Fearless (24 page)

This had been a possibility, he knew, but he’d thought it was a slim one, especially considering his most recent evaluation, based significantly on the training he’d taken part in
after
his eye injury. In the evaluation the master chief had stated that Adam was his “FIRST CHOICE for the toughest jobs.” He’d gone even further and recommended Adam for “NSW DEVGRU.”

Instead, Adam was given a job working with intelligence as part of a reconnaissance-focused task unit. As a team player, he dealt positively with his disappointment. “He thought he’d work hard and prove himself and then persuade leadership to clear him for direct action,” says one of his Team TWO teammates. “That was his plan.”

For the first few weeks in Iraq, while Adam’s teammates were conducting special reconnaissance, sniper missions, and raids—capturing or killing insurgents, clearing houses, and gathering intelligence—Adam tirelessly performed a myriad of support tasks while based in the northern city of Mosul. He constructed the C4 charges his team used for explosive entry; he took aerial photographs of target buildings and neighborhoods from airplanes and helicopters; he participated in the interrogation of captured insurgents; and most importantly, he pored over intelligence and played a lead role in planning missions.

Knowing how SEALs operate and with a keen sense for strategy, he “developed a systematic approach for intelligence and operations fusion,” wrote his commanding officer in evaluating Adam’s performance after the deployment. “His techniques were used to positively identify follow-on targets within 24–48 hours and facilitated an accelerated targeting cycle that resulted in the capture of 36 known anticoalition fighters in less than two months of combat operations.”

“He was making huge contributions, doing really important work,” says Austin. “They just would not let him do all of what we were doing because of his eye.” Adam continued to feel sidelined and “it drove him crazy. He didn’t realize he was probably working harder than anybody on the team.”

Back in Hot Springs, Kelley had no idea what Adam or any of the SEALs were contributing to the war effort, and to preserve operational security, Adam couldn’t tell her in his e-mails and phone calls. She could only trust in his training and pray for his—and the entire unit’s—safe return. Janice and Larry liked to keep abreast of what was going on in the war by watching the daily news, but Kelley would often walk away from the television. Not only did it escalate her worry, it also infuriated her whenever the U.S. military was portrayed in a negative light. She was livid at the soldiers who had taken part in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. “It reflected poorly on all the military,” says Kelley. “It reflected poorly on my Adam.”

It was so important to her that their children understand their father’s efforts in the war that Kelley had given Adam a journal before he deployed and made him promise to write about his experiences. “When Nathan and Savannah are older,” explains Kelley, “I want them to understand the war—not from the media or their school history books, but from the perspective of their daddy, who fought in it.”

After only six weeks in Iraq, in spite of the limitations placed on him by his superiors, Adam had a firm grasp on how this war was being fought, especially how intelligence was gathered and “extracted” from prisoners. On May 10, the same day the
New Yorker
magazine reported “numerous instances of ‘sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses’ ” in its cover story, “Torture at Abu Ghraib,” Adam sat down on his bunk at the end of a fifteen-hour workday in Mosul. He picked up the stuffed toy duck Savannah had sent with him and wrote about how he could still smell his Little Baby on it; he pushed around the toy #24 race car from Nathan. Then he wrote them a letter:

L
ATE IN
M
AY
2004 A
DAM WAS RECRUITED
by the CIA—for a few hours, anyway—when a case officer learned he was good with electronics. A local resident’s vehicle, to be used for drive-by reconnaissance missions in Mosul, needed to have installed a discreet surveillance system with its own power source. The system also had to be remotely activated. “I used parts from a bomb maker’s house that we did a hit on earlier this week,” Adam wrote in his journal. “He’s giving back and doing his part to fight terrorism and doesn’t even know it.”

While lending a hand to the CIA, Adam met a seasoned DEVGRU operator named Dale who had worked with Chief Harley. They discussed Operation Red Dawn, which had led to the capture of Saddam Hussein on December 13, 2003, near Tikrit, as well as Osama bin Laden and how Dale hoped to be the guy who took bin Laden out when the time came. That was, to Dale, the ultimate mission, the “Big Mish.”

The conversation segued to Adam’s recommendation for Green Team, the seven-month proving ground/selection course for those seeking to move up to DEVGRU. “He was really humble about it,” says Dale. “Adam was smart about how he got information. Some guys are annoying with their questions or come off as cocky, but Adam was so genuine, you wanted to give him all you could. And one question he asked me was why I chose to go to that next level.

