Honor and Betrayal : The Untold Story of the Navy Seals Who Captured the Butcher of Fallujah -and the Shameful Ordeal They Later Endured (9780306823091)

by Robinson, Patrick

  And when, finally, that moment came, all eleven of the Team applicants moved back into the main room. And in the best possible good humor, the veterans reunited every candidate with his precious Trident. There were no more harsh, sneering words or demands leveled at the rookies. Just a few well-rounded insults and rough battlefield humor. Right then they all became drinking buddies.

  The plain little ceremony, conducted in the recreation hut, signified once and for all that the candidates, who had been under close observation, were now trained to partake in war. Each man had not only demonstrated his mastery of the vital crafts of battle; he had also nailed down his own specialty, the skilled job upon which every other member of that platoon would, at some point in the years ahead, most certainly depend.

  The platoon chief petty officer told them all quietly: “Don’t forget. You just earned that Trident for the second time. In the future, like all of us, you must earn it every day. And I know you won’t let anyone down.”

  They’d all expected to be successful, but there was a sense of relief when it concluded at last. Because this had been a ceremony of acceptance, the moment when the senior SEAL combatants stated publicly that each of these new recruits was a true and proper person to serve in SEAL Team 10. They were all accepted into the brotherhood that day, and they celebrated in the time-honored traditions of the Teams on that night—drinks, that is. Heavy.

  And as the night wore on, the conversation moved steadily from one of celebration to one of extreme seriousness. Team 10 was going back to Iraq, to Camp Schwedler, which is set into a corner of the enormous US Marine Camp Baharia, close to Fallujah,

  There may have been excitement and adventure in the air, but even in 2009 Fallujah was no laughing matter. Attacks on US troops were still legion, and even with al-Zarqawi now dead, there was still a fearless al-Qaeda presence in the ruined city. And the atrocities were still taking place: the hostile killing of both Shi’ite townspeople and, whenever possible, the murder of US troops.

  Deployment details are rarely handed out to the Teams until the very last moment, but there was a buzz in the air in Virginia Beach. Team 4 was shortly to return after six months in the Fallujah area, and everyone seemed to know that Team 10 would replace them, that they were going back to the desert.

  Matt and Jon had several conversations with the veterans that night, all of which involved the half-crazed fanatical terrorist leader in Fallujah who was still there after five years—never found, never seen, but still killing.

  Ahmad Hashim Abd Al-Isawi, the Butcher of Fallujah, awaited them.

  3

  ECHO PLATOON IN BATTLE MODE

  A combat operation—so they lashed down the ammo cans in the back of the vehicle, in case they got hit by a hurled bomb, which could blast a gas can into a lethal missile and might easily kill them all.

  In his almost twenty-four years Matt McCabe had never had much luck with sandy beaches, at least not in the way that comes with peace, quiet, and relaxation through the gentle lapping of unhurried waters on the shore.

  In fact, his limited experiences had been the precise opposite: on the long, white sandy coastline of the Pacific at Coronado, dominated by the shouts and commands of tyrannical SEAL instructors driving men onward to within an inch of their lives.

  Including Matt.

  Would he enjoy the calm inquiry from an agreeable waiter—“Sir, may I get you a beach lounge, perhaps a drink?” Fat chance. What he heard was: “MCCABE! GET WET AND SANDY RIGHT NOW! GET IN THE DAMN OCEAN!”

  Virginia Beach, the East Coast home to the SEAL Teams, was not much different: same brutal long runs, same arm-wrenching exercises with the inflatable boats and their paddles, and same kind of commanders, yelling out their usual subtle observations: “TOO SLOW, GO HARDER! YOU’RE RUNNING LIKE A FAIRY! STEP IT UP FOR ME!”

  Even on his rare vacation time, Matt mostly avoided hot sandy beaches. Any chance he had, he headed for the mountains to ski, just as he had during his teenage years, driving up to the hard-packed fast slopes of the Boyne Mountains in Michigan.

  Now, based for months at a time on the Virginia coast, he had found a new playground, just a five-hour drive northwest from the SEAL base: the ski resort of Snowshoe, hidden among the snowy peaks of the Allegheny Mountains, way up there in Pocahontas County, West Virginia.

