor; a flintlock pistol sits in front of it. The insignia is known as the trident or, unofficially, a “Budweiser,” the reference being to BUD/S . . . or the beer, depending on who you ask.)

So, instead, I got a “frog bone,” a tattoo that looks like a frog skeleton. This, too, is a traditional SEAL and UDT symbol—in this case, honoring our dead comrades. I have the tattoo on my back, peeking over my shoulder—as if those who came before me were looking after me, offering some protection.

B
IRTH

B
esides being a SEAL, I was also a husband. And after I came home, Taya and I decided to try and start a family.

Things went pretty well. She got pregnant about the first time we kissed without protection. And her pregnancy was near-perfect. It was the childbirth that got complicated.

For some reason, my wife had a problem with a low platelet count. Unfortunately, the problem wasn’t discovered until too late, and because of that she couldn’t get an epidural or other painkiller when it came time to give birth. So, she had to give birth naturally, without any training or preparation.

Our son was eight pounds, not a particularly small kid.

You learn a lot about a woman when she’s under duress. I got bitched to high heaven. (She claims she didn’t, but I know better. And who are you going to believe, a SEAL? Or a SEAL’s wife?)

Taya was in labor for sixteen hours. Toward the end, they decided they could give her laughing gas to ease the pain. But before they did, they warned me of everything that could happen to my son, no matter how distant the possibility.

I didn’t feel I had much of a choice. She was in tremendous pain. She needed relief. I told them to go ahead, though in the back of my mind I was worried that my boy would come out messed up.

Then the doctor told me my son was so big, he couldn’t quite squeeze through the birth canal. They wanted to put a suction thing on his head to help him get out. Meanwhile, Taya was passing out cold between contractions.

“Okay,” I said, not really understanding.

The doctor looked at me. “He may come out like a Conehead.”

Oh great,
I thought.
My child is not only going to be fucked up from the gas but he’s going to be a Conehead.

“Goddamnit, just get him out of there,” I told him. “You’re killing my wife. Do it!”

My boy came out just fine. But I have to say, I was a case the whole time. It was the most hopeless feeling in the world, seeing my wife in excruciating pain, without anything I could do.

I was a hell of a lot more nervous watching her give birth than I ever was in combat.

Taya:

It was a very emotional time, with tremendous highs and lows. Both of our families were in town for the birth. We were all very happy, and yet, at the same time, we knew Chris would be leaving soon for Iraq.

That part sucked.

Chris had trouble handling the baby’s crying at first, and that stressed me as well—you can handle war but you can’t handle a few days of crying?

Most people don’t deal too well with that. Chris certainly wasn’t one of the exceptions.

I knew taking care of our son was all going to be on me for the next several months while he was away. More importantly, I knew that all the newness and magic was also going to be with me. I was nervous about how I would handle it, and sad that all the memories of our beautiful son would be mine alone as opposed to shared memories we could look back on together.

At the same time, I was angry he was leaving and terrified he wouldn’t make it back. I also loved him like crazy.

NAV
S
CHOOL

B
esides sniper school, I had been “volunteered” for nav school by my chief. I went reluctantly.

Navigating is an important skill in combat—without a navigator, you don’t know how to get to the battle, let alone how to get away when you’re done. In a DA (direct action) scenario, the navigator figures out the best way to the target, comes up with alternatives, and guides the fire team to safety when you’re done.

The problem is, SEAL navigators often don’t get a chance to actually fight in the DA they navigate to. The way we set things up, the navigator is usually assigned to stay in the vehicle while the rest of the unit breaks into the house or whatever. That’s so he can be ready in case we need to get out fast.

Sitting in the passenger seat plugging numbers into a computer was not exactly where I wanted to be. But my chief wanted someone he could count on planning the routes, and when your chief asks you to do something, you do it.

