SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper

by Stephen Templin

  I was skeptical about chiropractors and didn’t think they would be effective in easing the constant pain I had in my leg and neck, but I filed our conversation in the back of my mind anyway.

  * * *

  At the embassy, Johnny and I met a middle-aged American doctor who feared for his life. “I’m doing charity work as a doctor. Just trying to help people. And the mob is trying to rob and kill me.”

  “How do you know?”

  “They’re following me. People call my hotel, checking if I’m there. They’re at the hotel waiting for me.”

  Johnny and I told the assistant regional security officer (ARSO), working for the State Department. “We think the mob is really going to kill this guy.”

  * * *

  Johnny and I wore civilian clothes. Not wanting to stick out like Secret Service agents or diplomatic security, we didn’t carry radios. I liked to wear khaki Royal Robbins pants because they’re easy to run in, have a lot of pockets, and look nice. Over a navy blue T-shirt, I wore a photographer’s vest with a pair of binoculars and a blowout kit in the pockets. In a pancake holster on my hip was my SIG SAUER, which held one fifteen-round magazine. In the mag holder on my belt, I carried two more magazines. Over the vest I wore an unbuttoned button-down shirt, concealing my pistol and spare magazines.

  Leaving the doctor at the embassy, the two of us ran a mini countersurveillance of the doctor’s hotel. It wasn’t a high-class place like the Intercontinental, but it wasn’t a dive, either. Three blocks away from his hotel, Johnny and I stood on one of the top floors of a building. I called the hotel’s front desk and introduced myself as working for diplomatic security. Explaining the situation, I asked the desk clerk to open the curtains in the doctor’s room. Also, I told him what I looked like and what time I’d arrive.

  When the curtains opened, we could see inside with the binoculars we’d brought from the Team—pocket-sized waterproof Bausch & Lombs (now licensed with Bushnell) with antiglare coating, enhanced light transmission, and high color contrast. No one seemed to be waiting in the room. I felt relieved that we wouldn’t have to do a forced entry and get into a gun battle. The desk clerk verified that no one was inside. So far, so good. Then again, he could be setting us up.

  We moved in a wide square around the hotel area, looking for anyone running surveillance. Then we moved in closer toward the hotel, making concentric squares.

  A junky old vehicle sat in front of the hotel with two guys in it. My spider senses tingled. These are the two guys I need to look out for. They weren’t dressed like businessmen and didn’t seem to be there to pick anyone up. No one else in the area seemed to be a threat.

  Johnny parked our Jeep Cherokee near the corner of the building where he could see the doctor’s room above and the thugs in front of him. I transferred my SIG SAUER from my holster to my vest pocket, keeping my hand on it with my finger near the trigger. Then I stepped out of our vehicle and walked to the hotel.

  Inside the lobby, my eyes scanned for anyone or anything out of place. At that point in my career, I could take a glance at people, note their posture and body language, and know if they were a threat. Part of my awareness seemed to be a heightened sixth sense—like when you think somebody is watching you and you turn around to find out somebody really is watching you.

  The desk clerk, probably a relative of the hotel owner, escorted me to the stairway. An elevator can be a death trap. It can be stopped between floors. There could be somebody on top of the elevator—it doesn’t just happen in movies. Or a big surprise could be waiting when the elevator opens. If this was a setup, the desk clerk would become more nervous as we neared the doctor’s room. He would know he stood a good chance of getting killed during an ambush. If the ambush didn’t kill him, I would.

  We entered the stairway. I drew my pistol and bladed the stairs as we walked up—scanning the overhead for a muzzle or someone about to drop a brick on our heads, then scanning the stairs in front of me.

