Inside SEAL Team Six(85)

We went out and bought him a case of beer, then returned later and took the parachutes off the table.

Reed and I didn’t have jump boots, suits, helmets, or altimeters. Nor did we have time to repack the chutes.

We found our way to the large, open desert field where the Albuquerque balloon festival was taking place. Some balloons were already going up, and others were filling with heated air.

The basket could only accommodate two people at a time, so I climbed in first with the old hippie. He turned a valve, releasing propane from the tank, which caused the flame under the balloon to grow larger and fill the balloon with hot (lighter) air. The balloon started to rise gently from the ground.

Looking out from the basket, I was treated to an amazing sight—hundreds of different-colored balloons decorated the sky that changed hue by the second as the sun crept over the horizon.

I was taking it all in when the old hippie said, “Okay, dude. You can jump anytime.”

I had made more than five hundred jumps, and every time I’d jumped, I’d had a jumpmaster with me who gave me a pre-jump inspection and spotted the jump.

This time I was on my own. I had no idea how high we were and how much time I had before I could deploy my chute.

I stood on the edge of the basket and watched different balloons sail by. When I saw a clear space around and under us, I pushed off.

It felt like a base jump, which meant that I was falling right away. When you jump from a plane that’s moving at 120 knots, you’re initially moving at 120 knots too.

But this was more like a bungee jump. I felt an initial rush, waited for the air that I was pushing through to get louder, then pulled. The chute opened, and I had only a few seconds of floating under the canopy before I landed.

Now it was Reed’s turn. The balloonist landed and Reed went up and jumped.

After that it was propane and champagne, which is the motto of ballooners.

Teams and shit. What a thrill!





Chapter Fifteen





Retirement from ST-6




Whatever you do, you must pay the price.

—Angelika Castaneda,

world-class triathlete





One of the toughest people I’ve met in my life wasn’t a SEAL; she was an Austrian named Angelika Castaneda. She and her identical twin sister, Barbara Warren (who died in 2008 after a bicycle crash in a triathlon), were world-class adventure racers, triathletes, and ultra-distance runners. Both were tall, blond, and beautiful, and had previously been high-fashion models. Angelika used to work as Farrah Fawcett’s stunt double.

I recruited her to be part of my five-person team for the 1997 Raid Gauloises in Lesotho, South Africa. Even though I was still the advanced-training officer and WMD officer for ST-6, I had a ravenous appetite for new challenges and excitement.

In addition to Angelika, I recruited my buddy Lieutenant John Kainer, who had been stationed with me in Panama and was a member of SEAL Teams Two and Six. In late ’96, the two of us traveled to the Gauley River near Summersville, West Virginia, to test the two remaining candidates for Team Odyssey—Special Forces Major Alan Holmes, an accomplished triathlete, and Nick Spaeder, a great athlete and platoon chief at ST-2.

In three days, the four of us paddled seventy-five miles and ran ninety miles with backpacks and boots.

We flew to Johannesburg in January, and I remember sitting with Angelika and a reporter at a restaurant a few days before the start of the Raid. I’d watched Angelika bonk badly during another competition—crawling on her hands and knees, defecating, and passing out—and I wanted to make sure that she ate enough before the race.

When I expressed my concern, she answered in her charming Austrian accent, “Don, I will not die on you. I might feel like I’m going to die, but I will not die. My body will eat from itself.”

She was hard core.

We always used superglue to repair cuts, bruises, and blisters. It sealed the skin and helped prevent infection. But toenails were always a problem in long races. Sometimes they’d turn brown and black, and you had to peel them off. Other times, they’d fall off altogether.

As I was pulling out my seventh toenail of the race, Angelika reprimanded me. “Don,” she said, “if you’re serious about these races, you’ll have your toenails removed before the race. Have them pulled out and have them sew the skin together so they don’t grow back.”

Of course, she’d already had hers removed.

We started the Raid in South Africa at the foothills of the magnificent Champagne Castle Peak, and then we trekked, rappelled, paddled, biked, and portaged our boats more than five hundred miles over some of the most unforgiving terrain on earth.

Unlike marathons and triathlons, adventure racing isn’t about athletic performance alone. You have to plot and navigate the entire course, deal with team dynamics—which include the pain and emotional lows and highs—sickness, bonking, anger, sleep deprivation, and hallucinations. In addition, you face the challenges of Mother Nature—fog, rain, snow, lightning, strong winds, and brutally high heat and freezing temperatures.