Unbreakable: A Navy SEAL’s Way of Life (24 page)

EOD looked at me after we turned them over. “These boys be trained, Ridge Boss, and they are the probes. We are in for some more of this, for sure.” I replied, “Yup. Trident 2 Zero, this is Bravo Zulu. I have two EKIAs here. Foreign fighters from Chechnya, I suspect, wearing military issued gear with comms and night vision. Recommend getting some overhead eyes.”

“Roger,” he replied, and that was that.

The four of us proceeded to lay the claymore field and hide Bangalores in the branches, while some rounds cracked over our heads. Nike and Texas immediately responded, sending someone else to that place the Islamic people think there are some number of virgins waiting. Never figured out why the religious leaders put that into their silly book. I surely wouldn’t want to spend eternity with any number of young virgins. Could you imagine the eternal drama of that? Better to stay alive and spend the next forty-one years with a woman who knows which part is for what, and what works, for God’s sake.

The next part of the day was more of the same. Each position engaged
in random battles as the enemy probed us and formulated their battle plan. Nike and I had a sit down later in the day, talking about the inevitable fight.

“Dude, those hilltops over there, and there, and there are prime real estate, Chief,” Nike pointed out. “I would be up there just watching: seeing where people were dying and how we moved, and where those infidel Americans were shooting from,” he said.

“Our only salvation is air and that damned mortar tube,” I told him.

As the day wound down, the sinking feeling wound up. We had about an hour and a half before the sun would set. Most of us were in the courtyard eating and watching our dog, Turbo, take his anger out on a pillow. I was so damned hot I had taken my body armor off and put it inside the room where I napped hours earlier. I was sitting on the ground, legs crossed, rummaging through the last bit of my MREs. All of a sudden my skin crawled and the hairs on the back of my neck literally stood erect and tall. Now, that sensation is nothing to laugh at. I looked up to the hill 700 yards away and stared at what looked like several red bees flying right at me. As they arched across the sky, it dawned on me to duck—you know, like in the movie
The Matrix
when Reeves bent backward, and the slow-moving bullets went over him. Well, that is just what occurred. Everything really did feel like slow motion. I arched backward. The tracer rounds from the hilltop, from a Russian-made Maug or PKM, hit the wall right where I was and tracked around the inside of the compound wall. I looked around and saw the men diving for cover, then found myself jumping through a window into my “nappy room” while nine RPGs informed us all we had been sloppy and overconfident.

The sound of the explosions was deafening. Dust flew everywhere. I somehow put on my body armor and SCAR H without even knowing it. I cleared my head and put on my comms headset and helmet, frantically trying to make comms and listen in. I recall saying, “Oh my God!” out loud. After five attempts, I became convinced—I mean really clear in my dumb brain—I was the only one still alive. Another volley of rounds hit the wall outside, and off in the distance, I could hear other battles raging. For the first and only time in my life, I said to myself, “I am dead.” My legs buckled and I lay there looking up into nothingness.

For a time I couldn’t move. Then my Internal Dialogue shifted from
something dead to something new entirely. I heard Stacy say to me, ‘Do not fear dying. It makes you weak.’

So, in my thoughts, I formed a new dialogue,
I ain’t dying without killing as many of them as I can. I would rather my wife and kids read I was dead on top of a pile of enemies, than have them find out I was taken prisoner.

The prisoner thing wasn’t gonna work for me, anyway. I had failed out of SERE (Survive Escape Resist Evade) training because I can’t take someone smacking me in the face. When they did that in SERE, I warned the instructor: if he did that again, I would knock him out. Well, he did it again. As I stood over his unconscious body, the other instructors said, “Well, you can leave now. You’ve failed.” As I gained resolve in that second by reflecting on how capture was simply not going to work for me, I turned toward the window in time to see Texas fall from the roof above.

I really have to honestly say it sucks to see your men fall limply off a twelve-foot-high roof. I rushed to the open door and was met by a hail of those damned red bees again. I quickly moved to the window, and due to the angle of the hill above the window, I had to move inside the window frame. My head was kind of exposed, so as I tried to get my cross hairs on that hill, a round hit the window frame an inch from my face, spraying dirt into my eye. I went down, grabbing my eye, thinking for sure it had been taken out. What a pleasant surprise to find it still there. I moved back to the window and held up a pot I’d found in the room, and BANG. One single shot hit the center of the pot.

