Inside SEAL Team Six (16 page)

I found this somewhat disturbing because I ate lunch there almost every day.

When the U.S. military documentation people arrived a couple of days later, they asked me to open two of the body bags and turn the bodies over so they could photograph the faces. These particular bodies had been riddled with bullets. When I pulled one of them from the side to flip it over, the top half pulled away and separated from the bottom. It left me with a very unpleasant image that I’ll never forget.

A couple of days after we invaded, we were ordered to report to the Caribbean side of the canal, where the U.S. Army had attacked a Panamanian fishing boat and killed everyone aboard.

We arrived at around noon of a steamy hot day about twenty-four hours after the engagement.

An explosive ordnance disposal team had already searched the fishing boat for explosives but hadn’t removed the remains of the boat captain and six PDF soldiers, who were rotting in the sun. The smell, as you can imagine, was disgusting.

We had orders to clean up the sixty-foot vessel and tow it into harbor. The captain of the boat had been shot in the head with a large-caliber round. All that was left of his head was a small portion of his Afro. Maggots were in the process of eating away what was left of his brains. Behind him, against the cabin wall, was a large smear of blood.

I used this later when I trained guys in CQB. Since the captain had been standing next to a metal wall, it was easy to see that rounds had skipped off the flat surface and hit him. So stand away from hard surfaces during combat.

I said to the command master chief, the warrant officer, and the six SBU-26 guys who were with us, “Body remains, throw overboard. Marijuana, coke, or any drugs, just place it all in a pile. Anything that looks like it could be intel, put it over here.”

We threw some loose marijuana in the water, and we watched the fish devour it.

While the SBU-26 guys were cleaning and disinfecting the boat, the CWO and the master chief were doing their engineering and mechanical work to ensure the vessel was fit to transport. It was my job to inspect the hull, shaft, and screw to see if the underside of the boat had sustained any damage during the attack.

Typically in the Navy, we dove with swim buddies. But I was the only one doing this inspection dive. So after I suited up and started to make my way down the ladder, I said to the master chief, “If you need me for anything, just bang three times on the deck and I’ll surface.”

The master chief picked up something that looked like a small pipe and banged it on the deck of the boat.

“How’s this?” he asked.

“Great.”

My dive took about forty minutes. There wasn’t any obvious damage to the hull, shaft, or screw, and though I hadn’t heard any banging, the master chief did tap a bit about the boat, taking soundings.

Soon after I surfaced, we attached the enemy craft to our patrol boat and towed it to Fort Amador. We arrived at about 1600, tied the Panamanian boat to the pier, and set up a large GPL (general-purpose large) tent about thirty meters from our boat. Opposite the tent, about fifty meters from the ship, was a big Dumpster. Behind us stood the fire department, which was adjacent to the Army’s jungle survival school.

We heard sporadic shooting and rocket explosions in the distance.

Once we got the tent up, I said, “Guys, throw those old bloodied uniforms in the Dumpster, then take a break. You’ve been working hard.”

A few minutes later, three Army guys walked over to our PB—Captain Mike O’Brien, a major, and a sergeant.

Captain O’Brien asked, “Do you mind if we take the stuff, the uniforms, you’re throwing away? We’re starting a war museum.”

I said, “Sure. Help yourself.”

Captain O’Brien and the sergeant jumped in the Dumpster and started handing stuff out to the major. Then the sergeant climbed out.

Sometime during the day, that piece of pipe that the master chief had banged on the deck of the boat and then used to take soundings throughout the vessel had gone in the Dumpster.

I was sitting in the tent at around 2145 hours when I heard a tremendous boom.

Captain Mike O’Brien had leaned over to pick up the pipe, which really was a live LAW rocket round, and it had exploded. (Typically you would never see a LAW rocket round outside of its tube.)

All of us in the tent grabbed our weapons. I ran outside in the dark and saw trash scattered everywhere.

The major and the sergeant were screaming, “
Help!
Get help!”

We all had our first-line gear and second-line gear next to our cots—which included weapons—and I had my Special Forces medical kit, which was part of my second-line gear. I did what combat medics are trained to do in medical emergencies first: establish that the scene is safe.

The major and sergeant were screaming but weren’t hurt.

Captain O’Brien lay on the ground outside the Dumpster looking about as dead as a person could look. His left lower leg above the knee had been blown a hundred meters away. His right hand and most of the fingers on his left hand were gone. Both of his eyes were hanging out of the sockets by the optic nerves. And thousands of pieces of shrapnel had ripped into his face and body.

