The warrior code, p.16
The Warrior Code, page 16
part #2 of Seal Strike Series
The lieutenant understood what he had to do. “Well, let’s go ahead and stand the men down for an hour. I’ll make the call and wait for the shit to hit the fan. You and I should stand by to fly back to the coast or at least participate in a conference call. Do we have the secure line hooked up?”
The chief was relieved. “Yes, sir, the secure line is hooked up in the operations office and ready to use when we need to make the call.”
“Good deal, chief.” Jared said, beginning to regain some of his confidence. “I think the logic is sound, and we’ve had enough rehearsals to confirm what you are saying is true. I would put this platoon up against anybody when it came to breaking down doors and popping somebody in the forehead with two rounds, but this is different. I’ll go ahead and make the call. You do what you have to do here, chief.”
Sampson gave the officer a thumbs-up and marched away, with his face set in grim determination. He was under no illusion that his observation would be applauded by the higher-ups. The LT might be a good leader, but that meant nothing to the pukes who had left the real work of the teams two or three promotions ago.
Many of the officers in the staff in the senior command levels felt politics and saving face were more important than putting the right people in the target. His LT would be in trouble, no two ways about it.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Jared walked to the building where the secure phone was located. He spotted a few of his men sitting around and casually getting hydrated. He tried to hide his concern about the mission, but the SEALs could see by the look on his face that something was wrong.
Most of the men probably believed the LT was frustrated by the botched rehearsal cycle. They would be very upset if they knew the truth, that their leader was about to request they abort the use of their platoon for a real-world combat operation. In other words, quit.
Jared sat on the dusty chair and dialed the number to the operations officer of Naval Special Warfare Group One. After three rings, the phone was answered. “Special Warfare Group One quarter deck, Petty Officer Hopewell speaking. May I help you?”
“Petty Officer Hopewell, this is the platoon commander of FOXTROT Platoon. I need to talk to the operations officer if he’s in.”
“Sir, the operations officer went home for the day. Can I take a message?”
“That’s a negative,” Stone said quickly. “Call his cell; tell him I ordered you to have him contact me. Make sure you convey that it’s a very serious problem. If you can’t get hold of him that way, send him an email on the secure intranet. He needs to call me on a secure line.”
“Yes, sir!” the quarterdeck watch answered dutifully. “Will do!”
The lieutenant placed the handset back in its cradle and leaned back in the chair, sliding down a little bit further to get more comfortable. This is really going to stink up the place, Jared mused. The big boys are going to do everything from accusing us of being cowards to saying that we are trying to dodge a trip so we can stay home with our families.
The SEAL lieutenant knew for a fact that the senior staff types wouldn’t see the crystal-clear logic of the chief’s assessment. Somehow, Jared pondered, he had to come up with a strong enough argument to get his platoon off the hook for this mission.
Naval Special Warfare Group One–Coronado, California
Commander Jack Weasley was a former enlisted SEAL with ten years as a crazy frogman before attending officer candidate school and going over to what the enlisted SEALs referred to as the “dark side.” He’d been having a quiet moment with his wife Ann in Balboa Park, just strolling and taking in the beauty of the place.
They’d gone there eighteen years ago on their first date, a safe public place for Ann, who’d never dated a military man before. He had his smart phone’s ringer turned off, but he checked his emails and texts from time to time.
The email was cryptic, but provided sufficient information that he had to reluctantly put his wife in a taxi. He drove the twenty minutes over the Coronado Bay bridge through Coronado Island and onto the seaward side of the naval amphibious base to his headquarters.
Jack walked into his spacious office, unintentionally slamming the door behind him. The duty officer had greeted him at the door to the secure headquarters, a collection of officers and enlisted men responsible for managing and supporting all the SEAL teams on the West Coast.
As the operations officer, he’d been read into the SPECAT traffic and knew more than FOXTROT Platoon did about their end objective and location. He assumed the lieutenant was getting antsy and wanted more information, details they could work with. He didn’t blame them if this was the reason for the call.
He walked down the hall to the crew’s lounge, poured himself a cup of over-warmed coffee and then moved purposefully to the secure communications room. He was still angry at the disruption and knew he had to make it up to Ann somehow.
She’d been a trooper throughout their entire marriage. Long deployments, three tours of combat in Afghanistan, and much more. He punched the code into the cipher lock and opened the door. Jared Stone was on his shit list.
San Clemente Island – California
Jared sat next to the secure phone, falling in and out of a lazy cat nap. Each time he heard a sound, his head snapped up and he felt an electric shock course through his body. He was overtired, BUD/S student kind of tired.
This call might be a symptom of his fatigue and not his good judgment. SEALs hated quitters, and he was about to tell the chain of command that he and his platoon were dropping out. The ring of the phone startled him, and he fumbled with the handset.
“Jared Stone.”
“This had better be good, lieutenant!” The commander’s voice conveyed anger, and the message was received loud and clear by the leader of FOXTROT Platoon.
“Sir, this is about Operation Dagger.”
“No shit! Now get to the reason for this call!”
