Sea Stories

by William H. Mcraven

“Really!”

  Ed walked me through his assessment, and while I had some reservations about his conclusions, he was the expert.

  “If Al Qaeda can put explosives in a shoe, what else could they make a bomb out of?” I said, thinking out loud.

  “Well, provided they’re not using a time fuse, they would have to have an electrical impulse to initiate a blasting cap of some sort,” Ed offered.

  My heart began to race a bit. “What if they got a hold of a thin roll of plastic explosives and slipped it inside a laptop and then used the power from the battery. Could they initiate the explosive train?” I asked.

  I could hear the wheels grinding in Ed’s encyclopedic brain.

  “Holy shit!” he said. “Yeah. It’s possible. But I would have to run some tests to determine if it’s really feasible.”

  “Yeah, not sure we have time for tests right now,” I responded. “Downing is with the President on Air Force One. I need to call him ASAP and give him an update. Work the problem for me, Ed, and then get back to me.”

  I thanked Ed, hung up, and immediately had the SITROOM patch me through to General Downing on Air Force One.

  “Yes sir, the FAA thinks the threat is legit,” I said, yelling through the static of the ground-to-air communications.

  I could hear Downing dropping F-bombs on the other end. What if this attempt to bring down an airliner was a coordinated attack by Al Qaeda? What if there were more Richard Reids in the air right now? What if more Richard Reids were, at this very moment, preparing to board planes somewhere around the world?

  And then I said it—words that I would regret for the rest of my traveling days.

  “Sir.” I paused. “I think we need to have everyone boarding a plane bound for the U.S. take their shoes off and have them inspected. Also, we need security to check every laptop. The battery on a laptop could be used to initiate a bomb.”

  Downing didn’t hesitate. “Yes! Yes!” he shouted, clearly having the same difficulty with the air-to-ground communications. “I’ll talk to the President and get him to order it right away.”

  (In my defense, I only thought the order would be in place for a few weeks. Sorry… )

  Downing hung up, and within minutes the FAA had been ordered to upgrade their security protocols. An hour later, Richard Reid was apprehended upon landing at Boston’s Logan Airport, and within days the world of airline travel was never the same again.

  I went back to trying to rescue the Burnhams.

  By early in the new year, the plan we had briefed the President on was beginning to take shape. U.S. special operations forces had deployed to the Philippines and established a base of operations on the southern island of Zamboanga. The media coverage about the plight of the Burnhams was gaining traction and people were paying attention. The effort to eliminate Abu Sayyaf and Janjalani was now being called “the second front.” The State Department, FBI, and the intelligence community were in full swing trying to locate and recover the Burnhams.

  But, tragically, with every war effort, there are always consequences. In February, an Army Chinook helicopter returning from a resupply run to U.S. Special Forces on Basilan crashed off the coast near Zamboanga, killing the eight crew members and two Air Force pararescuemen.

  Throughout history, there have always been warriors who understood the risks of serving. They understood that there was a chance their lives could be lost in the pursuit of a greater goal. They understood that they could perish while trying to protect others. To some outside the military, this belief may seem like naïve patriotism, misguided loyalty, or foolish enthusiasm—reasons given to young men and women by those in power to cover for adventurism or empire building. But I have learned many times over that those who serve do so with their eyes wide open. Young and old soldiers alike are not fooled by the political rhetoric. On the contrary, they question the cause every day, but they overcome their doubts and concerns because they are inspired by their fellow soldiers who serve nobly and not for some political agenda. Those who serve are serving for their hometown, their high school football team, their girlfriends and their boyfriends. They are serving and sacrificing because they believe in the America they grew up in. They know that America and the people who live in its big cities and small towns are worth the sacrifice, sometimes the ultimate sacrifice. I can guarantee you that the men aboard that helicopter never once doubted why they were serving.

