The Operator Read online

  Our deployment started out in western Iraq’s Anbar Province at the Al Asad Air Base, the same base as my previous Iraq deployment in 2005. We quickly succeeded in hunting down and capturing or killing the relatively few al-Qaeda targets in our immediate neighborhood in far western Iraq, and found ourselves flying east to Ramadi and Fallujah for our nightly targets. These flights were long, inefficient, and uncomfortable, so we made the decision to pack up our portion of the base and head east.

  Within the course of two cycles of darkness—our daytime—the task force packed up all of its gear, including personal items, guns, explosives, computers, and everything needed to run a war, into large CONEX boxes, which were lifted via helicopter. We were operational again in forty-eight hours.

  We installed ourselves in a former mansion on the banks of the Tigris River. The living was not as plush as it had been in Al Asad, where we’d built out our space to suit us and had the routine down to a science. Army Rangers had occupied the old mansion for some time. They were more about Spartan living than we were. Compared to our built-out digs at Al Asad—with its seventy-inch plasma TVs, networked Xboxes, refrigerators, and coffee stations—the new quarters seemed a little primitive to us. But we figured we’d be moving east soon anyway—toward Baghdad, where the most serious fighting was going on.

  As it turned out, we never lacked for targets. We went out pretty much every night after the daily brief in the JOC (Joint Operations Center) in a neighboring mansion. Though only about a hundred yards away, the JOC seemed much farther as the temperature consistently teased 120 degrees, even after sunset. We didn’t dare drink any coffee until we got into air-conditioned spaces, and we knew enough to soak up that refrigerated air. There wouldn’t be any where we were headed.

  We’d recently learned a valuable lesson the hard way: Al-Qaeda knew some of our special operations tactics for breaching. As I’ve said, the breacher is the guy who gets the assault team inside a target no matter what. He’ll break windows, chainsaw through walls, pick locks, whatever is necessary. The most common method of entry for a breacher, though, is blowing open the front door with explosives. If the team judges that explosive entry is required, the breacher is the first one to the door. This is often the case when timing or terrain forces a team to land right next to the house or on the X. Al-Qaeda knew this, too. They’d wait a few seconds after they heard the helicopters, then shoot through the door with deadly effect, taking out the breacher and any other guys with him. Contrary to what Hollywood represents, bullets go through doors. Many good guys were killed while placing charges.

  So a more clever approach was called for.

  At one brief, we were handed targets that required us to hit three separate, adjacent houses simultaneously with three of our teams working together. This was a time-sensitive target: The guys we wanted were there at the moment but might not be in a few hours. We could potentially take out an entire cell with one operation if we acted fast. The fastest way was to land on the X, which left me more than a little concerned. These houses outside Fallujah were filled with al-Qaeda. They’d definitely hear us and be ready at the door. I needed to come up with a system that would minimize my time there. So I built a seven-foot strip of C-6 plastic explosive that could be rolled like a Fruit Roll-Up, only less delicious. The material opposite the explosive is extremely sticky, so as the bomb is unrolled down the door, it adheres to it. That could be done in an instant. I saved even more time by pre-attaching the blasting cap to the explosive. Don’t try this at home. It’s definitely a risk to run around with a charge already “capped in.” But getting shot is no good, either, so I took the risk.

  Now all I had to do once the bomb was placed was attach the cap to a twenty-foot-reel of “shock tube”—a kind of fuse that rolled out from a wheel like fishing line. As we prepared to launch, I stowed my gear in two M60 pouches that I rigged on my right hip.

  A few hours after the sun went down we took off in three Black Hawks. The other shooters with me were Cole, Delicious, and Mack. Needless to say we all had nicknames. Mine was NSRO (pronounced nizzro) for Navy Seal Rob O’Neill. My boss liked yelling, “What up, my nizzro?!” Mack was a college rugby player and a total badass. He was missing a front tooth and had dark hair down to his shoulders along with a big black beard. He looked like an awesome, tough bum but was as sharp as a tack and a tactical wizard. Delicious was the best-looking guy we had and a physical freak of nature. Perfect physique, tan skin, and pearly whites. I’m pretty sure he could bench press a Buick and climb buildings in his free time.

