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For Tara, and for my mother
BEFORE THE DOORS EVEN OPENED THAT MORNING, there was a line wrapped more than halfway around Cowboys Stadium, hundreds of people standing patiently, quietly, in the cold, damp air. The monolithic arena, the home of “America’s Team,” was the only place around that could accommodate the thousands of people who wanted to be there.
Plenty attending knew the man being memorialized that day, but most didn’t. Some had read his book or seen him on television. Some had only heard of him after his death. They’d seen news reports for days, on what seemed like every channel, and had e-mailed friends and relatives they thought may not have heard yet. Families traveled from three states away. Men missed work and took their boys out of school because they thought it was important. To honor a man, to send him off the right way, to commune with fellow grievers, friends, and strangers, they came out that Monday, February 11, 2013.
The doors wouldn’t open until 11:00 a.m., but some people showed up at 8:00, undeterred by the long wait. The morning was gray, thick with a fog, and it matched the somber mood in the air. When the attendants at the giant glass stadium gateways did finally open them, the crowd streamed in smoothly, silently, for hours. There was the sound of boots shuffling across the floors, of clothing rustling as people made their way in, but there were almost no words from anyone, even the stadium employees operating the metal-detecting wands. And while almost nobody spoke, nearly everyone felt some kinship, some sense of unity despite the tragedy that had brought them there that day.
There were businessmen and bikers standing next to each other. There were college kids, young men in jeans and hunting boots, young women with their hair pinned back—all stern, stoic. There were straight-faced grandmothers who might not have otherwise left the house that day, and widows who came because their loved ones couldn’t.
Most people wore black. Many wore dress uniforms. Entire teams of Navy SEALs were there, as were other special-operations fighters from multiple generations. There were police officers and sheriff’s deputies and Texas Rangers. Veterans of World War II, some in wheelchairs, nodded to each other quietly as they made their way into the stadium. Some men had served in Korea, some in Vietnam, some in the first Gulf War. There were many servicemen who had never served during a war and many civilians who had never served at all, but they all felt compelled to come.
The mass of people wanted to be there for him, for this American hero, because he had been there for them. He had always given everything for his family, for his friends, for his SEAL teammates. He’d been there for strangers who needed help, for countrymen who needed protection. The people who had never met him needed to show him how much he meant to them, too. They needed to make a statement, to honor something bigger than themselves. They came out because they agreed with what he stood for, what he lived for, and both what he was—a loyal family man, a fearsome combatant, an outspoken patriot—and what he symbolized: an American with American ideals.
These past few years have been rough for so many people. Nobody can remember a time when there has been such uncertainty in this country, such serious doubts about the future of the United States of America. So much of our collective recent past has been defined by gridlock, disagreement, disingenuousness—fears of all kinds. There have been drastic social changes, fundamental policy shifts, economic struggles, and that sustained, residual dread of terrorism. Even sports—what used to be an escape from the seriousness of life for so many people—has been filled with stories about cheaters and scandals and fallen demigods who once seemed pristine and sacred. Now no sports page would be complete without the words testosterone or concussion and a quote from a press conference somewhere in there.
So many Americans have been searching, grasping for someone, something to believe in. People have needed a hero. People have needed an icon, someone larger than life, like the heroes in history books and in movies. They have needed someone strong but humble, someone modest. Someone courageous, self-sacrificing, willing to go and do what the rest of us can’t or won’t. Someone smart, someone spiritual. Someone fighting for good, fighting against evil, fighting for freedom and for something bigger.
The people who came out that day were there because they’d found a hero fitting that description. He was American to the core, a highly trained warrior brought up to love God and country—the kind of man about whom hagiographies are written. He was a Texan, a cowboy. He was hope, assurance, the face of security, the epitome of fidelity. He was the proof that real-life superheroes walk among us, that some men are more than mere mortals. He was the broad chest and the cold eyes. Even before he died, he was already as close as anyone in modern times has come to being a living, breathing mythological figure.
He was already a legend.
THERE’S A STORY ABOUT CHRIS KYLE: On a cold January morning in 2010, he pulled into a gas station somewhere along Route 67, south of Dallas. He was driving his supercharged black Ford F-350 outfitted with black rims and oversize knobby mudding tires. Kyle had replaced the Ford logo on the grille with a small chrome skull, similar to the Punisher emblem from the Marvel Comics series, and added a riot-ready aftermarket grille guard bearing the words ROAD ARMOR. He had just left the Navy and moved back to Texas, and he was simply putting some gas in his truck.
Two guys approached him with pistols and demanded his money and his keys. With his hands in the air, he sized up which man seemed most confident with his gun.
Kyle knew what confidence with a gun looked like. He was the deadliest sniper in American history. He had at least 160 confirmed kills by the Pentagon’s count, but by his own count—and the estimates of his Navy SEAL teammates—the number was closer to twice that. In his four tours of duty in Iraq, Kyle earned two Silver Stars and five Bronze Stars with Valor. He survived six improvised explosive device (IED) attacks, three gunshot wounds, two helicopter crashes, and more surgeries than he could remember. He was known among his SEAL brethren as The Legend and to his enemies as al-shaitan, “the devil.”
