Tom Sileo (34 page)

“Don't even say that, Brendan!” she said. “I don't know what I would do without you.”

Brendan told his wife he was sorry, to which Amy nodded and said it was okay. She simply couldn't handle discussing the unthinkable.

On March 9, 2010, Brendan and Amy stood in a loving embrace as they kissed and reassured one another. It was three years to the day since Brendan had left the East Coast for Coronado to realize his dream of becoming a Navy SEAL. It was also Amy's birthday.

“I only have to get through six months,” Amy repeated over and over. “It's just six months.”

Brendan's tears welled up. Only in his most painful moments, like Travis's death, the Marine Corps Marathon speech, and leaving Amy after their wedding, did Brendan become this emotional. Though he was committed to his mission and defending the defenseless, the SEAL hated to see his beloved wife pay such a high price for his duty.

“Please try not to worry,” he said. “I'll see you later.”

Amy had to leave for work before Brendan had to head over to base for his flight. After taking a deep breath, she gave him another hug and kiss.

“Six months,” Amy said. “See you later.”

After a roller-coaster workday during which it was difficult to focus on anything other than missing Brendan, Amy collapsed on the couple's big, empty bed. She had spent the early part of the
evening hanging out with her brother-in-law's future wife, but as the clock approached midnight, Amy was alone on her birthday.

As loneliness crept into the bedroom, the couple's two dogs jumped up on the bed to keep her company. Like thousands of military spouses, Amy was starting the long odyssey of trying to function while her life partner and best friend was deployed overseas.

While petting Hayley and Lexi and looking around the room, Amy spotted the card Brendan had given her on Valentine's Day. She picked it up and opened it, hoping that seeing Brendan's handwriting would help her feel as close to him as she had that morning.

Titled “For My Wife on Valentine's Day,” the pink Hallmark card was self-deprecating and tongue-in-cheek:

          
When something needs doing, I don't always do it . . .

          
When something needs fixing, I don't hop right to it . . .

          
When the checkbook's a mess
,

          
I may throw a fit . . .

          
When the going gets tough
,

          
I've been known to quit
.

After reading the next few lines, which were filled with similar soliloquies, Amy smiled and flipped back to the second page. In thick black magic marker, Brendan had crossed out the last two lines and replaced them with three words:
I DON'T QUIT
.

12

MISSION 59

O
n April 29, 2010, the third anniversary of First Lieutenant Travis Manion's death in Fallujah, Iraq, Lieutenant Brendan Looney, sporting a full beard almost two months into his deployment, sent an e-mail to Tom and Janet Manion from the mountains of southeastern Afghanistan:

          
Mr. and Mrs. Manion,

                
I just wanted to let you guys know that I am thinking about you today and every day. I also [wanted] to drop you guys a quick line from Afghanistan and let you know what was going on and give you an update.

                
Things here are pretty slow, but by all accounts should pick up in the near future. It is interesting here for sure; we are more or less out in the middle of nowhere and are expected [to] protect the local nationals as well as rid them of Taliban.

                
The biggest problem . . . is trying to be in 100 places at once . . . seeing that the villages are so spread out and the terrain is such that it allows many different avenues of approach. So it is very frustrating. We are optimistic, but often wonder what we are doing here when you have [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai making comments that he might
join the Taliban. Kind of crazy . . . but we are trying to chip away at it.

                
Other than that things are good for the most part I guess . . . weather has not been bad, not too hot.

                
I also wanted to let you guys know that I flew a flag here for you today. We do not have outgoing mail, so I will not be able to get it to you until I return. I hope all is well and I will talk to you guys soon.

          
—Brendan

Brendan's parents, Kevin and Maureen, worried every day about their son. For Tom and Janet, watching Brendan deploy to Iraq and then Afghanistan was like having another son in combat.

When Janet became anxious, she would take Brendan's gold Navy SEAL trident out of her handbag and say the same prayers she used to say for Travis. When Tom read or watched the news, which didn't include nearly as much reporting from Afghanistan in 2010 as it had from Iraq three years earlier, he wondered what his son's former roommate was working on at the same moment in the country where 9/11 was planned.

America had changed dramatically in the eight and a half years since Brendan, Travis, and millions of Americans had watched the Twin Towers fall on live television. On November 4, 2008, the American people elected Barack Obama as the first African American president in US history. In his January 20, 2009, inaugural address, the new president echoed his theme of change:

       
We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort, even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We'll begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan.

             
With old friends and former foes, we'll work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat and roll back the specter of a warming planet.

             
We will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense.

             
And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that “Our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”

Although a Democratic president had replaced a Republican in the White House, the burden shouldered by military families was largely unchanged. Two days after the new commander-in-chief took office, twenty-one-year-old US Army Specialist Matthew Pollini, of Rockland, Massachusetts, was killed near al-Kut, Iraq, in a vehicle rollover. Two days later, twenty-five-year-old US Marine Lance Corporal Julian Brennan, of Brooklyn, New York, was killed while supporting combat operations in Afghanistan's Farah province.