  As for Cole, he was the most aggressive SEAL I ever worked with. “Fearless” is a word that is thrown around too often, but perfect to describe him. Again, brilliant tactician and a very physical guy. Great-looking, too. Starting to see a pattern here? Tall, dark, and handsome, Delicious and Cole could be on posters. Mack? Only if he fixes that tooth!

  Our team leader, Cruz, had one of the driest wits ever. He was a massive Polish-American with huge, long arms, dark features, and a great black beard. He and his family all spoke fluent Polish, and his brothers were all as huge as he was. Two of Cruz’s brothers actually made it to SEAL Team ****, and I worked with them. They were meticulous and probably the most loyal men I ever met. They all had the same nickname, “Cruz,” based on their last name. I first met this particular Cruz at SEAL Team Two. He immediately saw action in Sarajevo and Kosovo and was known off the bat as an operator. He made the leap to SEAL Team **** at the first opportunity and quickly moved up to Team Leader for D Team, my team. He was a thinker, a natural leader, almost impossible to beat in a race on land or sea, and as strong as anyone I’d ever seen. Despite his size and strength, he prevailed in arguments using cool logic rather than intimidation, and was always careful to hear all sides. His side was usually right, though.

  Cruz was famous for getting every legitimate penny out of the government when we’d fill out our “Travel Claims.” Each man is responsible for getting his own reimbursement but none of us knew the rules. Cruz knew everything, from house-to-airport miles to allowable percentages of clothing costs. Once, he took the time to explain to the entire squadron some of the intricacies. It was enormously complex, and we were a tough audience. We’d just returned from war and nobody gave a fuck. I waited until Cruz was finished, then said, “Oh, one more thing, guys, before you all go home to see your kids for the first time in months: You may pass a pay phone on the way home. Stop and check for a quarter. You can keep that shit!!”

  Everyone laughed, Cruz the loudest of all, and we all went home.

  Anyway, on the short flight in the Black Hawk to hit the three adjacent houses outside Fallujah, I was going over the breaching drill in my head to make sure it was flawless. I wasn’t scared, exactly. I’d call my mood serious and concerned. I didn’t want to have any snafus in front of that door. I was listening to chatter over our radios: updates on the target and the status of the people there. Nobody had left. They were quiet, and there were a few sleepers on some of the roofs. That was concerning but not alarming. Given the intense heat, people often sleep on their roofs. Still, they could be snipers, and they could even have a belt-fed machine gun.

  I heard the pilot say “Two minutes” in my earpiece. I hung my legs out the right-side door of the helo and began focusing on what was going on to my left—the direction of travel. I was looking at rooftops and fields, trying to see if we’d spooked anybody yet. Nothing. The pilot kept our altitude at about a hundred feet as we sped forward. “One minute.” This is when the heart starts to pound. There are few things more exciting than landing on the X. Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter.” I didn’t happen to be one of those doomed to never find other forms of excitement, but I can understand exactly what he meant. Even though taking out bad guys is very dangerous, it’s a kick-ass rush. Time to do some serious Navy SEAL shit.<
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  In my first combat experiences I’d been strangely detached, as if I were observing from above. It was like, “Oh, that’s what a bullet sounds like when it misses your head by inches,” or, “Okay, so that’s what a direct hit does to a man’s forehead.” I don’t know why I didn’t feel fear then—there was a time later when I did. But in those early days I found myself craving the moment when bullets would fly at us. Before this Iraq deployment, I’d say that 70 percent of the missions we went on were “dry holes”—offering little resistance and no targets of great significance.

  When gunfights broke out, you knew you’d found the enemy and that the night wasn’t going to be a waste of time. I’ve got a video of some of the fights we were in and when the guns start firing you can literally hear me saying, “Fuck, yeah!” Like, “It’s on, let’s fight.”

