Authors: Keith Douglass
“You got caught?” Murdock bellowed. Doing the crime was one thing, but a SEAL getting caught in the act was unforgivable.
“We thought about killing him,” Jaybird blurted out. “But we figured you’d be even more pissed.” He caught the chief’s fiery look, and added, way too late, “Sir.”
“Chief Marlowe is an old buddy of mine, sir,” said the Razor. “He brought the incident to my attention, and we handled it chief-to-chief.”
Murdock had to strain to keep from letting out an audible groan of relief. Chief-to-chief was the only thing that kept the Navy running, not to mention officers like himself out of courts-martial. “Is the camel okay?”
“Operational, sir, and returned to its rightful owners.”
“They don’t want to press charges?”
“No, sir. They were a little steamed about what was on the camel, but I managed to smooth things over.”
Murdock knew he was going to be sorry, but he had to know. “Okay, what was on the camel?”
“The number seven, sir.”
“A seven?” Murdock flashed a massively pissed-off look at his two miscreants; they both wilted. “Oh, that’s good. That’s very fucking good. You two should instruct operational security. And of course while the commodore was standing in a pile of camel shit in his garage this morning, he’d never look at that
number and make any connection with Team Seven. No, noooo, not ever. Brilliant, just fucking brilliant.”
The two looked like they were trying to dissolve into the deck.
“Was it painted on?” Murdock asked no one in particular.
“What’s that, sir?” asked the Razor.
“The number, was it painted on?”
“No, sir.”
“Well?” Murdock demanded.
“It was shaved on,” the chief said finally.
“
Shaved
on? Where?”
“On its ass, sir.”
Doc and Jaybird dissolved into giggles, which only ended when the chief gave Jaybird a mild open-handed slap across the back of the head.
Murdock stared at his framed commission on the wall for inspiration. He was no expert on camels, but from what he’d heard about their general temperament, it was hard to imagine one standing still for having its ass shaved by a couple of drunken SEALs. Then again, he wouldn’t put it past Doc Ellsworth to whip up some kind of camel tranquilizer … no, no, it was best not to even
think
about things like that. What you didn’t know you couldn’t testify to.
“Let me sum this up,” he said. “You drank enough alcohol to turn the higher function areas of your brains into Vaseline. Then, when you had become just stupid enough, you stole a camel, which I assume costs enough to knock this gig into the major felony class. Then you were going to tether this live camel, marked with everything except my name, rank, and social security number, in the garage of the quarters, the
home
, of the commodore who personally commands all the teams, special boat squadrons, detachments, and units in the West Coast and Pacific theater of operations. The man who writes our commanding officer’s fitness report and reviews mine. Does that about cover it?”
Ellsworth and Sterling merely shrugged, as if it had all seemed like a much better idea the night before.
Murdock let them sweat for a while longer. “Okay,” he said to the two. “Your choice. Captain’s mast or platoon punishment.”
“Platoon punishment, sir,” they both blurted out. The Razor would take it out of their ass a lot worse than the commander, but they’d keep their rates, and their record books would stay clean.
“Is that all, sir?” the Razor requested.
Murdock nodded.
“Out!” the chief hissed at Jaybird and Doc.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Murdock and Roselli stared at each other. Then they both burst into laughter.
“A fucking camel,” the Razor wheezed, holding onto a chair for support.
“The fucking commodore,” Murdock moaned.
“A seven on its ass,” the Razor said weakly. “We can only give thanks that they got caught. Fuck, I know alcohol affects the judgment, but come on!”
“Nice save on that, Razor.”
“We were lucky, Boss.” The chief started laughing again. “‘Standing in camel shit.’ I thought I was really gonna lose it when you said that.” He shook his head. “And this commodore? You know what a tight-ass he is? It would have been a shit-storm around here. If they decided not to shoot us, we’d all be assigned to the cold-weather detachment in Kodiak for the rest of our careers.”
“The only thing I don’t know is how Master Chief Mac kept a straight face on the quarterdeck,” Murdock mused.
“The word is going to get around,” said the Razor. “This is a minor SEAL legend in the making.”