He told the robbers that he just needed to grab the keys from the truck. He turned around and reached under his winter coat instead, into his waistband. With his right hand, he grabbed his Colt 1911. He fired two shots under his left armpit, hitting the first man twice in the chest. Then he turned slightly and fired two more times, hitting the second man twice in the chest. Both men fell dead.
Kyle leaned on his truck and waited for the police.
When they arrived, they detained him while running his driver’s license. But instead of his name, address, and date of birth, what came up was a phone number at the Department of Defense. The officers called, and at the other end of the line was someone who explained that they were in the presence of one of the most skilled fighters in U.S. military history. When they reviewed the surveillance footage, the officers found the incident had happened just as Kyle had described it. They were very understanding, and they didn’t want to drag a recently home, highly decorated veteran into a messy legal situation.
Kyle w
asn’t unnerved or bothered. Quite the opposite. He’d been feeling depressed since he left the service, struggling to adjust to civilian life. This was an exciting reminder of the action he missed.
That night, talking on the phone to his wife, Taya—who was in the process of moving with their kids from California—he was a good husband. He asked how her day was. The way some people tell it, he got caught up in their conversation and only right before they hung up did he remember his big news of the day: “Oh yeah, I shot two guys trying to steal my truck today.”
A brief description of the incident appeared in fellow SEAL Marcus Luttrell’s 2012 book, Service: A Navy SEAL at War—but not in Kyle’s own bestseller, American Sniper—and there are mentions of it in various forums deep in the corners of the internet. Before Kyle’s murder at the hands of a fellow veteran in February, I asked him about that story during an interview in his office last year. It was part of what was supposed to be an extended, in-depth magazine story about his service and how hard he had worked to adjust back to this world—to become the great husband and father and Christian he’d always wanted to be.
He didn’t want to get into the specifics about the gas station shooting, but after sitting across a table from him talking about it generally, I left that day believing it had happened.
THE DALLAS OFFICES OF CRAFT INTERNATIONAL, the defense contractor where Chris Kyle was president until his death, were immaculate when I visited him. You needed one of the broad-chested security guards from downstairs as an escort just to get to that floor of the building. Sitting under thick glass in the lobby, there was an exceptionally rare original English translation of Galileo’s Dialogue (circa 1661) about the sun, the earth, and which revolved around the other. A conference room held a safe full of gigantic guns—guns illegal to own without a Department of Defense contract.
At thirty-eight, Kyle was a large man, six foot two, 230 pounds, and the muscles in his neck, shoulders, and forearms made him seem even bigger, like a scruffy-bearded giant. When he greeted me with a direct look in the eye and a firm handshake, his huge bear paw enveloped my hand. That day he had on boots, jeans, a black T-shirt, and a baseball cap. It’s the same thing he wore most days he came to the office, or when he watched his daughter’s ballet recitals, or during television interviews with Conan O’Brien or Bill O’Reilly.
This was one of the rare chances when he’d have a few hours to talk. Over the next three days, he would be teaching a sniper course to the Dallas SWAT teams and had three book signings, one at a hospital in Tyler (for a terminal cancer patient whose doctor reached out to Kyle), one at Ray’s Sporting Goods in Dallas, and one at the VA Hospital in Fort Worth. He’d also have to fly down to Austin for a shooting event Craft was putting on for Speaker of the House John Boehner and several other congressmen.
“We are not doing this for free,” he said, anticipating a question. “We accept Republicans and Democrats alike, as long as the money is good.”
A few weeks later, he would have to cancel a weekend meeting with me because he was invited to hang out with George W. Bush. “Sorry,” he said when asked if anyone else might be able to join. “Not even my wife’s allowed to come.”
Chris Kyle loved the Dallas Cowboys and the University of Texas Longhorns. He loved going to the Alamo, looking at historic artifacts. The license plate on his truck had a picture of the flag used during the Texas Revolution, depicting a cannon, a star, and the words COME AND TAKE IT. Being in the military forced him to move a lot, and neither of his children was born in Texas. But for each birth, he had his family send a box of dirt from home—so that the first ground his child’s foot touched would be Texas soil.
He would often apologize to Vietnam veterans or their children for the way servicemen were treated when they first came back from war, even though he hadn’t even been born at the time.
He was outspoken on a lot of issues. He believed strongly in the Second Amendment, politely decrying the “incredible stupidity” of gun control laws anytime he was asked. He said he was hesitant to see the movie Zero Dark Thirty because he’d heard that it was a lot of propaganda for the Obama administration. On the night of the 2012 presidential election, he posted to his tens of thousands of Facebook fans: “Wow. I didn’t know there would be so many stupid people in this country. Oh well, better buckle up. It’s going to be a bumpy ride to socialism.”