Jared swallowed hard. They’d been out at the island working so hard he’d lost track of the days. He just realized it was three in the afternoon on a Sunday. “Sir, we are CASREP’d for this mission.”
Commander Weasley wasn’t sure he’s heard right. A CASREP is a navy casualty report, usually reserved for reporting mechanical failures on a ship. SEAL platoons didn’t fail in this manner. “What the fuck are you talking about? Are you shitfaced?”
Jared covered the phone and took a deep breath. He just needed to get it all out, no wind up. “Sir, FOXTROT Platoon is not proficient enough to execute at a C1 combat-ready status in the jungle. We are, and have been, an urban and underway hostage rescue unit for over eighteen months. I said CASREP because that’s the closet readiness concept that makes sense. You need to tell WARCOM you need another platoon that’s ready to fight and win in that environment.”
Naval Special Warfare Command – Coronado, California
Admiral Fitzpatrick arrived wearing golf attire. He sat down behind his large walnut desk and punched the speed dial button on his telephone. The automated system dutifully dialed up the desk phone of the Naval Special Warfare Group One Commodore, located a half a mile away on the San Diego Bay side of the Coronado Strand. The Commodore, Robert Morris, picked up immediately.
“Admiral, I’m ready to go secure on my end.” Bob Morris’s voice was calm. He’d been in a lot of tough scrapes in his twenty-five-year career. Getting yelled at by Admiral Fitzpatrick wasn’t even close to the worst he’d lived through.
The admiral found the right button on his phone. “Roger, I’ll initiate.”
Commodore Morris had received a call an hour before from his operations officer, Commander Weasley. His staff officer had conveyed the need for his presence at headquarters without breaching communications security, and then filled him in on the situation when they were face-to-face in the commodore’s office.
The commodore heard the tone signifying they were on a secure communications line. “What the hell’s going on, Bob?” the admiral said through clenched teeth. “I’ve only been told Foxtrot Platoon wants to abort. How the hell can they abort before they even begin the fucking mission?”
“Well, admiral, the commodore began, “The platoon commander of FOXTROT Platoon has requested that we relieve his platoon of their assignment.” The commodore took a deep breath.
“What?” Admiral Fitzpatrick jumped to his feet. “You dragged me in here because some lieutenant is getting cold feet? What the hell’s going on here? Where did we get this guy?”
The commodore took a deep breath, then began to explain the platoon commander’s logic. “Admiral, I happen to believe he’s right. Lieutenant Stone’s concern and that of his platoon chief is based in fact. Their specialized hostage rescue platoon is ill-suited for an engagement in the jungle, especially on such short notice. They are highly-trained and combat ready for the job they’ve trained to, primarily in urban environments and ship boarding operations.”
The admiral’s voice rose from a steady tone until he was shouting. “Maybe I’m delirious, Bob, but if I recollect correctly, THIS IS A FUCKING HOSTAGE RESCUE MISSION!”
Commodore Morris was used to dealing with the admiral. He’d worked under the officer in a coalition special operations task force in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in 2010. He always had been an emotional man, a screamer. Bob knew he had to wait out the storm before he’d be able to get his point across. They were wasting time.
“Admiral, they’re having great difficulty making up the deficit in jungle training in the time allotted them. They’re also training on San Clemente Island. That’s damn near desert terrain, a far cry from the jungles of Colombia.”
The admiral was having a hard time controlling his temper. “Bob, they’re SEALs, damn it! I was against this specialization bullshit from the very start! Now all my troops are drill bits. They only fit a precise requirement. What good is it expanding the force if you’re still running short on C1 ready combat units?”
The admiral was right. Overspecialization had created teams and platoons designed for a specific task and environment. It looked great on paper; Bob Morris had been one of the advocates for the change. But it hadn’t stood the test of time. Now the community’s leaders were arguing that it was time to get back to its roots. The core value of special operations is flexibility and adaptability. Assess, plan, and execute. He grudgingly had to agree.
The admiral’s voice became calm. “What am I supposed to do now? Send an East Coast platoon from SEAL Team Four?”
The commodore knew the real problem here was East Coast–West Coast politics. The old man was supposed to be in command of both, but it was clear he was trying to throw a bone to the West Coast because his roots were in Coronado.
Bob wasn’t a stickler for boundaries. Maybe it would’ve made sense if they’d tapped a seasoned West Coast platoon for this job. There were several working in the Philippines that were ready and available to support Dagger, but these units were still engaged against Abu Sayyaf and committed to Pacific Special Operations Command or PACSOC for several more months of counterterrorist operations.
“Admiral, these men haven’t touched an M-240B machine gun or conducted open-field fire and movement in almost two years, and they don’t have much time left. They could receive the green light to launch the rescue at any moment. Sir, the bottom line is simple. If they don’t feel they’re ready, my recommendation is we reassign the mission to the East . . .”
The admiral cut his commodore off in mid-sentence. “Bob, I don’t care what you think, and I don’t care what that lieutenant thinks. This is a West Coast show. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is going to tell me who goes on a mission and who doesn’t. I don’t buy this crap about SEALs not knowing how to patrol and not knowing how to do fire and movement; and if I remember right, this specialization shit was your idea!”
