No Hero: The Evolution of a Navy SEAL

CHAPTER 11 Watch the Shoes Evolution

I got the page early in the morning.

Team leaders in the squadron always carry small black pagers on deployment so planners can alert us of a possible mission. I rolled out of my lumpy bed, which was built into the wooden walls of my room, and headed over to the operations center.

We were on vampire hours, so while to us it was early morning, really it was a late winter afternoon in Afghanistan. We slept all day and ran missions at night. Things were slow. We’d been at a base south of Kabul for months, with few missions. The bitter cold made the winter fighting season slow. The Taliban were across the border in Pakistan or lying low in Afghanistan. Neither side really wanted to fight.

I stuffed my hands into my jacket as I walked over to the operations center. I had no idea what was going on, and I didn’t wake my team. We’d been conducting missions like this for years now, and I knew things could spin down as quickly as they had spun up. Many times we would wake everyone up to start planning and the target would disappear. It was better that they get as much sleep as possible.

I walked into the operations center. It was a squat, prefab building. The floors were muddy from all the dirt tracked in by our boots. There was a worn path from the door to the coffee maker. I followed the track and got a hot cup. I took two quick sips and let the caffeine shake me from my funk.

There was a subdued energy in the room as the planners and intelligence analysts pored over data, trying to tee up that night’s mission. Black-and-white Predator feeds trained on a compound were displayed on the screen. Standing near the back next to a long desk were the troop chief and troop commander. They saw me come in and nodded. I dropped three packets of sugar into my coffee and joined them.

“What’s up?” I said.

“ISR has been tracking some fighters,” the troop chief said.

The drones patrolling overhead caught a group of five to seven fighters going from compound to compound, looking for a warm bed and meal. They’d been moving most of the day but had just stopped. The planners figured the group was going to stop moving and bed down at the compound for the night. It was starting to get dark and they’d been traveling most of the day.

“From what we can see from the ISR, it looks like they were just walking through town and decided to hide out at this random house for the night,” the troop chief said. “We saw them knock on the door and when the people inside answered they pushed through the door. They even moved their vehicles inside the compound’s wall.”

I was one of three team leaders. I looked over at Steve as the troop chief gave us details on the compound’s location. Steve was nodding as the troop chief told us about the mission.

After the first briefing, the recce team leader started working up routes to the house. I started looking at the house with Steve.

“Looks pretty cut-and-dry to me,” I said.

“I agree. You going to wake up your crew?” Steve said.

“Yep, I’ll wake them up now so they can grab some food before we start spinning too hard,” I said.

I followed the muddy path to the door and made a beeline to where the guys were sleeping. The tent was pitch-black. Only a small strip of white rope lighting ran down the hallway toward our makeshift lounge area. The plywood walls separated the tent into little mini-rooms, each with a bed and desk. Each room had one SEAL. It was tight quarters, but at least you had some privacy.

The far end of the tent was the lounge. It was spacious, with stadium seating in front of a fifty-inch flat screen. We’d been coming to Shank for years, and each squadron worked hard to make the living conditions a little better each time. A previous squadron built a fire pit and outdoor lounge. Another fixed up the gym. If we had to do time in Afghanistan, the goal was to make it as nice as possible.

I turned on the light in the lounge and turned the TV on. We could watch the American Forces Network, which broadcast American shows, movies, and sports. But we’d also rigged it to show the same ISR feed that the planners saw in the operations center. I turned on the feed. All around me, I could hear the boys stirring. Guys were getting out of their bunks.

I put on a pot of coffee. One by one, with a fresh cup in their hands, the guys gathered around the TV. There was nothing to see other than the compound walls and buildings. There was no movement inside the walls or near the compound because the fighters had already moved inside the buildings.

“Sweet,” Walt said. “Same shit, different day.”

He rubbed his eyes and watched the black-and-white picture for a few seconds.

“This better not be another dry hole. I don’t go out in these temperatures for less than twenty bad guys,” Walt said in his typical smartass tone.

Once all the guys got a cup of coffee or a drink, I started the brief. I gave them the rundown on the target and the fighters. There was nothing difficult about this hit. We’d rolled up fighters sleeping in compounds just like this hundreds of times before. In many ways this mission was just plug-and-play. Everyone knew what roles needed to be filled.

Our plans were always pretty simple, but I tried to give my guys a chance to shoot holes in it. I started with the basic questions.

What are we missing?

