The Operator

by ROBERT O'NEILL

  I was beginning my second tour as an Assault Team Leader and was excited about it. I had a great crew, Two Troop, and had been working with most of the guys for a number of years. Paul was the other Assault Team Leader. He wasn’t your typical SEAL, meaning he wasn’t what you’d expect physically, neither especially big nor buff. But he was a fantastic swimmer, and one of the smartest men I’d ever met. He had a kind of stealth wit that snuck up on you and enlivened many a round of cocktails. He was comically proud of his bushy eyebrows and could grow one of those perfectly groomed beards that the ladies adored. My Sniper Team Leader was Jonny, my close friend and the hero of the Captain Phillips rescue. Mack, the former rugby stud with the missing tooth, was my number two. I knew him incredibly well after years of fighting together and trusted him completely.

  My number three was Nic Checque. At twenty-seven years old he could barely grow a beard, but I don’t think he wanted any hair on that Hollywood handsome face. Nic would prove the kind of SEAL he was less than a year later when he was part of a team that stormed a remote mountain shack east of Kabul where Taliban fighters were holding a hostage, an American doctor who’d been helping to train Afghan health workers for a nonprofit. Nic was the point man, the first through the door. He was immediately shot in the head and killed. His SEAL brother Ed Byers was right behind him. Byers shot the man who’d killed Nic, tackled another guy who was scrambling toward a gun, held him down until he was sure he wasn’t the hostage, then killed him and threw his body over the hostage, at the same time pinning another attacker to the wall with a hand to the throat until another SEAL could shoot him. For that, Byers became the first Team **** member to be awarded the Medal of Honor. After President Barack Obama hung the medal around his neck, Byers said the medal rightfully belonged to “my teammate, friend, and brother” who “died like warriors die.” Nic was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross. In my mind, he’s still very much alive. I still have his cell number in my phone.

  Our troop commander, Eric Roth, had also been my commander on my last combat deployment. The only commissioned officer of the group, Roth was an outstanding man and an excellent officer. He exemplified the kind of strong leadership I came to admire. He knew there was no reason to ever be a jerk and nothing wrong with being genuinely liked by your people. He did the small things, like saying please and giving praise even for a rote task assigned to the least senior man. Although that was his first deployment with our squadron, he had had four combat stints with the conventional SEAL teams and had seen more than his share of war.

  Our new guy, French, was running the dive trip logistics. He was blond, tan, and ripped. At first glance, he appeared to be a cocky surfer dude, but he was quite the opposite. He’d been by far the top guy coming out of his selection course and was always looking to better himself by taking advice from older dudes and seriously studying tactics. And he was turning out to be quite adept at this logistics thing. He’d put us up at the Courtyard Marriott near South Beach. It was a great location and the perfect time of year. Guys could get up in the morning and run on the beach or take a swim in the crystal clear water. I even found myself out in the ocean—and enjoying it!—something I never thought would happen after overacquainting myself with salt water at BUD/S. The work schedule was reasonable, too, for a change.

  The main work-related reason for the dive trip was our determination to get back to basic SEAL skills. Because of the two wars that had been taking up the majority of every squadron’s deployment cycles as well as other global contingencies, skills like combat diving were being neglected in favor of close quarters combat, shooting, driving, helicopter training, and skydiving. It was going to be good for us to get back in the water. The fact that the water happened to be in Miami, well, we could deal with that.

  One of the ways that we were able to sell the trip with such ease was the ever-growing pirate threat off the coast of eastern Africa. The Maersk Alabama hadn’t been the first or the last commercial ship attacked, and pirates were going after private vessels, too. That meant my guys and I needed to remain in the forefront of tactical development. What kind of ladder should we bring? What kinds of weapons should we carry? In case we needed to breach or cut anything once we boarded an enemy vessel, what kind of tools would we require? All the essential gear would be bulky and weigh a ton, but we’d have to swim with it. We needed to figure out how to do that. The entire scenario was challenging, and I really enjoyed the problem solving that came with it. To be honest, it was nice to be thinking tactically about Navy SEAL stuff, not just about how to fight terrorists in deserts and mountains.

