by Dick Couch
At one point they came to the room with the maps and leftover vests. Engel quickly looks at the maps and map notations while Nolan counts vests.
“Boss, we don’t have all the vests.”
“And the others are headed for L.A. and other points north,” Engel replies. “We gotta find these guys.”
They hear scrambling down one of the passageways leading away from the room, toward the rear of the factory subbasement. They head down the passageway. Soon the concrete floor gives way to dirt. They’re moving quickly now, accepting the risk that comes when forced to do so. From a window, one of the cartel gunmen sprays a short burst into their corridor, before De la Ribandeo turns his Uzi on him and kills him.
Engel, now on point, is rounding a corner bathed in shadows, with the firing now behind him. Suddenly he is shoved against a wall by a small man, one of the Filipino recruits. The man is surprisingly strong. He has only a pistol, but he manages to parry the barrel of Engel’s M4 and bring the pistol up. Engel blocks the handgun, but the man begins to fire. The rounds splash against the concrete near his head, and are getting closer. For his part, Engel releases the pistol grip of his M4, slides a sheath knife from his lapel, and inserts it between his attacker’s ribs and into his heart. As the Filipino slides to the floor, Engel takes the pistol from the dying man’s hand, tosses it aside, and resumes heading down the hall.
“Everyone, okay?” Engel calls back.
“Took a ricochet in the calf,” A.J. says, “but drive on. I can keep up.”
They move on with A.J. now in trail, but he’s watching their back.
“Hey, Boss, you there?”
“Copy, Sonny, but I’m kind of busy. What you got?”
“We’re getting low on ammo here, and there’s no shortage of Tangos. I have one GAFE down hard and another wounded.” Engel pauses and looks back at Nolan.
“Let’s send A.J. back with some of our ammo. One way or another, we won’t need that many more rounds.”
Engel nods. “Hold on Sonny. A.J.’s coming back with some bullets.”
“Roger that, Boss.”
Nothing more needed to be said. A.J. works his way up the file, collecting magazines. Then he turns and hurries back up the passageway, half limping and half jogging. With the prospect of more ammunition on the way, Sonny and the two Team One SEALs easily repel the next assault. There is no more extra ammo for the sniper on the roof, but every round he has left, he makes count. Like all snipers, he’s in a zone—one shot, one kill. Soon, the new milk factory defenders on the ground have a new supply of ammo, and A.J.’s gun is in the fight.
Back underground, one of Shabal’s diminishing number of recruits decides that she has had enough. She pulls a pistol from her waistband, turns, and runs back at her pursuers. The team is in yet another room, trying to decide which of the two passageways is the right one. Engel hears her running toward him long before he sees her, and takes a knee. Chief Nolan is checking out the other tunnel, but De la Ribandeo is at Engel’s side. Seeing the backlit silhouettes, she begins firing wildly as she runs. The two men at the mouth of the passageway, seeing the muzzle flashes, return fire, killing her instantly.
“Well,” Nolan remarks, stepping back from the other passageway, “at least we know which way they went so we can . . . Aw, shit, no!”
On the dirt floor is Commandante Juan de Rio de la Ribandeo, lying on his back with a bullet entry in his high, aristocratic forehead. His dark, sightless eyes stare at the ceiling as a pool of dark blood begins to collect around the back of his head like a crimson halo.
Engel sits back on one heel, his M4 pointed up and his head lowered. “Dammit!” he says quietly. Then he rises and sets off at a run, down the passageway where the woman had come from. He is followed by Nolan, Weimy, Ray, and the last remaining GAFE. As the GAFE soldier passes the woman’s body, he puts two rounds into her head.
* * *
The woman had brought the pursuer {t tsp;*s hot on their heels, but she had also given Shabal an idea. At the next room opening—a small cavern lit by a single small-wattage bulb—he halts with Sanchez and now only three of his recruits, a woman and two men. He selects the woman. She is anxious, her forehead glistening with sweat.
“Sister,” he says in Tagalog, “are you ready to be with your martyred husband in paradise?”
