SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper (20 page)

It’s a whole lot better to go up
the river with seven studs
than a hundred s***heads.

—Colonel Charlie A. Beckwith,
ARMY DELTA FORCE FOUNDER

8.

SEAL Team Six

Green Team was a selection course—some of us would fail. Most of us were in our thirties. I was exactly thirty. The instructors timed our runs and swims. We practiced land warfare, parachuting, and diving—all taken to a whole new level. For example, we probably did around a hundred and fifty parachute jumps within four weeks: free-falling, HAHO, canopy stacking, etc. Our curriculum included free-climbing, unarmed combat, defensive and offensive driving, and Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE). Although we spent a little time on skills such as how to break into a car and how to start it with a screwdriver, we spent more time on how to maneuver the vehicle and shoot from it. The instructors evaluated us and ranked everything we did, including an overall score and ranking.

The easiest part for me was the O-course, and the hardest part was John Shaw’s shooting range practicing close-quarters combat. More than learning how to pick a lock open, we learned how to blow the door off its hinges. We shot thousands of rounds every day. I was told that in one year, SEAL Team Six alone spent more money just on 9 mm ammunition than the entire Marine Corps spent on all its ammunition.

I learned CQC at a whole new level. Even though I was already a SEAL, I hadn’t done it like SEAL Team Six does it. During one drill, we had to enter a room, engage the targets, shuffle-shoot, sprint, and shoot a stop target. The instructors constantly reconfigured the rooms: big, small, square, rectangle, enemy, friendly. They constantly reconfigured the furniture inside the rooms, too. We were constantly under scrutiny; the instructors showed us recordings of our performance on video.

Bobby Z., a tall blond-haired kid, and I were always within a couple of seconds of each other. Sometimes we were so close that I felt the blast of his muzzle blow my hair—this was with live ammo. A large gap grew between us and everyone else. After reviewing the video, we saw that Bobby and I didn’t slow down while we shuffle-shot side to side. Most people slow down a lot to engage their targets, but we didn’t. Bobby kicked my butt on the runs and swims.

While in Green Team, Bobby and I went back and forth in the number one position. I ended up being ranked at number two. Part of the reason for the ranking was that we actually went through a draft. While we were out at John Shaw’s shooting school, scouts from Red, Blue, and Gold Team came out to watch us train—getting feedback from the rankings, cadre, and our live performance. They weren’t impressed to find out about the guy who came back drunk from a strip club, crashed his car into a bridge, and flew through his windshield.

SEALs constantly work in danger, but Team Six pushed those danger levels higher. In the first years of Six’s formation, during CQC training, a Team member stumbled and accidentally squeezed the trigger, shooting Roger Cheuy in the back. Cheuy later died in the hospital due to a staph infection. “Staph” is short for “staphylococcal,” and that strain of bacteria produces toxins similar to those in food poisoning. The Team member was not only kicked out of Six but kicked out of the SEALs. In another incident, a freak CQC accident, a bullet went through one of the partitions in the kill house and entered between the joints in Rich Horn’s bullet-resistant vest, killing him. In a parachuting mishap, Gary Hershey died, too.

Six months after my Green Team started, four or five men had failed out of thirty. Although we had some injuries, none of them were fatal. Red, Blue, and Gold made their first picks of the draft. Red Team picked me up in the first round. Just like the NFL draft. Similar to the Washington Redskins, Red Team’s logo was the American Indian—some activists may find it offensive, but we embraced the bravery and fighting skills of the Indians.

Just because I got drafted in the first round didn’t mean I got treated better in the Team. I became an assault member just like everybody else. My boat crew was one of four. I was still the F-ing New Guy (FNG). Never mind I’d been in combat and some of them hadn’t. I would have to earn their respect.

Now I belonged to a cover organization with an official commander, address, and secretary to answer the phone. When applying for a credit card, I couldn’t very well tell them I worked for SEAL Team Six. Instead, I gave them the information for my cover organization. I showed up to work in civilian clothes, rather than a uniform. Nobody breathed the words “SEAL Team Six” back then.

