As we watched, the boat came about, bow pointed to sea. His engines reversed as he attempted to hold position in the ebbing tide. Hatches were closed and I watched as our IR buoys were tossed into a locker. They were making ready for sea. The PB drifted for a while longer, backing slowly, and then their skipper felt he had a break. The engines roared, and the PB made its run at the bar. It plowed through a couple of waves, then disappeared into the moonless dark.
“Our turn,” I said.
Dave and I hauled ass back to the Zodiac.
“They’re across the bar,” I told the guys. “I want to get as close to the rendezvous point as I can before the sun comes up.”
That was fine with the lads. We rounded the point and entered the channel. The surf was still big. The noise made it hard to speak. I drifted and watched a couple of sets, counting waves and noting the big, the bad, and the ugly. At the end of a particularly big set, I told everyone to hang on. I twisted the throttle and pointed toward deep water.
We plowed through a couple of broken waves, and the boat took on water. I didn’t have to say a word. Hats came off and the guys shoveled water over the sides.
Dave yelled, “OUTSIDE!” It’s the call surfers give to warn that big waves are coming.
That’s when I saw them. A set as big as highway overpasses. But these weren’t walls, they were peaks—higher in one spot than another. The tide was ebbing, and to port, I was pretty sure there was a deeper channel. The waves would break first in shallow water. I headed for the deeper water and the low spot, even though our course took us diagonally across the front of the oncoming set.
As the first wave approached, I swung the tiller around to take it perpendicularly on the bow.
We went up . . . up . . . up . . . and finally over. Like a moving hillside, the wave passed under us. The next wave was the same, a long, impressive climb. We watched this one break to our starboard, a gigantic fifteen-foot tube. If we’d been under that, it would have been game over.
We came down the backside of the wave, delighted to be alive.
And there was the patrol boat.
It was maybe three hundred yards away, nose on to us. Her bow wave was wide and white. She was balls-to-the-wall and headed right for us. We had definitely been seen.
We dropped into the trough, and the PB temporarily disappeared. There wasn’t time to say anything. I swung the tiller and headed up the face of the next wave. At the crest, we could actually look down onto the decks of the patrol boat—now two waves inboard of us, maybe two hundred yards away. Her windshield wipers were on.
I ran onto another wave face, this time cutting it as near as I dared to the breaking section. We were now pointed directly out to sea. Behind us, the PB put her helm over and followed.
The Zodiac was climbing a near-vertical wave face. I thought, calmly, that this wave was bigger than any I had ever surfed. We were halfway up the face. The top of the wave was throwing off spray. To our right, a ten-foot wall of water was starting to go concave as it felt bottom and slowed.
Five more feet to the top. The engine growled, maxed out. As we popped over the crest, we went airborne. The propeller came out of the water, and the engine screamed. The sound was lost in the thunder of the breaking wave. We fell back to the surface, tubes vertical. We landed on our transom, then slammed down like a pancake.
Hail Mary, full of grace. We made it.
I turned around. The bow of the patrol boat exploded through the back of the wave, then seemed to slow. White water swallowed her prow, then swept in, covering her wheelhouse. Her decks were covered as she stopped, listed to starboard, and was sucked backward in the wave. I watched her mast nearly disappear as she was knocked on her beam’s end and dragged back into the impact zone.
We all screamed. Yelled. Cheered. She had broached!
We rolled up onto another swell. Three more huge waves pounded the PB as we watched, pushing her back into the channel mouth. Her engines were belching white smoke as she struggled to keep off the shoals and away from the breaking waves. The PB was driven, wave after wave, back into the bay. It was a miracle, or the result of excellent seamanship, that she did not capsize or get driven onto the beach. When we last saw her, she was afloat with her engines working, but she’d had her ass handed to her. For the foreseeable future, she’d be busy trying to bail out and stay alive.
We didn’t stick around to see how it came out. I went to full throttle, steered out of the impact zone, then followed the coast west and out to sea. No longer bottled up in the bay, we were again a small dot on a vast black ocean. We were as safe as we were going to be.
When we were within five miles of the rendezvous point, the lights of Fairfax County came into view. The first fingers of dawn were spreading over the water.
“Long Bow, this is Garfish. Katherine, Avis. We are ready for pickup.”
“Nice talking to you, Garfish,” came the message. “We were getting worried.”
“They were getting worried?” Bubba said. “I almost shit my own heart.”
“Stand by to be recovered,” came the radio call.
“Roger, Garfish out.”
I looked back toward the coast. Twenty miles out, Honduras was a low hint of green on the horizon. The sun was coming up, and the clouds were taking on a neon shade of pink. The storm had let up, and it looked like the day would be beautiful.