  As we reached the fourth floor, I was going to ask the clerk to walk out in front of me, but he already had. He led me through the hallway and unlocked the doctor’s door. Inside the room, I locked the door behind us, including the bar latch. I didn’t want any surprise visitors from behind. The clerk went to the center of the room and began packing up the doctor’s belongings—perfect; if anyone was going to attack us, they’d go after the clerk first. Also, his relaxed state gave me further evidence that he wasn’t setting me up. I searched the room for bogeymen: shower, closets, under the bed—everywhere. When everything was clear, I closed one curtain halfway over the window, signaling Johnny we were in and all was clear. Maybe I could’ve waved at him from the window, but I didn’t take the chance of eating a sniper’s bullet. If I hadn’t given the signal within five minutes after leaving Johnny, he’d’ve been coming to back me up.

  The clerk packed a rolling suitcase, a garment bag, and a briefcase full of U.S. currency. I wondered how the doctor had acquired the stacks of money—thousands of dollars from what I could see. Maybe he brought the cash from the States to survive on. Maybe he’d been involved in something he shouldn’t have been.

  After the clerk finished packing everything, he carried the luggage down the stairs. Feeling more comfortable, I still had my weapon out but wasn’t aiming at every potential hazard. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I put the pistol back in my pocket. I quickly looked around the lobby. Everything seemed OK.

  I thanked the clerk and took the luggage. After hooking the garment bag to the suitcase, I pulled it with my left hand while carrying the briefcase in my right.

  When I exited the hotel, the two thugs saw me. They seemed to know what I was there for, and they seemed to know that I knew what they were there for. Is it worth it for you to try taking me down? If they made a move, I’d have to drop the briefcase in my right hand and draw my pistol from my pocket. I could move while shooting, and they would be confined to their vehicle. If they tried it, I’d make them have a bad day. Even so, my anus puckered.

  Johnny brought up the Jeep Cherokee and stopped at an angle behind them. If they wanted to get out and shoot at the Jeep, they’d have to get out and turn—without their door as a shield between them and us. Johnny stepped out with his weapon drawn and held down at his side. The door shielded his lower body from the direction of the two thugs. Johnny’s presence gave me peace of mind.

  I walked past the thugs, threw the luggage in the back, and sat down in the passenger seat. The thugs had cranked their heads around to look at us, becoming highly animated, speaking rapidly back and forth. Johnny drove us out and circled the block, and when we returned, the two thugs were gone.

  We picked up the doctor at the embassy, gave him his luggage, and took him to a U.S. commissary in Manila where they had shopping and a restaurant. We kept him there until his flight was ready to leave. He thanked us over and over again.

  As we drove the doctor to the airport, we had another of our vehicles drive out front to make sure the route was clear.

  “You two saved my life.” He continued to thank us. We loaded the doctor onto a plane.

  Later, he wrote the embassy thanking them for our help, which resulted in big kudos for us. We found out later that the doctor had been dating a mob boss’s daughter. She lost her virginity to him, and he promised to marry her—even though he had plans to leave the country. When the mob boss discovered this, he put a contract out on the doctor. Maybe he deserved it.

  I’d come a long way in recovering from my wounded leg. I still had daily pain and sleepless nights, though, and the diplomatic security assignment was an easy job as far as SEAL Team Six assignments went—a cakewalk. I knew I wouldn’t be able to work the tough assignments again.

  * * *

  After completing the diplomatic security assignment, I returned to the Team. We did our routine workups: running, kill house, shooting range. I realized, This isn’t going to work out.

  I spoke to Six’s command master chief. “I�
�m going to pack my stuff and head to Georgia. I’m in constant pain. My leg throbs all day. A lot of hip pain. Neck pain. I can’t sleep too well.” At the time, I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Having adjusted for my gunshot wound by changing my gait, I was carrying myself wrong—my externally rotated foot was affecting my hip. My neck compensated by going the other way. Sort of like a house: If the basement tilts to the right and sinks a little, the roof follows—except the neck pulls the opposite way.

  “I understand exactly where you’re coming from. If you want, I’ll transfer you to any Team you want, send you to BUD/S to be an instructor … You can pick a division here: air ops, boat ops, demo … Whatever you want to do. Just tell me and it’s yours.”

