Inside SEAL Team Six(94)

On the day of the attack, I was at a U.S. base overseas training a group of Egyptian commandos in M4 marksmanship and weapons drills. Right after we heard the news, the chief of the base directed us to disarm the Egyptians, stay armed ourselves, and not allow the Egyptians to leave their barracks.

The air was suddenly thick with distrust. I understood that the world had changed immediately and that the United States would be engaged in a war against Islamic terrorists that would last for decades.

Since 9/11, I’ve been working to help defend our country in a number of different capacities—training people for BUD/S and teaching military, special-police units, and government agencies how to do VBSS; CQB; fast-roping; diving; shooting; urban, jungle, desert, and arctic warfare; and more.

I’ve deployed to the Middle East many times. In fact, I traveled to Afghanistan soon after the fall of the Taliban in late 2001 to train the security detail of President Hamid Karzai. I was with him in February of 2002 when he teared up after learning that one of his ministers had been assassinated.

When one of the Americans on my team in Afghanistan got sick late one Christmas night, I drove to a clinic to get some medicine for him. On my way I was stopped at an intersection that was blocked by a large tractor-trailer.

A British MP came up to my window and said, “Yo, mate, you might want to go the other way. This truck is filled with explosives and could blow up half the city.”

The day after the incident with the tractor-trailer, I learned that one of our vehicles had gotten stuck in a mud-filled ditch just outside the city. I threw some chains in the back of my armored vehicle and drove to the site as fast as I could.

When you’re trapped like that in a hostile environment, you have two choices: call for help and sit in your vehicle until help arrives, or have someone hold security while someone else tries to get the vehicle out of the ditch.

You try not to escalate the situation. Which means that you don’t point your weapon at a crowd, instigating trouble. Instead, you constantly scan the area using all of your senses, looking in people’s eyes and at their hands.

Hands hold things that can kill you. If you see someone raise a weapon, you have no choice but to eliminate the threat.

As I drove up to the scene, I saw about twenty Afghan men, women, and children closing in around the vehicle. Some of the men were armed. Practically everyone in Afghanistan seems to own an AK-47. They cost about fourteen dollars on the street, less than a pair of Nike sneakers.

I made my way through the crowd and saw that the American holding security was standing with his M4 pointed toward the ground and his mouth frozen open with fear. His partner, meanwhile, was trying to hook a line to the back of their stuck vehicle, without security.

Stepping into the middle of the circle, I motioned to the Afghans who had gathered to back away. I spoke in a firm voice because I didn’t want to make them angry. They started to retreat, which gave us room to hook a cable to the vehicle, and we towed it out of there without incident.

Another time, a successful Afghan construction contractor I was working with was kidnapped and held for ransom. One night he’d entered his driveway, and a black SUV had pulled in right behind him; four armed men wearing balaclavas and CT gear got out. They hog-tied the contractor and drove him through several Afghan military checkpoints without being stopped, which is usually unheard-of.

He was taken to a house and up flights of stairs, where the kidnappers instructed him to call his family on his cell phone. They were demanding three hundred thousand dollars. His family managed to raise two hundred thousand dollars in a week. The kidnappers accepted the lesser amount and released him. I treated his injuries, which included a dislocated shoulder and some minor lacerations.

After the contractor was released, he told me that he was sure that officials from the Karzai government and local banks had been part of the kidnapping ring. It explained, he said, why his kidnappers were able to pass through government roadblocks without a problem and how they knew that he had a lot of money in the bank.

Things weren’t any less complicated in Iraq, where I’ve also spent a good deal ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​​ ST-6 ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​