When Bob Costas discussed gun control during a football game, Kyle took to Facebook to contradict him. “FOOL!” he wrote. “If you are gonna hold the gun responsible for killing a person, then you need to hold the spoon responsible for making Rosie O’Donnell fat!”
Around the same time, he posted this: “If you don’t like what I have to say or post, you forget one thing, I don’t give a shit what you think. LOL.”
He didn’t worry about sounding politically incorrect. The Craft International company slogan, emblazoned around the Punisher skull on the logo, reads, “Despite what your momma told you, violence does solve problems.”
His views were nuanced, though. “If you hate the war, that’s fine,” he told me. “But you should still support the troops. They don’t get to pick where they’re deployed. They just gave the American people a blank check for anything up to and including the value of their lives, and the least everyone else can do is be thankful. Buy them dinner. Mow their yard. Bake them cookies.”
“The best way to describe Chris,” his wife, Taya, says, “is ‘extremely multifaceted.’ ”
He was a brutal warrior but a gentle father and husband. He was a patient instructor, and he was a persistent, sophomoric jokester. If he had access to your Facebook account, he might announce to all your friends and family that you’re gay and finally coming out of the closet. If he really wanted to make you squirm, he might get hold of your phone and scroll through your photos threatening to see if you kept naked pictures of your girlfriend. And if you took any of it too seriously, you might face the risk of getting lovingly choked out.
There was a party trick he liked to perform, a sleeper hold that would render a man unconscious in seconds. Kyle called it a “hug.” It started in high school and didn’t stop. Eventually, by the time he was a national hero, people would dare him to do it to them, saying they wouldn’t go down.
Kyle could also be kind beyond measure: giving away 100 percent of his share of the proceeds from his book, for instance. Or offering to let mothers of his fallen SEAL teammates live in his home. Or sitting for hours with an annoying, awed reporter—then inviting him to tag along and observe his life for a few days.
We had originally focused on me writing a story about his transition, the strange journey from the sniper picking off targets to the suburban T-ball coach. He’d done a lot of interviews and seemed so complex, so interesting from a journalistic standpoint. It wasn’t just about reconciling the killing and the kindness. He seemed to have readjusted to civilian life so well at a time when so many were struggling. He seemed to bear the mantle that comes along with being a celebrated war hero reluctantly but graciously.
His story had meaning politically, socially, historically. But it also excited the child inside of me. This was a man who’d been described as a “real-life G.I. Joe.” Right there, a few feet away from where we sat at Craft, were the kind of giant guns you only see in high-budget action movies. And with his throaty Texas accent, he would answer any question I could come up with.
Kyle liked when people thought of him as a dumb hillbilly, since he actually had a remarkable ability to retain information, whether it was a mission briefing, the details of a business meeting, or his encyclopedic knowledge of his own hero, Vietnam-era Marine sniper Carlos Hathcock. While on the sniper rifle, Kyle, a former bronco buster, had to do complicated math, accounting for the speed of the wind, the spin of a bullet (he could explain the Coriolis effect better than a lot of science teachers), and the curvature of the earth—and he had to do it quickly, under the most intense pressure imaginable. Those were the moments when
he thrived.
The most common question he was asked was easy for him to answer. He said he never regretted any of his kills, which weren’t all men.
“I regret the people I couldn’t kill before they got to my boys,” he said. That’s how he referred to the men and women he served with, across the branches: “my boys.”
He said he didn’t enjoy killing, but he did like protecting Americans and allies and civilians. He was the angel of death, sprawled flat atop a roof, his University of Texas Longhorns ball cap turned backward as he picked off enemy targets one by one before they could hurt his boys. He was the guardian, assigned to watch over open-air street markets and elections, the places that might make good marks for insurgent terrorists.
“You don’t think of the people you kill as people,” he said. “They’re just targets. You can’t think of them as people with families and jobs. They rule by putting terror in the hearts of innocent people. The things they would do—beheadings, dragging Americans through the streets alive—the things they would do to little boys and women just to keep them terrified and quiet”—he paused for a moment and slowed down. “That part is easy. I definitely don’t have any regrets about that.”
He said he didn’t feel like a hero. “I’m just a regular guy. I just did a job. I was in some badass situations, but it wasn’t just me. My teammates made it possible.” He gave all the credit to his training, to the military. He matter-of-factly explained that he just so happened to come across more targets that fit the very narrow rules of engagement. He wasn’t the best sniper in the SEAL teams, he said. “I’m probably middle of the pack. I was just in the right spots at the right times.”
The way he saw it, the most difficult thing he ever did was getting out of the Navy.
“I left knowing the guy who replaced me,” he said. “If he dies, or if he messes up and other people die, that’s on me. You really feel like you’re letting down these guys you’ve gone through hell with.”
The Life and Legend of Chris Kyle: American Sniper, Navy SEAL Page 1