Unbreakable: A Navy SEAL’s Way of Life (13 page)

Once in the center of the capital, we checked in with all the EODs and DEA men who were prepping charges and beginning to burn and destroy all the drugs, bombs, bullets, and guns they had found. Apparently, they had captured over three billion dollars’ worth of black tar opium, 800 RPG warheads, and 10,000 bullets. I lost count of all the bags of opium sitting in front of every single store.

I turned to Nike, “Wow, can’t buy this in America.”

When we stopped to talk to our SF brothers, Nike grabbed my arm and said, “Come with me.” He led me over to the arm pump of a well and said, “Shower time, Ridge Boss. And you are first, you smelly animal.”

I took off my gear and shirt, got down on my knees, and said, “Pump me, big daddy.” Holy shit, that water was cold. It took my breath away, and for a moment, I was transported to some other place.

After all of us took a “hell” shower, we found Snowman. The scene didn’t register for a bit. Blood was smeared all over the wall and Snowman. He looked like he had aged ten years. We didn’t know what to say; we all hugged him. He was in the middle of talking to twelve aircraft, trying to push the ones who were ready to other JTACs and communicate to the newly arriving ones who was doing what and when. We all dropped several Gatorade bottles and three bags of MREs so he at least knew we cared.

Nike said, “Jesus, that is fucked up. He is the only JTAC up here.”

As we pushed back toward our platoon, we noticed a door that had not been opened and was still locked from the outside. We all looked at each other, then I said, “Nike, Texas, cut the lock. Let’s clear that building.”

Texas produced a set of bolt cutters, opened the lock, turned the door handle, and pushed the door open. I waited a second after the two of them went in, then I entered slowly. While Nike and Texas silently cleared the room, I noticed a leg sticking out from under a blanket in the corner. “Hold,” I said softly. When I moved toward the blanket, Nike pushed in, grabbed the foot, and pulled—a bit harder than I would have, but it was effective. An old man went flying across the room in front of me, about three feet off the ground, and hit the wall on the other side of the room.

Apparently, he was barely alive. After clearing the rest of the room, we picked him up and carried him to our compound. This way, we could get some fluid in him to revive him enough to be put back on the alive list. When the interpreter arrived, we found out he was ninety-eight years old, and had not eaten or had water in three days. These people are tough, I have to admit. In America, this man would have died in twelve hours. Most Americans don’t live to ninety-eight either. This guy ate shit, drank diseased water, and out-lived all the diet zealots who die at fifty-eight from the stress of hating who they are and what they look like. This guy was worth saving because he was hard to the bone and laughed at death. He truly had no fear of dying or of us shooting him. He even said, “Thank you,” and hugged several of us.

Once things had settled a bit, LT and I talked about what we needed to do to take the fight to the enemy, rather than sitting here waiting for him to shoot first. We had noticed a building about 300 yards away which obscured our view of the road. If we pushed south a bit toward the canal, we could see the entire length of the road. Therefore, off we went, Carnie, Nike, LT, and I, to shake the boredom off.

The idea seemed straightforward and easy. LT and Carnie moved to the far side of the road. Nike lay on the near side with his sniper rifle, and I got out my binos and looked down the road. Holy shit! What I saw looked like ants moving their nest across the road. Five enemy walked nonchalantly across, arms full of guns and RPGs. Without saying a thing, Nike opened up with the rifle and Carnie engaged with the machine gun. Due to bullets flying eight inches above the ground, within twenty seconds, we could no longer see anything. Once the dust settled, we saw three enemy lay on the road.
Nice
, I thought.

I don’t know what to call this, maybe a sixth sense, but all of the sudden
the hair on my head and neck stood straight up. Something was wrong. I looked south a bit instead of straight down the road and saw two enemy running through the trees about 200 yards away from us. I unleashed my M14, though my barrel was three inches above Nike’s head when I fired. And I fired like I was about to die. The enemy was at full sprint. I had to fire seven rounds to hit the first one; the second only took six because he stopped at a tree. I think he was tired.

