by Dalton Fury
By now I was completely soaked, except for one area, and a few steps later, the icy water finally reached my groin, too, giving me a frigid reality check. I don’t exactly remember when Nitro and I eventually split up, but once we lost each other, another twenty-nine hours passed before I saw him again.
The rain worsened over the next few hours and my body temperature was dropping fast. I had only eaten a single bite of a chocolate Powerbar. I felt nauseous and lost my appetite, a sure sign that I needed to keep refueling my body, both with water and food. I ignored it. My rucksack was soaking up rain like a giant sponge, adding at least another five pounds to my load and making each step much more labored. To refill my Camelbak water container, I would have to take off the rucksack, but I was too cold and miserable to do so.
I was simply too focused on succeeding, too focused on moving forward one step at a time, and too stupid to stop for a few moments to refuel my body.
When the morning sun finally began to break over the horizon, about six hours into the march, I decided to get rid of the batteries in my flashlight to shed a few ounces of unneeded weight. The two D batteries were part of the load slowing me down, so I threw them into a fast-running creek, hoping I would finish the march before darkness fell again. It made some sort of fuzzy sense at the time.
I was continuing down the waterlogged trail that paralleled the creek when my mind told me I might have made a big mistake. Somewhere along the way I had allowed rain to seep into my clear plastic map case, probably when I had stopped to don my camouflage wet-weather jacket to prevent losing any more warmth in my body. I had waited until after I was thoroughly drenched from the rain to do it.
The map case is used to shield your map from inclement weather, and works well until you have to switch out map sheets as the trail leads you off of one sheet and picks up on a different map. My maps got soaked while I was swapping them, and from then on, with each slight tug inside the map case, the papers disintegrated. Figuring I was about thirty miles into the movement, with an assumed ten miles still to go, I knew I had big problems.
I crossed a footbridge that spanned a swift-running river to get to my next rendezvous point and saw another candidate, a blond and muscular Green Beret, standing beside a cadre vehicle. His map also had deteriorated from the rainwater, and he was piecing it back together like a child’s jigsaw puzzle. Luckily, the two portions of the map I needed to reach the next rendezvous point were still intact. I showed the cadre member sitting in the driver’s seat where I currently was on the map and the point to which I was going next. Those were the only two required pieces of information a candidate had to present before he could continue the exercise. Fortunately, we were not required to point out the exact route we planned to take, because that portion of my map had turned to mush. I also had a good hint because other candidates who had done a better job keeping their maps dry were moving in what I figured had to be the correct direction.
I set off again, physically and psychologically spent, moving one step at a time on some untapped fuel reserve that few men ever push themselves hard enough to experience. It’s so much easier just to quit.
Only a hundred meters along, I found myself staring at a massive hill. Without the details of the map to help me make a decision as to which way to go, or if an easier way existed, perhaps a small trail to get me to the top quickly, I just stepped off. Straight ahead.
Thick, intertwined, nearly impassable underbrush of wait-a-minute vines and trees slowed me to a snail’s pace. I worried, sniveled, and felt sorry for myself. I’m losing too much time. I will never make it in time. No, don’t quit, keep moving, the terrain can only get better. Maybe it’s less dense near the top. Fortunately, it was.
I broke free of the thick vegetation about ten yards from the crest of the mountain and a trail appeared, giving me a shot of adrenaline that I desperately needed. Maybe I can still make this. How long have I been walking? Twelve, thirteen hours? My pace quickened and my legs thanked me for finally stumbling onto flat land, and I was wondering if I had passed the rendezvous point or not. In fact, I was not even sure which direction to head on the trail but I soon found the answer.
To my amazement, someone was actually walking the same trail, but approaching me. He was in civilian clothes, and his blue rain jacket contrasted heavily with the dark browns and greens of the thick trees and bushes. Odd. Who in his right mind would be out here for a stroll in this weather? The answer hit me like a breath of fresh air: Only a Delta selection cadre member would be out here! That’s it! If I was correct then he must have just come from a rendezvous point somewhere up ahead. Then I hoped he was not moving toward a point that I might have missed.