All of the combat medical training I’d received immediately kicked into place. I looked at his chest and listened and felt for any signs of breath from his mouth and nose. I saw that his chest was rising, which meant that he had an airway and was still breathing. His upper left arm had a major arterial wound that was pumping out fresh bright red blood. I covered it with my hand and then quickly applied a blowout patch.

His left femur was completely exposed. But with a traumatic amputation like that, the vessels constrict and seal up, so the bleeding was minimal.

The major knelt beside me. The sergeant, some Army Rangers, and all of the SBU guys eagerly offered to assist me.

I opened my SF medical bag—which was a little bigger than a one-day backpack—and started issuing instructions.

I said, “You. Take this Kerlix and wrap up that leg.

“You, wrap that arm.”

All the time I was talking to the captain, saying, “Sir, we are going to take good care of you, you are in good hands, my buddy is going to place a bandage over your hand.” And so on.

In a serious injury you need to calmly talk to the patient. Hearing is the last sense to go before death. Even when the patient doesn’t respond, there’s a chance that his hearing you might prevent him from going into a deeper stage of shock. In the unfortunate cases where the patient doesn’t survive, at least the last thing he hears is a friendly soothing voice.

As in any trauma case, I constantly monitored the captain’s AVPU scale—another great lesson from goat lab. AVPU (which stands for
alert, voice, pain, unresponsive
) is a tool for assessing level of consciousness. If the person is awake, opens his eyes spontaneously, and responds to questions, he’s alert. In that case, I would make a mental note or ask someone to record
Alert 1545.

The patient is one step lower on the scale if he doesn’t move or open his eyes spontaneously but does respond to a voice; in other words, if the patient makes any sort of groan or movement when I ask, “Are you okay?”

Below that is pain—that is, responds to painful stimuli only. For example, the patient moans as you apply a splint or IV. I might also tweak the person’s ear or rub the sternum with the knuckle of my middle finger to see if there’s any response.

The worst case, other than death, is when the victim is unresponsive to both voice and pain.

Initially, Captain O’Brien was totally unresponsive. I tweaked his ear and did a sternum rub, but no response.

I monitored his airway constantly, because an airway can become obstructed at any time by bleeding, vomit, mucus, broken bones, teeth, or swelling. Just because the patient has an airway during your initial assessment doesn’t mean that it won’t close during your treatment.

Captain O’Brien had an airway, and we had stopped most of the bleeding. Now I needed to get fluids in as quickly as possible. Since he’d lost so much blood, he needed a blood-volume expander—Ringer’s lactate. But I had a hard time finding a good vein because all of his limbs were injured. I finally managed to get two large-bore IVs in his good arm, then pumped in 4,000 ccs of Ringer’s lactate.

Within twenty minutes, I’d gone through everything in my SF medical kit.

The captain’s pulse was over 140 beats per minute. His heart was beating this fast because his brain was crying out for more oxygen.

If a patient’s pulse was 110 and his breathing rate was twenty, and then I checked three minutes later and his pulse was 130 and his breathing was thirty, and then two minutes after that, it was up to 160 and forty, that meant something was seriously wrong; I’d need to correct it quickly or the patient would die.

What had been killing Captain O’Brien was all the leaks. Now that we had stopped them, his heart rate and breathing started to stabilize. Then he moaned and began moving around a little bit. He’d gone from being unresponsive to responding to pain. A step in the right direction. His pulse was getting stronger and his breathing was becoming deeper too.

Suddenly, he asked in a whisper, “Hey, what happened?”

I said, “Sir, what’s your name?”

“Captain Mike O’Brien.”

“Do you know what just happened?”

“No, but I went to pick up a flashlight.”

That told me that he saw the live rocket round in the Dumpster and went to pick it up.

He asked, “How come I can’t see?”

As a medic, I couldn’t say,
Because your eyes are hanging down your face.

It was my job to keep him as comfortable as I could.

I said, “You’re going to be fine, sir.”

He asked, “How come I can’t feel my hand?”

I said, “We’ll look at that. We just called medevac.”

Half an hour had passed since the explosion. It seemed that medevac was taking forever.

Captain O’Brien asked, “How come I can’t feel my leg?”

He got to the point where he was actually joking about his condition. He said, “At least if I still have my nuts, my wife will take me back.”

The man’s courage was amazing.

