Service: A Navy SEAL at War (20 page)

Before U.S. forces took him to safety at Camp Corregidor, Sheikh Jassim instructed the elders in his tribe to cooperate with us. After all the blood we had shed in fighting the insurgency—taking, no doubt, a heavy price from Jassim’s own ranks—we all had second thoughts. But we are forged to adapt quickly to the battlefield. In Ramadi in 2006, we could sense that things were turning our way.

The night of the attack, our officers at Camp Corregidor helped plan the mission to repatriate the sheikh back into his neighborhood. Most of the Corregidor boys piled into a
helicopter and set out into this until-recently-off-limits part of the city. Making several false landings to conceal their location, they finally hit the ground in a rural area about five klicks from his compound and began patrolling it on foot.

It was like entering a lion’s den. Jassim’s fighters and other allied tribesmen walked up and down the streets with weapons at the ready, while our guys studied them grimly. They were in typical Iraqi ninja gear: full black clothing and scarves, faces covered—the same dudes who had been shelling Camp Corregidor and staging attacks against us all the way west to Camp Marc Lee. There was bad blood going both ways—a couple of nights, while sitting around the campfire, our guys overheard Iraqis talking about how a week ago they were killing American soldiers. But now came the understanding that circumstances had changed and bygones needed to be bygones. It was the way of life out there in old Mesopotamia, a tried-and-true understanding rooted firmly in the ancient earth: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Everyone seemed to know what the deal was. War sure is crazy. Still, our guys kept their fingers close to their triggers.

They all thought it was going to be a quick in and out, a three-day overwatch operation with a raid or two thrown in. As it happened, the undersized platoon of about a dozen guys spent most of a month out there, hanging out on a limb, calming things down and keeping the sheikh’s people safe from incursions by Al Qaeda. They set up at a power plant, then moved into the sheikh’s compound. The EOD tech, Shane Snow, decorated the outside walls of the compound with antipersonnel mines, concealing them with blankets and prayer rugs. Better safe than sorry.

When they began training volunteers to join the Sunni police, our guys ran background checks on the recruits and created a
biometric database—fingerprints, retina scans—keeping lists of who’d been naughty and who’d been nice. Several of them popped for having killed Americans. The most charismatic and aggressive of them, of course, had the leadership traits we needed, so we put them—arguably the most dangerous ones—in charge.

It’s spooky to work with people who had been trying to kill you just a few days before. Team guys are raised from birth to deal with threats like that forcefully and permanently. I don’t need to tell you that my brother and his teammates slept with one eye open the whole time they were out there. Their days and nights were an endless episode of
CSI: Iraq
. But this was the strategy we and so many other units were working toward. It would change the landscape.

Within days, most of our guys had learned enough Arabic to run a shooting range. “Hold the butt stock firmly against your shoulder!”… “Use your right eye to look through the sight!” Much as they didn’t care for this mission, they proved themselves in the training role. Afterward, sitting around a fire with the locals, sipping chai, they’d struggle along, telling stories in broken Arabic, with a lot of intense eye contact and frequent recourse to the phrase book. The Iraqi kids seemed to think it was the coolest thing in the world. The SEALs took special care to show respect for the kids’ mothers, who, like mothers everywhere, knew how their corner of the world worked better than anybody.

Those who had a handle on Arabic made a real difference, getting good intel from their new friends. This allowed us to raid insurgent cells that otherwise would have remained well hidden. Sometimes they fooled us, dropping the dime on tribal rivals, saying they were Al Qaeda and hoping we’d ruin their day. We learned to vet their leads fast.

Pretty quickly, the Army moved a whole company into the neighborhood—about 150 men—and kept it there for a while. The SEALs and those soldiers from Lieutenant Colonel Ferry’s command understood the score. In spite of official coalition policy, which frowned on it, they had clearance to bring in weapons and ammunition and helped arm the new tribal police to defend themselves. Though they were wary of creating a potentially dangerous militia, the greater need by far was to make sure we had allies who could get the job done. We didn’t always mind seeing business done that way, and never minded it when it worked as well as it seemed to here. It didn’t take long for something remarkable to happen: in less than two days, the daily barrage of mortars stopped raining down on Camp Corregidor.