  He’d found a good buddy to join him on the steep westerly slopes of the Appalachian Range—one of the best snowboarders on the base, Petty Officer 2nd Class Tyler J. Trahan, an EOD by trade, a man wedded to the dangerous edge of life, both with bombs and dazzling acrobatic maneuvers on his snowboard.

  Whereas Matt stuck to the hard-eyed high-speed runs of the downhill skier, Tyler was leaping and cartwheeling on his wide single board as ever out there on the edge. And this was a hell of place to be on the edge. One of the runs, chillingly named Shay’s Revenge, has a fifteen hundred-foot vertical drop, the highest in the mid-Atlantic.

  The highest elevation was almost five thousand feet, and the trails—Grab Hammer, J Hook, Ball Hooter, and Skidder—were named for the old steam locomotives that once hauled logs over the vast Appalachian Range.

  Both of them loved it up there, especially Tyler, who was always seeking the most challenging snowboard runs. He was a special guy: an outstanding high school football captain and quarterback, inducted into the National Honor Society, and at the US Navy Boot Camp had marched at the head of the parade, holding the golden sword awarded to the class leader.

  As a deployed EOD expert in Iraq, the twenty-two-year-old Tyler was regarded as one of the most valuable young explosives technicians attached to the Teams. He and Matt shared not only a love of the mountains but also an unusual devotion to high patriotism and training.

  Either of them would tackle any mission, no matter how dangerous. But not many people understood they were among the winter kings up in those snowy Allegheny trails, riding high and sliding fast. Real fast.

  It was therefore doubly surprising to find Matt sitting on warm sand in late February, before they even took off for Iraq two weeks hence. He had turned up in the northeast corner of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula with his girlfriend at the time, Danielle, on a hotel beach outside the city of Cancun.

  After a few days’ practice he was just getting the hang of relaxation—no one was yelling at him to get wet and sandy. The turquoise waters of the western Caribbean were superb for swimming and diving, and the drinks were as good as those in Squaw Valley.

  It was not a long vacation. And like Jon Keefe, Matt was soon headed back to Virginia to pack up for Iraq. Jon was off base at his parents’ home, packing and saying good-bye to Tom and Dawn. When SEALs prepare for deployment, every parent understands the honor, the trust, and the responsibilities that have been bestowed upon their sons by the US Navy. And every parent understands the innate pride deep inside the heart of every serving Navy SEAL.

  But the unspoken dreads are always there: What if I never see him again? What if he dies at the hands of some half-crazed tribesmen? What if he hits a roadside bomb? Will I understand what he died for? How could I ever get over it?

  SEAL commanders do not allow the waiting time to go on for long. Jon and Matt were due to leave just twenty-one days after they were initiated into Echo Platoon, and Matt was back from Mexico with just a few days to pack and be on the tarmac by March 2.

  Early that morning he was outside his house, just beyond the perimeter of the Virginia Beach base. Jon arrived in a blue truck, driven by his brother, Tommy, who dropped them both at the airport before they set off for one of the most dangerous places on earth.

  If one of the Teams is leaving, the situation must be truly dangerous, otherwise the SEALs would not be involved. And this was reported to be Fallujah. How could anything be worse than that?

  Jon’s most difficult farewell happened at home, when he said good-bye to his childhood girlfriend and future wife, Krista Hedrick. Jon had known Krista since second grade, and she understood as well as anyone where he w
as going and that there was a possibility she may not see him again.

  But Krista was from a very special area of the United States, this enclave of the Virginia Peninsula, where the vastness of America’s Navy and military were an ever-present fact of life.

  Right here, in the beating heart of the US defense system, close to the gigantic aircraft carriers, the guided-missile destroyers, the Marines, and the SEALs, a brave face was compulsory for everyone. Thus, there were no tears at Jon’s family home at Yorktown. Well, not that many.

  Tommy Keefe, an Air Force combat controller stationed at Fort Pope on the Fort Bragg Army Base, had driven up from North Carolina for a few days with Jon. And now he was driving his kid brother away, bound for Iraq. It was shortly after 0400 and still dark when they picked up Matt at Virginia Beach and was just as dark when they arrived at Norfolk Airport fifteen minutes later.