She nods, not trusting herself to speak. He quickly slips one of the vests on her and removes the safety shunt from the initiator. Then he pulls the final safety clip.
“You know what to do. Allahu Akbar.”
“Allahu Akbar,” she mumbles back, but she does not move.
“Now!” Shabal commands. She turns and begins to walk back up the passageway.
The five pursuers pause at a cross tunnel to listen, unsure if Shabal and the others have continued on or have taken one of the side paths. It’s dark in the passageway, and the four SEALs have on their NODs. The woman is walking slowly with only the aid of a small flashlight. Engel sees her first, and in the glow of the small light, he sees what she is wearing.
“Bomb!” he yells, and the SEALs all dive into the side tunnels. The SEALs make it, and the GAFE almost does. His legs don’t clear the edge of the tunnel. His lower torso is shredded by the force of the blast and several of the ceramic balls. The SEALs all have on Peltors, so they still have their hearing. The GAFE soldier can’t hear or feel anything. Nolan gets to him first and drags him by the collar into the cross tunnel, not that it will do much good now.
“No es bueno, eh, Jefe?”
“Su es un Mano, amigo. Es tambien,” replied Engel, but the soldier merely smiles and grips Nolan’s hand.
“Anybody else hurt?”
“I took a ricochet under my arm, Boss,” Weimy says. “It went through, but I don’t know how bad it is. I don’t think it’s a sucker.” What Weimy was saying was that he didn’t think it had penetrated his chest cavity, meaning that he may not be a pneumothorax candidate. But there was no way to be sure. Engel makes a quick decision.
“Weimy, radio check,” he says on his radio, and Weimy responds, which means his radio and Weimy’s are both still working. Then audibly, “I want you to stay here with our GAFE brother. Call me if that wound starts sucking or you collapse a lung.” SEALs can talk like that to each other; they’ve all either seen it before or experienced it.
“Roger that, Boss. Go get that son of a bitch.”
Engel looks at Nolan, then at Ray. “Ready?”
“Ready, Boss.”
“Let’s do it.”
Ray is on the move quickly, beating them both to the passageway entrance, where he takes off at a run. The first man is almost always at risk. They keep a ten-yard interval and move quickly. The next room, or cavern, presents them with three alternative passageways. Ray quickly studies each with his NOD and sees a faint glimmer coming from one of them, a glimmer that immediately extinguishes itself.
“They went this way,” he says and they’re off again.
The tunnel leads them to a small cinder-block enclosure with doors on both ends, one leading into the room and one leading out. As they regroup in the center of the room, a sprinkling of dust drifts down from the ceiling. Too late, Engel looks up and sees one of the Filipinos. He’s waiting for them crouched atop a steel I-beam. Engel shoots him twice, but he has already dropped the grenade. It’s a standard American-made M67 hand grenade—effective, reliable, and lethal. The cinder-block room was a ready-made killing enclosure. In just a blink of an eye, Roark Engel takes it all in. He sees the grenade that will kill or disable them all. He knows there is no escape for any of them in the small enclosure. And he knows Shabal will then be able to come back and kill those who survive the blast at his leisure. He also knows that Shabal still has several of the vests, and a clear path to continue his journey north into America. All this is clear to Lieutenant Engel—in that moment. There is only one course of action open to him, and he takes it. Had he minutes, even hours, to think about it, there was still only o
ne course of action to take.
Roark Engel dives onto the grenade, cradling it to his chest and the same ceramic plate that had stopped the other grenade less than twenty-four hours ago. Only this grenade is much more powerful, and it does not need a distance of travel to arm itself, only time. The explosion lifts Engel eighteen inches into the air and deposits him back onto the hard-packed dirt floor. He absorbs most of the blast and a good portion of the detachable-link, circular shrapnel band that was wrapped around the explosive core. Both Dave Nolan and Ray Diamond absorb some of the shrapnel but little of the blast. They will live, but their lieutenant will not.
Nolan gets to him within seconds of the blast, but he knows it’s too late. Already Engel’s eyes are beginning to dilate. He exhales once and it’s over. In that brief terrifying moment, Roark Engel is gone. He had no other choice. It was how he was raised, trained, and lived: the mission first, next his men, and then himself.