I’d moved to Captain O’Brien’s side and left a guy I didn’t know in charge of keeping the captain’s head and neck immobile, something you always have to do in the case of a traumatic injury because of the possibility of damage to the patient’s spinal cord.

When I saw him starting to move the captain’s head, I said emphatically, “Don’t move his head!”

“It’s okay,” the man responded. “I’m an Army doctor.”

“Well, if you’re a doctor, how come I’m doing all this?”

The Army doctor said, “His neck isn’t broken. I can tell.”

“You don’t have x-ray fingers,” I shot back. “So you can’t tell. Hold his head still.”

After forty-five minutes the medevac team arrived and flew Captain O’Brien away. He ended up being treated at the Army burn center in Texas.

Later he sent me a letter. He told me that he’d lost one eye but had partial vision in the other. He’d been fitted with a prosthetic leg. Surgeons removed a toe off his foot and attached it to his hand so he had opposing fingers on one hand, which meant he could grasp objects and lift them up.

The experience reinforced an important lesson: Don’t lose your cool when you see someone who is grotesquely injured. Stay calm and proceed to treat him the way you’ve been trained.

Afterward the Army conducted an investigation. They found out that three LAW rockets had been fired at the boat, and the EOD guys had recovered only two.

So the story came together. And I’m very happy to report that Captain Mike O’Brien is doing well.

W
ithin two days of the launching of Operation Just Cause on December 20, 1989, most PDF units loyal to General Manuel Noriega had either disintegrated or surrendered. Twenty-four U.S. troops had died during the takeover of the country—including four SEALs on the runway. More than 200 PDF soldiers had been killed, and another 1,905 captured. Unfortunately, the
New York Times
reported, between 202 and 220 Panamanian civilians had also perished.

Still, according to a CBS poll, 92 percent of all Panamanian adults supported the U.S. incursion. Seventy-six percent wished the U.S. had intervened earlier.

The fighting had pretty much ended, but Manuel Noriega was still at large.

Christmas Day 1989, he and four of his henchmen, including the former head of Panama’s secret police, fled to the Apostolic Nuncio—the de facto embassy of the Vatican—and sought asylum.

American soldiers promptly set up a perimeter outside the building, while Secretary of State James Baker sent a strong message to the Vatican asking them not to grant the former despot diplomatic immunity.

When Vatican officials refused to turn Noriega over to the United States, the Army turned to psychological warfare (psy ops), surrounding the building with armored vehicles and blaring rock music over loudspeakers—including some of my favorites, the song “I Fought the Law” by the Clash and the album
Appetite for Destruction
by Guns N’ Roses.

Ten days later, Noriega went outside for a walk around the Nuncio grounds and was grabbed near the gate by what he described as a “gigantic, enormous” American soldier. He was tackled, handcuffed, and whisked off to Howard Air Force Base in a waiting helicopter.

Two years later, on September 16, 1992, Noriega stood in a Miami courtroom listening to a federal judge sentence him to forty years in prison for drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering. He was later extradited to France, where he’s still in prison.

While the Noriega drama played out in Panama City, we continued to patrol the canal and board suspicious vessels. We encountered hundreds of
cayucos,
which were homemade, cutout-type vessels sometimes powered by outboard engines. Usually they were manned by a husband and wife, and maybe a couple of young children.

Since the
cayucos
were too small to board, we’d stand on the deck of our PRB and shout instructions in Spanish that meant “Open that container.”

Often we’d find small quantities of marijuana and cocaine onboard.

We also detained fishing boats with small four- to eight-man crews, as well as giant cargo ships. No matter the size of the ship, I’d board with three or four armed SEALs and/or SBU guys, look around, and review the bills of lading. Many times we were badly outnumbered. But we wanted everyone to know that we controlled the local rivers and the canal.

We conducted searches day and night, seven days a week, and seized huge amounts of cocaine that was being smuggled up through the canal from Colombia. Once, we had to wear plastic gloves as we were carrying off the shrink-wrapped packages because the cocaine was seeping through the plastic. We were getting wired and starting to grind our teeth.

Initially some of the SBU guys were intimidated to work around SEALs. After I’d been with them for about a month or so, I said to a group of them, “Whenever you guys are at a party or bar and the team guys [SEALs] are around, you SBU guys would all sit down, stop having fun, and get quiet. That’s wrong. I mean, you guys kicked ass in Vietnam and now you’re kicking ass down here and in South America. You’re every bit as good at what you do as we are at what we do.”