  The first few days of the trip were paradise. We’d get up in the morning with the sun rising over the water. Guys would go for a run on the beach and boardwalk, swim in the ocean, or do both. It was a long way from the rigorous PT of earlier years. Our superiors trusted us to stay in shape however we saw fit. They even trusted us to relax a bit, and Miami was an excellent place to do that, as some discovered: Wake up and lazily drink coffee at a table on the patio, enjoying one of the most beautiful views on the planet. After that, showers and breakfast, then my troop would pile into our rental cars, head to the training site—a marina twenty minutes north—and begin the day’s work.

  Our schedule was simple: re-fit our dive gear, give each other safety checks, brief the evolution for the day, and then dive it. After a few hours, we’d have lunch on site, re-fit our gear, and then dive the plan again. Once the diving was done, we’d clean our equipment and secure the site, then head back to the hotel. Most guys would then hit Gold’s Gym on South Beach, do a workout, and wait to see if Anna Kournikova showed up like she usually did. Those with no interest in pumping iron or famously sexy tennis players would go to their rooms and flip the channels until it was time for dinner. After that we’d all meet at the bar on the patio for happy hour. It was the perfect way to get back into the swing of things after an arduous winter deployment to Afghanistan. Everyone was happy, our training objectives and time lines were being met, and we were in South Florida.

  Just as we were gearing up for the weekend, Paul and I received word that two positions had opened up for the Military Free-Fall Jumpmaster Course in Yuma, Arizona. This was a great opportunity for our troop. Not only would it give us two more jumpmasters, it was a leadership qualification with serious responsibility that would greatly assist whomever we chose once the next promotion cycle came around. Promotions were getting more competitive and qualifications like this helped. The only issue was that selection for the course meant: Get on a plane, go to Yuma, and, worst of all, no weekend in Miami.

  I picked Checque from my team, and Paul went with Cheese, who’d been my dog handler in previous deployments. Paul put it best when we broke the news to the boys:

  He said, “Cheese, I have good news and I have bad news.”

  Cheese replied, “What’s the bad news?”

  Paul said, “You’re leaving Miami, missing the weekend, and going to Yuma for Free-Fall Jumpmaster. Class begins on Monday.”

  “Okay, what’s the good news?”

  Paul waited a beat then responded, “I have no good news.”

  With that, Cheese and Checque packed up and reluctantly headed to the airport. The rest of us returned to the patio for cocktails, camaraderie, and scenery—of all kinds. We also wanted to brainstorm ideas about how to be the best anti-piracy team on the planet. I knew that the coming week was going to be intense, and I was right. But not remotely for the reasons I imagined.

  On the evening of March 5, 2011, after a great day of training, it was once again time for a libation or two at the hotel bar on the boardwalk. I went down first, phone in hand, sending text messages to summon all the guys. Paul came down first, followed closely by Mack and Jonny. The three of us were eventually joined by most of the rest of the gang with Roth pulling up the rear. We were sitting around a table adjacent to the patio bar contemplating which drink to order when Roth’s cell phone went hot. He excused himself for a few mi
nutes and left the rest of us to ponder the many merits of tequila. We thought of several, but before we could pull the trigger on an order he returned and said he needed to talk to me, Jonny, and Paul—the three team leaders—in a separate area.

  No major alarm bells went off in my mind. I was thinking one of our guys must have screwed up somehow. The four of us moved to a quieter part of the patio near the rear entrance of the hotel. There was a group of couches and we all sat, curious to know what was up. Roth said the boss—our Command Master Chief—was back home in Virginia Beach, and he needed us and Jonny, Paul, and Mack to all check out of our rooms and get back home as quickly as possible. Some sort of situation had arisen, and it required us to get a face-to-face with command leadership. That was all Roth had been told. Now this was looking like a bigger deal—especially considering that our Commanding Officer and Master Chief were supposed to have made this trip with us, but at the last minute had gone to Washington instead. Something was definitely up.

