Inside SEAL Team Six (10 page)

Five of the divers in the hangar, including the petty officer, passed out and fell into the water (some possibly losing their scuba-regulator mouthpieces). The BMC managed to hook his arm on or through a pipe to avoid falling, and then he also passed out.

On the dry side, watch standers heard the microphone keying but dismissed it as an inadvertent action. When they didn’t hear the expected reports of water level and when they noted that the usual draining noise had stopped, the watch standers attempted communications with the wet-side occupants. When that failed, they tried standard tap signals, repeating them several times.

Then one dry-side watch stander entered the transfer lock that separated the dry from the wet side and peered through the small deadlight window. He saw only material from a wet suit within.

According to the report of the Navy investigators, after several more minutes of communications attempts, the BMC began to revive and reported that he needed help. Dry-side operators then entered the hangar.

They removed the BMC and the bodies of the ensign, the petty officers, the fireman, and the seaman. For two hours, crewmen tried to revive these men. Five SEALs—William Robinson LT, Chuck Bloomer MM2/DV1, Richard Bond QM3/DV2, Rodney Fitz FN/DV2, and Leslie Shelton SN/DV2—had passed out from lack of oxygen and drowned.

A subsequent investigation revealed several design flaws in the system and concluded that the wet-side operator had opened the vent valve only partway, thereby causing a vacuum to form.

Shortly after the accident, the USS
Grayback
was decommissioned.

When we weren’t in the water, we practiced on the land and in the air. And we were taught by the best. Harry O’Connor, who did some of the wild James Bond skydiving stunts, worked with us on our free-fall skills. And Jeff Cooper trained us on pistols and shotguns at his Gunsite facility.

Jeff taught us four rules that every gun owner should commit to memory:

1.  
   All
   guns are
   always
   loaded.
   
2. Never
   let the muzzle cover anything that you are not willing to destroy.
   
3. Keep your finger
   off
   the trigger until your sights are on the target.
   
4. Always
   be sure of your target.
   

Fast-roping and close-quarters-battle skills had just started being utilized in Navy special warfare. Many of these new CT techniques we learned from the
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Fire movement and fire maneuver quickly evolved. From Jeff Cooper we learned the double-tap (two shots to the chest fired in quick succession to assure maximum incapacitation of a threat). We trained using the modified isosceles stance (which has since been adopted by law enforcement worldwide), and the Mozambique drill used to such effectiveness to this day (two shots to the center of mass followed by one to the head).

As the techniques of urban warfare became more important, we practiced all over the world, breaching building doors, windows, and walls using C4, detonation cord, other specialty demolitions, and rams. We’d rappel or fast-rope down from the roofs and upper decks.

For some ops (training or real), we’d split into squads of six or seven men. Squad one would typically be run by the officer in charge (OIC) and the senior enlisted, the lead petty officer (LPO); squad two by the assistant officer in charge (AOIC) and the chief.

A target would be set up in a building. Squad one would approach on the vertical axis, the other squad on the horizontal. The chief would initiate the order, then it was
boom, boom.
Depending on the op, there might be at least one M60 in each group and the rest us shooting M16s, M14s, or MP5s—point shooters.

When we used this standard operating procedure, the enemy had no place to hide. Every threat on target would be found and captured, or killed.

On command from the OIC, I’d fire a white star cluster from my 40 mm M203, signaling the other squad to shift fire so they hit anyone trying to escape from the back of the building. Meanwhile, squad two would move into the structure and shoot until the ceasefire order was given.

Captured prisoners would be tie-tied at the wrists and ankles and blindfolded. We’d put them on their knees, with their foreheads touching the ground and their wrists behind them. Then we’d search them for weapons, demos, or intel. They weren’t allowed to communicate. We’d hold them until the military intelligence guys arrived to debrief them.

We also conducted a lot of land, desert, and mountain warfare training, in and out of helicopters and indigenous vehicles at Camp Kerry, located in the Sonoran Desert outside of El Centro, California.

One night we were rehearsing an op
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The driver, an
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and our officer sat in front, and eight of us SEALs were in back, four to a bench. We all had our weapons, gear, and rucksacks, and we were camouflaged. With all the op gear, we were probably carrying about three hundred pounds each.

The driver, who was the only one wearing night-vision goggles, was fresh out of BUD/S. The rest of us couldn’t see a thing as the
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flew down a dirt road that dropped off sharply to our right into a canal thirty feet below.

All we heard was the grind of the engine and rushing water as we were tossed around.

I yelled, “Slow down.”

The officer in front responded, “Quiet back there.”

I told the SEALs who were with me to unbuckle their web gear and hold their weapons away from their heads in case the vehicle had to stop abruptly or went off the road.

Minutes later the ambulance fishtailed around a turn that had no shoulder or guardrail.

We heard the 
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guy up front shout, “Cut it! Cut it sharp!”

Then our officer shouted, “Here we go!”

The
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shot off the road and flipped over onto its right, so that the guys on the opposite bench fell on us. It felt like we were flying, and then we hit the water hard. We were all severely jolted, and then we felt the
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start to sink.

The guys in back with me remained calm. I thought,
At least it’s not filling up with water.
Almost as soon as I had that thought, water started pouring in the back. It filled up quickly. The eight of us positioned ourselves so that we could hold our mouths above the waterline and breathe. We tried pushing open the back door but were hindered by the strong current in the canal.

Luckily for us, the driver and SAS guy up front had been thrown from the vehicle. The SAS swam around and tried to pull the back door open while we pushed. After a couple of tense minutes we managed to pry the door open and swim out.

