KBL (12 page)

In contrast, NSW was collegial. Officers and enlisteds went through BUD/S together. Suffered together, pulled together, and ultimately either prevailed together or failed together. Same in real life—it was . . . the
Team
.

And the officers who didn’t pull together, who tried to maintain the caste system and didn’t trust their NCOs? Usually they did their fourteen months and then they left. For a staff job somewhere or a slot aboard one of the big gray monsters where they could hide in the ward room, away from all the scoffing chiefs and truculent Sailors, and be officers, managers, bureaucrats. Screw that. Which is why, after talking things over with his senior NCOs, Loeser decided to use shoot house exercises to bring back his squadron’s self-confidence.

Danny and Charlie Troop’s senior NCO, Kerry Brendel, suggested a basic incremental approach. They’d start with dry runs, then move to live ammo, and finally force-on-force using Simunition training ammo. Loeser realized it was a perfect solution because it combined the SEAL fundamentals of approaching a target stealthily, attacking it swiftly and ferociously, while simultaneously honing frangible shooting skills, with the principle of learning from your mistakes.

Dave Loeser projected a PowerPoint slide on the workroom’s wall-mounted flat screen. It showed the outline of the villa, an X marking the single entry. “No windows on the ground floor. One door—material unknown. Hostiles? Unknown. Family: wife, kids, and probable relatives.” He paused. “Ideas?”

“Pretty straightforward—just like yesterday, except we don’t know about the hostiles.” Ken Michaud was, like Troy, one of Red Squadron’s youngsters; he’d just turned twenty-three. He had the lean, sinewy build of a marathoner, which he was. Tall and bearded, Padre, as the knuckle-scarred veteran of a Catholic education was known, had been top of his class at BUD/S. He’d been spotted as a potential DEVGRU candidate within weeks of his arrival at SEAL Team 2, and he had made it through selection less than a year ago—one of the squadron’s newest members. He’d been reassigned from Delta Troop to Charlie’s 6-Team to replace the Sailor who had fragged Linda Norgrove.

Loeser asked, “So?”

“Are we working against Jihadis?” Gunner’s Mate First Class Len Elliott was Alpha 1-Team. Tall, solidly built, with short blond hair going prematurely gray. His call sign was Rebel, and he’d been at DEVGRU for seven years and two wives.

“Don’t know,” Loeser said. “All I was given was the layout.”

In fact, the colonel from JSOC who’d given them the scenario had told Loeser to be vague about target, location, and occupants. “That’ll be pretty easy,” Loeser had responded, “because you haven’t given me any of that data anyway.”

The colonel had laughed. “Ain’t life grand when it’s full of surprises.”

Charlie 6-Team’s Machinist Mate First Class Jerry Mistretta, call-sign Cajun, cocked his head in the whiteboard’s direction. “You don’t know? Then we gotta factor dem Jihadis in.”

“That could mean suicide vests.” Quartermaster First Class Blair Gluba, call sign Gunrunner, was a round-faced pocket rocket from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He had four filled-to-capacity gun safes at his home just off London Bridge Road, behind Oceana Naval Air Station, and whether he was on or off duty, he never carried fewer than two weapons on his person.

The tall, angular boatswain’s mate first class from Florida, Roger “Heron” Orth, broke in: “Which means we got to get in and shoot them first.”

“That would be the general idea, Heron. What’d they say on that TV cop show—‘Do it to them before they do it to us.’ ” Loeser popped another PowerPoint frame on the screen. “Unless, of course, there are women and children.” He let that possibility settle in for a couple of seconds, then put a new frame up. “Here’s the landing site. The scenario begins with a fast-rope insertion.”

Troy’s hand went up. “Time?”

“Five minutes or less.”

“That’s doable, “ Padre said.

“I’ll break it down, and we’ll talk it over,” Danny Walker said. “Be with you in a couple of minutes, Boss.”

“Works for me.” Loeser dropped the remote on the desk. “Work it, then jock up. H-Hour is 0800.”

8

Dam Neck, Virginia
January 12, 2011, 0812 Hours Local Time

It was cold enough in the shoot house that the SEALs could see their breath. The target villa was three stories high, perhaps forty feet to its roofline, and seventy feet in width. There was one door, right in the center, and no windows. There were two circles taped on the shoot house deck to indicate the fast-rope locations; in the center of each, a sixty-foot, soft, thick fast-rope was suspended from the ceiling. The platform from which the SEALs would drop was just over forty-five feet above the deck.

From the left side it was just over ten yards to the single doorway, a straight run at about a 40-degree angle. The right-hand circle was just to the right of a square perhaps twelve feet on each side, built out of eight-foot-high moveable wall sections. Troy walked over and—habit—pulled on the fast-rope. Secure. He checked the angle. From the right-hand circle, the door couldn’t be seen.

“Breachers and entry team have to see the door,” he called out. “So we drop left, Alpha right.”

Rebel grabbed the right-hand fast-rope and hoisted himself a couple of feet off the ground. “Makes sense.”

The first two assault elements broke into swim-team pairs and lined up to check equipment. They were jocked up in full assault kit: the newest model light ballistic helmets with dual-tube NODs—night observation devices—and talk-through Peltor hearing protection with boom mikes that were connected to their communications suite M-BITR radios.

Each assaulter had tailored his kit individually. Most favored lightweight plate-carriers with the stand-alone ceramic plates that made them more battlefield agile. Some wore CamelBak hydration-capable vests. Others had subload from which they attached pistols, magazine holders, and first-aid blowout kits. Other pouches held flexicuffs, rolls of tape, and other miscellaneous supplies.