Chapter Thirty
The commodore knew the admiral had him pinned to the mat. He’d been an advocate for creating super platoons capable of transcending all previous high-water marks in every mission category.
The old standard of SEAL platoons being “jacks of all trades and masters of none” was inhibiting the pursuit of operational excellence; and the better SEALs performed around the world, the more Washington demanded of them. In the new special operations era, the national command authority wanted elegant precision. Cadillacs not Chevys.
The commodore tried one more time to convince the admiral to change his mind. “Admiral, this is a request from the platoon chief and platoon commander. If we force them to do this mission against their recommendations, we run the risk of a disaster. One we could’ve prevented. It’s my opinion that a SEAL Team Four jungle warfare platoon would be better suited for this operation.”
He paused for effect. “Consider for a moment that the target is not a sophisticated hostage scenario in a built-up urban area. It’s nothing more than a bunch of huts, lean-tos, and makeshift buildings. There’s no need for a precision hostage rescue team.” The commodore stopped talking.
The admiral barely waited for the commodore to finish. “Bob, you will order that lieutenant to continue preparations for mission execution. You will tell them it’s his responsibility to get those men ready for combat. You tell him that and when you are done telling him I want you to schedule a meeting. Next Tuesday, just you and I. We have some serious issues to discuss regarding the readiness of your SEAL teams. Do you understand me?”
The commodore realized he had lost. “Yes, admiral, I’ll pass on your answer and your orders.”
“That right, Bob, my orders. Not suggestions!” With that, the admiral slammed the phone down.
Staging hangar – Panama
Matt fiddled around with his equipment for what seemed like the fourth or fifth time in the last hour. He knew all his gear was finally good to go, but it helped ease his mind. Nearby Oby and Boone were putting the finishing touches on their gear.
In the few minutes left to them before mission launch, they’d mulled over every detail of the operation. They worked the phases, running down individual mental checklists to detect anything that might be amiss. It was overkill and they knew it, but the only thing that would stop the process was mission launch.
Lately, Matt spent a lot of time thinking about his father. It felt like a million years since he’d been burdened with the emotional baggage of his old man. His father’s hero status as a holder of the Medal of Honor had cast a shadow over Matt for all of his childhood and into his mid-twenties. It rarely came up in the teams, but that didn’t matter; it was still in Matt’s head.
He realized he’d thought about his dad and the big blue less and less after the operation in Egypt. His combat experience removed his low self-esteem regarding his dad; and in a strange way, being a leader brought him closer to his dead father. Matt still felt the man’s presence during times of stress and that was probably why he was thinking about him right now.
For the past two years, Matt had sat on his ass at the training center in San Diego, fooling himself into thinking he might have a chance for a normal life. His mental focus had shifted off the warrior mind-set expected of a SEAL, and instead he’d focused all his energy on trying to establish a lasting relationship with Tina.
Team guys never spoke about getting out, unlike all the cliché war movies; members of elite units operated like professional athletes. Honing their skills, expanding their knowledge, and getting ready for the next event. Matt wasn’t sure if he was going to stay in the teams for the long haul or quit and give civilian life a shot.
The other thing that nagged him when he was getting all introspective was Tina. She was gorgeous, smart, and when not complaining about his work schedule, funny. Yet in his gut, he knew she wasn’t the one. She wasn’t Sherry.
The more time passed, the more he realized he’d been in love with the Virginia Beach beauty. Sherry was scared away by the combat risks and the severity of Matt’s wounds.
After the fight in Alexandria, Egypt, she had ended the relationship. Maybe he was ready for her level of commitment, that is if she wasn’t already married with three kids back in Virginia Beach. Almost five years had passed. Maybe . . .
“Hey, boss, you okay? You’re standing there staring off into space like you’re in a trance or something.” Boone’s voice held a slight tinge of real concern.
Matt took a breath. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just running through the op in my head. I can’t find any issues. You?”
Boone shook his head. “I just asked Oby and he’s solid, too. I think we need to get out of this metal box and into the field. It’ll all shake out once we’re locked and loaded.”
Oby walked over and waved his hand. “Come on, ladies, chow is ready, and we don’t want to go into harm’s way on an empty stomach, do we?”
Matt and Boone laughed. Oby loved two things in this world: guns and food. “You join Oby, Boone. I have one or two more things to check here, then I’ll join you. Make sure Oby doesn’t eat my share.”
“Roger that, boss!” Boone jogged to catch up with his swim buddy.
Matt wondered if Oby or Boone ever thought of leaving the teams. Most enlisted guys expected Templar-like devotion to the brotherhood and would see a crack in a man’s commitment as a serious sign of weakness and potentially a liability. In the teams, you were all in or you were not in at all.
Most enlisted men tended to stay in the teams a full twenty years or more if physically able to operate at a high level. Officers, on the other hand, would eventually rise up the ranks, leaving danger behind and fighting new battles in the staff environment. A good percentage left the teams and the navy, jealous of their enlisted brothers.