“Just as long as the Skipper doesn’t hear about it until after I get orders out,” said Murdock. “And just as long as no one else in the platoon gets the idea to one-up this little stunt.”
“They won’t,” the chief said confidently. “Not after they see the pound of flesh I’m gonna take out of Jaybird’s and Doc’s asses.”
Just then Lieutenant j.g. DeWitt stomped into the office, his face crimson. “Man,” he announced. “The Master Chief really ripped me a new asshole this morning. He never got so hung up on my fucking belt buckle when he was in the platoon.”
Murdock and Razor looked at each other, and exploded into laughter again.
“It’s not that fucking funny,” DeWitt said huffily.
“Oh, yes, it is,” said Razor Roselli.
“We’ve got to get these boys out of town,” Murdock said to his chief.
“The trucks are scheduled for 0730,” said the Razor. “Which means they’ll probably show up sometime after 0900.”
“A week in the desert is just what the doctor ordered,” said Murdock.
“Besides, sir,” Roselli said, “if we don’t get Mister DeWitt either squared away or out of the Command Master Chief’s sight, he’ll be standing watches until he’s a lieutenant commander.”
“Or until Master Chief Mac retires,” said Murdock, chuckling along with him.
“That’s not funny,” said DeWitt.
“Oh, yes, sir, it is,” said Razor Roselli.
1345 hours
Chocolate Mountain Gunnery Range
Niland, California
The training ground of the West Coast SEALs was the Chocolate Mountain Gunnery Range, a former aircraft bombing area now set aside for ground-war use. It was a three-hour drive east from San Diego into the southern California desert, near the town of Niland. The SEALs had been using Chocolate Mountain since the Vietnam War, when the canals of the nearby inland Salton Sea stood in for the canals of the Mekong Delta during cadre and platoon predeployment training. It was big, anonymous, and secluded; you could make a lot of noise without disturbing the neighbors.
Unlike almost every other service, SEAL field training was traditionally run by the man in the platoon who had the most experience in the skill to be taught. Rank had nothing to do with it, and neither did rate.
Like all enlisted men in the Navy, SEALs carried a rating, like Mineman or Machinist’s Mate, which they’d picked up after boot camp. But for SEALs the ratings were meaningless, having been discarded on the Silver Strand at Coronado when
they’d graduated from BUD/S. Unfortunately the Navy, in its infinite wisdom, still took them seriously. So a SEAL master free-fall parachutist and dive supervisor who also happened to carry a hull technician’s rating still had to study welding manuals twice a year for the written test required for promotion. And an aviation ordnanceman who’d gotten tired of loading sonobuoys on P-3 Orion sub hunters and gone to BUD/S was still competing for promotion, not with other SEALs, but with everyone currently loading bombs on aircraft. Stupid, yes, but as SEALs liked to say, that was the fucking Navy for you. Only SEAL hospital corpsmen utilized the same skills as their counterparts in the black-shoe Navy, though they learned to inflict more casualties than they treated.
And in addition to the complex skills required of each member of the SEAL community, individual SEALs also gravitated toward more specific areas of expertise: weapons, communications, intelligence, parachute rigging, etc. These also broke down into more detailed talents. One SEAL might be an absolute master in the use of the Stinger antiaircraft missile down to the repair of its complex electronics; another in all aspects of intelligence photography; yet another in the esoterics and employment of laser target markers.
For the 3rd platoon, the first day’s training at Chocolate Mountain was handled by Radioman 1st Class Ron Holt, the pistol expert. For there was a new weapon in the inventory that they were getting their hands on for the very first time: the Mark 23 Mod O Special Operations Forces Offensive Handgun System. The name was a mouthful, but it was a brand-new pistol, the product of some history that deserved re-telling.
In the early days, the weapon of choice in the Underwater Demolition Teams had been the Smith & Wesson revolver .38 Special. Just in time for Vietnam, the SEAL teams received a stainless-steel Smith & Wesson 9mm automatic pistol with a screw-on sound suppressor. This was the Mark 22 Mod O. During Vietnam it picked up the name Hush Puppy, since it
was used more often to silence barking dogs and honking ducks than human sentries. Contrary to popular legend, there never were very many, only enough to issue a couple per platoon. And these were passed on to the next platoon when they arrived in-country. The rest of the SEALs in a platoon carried the Smith & Wesson revolver or issue Colt .45 automatics. Pistols were just backup weapons, and SEALs felt that your shit was pretty weak if you got yourself into a tactical situation where you had to use one.
