The Red Circle: My Life in the Navy SEAL Sniper Corps and How I Trained America's Deadliest Marksmen (23 page)

That was the last time I ever got hazed, and it left an impression—not only on me, but on all the guys. They talk about it to this day. I’ll tell you what, though: I never lied to the platoon again.

*   *   *

In the spring of 2000 our eighteen-month workup concluded with an Operational Readiness Exam (ORE), conducted off San Clemente Island, in which a small group of us simulated a covert tagging and tracking op on an enemy vessel. There were some tricky issues with water currents on the way back in, and things got sketchy. By the time we got back to rendezvous with our vessel, I had run out of air and had a headache, but we passed the exercise. GOLF platoon was certified and operationally ready to rotate overseas to serve in an alert status, which the platoon would do after a little downtime.

Before it did, though, something unexpected happened that changed the course of my career in the navy.

One day shortly after our ORE, Glen and I were called in to see our OIC, McNary. When we entered his office we found Tom, our platoon LPO, and Chief Dan there with him. Clearly something was up, something big, but we had no idea what.

Were we in some sort of trouble?

“Listen,” said McNary, “you guys have done a really great job here, and we’re short-handed on snipers right now. We want to offer you the opportunity to go to sniper school.”

I was not planning to become a sniper. In fact, the thought had never occurred to me. Of course, we all knew the SEALs
had
snipers, and we all knew how difficult a course it was. The whole thing seemed fascinating, but I’d never for an instant considered that I might become one of those guys. All my life, I’d loved being in the water, and all my life I’d wanted to be a pilot, but a sniper? Not a chance. Now here it was, being offered to us on a plate.

We were stunned. We were thrilled. We were terrified.

It was unheard of for a new guy to get a sniper billet. There were some seriously seasoned guys on the team who had waited years to get a slot; that’s how hard they were to get. We knew it was a fiendishly difficult school to pass, and the last thing anyone wanted was some wet-behind-the-ears new guy in there, because he’d just fuck it up and wash out. We also knew that everyone would be watching us, including our entire platoon, hell, our entire team, and that they would all be counting on us. If we washed out, we would be letting them down. If we said yes, we would spend the next three months under excruciating pressure.

We didn’t hesitate for a second.

SIX

COLD BORE

There are some pretty difficult schools and training courses in the United States military, but none has quite the reputation of SEAL sniper training. It is one of the toughest programs anywhere on the planet. Even when compared to my combat tours in Afghanistan and later in Iraq, I count my time in sniper school as one of the most intense, grueling experiences of my life.

The SEAL sniper course is three months of twelve-plus hour days, seven days a week. Ironically, it is not all that demanding physically. After going through the brutality of BUD/S and some of the programs in SEAL Tactical Training, there was nothing in the sniper course that posed any real physical challenge. Nevertheless, it is extremely challenging mentally.

“First and foremost?
Intellectual capacity
.” When people ask what it takes to become a Navy SEAL sniper, that’s my first answer. Don’t get me wrong: You have to be physically tough. Our training demands that every graduate be one of a unique breed, willing to snake his way through treacherous urban war-zone terrain or crawl the hot desert floor for hours, slow as a snail and often through his own bodily waste, sometimes withstanding days on end of unendurable physical hardship, to set up on his target. Still, the physical ability is maybe 10 percent of it. Most of it is mental.

Sniper school is one of the very few courses a SEAL will not be looked down upon for failing to complete. It’s an unwritten rule that you don’t give guys a hard time for washing out of sniper school. Because the course is known for its insane difficulty, just being selected or volunteering to go automatically elicits respect in the teams.

The students who entered the course were already the cream of the crop, but the attrition rate was still vicious. When I took the sniper course in the spring of 2000, we classed up with twenty-six guys at the start. Three months of continuous training later, only twelve of us would graduate.

*   *   *

A few weeks after our conversation in Lieutenant McNary’s office, Glen and I, along with two dozen others, mustered at the SEAL Team Five quarterdeck in Coronado for our initial sniper school in-briefing. Though this would later change, at the time the different SEAL teams would rotate as course host, and it happened to be Team Five’s turn.