But we couldn’t find the driver. Thinking that he was trapped underneath the ambulance, I dove to find him, but he wasn’t there.

Turned out he had suffered a head injury and had been carried with the current about a half a mile down the canal. We found him sitting on the bank wondering what had happened.

We trained hard and sometimes partied hard. One night after a long seventy-mile hike in the heat, three of us were sitting outside against some CONEX ammo boxes. One of the SEALs, a big, muscular guy who I’ll call Ed, was drunk. He had a deathly fear of snakes.

It didn’t help that the area was full of rattlesnakes. The third SEAL, Tommy—who went on to become the command master at ST-6—killed and cut the head off a large rattlesnake, then threw it in Ed’s lap. Ed jumped to his feet and started doing this herky-jerky dance as he screamed bloody murder. His movements apparently scared a big, black rat; it came running out from behind the CONEX boxes and started charging right at Ed.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God!” he screamed.

Tommy coolly raised his .45 and shot the rat dead in its tracks.

A couple days later, we were out on patrol again, resting on some rocks, when a large rattlesnake slithered past us. Everyone was so exhausted, including Ed, that no one moved a muscle.

Snakes seemed to be a constant nuisance. Another time during jungle-warfare training in the Philippines, a Marine who was working with us went missing in the jungle for a couple of days. His body was finally found and brought into camp, where a pathologist performed an autopsy to ascertain the cause of death. He found two fang marks four inches apart; they had penetrated four inches through the Marine’s skull.

He’d apparently been struck by a king cobra when he stood up to take a piss.

We could be working anywhere on the planet at any given time. One month we’d be slogging through the jungles of Thailand. A month later, we’d be shivering our way through winter-warfare training in Alaska.

It was around this time that me and three other SEALs were selected to go on the
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which was so sensitive that it was never even mentioned in our records.

Our platoon also trained for months for a highly sensitive op (that is still classified) that was supposed to take place behind the Iron Curtain. To our great disappointment, we never deployed.

In the winter of ’84, seven of us were selected to perform a winter-warfare op in Korea, which involved getting intel from someone who had contact with a North Korean defector. We jumped from an aircraft at night into the freezing water, but we didn’t have room on the boat for all our winter gear.

By the time we climbed into our Zodiac and started motoring through the rough sea to shore, our hands and feet were numb, our clothes and gear were frozen, and we were all suffering from hypothermia.

Thankfully we warmed up a little as we climbed into the mountains. The rocky landscape was covered with frozen snow and ice.

We slept outside huddled together on beds of sticks that we’d gathered to keep our bodies off the frozen ground. One night my feet slipped off the sticks, which caused me to suffer frostbite in both feet.

But still we made it through three days of humping over the mountains until we reached our target, and got the intel. Mission success!

Unfortunately, the frostbite stayed with me, and to this day I experience pain and numbness every time my feet get cold.

Despite the occasional discomfort, I loved the pace, constant movement, interesting places we visited, and the characters we met.

There was no one more colorful than Ray Bosco, who taught us hand-to-hand combat in the Philippines. He was a big tough ex-con who had a gym in Subic City; the gym had a bar upstairs and we all gathered there at night.

Once two robbers attacked him at the bar—one armed with a gun, the other with a knife—and Ray, who was unarmed, killed both of them with his bare hands.

He told us that if we ever had any trouble, we should come to him.

I’d gotten away from the kind of trouble I’d had as a kid, but occasionally it still found me. Around this time, I bought my wife, Kim, a new custom-built high-end bike for her birthday. When I was away with my platoon in Guam for a month, our house was broken into and the bike stolen.

I went to the kids who were on the streets riding bikes and I said, “If you ever see my wife’s bike, I’ll give you a hundred-dollar reward.”

They were back in half an hour and said, “The guy who runs the booth down the street where he sells jewelry has your bike. But he painted it bright orange.”

I filled my wallet with money, went to his booth, and bought a little piece of jewelry. Behind the vendor was an old bike leaning against a building. I asked him if he was selling it. He gave me a price. I could tell right away that it wasn’t my wife’s.

“Do you have anything lighter?” I asked him. “I’m in a bike race next weekend and am looking for a lightweight bike.”

He said he did but didn’t want to sell it. My initial instinct was to grab the vendor by his throat, pull him into the open doorway behind him, and beat the hell out of him. But I decided against it because the bike wasn’t even there.

So I paid the kids their reward and I went to Ray Bosco.

Ray, who liked breaking people’s legs, said, “I’ll kill that motherfucker.”

I said, “Ray, I don’t want you to kill him. I just want my wife’s bike back.”

“In that case,” he said, “let’s call the police.”

Ray and a Filipino cop picked me up and drove up me to the jewelry booth, where I identified the crook. They grabbed him, threw him in the back of the cop’s jeep, then dropped me off at the police station. Ten minutes later they were back with my wife’s bike, which had indeed been painted bright orange.

I thanked Ray and the policeman. But that night as I was getting ready to go to bed, three other Filipino cops knocked on my door and arrested me. They accused me of stealing the vendor’s bike and beating him up, which was absurd.

But they refused to drop the charges against me until I dropped the charges I had filed against the jewelry seller. Faced with the prospect of spending the night in a Filipino jail, I relented.

A short time after I told Ray what had happened, my wife’s bike reappeared and the jewelry seller was gone. I didn’t ask.

When we finished our seven-month deployment in the Philippines and returned to Coronado,
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of SEAL Team Six, would soon be arriving to interview guys who were interested in joining the team.

I figured that everyone would jump at the chance to go to ST-6, but a lot of guys didn’t, for one reason or another.