Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL (46 page)

She kissed me again. “So am I.” We kissed more, and it started going somewhere. She sat up and straightened her blouse. “Maybe I’d better go check on Vicky.”

“That might be a good idea.”

She looked at me the way she had after the tequila shot. “Are you all right with this?” she asked.

I heard my voice deep and flat, as though I were listening to myself speak down a long tube. “Yeah, I’m all right.”

She left and pulled the door closed behind her. I lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. I made myself try to think of nothing, nothing being a fine substitute for wanting to follow her. At last I peeled off my shirt, slipped my arms out of my shoulder holster, and placed my gun on the nightstand.

I was in the bathroom splashing my face when I heard a knock on the door. “Who is it?”

“It’s us,” one of the Vickies whispered.

I opened the door, and they were both there, the blond Vicky and the brunette Vicky. The blond kissed me, and then the brunette kissed me. They didn’t say anything as they pushed their way into the room and the door closed behind them. We made out on the bed for a while in a big pile, and then the clothing started to come off. I watched them kiss and undress each other, and whatever objections I had to being an unfaithful husband wafted away like smoke. We made love until I had to leave for the airport in the morning, and I never saw them again.

On the helicopter back down-country I sat in the door gunner’s seat, letting the wind snap into me. I watched the red-dirt towns and the dusty roads pass below until the ground became low and fingers of mangrove reached inland, and then the broad water of Barra de Caratasca yawned under us. Again I tried not to think of anything.

I was back in the bush outside of Puerto Lempira, lying on a simulated ambush position with a detachment of Contras. From out of the darkness, I watched a three-foot-long fer-de-lance slither over my rifle barrel. The viper was too close for me to try to pull away, so I remained perfectly still. As it moved through a thin sliver of moonlight, its scales showed silver-gray, as if it were made of chain mail. For a long moment it remained across my weapon. Light stripes and a dark diamond pattern covered its wide back. Its eye was like a shiny onyx bead. I held my breath until it disappeared back into the gloom, its skin hissing over the plastic foregrip of my rifle.

I count myself lucky that the serpent chose not to strike me dead.

THERE WERE SEVERAL
more deployments, and MTTs were dispatched to the Dominican Republic. We hosted several deputations from the Teams up north, and Greg and I ran combat-swimmer training for platoons undergoing PDT. The Caribbean was quiet, and the tour stretched out. Frank was busy in El Sal, and occasionally we’d hear of some exploit or near-miss. While Frank was kicking ass, I was getting dangerously bored. I drank like a bastard and ran barely enough to keep the fat off.

Bored or not, I’d inherited Frank’s command ethic, and when a detachment was called upon to tour South America, I sent Greg and boat crews Delta and Charlie. The exercise was called UNITAS, and the tour was what we liked to call “low intensity, high per diem.” Strictly peacetime, it was a series of exercises and special-warfare demonstrations for our South American allies. It was all goodwill, a four-month grip-and-grin. I would have loved to go, but Fifth Platoon’s mission was to stand by for contingency operations, and that mission was my responsibility. As Frank said, platoons are commanded by platoon commanders, detachments by assistant platoon commanders. Greg and I had grown close; he was a good officer, a wild man on liberty but sane when he operated, and I had complete confidence in him. When they shoved off, our world in Puerto Rico got smaller. Alpha, Bravo, and I remained in Roosevelt Roads, poised to put out any brushfires that might erupt.

We waited. There was no trouble in paradise.

Then I received a call from the SEAL officer detailer in Washington, D.C., or rather, the detailer’s secretary, a no-nonsense lady named Margrethe Foster. Margrethe is the Moneypenny of the SEAL Teams. Detailers come and go, but Margrethe remains. She is the power behind the throne, the woman who knows where all the bodies are and where all the skeletons are buried. She’s put a few skeletons in the ground herself.

“Okay, Pfarrer,” she said, “your orders came in.”

I waited while the connection from Washington crackled and hissed.

“You’re going to SEAL Team Six.”

T
HE SUPPLY CHIEF
was in a hurry because it was time to go home. I’d shown up late, with an inventory half an inch thick, just as he was pulling closed the steel-and-wire mesh door that separated his office and warehouse from the passageway. He grunted as I handed over my paperwork, equipment I’d need for my course in Green Team, the training cell of SEAL Team Six. The other twenty or so members of my training class had drawn their kits over the last several weeks as they arrived and checked in to the Team.