Almost three years before the last US troops would leave Iraq, and with no end in sight for the ongoing struggle in Afghanistan, thousands of American service members still faced danger on a daily basis. At home, their loved ones continued waiting, worrying, and sacrificing.

As assistant officer in charge of his SEAL Team Three platoon, Brendan saw the terrorist threat firsthand in a way few Americans could in the spring or summer of 2010. He was driven not by ideology, but by the same promise he and Travis had made when they were called to action after 9/11. As long as evil men wished to do Americans harm and demonstrated the willingness and capability to do so, brave men and women like Brendan and his fellow US service members would step forward to confront them.

With the Taliban launching its annual spring offensive, Brendan and his platoon started to see more action in May, just as he had predicted in his e-mail to Tom and Janet. Surrounded by jagged cliffs, extreme poverty, and acute desolation, which many of the younger SEALs had never experienced, it was Brendan's responsibility to keep them optimistic, focused, and sharp. But
considering that the SEALs were sleeping on an FOB “in the middle of nowhere,” thousands of miles from home, setting a positive tone was never an easy task.

Rather than barking out orders to the SEALs under his command, Brendan was “Loon-Dog.” The enlisted SEALs, or “E-Dogs,” as they were nicknamed, loved working for the twenty-nine-year-old lieutenant, because even though Brendan was an officer, he still thought of himself as just one of the guys.

During his deployment, Brendan spent roughly the equivalent of two full weeks on “over watch” missions above three districts in northern Zabul province, where the lieutenant and SEALs under his command would look down from the cliffs to make sure their brothers in arms operating below were safe from lurking Taliban and al Qaeda fighters. But after only a day or two on the high ground, Brendan was concerned that his primary responsibilities as an officer and squad commander weren't enough of a contribution to his platoon. Upon returning to base, he started training on a .50 caliber sniper rifle so he could directly help his teammates blunt the enemy threat.

After only limited training, Brendan was a consistent shot from a thousand yards. Over the next few months he made some of the most accurate shots his teammates had ever seen to protect Americans and Afghans in the villages below.

Wearing a half-shell helmet and carrying heavy gear and the .50 cal sniper rifle in his huge backpack, the bearded warrior patrolled, exercised, ate, and hung out with his entire platoon. When there was extra gear to carry, the officer threw it on his back instead of ordering enlisted SEALs to carry it. Regardless of the command structure or rank, Loon-Dog treated everyone with the same respect.

When things got dicey on the battlefield, however, there was no mistaking who was in charge, like one day when gunfire rang out beneath the over watch position Brendan's SEAL team had established above a small, Taliban-controlled Afghan village.

“Incoming!” Brendan yelled.

As bullets pounded the mountain rocks that were shielding his team, who took cover as soon as they heard their leader's unmistakable voice, Brendan's commanding officer (CO) asked for a status report over the radio.

“We've got enemy fire coming from just outside the village,” Brendan said. “Nobody's been hit, and we're prepping the counterattack.”

“Lieutenant?” the CO asked.

“Sir?” Brendan repeated what he had said a few times before realizing the signal was dropping in and out, as it had been for most of the day.

“Lieutenant,” the CO repeated. “If you copy, call me on the SAT [satellite] phone.”

As soon as Brendan heard the order, he broke his crouch and stood up. The SAT phone was a few yards in front of the boulder that was protecting him.

“Whoa, Loon-Dog,” exclaimed a surprised fellow SEAL,
Petty Officer First Class Vic Nolan. “Be careful, sir.”

Brendan knew his CO wouldn't ask him to call unless it was extremely important, and for all he knew, retrieving the satellite phone could be a matter of life and death. Without blinking, Brendan hustled toward the phone, picked it up, and returned to his position as bullets whizzed by.

“Loon-Dog . . . you alright?” Nolan said.

“I'm okay,” said Brendan, acting more like he was taking an afternoon stroll than engaging in an intense firefight.

Brendan then told his CO that his men were ready to strike back at the enemy. Moments later he aimed his sniper rifle at the enemy position. When the day was over, the Navy SEALs had once again disrupted the Taliban's plans.

At night in the cold, largely uninhabited land where he was serving, Brendan usually returned to his FOB, where he would unwind by lifting weights. At the same time, Amy would be starting her day in warm, sunny San Diego.

Before Brendan called home, he would give his teammates a chance to call their wives and girlfriends first. He wound up calling Amy about once a week. On one particular night, he was relaxing after an all-day mission and called his wife.

Amy was running around getting ready for work, making a cup of coffee with the birthday present Brendan had given her on the day he left for Afghanistan. Instead of spending money on pricey lattes at Starbucks, her husband had said, she'd now have her own machine and enough coffee to last the full six months.