I spent the whole first week of nav school frowning at a desk in front of a Toughbook laptop computer, learning the computer’s functions, how to hook up to a GPS and manipulate the satellite imagery and maps. I also learned how to take the images and paste them onto PowerPoint for briefings and the like.

Yes, even SEALs use PowerPoint.

The second week was a little more interesting. We drove around the city—we were in San Diego—plotting and following different routes. I’m not pretending it was cool, though—important, yes, but not very exciting.

As it happened, though, it was my skills as a navigator that got me to Iraq ahead of everyone else.

6

Dealing Death

B
ACK TO
W
AR

T
oward the end of our workup, we found out that they were standing up a new unit in Baghdad to do direct action raids on suspected terrorists and resistance leaders. The unit was being run by the GROM, the Polish special operations unit. While the Poles would handle most of the heavy lifting, they needed some supplements—namely, snipers and navigators. And so, in September 2004, I was pulled from my platoon and sent to Iraq to help the GROM as a navigator. The rest of the platoon was due to come overseas the following month; I’d meet them there.

I felt bad about leaving Taya. She was still healing from the birth. But at the same time, I felt my duty as a SEAL was more important. I wanted to get back into action. I wanted to go to war.

A
t that point, while I loved my son, I hadn’t yet bonded with him. I was never one of those dads who liked to feel my wife’s belly when the baby was kicking. I tend to need to know someone well, even kin, before that part of me grows.

That changed over time, but at that point I still hadn’t experienced the real depth of what being a father is all about.

G
enerally, when SEALs go out for a deployment or come back, we do so very quietly—that’s the nature of special operations. There are usually few people around except for our immediate families; sometimes not even them. In this case, because of when I was heading out, it happened that I passed a small group of protesters demonstrating against the war. They had signs about baby killers and murderers and whatever, protesting the troops who were going over to fight.

They were protesting the wrong people. We didn’t vote in Congress; we didn’t vote to go to war.

I signed up to protect this country. I do not choose the wars. It happens that I love to fight. But I do not choose which battles I go to. Y’all send me to them.

I had to wonder why these people weren’t protesting at their congressional offices or in Washington. Protesting the people who were ordered to protect them—let’s just say it put a bad taste in my mouth.

I realize not everybody felt that way. I did see signs on some homes supporting the troops, saying “We love you” and that sort of thing. And there were plenty of tearful and respectful sendoffs and homecomings, some even on TV. But it was the ignorant protesters I remembered, years and years later.

And, for the record, it doesn’t bother me that SEALs don’t have big sendoffs or fancy homecomings. We are the silent professionals; we’re covert operators and inviting the media to the airport is not in the program.

Still, it’s nice to be thanked every so often for doing our job.

I
RAQ

A
lot had happened in Iraq since I left in the spring of 2003. The country had been liberated from Saddam Hussein and his army with the fall of Baghdad on April 9 of that year. But a variety of terrorist forces either continued or began fighting after Saddam was deposed. They fought both other Iraqis and the U.S. forces who were trying to help the country regain stability. Some were former members of Saddam’s army and members of the Ba’athist Party that Saddam had headed. There were Fedayeen, members of a paramilitary resistance group the dictator had organized before the war. There were small, poorly organized groups of Iraqi guerrillas, who were also called Fedayeen, though, technically, they weren’t connected with Saddam’s organization. Though nearly all were Muslim, nationalism rather than religion tended to be their primary motive and organizing principle.

Then there were the groups organized primarily around religious beliefs. These identified themselves as mujahedeen, which basically means “people on jihad”—or murderers in the name of God. They were dedicated to killing Americans and Muslims who didn’t believe in the brand of Islam that they believed in.

There was also al-Qaeda in Iraq, a mostly foreign group that saw the war as an opportunity to kill Americans. They were radical Sunni Muslims with an allegiance to Osama bin Laden, the terrorist leader who needs no introduction—and whom SEALs hunted down and gave a fitting sendoff in 2011.