“Stay with him, Ray,” Nolan says as he takes up his M4 and heads out the other door. Ray, who has taken only a few more pieces of shrapnel that Nolan, retrieves his rifle and crawls over to his lieutenant. He sits close and presses Engel’s cheek close against his thigh with one hand. He holds his rifle at the ready with his other.
“Boss . . . Boss. Why did it have to be you?” He begins to cry, but he never takes his eyes off the door that Nolan just went through.
Dave Nolan grimly moves forward through a tunnel that is now all hard-packed dirt—floor, ce {tis greiling, and both walls. Like an old mine shaft, there is knob-and-tube wiring that services an occasional bare lightbulb. Nolan senses danger and advances slowly, the butt of his M4 in his shoulder and looking over the front sight. He comes to the next node in this seemingly endless series of tunnels and rooms, where three forms are pressed up against the walls of a small room, just out of his line of sight. One of the Filipinos comes at him, pistol in hand, and Nolan cuts him down with a short burst. Next, Sanchez steps out to get a better firing angle, and Nolan immediately fires and kills him. He stays with Sanchez a nanosecond too long. He’s shifting aim to the other side of the room when the bullets begin to strike him. They are rounds from Shabal’s AK-47.
The first several rounds tear into his trigger hand and knock his rifle away. The next ones slam into his chest plate, driving him back against the wall. Without conscious thought, Nolan draws his secondary weapon, a Sig Sauer 9mm, with his good hand. A single Filipino, the last one, darts up the tunnel. Nolan puts three rounds into his back, and he goes down. But there are more rounds slamming into him, into his plates and into his bowels below the plates. He sees the muzzle flashes and takes aim, but a round slices through his remaining good gun hand, severing his thumb. The Sig is slick with his blood and hard to hold, but he keeps firing. Finally the slide locks to the rear—empty.
Nolan slides to the floor and to a sitting position with his back to the dirt wall. Without looking down, he begins to fumble at his ammo pouches for a fresh 9
mm mag. Shabal hears the slide go back and knows he has this man. He checks his AK quickly to ensure he has at least one more round and moves forward. Nolan’s eyes lock on Shabal’s as he desperately tries to fit a new magazine into his weapon with his crippled hands. Shabal himself has been hit twice, but he is now focused only on Nolan. This American now represents all his frustrations and his hatreds and his thwarted attempts at retribution. He is now but five feet from the prostrate Nolan; he wants to stand over him when he kills him. Then something like a fist punches into his chest. Then another blow, and another.
Shabal tears his eyes from Nolan and looks down the dimly lit tunnel. The form of yet another Navy SEAL coalesces around the muzzle flashes. By the time Ray steps into the dimly lit room, Shabal has gone to his knees, his weapon has fallen away. His hatred holds him upright—the hatred and the overwhelming disappointment of what might have been. How did it come to this? Then Ray sends a bullet through his brain, and all is blackness.
Dave Nolan, now a bystander, watches this drama unfold in detached fascination. He’s aware of the firing behind him; he sees Shabal drop to his knees and the AK-47 fall from his hands. Yet all is taking place in slow motion. Then it all fades away.
EPILOGUE
It was the final day.
The last week was a blur for Jackie Engel. It began with the SEAL officer in his dress uniform, accompanied by a Navy chaplain, knocking at her door. Then there was the shock and disbelief that Roark had been killed in action. There was the ongoing and continuous support of the entire SEAL family. Julia Nolan was t ~tisy chaplhere for her, just as she herself had been there for other SEAL wives who suddenly found themselves widowed. Her parents, then Roark’s, flew in from the Midwest. The Navy CACO, or Casualty Assistance Calls Officer, had called on her. He gently and compassionately walked her through the myriad of details involved when a service member dies. It seemed so surreal, yet it was happening—and happening to her. But any dreamy denial that this did happen ended when the Navy C-130 Hercules aircraft landed at NAS North Island with Roark’s body. There followed the wake at Pinkham-Mitchell Mortuary in Imperial Beach, California, just a short drive from Coronado. And there were the condolence calls from senior SEAL flag officers she had never met. It was a conveyor belt of grief that seemed to never stop. The days seemed to drag by, as did the sleepless nights.