They told us that there were two principal parts to the sniper training. First came the shooting phase, which would focus on learning our weapons, advanced ballistics, and, of course, the actual marksmanship training, during which we would work in pairs taking turns as shooter or spotter. Second was the stalking phase, where we would be trained in the arts of stealth and concealment.

We would be conducting the shooting phase at the Coalinga range, a private inland facility about a hundred miles northwest of Bakersfield, where we would camp out, receive all our instruction, and do all our shooting. In the event we survived the shooting phase, we would then go on to the stalking phase, concluding with our graded final training exercise (FTX) out in the California desert near Niland.

Being from Team Three, which at the time had charge over the desert theater of operations, Glen and I were already quite familiar with the challenges of operating in that ungodly terrain and how fucking miserable it could be there. We took comfort in the idea that this prior knowledge might give us some small advantage in the final phase. Assuming we made it that far.

We were led to the team armory, where we each checked out the suite of weapons we would be working with over the next few months. We each got a sniper M-14, a Remington .308 bolt gun, a Remington .300 Win Mag, and a .50 cal, along with scopes and ammo.

Once we had our weapons, we mustered back in the Team Five area to meet our instructor cadre.

At the time, the sniper school was run by a master chief named Jordan, who was just in the process of turning it over to Senior Chief Seth Carver. Seth was an ultramarathoner, one of those guys who runs 100-mile races but doesn’t make any kind of big deal about himself. He was a total professional and highly respected by everyone there. A few years later I would end up working for Chief Carver as part of an advanced sniper training cell and would be on hand to see his life crumble to pieces and be salvaged by the goodwill of the team. We’ll come to that story later. For now, Chief Carver was simply one of the good guys, one of those instructors we could count on both for his expertise and for his solid character.

That didn’t apply in every case. Our instructor cadre consisted of several full-time instructors along with a few guys pulled from the different SEAL teams to help out and augment the staff. In terms of their shooting skills, these guys were all at the top of their game, but they were not necessarily good teachers. This is something we would change later on, when I became part of the team that redesigned the entire sniper course, but when we went through the course back in 2000, there wasn’t much emphasis on teaching skills. It was a sink-or-swim deal:
Here’s the training, and if you don’t get it, tough.

After meeting our instructors, we got the rest of our gear list and were divided into shooting pairs. Glen and I were happy to learn we had been paired as shooting partners. We had been working together in GOLF platoon for over a year by this point, had developed a good friendship, and trusted each other implicitly. As intimidated as we were, things were lining up in our favor. Now we just had to do the work—and do it perfectly.

We kicked off the course by going out to Camp Pendleton for a qualifying shoot. Just to
start
the sniper course, we had to be shooting on the standard navy rifle at expert level. They took us through a brief class to make sure we all knew how to set up and operate all our weapons, and then we were out on the range shooting.

We started off at 100 yards, doing a standing shot, then sitting shot, then standing-to-sitting rapid, then a prone slow fire, then a standing-to-prone rapid fire. Next we went out to 200 yards and shot another volley. Out of a perfect score of 200, we had to shoot at least 180 to qualify as shooting expert. We each got two tries. Some guys didn’t make it, so we lost a few right then and there.

The rest of us saddled up and headed north for Coalinga, where we would spend the next six weeks camping out on the property of the Coalinga Rifle Club, a five-hour drive from San Diego up in California’s Central Valley. When we arrived there, we found the place had a shower, bathroom facilities, a small kitchen facility, and that was about it. The classes would take place outdoors on picnic tables under the cover of a few shade trees. As we soon learned, it got hot as hell out there.

This place sports one of the largest shooting ranges in the West; the regional and state shooting championships are held there. It’s also fairly isolated—far enough away from any distractions (read: women and beer) that it would force us to focus on the task at hand.