Once aboard Fairfax County, we prepared our beach chart, and I told the story of our encounter with the PB. I was told that Fairfax County’s radar had picked up a craft inside the Laguna during our recon. They assumed it was Honduran. Had I checked with Fairfax County’s Combat Information Center before I departed, they would have told me about it. Important safety tip: Check the local radar. That was a lesson I would never forget.
An hour before we made the rendezvous, Fairfax County had detected a small craft exiting the bay and turning east and south. Our Nicaraguan friends had finally made it out. Luckily for us, they’d had enough fun for one night.
Agas Tara went as planned. The marines landed, and the Seabees bulldozed. Across the border, the Nicaraguans fumed and accused the United States of trying to start a shooting war. An ironic turn of phrase.
Over the next couple of days, we had little to do but clean our gear and get ready to return to Little Creek. I spent some time wondering why a Sandinista patrol boat had been waiting for us. We all wondered. But there had been newspaper stories from the beginning, and the overflight by the Cuban airplane. The Nicaraguans had our amphibious ships on coastal radar. These seemed like reasons enough.
There was a better reason, but at the time none of us could know it. Chief Warrant Officer John A. Walker, Jr., and his pal, Senior Chief Radioman Jerry Whitworth, had supplied the Soviets with code keys to the U.S. Navy’s KWR-37, KW-7, KG-14, KY-8, and KL-47 cryptographic machines, as well as technical manuals that allowed the Russians to build their own copies. Ivan was reading our mail in real time.
Walker and his spy ring did much greater harm than just ratting out a few operations. Their espionage allowed the Russians to decipher almost every piece of coded traffic sent by the U.S. Navy from 1968 until 1986. At the time of Agas Tara, Mr. Walker was “working” in Norfolk, Virginia, and driving up to Washington on the weekends to make deliveries of codes to his KGB handlers. He wouldn’t be arrested until 1985.
The Nicaraguans were waiting because they knew we were coming. Our reconnaissance plan, the location of the beach-landing site, the composition of our team, even Susan, Katherine, and Avis, were all in coded traffic that was open to Russian penetration. The Sandinistas knew a five-man SEAL detachment would enter after the tide change and attempt to leave before dawn. They knew there would be no Honduran naval units in the bay. They knew we would be without support. The Sandinistas knew everything—except how to corner a boatload of SEALs. And how to work their boat in the surf.
If they had succeeded in killing a detachment of “American spies,” the timbre of relations between
our countries might have gone from bad to bellicose. They might have started a real shooting war. But this isn’t the kind of stuff you think about after an op. History is made in the dark, someone said. And sometimes, history isn’t made.
Two days before Agas Tara ended, I was in Puerto Lempira’s disco with Stan, Tim, Bubba, and Dave. The merengue was loud, the beer was cold, and we watched a chicken walk across the pulsing dance floor.
“I got a message from the Team today,” I said between sips. “We got our orders.”
Fifth Platoon was scheduled to deploy after returning to Little Creek. Rumor had it we were going someplace tropical.
“Where we going, Mr. Pfarrer?”
“Back to Hondo?”
“Panama?”
“Betty Ford?”
“Better,” I said, trying to keep a straight face. “We’re going to Beirut.”
* * *
JOINING THE CIRCUS
Log PT, Hell Week.
U.S. Navy
* * *
The O-course.
U.S. Navy
* * *
The only easy day was yesterday. Boat Crew Four, Hell Week, Class 114, May 1981. The author is under the middle of the boat, face in shadow.
Author’s collection
* * *
Bulletproof and invisible. Class 114’s graduation picture, September 1981. The author is in the last row, second from the right. Class 114 was one of the few classes to complete Hell Week without losing a single man. Twelve operators from this class would later go onto serve at SEAL Team Six.
U.S. Navy
* * *
A SEAL operator prepares for a water landing using an MT-1-X parachute. His descent is going a lot smoother than my last jump.
U.S. Navy
* * *
MH-53J Pave Low special operations helicopter.
U.S. Air Force
* * *
Trident C-4 missile is launched off the coast of Florida.
U.S. Navy
* * *
Combat rubber raiding craft insertion off Vieques Island, Puerto Rico. Dwight Light (in billed cap) and author (in jungle hat).
U.S. Navy
* * *
Fifth Platoon, SEAL Team Four conducts live fire exercises, Fort A. P. Hill, Virginia, November 1982. Point man lays down fire as his squad deploys. The smoke is from the detonation of a booby trap.
U.S. Navy
* * *
Combat-swimmer training, Isla Peros, Puerto Rico. Author (standing, carrying fins) and Frank Giffland (mask on head).
U.S. Navy
* * *
Woodland operations, predeployment training, Fort A. P. Hill, Virginia.
Operator in foreground carries an M-4 carbine, aka a “poodle shooter.” Rigged under the barrel is an M-203 grenade launcher. Operator in background carries an M-60 machine gun.