As we neared each other, I tried to stand a little straighter and hide my physical and mental anguish. The hood was pulled over his head, but I recognized him. It was not just any cadre member; it was the longtime unit command sergeant major. As we passed each other I said, “Hello, sergeant major.” He responded only with a half grin, half smile, which was all I needed to pick up my pace.
The euphoria soon passed. It had been hours since I had seen another candidate and I was pretty much resigned to the belief that I wouldn’t make it. I was certain this would prove to be my last day, but there was no option other than to press on.
It began to rain harder and I was sure I was nearing hypothermia, and darkness was on me, a man who had disabled his own flashlight! I started looking for a dry place to stop for the night. I wanted to end it, but except for the sergeant major, way back, there was no one around to whom I could say, “I quit!” Any cadre member would have done, but I couldn’t find anybody at all.
I saw a small derelict cabin off the beaten trail, and I thought of building a fire to warm my tired bones and muscles and get some sleep before resuming my march in the morning. I was disappointed for failing. Lost in thought, the cabin was well behind me before I could decide whether to stop. Turn back? No, keep going. You can always find another spot to quit.
I reached another rendezvous point and my mind was arguing with itself—the devil telling me to jack it in and the angel whispering words of encouragement and strength. I pressed on.
Another hour and another rendezvous point. I had completely lost the ability to determine time or distance, even while wearing a perfectly good wristwatch and with a compass around my neck. My mind was numb to even kindergarten math.
As I went through the standard procedure of preparing to show the cadre member in the truck where I was and where I thought I was going next, the selection course commander, wearing bright and colorful civilian clothing, suddenly appeared from behind the truck. This is it. I’ll bet he enjoys seeing us at our most vulnerable and weakest state.
My camouflage Gore-Tex rain jacket was zipped all the way to the bottom of my chin, and a soaked black wool cap hung barely above my eyes, giving me the look of a tired and wet gangster. I was a pathetic sight for sure, and didn’t feel I deserved to call myself a soldier. My muscles, cramped as tight as a bear trap, screamed for mercy. Physically and mentally, I was finished.
The commander extended his right hand and said, very formally, “Captain Fury, congratulations on successfully completing the stress phase of selection and assessment. Your evaluation for potential service as an officer in Delta begins now. Good luck!”
I had made it.
The evaluation for potential service with Delta continued another four days before I finally found myself standing before the commanders’ board, wearing the best set of four torn and tattered camouflage uniforms I had and a pair of brush-shined and -scarred jungle boots.
I reported to the Delta commander, Col. Eldon Bargewell, a special ops legend. As an enlisted man during the Vietnam War, Bargewell served as a team leader in the Special Operations Group. Years later, having become an officer, he commanded Delta operators in Panama and was part of a handful of operators who rescued American citizen Kurt Muse from the Modelo prison. He led his squadron in Desert Storm, se
rved as a key figure in the Balkans, and was a general officer in Iraq.
At his right was the unit command sergeant major, the same man I had passed on the mountain trail a few days earlier, and about fifteen other Delta senior officers and sergeants also were in the room. The “docs,” the unit psychologists, were in the back of the room, dissecting every candidate’s mannerisms and responses. They already had taken their pound of flesh when I spilled my guts to them and allowed the shrinks full access to my closet of skeletons.
For roughly an hour now it was open season on Dalton Fury. Nothing was off limits as the personal and professional questions came at me like darts. Tell us about your run-ins with the law. What were you thinking when you ordered your company out on a twelve-mile road march on Christmas Day in Korea? How do you explain this? Can you be trusted? Why should we select you, an average officer?
Any fear of personal embarrassment was subordinate to their desires in the brutal interrogation, and at the end of the hour, I was totally confused and mentally exhausted. Colonel Bargewell stood, stepped forward, and extended his hand. “Captain Fury, welcome to Delta,” he said.
