The Operator Read online

  The problem was that the instructors found infinite excuses to send us sprinting two hundred meters to the beach to get wet and sandy. No matter how fit the students were, cold and wet always won. And if you actually messed up, you got crushed. Even if you were in the general vicinity of someone who messed up, you got crushed. That’s what made my island experience so hellish.

  Once again, my old swim buddy, Monte, and I were split up and randomly assigned to different teams. And once again, I drew the short straw with my new buddy, a guy I’ll call Parker. After gutting out Hell Week, Pool Week, and the two 5.5-mile swims like the rest of us—which theoretically should have meant he was fireproof—Parker, for some reason, began to melt down on the island.

  He’d been my roommate since we’d moved to building 618 in second phase and would be again once we returned from the island for graduation week. We’d had no problem getting along. He was very funny and the biggest Jimmy Buffett fan I’d ever met. His performance had never been an issue. He was extremely fit and had been cruising through just fine. The problem was that he had a girlfriend in San Diego. Having her nearby on weekend leave must have been holding him together. Once we left for the island, he lost it. He began falling short in PT. He got busted trying to turn around early on one of the runs up frog hill—by the students, thank God for him. He was noticeably not performing to third-phase standards and we began to get concerned.

  One time, he forgot to put the buffer spring in his gun, an essential part of the recoil and recovery mechanism. The gun won’t work without it. At the rifle range, an instructor asked him if he’d completed an inspection of his weapon and a “function test.” Parker lied and said yes. Failing to do the test is an unpardonable sin. Lying about failing to do it is grounds for immediate ejection from training. It was also unbelievably stupid. Of course, the instructor attempted to perform the same test. There was no spring, so no tension.

  I have to think that Parker was so exhausted and worn down that on some level he wanted to get tossed out. But the instructors liked this guy, plus they hesitated to boot anyone so deep into training. Instead of going nuclear, they decided to punish him by making him get wet and sandy every hour on the hour for twenty-four hours.

  The problem for me was that although we were on the island, no man is an island in the SEALs. We always have our swim buddies, even when we screw up. I’m all about a team effort, but getting punished for someone else’s incompetence and laziness over and over gets old. Every time Parker screwed up, the instructors said: “Sucks to be you, O’Neill.” It sure did. The island was tough enough without being perpetually cold, wet, sandy, and sleep deprived. I’d been beat down over and over for him and it was starting to piss me off.

  Then something odd happened. A group from SEAL Team Three came out to the island to train in some water demolition drills. They stayed in a better compound, much nicer than ours, just a few hundred meters from the BUD/S compound. As opposed to several plain barracks with no common areas, it was a state-of-the-art, one-story hotel. It had big-screen TVs, a big kitchen, and a bar. There were fire pits outside and plenty of room to work out. Team Three also had freezers that needed to be taped shut because they were so full of lobster.

  But they trained in the same bay that we did. On one of their drills, the underwater charge didn’t explode. The SEALs also failed to follow rule No. 1: “Two is one, one is none.” They didn’t put a secondary initiator on the charge for redundancy. Because there was now unexploded ordnance underwater with no way to blow it, they needed to wait a minimum of forty-eight hours before they could send in a guy to reattach an initiator. It took that long to be sure the charge wouldn’t blow when someone came to fix it. Since the very large unexploded charge was just off the only accessible beach on the island—most of the coastline was sheer rock cliff—there was nowhere else to do the dive training. This was great news for Class 208 because that meant nobody could get in the water for a few days. What a sweet deal!! Then Parker screwed up again.

  This time he didn’t thoroughly clean his weapon and there was a bunch of carbon in the bore. The instructor started to say, “Get wet and sandy every hour on the …” when it hit him. “Oh, shit. You can’t get in the water.”

  I was so sick of being punished because of this guy, I blurted out, “Let me hit him with the hose every hour on the hour.”