  By late February, intelligence indicated that Martin was thinner than ever. Handcuffed throughout the day, he was suffering from diarrhea, dehydration, and bouts of malaria. He was physically struggling to keep up with the young fighters fleeing the Philippine Army. Gracia, battling severe diarrhea as well, also had to deal with the constant indignity of no privacy for her illness. Bombs from the Philippine Air Force routinely and indiscriminately rained down on the small band of Abu Sayyaf, forcing them and their hostages to stay incessantly on the run. It had been nine months since the Burnhams were captured. Nine long, excruciating months.

  In March, an anonymous donor paid $300,000 hoping to gain the release of the Burnhams. While the payment didn’t achieve its goal, some intelligence was derived from tracking the dispersal of the cash. Still, even with the added information, the group of hostage takers proved very elusive in the jungles of Basilan.

  Later that month, the Director of the FBI, Bob Mueller, flew to the Philippines to ensure that the Bureau was doing everything possible to gain the Burnhams’ release. Back at Langley, the CIA continued to coordinate the intelligence activities in the Philippines, keeping the White House and the Hostage Coordination Group advised. From my cubicle on the third floor of the Old Executive Office Building, I continued to push for more U.S. involvement and less reliance on the Philippine forces.

  “Look, Bill,” CIA Tom said. “The Filipinos are doing their best, but they aren’t the SEALs and they are never going to let U.S. Special Forces take the lead. This is their country and they see it as their problem. All we can do at this time is give them some training, provide them the best intelligence possible, and then point them in the general direction of the Burnhams. We can hope they get lucky.”

  I knew he was right, but that didn’t make it any less frustrating. As Tom spoke, I couldn’t help but think of an old military adage: “Hope is not a strategy.” But I knew I didn’t need to lecture Tom. He and the CIA were doing everything they could to help.

  March became April, April became May, and May became June. On June 7, I managed to escape the White House for twenty-four hours and was giving a lecture at West Point. That evening after my talk, I returned to the Thayer Hotel on the campus. It was a beautiful night, and from my window I could see the moon cresting over the Hudson River.

  On Basilan Island in the southern Philippines it was beginning to rain. Peering through the thick jungle canopy, the Filipino sergeant could barely discern the outline of the small band of armed men and their hostages. The Filipino Special Forces had been tracking the insurgent group all night, just waiting for an opportunity to attack. Camped on a steep hillside, the Janjalani group settled in for the night, hoping the rain had covered their tracks.

  As the commandos fanned out from the edge of the jungle, the captain in charge maneuvered his men into firing position.

  On the hillside, Martin and Gracia Burnham were just unrolling their hammocks.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  Martin smiled.

  Suddenly the tree line erupted with the sound of automatic weapons. “Fire! Fire! Fire!” screamed the Filipino captain.

  Falling from her hammock, Gracia tumbled down the hillside, struck in the leg by a large-caliber round. As she rolled to a stop, the body of Martin Burnham lay next to her, dead from the first volley. All around her, soldiers and captors were shooting wildly, men screaming in pain from their wounds. Screaming in fear for their lives.

  Bullets continued to fly both ways, killing another hostage and wounding several Filipino soldiers. Within minutes the Fili
pino soldiers had swept through the campsite and chased the remaining Abu Sayyaf into the jungle.

  In the Thayer Hotel my phone rang. It was the SITROOM. The voice of the young officer on the other end was tense. He was talking fast, breathing quickly. Reports of the “rescue” were coming in. Martin was dead, but Gracia had survived. I was immediately connected to Downing and Condi Rice. We were briefed that the Filipinos were moving Gracia to Zamboanga for medical attention and then back to Manila. The U.S. ambassador, Frank Ricciardone, would meet Gracia planeside and then make the calls to Martin’s parents, informing them of their son’s death. In the chaos of their fight, the Filipinos had left Martin’s body in the jungle, but they pledged to retrieve it at first light—which they later did.

  Over the course of the next few days, Gracia was reunited by phone with her children, and while in the Manila hospital she received a visit from President Arroyo. On June 17, after a long flight from the Philippines, she arrived back in Kansas City.