A couple of nights later, a pudgy little guy from SBU-26 went up to some SEALs in a bar and said, “Senior Chief Mann said that except for the trident, we’re just as good as you.”

The SEALs beat the hell out of him.

I told the SBU guy that he didn’t get the right message. I wasn’t telling him to mouth off. I wanted him and his teammates to hold their heads high and take pride in the fact that they were professional warriors.

My buddy Lieutenant Adam Curtis had returned to SBU-26 after he and his wife were released by the Panamanians. One day we were patrolling the canal together when we received a report about a boat that was attempting to smuggle one of Noriega’s officers out of the country.

We pulled up to a forty-footer, sounded the siren, got on the bullhorn, and ordered the boat to stop. When it did, four of us boarded—me, Adam, and two others.

After we had searched the vessel and not found the Panamanian we were looking for, one of the crew members told us that the man had crawled under the deck and was hiding in a very tight bilge area at the bottom of the boat—a long tube-like container, about twenty-four inches in diameter and twenty feet long.

Lieutenant Curtis started to take off his gear so he could squeeze inside.

I said, “No, LT, you’re not going down there.”

He said, “I’ll go.”

I said, “No, you’re an officer. I’ll do it.”

We both wanted to crawl in and catch the guy.

I squeezed through the tight opening, holding my .45 in front of me, and squirmed my way through. It was pitch-black and I couldn’t use a flashlight because I’d give away my position.

I remember thinking,
If the guy is armed and he shoots, there’s no way he will miss me.

Turned out the Panamanian wasn’t down there, but he was captured later.

The following day, I was asked to go to Howard Air Force Base to assist a Special Forces Reserve unit that had been sent down for Operation Just Cause with orders to trek through the jungle of San Blas Island and capture one of Noriega’s officers. This particular Panamanian general had a reputation for being a sadist, and he had recently decapitated one of his servants for serving bad wine.

The SF Reserve unit was composed of a warrant officer and twelve soldiers—all of whom had recently been recalled. They were poorly trained and in terrible physical condition. In fact, their medic was so fat that they didn’t think he could make it over the difficult terrain. That’s why I was asked to join them on the op.

I accepted the offer and took two Navy guys with me—a lieutenant and an E5 who were both preparing to go to BUD/S.

The San Blas Islands are actually an archipelago of 378 islands and cays—49 of which are inhabited—that string out along the Caribbean coast of Panama nearly all the way south to the Colombian border. They’re home to the Kuna Indians, who worship the ancient god Erragon.

The islands are as close to a tropical paradise as you can get—powdery soft beaches, clear blue-green water, gently swaying palm trees, and tree-covered slopes and mountains.

We packed our rucks for what was supposed to be a weeklong trek through the jungle.

The SF warrant officer was a big man, weighing about two hundred fifty pounds and standing about six two. As three of us from SBU-26 and eleven SF Reserve guys listened to him give the patrol leader’s order, I took notes. As the only SEAL on the op, I didn’t want to be overbearing, but the PLO sounded incomplete.

At one point I said, “Warrant, I didn’t hear the loss-of-comms plan.”

The WO grinned and answered, “You guys in the Navy….We don’t need any loss-of-comms plan, because our radios work.”

That was a bullshit answer coming from an inexperienced operator. You always have a loss-of-comms plan. Comms fail often, and for a variety of reasons.

I said to the lieutenant and E5 I’d brought with me, “If the shit hits the fan, we will stick together.”

We set out early the next morning into the jungle. It was extremely hot and humid. The terrain was steep. The SF guys were noisy and smoking nonstop. They had to take frequent breaks because they weren’t used to carrying heavy gear.

A platoon is supposed to move quietly and use hand and arm signals. Every member is supposed to have assigned responsibilities—the point man, rear security, automatic weapons, and so on.

This platoon would patrol for twenty minutes, then the WO would call out, “Okay, guys, let’s take a break.”

When a platoon on patrol takes a break, it’s supposed to establish 360-degree security weapons at the ready. But this WO would plop down on the log or a rock, take off his boots, rub his feet, then eat a sandwich.

He’d say in a booming voice, “These friggin’ boots are killing my feet.”

Meanwhile, all the SF guys would take out their cigarettes and light up.

The first day out, we were walking through the jungle when one of the SF soldiers ran up to the warrant and said: “Hey, sir, I left my AT-four against a tree the last time we took a break.”