“I explained it to Adam like this,” he continues. “Guys will say they’re going to get out and do something else, but honestly, the reason guys don’t go, the
only
reason a SEAL from the regular teams won’t go to Green Team, is because he’s afraid of failing. Because if you fail out of Green Team, then you’re automatically ranked in the SEAL teams as not good enough to be at DEVGRU—and, some of us might say, not
good enough to be a SEAL. If you don’t go, then you’re never ranked. Oh, you can still think you’re a hotshot at the regular team level, but that’s only because you’ve never been tested at the next level.

“The big thing for a SEAL is how many platoons you’ve done. Like this guy did seven platoons; he’s a badass. I told Adam, ‘I don’t care if you did a hundred platoons’—I’m kind of a snob that way, and a lot of guys are—‘if you don’t at least try for DEVGRU, then I really don’t want to talk to you. Not to be a dick, but I’m just saying, why wouldn’t you? Who they gonna call first when the Big Mish goes down?’ ”

After two months in northern Iraq, Adam’s unit was assigned the mission of protecting top Iraqi government leaders, including the Iraqi president and prime minister. His platoon would relocate to Baghdad immediately.

As a member of the support team for Team TWO in Mosul, Adam had planned nearly a dozen successful direct-action raids and missions that resulted in the capture or killing of numerous insurgents. But not once had he been allowed to participate himself. Now he was informed that he also would not be allowed to take part in the security detail protecting the Iraqi leaders, and was given the option of going home.

“We all talked about it,” says Austin. “He didn’t want to leave us, but we agreed: go home, try to get your vision back with surgery, and gear up for the next deployment. He had to take a step back to take a step forward, and that wasn’t easy for Adam, who was always in fifth gear. But he did it.”

Kelley was still in Hot Springs with Nathan and Savannah the first week in June when Adam called her from Virginia Beach. “They benched me,” he said, explaining how he’d been held back because of his eye. Then he told her he wanted to screen for Green Team, the selection course for DEVGRU.

According to documentation, fewer than 15 percent of more than two thousand SEALs on active duty at the time had successfully “screened” for the course—that is, been approved to participate in it. Those who actually pass are considered the top 1 percent of the SEAL community—the absolute best of the best. “He was fired up,” says Kelley, “and I was thinking,
Wait a minute, you just told me in that last sentence that you got benched
.”

“Baby,” she interjected, “you have only one good eye, and the doctor says that’s probably not going to change.”

“That’s why I want to screen for Green Team,” Adam said. “If I don’t pass the screening, then I’ll know. Then we’ll have to think about what’s next. If I’m not going to get to do my job, I don’t want to be strung along.”

While Adam had accepted that the bad choices he’d made—quitting football in college, the drugs, the crimes—had led him to where he was now, he still regretted them. That regret strengthened his resolve this time to push through until he could push no further.

“Itty Bitty, remember when you prayed about us back when I seemed hopeless, and God never once told you to leave? Well, I’ve been praying too, and all I’m getting, all I’m feeling in my heart, is that I’m not done. I’ve still got a lot of fight in me. I want to do something
I
can be proud of. I want to do something that’s going to make a difference, and I have
not
had the chance to do it yet.”

“All right then,” Kelley said. “Let’s keep praying about it. If you get in, it’s God. If not, we’ll figure it out.”

With Adam back in the United States, Kelley wanted to return to Virginia Beach as soon as possible, but it was summer and rentals were hard to come by—at least in their price range. Even with a recent promotion to the E6 pay grade, Adam’s net income as a SEAL (including some extra cash he made cutting down trees in residential neighborhoods) was about three thousand dollars a month. Still, with two kids, three maxed-out credit cards, a car payment, and life and auto insurance, they had managed to save twenty-five hundred dollars for a down payment on a house of their own.

After a couple of weeks in Virginia Beach, during which Adam stayed in the bachelor barracks for free, Kelley said to him, “I’ll do anything to be there with you. We’ll camp if we have to until we can find a place.”

That’s exactly what they ended up doing: buying the cheapest tent and air mattresses on the shelf at Wal-Mart and camping in the midsummer heat as a family at the Little Creek base campground.