  I’d never be able to do what my Teammates were doing. I remembered going up the stairs in the kill house—holding up the last three guys in the train. That had never happened to me before. I knew when I was at the top of my game. Now I was not. It was a harsh reality to face. I’m not as good, not as fast, and my senses are not as keen as they used to be. Definitely not physically doing what I used to do. “Thank you, Master Chief. But if I’m not going to be one of the Team guys doing the job, I’d rather just get on with the next phase of my life. Do something different. See what’s out there.”

  Most of my adult life, I had been in the military. It would be a new adventure: What can I do in the civilian world?

  16.

  Fish out of Water

  Outside of the military, my situation would be feast or famine. While processing out of the navy on a medical retirement, I received an offer to train the 1996 Summer Olympics security teams in Atlanta. Fifteen hundred dollars a week seemed like huge money to me then—especially compared to military pay. I left the navy and took the job. Also, I trained the Federal Bureau of Prisons Special Operations and Response Teams and others. It involved a lot of travel. Charging five hundred dollars a day, I thought I’d get rich.

  In the tactical game, I was paid well for each assignment, but the assignments came and went. Between assignments, I struggled financially.

  Hoping for more stability, I became a police officer just north of Miami Beach in Hallandale Beach, Florida, a place known for its greyhound racetrack and Canadian tourists. After more than half a year of training, I became a police officer, just like the ones who treated me well as a kid.

  While patrolling, I wore Revo sunglasses, made with NASA technology by the same Italian eyewear company, Luxottica, that owns Ray-Ban and Oakley. The Revos had the clearest lenses and the best polarized protection, and they stayed on comfortably. Because I was a rookie, a recruit training officer (RTO) rode in the patrol car with me. One day, I spotted a stolen Cadillac driving in front of us. I called it in. Another patrol car joined me, and we turned on our flashing lights. The stolen Cadillac pulled over. Just as it stopped, the passenger, a black kid in his late teens, bailed out and took off running. We stopped behind the stolen vehicle. My RTO jumped out of the passenger seat of our patrol car, ran to the stolen Cadillac, and apprehended the driver, an obese kid. After I opened my door on the driver’s side, my feet hit the ground running.

  I chased the runner for what seemed like forever. Over shrubs and fences. Underneath bushes. My ASP telescoping tactical baton fell out somewhere during the chase. The radio mike clipped to my lapel fell off and dragged behind me. I didn’t lose my sunglasses, though. We ran through people’s yards and ended up all the way in the next town, South Hollywood. Suddenly, I lost visual and audible contact with the runner. A man watering the grass in his front yard pointed to the back of his house. I snuck up behind the house, but the runner spotted me and took off again. Finally, as he ran across the middle of the street, I tackled him on the asphalt. A motorcycle police officer stopped and helped me. It felt good to catch the guy.

  “That’s the longest foot chase I’ve ever heard of,” the policeman said.

  If the runner hadn’t been holding his pants up the whole time he was running, he could’ve outrun me. When I stood him up with the handcuffs on, his pants fell down. I took out a flexicuff, pulled his pants up, and zip-tied his belt loop to his handcuffs to keep his pants on.

  My RTO arrived with our patrol car.

  The kid turned and looked at my name tag. “You ain’t going to beat me, Officer Wasdin?”

  “Of course not. Why do you ask that?”

  “I just thought that’s what you cops did. Beat us. That’s why I was running.”

  “Man, you got the wrong idea of cops.”

  When I started to put him in the car, another officer actually pushed the kid into the vehicle.

  “Hey, take your hands off my prisoner,” I said. “And don’t touch him again.”

  Later, I’d catch flak from some of the guys who’d been around a while. “You should’ve been rougher on the kid. Show him you don’t run from cops. There’s a way to put cuffs on somebody, then there’s a way to put cuffs on somebody.”

  I understood their point, but I didn’t adhere to it. That wasn’t my type of police work. It turned out that the fat kid had stolen the car. The runner was a mule, paid probably twenty or thirty dollars a day, to deliver crack, then carry the buyer’s money back to the dealer. He had three or four pieces of the off-white colored rock on him. The dealers used kids under the age of eighteen, so they couldn’t be prosecuted as adults.