  On the tarmac was one of the biggest military aircraft in the country, Boeing’s gigantic C-17 Globemaster III, the prime transporter for the rapid strategic airlift of troops and cargo to US forward operating bases throughout the world. This thing is 174 feet long and 55 feet off the ground at the tail. Its cargo hold is 88 feet long by 18 feet wide by 12 feet high. It can whisk a half-dozen M1 Abrams main battle tanks anywhere in the world without the slightest stress.

  Right now the SEAL transporter was under full load-out for deploying Team 10’s Echo Platoon. Because when SEALs travel they assume nothing is available where they are headed. Every conceivable item they might need in any war zone is transported with them, including Zodiac boats, engines, paddles, scuba gear, wetsuits, rocket fins, and goggles—despite the fact that Arabian deserts received about a quarter inch of rain every six thousand years.

  So much of the equipment that would go with them would never be used. But for SEALs this is not the issue. What if they were suddenly rerouted to the Gulf? What if they were moved on from Fallujah to al-Basrah? What if someone wanted them to cross the wide Shatt al-Arab to Iran and they did not have their beach assault gear?

  It’s a Special Forces mind-set. Great Britain’s SAS are precisely the same. Deployed, they take everything but the kitchen sink.

  The T-tailed Globemaster III would not be overwhelmed with passengers. Built by McDonnell Douglas to hold 236 personnel for instant troop movement, today it would carry only eleven SEALs and a three-man crew—pilot, copilot, and loadmaster.

  The rest of the space, right down the middle of the aircraft, was occupied by big metal containers, loaded with every last one of the platoon’s weapons, rifles, machine guns, combat knives, pistols, all of the breaching tools, and dozens of ropes, heavy and light as well as fast ropes (30 foot, 90 foot and 120 foot).

  There was climbing equipment, including ladders, for urban assault and the possibility of scaling buildings. There were computers, cables, monitors, and flat-screen TVs—everything to set up an instant SEAL platoon ops room, no matter where. All the comms equipment, radios, antennae, backpacks, and GPS were packed.

  All of their personal operations gear was packed and stowed. Every item of medical equipment SEALs take on patrol was in there. The SEALs support staff had taken care of everything. It was perhaps the first time either Jon or Matt realized precisely the high regard in which the Team members were held. By everyone.

  Because everything that could be done for them had been done. They were required to present only themselves, with their handheld ready bag, which holds each SEAL’s M-4 rifle, body armor for Iraq, plus night-vision goggles, a combat knife and Sig-Sauer pistol, helmet, and medical blow-out kit.

  The ready bag contained all the essentials in case they ran into what they quaintly describe as an “Oh shit! scenario.” As the enormous Boeing freighter commenced its final flight path, helmets and body armor would be pulled on, with rifles ready. No SEAL would disembark through that aircraft door unless the platoon was prepared as a fighting unit to engage the enemy.

  One by one they embarked the aircraft, climbing the boarding stairs in the early morning darkness of Virginia’s Atlantic coast. When they were inside and all together, the CO reminded them for the last time on American soil: “This is a very serious SEAL deployment. We are going to an extremely dangerous place, and every one of you needs to remember every last lesson you have been taught. Might as well start right now and put on your game faces. Because that’s the way it’s likely to be from now on.”

  Matt recalls that this was a departure like no other they had ever experienced. There was not one iota of levity—no laughs, no jokes. Like so many valorous young men in the past, all of them holders of the legendary SEAL Trident, they were leaving for a war zone. And not everyone comes back.

  In silence they each sought out a spot on the aircraft, slinging their hammocks between the great steel packing cases that were stacked high to the ceiling. They cleated them off about ten feet above the cargo floor, some fastened to the high freight palettes, others to the heavy nets that covered the weapon cases.

  And everyone felt the faint shudder down the interior as the four giant Pratt and Whitney engines were fired up—special military designation: Globemaster III—F117-PW-100, over forty thousand pounds thrust on each one—seventy-two tons of raw turbo-jet power to hurl them skyward.

  They set off into a gusting March wind, the twenty wide wheels of the undercarriage rolling hard through the first revolutions of a journey that would put both Matt McCabe and Jon Keefe through some kind of a living hell. But not yet.