There were also Iranians and their Republican Guard, who fought—sometimes directly, though usually through proxies—to both kill Americans and to gain power in Iraqi politics.

I’m sure there were a hell of a lot of others in what came to be known to the media as “the insurgency.” They were all the enemy.

I never worried too much about who exactly it was who was pointing a gun at me or planting an IED. The fact that they wanted to kill me was all I needed to know.

S
addam was captured in December of 2003.

In 2004, the U.S. formally turned over authority to the interim government, giving control of the country back to the Iraqis, at least in theory. But the insurgency grew tremendously that same year. A number of battles in the spring were as fierce as those waged during the initial invasion.

In Baghdad, a hard-line Shiite cleric named Muqtada al-Sadr organized an army of fanatical followers and urged them to attack Americans. Sadr was especially strong in a part of Baghdad known as Sadr City, a slum named after his father, Mohammad Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, a grand ayatollah and an opponent of Saddam’s regime during the 1990s. An extremely poor area even by Iraqi standards, Sadr City was packed with radical Shiites. Said to be about half the size of Manhattan in area, Sadr City was located northeast of Baghdad’s Green Zone, on the far side of Army Canal and Imam Ali Street.

A lot of the places where regular Iraqis live, even if they are considered middle-class, look like slums to an American. Decades of Saddam’s rule made what could have been a fairly rich country, due to its oil reserves, into a very poor one. Even in the better parts of the cities, a lot of the streets aren’t paved and the buildings are pretty rundown.

Sadr City is truly a slum, even for Iraq. It began as a public housing area for the poor, and by the time of the war, it had become a refuge for Shiites, who were discriminated against by Saddam’s Sunni-dominated government. After the war started, even more Shiites moved into the area. I’ve seen reports estimating that more than 2 million people lived within its roughly eight square miles.

Laid out in a grid pattern, the streets are fifty or one hundred yards long. Most areas have densely packed two- and three-story buildings. The workmanship on the buildings I saw was terrible; even on the fanciest buildings, the decorative lines didn’t match up from one side to the other. Many of the streets are open sewers, with waste everywhere.

Muqtada al-Sadr launched an offensive against American forces in the spring of 2004. His force managed to kill a number of American troops and a far greater number of Iraqis before the fanatical cleric declared a cease-fire in June. In military terms, his offensive failed, but the insurgents remained strong in Sadr City.

Meanwhile, mostly Sunni insurgents took hold of al-Anbar province, a large sector of the country to the west of Baghdad. They were particularly strong in the cities there, including Ramadi and Fallujah.

That spring was the period when Americans were shocked by the images of four contractors, their bodies desecrated, hanging from a bridge in Fallujah. It was a sign of worse to come. The Marines moved into the city soon afterward, but their operations there were called off after heavy fighting. It’s been estimated that at that point they controlled some 25 percent of the city.

As part of the pullout, an Iraqi force came into the city to take control. In theory, they were supposed to keep insurgents out. The reality was very different. By that fall, pretty much the only people who lived in Fallujah were insurgents. It was even more dangerous for Americans than it had been in the spring.

When I left for Iraq in September of 2004, my unit had begun training to join a new operation to secure Fallujah, once and for all. But I went to work with the Poles in Baghdad instead.

W
ITH THE
GROM

“K
yle, you will come.”

The Polish NCO doing the briefing stroked his bushy beard as he pointed at me. I didn’t understand much Polish, and he didn’t speak very good English, but what he was saying seemed pretty clear—they wanted me to go in the house with them during the operation.

“Fuck yeah,” I said.

He smiled. Some expressions are universal.

After a week on the job, I had been promoted from navigator to a member of the assault team. I couldn’t be happier.

I still had to navigate. My job was to figure out a safe route to and from the target house. While the insurgents were active in the Baghdad area, the fighting had slowed down and there wasn’t yet the huge threat of IEDs and ambushes that you saw elsewhere. Still, that could change in an instant, and I was careful plotting my routes.