I am a sniper—have been since 1998—and I smiled because I knew I was up against a worthy shooter. Seven hundred yards is a tough shot. He had missed once, but now he knew the distance and wind, and he thinks he’s got me. I grabbed some blankets and pulled them over me. I laid on the floor with my body covered and moved forward slowly, in the shadows. I knew he would not be able to detect movement inside the shadows. I inched forward, constantly looking through my scope, until I could view the hill. I knew the distance and had already dialed 721 yards into the scope. I talked to myself,
Calm down, Thom. Where would you be shooting from? He has to see me perfectly, but be hidden from the hilltop SEAL element. He is smart, so where would I be? Work it out.
I concentrated on those words and worked the terrain with my scope. Then, I saw
a flash. “Well, shit, there he is,” I said out loud.

I could see the weapons barrel, so I concentrated on relaxing my eyes to let the image clear. Then I saw his back and head and right arm. I took a breath and closed my eyes. Then, all the training at sniper school and all those rounds over the years kicked in. I opened my eye to look at the wind. I could see it moving from left to right at about three miles per hour. The mirage was kicking. I closed my eyes and took another breath. With them still closed, I released the safety. As I opened them, I adjusted my aim to compensate for the wind and released my breath slowly.

Suddenly, I thought of my kids and my wife, and I think of that connection, far away … so far away, when I was not this man covered in dust, bullets flying everywhere, my men struggling with their own lives. I blinked, looking at the sniper looking at my window not knowing, and I said, “Do your best, fuck-head. Try to kill me, because here it comes, buddy.”

I remember the last things in me: my wife, so sexy; my sons, so strong; my daughter, so everything. I slide the last inch forward, where I would be exposed for a split second, then I squeezed.

Time froze.
Dammit, if you’re death, come on. If you are all the things I have done badly come to claim me, then bring it. If you are the blackness of the Shea Clan, then so be it. I know my bullet is gonna kill you—why is it going so fucking slow? At least I died killing you, so your kind will never kill my family or my men.

Then I saw blood splash the rock behind his head, and all of a sudden my right eye is in pain, and I hear a smack on the ground. I rolled away from the window and grabbed my face.
Oh, shit
, I recall thinking. I recall just holding my eye, afraid to bring my hand down. I didn’t have any pain outside the initial shock I felt. Then I thought,
Lying here not shooting, while my men are fighting for their lives, is sorta selfish.
So I rolled over to my hands and knees and pulled my hand away. “Holy shit, no blood,” I laughed to myself.

I looked down on the ground where I had taken the shot and saw a round embedded in the ground where my head had been. He had me dead to rights but was too slow—what a chump.

I smiled, bent down, and twisted the bullet out of the ground, then dropped it in my pocket. I recall thinking it would make a great necklace
for Stacy. The things you say to yourself in combat are funny. Funnier still is when you believe in yourself too much in combat.

Kids, the shift for me—what this whole book is trying to capture—was right then. That was my Adamantine moment. I was Unbreakable because of the connection with my men, my weapon, the air, the whole bloody fucking mess my Internal Dialogue had given me access to. My Internal Dialogue had given me access to things—all things—to living or dying, to my men, to me.

At that point, I moved to grab Texas, who I thought was dead. But we ran into each other at the door, and, God, I think we hugged each other.

“Dude, where is Nike,” I yelled.

“Chief, they are everywhere—from right outside the door to the bottom of the hill 600 yards away. We are fucked,” said Texas. He smiled, but I knew he wasn’t happy.

“Son, where is your gun?” I asked.

“Oh, they shot the shit out of it, so I left it there and jumped oft,” he replied.

“OK, where is Nike?” I asked again.

“He jumped off the other side. Hell, I don’t know where he is.”

I said, “OK, come with me. Here is an M4, but it has only one magazine, so make it count. You and I are going to run across that courtyard through the maze of bullets to see who is alive.”

“Oh, Chief? Your radio is off or something. They are trying to make comms with you,” Texas added.

Texas moved over and looked at my radio. “Oh,” he said, “what … did you turn the channel to the music channel or something?” I felt like an idiot, but his joke made me laugh.

