Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL (52 page)

I’d placed three shooting pairs by the line of trucks. One pair watched the empty vehicles as they pulled off the road and into the loading line. The second pair covered the first and checked out oncoming traffic. A sniper and spotter scanned the rooftops of the buildings in the village.

It was a thin veneer of protection. We were open to any competent marksman concealed in the village, but we were safe, I felt, from a vehicle bomb. This was post-Beirut, and America was in awe of the truck bomb—with good reason. Besides the marine barracks, the embassy in Lebanon had been bombed twice; several other attacks had been attempted; and American legations worldwide were on alert. Even the most benthic staff wonk at U.S. Central Command had been smart enough to include vehicle bombs as a threat and to list them as a contingency in our operations order. Although the threat was largely hypothetical, it was wise to remember that truck bombs not only killed people, they ruined careers.

At any rate, we weren’t sweating it. We were in an ostensibly allied country, and the line of waiting trucks effectively blocked the approach of any vehicle intent on mayhem. There were two SEAL shooting pairs between the highway and the beachmasters. Again, this was not sure proof against a crater, but our principal defense was the beach itself. The sand was soft, and it was not likely that any vehicle leaving the highway would get over fifty feet off the asphalt before it bogged down. I was more worried about snipers, but not very.

I sat with my three remaining shooters, Rudi, Dave, and Cheese, against the tubes of our F-470 Zodiacs. Our two boats were beached between the trucks and the sandbags, engines tilted up, inflatable hulls lolling in the minuscule waves. It was hot, getting hotter, and the flies were starting to bite. We were bored shitless.

The Zodiacs had made a sweep of the harbor before Texas Pete anchored, checking for obvious inconveniences like floating mines, submerged wrecks, or uncharted hazards to navigation. We’d landed an advance element and provided security while the beachmasters hooked up with their hosts.

The landing craft came and went, and I yawned. We’d been up since 0300. I was hungry and tired. I lifted my binoculars and swept the water. In the harbor were a number of fishing boats rafted together. A few scraggly-looking fishermen tended long lines. We’d checked each boat before sunrise, shining streamlights into the faces of the fishermen, checking their gear and under the planks in their bilges.

In the shallowest reaches of the anchorage, a number of lateen-rigged dhows swung lazily at anchor. We had checked these as well, boarding and searching each one, then diving under their keels to look for attached explosives before Texas Pete entered the harbor and plied her boats.

I was thinking about taking the Zodiac back out to the ship and scoring some sandwiches for the lads when a fishing boat came away from the quay about five hundred yards to the east. I put the binoculars on it without thinking, pressing the laser range finder like a reflex.

The first thing I noticed was that the boat was in pretty good shape. The local fishing craft were about twenty feet long, a cross between an Arab dhow and a longboat. All were dilapidated. Some were rigged for sail, and nearly all had puttering, battered outboards attached to their transoms. The boat chugging away from the quay was longer, maybe thirty feet, freshly painted blue and white, and on its transom was a brand-new Yamaha outboard.

I zoomed the lenses. There were four men aboard. They were buffed out, nut brown from the sun, and two of them wore Speedo bathing suits.

I handed the binoculars to Rudi. “What’s wrong with this picture?” I asked.

Rudi pointed the binoculars at the boat. “Nice underwear,” he said.

It was extremely unusual for Arab men, even fishermen, to show so much flesh. Cheese took the glasses and got a load of the Speedos. He said, “Hey, Rudi, looks like these guys are from Miami Beach.”

Rudi snatched the binoculars back and tossed them to me. I took another long look at the boat.

Whoever these guys were, they looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger compared to the tubercular-looking fishermen we’d searched before the landings. Even more suspicious, they were puttering into the anchorage. The locals pushed their beat-up craft as fast as they would go. These guys were creeping.

I went up the beach toward Luke, standing by the line of trucks. “Tell me I can go home now,” he said as I walked up.

“We’ve got a boat out there that looks a little hinkey. I’m gonna take the Zodiac and check it out,” I said.

Luke squinted into the anchorage and smirked. “Very efficient, sir. Carry on.”

“Keep an eye on us,” I said. Luke nodded and went back to staring at the trucks.