An AT-4 is a powerful antitank grenade and rocket launcher. Any twelve-year-old could have picked it up, snuck up behind our very noisy patrol, and blown us all away.

Instead of castigating the soldier, the WO shouted, “Break!”

Then he turned to the soldier and said, “We’ll wait here while you go back and get it.”

If a SEAL ever did that, he’d be relieved from SPEC WAR—but a SEAL would never do that! When the SF Reserve soldier returned, the WO simply said, “Good job. You found it.”

After the mission, he probably put the guy in for a medal. It was pathetic.

We were about half a day out when a local Indian came down the jungle path on horseback. Through our interpreter, the WO asked, “If we pay you, can you get us some horses to carry our gear?”

He pulled out a big wad of money and said that he wanted to hire a dozen horses and twelve Indian guides.

The Indian guy said, “
Sí,
señor.” And took off.

We waited in the same spot for hours before the Indian came back with the guides and horses. All the SF guys piled their gear on the horses.

I told our guys, “We’ll carry our gear.”

Now we moved in this long, noisy circus caravan with all the Indians and SF guys with all of their gear on horseback. The three of us Navy guys walked in the middle of the patrol.

The horses had an amazing ability to climb up the steep mountain trails. They were better at it than the SF guys, who had to stop all the time and were constantly complaining about the heat, humidity, insects, their sore feet, and their tired legs.

The WO had all of the comms loaded on one of the horses. As the horse was climbing a particularly rocky, narrow mountain trail, it lost its footing and fell hundreds of feet into a deep ravine. That was the end of all our communications equipment. We didn’t even attempt to retrieve it.

At the end of the first day, instead of being stealthy and setting up camp with half of the guys sleeping while the other half kept watch, the WO had one of the Indian guys lead us to a Kuna village. It featured a group of huts that had sides made of reeds and roofs of thatched palm fronds.

As the older Indians lounged in hammocks, younger women wove
molas
—layered lengths of fabric intricately cut and sewn into various colors and designs. Their calves were wrapped in loops of beads, and they wore bright yellow and red blouses that highlighted their tanned skin. Large gold hoops adorned their ears and noses.

It was like a scene out of
National Geographic.
But we definitely didn’t belong there.

The WO pulled out his wad of money and asked through the interpreter, “How much will it cost for us to stay here and have you cook us dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow?”

He negotiated a price with the local chief and we stayed the night. While we were there, I’m sure one of the kids from the village ran ahead to warn the Panamanian general. The WO didn’t seem to be the least bit concerned about that.

As a matter of fact, next morning after breakfast he asked the local chief, “Do you know where General X is?”

Talk about giving away our objective. By this time I’m sure the whole archipelago knew where we were going.

We lodged in local villages all of the three nights it took us to get in.

The farther we got, the slower we seemed to move. When we arrived at the general’s mansion, on the fourth day, it looked like the set of a movie—a gaudy, modern villa smack in the middle of the jungle with stables, a beautiful modern kitchen, and fancy tile floors.

As the WO started to walk up the driveway, I stopped him and said, “Warrant, we need to do a recon of the area first. The general’s probably gone anyway, but we should do surveillance for a while and watch what’s going on before moving in.”

The WO smirked at me and said, “You’ve seen too many movies. Don’t worry about it.”

It took all my restraint not to deck him right there.

He and a couple of his men starting walking up the long driveway, as obvious as sitting ducks. As they approached the gate, a young male servant came running out of the house.

The Spanish speaker in the group asked, “Where’s the general?”

“Oh, he left two days ago.”

Big surprise.

For the next twenty-four hours we searched the house, stables, and property for drugs and weapons, but we didn’t find anything. The whole mission seemed like a big waste of time, resources, and energy.

My only consolation: I slept in the general’s bed and took his shaving gear. It’s very high quality and I still use it.

I want to point out that I’ve worked with many exceptional SF guys throughout my career, but those reservists were terrible. I could have taken a troop of kids and been more successful.

Five days later, me and the other two Navy guys were back at Rodman Naval Station on the other side of the isthmus. That afternoon Lieutenant Adam Curtis and I were lying on the pier when our captain, Mike F., walked over and said, “The secretary of defense wants to meet with you.”

We stood up, buttoned our shirts, and straightened out the dirty, sweaty camo uniforms we’d been wearing for three days as two black cars pulled up and a group of Secret Service agents in dark suits emerged. Behind them walked Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.