On my count, one, two, three, we broke from the cover of the room and rounds were immediately hitting all around us. I was sure both of us were hit. I fell twice but couldn’t recall tripping. We dove into the room where the rest of the platoon was, and when I looked up, I was shocked.

All of their guns were pointed right at us. Then they all simultaneously said, “Shit, we are fucked. We can’t get out of this room. We are pinned down!”

“OK, shut the fuck up,” I said tersely. “We are going to kill as many as we can. Here are my two grenades and my 40 mm bandolier. You two get
everyone’s grenades and put them in a bag, then meet us at the mortar tube.” I pointed to others in succession, saying, “You two get all the 40 mm you can find and all the tubes and meet up at the mortar. Go now. Who has a machine gun? OK, you get in a position to look at the front gate. Every minute, shoot through the gate until you are out of rounds, dead, or I tell you to stop. No one gets in that front gate, you got it? Go now.”

Nike and EOD burst into the room. I grabbed them, saying the three of us were going to the mortar and shooting every fucking round we had. “Let’s get some.”

We moved together, tucked up next to the wall, and found the mortar tube and rounds. As Nike and EOD prepped the tube, the rest of the men consolidated and threw grenades over the wall, shooting 40 mm over the wall toward where Nike and Texas said the enemy were. I called up to the C2 element that we had a full head count and were pinned down, so we were engaging with mortars. Clear altitude and direction. I am not waiting. I heard, “Roger, out.”

For the next eternity, we threw grenades, launched 40 and 60 mms, and shot the piss out of the front gate. As I unraveled the last tape on the mortar shell and pulled the pin, I heard C2 say, “Bird checking on, hold the mortars. But I gave the last one to Nike and said to send it.

Finally I called C2, saying, “Winchester on 60 and 40 mike, mike; Winchester on grenades and 7.62 link. Need resupply if anyone can support.”

Then I turned my channel to the air net and heard the call sign of a B-1 bomber. Snowman said, “Gents, B-1 checking on, get out the cameras.”

I looked around the courtyard into the tired, swollen eyes of the most courageous men on earth. Saw the smiles creep in, saw the future lives and families they would have, and sat down with my back against the wall, saying to myself,
Stacy, I am coming home!

The B-1 bomber was the most beautiful plane I have ever seen. Any soldier or sailor who has ever been in a pickle like that would tell you the same thing. We watched him drop his entire payload on every enemy who had worked his way to the hilltops. Two thousand-pound bombs dropping 500 yards away are called danger close, and, wow, the shock wave is spectacular. After a bit he called himself Winchester and headed
out. By then darkness was setting in, and the mother of all combat planes was eagerly checking on … C-130. Love it: don’t leave home without that plane, let me tell you.

During the next hour, the men rebuilt the various fighting positions, and ate and drank, saying, “Wow, that was close!” often to each other. The snipers built the position one sandbag higher, even though the roof was begging to fall with the new weight.

I called over to Nike, but he stopped me mid-sentence, “Fuck off, Chief. I would rather fall through the ceiling than take a round.” I smiled … “So would I.”

We leaders met in the compound adjacent to mine and had an interesting discussion. Each of us had our points to make. Our original mission was to stay for two days and clear the other side of the valley. Under that plan, my exhausted men would now leave our compound and patrol over to a series of twelve buildings, rummaging and/or fighting our way through whatever mess we found. Then, we would come back after the night of fun and have no sleep to face a day in an inferior position.

My vote was countered with, “What are you, a pussy? Are you afraid?”

“Well, if you fuckers want to fight from a position where we just got our ass handed to us, then you are fools. We have nothing to gain here. Get those helos in to pick us up, or I can bet you one of your men will surely die,” I replied.

“Well, the bosses sitting there back at camp said, ‘Good job; kill more enemy,’ and they ain’t sending a helo until tomorrow night. We are stuck. Best get your platoon together and get the clearance done.”

I felt a surging anger like I have never known. Yet, I knew this wasn’t anyone’s fault. I knew, even then, war is fought by brave men, for reasons that truly didn’t matter to anyone, especially back home. We sick men, who eagerly go to hell to piss on the devil, only need permission.