Does what the intelligence folks are saying match with what we are seeing?

What were everyone’s responsibilities for the night?

Which team would lead the assault?

Everyone on the team had input, even the newest guy. I knew I definitely wasn’t the smartest guy in the room, and I had learned a long time ago to ask for outside opinions.

It took about an hour to get everything in place. When we were done, Steve and I went back to the troop chief and briefed the plan. The troop chief and troop commander sat in the operations center listening carefully as we detailed the routes to and from the target and the assault plan.

Although our intelligence analysts were confident the fighters were not going to move again the rest of the night, we kept a watchful eye on the compound. The drones kept a constant vigil overhead.

We planned to land about five kilometers from the target and patrol to the compound. This allowed us to keep the element of surprise. Nothing gives away your position like a massive helicopter hovering above. With the high mountain peaks and long valleys, the helicopter noise would float for miles and everybody up and down the valley would know we were coming. Sometimes we’d land one valley over in order to keep the rotor noise down. The only problem with that idea was you had to walk your happy ass up and over a mountain.

I watched the troop chief and troop commander carefully as we briefed. They nodded their heads as we laid everything out. The plan was simple, so I didn’t anticipate any issues. The troop commander blessed off on the plan, and a couple hours later we were airborne, headed to the compound.

I was excited as I sat in the Chinook, trying to think warm thoughts. In the back of my mind I wasn’t nervous about anything. I was confident, not arrogant, that I knew how to handle almost anything on target. By my thirteenth deployment, I was light-years ahead of my first missions. I’d come a long way from the kid in a T-shirt hoping to be a SEAL. I’d learned valuable lessons on the streets of Baghdad on my first combat deployment.

There was no stopping a lucky shot or well-placed roadside bomb, but after thirteen deployments there was little that surprised me. I’d been sent to a compound rigged to explode when I arrived. I’d walked into countless houses in Iraq and Afghanistan and faced fighters waiting to ambush me. The missions weren’t any easier, but I had a wealth of experience behind me.

Part of the reason my teammates and I were so capable was we constantly tried our best to evolve. The enemy was always changing their tactics, and if we didn’t change ours as quickly, we would fall behind, putting ourselves at risk.

At the start of the war in Afghanistan, few of us had seen any real combat. We were highly trained with no experience, but after a decade of war, almost ninety percent of the force had real-world combat experience and close to double-digit deployments under their belts.

During every deployment, we pushed to change tactics and techniques as quickly as our enemy did. We never rested on what worked in the past; instead we pushed to develop what would work in the future.

I closed my eyes and let the hum of the helicopter’s engines wash over me. Some of my teammates were already asleep. I rested my eyes and went over the mission in my head. I tucked my hands between my body armor and my stomach, trying to keep them as warm as possible for as long as possible. It wasn’t Alaska cold that night, but it was still cold enough that I could feel it through my gloves.

We were used to this routine. At this point in the war and our careers, we had become somewhat numb to the pain, suffering, and sacrifice of going on missions. I rationalized it all as “just part of the job.” Some people had chosen different professions, but this was ours and we were getting really fucking good at it.

I felt the helicopter dip down and heard the engine pitch change as it landed. A mix of dust and snow greeted us as we dashed off the back ramp. I got about fifty yards from the helicopter and started to piss into the dirt. I’d been holding it for the hour-long flight and I knew once we got moving I wouldn’t have a chance to go. All around me my teammates were doing the same thing. As the helicopter’s engines faded away, we got into patrol formation and started toward the compound.

No words had to be spoken. No order given. This was another day at work for us. Everyone knew what to do, where to go, and what was expected of him. Sure the bureaucracy and bullshit rules from senior officers were always there, but we always worked with them and around them and otherwise did our best to block it all out of our minds.

In the green hue of my night vision goggles, I could see my teammates spread out before me. We had been patrolling toward the target for about an hour when the radio crackled to life.

“We’ve got two MAMs [military-age males] coming out of a door on the west side of the compound,” I heard over the radio. “They just moved over to a door on the east side.”

Shit, the fighters were still awake. If people in the compound were awake, it meant we would have to use different tactics on the assault. We wouldn’t be able to silently pick the lock and slowly make our way into their bedroom and catch them by surprise.

As it stood, based off the latest report from ISR, we’d have to call them out, giving up our element of surprise and allowing them time to arm themselves to make a stand. I’d been around long enough to know that folks who really had no clue what was happening on the ground made most of the rules we operated under.