Next only to my wedding day and the births of my two children, it was the proudest moment of my life.
Yet it would still be some time before I would be considered a full-fledged Delta operator. Soon after the commander’s board, the would-be Deltas attend the six-month Operator Training Course, a finishing school where finer points of killing are taught, along with other unique skills required of a covert commando.
Finally, I was declared ready, and was put to work.
With the required operator training behind me, I was fortunate to land in Lt. Col. Gus Murdock’s squadron. I had met him only once before, when he had appeared in the rain at the end of the endurance course, sizing up the candidates, but knew him by reputation, which could be the base for a multivolume nonfiction action series.
Murdock had been associated with Delta since the early 1990s, had been on the ground in Mogadishu, was a key player in running down Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, and had hunted war criminals in the Balkans. Twice wounded in action, he would give up his command just before 9/11, then to no one’s surprise, was one of the first special operations officers inside Afghanistan. He spent several years in Iraq commanding a Joint Special Operations Task Force, and was there when Saddam Hussein was captured. Murdock eventually became the overall commander of Delta Force, and was the most phenomenal officer I ever served under.
Gus took a personal interest in the mental and physical conditioning of his subordinate officers, and on Officer Day he took pleasure in pitting fellow officers Serpico, Bad Chadio, Super D, and me against each other in man-to-man, winner-take-all commando competitions. Of course, Gus never was a good spectator and would usually be found in front of the pack during these adventures.
I’m convinced that Murdock was hiding gold or moonshine down the hill at the Delta obstacle course because he was always there. At least once a week Gus would show up unannounced in our office wearing a dull green flight suit and grab all the officers to “run the O course.” We learned to make ourselves scarce around the squadron area just before lunch.
Not to be outdone, Sergeant Major Ironhead and my second troop sergeant major, Jim, dreamed up masochistic events of their own. The events had to be painful, unique, and involve some analyzing of a problem. Simply thinking wasn’t enough to be successful. Climb four flights of stairs at the sniper condo and come down carrying a 150-pound dummy over your shoulder; drag a wounded teammate one hundred yards as fast as possible; put on full fighting kit, close to forty pounds of gear, and use a long rope and simple snap link to get your team up an elevator shaft.
All these exercises were tailored after real-world expectations and designed to break up the monotony of the standard days of close quarters battle, running, shooting, lifting, and swimming. Guys in Delta typically possess type A personalities so each event was very competitive. Nobody liked to lose, including me, but I was just too average among these elite men to ever win. And I knew it.
In Delta, as in the most successful Fortune 500 companies like GE, Microsoft, and Cisco, the organization makes the individual its number-one priority. It teaches, nurtures, and implements bottom-up planning. That is the direct opposite of the U.S. Army’s structured and doctrinally rigid military decision-making process, which is too slow and inflexible for fastpaced, high-risk commando missions or minds, and one undeniably driven from the top down.
The Delta technique is a modification of the Delphi method of estimation or prediction that was developed by the RAND Corporation. In Delphi, groups of experts are elicited for combined judgments. We apply this method to planning complicated direct-action assaults.
The sergeants in Delta typically stay in the Unit for eight to twelve years, which provides a continuing institutional memory. Their collective longevity ensures that most good ideas have been proven as “best practice” methods and can be expected to serve the Unit well again. They also remember mistakes that must not be repeated. The senior officers in Delta have spent multiple tours in the Unit, some ten years and counting. The obvious experience base is priceless and it would be foolish to exclude any of those men from the process.
Still, there is no confusion that bottom-up planning also means bottom-up leadership. Leadership can’t be abdicated. But the practice of bringing in these quick minds on decisions is one of the greatest virtues of Delta. Shared knowledge and the cultivation of organizational strength must be fully understood and embraced by everyone selected for the service. Individuals are subordinate to the group.