We were taking heavy fire, and were terribly exposed on the open road. The scariest thing was hearing the .50 caliber machine gun open up and the rounds whiz past us just to the left … maybe thirty feet away. When a round hit next to Nike’s elbow, he and I jumped into the canal. OK—time to get back to the compound. We crawled and sprinted until we were next to the wall, and the room housing the .50 caliber. Getting the .50 caliber to stop firing was scarier than the bullets hitting the wall next to us. Finally, we got KM’s attention. He tipped the barrel up, and we ran into the safety of the compound. Once we were in, the .50 caliber continued firing. I thought,
Good luck with that, Mr. Taliban.

Just that little forty-yard sprint took it out of me. I was thoroughly exhausted. I think we all were, except LT. He is a genetically-freakish athlete; I think he’d have worked out if he had a weight set or bike trainer in the compound.

All of us were truly strung out. The heat, sustained combat, fear of dying, and lack of rest and good food was taking its toll. You may not understand this, but someone always needs to say, “Stop!” or “Enough!” SEALs have a hard time stopping, but I knew I had to keep my wits about me. A bad decision might result in someone getting killed. A lesson I learned in adventure racing is that with exhaustion comes cloudy judgment. I just didn’t know how to apply the lesson here. We really couldn’t stop, and we had no place to go.

With night came a long, fitful sleep. My dreams were of my family and of not ever seeing them again … of watching them attend my funeral … of Stacy crying, shutting down, and losing heart. I woke up at midnight and walked around the compound, noticing others were talking in their sleep, or they were coughing and restless.

EOD was standing in the corner, so I walked over next to him. He turned and said, “Thom, I don’t know how much more of this we can take.
Everyone is completely fried. How are you doing?”

“Well, except for just dreaming of my death and watching my family go to my funeral … I am right as rain,” I replied.

“Just one more day. We have to keep everyone active tomorrow, fighting and concentrated on this. Whatever the hell this is,” he added.

I replied, “I agree, Warrant. We need to rebuild all the sandbags, whether we want to or not. We need to clean the compound just to stay busy. Gonna have the men gather all their gear and check it, then place it all in a row, ready for extract. Need to play some sorta game, too, to get us all laughing. I am going to get some shut-eye. I suggest you do the same.”

My bones ached. A part of me—I cannot really explain what part—was coming unhinged. Part of me no longer gave a shit whether I lived or died, and the other part hung on desperately, looking forward to making it out of here and going home to my family. Just as I was beginning to nod off, LT and Lawyer came in and kicked me awake.

“Chief, we are going to call a fire mission on the wall east of here to knock it down, so we can see beyond it and deny the enemy that position for a fourth day,” LT suggested.

I sat up, not fully awake, and said, “Sure, why not? When do we expect this to go down?”

Lawyer said, “Oh, how about in three minutes?”

I got up, straining to stand upright as the tendons stretched in my back and neck. My body armor was molded to my skin by then and most surely smelled like rotted flesh.

Outside, we readied for the fireworks. I walked over to Nike and handed him a can of Copenhagen. I said, “This ought to be funny. The C-130 at 10,000 feet, shooting straight down, trying to hit a three-foot-wide wall with a 105 mm round that may be seven inches wide.”

Nike took the Copenhagen, opened it slowly, and scooped the remainder into his lip. “Who gives a fuck? This is getting boring, anyway. Same thing day after day, after fucking day. Don’t get me wrong: killing is fun, but we are pushing our luck. A stray round could easily hit any one of us tomorrow morning. Earlier today, a round went through the sand bag and right into Jake’s mouth, breaking his two front teeth. He spit the damn thing out into his hand and laughed.”

“Yeah, he showed me. I am not giving him a Purple Heart for that.”
We both laughed an eerie laugh. “Nike, you know what occurs to me now after all this sustained, in your face, combat? If your time is up, you can’t do a damn thing about it.” He nodded in agreement.

“I would rather go out doing this than dying of cancer or from AIDS,” he laughed.

“You trying to tell me something, Nike?” I tipped my head up. He knew I was just trying to bring levity to this hellhole.

Just then Lawyer called out, “Thirty seconds to tally.”