I was late for an unsurprising reason. When I received orders to Six, the commanding officer of SEAL Team Four called me in Puerto Rico and attempted to get me to decline the transfer. He said he had a great position at the Pentagon for me, an assignment that would be better for my career. As far as I knew I had no career, and I had no desire to serve at the Pentagon. I politely but firmly refused. My orders were to report aboard SEAL Six no later than September 15, and I was looking forward to the change. But through acts of either inertia or contempt, I was ordered to remain in Puerto Rico until September 14. Like Frank Giffland, I had been given one day to check out of my old command and in to my new one.

All day on the fifteenth, I had dashed around the SEAL Team Six compound, schlepping paperwork, getting ID badges, drawing weapons, parachutes, diving rigs, and radios, much to the consternation of clerks and technicians who told me this should have been done weeks ago. I learned pretty quickly that being a Green Team member didn’t cut much ice at Six. None of the support guys I dealt with were even SEALs, but they all gave me a hard time. I made no excuses and asked no favors, but I soon rounded up what I needed. Supply was my last stop and the biggest haul. There were more than two hundred items on my gear list, everything from desert cammies to arctic overwhites, ice boots to shower shoes.

The chief frowned. “When do you need this?”

“Tonight,” I said. “I start training tomorrow.”

He pushed open the door reluctantly, and I followed him into supply. He removed a folder from a file drawer. “We didn’t think you were coming,” he said.

I’m sure he would have been delighted if I’d been killed by land crabs in Puerto Rico.

“What’s your operator number?” he asked.

“One-five-six,” I said.

He shook his head. “We already have a One-five-six.”

Before I could ask to pick a new number, like 007, the chief’s eyes fell on a flat cart loaded chest-high with duffel bags. It was an individual operator’s load-out, all the equipment I would need to draw. The number 205 was stenciled neatly on the bags.

“I got a full load-out right over there. You have a problem with changing your number?”

“Does it get me my gear any faster?”

“You become Two-oh-five, and you can sign right here.”

We were both in a hurry. I signed, and the booty was mine. In the stroke of a pen, I was Operator 205.

“It’s all there,” the chief said, “all of it and then some. I just inventoried it myself.”

I smiled as he locked up the supply room. Thinking I had scored, I shouldered the pile of bags on the cart and wheeled it into the passageway.

“What happened to Operator Two-oh-five?” I asked.

“His parachute didn’t open,” the chief said.

SEAL SIX HAD THE JACK,
and it showed. The equipment I’d drawn was the best of everything. I stayed up late that night, stowing the gear in my cage, a locked wire enclosure about the size of a one-car garage. Here I would keep every piece of my operational kit racked, stacked, and ready to fly. Each operator had a cage, his own personal space, warehouse, and dominion. There was little communal equipment. We all drew our own gear and were responsible for maintaining it.

I had been issued an astonishing amount of stuff. Foul-weather gear, Gore-Tex parkas, assault vests, cammies, boots, fins. Bags and sea chests full to bursting. Climbing harnesses, carabiners, chocks, jumars, and lock picks. Nomex coveralls. Custom wet suits. Flight suits. Survival kits. Sunglasses and ski goggles. Scuba rigs, a pair of twin steel 90s for open circuit and a brand-new Draeger LAR-V rebreather. An MT-1-X parachute and an impressive number of weapons. In my personal rack in the arsenal were a CAR-15 with M-203 grenade launcher, MP5-A5 and MP-5K machine pistols, and a wicked little silenced MP5-SD. I had a personal AK-47, an H&K G3 assault rifle, an M-60 machine gun, a SAW-squad automatic weapon, a stainless-steel Smith & Wesson model 686 .357 Magnum pistol, a Beretta 92 SBF, and a blue-steel Walther PPK, just like James Bond. The armory tech was blasé as he had me sign.

“This is your basic draw,” he mumbled. “If you need any other sort of weapon, or if you want modifications made, just let us know.”