  The instructor laughed and agreed. As had happened with the room inspection, I’d come up with something unexpected and entertaining, so the instructor decided to go with it. Of course, it wasn’t very loyal of me to suggest it, but this dude was killing me. The other students were fed up, too, and they appreciated my creativity. The only flaw was I still had to wake up every hour to do the hosing.

  I don’t think Parker blamed me for it. It was pretty obvious that he wasn’t himself and the instructors didn’t want to kick him out yet. He just needed to be rolled back to Coronado to get his mind right, which he did. He graduated with Class 209.

  For forty straight days we shot and blew stuff up and swam and learned. It was the first time in eight months that our bodies were allowed to heal a little, so all the working out, instead of constantly tearing us down, was finally building us up. We could only eat what they served in the galley, which meant no junk food and no booze. I remember looking at myself in the mirror before a shower and wondering how in the hell my Pillsbury Doughboy midsection got this six-pack.

  A few weeks before our stint on the island was over, we were handed “Dream Sheets” to fill out. We were told to fill in our name, rank, and BUD/S class, along with our top three choices for team assignment. It really boiled down to whether I wanted to go to even-numbered SEAL teams on the East Coast, or stay out here in Coronado with the odd-numbered teams. I chose the East Coast. Team Two was the oldest team, and had the richest history. It had been the SEAL team that had been deployed to the Bosnian War. True, deployment to that conflict had just recently ended, but I figured that part of the world might provide the best chance of putting to use all my combat training.

  The truth is, I was choosing blindly. None of us were exactly sure what SEAL teams did, but we had an idea that there were all kinds of covert ops going on.

  There was one thing we were sure about, though: DO NOT PUT “SDV” ANYWHERE ON YOUR DREAM SHEET!

  SDV stands for SEAL Delivery Vehicle. It’s a mini-submarine that can carry a SEAL team long distances and deliver them to targets undetected. The swimmers can emerge beneath ships, sneak onto beaches, or sail far up rivers for clandestine insertion into cities. It sounds cool and looks good on paper, but get this: These are not airtight vehicles. They’re flooded with cold water and dark inside. It’s like sitting in a coffin full of water.

  I’d had enough of being cold and wet for long periods. Plus, since you’re always diving, there is no time for other Navy SEAL activity, the fun stuff: skydiving, shooting, setting off big explosions, etc.

  Reasonably, no one wanted to be an SDV crewman, but the Navy still needed to fill the slots. So if you even breathed the letters “SDV,” you were going and for a long-ass time.

  When it came time for us to get our first SEAL assignments, we all sat together in a classroom, listening as an instructor went down the list: So and so, SEAL Team One. So and so, SEAL Team Eight. So and so, SDV Two. You could hear the grumbles from the class anytime the dreaded letters were read. We had about eight guys go SDV before my name came up. The instructor was so used to saying it, he actually said, “O’Neill, SD … excuse me, SEAL Team Two.”

  In the blink of the puckered ass it took for that slip, I must have said, “Oh, fuck me” about nine times, followed by a “Yes!” SEAL Team Two it was. My first choice. My true swim buddy, Monte, and I went out back that day and had our picture taken together. I still have the shot: I held up two fingers for SEAL Team Two, he held up one finger. Guess where he was going?

  Flying back to Coronado was such a kick-ass feeling: It was Friday, we had two days off, and Monday would be the fi
rst day of our last week in BUD/S. That was when it really sank in for the first time: I was going to graduate and become a Navy SEAL.

  My family came down to watch me graduate the following Friday. The thirty-three survivors of the original two hundred members of Class 208 were sitting together wearing their dress blues, waiting for the graduation ceremony to begin, when Instructor A walked in. Most of the class hadn’t seen him for months, as he was a first-phase instructor. Back then, each week right before Friday liberty, he’d stand before us in the same classroom where we’d first met. With that marvelously rich voice, he’d read off, in alphabetical order, the last names of guys who hadn’t failed an evolution all week and ask them to stand. He’d then announce that the men standing were this week’s “BUD/S Studs.”

  Now, in that same voice, he asked us all to stand and said, “When I read your name, take a seat!”