  We called the rest of the troop to a meeting and told them the news: The trip would continue but without troop leadership. French had a lock on all of the logistics and had been planning this trip for about five months; he had it covered. The rest of the guys had been around long enough to train themselves and devise possible scenarios and problem solve their way through them. Plus, they had the rental boat the next day and were dying to see if they could secure it and board it. Also, they had a huge barbecue and fish fry planned once training was finished. To be honest, I don’t think they were especially heartbroken to see our backs.

  The five of us changed our return flights to Virginia Beach and went to our rooms to pack and arrange early-morning wake-up calls. I remember lying in my bed on the top floor of the Marriott wondering why in the world I was being recalled off a training trip so soon after finishing a combat deployment. It didn’t make any sense. One of our squadrons was in Afghanistan and another was back home on standby. If there were any hostage situations in the world, they were the ones who had control for the next four months. If a high-value target poked his head up in Africa or the Arabian Peninsula, we had pieces from yet another squadron to coordinate air strikes through Air Force drones or naval aviation. There were no more targets in Iraq, so that didn’t cross my mind, and if a high-level al-Qaeda or Haqqani target crossed into Afghanistan, or even got close enough to the border and we knew about it, the squadron stationed in Afghanistan would launch. Why did they want us? Why did I have to leave Miami at the best time of the year?

  Could it be Libya? Just a few weeks earlier, on February 17, major political protests had begun opposing the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. It was all part of the “Arab Spring” and these protests had spilled over from Egypt and Tunisia. NATO forces were now involved, enforcing a no-fly zone after a civil war broke out. While, supposedly, this zone had been created to protect civilians, I was thinking that many people up the chain of command wanted Gaddafi dead and that the no-fly zone might be a ruse to get aircraft in the sky to locate him so he could be taken. Was this why they wanted us? I was pretty sure that Army Special Forces would be the go-to in that area of the world. They, too, had a squadron in the States standing by for global contingencies. Any way I angled it, it made no sense.

  What in the world was going on?

  *

  I SLEPT RESTLESSLY AND WOKE before sunrise for my flight home. Paul, Mack, Roth, and I all managed to get on the same flight, and we had two rental cars to return. We made it to the airport without issue, checked in, boarded the flight, and returned to Virginia Beach.

  After driving to the command and finding our usual, distant parking spaces, the four of us made our way up to our Team Room. Once there, we found out a few things: Almost the entire leadership of our squadron—both officers and enlisted leaders—were there, many having been recalled from other assignments. This wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows if we’d been on standby. But we were supposed to be training around the country. This was brand-new, and very odd. Nobody knew what the hell was happening. Well, the Commanding Officer and Command Master Chief did, but they weren’t telling anybody yet, so we all just milled about talking in hushed voices, all with the same rising note of perplexity.

  “What did you hear?”

  “Nothing, what did you hear?”

  “We are in our training cycle and won’t be on standby for another four months!”

  “Christ, we just finished deployment. What is going on?”

  “Did we seriously just get recalled for some training exercise?”

  “We better not miss the Thailand trip!”

  As time stretched on with no new information, we began to relax a little and just shoot the shit as usual. Cheese had a funny story about his brief trip to Free-Fall Jumpmaster School in Yuma with Checque. Those two had been close friends for years and constantly made fun of each other. Even in combat. Anyway, they went out together for this course, which is considered very technical and difficult, for most units anyway. SEAL Team **** has an excellent track record there. People from my command are expected to pass at the top of their class, and failure is not an option.