We got into our Hummers and set out. I had the front seat, next to the driver. I’d learned enough Polish to give directions—
Prawo kolei
:
“right turn”—and guide him through the streets. The computer was on my lap; to my right was a swing arm for a machine gun. We’d taken the Hummer’s doors off to make it easier to get in and out and fire. Besides the mounts on my side and in the back, we had a .50 in a turret at the back.

We reached the target and hauled ass out of the truck. I was psyched to finally get back into battle.

The Poles put me about sixth or seventh in the line to go in. That was a bit disappointing—that far back in the train you’re unlikely to get any action. But I wasn’t about to bitch.

The GROM hit houses essentially the way SEALs do. There are little variations here and there: the way they come around corners, for example, and the way they cover buddies during an operation. But for the most part, it’s all violence of action. Surprise the target, hit them hard and fast, take control.

One difference I particularly like is their version of flash-crash grenades. American stun grenades explode with flash of light and an enormous bang. The Polish grenades, on the other hand, give a series of explosions. We called them seven-bangers. They sound like very loud gunfire. I tried to take as many of those from them as I could when it was time to move on.

We moved the instant the grenade started going off. I came in through the door, and caught sight of the NCO directing the team. He motioned me forward silently, and I ran to clear and secure my room.

The room was empty.

All clear.

I went back downstairs. Some of the others had found the guy we’d come for and were already loading him into one of the Hummers. The rest of the Iraqis who’d been in the house stood around, looking scared to death.

Back outside, I hopped into the Hummer and started directing the team back to base. The mission was uneventful, but as far as the GROM were concerned, my cherry had been burst—from that point on, I was a full-fledged member of the team.

B
UFFALO-PISS
V
ODKA

W
e went on DAs for another two and a half weeks, but there was only one where we had anything like real trouble. A guy wanted to fight as we were going in. Unfortunately for him, all he had were his bare fists. Here he’s facing a squad of soldiers, each heavily armed and protected by body armor. He was either stupid or courageous, or maybe both.

The GROM took care of him quickly. One less asshole on the wanted list.

We picked up a pretty wide variety of suspects—financiers for al-Qaeda, bomb-makers, insurgents, foreign insurgents—one time we picked up a truckload of them.

The GROM were a lot like SEALs: extremely professional at work, and very hard-core partiers after hours. They all had Polish vodka, and they especially loved this one brand named Zubrówka.

Zubrówka has been around for hundreds of years, though I’ve never seen it in America. There’s a blade of buffalo grass in each bottle; each blade comes from the same field in Poland. Buffalo grass is supposed to have medicinal properties, but the story related to me from my GROM friends was a lot more colorful—or maybe off-color. According to them, European bison known as wisent roam on this field and piss on the grass. The distillers put the blades in for an extra kick. (Actually, during the process, certain ingredients of the buffalo grass are safely neutralized, so just the flavor remains. But my friends didn’t tell me that—maybe it was too hard to translate.)

I was a little dubious, but the vodka proved to be as smooth as it was potent. It definitely supported their argument that the Russians don’t know anything about vodka and that Poles make it better.

B
eing an American, officially I wasn’t supposed to be drinking. (And
officially,
I didn’t.)

That asinine rule only applied to U.S. servicemen. We couldn’t even buy a beer. Every other member of the coalition, be they Polish or whatever, could.

Fortunately, the GROM liked to share. They would also go to the duty-free shop at Baghdad airport and buy beer or whiskey or whatever the Americans working with them wanted.

I
formed a friendship with one of their snipers named Matthew (they all took fake names, as part of their general security). We spent a lot of time talking about different rifles and scenarios. We compared notes on how they did things, the weapons they would use. Later on, I arranged to run some drills with them and gave them a bit of background on how SEALs operate. I taught them how we build our hides inside homes and showed them a few different drills to use to take home and train. We worked a lot with “snaps”—targets that pop up—and “movers”—targets that move left to right and vice versa.