  He started to read off names in alphabetical order, most ones we didn’t recognize, and the list was long. He read off about 170 names before he was done. We were all still standing.

  He let us take it in for a moment of heavy silence, then said, “Those are all your quitters. The men standing are the BUD/S Studs from Class 208. Congratulations.”

  It was very cool of him to do that and something I’ll never forget.

  *

  NOBODY CAN PREDICT WHO’LL MAKE it through BUD/S. The brass tries to figure it out; they bring in psychologists and boost the number of guys beginning the process, hoping more SEALs will be left standing at the end. They tweak the design to create more equal opportunity for minorities, but all that happens is that the instructors do to the students exactly what was done to them, and always 80 percent don’t make it. We have more white SEALs simply because more white guys try out. Eighty percent of white guys fail, 80 percent of Filipinos fail, 80 percent of black guys fail. And the irony is, the Navy doesn’t want an 80 percent failure rate. There can’t be too many SEALs. We’re always undermanned.

  From the beginning of boot camp, the instructors try separating guys who want to be SEALs. They put them together, feed them better, give them workouts designed to prepare them for BUD/S. These promising rookies get in better shape, are better nourished, and are psychologically primed to go. Then they’re sent to SEAL training and 80 percent fail. No matter what the Navy process tweakers do, they can’t crack it. You’d think the Olympic swimmer would make it. You’d think the pro-football player would make it. But they don’t—well, 80 percent don’t.

  In my experience, the one category of people who get reliably crushed in BUD/S are that noble demographic, the loudmouths. They’re usually the first to ring the bell.

  As for who will make it, all I can say is: Are you the person who can convince your body that it can do anything you ask it to? Who can hit the wall and say, “What wall?” That strength of mind isn’t associated with any ethnicity or level of skin pigmentation. It’s not a function of size or musculature or IQ. In the end, it’s sheer cussedness, and I’m guessing you’re either born that way or you never get there.

  *

  AFTER GRADUATING, I CELEBRATED WITH my family in BUD/S style by going to Tijuana. My family couldn’t believe how cheap the Oakley sunglasses were. It broke my heart to have to tell them they were fake. They didn’t believe me anyway.

  We all went back to Butte for the Christmas holiday. I can’t tell you how pumped I was. I’d just finished BUD/S, had orders to report to SEAL Team Two, and had a stop at jump school—Basic Airborne at Fort Benning, Georgia.

  When I checked in there in early January, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew that the other students would be about my age, but I wondered what they were like. Would they be huge, tough Army guys? I was curious, but it turned out they were more curious about me. They wanted to know about SEAL training and if the movies and TV shows were accurate. Naturally, I said they were exactly right. Just like the movies, that’s us.

  It was only when I saw my brothers from BUD/S Class 208 that I realized how much I’d missed them, even after only two weeks. We’d finished the world’s most difficult military training together and we had the kind of bond usually forged by going to war. We also may have been just a teensy bit full of ourselves.

  We knew that even if we failed jump school, our team would slap our wrists and send us right back. Guys from other branches didn’t have this luxury; if they failed, they were out. We were the military’s version of made men. We were also in the best shape of our lives, cocky as hell, and really good-looking.

  In jump training, before a student could eat, he had to do five pull-ups on the bars outside the chow hall. Our guys would be on pull-up number thirty before the airborne instructor—they were called “black hats” because they all wore black ball caps with a conspicuously shiny parachutist badge pinned on them—would yell at us to knock it off. I remember one hilarious black hat who shouted, “You don’t think I know who you are … Navy SEALs … Damn Terminators!”

  Another cool instructor pulled us aside and said, “I know what you all just did. We get you guys every other class or so. Keep in mind, I have a job to do and this school is a big deal to your Army, Marine, and Air Force brothers and sisters. Be professional and don’t give the black hats too hard of a time!” He laughed and yelled, “Drop!”