I walked back to the Zodiacs. Rudi had already locked and loaded his M-60 and slung it around his shoulders. It was a point of pride for SEAL M-60 gunners that in every other service, it took three men to handle the same weapon. The big machine gun was like a toy in Rudi’s hands.

“Time for a skivvy check?” he asked.

“I’ll let you check their skivvies,” Cheese said.

Cheese hung his M-14 around his neck, and he and Dave started to drag the Zodiac back into the water. We pushed the bow around and splashed through the foot-high waves. I hopped into the bow, and Dave pointed us seaward and revved the engine.

Out around the point, the blue and white boat came on, now paralleling the beach. They were headed in the direction of Texas Pete, not in any hurry. One of the men was pulling at a large heap of monofilament net, again seeming perfectly normal—except none of the boats we had boarded this morning used nets. All were long-liners.

The sun is making me paranoid, I told myself. These yo-yos are probably just out for sardines. A voice in my head answered back: Paranoids are occasionally right.

I told Dave to head offshore. He put the helm over and turned away from the blue and white boat and directly out to sea. The men in the fishing boat were doing their best to seem normal, so I wanted to appear innocuous to them. If we were to catch them with anything, we’d need to gain an element of surprise. It was broad daylight. They could see us perfectly, and we could see them. Chasing them down would take longer than coming at them on an intercepting course.

I told Dave, “Let them pass the beachmasters’ position, then double back and cut them off from the ship.”

“When do you want to put the swerve on them?” he asked.

“After we get outside the harbor mouth. This is only gonna work if they think we’re headed somewhere else.”

Dave played it like a pro. We zoomed out into the anchorage, careful to keep from watching them too closely. Sitting in the bow of the Zodiac, I casually turned now and again, casting an eye on the boat.

Dave glanced over his shoulder. “They’re past the beach. Looks like they’re heaving to.”

They were maybe five hundred yards to leeward and a hundred yards offshore. They had cut their engine and were adrift. Four hundred yards seaward from the fishing boat, Texas Pete sat at anchor.

“What are they doing?” asked Dave.

I was now lying against the thwart tube, balancing the binoculars and keeping low. “They’re screwing with their nets,” I said.

“Say when,” Dave said.

I put the binoculars away. “Let’s do it.”

I checked my weapon. It was a MAC-10 machine pistol with a long black silencer. My usual equipment, a CAR-15, was in the armory with a broken trigger assembly. I’d taken the MAC-10 this morning only because it was small, and the silencer, which was the size of two beer cans laid end to end, usually impressed the natives. It had definitely made an impression this morning. When we came ashore, one of the allied officers had pointed to my weapon and said, “Look, a gun like
Scarface.
” Gangsters loved the MAC-10. Granted, it was small and deadly, but it was a triumph of style over substance. If you discounted looking cool, MAC-10s were essentially useless. They were cheaply made of pressed steel, and worse, they fired from a bolt-open position. This meant that you walked around with the bolt back and the chamber of the weapon wide open—a perfect place for sand, dirt, mud, and cosmic debris to accumulate. MAC-10s were extremely short, more pistol than machine gun, and without the added length of the silencer, nearly impossible to aim. That the silencer weighed more than the gun was not considered a feature.

The weapon was designed, essentially, to spray bullets, another factor that made the MAC a nonfavorite. The weapon could fire better than eleven hundred rounds a minute, meaning it would tear through its thirty-round magazine in about a second and a half. That makes for a pretty short gunfight.

Lastly, the MAC 10 fired a .45-caliber bullet, great for knocking people over but not too good on range. The silencer, besides cutting down on bang-bang, slowed the bullet to subsonic speed, further reducing range and accuracy. In short, the MAC-10 was great for drive-by shootings and killing people in closets but not too good for anything else.

Today it was all I had. Crouching in the bow of the Zodiac, I folded out the wire shoulder stock and made sure the silencer was screwed on tight. Keeping their weapons low, the other guys made ready, locking and loading. Dave put the tiller over, and the Zodiac swung in a wide arc. We were now on an intercepting course with the fishing boat, and I felt like a dumb shit for bringing a MAC-10 out here.