One day Shane noticed that one of his hidden claymores protecting the compound had been exposed when a strong wind gust blew the prayer rug hiding it out of position. He was watching when an Iraqi clad in black noticed this. Shane raised the scope of his M4 to his eye, steadied himself, and put his finger on his trigger, ready to take the shot. That was when the guy reached down, picked up the blanket, and put it back in place, covering the charge. Shane stood down. This enemy seemed to have become our friend.

The fighting never completely stopped, and we always had to watch our backs, but after Sheikh Jassim reclaimed his neighborhood from the terrorists, with an assist from U.S. forces, it was clear that Al Qaeda in Iraq was on the ropes. We mourned the deaths of all the Americans who had died to put us in that position. We honored the sacrifices of the Iraqis, too. Anyone who was there at the time can testify to the impact of their steadfast and courageous service. We did it, and we did it together.

A
s I flip through my diary of those days, I see something I never fully realized in the moment: though we all lived it from day to day, from one mission to the next, the battle for Ramadi was epic. Our mission challenged us mentally and physically. It stretched our capabilities in new directions and sharpened our blade for wars both familiar and new.

It stretched me a little, too—nearly to a breaking point, in fact. In early December, as Pearl Harbor Day approached, I knew my days as a door kicker were numbered.

As the platoon medic, I was keeping busy helping guys with their injuries and ailments. But you know what they say about the cobbler’s kids wearing the worst shoes. My back and pelvis were busted up so bad that if I sat for more than twenty minutes, I lost all feeling in my legs, and eventually in my arms, too. The pain from the compression on my spine was getting worse all the time. With sleep seldom coming, I got by on little cocktails of Vicodin, Flexeril, Ambien, whatever combinations the doc thought might help. But I wouldn’t surrender to the forces that were trying to take me down from within. Staying on the line with the guys was more important than saving my body—and I
was always willing to do whatever it took to stay on the line, always ready to do my duty when midnight came.

The last mission I ran with Gold squad, on December 7, 2006, was named Going South—an appropriate name. And this one was going to be it for me.

After Johnny and Elliott got hit, our bomb techs had been itching to take down the “emirs” who oversaw manufacture of the IEDs. Our assaulters had killed or captured plenty of triggermen and emplacers, but the HVTs—high-value targets—eluded us. The assholes who designed and built the IEDs were like the cookers in a drug ring, simmering the meth. With college degrees and professional training, they were smart enough to feel the heat coming when we were after them. They ran when they sensed trouble, and that was probably why the mechanics of the bombs our EOD guys found seemed to change so often.

Andy and Shannon had a hunch that the area west of town known as the Five Kilo district sheltered some of the people we were after. It was quiet out there, sparsely built and rural. We had never run an op out that way before, but I trusted their hunch and passed it up the line. That’s how we ended up targeting that neighborhood for a midnight visit.

Within the city, we almost always drove a safe route to one of our combat outposts before setting out to our objective on foot. This time, we did it old-school. We drove out into the unknown streets to the actual target instead of patrolling from the COP. The motorized assault consisted of two ten-man squads, one under Lieutenant Austin with Salazar on point, and the other under Chief Marty Robbins. Each group had a trio of
jundis
as
well. Lieutenant Nathan and I had the mobility force: the vehicles. The two squads piled into our two-and-a-half-ton troop carriers, and we left Camp Marc Lee after midnight and turned west onto Route Michigan.

In the desolate area west of town, this heavily potholed main road was known to be full of big IEDs. Buried in the road, they were like speed bumps packed with homemade explosives. As our convoy moved, we noticed different symbols painted on the wall running along the road. They were said to be warning signs to locals that IEDs might be buried along their path. The houses out there were built of mud and straw, scattered around a flat, sun-baked area. One might have taken it for a farming community, if growing dirt could be considered farming.

About five hundred meters from the houses we were going to hit, we stopped the trucks and our two squads dismounted. They formed their trains and begin sprinting forward parallel to the road, offset by a healthy distance to avoid unwanted fireworks. It was a full-on rush to hit the targets: three houses, each suspected of having some involvement in the bomb-making trade. Battle-wise as our guys were, they ran almost silently though they carried a full loadout.