Even after passing Green Team and gaining acceptance to Team Six, we continued to hone our shooting skills at John Shaw’s Mid-South Institute of Self-Defense Shooting in Lake Cormorant, Mississippi. He had a huge range with left-to-right, pop-up, and other targets. His kill house was top of the line. Eight of us from Red Team went there to train. On the first Friday night we were there, the eight of us went out to a strip bar across the river in Tennessee. Our designated driver was a non-SEAL radio geek assigned to the Team as support. His name was Willie, but we called him Wee Wee. He read a lot and hardly ever said more than three words. Wee Wee wouldn’t join us inside, so he waited outside in the van and read a book. The Team van was black with blacked-out windows. It had government Virginia plates and upgraded suspension. The seats were customized and carried eight people comfortably. Team Six had vehicles with armor, bullet-resistant windows, run-flat tires, police lights, and a siren behind the grille, and interior pockets for holding weapons, but this was simply a support van to haul personnel and equipment inside the United States. After we’d finished in the bar, Wee Wee drove us away in the van.

At a stoplight, three rednecks in a jacked-up four-wheel-drive truck with dual exhausts stopped next to us. They saw short, skinny Wee Wee wearing Clark Kent glasses as he drove with his windows down partway but couldn’t see the eight of us through the blacked-out windows in back. “Hey, Yankee bastard,” yelled one of the rednecks. “Go home!” Never mind that our Virginia license plate came from a state that fought with the South during the Civil War—home of the South’s general Robert E. Lee.

One of our guys in the back shouted, “F*** you, redneck!”

The light turned green. Wee Wee drove forward until he came to the next red light and stopped. The rednecks stopped beside us again.

“Hey, you little skinny bastard. You’re all mouth, aren’t you?” They thought Wee Wee had mouthed off to them.

“Hey, hillbilly,” one of us shot back. “How do you feel knowing your father and mother were brother and sister?”

Now the rednecks were pissed. “Pull over, you skinny bastard.” They spit tobacco out of their windows. “We’ll teach you a lesson.”

Wee Wee now had beads of perspiration breaking out on his forehead as he pushed his glasses higher on his nose. We were holding our breath to keep from laughing our asses off and letting them know we were in the van. Someone whispered, “Wee Wee, pull over up here.”

Wee Wee drove a couple of miles and pulled over on the side of an on-ramp heading to the interstate highway.

The dumb rednecks followed and stopped next to us. They taunted Wee Wee to get out of the van. “What’s wrong, Yankee?” they yelled. “Did your mouth write a check your ass can’t cash?”

We stacked on the roll-out door like we would for an entrance to assault terrorists. I had my hand on the door handle with half the guys stacked on each side of me. Three of us would exit and peel left, and three would exit and peel right. “Wee Wee, tell them to come over to the roll-out door.” Wee Wee convinced the rednecks to come to the other side of the van so they would be out of traffic.

The rednecks walked around to our door. Just as they arrived, I ripped the door open. Like magic, the six of us appeared in a circle around the three rednecks. Their eyes looked like they were about to pop out of their skulls.

One of the rednecks spit out his tobacco. “See. See, John. I told you. I told you one day your mouth was going to get us in trouble.”

“Hey, dumb-ass, first of all, none of us are Yankees.” I gave them a history lesson. “Second, Virginia wasn’t a Yankee state. Third, the commanding general of the South, Robert E. Lee, was from Virginia.”

It seemed like the rednecks were calming down when John started running his mouth again.

So we decided to teach them a life lesson, not to prey on the apparent weakness of others. Basically, we stomped a mud hole in their asses. To drive the lesson home, one of us told them, “You guys take your pants off.”

They looked at us strangely for a moment, but they didn’t want another beating, so they stripped down to their underwear.