A few days after we arrived we were joined by guys from the Army Marksmanship Unit (AMU), the military’s elite match shooting team. The SEALs are not known for their humility within the Special Operations community, but for what it’s worth, we always strive for the best, even when that means going outside our community. In this case our instructor cadre was smart enough to bring in the best of the best. These guys could
shoot
. Most of them would go on to compete at the highest levels worldwide; some had Olympic gold medals to their credit. I quickly realized I needed to pay attention, take notes, and do whatever these guys suggested. This was some of the best marksmanship training I have ever received, and their training methods would not only stay with me throughout my time in the teams, they would also influence my teaching practices in the future.

We started out shooting iron sights, meaning without scopes, on the 7.62 mm M-14, a classic rifle that the U.S. military had relied on for four decades. Iron sights on a rifle consist of two elements, a rear sight and front sight, which you use to line up your view of the target. They are similar to the little notchlike sights on a pistol, except that the M-14 rifle sights provide knobs that allow you to dial in your windage (side-to-side adjustment to compensate for the effects of wind) and elevation (vertical adjustment to compensate for factors including distance).

The AMU sharpshooters taught us the fundamentals, including sight picture and sight alignment, breathing, grip, and trigger pull. They taught us about sight fixture: fixing on that sight post, which may be a centimeter wide on the front sight, visually splitting it in half and focusing on the top center edge. This requires an exceptionally tight degree of mental focus and concentration. A visual misalignment of even a tiny fraction of a millimeter, magnified by the distance you’re shooting, can result in a complete miss, and the farther out you’re shooting, the greater that magnification—in other words, the greater the need for complete accuracy in your sight alignment.

They taught us how to control our breath and how to work with our natural breathing cycle. Common sense might suggest that the best way to take an accurate shot would be to hold your breath. Actually, it’s just the opposite. Instead of fighting your natural breathing cycle, you have to learn how to use it. When you’re lying down, as you typically are when taking aim for a long shot, your rifle’s sights slowly rise and fall with the movement of your chest expanding and contracting. What you want to do is time your shot so that it comes precisely during the lull of the natural respiratory pause at the bottom of your exhale, so your breathing doesn’t affect the shot’s elevation.

They taught us about something called natural point of aim: Whether you’re kneeling, sitting, standing, or lying down, after you put your sights on the target, you scoot your body back and forth until you’ve put yourself into a position where you’re naturally aligned with the target. If you have to swing your arm over to get on sight with the target, even if only slightly, that means you are using your muscles, which is not ideal. Instead, you want to be relaxed in perfect position such that that your alignment is naturally focused on the target.

We shot all the way back to 800 yards without scopes, except a personal spotting scope. We would have the spotting scope set up next to us so we could lean over, look through the scope, read the wind (for both direction and wind speed) and the mirage, estimate the windage (compensating horizontal adjustment) in minutes of angle (a minute is one-sixtieth of a degree), dial in a correction on our iron sight windage knob, then roll over and take the shot. Mirage is the heat-rippling effect you see when you look down a highway on a hot day. You can adjust your scope so it’s visible, and it flows like a river, either to the right or to the left, showing which way the wind is blowing. Or it might flow straight upward, in which case we call it a boil, meaning that there is either no wind at all or that the wind is blowing straight toward you. You’re also looking for any telltale signs, whether it’s grass blowing in the distance or just the feel of the wind on your face. You get to be an acute observer of exactly what is going on in your environment and an excellent judge of how to apply that to your weapon.

There is a tremendous amount of science involved in making all these observations, but the art of it is bringing them all together into an extremely precise picture of the overall scenario. What is the weather doing at your position as the shooter? Looking down the range halfway to your target, what’s happening at
that
position? Is that valley funneling the wind a certain way? What’s happening 800 yards away, all the way down to where the target is sitting? Is the wind calm there, or moving, and if so, in what direction, and how strongly? Calculating all those factors, then assembling them all together to arrive at an estimation of exactly what you think is happening and precisely how it all applies to your weapon, and then making the perfect shot—it’s incredibly complicated, and there is zero margin for error.