The assaulters split into their two elements. Their point men led them to the doors and the breachers came forward and sledged the bolts. Marty Robbins, the chief, pushed everybody forward, running up their backs, keeping the train moving fast. Piling in, they hoped for resistance and expected a jackpot. Instead, there was nothing. No resistance, no fight. And no bomb materials, explosives, wires, or emplacing tools, either. Instead, the lieutenant and I, who were in charge of the trucks, got a call from the pissed-off operators asking for extract. When
we kicked it into gear and drove to the set point, where they had dismounted not twenty minutes ago, the frustration of the anticlimax was vented in the obscenities they unleashed upon the world for hitting a dry hole.

You can’t make movies out of raids like Operation Going South. Not every target is what you think it’s going to be. There was no drama in this anywhere, except in the full day preceding its kickoff. The preparation of the force list; the infil and exfil routes that we drew up, debated, and redrew; the coordination with the Iraqis; the staging of vehicles; the time-on-target calculations; the shootout procedures and contingencies identified and game-boarded; the comms plan; the QRF plan—all of it prepared with a rushed special operations tempo, the checking and rechecking of gear: rifle cleaned, mags and frags packed, batteries, flares, radios, and so on. The adrenaline surge is even stronger when you’re going into a new area. The sense of anticipation and tight nerves—that’s war, too.

Truth is, every mission is big, and the fight isn’t always where you expect, which is why a warrior’s first challenge is to be ready for it, especially when there’s no reason to think it will appear. You prepare so you
don’t
have to fight, not so you have to fight. You don’t always get what you wish for. If you love the fight too much, sometimes she won’t love you back.

As inconsequential as it was, this mission was a turning point for me, and I knew it. Or, actually, I should say I knew it as soon as Senior Chief Steffen pointed out to me what a turning point it was. There was no hiding my physical decline from a leader as well attuned to his men as he was. He sensed my pain and my exhaustion. None of it was useful to the squadron.

As I’ve said many times and will probably never say enough,
in my opinion Senior Chief Steffen is one of the most effective individuals in the special operations community. Part of it is his ability to tell you things you don’t want to hear, and make you like it all the same. He has this rare talent for climbing into your ass, knocking around a little, and leaving you feeling grateful for the favor. He hammers you like a loving father. He’ll tell you that you screwed up, or that you’re not on your A game, or that there may be serious questions about your suitability to serve, but at the end of it, all you want to do is say, “Roger that, sir.” And go find a way to improve yourself. Our respect for him was commanded, not demanded.

Still, when he came to me one day in early December and told me he thought it was time for me to quit going outside the wire, I wasn’t ready to hear it. I remember our conversation well. I pushed back on him. I told him I was still good to go, and that the boys would pick up my slack. We were a machine out there and it had a lot more miles on it. There was no way I entirely believed this myself, but I did my best to make the case. I didn’t want a bullshit op like Going South to be my swan song.

I won’t describe the language that flew between us that day. When I flared up on him, it was the last gasp of a tired frog’s pride. I think he knew it, and I think he knew I knew it. But my pride had to have its say before I went along with what was right. As a member of an assault element, I was more a liability than an asset now. I’d been burning the furniture to avoid freezing to death in my house. It was the senior chief’s job to tell me I couldn’t go anymore.

How do you get right with the idea, at the age of thirty-one, that the career you’ve pursued with every fiber of your being has come suddenly to an end? I can tell you it helped that DQ, our
squadron operations officer, widely respected in the E-5 mafia, was on hand, visiting from Fallujah. He helped me own the decision. To have a gunfighter like him look me in the eye and tell me that the war can’t go on forever, that a young gun must always become an old hand, made this evolution feel natural to me. He forced me to be honest with myself. He asked me, “Marcus, if something happens out there and you have to vault somebody over a wall, or haul a badly wounded teammate to safety, are you the best man to carry the load for your team?” My back, my knees, and my exhausted mind answered the question for me.