  “Thirty seconds.”

  I could see our target now and I traced the route I’d take to the front door of “building 1-1,” the primary target. My gun was up, night vision down, invisible laser on. I was lighting up the front door for myself so that I could take a shot if a head and gun popped out. Nothing. We hit the deck and I sprinted toward the door. I had three of my guys—Cole, Delicious, and Mack—with me for security. Delicious and Mack would stand back and hold the corners while Cole came up with me to “cover the crack”—meaning hold his gun on the part of the door that might pop open while I placed the charge. We got to the door, which was a standard, heavy wooden door with the knob on the left. That meant the hinges were inside on the right. I was going to put the charge on the hinge side. I was attaching seven feet of C-6. It was gonna open. I made sure to stand off to the right side as I placed the charge. I could sense Cole beside and behind me with his gun reassuringly fixed on the crack. If the bad guys had shot through the door in the three seconds it took me to unroll the sticky strip, the bullets might have missed by a few inches. Might have missed. I was maximizing my chances, but it was still no sure thing. As I bolted away, unrolling the shock tube as I went, Cole was right behind me. We ran about twenty-five feet from the door, and I clacked it off. BOOM!

  A charge like this is big and loud, even at a “safe” distance—so loud that a lot of guys suffer from cumulative traumatic brain injury later in life. It’s a load-pushing charge that destroys everything in front of it. This was no exception.

  The guys who’d come in on the other helicopters hadn’t even set off their charges yet, so I guess my system had worked. Now there was a ragged hole where the door had been. We charged into the house. I was the number two man, right behind Delicious. The room opened up into a small living room with another room off to the left and a stairwell to the right. Straight ahead was an open door to a kitchen. Delicious went right, and I went left. I cleared my corner first, and as I swept my weapon back to the right, I saw a body crumpled on the floor beside an AK-47. My eye followed the wide blood trail that led from the body up the wall to a red impact smear near the ceiling. Clearly, the insurgent had been standing at the door about to fire when my seven-foot-long charge beat him to the punch.

  As I looked more closely at the very dead body, a cold shock ran through me. The insurgent was no him. It was a woman. A woman waiting to kill me with an AK-47. She was an enemy combatant, yes, but she was also a woman. I remember thinking, I hope God forgives me.

  I would think of this many times and never feel completely right about it, but I had no time just then to indulge in guilt. Delicious had cleared his room and returned. Together, we moved past the woman’s body and through the door to the kitchen. The kitchen was clear, but there was another door at the far end leading to a bedroom. Since the door opened into the corner of the room, I could “pie” it—stand just outside the door and sweep the room slice by slice. When I was 50 percent through, my invisible laser exposed another insurgent pointing an AK-47 toward the entrance, waiting for us to come in so he could unload his weapon. Behind him were three small children. Unfortunately for him, I could see in the dark, and he couldn’t. Pop! Pop! I was able to take two good head shots, and he went down. I finished my clearance to the best of my ability and then we entered.

  The three children were fine, but frightened, obviously. That was the last room on that floor, and the rest of the team had finished clearing the second story. Now the house was clear, two insurgents had been killed in action, and three children were physically okay. We could hear gunfire at some distance outside. The two other teams were getting it on.

  While my guys searched the house for weapons, explosives, and intelligence, I took the three kids into the kitchen and brought in my interpreter. This was difficult. The kids were standing there staring up at us, and they were the ages of my kids and my buddies’ kids. It really sucks that children are involved in this, and there are always kids in these houses. Always. The children told us that most of the folks nearby were family, but that there were strangers in town. This was their father’s house; that was the man I’d shot in the bedroom. They’d been sleeping in there when the helicopters woke them. Their father had sent his wife, their mother, to the door with an AK-47 to martyr herself and possibly take one of us with her. Now these kids were orphans.