  We got in the push-up position or “front lean and rest,” obligated to do our ten push-ups and count ’em out. Keep in mind: During third phase of BUD/S, every time we were “dropped” the number was fifty. We were used to doing thousands per day.

  Our senior man became the cadence and the rest of us would “count.”

  “Down … ONE!”

  “Down … ONE!”

  “Down … ONE!”

  “Down … ONE!”

  We counted to one about thirty times before the black hat yelled, “REcover!”

  We did. “Assholes. Get back with your class!”

  They were good to us and we were good to them … for the most part. I remember telling one of the black hats about my first jump. “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever done!”

  He must have been amused by my wide-eyed enthusiasm, which I’m sure he’d seen a hundred times before. The jump door had looked small but the outside enormous; a big, fake movie screen full of sky on one side and trees on the other. Jumping out was a loud rush followed by “holy shit” and then the most peaceful calm. And a really hard landing. It actually took me three weeks to master how to land. And I was happy about that. The longer it took, the more jumps I could make.

  Anyway, none of us encountered any major issues and we all graduated on time. I was given my jump wings—a cool pin of silver wings curving out from a parachute canopy—and I was very proud. Jumping out of a plane changes your life, and I wanted to get the full treatment: “blood wings.”

  I’d heard about it from instructors, SEALs, and the 82nd Airborne. They all talked about it as a rite of passage … “back in my day …” It had been officially prohibited, but I knew it still went on among the hardcore. You might be able to guess what it involved.

  I went to the office of my favorite black hat and knocked on the door. There were three other black hats in there. I handed him my wings, having removed the stoppers on the sharp pins. He said, “What do you want?”

  I said, “I haven’t earned these yet. I know what you guys do at the 82nd.”

  “Hazing is illegal, O’Neill.”

  “Pin me.”

  We looked at each other for a second. He nodded and came closer. He stuck the sharp pins on my left breast with his left hand and punched the jump wings into my chest. He shook my hand. I looked at the other three black hats and said, “Well?”

  They all came over and, one at a time, punched the wings in farther, smiled, and shook my hand. Now I was Airborne.

  Time to drive to Virginia Beach for the first time in my life. Time to check in with the legendary SEAL Team Two.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  My very first night in Virginia Beach, fou
r of the guys from 208 and I went to Peabody’s, a famous “18 and up” club. I liked the music inside but wanted to get some fresh air so I grabbed a beer and walked outside. Too bad there was no balcony.

  I was twenty years old, and I was used to Butte, Montana. Turns out in the normal world you can’t buy a beer and drink it on the sidewalk. I’d barely taken a swig when a hand clamped down on my arm. It was a city cop, and he was pulling me into his car.

  I was thinking, Okay, here I am, not only do I have an open container, but I’m underage.

  The horror of the situation opened like a trapdoor. If you’re arrested on an alcohol-related charge your first day with a SEAL team they’re going to kick you out. All the months of sweat, blood, sand, and wetness flashed by in review. I’d just pissed it all away because I was less than a year shy of twenty-one.

  I thought of my older brother, Tom’s, expired license tucked into my wallet. I’d grabbed it when I was a senior in high school and had kept it with me when I left Butte. Not only was it expired, but the unsmiling face on the license didn’t remotely look like me. I figured, Screw it. I’ve got nothing to lose, and reached for my wallet. I gave the cop the license and turned my face away as he looked it over. I waited for him to crush me, but he just jotted the info on his clipboard and calmly handed it back. “Stay inside next time, Montana,” he said.

  A couple weeks later I got a call from Butte. It was Tom, wondering why he’d gotten an open-container violation ticket from Virginia Beach.

  “I’ve never even been to Virginia Beach!” he said.

  *

  SEAL TEAM TWO WAS BASED at the two-thousand-acre Naval Amphibious Base on an inlet of the Atlantic called Little Creek Cove. The team itself occupies a two-story building with a weight room, a locker room, and some offices downstairs. Upstairs are what we call platoon huts, which are essentially clubhouses for the eight sixteen-member platoons.