I reported the following morning at 0600 and met my new teammates. The twenty of us were to be the fourth Green Team processed by SEAL Team Six. Some faces I recognized and some I did not. In any case, we were surprises to one another. When we were notified of our selection, we were told to tell only those people with a need to know. Several of my new teammates were old friends. Wild Bill had been in Class 114 and was a member of my boat crew during Hell Week. Bill was an NFL-sized guy with an incredible sense of humor. He was impressively strong and born into the career of spec ops—his father was a serving colonel in the Green Berets. There were three others from 114 in my Green Team: Greg Pearlman and Chris Keller, the two hot dogs who’d swiped the jumpmaster’s hat back at Fort Benning, and Vinny, a tall man built like a cross-country runner, who was quiet, intense, and dedicated. He, too, had been in my boat crew for Hell Week, and I was glad to see him. They were solid guys, good shipmates, great operators, and all would be destined to have long careers at SEAL Six.

The balance of my Green Team came from SEAL Teams One, Two, and Three, as well as the SDV Teams. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, I was the only one from SEAL Four. Everyone selected was considered top-of-the-line, the officers all former platoon commanders, and most of the enlisted former leading petty officers or boat-crew leaders. The class’s sole chief petty officer was Bud Denning, a taciturn guy with a subtle and cutting sense of humor. As chiefs go, Bud Denning was one of the best.

There were three other officers in my Green Team, all of us lieutenants, and all of us would become friends for life. Sean Pikeman was our class leader, senior by a couple of years; he was fresh from SEAL Team One and a jungle deployment to the Philippines. He had been raised in Stillwater, Oklahoma; he had an Okie’s level head and had played all-American lacrosse at the University of Rochester. Next was Rick Cullen, unflappable, a meticulous planner and a former platoon commander from SEAL Two. Finally, there was Moose. If the Moose didn’t exist, someone would have had to invent him. Built like a linebacker, he was a high-time SDV pilot from the West Coast. Driving minisubs into Korean harbors on recons wasn’t exciting enough for him, so here he was. Moose was a fascinating guy with a rigorous and accomplished upbringing. Captain and quarterback of his high school football team, he also found time to play first violin in the Seattle Youth Symphony. At Claremont College in California, he ran the 880 and majored in philosophy and religion, writing his senior thesis on the death of Eric Bonhoffer, a Lutheran theologian executed by Adolf Hitler. Moose was as impressive intellectually as he was physically. He could talk about Epictetus while he benched 350, and it was only a fool who’d try to outdrink him.

Our instructors walked in, dressed in the uniform of the day, blue jeans and polo shirts. The entire time I was at SEAL Six, I would wear a navy uniform only once. This was a civilian-clothes operation.

The training cell was led by a man with the remarkable name of Traylor Court. Court was prior enlisted, had attended OCS and gotten drafted into the command by Dick Marcinko personally. Court had a gymnast’s build and was one of the operators, along with Kim Erskine, who had taken down the radio station on Grenada. Court wasn’t the type to raise his voice. He commanded attention and respect.

With Court were three other instructors: Toni, a six-foot, 250-pound Hawaiian surfer; Mike Daniels, your basic triathlete sniper-cum-demolition expert; and a guy we called Bam-Bam. Bam-Bam was from Gary, Indiana, and was fond of remarking that he was the only one of his three brothers not currently in prison. Bam-Bam had been the Indiana State springboard-diving champion, and in a command where everyone was an expert marksman, he was considered one of the fastest and deadliest shots. He was also quick with his fists.

There was no welcome-aboard speech. Court made a few remarks, most notably that this was a selection course. Not only was it possible to fail; for most of us, it was likely. He predicted that half of the men assigned to this Green Team would attrite. It was a variation of my welcome to BUD/S, and I am sure everyone who heard him thought they’d be among the graduates.

Court was to prove precise in his estimate. Of the twenty of us standing in the Team room, only twelve would make it through Green Team and be assigned to assault elements on the operational team. Court went on to enumerate half a dozen transgressions for which we would be immediately canned: Accidental discharge of a weapon. Any safety violation involving diving or explosives. Use or suspected use of controlled substances. Loss or mishandling of classified material. Revealing any facts about SEAL Team Six to anyone, in or out of naval special warfare. We were specifically instructed to no longer associate with anyone back in the regular Teams. We were told bluntly: “Make new friends.”