  I put the fat driver in the back of my vehicle with the runner and drove away.

  “Why didn’t you get your fat ass out and start running?” the runner said.

  “Nigger, please. You got caught by a white man,” the fat kid argued. “What you talking ’bout?”

  “This wasn’t no ordinary white man. Every time I turned around, he was still coming.”

  I smiled.

  At the Hallandale Beach Police Department, I processed the two suspects. Then I took them to the Broward County Sheriff’s Department to drop them off at the jail. I noticed the runner’s hands and knees were sliced up from my tackling him on the asphalt. He was going to need a couple of stitches. Since it’s the arresting officer’s job to take him to the hospital, that’s what I did.

  After checking him in at the hospital, we had a forty-five-minute wait. Having missed lunch, I cuffed the kid to a railing and went to the McDonald’s in the hospital. I returned and ate my Quarter Pounder Value Meal.

  The kid looked at my food.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked.

  “Uh, not too bad.”

  “When’s the last time you ate something?”

  “I had some soup last night.”

  Oh, crap. I went back to McDonald’s and bought him a Quarter Pounder. When I returned, I asked, “If I’m nice enough to buy you a hamburger, am I going to have to chase your tail down if I take that handcuff off and let you eat like a human being?”

  “No, sir, Officer Wasdin. I promise you. I ain’t running again. I promise.”

  “Just so you know, I’m tired of running. So if you run again, I may just shoot you.”

  We chuckled.

  I took off the handcuffs, and he thanked me. He gulped down his Quarter Pounder. Then I went back and got him some more food.

  Finished eating, we sat in the emergency room. “You ain’t like most po-lice, is you?” he said.

  “More police are like me than you think.”

  “I would’ve never thought a police officer would buy me something to eat.”

  “You know what? If you went up to most police officers and asked them for food, they’d probably give it to you. They probably wouldn’t give you money, but they’d at least give you a pack of crackers or something.”

  “Thank you.”

  He was very polite. Wouldn’t stop thanking me. He seemed like a good kid. Just in with the wrong crowd. I felt good to be able to help him in that way, but I felt bad at how destitute his situation was.

  Later, when I saw him on the street, whatever he was doing, he made it a point to stop and wave at me. Occasionally, he came over
and talked.

  For a couple of weeks after the big foot chase, my body paid for it. My neck and lower back were killing me. A police officer from North Miami Beach had been recommending over and over that I visit a chiropractor, but I blew her off. Now I was desperate. I remembered Ambassador Negroponte’s chiropractor.

  Finally I went. The chiropractor evaluated me. “Compensatory to your gunshot wound, you’ve got an external foot rotation affecting your right hip. From your pelvis it worked its way up to your neck. This is why you aren’t sleeping well and experience constant pain.”

  After three adjustments, I slept all the way through the night for the first time in years, nearly pain free. Just by visiting the chiropractor twice a month. Wow! After all the neurologists, orthopedic surgeons, and other doctors, a chiropractor gave me back my quality of life.

  At that point, I thought chiropractors were like massage therapists or something like that. I had no idea that they studied to become doctors. There really is something to this chiropractor thing.

  As a police officer, I didn’t find a kid with the marks of beatings like the ones I’d received on a weekly basis as a child. If I had, there would’ve been no questions asked. That child would’ve been turned over to the authorities, and the father would go straight to jail.

  Financially, as a single father, I realized I couldn’t make it as a police officer. Forty-two thousand dollars a year went far in Jesup, Georgia, but not in Hallandale Beach, Florida.

  * * *

  The world’s leading manufacturer of body armor for military and law enforcement, Point Blank Body Armor, part of Point Blank Body Armor–PACA (Protective Apparel Corporation of America), offered me a job in Tennessee. Seventy-five thousand dollars a year would go far—especially in Tennessee. So I left law enforcement and took the job. Living in a small town, I felt rich. Blake fit in well at his new school, and life went smoothly.