I refer to this as the Delta problem-solving process, in which a group of experts, say fifteen operators and five experts in critical support skills (communications; nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare; medical; explosives; etc.), are presented with a problem (hostage rescue, kill-or-capture mission) and interact face-to-face in a combined session. After hearing the problem, the group breaks up into their respective assault or sniper teams to develop solutions. Unlike the normal Delphi method, Delta encourages an adversarial process and exploratory thinking.
My job as a subordinate commander was not to have all the answers but rather to guide the process, keep it moving, and as Gus Murdock consistently cautioned, prevent groupthink from taking over. Then, what the experts conclude needs to be cross-checked with the intent of the higher two commanders before the final decision is made.
My three troop sergeant majors had more than three decades in the commando business, which shored up my personal inexperience in the counterterrorist trade. Their knowledge and camaraderie, tested in battle, was an enormous combat multiplier. Who could blame me for wanting to work with men of such caliber? Together, we formatted and packaged the product at the end of the process, synched it with the other moving pieces in the big picture, then briefed it back to the experts as a group to allow for any changes of opinion and to ensure we all were in as we moved toward launch time. In Delta, egos need to be checked at the door.
Strangely, the greatest benefit of this bottom-up process is saving precious time. Conventional units doctrinally prepare three courses of action, then undergo a lockstep process to decide which course presents the most promise of success, based on what the enemy is believed likely to do in a given situation. A conventional staff scrutinizes each option and ultimately recommends the one most likely to succeed.
This can waste an enormous amount of time and it is unsuited to the fluid, ambiguous nature of the war on terror. Minutes count. By the time a conventional planning process has been completed, Delta is already typically “mission complete” and back in the chow tent for hot soup and crackers.
The positive value of our organizational culture and the uncommon sergeant-to-officer relationship cannot be overestimated or matched in any other military organization. By way of example, our squadron’s troop sergeant majors already were living legends inside the Delta community when the attacks of
9/11 took place.
Jim and Bryan were both decorated for valor for leading small teams in the Tora Bora Mountains in 2001, awards that were pinned next to the Bronze Stars for Valor they had won during a little-known firefight on a rocky outcrop in western Iraq in 1991. Jim eventually became the squadron sergeant major and retired from Delta after being wounded in Iraq and earning his third Bronze Star for Valor. His new job would be no less dangerous.
The third one, Pat, was wounded and decorated during Operation Acid Gambit, the rescue of hostage Kurt Muse at the beginning of the invasion of Panama. Pat survived three helicopter crashes during his time in Delta, and was again wounded during the first combat raid into Afghanistan before retiring several months later.
A fourth troop sergeant major, Larry, was also on the Muse rescue in Panama and is one of the best pistol shots in the world. Soon after retiring, Bryan, Pat, and Jim took their skills back to Iraq and Afghanistan, as part of an organization with the mission of protecting our troops from improvised explosive devices—IEDs. Résumés containing the words “Delta Force” rise to the top of the heap in a hurry in today’s security-conscious world. Dozens of former Delta operators have moved into the security industry, while others have taken their skills to the CIA, and they provide progressive leadership, organizational ingenuity, unique expert training, and unparalleled vision in helping protect the United States.
Having retired from the army, many of Delta’s world-class shooters have chosen to carry their skills to the civilian, law enforcement, and military markets where they teach the finer points of combat marksmanship and urban battlefield tactics. Delta Force legends like Paul Howe of Combat Shooting and Tactics Inc., Larry Vickers of Vickers Tactical Inc., Brian Searcy of Tiger Swan Inc., and Kyle Lamb of Viking Tactics Inc., can’t only teach you how to shoot a gnat off a bull’s ass at fifty yards while on the move but they will actually show you how it’s done first. And they will teach you the combat mind-set so important to develop to do this task while someone is trying to kill you first. If you truly want to see the best of the best in action and are serious about dropping the bad guy before he gets the drop on you, then give one of these guys a call.