U.S. Navy
* * *
Counterambush training, Isla Peros, Puerto Rico. Bubba at left, Surfer Dave, right (crouching).
U.S. Navy
* * *
Dog tired after a week of night ops. Fifth Platoon’s operational readiness exam, Isla Peros, Puerto Rico. Left to right: Frank Giffland, Operator 570, Cheese, Scott.
U.S. Navy
* * *
PEACEKEEPER
Green Beach, with Beirut International Airport in the background.
U.S. Navy
* * *
Green Beach, from seaward. Note the causeway sections and the fortifications on the hill.
U.S. Navy
* * *
The author and Doc Jones at Green Beach, August 1983. Our world was about to get violent.
Scott Speroni
* * *
The Radical Riviera. West Beirut, the Italian sector. A wild no-man’s-land we called Khomeiniville.
U.S. Marine Corps
* * *
It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood. Marine patrol enters the slum of Hay es Salam, north of Beirut International Airport. This part of town we called Hooterville.
U.S. Marine Corps
* * *
Martyr’s Square. The Green Line, downtown Beirut.
U.S. Marine Corps
* * *
French Foreign Legion barracks, Beirut. This building (at left) would be truck bombed on October 23.
U.S. Marine Corps
* * *
Inside the watchtower, Green Beach. In a matter of weeks, snipers would make the tower too dangerous to use.
U.S. Marine Corps
* * *
Explosion tears at right flank of Green Beach.
Scott Speroni
* * *
Fifth Platoon of SEAL Team Four and elements of the French Foreign Legion conduct parachute insertion into Beirut, July 1983. That’s Hooterville below.
Claude Salhani
* * *
Bad Karma. The author, aboard an LCU of Assault Craft Unit 2, following a foot patrol of West Beirut.
Author’s collection
* * *
A 155-millimeter howitzer of Charlie Battery, 24 MAU, fires against Shiite gun positions in the Shouf Mountains.
Claude Salhani
* * *
Seafox SWSC (Special Warfare Support Craft) off Beirut. Frequent repainting of the shark’s mouth led both Israelis and Lebanese to conclude that the U.S. had as many as four boats patrolling off the city. In actuality, the white enamel we used for the teeth kept flaking off the Seafox’s carbon fiber hull. Every time we repainted the teeth, the mouth came out differently.
Frank Giffland
* * *
The corniche, Beirut, 1983. Looking east from the Duraford building.
U.S. Marine Corps
* * *
The author in militia costume.
Author’s collection
* * *
A marine CH-46 helicopter departs the pattern from LZ Brown at Beirut International. This low-level flying was made necessary by the amount of RPG and small arms fire coming out of Hooterville.
U.S. Marine Corps
* * *
The battalion landing team headquarters, Beirut International Airport. The truck bomb that would destroy the building smashed through a security gate and drove straight up the main drive and into the building.
U.S. Marine Corps
* * *
On October 23, 1983, at 0623 hours, one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in the history of warfare destroyed the battalion landing team headquarters at Beirut International Airport. To gauge the size of the explosion, note the airport’s control tower and a pair of Boeing 707 jetliners in the foreground. This photograph was taken seconds after the blast, from the marine positions at the north end of the runway. The photographer was nearly a mile from ground zero.
U.S. Marine Corps
* * *
Moments after the blast, marines begin the search for survivors. For the next two days, snipers from Hooterville would pour fire on rescuers and victims alike.
U.S. Marine Corps
* * *
Firefight in the Ash Shuafat. In the foreground is the wreckage of the battalion landing team headquarters.
U.S. Navy
* * *
Leaving Beirut.
U.S. Marine Corps
* * *
A RAKE’S PROGRESS
SEAL Team Four rigger straddles the deck of an underway nuclear submarine.
U.S. Navy
* * *
SEAL swim pair approaches a surface target. Note absence of bubbles. Diving rigs are Draeger LAR-V oxygen rebreathers.
U.S. Navy
* * *
Gearing up for a water drop off the coast of Honduras. Rudi (right) and Uncle Chuck trying to look fierce.
Scott Speroni
* * *
The author exits an aircraft 30,000 feet above the Sonoran desert. That’s Interstate 10 way down there.
Author’s collection
* * *
S
EALs conduct VBSS (visit, board, search, and seize) exercise against the U.S.S. Austin. Their equipment is typical kit for shipboard CQB. Helicopters are from HCS-2 Redwolf Squadron.
U.S. Navy
* * *
The cruise ship Achille Lauro.
Associated Press
* * *
Night-vision equipment photographs a SEAL operator conducting shipboard CQB. Note the MP-5 and the night-vision monocle attached to his helmet.
U.S. Navy
Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL Page 16