  The C-17 thundered southwest, rising off the runway and banking left over the myriad of bays behind the SEAL base. Climbing north up the Atlantic, they left the long finger of Virginia’s eastern shore to portside and pressed on along the eastern seaboard over the deep waters off New Jersey, staying well out to sea as they made for Nantucket Island and then the coast of Nova Scotia.

  The nine men who traveled with Matt and Jon were a highly diverse group—the most important of them was almost certainly the experienced Sam Gonzales, from Blue Island, South Chicago, a Special Operations petty officer 1st class, aged around twenty-nine and a highly decorated SEAL, including a Bronze Star with valor. Sam had been in the Navy since 1999 and a SEAL since 2006.

  He was one of the most popular SO1s on Team 10, a very smooth operator of the comms systems and a joint terminal attack controller (JTAC). And on top of all that he dealt with the onerous duties of the leading petty officer. He stood only five feet seven inches tall, but he found a way to look like an offensive lineman for his local Chicago Bears.

  Also on board was a highly amusing twenty-nine-year-old petty officer 1st class from South Carolina, a SEAL who had served in Yemen and Baghdad. He was a breacher by trade and went by the colorful name of “Greens.”

  Next to Jon on the flight was another exquisitely named Navy SEAL: Carlton Milo Higbie IV, a twenty-six-year-old petty officer 2nd class. Carl, as he was usually called, was the son of a wealthy financier, based—where else?—in Greenwich, Connecticut.

  This six-foot, 240-pound SEAL had always known he would greatly prefer some bomb-blasted landing beach or the rubble of the Fallujah ruins to an office on Wall Street. Carl was a big boy, in terrific shape—the consummate SEAL noncommissioned officer. As a JTAC, his job was to stay in touch with the overhead aircraft on all missions. Jon was one of his main weight-lifting buddies.

  Another petty officer 1st class on board was Eric, the platoon’s top medic and lead sniper. He was an excellent swimmer and runner, and he competed in triathlons. He was very, very fast across the sand. Slightly unusually for such a dedicated athlete, Eric was also the platoon intellect, a graduate of Georgia Tech, which NASA now recognized as the aerospace capital of all US universities.

  Echo Platoon called him the rocket scientist. And although he could most certainly find his way through outer space, Eric was equally adroit at navigation on planet Earth. He spent a lot of time studying maps, and this made him, in SEAL parlance, the point man, out in front of the others, leading the Team from
waypoint to waypoint, checking the ground contours, watching the compass and the GPS.

  Eric was, invariably, the reconnaissance leader, exploring the lay of the land, reporting back from his forward position. He was experienced, too, and had already been on two combat deployments, one of them to Baghdad at a very bad time. Every man on the C-17 was pleased to have Eric in the platoon.

  The other five SEALs who traveled in the C-17 have remained in the US Navy, and their names will not be revealed. Meanwhile the mighty Globemaster III, jammed to the gills with SEAL equipment, thundered out over the North Atlantic, making its crossing just to the south of Greenland.

  It was an eight-hour journey, and the men mostly slept, waking when they entered Europe and crossed the Scottish borders before flying high over the rough, gale-swept North Sea. They made their mainland Europe landfall just north of Ostend, Belgium, and then descended over tiny Luxembourg and into the American Air Base at Ramstein, Germany.

  They touched down shortly after 1900, and it was as dark as it was in the United States when they took off. This was a two-hour refueling stop for the C-17, which took on board about a zillion gallons of gas and, for the SEALs, a few dozen cheeseburgers.

  Surrounded by fifty-three thousand Americans—the largest overseas population of US citizens in the world—the guys from Echo Platoon were mildly surprised at how isolated they immediately became. It seemed that no one felt sufficiently confident to come over for a chat.

  But Ramstein is a massive military base, home of the 86th Airlift Wing, headquarters of US Air Force in Europe. Everyone knows the unwritten rules of the Special Forces: basically, leave them alone, because their work is always top secret and ought not to be discussed with anyone.

  Matt had firsthand experience of this military form of omertà, their own code of silence. “The SEALs operated with the Marines for a couple of months while we were in the Gulf,” he recalled. “I never once spoke to any of them. It’s just the way it is with SEALs. They always seem pretty quiet, and everyone keeps their distance.”