But we still had a long walk ahead of us. I hoped by the time we got to the compound the fighters would be asleep. I kept scanning for threats and focused on the long patrol. As we got closer, the ISR pilot was on the radio again.

“The two movers just returned to their original doorway and went inside,” the pilot said.

We patrolled over a few small hills and into a thicket of trees near the compound. This was our final set point before we assaulted the target. From the trees, I caught a glimpse of the compound. At night and in the dark, it looked like just another compound in Afghanistan. It had high mud walls and a heavy wooden gate.

Since the last warning, the compound had been quiet.

No movement.

No more sleepwalkers.

We waited a few minutes to make sure no one got up again. Finally, the troop chief made the call to continue with the assault. Because of the freezing temperatures, our troop commander made the decision to sneak over the wall instead of conducting a callout because a callout would only expose the women and children to the bitter cold. Plus, if the Taliban decided to fight, the women and children would be stuck in the crossfire.

We quietly moved into position. My team fell in behind the snipers and we made our way to the front gate of the compound. I watched the snipers scale the walls and set up overwatch positions.

The gate was made of wood with an old iron latch as a handle. The point man tried the latch, but it was locked on the inside. He called to one of the new guys who was carrying the extendable ladder on his back. We placed the ladder against the wall and the point man slowly climbed the giant mud wall. Another ladder was passed to the point man as he straddled the ten-foot-high wall. As we passed the ladder up to him, he seemed to wobble a little and quickly reached down and got his balance.

We were wearing more than sixty pounds of gear and the point man was doing gymnastic-style moves on the top of a ten-foot-high wall with a room full of sleeping Taliban fighters thirty feet away.

Rung by rung, we passed the ladder up. It was tense because silence, not speed, was the most important thing. It was pitch-black outside. The wind was picking up, blowing the ladder around a bit. A few times I was afraid the point man was going to lose his balance and tumble into the compound.

All I could think about was the sleepwalkers. The report was of two movers, but ISR was tracking between five and seven fighters altogether. We all knew which door the two movers had come from and then later gone back into, but nobody knew exactly where the others might be sleeping. If they were to walk through the compound again, the snipers would drop them. But that would likely wake up the other fighters still sleeping inside. My hope was that we could get inside the house before the fighters had any idea we were there.

The point man finally got the ladder up and delicately lowered it into the compound. Then he and his swim buddy climbed down into the compound. I waited by the gate, ready to enter. A few seconds later, I could hear the bolt of the gate slide back, and the heavy wooden door slowly swung open.

The point man stood in the opening with a shit-eating grin on his face.

“Too easy,” he whispered.

We now had the front door open and it was time to go to work. We all crept through the gate and into the compound, which opened up into a small courtyard with buildings along the perimeter. Everybody moved as quietly as we possibly could. The “don’t run to your death” rule always applied. After all, this wasn’t a video game. You can’t just get shot and re-spawn in place.

Several of the newer guys were in front of me as we slipped inside the compound. I watched them veer off to search animal pens and the north and east side of the compound. I could tell the younger guys were all amped up. They were doing their best to suppress their energy.

But the key was being in the right place, and after more than a dozen deployments, I knew where the fighters were sleeping by listening to the ISR pilot on the patrol to the target. As I listened to each report, I thought back to the compound layout. The movers came out of a door on the west side of the compound. I headed straight for the west door. If the ISR was correct, the lone door on the west side of the compound was where the fighters were sleeping.

I didn’t run.

I wanted to be not just slow, but super slow. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. I moved over to the west side of the compound and waited by the closed door. One of the new guys on his first deployment with the troop was on the other side of the door. I reached out and pressed the door handle down. The door was unlocked.

The door opened inward into a small anteroom. Two wooden doors were on either side of the room. A staircase leading to the second floor of the house was almost directly in front of us. Since I opened the door, the new guy was the point man and would be the first person to enter. He slowly stepped inside and I followed.

I saw from the doorway a whole bunch of men’s shoes in a pile next to the right door. The pile was a mix of big leather sandals and black Cheetahs. We joked that we’d never seen an innocent person wear a pair of Cheetahs. The black shoes equaled Taliban more times than not.

The opposite door had kids’ and women’s shoes stacked outside. I knew the instant we walked inside the anteroom where the fighters were sleeping. But the new guy, probably a little too amped to notice, went to the left door. I moved to the door on the right. As I reached for the knob, I was one hundred percent sure the fighters were inside the room. My hope was they were sound asleep.

