Inside SEAL Team Six(2)

■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ They reciprocated by showing us how to eat poisonous snakes: by snapping their heads against our boots, peeling the skin back with our teeth, pulling out the venom sacs, and eating the meat. Now we were all horribly sick. Running fevers, puking our guts out, and suffering from real ugly diarrhea.

In between frequent bouts of relieving ourselves in our foxhole, we cursed the Egyptians. Soon after we left Cairo, they were sent on a mission to take down a hijacked Boeing 737 Egypt Air jet. ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ on the plane and set it on fire. Fifty-eight passengers died, along with two of the six crew members and two of the three Abu Nidal terrorists. The third, Omar Rezaq, was captured and sent to prison. Until September 11, 2001, it was the deadliest airplane hijacking in history.

The Egyptians considered the mission a success. We, however, were deeply embarrassed and knew we’d get ribbed endlessly about it when we returned to the States. Something like Nice job, guys. Next time we need to ■​■​■​■​■​ foreigners to fry airline passengers, we know who to send.

Back in the hole on the beach, my teammates were losing patience. Even our lieutenant started to bitch, saying, “I should have trained to become a helicopter pilot. This sucks.”

Drake, a total action junkie, said, “I should have stayed living in the desert, racing cars and motorcycles.”

Aside from the occasional gripes, we didn’t talk much. Instead, we listened to our surroundings and were occupied with our own inner musings about life and the possible dangers that waited around the corner, musings that were intermittently interrupted by the sound of one of us snoring or throwing up. Thick green bile mostly, since we didn’t have anything in our stomachs.

LT turned to me and flashed his isn’t-life-a-pile-of-shit smile. “You still having fun, Doc?”

“I’m fine, LT. What about you?”

Sitting in a foxhole with sand whipping our faces and shitty water up to our necks didn’t seem to be such a hardship, considering the excitement of the op. I mean, no one other than a handful of people back in Coronado, California, even knew we were there. We were completely on our own in enemy territory with limited ammo, on a ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​

It didn’t get more thrilling than this.

Day three, I was on watch with my ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​—when, through my goggles, I spotted a local man approaching. Through the rising heat and swirling sand, he looked like a figure out of the movie Lawrence of Arabia.