The official issue handgun for the U.S. military is the Beretta M-9, a 9mm semiautomatic pistol. Almost universally, SEALs reject that pistol in favor of one they consider more reliable and accurate, the Sig-Sauer 226 semiautomatic 9mm pistol. At DEVGRU the pistols du jour were Sig 226s, loaded with 124-grain +p+ hollowpoint, and Heckler & Koch’s new .45 ACP semiauto, with Speer 200-grain +p hollowpoint. Both pistols were durable enough to survive a maritime environment.

Long guns were either HK416s, short-stroke, gas-piston-driven automatic assault rifles that fired the 5.56 NATO round, or, for working perimeters and stand-off, 7.62 LWRCI REPRs—gas-piston-driven rapid engagement precision rifles with 16.1-inch barrels, or the 12-inch barreled REPR JKW (joint kinetic weapon)—slung off a variety of slings, depending on each SEAL’s preferences and the mission requirements.

Altogether the assaulters’ gear weighed close to fifty-five pounds. It was bulky, and it could be cumbersome when a dozen SEALs were crammed into the fuselage of a helo. Especially when the goal was to get all twelve out of the helo and onto the ground in ten seconds or less.

The reason for the rush? To avoid vulnerability. As Admiral Bill McRaven wrote in
Spec Ops
, there is an area of vulnerability in every special operations mission during which the probability of mission completion can be compromised—compromised by what Clausewitz called
la friction,
compromised by the fog of war, compromised by Murphy’s Law. Whatever the cause, the longer that area of vulnerability exists, the more likely it becomes that things will go south and relative superiority will not be achieved. So, when getting boots on the ground ASAP was key, fast-roping was the most effective insertion method.

Basically, fast-roping is a controlled free fall. The operator goes out the helo and descends a rope using his hands as brakes. Thick leather gloves prevent rope burns—but not always. In fact, some fast-ropers have been known to adapt extra-thick welder’s gloves as their descent equipment of choice. The fast rope itself is an olive green, multiple strand, right-hand lay weave, soft-woven, multifilament polyester over multifilament polypropylene, with a diameter of one and three-quarter inches. It is known as a Plimoore fast rope. Plimoores come in four lengths: 30, 60, 90, and 120 feet, the most common being 60 or 90 feet. They have a tensile strength that exceeds thirty thousand pounds.

Today the SEALs would have it easy. They were dropping off a platform on a single rope, not a hovering helo and twin ropes, where the rotor wash could smack them onto the ground if the helo shifted, or toss them into the air as they ran through the wash vortex. Still, between the weight of what they carried and the cumbersomeness of it all, even this sterile exercise could end in injury. Fast-roping is, to repeat, a (slightly) controlled free fall. And the human body free-falls at 180 feet per second—more than 120 miles an hour—once it achieves terminal velocity.

Or, as Boatswain’s Mate First Class “Heron” Orth was fond of saying, “Ain’t gravity wonderful.”

0819 Hours

Dave Loeser came into the shoot house all geared up and carrying a thirty-gallon blue plastic garbage can. He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled to get everyone’s attention. “Change of plans, guys.”

He dropped the garbage can on the cement deck. “Magazines, please. All ammo please.”

He waited as the twenty-four shooters cleared their weapons, extracted magazines from their pouches, belts, and thigh rigs, and dropped everything into the can.

“Check one another, please, and call clear when you’re done.” He watched as the SEALs patted one another down. Loeser looked over in Blair Gluba’s direction. “Hey, hey, Gunrunner, don’t get fresh with Rebel.”

“Not to worry.” Len Elliott towered above the short SEAL. “He can’t reach the good parts.” He looked down. “Can you, ankle biter?”

Gunrunner rolled his lips back over his teeth and growled.

Alpha 1-Team’s Myles Fisher, call-sign Fish, laughed. “Hey, we got our own Jack Russell.”

Cajun Mistretta’s arms were raised in a surrender position as Troy patted him down. “Hope Gunrunner have his shots.”

Fish: “Hope Rebel have
his
.”

Three minutes later, Loeser received a thumbs-up from Walker. “All clear, Boss.”

“Good.” Loeser pulled a BlackBerry out of his chest pouch. Two minutes later one of DEVGRU’s armorers walked in, wheeling a mobile storage cabinet.

Cajun was the first to get it. “Oooh, oooh, we gonna get the chance to shoot real people today, ain’t we, Boss?”

0824 Hours

The SEALs exchanged their HKs and REPRs for preconfigured Simunitions guns. They were the same size and weight, but the barrels were bright blue and were specially tailored for Simunition’s 5.56, primer-powered marking cartridges. Handguns were different. Marking cartridges came only in 9mm, and so Sig-Sauers and HKs were outfitted with Simunition kits that had proprietary barrels and lighter recoil springs.

“Saddle up, gents.” Loeser led the way up the ladder attached to the shoot house’s north bulkhead.

0845 Hours

Atop the platform the SEALs split into assault elements. Troy’s 6-Charlie broke into three pairs: T-Rob and Padre, the pairing Walker referred to as “Kindergarten SEALs,” Chief Quartermaster Jack “Jacko” Young with Cajun, and Heron with Alpha’s senior NCO, a tall, lean sniper with a wispy Fu Manchu mustache, Chief Gunner’s Mate (GUNS) Kerry Brendel, call-sign Rangemaster.