  Within a few weeks, I returned to the daily grind. Downing had put me in charge of drafting the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism. It was to be the first comprehensive, interagency, presidentially directed strategy for taking the fight to terrorists worldwide. I went about the work with a sense of purpose, hoping to make a difference in the war on terrorism, a difference that seemed to have eluded me up to this point.

  As I sat in my cubicle pounding away on the computer, the phone rang.

  “McRaven,” I answered promptly.

  “Is this Bill McRaven?” came the man’s voice on the other end.

  “Yes sir,” I said, recognizing the distinct drawl of the wealthy donor who had sought the Burnhams’ release.

  “I have someone here who would like to talk to you.”

  The phone went quiet for a moment and then a soft, almost angelic voice spoke up. “Captain McRaven. This is Gracia Burnham.”

  I took a deep breath. It was a voice I thought I would never hear. “Yes ma’am.”

  “Mr. McRaven, I just wanted to thank you for all that you did for Martin and me.”

  My eyes began to well up. “I am so very sorry that we weren’t able to save Martin,” I said, stumbling a bit with my words.

  “It’s all right,” she said sweetly. “I know you tried your best. God has a plan for all of us, and I pray that something good will come from Martin’s death.”

  We talked for bit longer and then hung up.

  A year later I would leave the White House. Over the course of the next decade, as I took command of the nation’s hostage rescue and counterterrorist forces, I did everything I could to ensure that something good came from Martin’s death. I promised myself that as long as I had the authority to act, we would try to rescue every hostage, and as long as I had the forces to strike, no terrorist would go unpunished.

  In her book In the Presence of My Enemies, Gracia would write that the only way to overcome the hatred in the world is to have “genuine love in our hearts.”

  But I must confess, as I hunted bad men around the world, I did not always have love in my heart. To each man God has given special talents. Mine seemed better suited to exacting justice than to offering mercy. I hope Martin would understand.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE ACE OF SPADES

  BAGHDAD, IRAQ

  December 2003

  I squinted to get a better look at the video screen. Two MH-47 Chinook helicopters were streaking across the western Iraqi desert, bound for a small Arab compound north of Fallujah. Inside the helos were twenty-four Army special operations soldiers from our special operations task force. Their objective: Saddam Hussein.

  The grainy black-and-white pictures were being broadcast from a Black Hawk helicopter flying above the Chinooks.

  “Two minutes out,” came the call from the Joint Operations Center (JOC) noncommissioned officer.

  “Roger. Two minutes out,” I acknowledged.

  Around the JOC, fifty men, headsets on, eyes fixed on the screen, quietly talking into their microphones, were helping coordinate the mission.

  “Little Birds on target, sir.”

  Small black shadows jetted across the screen as the AH-6 Little Bird gunships, acting as fire support, took up positions on the north and south sides of the compound.

  “Taking fire from the compound, sir.”

  “Roger,” I said, adjusting my headset and leaning in to get a better look.

  A steady stream of gunfire erupted from inside one of the small structures, aimed at the hovering Little Birds. The mini-guns on the Little Bird whirled in response, sending a burst of 7.62 rounds into the building, silencing the shooter.

  “Birds on the ground.”

  Dust enveloped the two Chinooks as they landed, one beside the other, just outside the walled compound. The SOF operators sprinted off the ramp of the helos, running full speed toward the metal gate on the outside of the wall.

  “Sir, we have activity inside the compound.”

  Onscreen I could see multiple Iraqi men moving in the courtyard. The operators had breached the outside gate and were flowing into the first building.

  “Shots fired. Shots fired.”

  There was a brief pause from the NCO.

  “Two Tangos EKIA.”

  “Roger.” I breathed a little easier. Two enemies killed in action.

  I watched as the operators systematically cleared each building. Lining up outside the building entrances, the first man in the stack would toss a flash-crash grenade, stunning the occupants inside, followed by a bull rush of armed soldiers. Within ten minutes the fight was over.

  My radio squelched. The squadron commander came on the line. “Raven Zero One, this is November Zero One.”