As the Zodiac came about, I had eyes on the fishing boat. The men on deck were grouped amidships, standing around the pile of net. One man sat in the stern, next to the outboard. They were still drifting; they seemed not to have noticed that we had turned.

As we watched, one of them lifted a pair of binoculars and took a long look at the ship. Binoculars, definitely a fashion accessory beyond the reach of most fishermen in the Arabian Sea. I didn’t have to say anything. Everybody in the Zodiac knew that this was no ordinary fishing boat.

Dave opened the throttle. Our course kept us between the ship and the fishing boat. I prayed these guys were not suicide bombers preparing to ram the ship. If they suddenly came about and went to full throttle, I doubted that we would be able to intercept them.

We continued on. Closer, closer. Finally, at about two hundred yards, the man at the stern snapped his head around. He saw we were on him, and he caught sight of Rudi standing in our bow, holding the bowline in one hand and his M-60 in the other. It was obvious we were coming for them.

The man in the stern of the fishing boat yanked the starter, and their engine roared to life. He pushed the tiller over, and they pulled a tight circle away from us and back toward the point.

Dave adjusted course to run them down. “Put some muzzles on their boat!” I yelled over our screaming engine.

Cheese leveled his M-14 at the fishing boat. I watched his trigger finger switch his weapon from safe to fire. We were under seventy yards from the boat and closing fast.

They saw us, and saw that we had guns pointed. Most legit fishermen would have heaved to and raised their hands. These guys were making a run for it, and we all puckered a little.

Halt! I shouted in Arabic. It was one of the only Arabic words I knew. HALT! I yelled again. The man in the stern glanced at me, then looked away. His hand seemed to twist harder on the throttle. They were balls-to-the-wall. So were we. But our bearing held constant, and our range decreased. Dave had us on a perfect collision course.

“Don’t fire unless I initiate,” I said to the guys. This was going to be a confrontation, and we were all starting to get jacked up, but I didn’t want any innocents shot. That included Mrs. Pfarrer’s little son Chucky.

The Zodiac was closing rapidly. Dave kept us expertly pointed at the fishing boat. Foam was spraying from our bow as it cut the water. Fifty yards. Twenty yards. Things were happening fast, but for me, everything seemed to slow. It was adrenaline time again.

My vision was crystal clear, and each second felt like a minute. The sunlight and sky looked perfectly white. The water was emerald green, and the fishing boat became the bluest thing I had ever seen in my life.

I heard myself yelling “Halt” again. The strange Arabic word, guttural and low, rang in my ears like someone else’s voice.

The man at the engine was wearing a tan shirt unbuttoned to the waist. As we closed, my eyes clicked to the three other men, now crouched in the middle of their boat and bracing for impact. One of them was crawling toward a canvas-covered lump next to the fishing nets.

The Zodiac hit them amidships. The fishing boat lurched, and our rubber boat bounced off. Dave turned hard to starboard, laying the Zodiac perfectly alongside the boat. We were close enough to spit into their faces.

They were a little higher than us in the water, so I stood in the bow, balancing on my toes and pointing the MAC-10 at the man holding the tiller.

I heard Dave yelling from the stern, “Heave to, motherfucker!” It struck me as funny that the word “motherfucker” may have been the only English these guys understood.

They may have heard us, but they didn’t stop their boat. White water splashed up between us as we slammed together. For a few seconds we zoomed along, parallel. I had eye contact with the man at their engine, and I was aiming down the length of the boat, past and through the men by the nets.

“Stop your boat!” I yelled in English.

Incredibly, the man at their tiller flipped me the finger. Straight up, middle finger from a fist, he flashed the bird. A very cosmopolitan gesture for an Arabic fisherman.

I obviously wasn’t getting any respect. Shooting these guys was still a bit extreme; this was, after all, a country friendly to the United States. We were in their harbor, and I wasn’t even a game warden. But I intended to search their boat, and to do that, I was goddamn well sure going to make them stop.

I decided to fire across their bow. I swung the MAC-10 forward and aimed it at the wooden forepeak of their boat. I pushed the safety off and pulled the trigger. The bolt snapped forward, and the first bullet in the magazine fed sideways. The bolt smashed down on the bullet, jamming it halfway out of the ejection port. The unfired shell jutted from the chamber as the bolt slammed forward with an audible
clack.