  So Cheese and Checque showed up on Monday for class. Tuesday was all classroom work as well, and so was Wednesday. But Cheese had been recalled on Tuesday night and was noticeably absent for class on Wednesday. When asked by the senior instructor where Cheese was, Checque answered with a straight face, “He quit.” The rest of the class was suitably shocked. Checque never bothered to tell anyone the truth.

  The familiar chatter and comfort of all being together only managed to underline the strangeness of the situation: Here we were, back in the Team Room for mysterious reasons when we should have been on the road enjoying training and liberty.

  The Team Room is quite an impressive place. The main area is a monster square space with three huge conference tables lined side by side in the middle; one for each troop. Opposite the main entrance is a huge bar with stools, a commercial sliding glass refrigerator loaded with everyone’s favorite kind of bottled beer, and a stainless steel freezer. The bar is fully stocked, and we have two sinks and three microwaves. A living room next to the bar is furnished with three leather couches and a coffee table. On the wall above one of the couches are framed photos of comrades who have died, and of “Spike,” a team dog killed in action in Iraq. On the wall opposite that, a huge wooden plaque bears the names of every man who has ever been a member of our squadron. The rest of the wall space is dominated by flat-screen TVs and mementos from the wars fought by the Tribe.

  There’s Neil Roberts’s machine gun, bent at a sharp angle from impact when he fell out of a helicopter into an al-Qaeda hornet’s nest on top of a ridge soon to be named for him. A bloody hood and steel handcuffs used to arrest a war criminal in Bosnia reside in a case on the wall. There is a photo from Operation Wolverine, a revenge vehicle interdiction in which our guys ambushed four vehicles containing nineteen al-Qaeda fighters as they fled the Shahi-Kot Valley trying to reach Pakistan in 2002; and a painting of the Maersk Alabama with the hat signed by Captain Richard Phillips. The floor cover is a 15-x-10-foot black-and-red carpet with a huge squadron emblem on it. A life-size statue of Tecumseh stands at the main entrance to greet all visitors. He has a grease-gun over his shoulder.

  We continued to mill about for an hour or so until word was passed that we were to meet in the Commander’s Conference Room. Once we were all inside and seated, we were given a short intro by the Command Master Chief. He read a short list of names: guys who had personal issues going on at the time and would need to remain in the Virginia Beach area to take care of them. One guy was having some problems with his wife. Another was scheduled for shoulder surgery. Yet another was still healing from a recent injury. One of the guys, Bert, was the leader for a major urban-training evolution in Los Angeles. That trip wasn’t for about six months, but he figured he’d need as much time as possible to coordinate all the aircraft and logistics. He asked to be replaced so he could work on it
. I’m certain that he regrets that decision.

  The guys whose names had been called were asked to excuse themselves so the rest of us could be read-in. That was the first time I’d ever known this to happen. Something big was up and whatever it was, our leadership wanted it on a need-to-know basis. Even the other team leaders, Troop Chiefs, and troop commanders who hadn’t been specifically recalled were asked to leave. They had to be told a few times because they couldn’t believe their ears.

  When they’d all departed, twenty-four of us remained. The doors were closed and our Master Chief, Willy, stood up front.

  “What I’m about to tell you cannot be discussed outside this room.”

  We’d all heard this song and dance before, and were pretty good at heeding it. But surely they didn’t mean we couldn’t even tell our brothers just outside. It quickly became evident that that was exactly what was meant.

  Willy, usually the picture of self-assurance, shifted on his feet, looking uncomfortable standing there. There had been a major earthquake in Japan, he said. Yeah, we were all aware. It had been all over the news. So what did that have to do with us? Japan is our ally and none in the room could see a need for us there. I’m sure he could sense the skepticism.

  He was being uncharacteristically vague. As he talked on about the implications, no country was mentioned by name. The details were sparse, but the mission involved getting to a secluded base station that consisted of a series of buildings he likened to a large Afghan compound. It was surrounded by mountains in a large bowl. We were also told that the two dozen of us had been broken down into four teams. He read off the names and leaders for each team. I would be the team leader for Team 4.