  “Roger, Bill,” I answered.

  “Sir, it’s a dry hole,” he said, sounding exasperated.

  “No worries, Bill. Everyone okay?”

  “Yes sir, everyone’s fine. We have a couple of EKIAs, but no Jackpot. It looks like these guys were building car bombs.”

  Car bombs. VBIEDs. Vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices. They had killed hundreds in the markets of Baghdad and were one of the most lethal and effective weapons in Al Qaeda’s inventory.

  “Well, someone is going to live because of your boys. Nicely done.”

  “Sir, we’ve got another hour or so on site exploitation. Who knows, maybe someone will talk or we’ll find some pocket litter, but I don’t really think anyone here knows where Saddam is.”

  “All right, Bill. Tell the boys thanks. We’ll reset and try another target tomorrow.”

  “Roger, sir. Out here.”

  Another night. Another dry hole. It was beginning to get old.

  I had arrived in Baghdad three months earlier, in October 2003, to replace the outgoing Task Force 714 commander, Air Force Brigadier General Lyle Koenig. Our special operations task force was garrisoned at a small camp off the Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). When Task Force 714 first arrived in Baghdad in March 2003, the commander at the time, Major General Dell Dailey, named the small garrison Camp NAMA, for “Nasty-Ass Military Area.” While it certainly wasn’t as bad as some places I had bedded down, Camp NAMA wasn’t Saddam’s Al-Faw Palace either. Most of us lived in tents or dilapidated buildings where the stench from broken sewer pipes and the smell of burning trash wafted over the entire camp. But I didn’t care. I was finally out of the White House and helping with the fight.

  We set up our joint operations center in one of the few buildings not destroyed during the U.S. invasion. The camp housed about eight hundred soldiers, including a company of Army Rangers; a company from the 1st Cavalry Division, which provided our Abrams tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and M113s; a support company; the task force headquarters element; and a twelve-man intelligence element that ran our small jailhouse. The jail contained about five to twelve detainees who were held under very strict DoD guidelines. The intelligence we received from these detainees was providing invaluable leads to other
Baath Party leaders.

  As a way to motivate the American troops, some enterprising young public affairs officer came up with the idea of creating playing cards with the names and faces of Iraqi’s most wanted emblazoned on the cards. Saddam was the Ace of Spades.

  Our Army special operations unit was given the job of hunting down the Top 50 High Value Targets. One by one, over the course of the past eight months, task force operators had captured or killed some of the more notorious Baath regime members. Most notably, just a few months before I arrived in Baghdad, Lieutenant Colonel Mark Erwin’s A-Squadron located Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qusay, in a barricaded hideout near Mosul. The two sons were well known for their abhorrent behavior. Uday kept women as sex slaves in his villa on the Euphrates River, and Qusay, whose villa was right next door to Uday’s, loved to torture innocent Iraqis for their disloyalty to Saddam. When we finally seized the villas after the fall of Baghdad, they reeked of blood, urine, and fear. Behind the barricades in Mosul, Uday and Qusay fought to the death, wounding several A-Squadron members in the fight and killing a military working dog. It finally took a TOW missile from a unit of the 101st Airborne Division to seal the bastards’ fate forever.

  But while locating the top-tier Baathists came quickly, Saddam still eluded us nine months after the fall of Iraq.

  I was having one of those feelings again. Inexplicable. Powerful. Eerie. One I couldn’t shake and certainly couldn’t rationalize. But it wasn’t the first time I had a “premonition,” and as I would find out later, it wouldn’t be the last time.

  “Turn the plane around!” I shouted over the sound of the C-130’s engines.

  “What?”

  “I said, tell the pilot to turn the plane around and return to Baghdad.”

  My military aide, Army Captain “Hank” Henry, pulled off his Bose headset and moved across the aisle to sit next to me.

  “What did you say, sir?”

  “Hank, we need to get back to Baghdad. Tonight’s the night we get Saddam Hussein.”

  Hank looked around the sparsely filled airplane and asked quizzically, “Did someone call you?”