As much as anyone can be prepared for the sudden death of a spouse, Jackie Engel was prepared. More than fifty Navy SEALs had died in action since September 11, 2001, and Jackie had been to many wakes, funerals, and burial services. Several of the men whose wives and families she had consoled had served with Roark in his previous tours. One young wife was only nineteen years old when she became a Team widow. She had been completely inconsolable, and Jackie had taken it upon herself to help the woman deal with her grief. To this day, she considered Jackie to be the big sister she’d never had. Only now did Jackie have some insight into what that young woman had endured, and she understood now how the pain had made her numb.
But as prepared as she was, nothing had readied her for this day. Today she would bury her husband—her Roark. She had steeled herself for this day, or thought she had. She had watched other SEAL widows perform this ritual, but could she? She would have to, she told herself; if nothing else, it was her duty—to her husband and what he had died for. The SEAL family was with her every step of the way. At one point during Roark’s wake at Pinkham-Mitchell, she had to console Julia and Dave Nolan’s second youngest, three-year-old Maggie, who presented her with a picture she had drawn of Jackie and Roark surfing. As she presented it to her, Maggie had completely broken down, and Jackie had hugged and rocked her for what seemed like an eternity until the girl had fallen asleep in her arms. A wise Julia Nolan did not intervene and let Jackie comfort her daughter for as long as it took.
Now she walked out of the door of their local church in Coronado, Christ Episcopal Church, flanked by her mother and father, and moved toward the car waiting at the curb on the Ninth Street side of Christ Church. Father Geisen’s words had been uplifting, and the overflowing crowd of friends, neighbors, and SEAL families listened in respectful silence. Jackie, too, had listened but had heard little.
Just outside the door, the Naval Special Warfare Command commander, Rear Admiral Frank O’Connor, approached her.
“Mrs. Engel, I’ll accompany you and your parents in my staff car if that’s all right.”
“Yes, Admiral, that will be fine. Thank you. You’ve met my mom and dad earlier this week.”
“Sir, ma’am. Your son was one of our finest.”
Jackie’s parents were onare to ly able to utter a quiet, “Thank you.”
Admiral O’Connor helped Jackie and her parents into the backseat of the car. The six SEAL pallbearers had already placed Roark’s casket in the hearse that would lead the procession. Their destination was Rosecrans National Cemetery, but instead of driving straight to the Coronado Bridge that would take them to San Diego, the hearse turned on
to Orange Avenue, Coronado’s main boulevard.
Coronado, California, is where every Navy SEAL begins his training and where many Navy SEALs are stationed. While the San Diego metropolitan area has a large Navy presence of aviation, surface, and subsurface commands, for the small city of Coronado, the bond with the SEALs is an especially close one. This became clear as the procession made its way down Orange Avenue.
Flanked by her mother and father in the back of the staff car, Jackie Engel saw hundreds of Coronado’s citizens lining both sides of the avenue. They stood in quiet reverence as a tribute to her fallen husband. Every hundred feet there was a large American flag. At the first intersection, at Orange and Eighth Street, Coronado Police Department cars blocked the intersections on both sides. Jackie quickly realized that they were there to ensure that no other traffic was allowed on Orange Avenue. The city had shut down this morning to honor Lieutenant Roark Engel.
Admiral O’Connor turned around to Jackie and simply said, “They’re here to honor Roark and to share in your grief.”
When the long line of cars finally did cross the bridge and into San Diego, the admiral again directed the procession onto a local route. The details of the operation Roark had led were still classified. But that didn’t prevent the Naval Special Warfare Command and the City of Coronado from telling their neighboring communities of the death of a hero. The funeral procession passed through Barrio Logan, National City, Downtown San Diego, Liberty Station, and Point Loma on its way to Rosecrans National Cemetery. It was said, unofficially, that this SEAL officer had helped to foil a terrorist plot that would have killed thousands of Americans.