The beat-up, rusty, old hinges let out a long squeak. In the silence, it sounded like a freight train barreling through the mud hut. The room was freezing and it was pitch-black inside. I had my night vision goggles down and could make out man-sized lumps lying under blankets.

As I scanned around the room, a fighter just to the left side of the door stirred and sat up. He was about three feet away from me. He must have heard the door and was trying to make me out in the darkness. Looking beside him, I spotted a large belt-fed PKM machine gun. His vision quickly cleared. He could tell whoever was at the door was not friendly. His hands instantly shot out and he grabbed the machine gun. The problem for him was the PKM’s barrel was pointed away from the doorway.

I watched for a split second as he wrestled with the gun, trying to get it turned and facing my direction. He never got the chance. I leaned in and shot him twice in the face.

My rifle had a suppressor, but even the muffled shots seemed loud in the mud room. The fighter flopped backward like he was going back to sleep and disappeared from view. I raised my rifle to cover the rest of the room and saw AK-47 rifles leaning against the wall. Chest racks stuffed with magazines hung on the wall. The “lumps” under the blankets immediately turned into a blur of movement as all the fighters woke up and scrambled to get their guns.

I didn’t hesitate.

I started to shoot. Tracking from one fighter to the next, I pumped two or three rounds into each blur’s chest, pausing only for a second to make sure the fighter went down. There was no yelling or screaming, just the muffled sound of my rounds cutting into the enemy fighters.

The fighters crumpled or fell back to where they had been sleeping. Each shot sent a charge through the dark wool blankets, which looked like a wave rippling over a lake. As quickly as it began, it ended. I stepped into the room with a swim buddy behind me and we moved from fighter to fighter, making sure they were no longer a threat.

There were six fighters total. I counted five AK-47s and one PKM machine gun. We also recovered two RPGs and several rockets. The fighters were well armed. Their guns were in decent shape and they had good gear compared to a typical Taliban fighter. We also found first aid kits and Afghan and Pakistani money.

No shots were fired in any rooms other than the room I cleared. All of the fighters had huddled into the one room. The family living there likely had no choice but to let the fighters hole up inside their home.

As I consolidated the weapons, I could hear the women and children crying across the hall. As I predicted, the new guy had walked into the women’s sleeping room. They were startled when he walked inside. When I started shooting, they started to scream. When I left the room I’d cleared, I poked my head into the opposite room and saw him pulling security on a room full of unhappy women. He didn’t look thrilled.

Just before we started to patrol back to the helicopter landing zone to catch our ride home, the new guy came up to me.

“Motherfucker,” he said. “I knew I should have gone to the right.”

During a slow deployment, missing a chance to send some rounds downrange was painful.

“Don’t be mad at me,” I said. “You had first dibs on which door to take.”

“I’m not mad at you. I’m just pissed at myself for not catching that sooner,” he said.

“Always—I repeat, always—check the shoes,” I said.

I’d learned the shoe lesson the hard way on a previous deployment to Iraq. When you’re new, all amped up, and in a hurry, you miss the little details, like the shoes, that can be meaningless at first glance but are really a big clue. When you’re more experienced and have been in the car crash a million times, and have made mistakes and learned from them, everything slows down and something as small as shoes can stand out.

This time, I read that situation perfectly. In our line of work, you can only hope to survive your first mistake and live long enough to never make it again. Thinking about it now, it was one of many lessons I learned that I still use today. On the practical side, it was about tracking the enemy, but the more universal lesson was about attention to detail in high-stress situations. In this instance, success meant life or death.

This was my thirteenth combat deployment. I had years of my life spent operating in Iraq, Afghanistan, and all over the world. This was no longer “theory” or “training.” For the first time in my career, I felt like I’d achieved my goal of becoming the SEAL operator that I’d dreamed about as a teenager in Alaska.

Years of training had led me to this level. No SEAL I ever worked with was content being average. We’d learned teamwork in BUD/S and we were experts in our individual tactical skills. After more than ten years at war, our skills were at their peak. We’d shot millions of rounds, blown thousands of pounds of explosives, and trained and fought in every situation and environment. We could spin up on an operation on a moment’s notice, no matter how complex. Mission planning was simple because we’d done it hundreds of times. We trusted each other and could almost read each other’s minds on target.