  They didn’t even know at this point that their father was dead—they’d only heard two suppressed shots, which might not have said “gunfire” to an innocent ear. Nor did they know that their mother had been blown up at the front door. But I did. I asked them where their nearest family was. They said their aunt lived in a house across the small field out the back door. I told the kids to grab their shoes. I shouldered my gun so I wouldn’t scare them and walked them about thirty meters to the aunt’s house. Here I was in the middle of a gunfight, and I actually rang the damn doorbell.

  It was probably the single most reckless thing I’d ever done. But it was a very terrible feeling to know that I’d killed these children’s parents—essentially, right in front of them. I wanted to make sure the kids were taken care of and not any more frightened than they already were. They’d had nothing to do with any of this, and after all, we were the good guys. The ability to save the lives of noncombatants was one of the most important skills SEAL Team **** offered. When intel pinpoints a terrorist safe house, the leadership can just order up a guided bomb and blow the place apart. Since, as I’ve said, you can always multiply the number of fighters in a safe house by wives, kids, and cousins, the collateral damage in a strike like that can be something like twenty-plus to one. If you drop a payload on a house, you risk killing twenty innocent people for every one terrorist. By contrast, we were precise enough to hit our target without killing innocent people. That’s why we were given latitude—at least, back then. We’d proven we could do exactly what the command needed.

  I put the kids in front of the door and backed into the shadows. A woman came to the door and spoke for a second before bringing them in. They crossed the threshold, then, and I’ll never forget this, they turned and waved.

  When I got back to the original target, the gunfight was ongoing all around us. My team had found AK-47s, grenades, and some homemade explosives. We were in the heart of al-Qaeda country, and this was proof of who lived here. So was the heavy armed resistance. We walked in patrol order through the compound to the secondary target. The team leader there, Street, met us at the main entrance and gave us the dump on what was happening. They’d cleared the building, killed two of the enemy, and arrested two more, who were currently being interrogated by the Tactical Questioning Team. The remainder of his team was searching all the nooks and crannies where al-Qaeda liked to hide weapons and intelligence.

  As Street was talking, he was interrupted. Bap! Bap! We heard the unmistakable blat of an automatic weapon. Two rooms away from us, part of the search team had uncovered a fighting-age male in a hiding hole in the wall. He was armed and attempted—but failed—to get some shots off when the team moved the false wall he was standing behind. That first “bap” was the last thing this guy ever heard.

  We rolled up
all of the men and left all of the women and children behind. We told the women not to leave their houses until the sun was up. We explained that our aircraft would remain in the area, and we didn’t want them to be mistaken for reinforcements. That could be bad.

  In all, that night we killed seven al-Qaeda fighters and took nine more off the battlefield. It wasn’t even an unusually eventful evening. We were getting in fights every single night, and it got to the point that if we only killed five al-Qaeda, we considered it a slow night.

  We remained in our humble abode in Ramadi for about ten days. As we honed our tactics and technique, we became so good at entering targets silently that we started playing a game we called “counting coup” in honor of Native American warriors of the past.

  To demonstrate their courage and stealth, Native Americans would creep up to their sleeping enemy and touch him, even take items off his person without waking him. So we started doing that, too. We’d sneak up on a house full of bad guys and enter as quietly as we could, forgoing explosives for the silent removal of windows, picking of locks, or whatever other clever ways we could think of that would make minimal noise. When we found a sleeping enemy, we’d stand over him and slowly remove his blanket. Then we’d run a finger lightly down his chest to check for a suicide vest. Some guys slept in them. If the bad guy had a vest on, it was time to shoot before he had a chance to “clack himself off.” If he didn’t have a vest, it was time to wake him up. This was the fun part. I’d put one finger over his lips and quietly whisper, “Shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh.” It was always interesting to see how these “feared enemies of America,” these holy warriors, reacted. Without exception, they turned into complete cowards and cried like schoolchildren who’d just crapped their pants on the playground. And usually, they did crap their pants. But who can blame them? They’d awoken to their worst nightmare. American justice.