We took their keys, locked their truck doors, threw their keys into the bushes, and took their shoes and trousers. “Go down to the next exit, stop at the first 7-Eleven on the right, and you’ll find your stuff inside the bathroom.”

The next morning, we were sitting at John Shaw’s range having coffee before starting our shooting drills when a police officer who is one of Shaw’s assistant instructors drove up and got out of his police truck. He walked up to us and spoke. We knew him well because we trained with him often and went out drinking with him, too. He was also a Harley-Davidson rider who fit in with us. “I heard the funniest story at about one thirty this morning.”

“What’s that?” we asked innocently.

“I get a call from the 7-Eleven that three men walked up in their undershorts. The cashier locked the door and wouldn’t let them in. The three men claimed they needed to get inside to get their clothes. When I showed up, half the police force showed up with me. And I’ll be damned, there were three men standing there in their underwear. We listened to their amazing story. Get this, a blacked-out van with Virginia plates, kind of looks like that one there”—he pointed to our van—“pulled up beside them. Suddenly, eight buff guys, kind of like you guys, surrounded them like Indians on the warpath and beat the crap out of them for no reason. So we let the three inside the 7-Eleven and searched for twenty minutes, but we didn’t find their clothes anywhere.”

We had been laughing so hard that night that we’d forgotten to stop at the 7-Eleven. Their shoes and clothes were still in the back of the van.

The policeman continued, “Before I left, one of the men said, ‘See, John. I told you your mouth was going to get us in trouble.’ Then, still in their underwear, two of them started punching John in front of the gas pumps. We broke them up and asked what was meant by ‘big mouth getting us in trouble,’ but they shut up.” The policeman shook his head. “Can you believe such a crazy story?”

None of us said a thing. After an awkward moment, we stood up and began our morning drills.

Later that afternoon, the police officer said, “If somebody’s going to be a dumb-ass, sometimes a good ass-whooping is just what they need. Whoever those guys were in the black van might’ve saved those three men’s lives from someone who isn’t as patient with rednecks mouthing off.”

We nodded our heads in polite agreement.

*   *   *

In spite of being the FNG, I had my eyes on the next challenge: becoming a sniper. I was an adrenaline junkie for sure. SEAL Team Six wanted us to be in our individual color teams for three years before applying to become a sniper.

During the fall of 1992, I requested to go to sniper school. Our Red Team chief, Denny Chalker, told me, “You’re a great operator, but you haven’t been in the Team long enough. It’s an unwritten rule that we want you here three years before you go to sniper school. Besides, your boat crew leader doesn’t want to lose you.”

Red Team only had two snipers, though, and we needed four to six. My being a hell of a shot didn’t hurt matters. A week later, Denny said, “You know what? We changed our mind—you can do it. We’re going to send you and Casanova to sniper school.”

Although we would stay in Red Team, we would also become members of Black Team—the snipers. Casanova and I could’ve chosen from three schools. The SEALs had started their own little sniper school. The army had the Special Operations Target Interdiction Course at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The Marine Corps had theirs at Quantico, Virginia. I knew the Marine Corps sniper school would be the biggest kick in the nuts—like a mini BUD/S Training—but their school had the longest tradition, the most prestige, and, more importantly, the best reputation in the world.

*   *   *

So I went to Marine Corps Base Quantico, which covers nearly one hundred square miles near the Potomac River in Virginia. Also located on the base are the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration academies. Tucked away in the corner of the base next to Carlos Hathcock Highway is the Scout Sniper School, the Marine Corps’ most demanding school. Among the few accepted to the school, only around 50 percent pass.

The ten-week course included three phases. On day one of Phase One, Marksman and Basic Fields Craft, we took the Physical Fitness Test (PFT), checked in our gear, and handed in our paperwork. Those who failed the PFT were sent home with no second chance.

After the cadre figured out which students stayed, we took our seats inside a cinder-block building with blacked-out windows and one classroom, called the schoolhouse, and received a general briefing about the course.