Up high we heard the engines of the C-130. Then the first round fired with a distant, hollow boom. It was immediately followed by a light, then a very loud explosion on the wall. The artillery barrage continued for ten rounds. Without wind, we’d need another ten minutes before we could see what damage had been done. We all immediately laughed in unison. The rounds had knocked down the wall, but directly behind it stood another wall.

I simply turned and walked back to my room—my place to check out—and went to sleep.

In my dreams, I was playing tag with my family. Autumn was chasing Chance. Garrett was screaming, trying to get away from me. Stacy was laughing. I yelled for everyone to stop, because for some reason, I was wearing my radio headset, and Carnie was asking for cover fire. I am sure some will think that was nuts, but it all made perfect sense to me at the time. My family needed me to provide for their safety, and Carnie and I were doing just that.

When I awoke, my snipers were in another firefight. Game on again.

The initial morning fun only lasted thirty minutes. No one was frazzled. I think we were all jaded by then.

We had to take the offense now. LT and I decided to take half the platoon and move east into the rubble of the buildings to get a better vantage point beyond the walls and buildings obscuring our view. The plan made tactical sense. However, we were all so entirely exhausted, nothing made any human sense.

After lunch we headed out. After arriving at our position, it became clear to me: not only were we, as the maneuver element, going to be awake the remainder of the day, but the base element we left behind was also going to be awake all day with no relief.

Due to the nature of the buildings, we had to knock a hole along the east-facing wall, low to the ground, to give my snipers the steadiest position. We used some blankets and linen to stretch over the heads of the snipers, affording them some sort of shade. But at 125 degrees, our aggressive choice was like asking them to sit in an oven.

Each sniper could only last forty-five minutes in that position before he felt like he would pass out. I went out and poured water over their heads and bodies every fifteen minutes. I think my doing so kept them alive.

We were about to call it quits when we started taking enemy fire. I immediately called back to KM to fire at the enemy who was working in on our position on the south side of the road.

Once he opened up, all hell broke loose. Enemy machine gun fire hammered our position. Tracers flew over our heads everywhere. The sound of the .50 caliber machine gun rounds soaring by the south side was even scarier. You could feel the round, and the vibration in the walls was truly freaky. At some point, we couldn’t tell if the bullets were the enemy shooting at us, or the .50 caliber shooting at the enemy. After five long minutes, everyone ceased firing, and we all took a long deep breath.

I walked over to LT, “Jesus, what was that? Was it the .50 or was it the enemy?”

LT replied, “No idea, Chief. Let’s get an ammo, water, and food count, OK?”

I answered, “Sure, we have an hour left before dusk. I suggest we prep to leave. We are all done, and so are the men we left behind.”

After dark, we made an immediate movement back to the compound. As soon as we arrived, I could tell I had made a mistake. Thank God it was not a grave one. We all rehydrated and soon got radio traffic from the mission boss that we were all going to extract at 2330 hours. We had two hours to check all of our gear, get it prepped to leave, and finally—Oh my God, finally—we had to blow up and destroy all our excess ordnance, which was too heavy to carry.

Half of the platoon began the task of picking up and carrying outside all the stuff we needed to blow up. EOD grabbed his “blow shit up gear,” and put charges on top of everything.

Another SF element met us at our compound and waited with us to
load onto the helo. As the rest of the platoon and the army guys moved out to meet the helos, EOD and I stayed back. We were to detonate the explosives, then run to the helo. After igniting the fuse, we’d have thirty minutes until a big boom happened.

I have to admit I am not perfect. I know you all know this already, but I truly have to say nothing comes close to getting on that extract bird and leaving combat. I’m not saying I don’t like combat, but leaving is better than sex. Maybe because leaving combat and coming home allows you to have sex!

I was in a new state of awareness, or maybe of life. The men were, too. We had no hope, and we didn’t hold belief in anything. We had passed through the human condition of non-action and mental drama that leads to inaction and arrived in a place of an odd, new power. Flying back to base, I reflected on how powerful it is to actually live through what other people deem hell.

Performing well in hell, or in other difficult life situations, is uniquely linked to your Internal Dialogue. I have been wrestling with how to explain what I have learned because it is vitally important … especially since I have the distinct impression I will not return from this.