This continued into the 1970’s, with the model of pistol being a SEAL’s personal choice. As the Hush Puppys fell apart from overuse, they were replaced by the Heckler and Koch P9S 9mm automatic fitted with a Qualatec suppressor. Again, very few of these were procured.
In the late 1970’s hostage rescue became a growth industry and pistols gained importance as primary assault weapons. Delta Force armed itself with a modified M1911A1 Colt .45 automatic. SEAL Team Six chose the stainless-steel Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver and 9mm Beretta automatic. The FBI Hostage Rescue Team, having been trained by the British SAS, adopted the SAS-standard Browning Hi-Power 9mm automatic.
Hostage rescue shooting, which the British termed Close Quarters Battle or CQB, was of a standard totally alien to the U.S. military. It required entering a room filled with screaming people, distinguishing friend from foe, and shooting the foes in the head in a span of time measured in tenths of seconds. Mistakes and misses were not allowed.
CQB shooting demanded as many as five hundred rounds per man per
day
to gain proficiency, and a minimum of three hundred to four hundred rounds per week to maintain that proficiency.
SEAL Team Six soon discovered that the strain of that many rounds caused the slides of their Berettas, otherwise fine weapons, to weaken. When one blew up during firing and took out a SEAL’s front teeth, Team Six moved to the SIG-Sauer P-226 9mm automatic, as had the British SAS.
Meanwhile, the Beretta had gone into U.S. general issue as the M-9, including a Special Operations version with a slide lock and barrel extension for a Knight’s Armament Company snap-on sound suppressor. This was in service with all SEAL teams at the end of 1987. But by then all the teams were doing CQB shooting. They ran into the same trouble with the Beretta and gradually moved over to the P-226.
Things came to a head when the Special Operations forces of all the services were placed under U.S. Special Operations Command, which had its own budget authority. Someone at USSOCOM happened to check the numbers and freaked out at the multitude of different pistol models everyone was carrying, each requiring its own unique and very expensive spare-parts package and armorer training.
So USSOCOM put out a design competition for a new handgun. In case Congress might wonder at the need for yet another pistol, it was called the Offensive Handgun to distinguish it from the self-defense weapons carried by truck drivers and gate guards in the conventional military. The weapon had to be .45-caliber, with a magazine capacity greater than the seven rounds of the old Colt .45, with a sound suppressor and a laser aiming module. And it had to be able to shoot at least thirty thousand rounds without any parts failure.
The winner of the competition was Germany’s Heckler & Koch, with a weapon based on their USP Universal Self-Loading Pistol. It was double action, with a twelve-round magazine, a decocking lever to silently lower a fully cocked hammer, and ambidextrous safety and magazine release catches. The screw-on sound suppressor was by Knight’s Armament Company, whose products SEALs knew and trusted. The laser sights that snapped under the barrel hadn’t arrived from the factory yet.
Ron Holt began the late morning training session by giving an introductory class on the weapon. It didn’t take long. Whereas other members of the U.S. military would only have
summoned up some interest if the weapon dispensed iced beer, SEALs couldn’t wait to play with a new toy. And since their lives would probably depend on the thing, they damn well were going to get it down cold.
When the class was over, the platoon spent an hour taking the pistol apart and putting it back together, until they were comfortable with it. Blake Murdock had some initial reservations about the weapon, which from the comments around him his platoon seemed to share. The pistol was a big son of a bitch, over two and a half pounds unloaded and just over four pounds with a full magazine. That was a lot of weight to pack on your hip during the course of a mission. And it looked like they were going to have to visit the sewing machines in the parachute loft to modify their holsters. The pistol was over nine and a half inches long and the suppressor seven and a half inches, sixteen and a half inches screwed together. Unless their holsters rode higher up on their hips, the suppressor would be cracking on their kneecaps every time they moved.
But the proof was in the pudding, so after lunch they headed out to the range to give the weapons a workout.