Inside SEAL Team Six

Chapter One





Somalia, 1985




The only easy day was yesterday.

—SEAL motto





You having fun, Doc?” Lieutenant Haig asked. He called me Doc because I was trained as a Navy corpsman (the Army referred to us as medics), and he and the other two SEALs on our team trusted me to patch them up should the need arise. Lieutenant Haig (we called him LT) was a Lebanese American, about five ten, 185 pounds. Sported a sinister smile and was a student of military history. He was also as gung ho as they come.

“Hoo-ya,” I answered, which is SEAL-talk for, roughly translated, “Hell, yes.”

I was in my midtwenties and this was my first real-world SEAL mission—a top secret, highly dangerous reconnaissance-and-demolition op; ten years before, I hadn’t even heard of the SEALs. Four of us were sitting in a six-by-six-foot foxhole covered with desert-​camouflage netting on a beach in an undisclosed part of Somalia, up to our necks in water fouled with excrement and puke. Ours. But despite the less than ideal conditions, I was loving it. I said to myself, This is incredible. It’s what SEAL team is all about!

Two nights earlier we’d executed a jump out of a C-130 off the coast. First out, our rubber boat—a Zodiac CRRC (combat rubber raiding craft), which we called a rubber ducky. It was followed by our gear—scuba equipment, motor, gas can, paddles, water, shovels, MREs (meals ready to eat), commo supplies, rucksacks, demolitions. Then the four of us with our weapons, belts, and packs.

It was pitch-black when we hit the water. Then the C-130 tore off into the night sky, leaving us to our mission with no support whatsoever, which was almost unheard-of. Under normal circumstances, we would have been given backup and a medevac plan.

But this was a special mission. One of the most dangerous and important ops SEAL teams had gone on since Vietnam. So critical, in fact, that the SEAL commandant had personally selected us from all the SEALs stationed on the West Coast.

When our Zodiac CRRC motored to within a thousand meters of the shore, me and my SEAL buddy Bobby O.—a little Irish guy whose specialties were comms and picking up chicks—donned our black skin suits, which covered us from head to foot, slipped on our fins, slid in the water, and swam to the beach. It was a little finger of land with a harbor area and airport to the west and a big landmass beyond a tributary to the east.

SEALs aren’t choirboys. A couple of months earlier, I was trying to get Bobby out of a hotel room in the Philippines. He spoke to me through the closed door, saying, “Don, I’ve reached the lowest point of my life.” When he finally let me in, I saw a naked Filipino woman sitting on the foot of the bed smiling; she was cross-eyed and wore thick glasses and was hugely overweight and covered with freckles.

But despite Bobby O.’s tastes in women, I trusted him with my life.

As I sidestroked through the ocean, I kept checking the water behind and to the sides of him, and he watched the water around me. We’d been warned during the pre-mission intel briefing that these waters were infested with sharks. Seems like the Somali operated a camel-meat processing plant nearby that dumped the camel innards in the ocean, thus attracting hundreds of sharks.

Thankfully, Bobby and I made it to the shore in one piece and the four of us quickly dug two holes, one to bury our equipment in and one to live in, both of which we covered with camo netting.

And that’s where we were two days later, me, Bobby O., the LT, and Drake—a tall, lanky guy and weapons expert—■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ It would’ve been easy work if it weren’t for the extreme heat and violent windstorms that filled our mouths and ears with sand. Especially when we were trying to sleep, which we had to do sitting up.

“You still having fun, Doc?” the lieutenant asked.

“Hoo-ya.”

Added to the sandstorms were two other challenges. One, our hole had filled up with salt water during high tide. And two, all of us were suffering from serious cases of food poisoning.