Tom Sileo

by Brothers Forever

  —Brendan

  Brendan’s parents, Kevin and Maureen, worried every day about their son. For Tom and Janet, watching Brendan deploy to Iraq and then Afghanistan was like having another son in combat.

  When Janet became anxious, she would take Brendan’s gold Navy SEAL trident out of her handbag and say the same prayers she used to say for Travis. When Tom read or watched the news, which didn’t include nearly as much reporting from Afghanistan in 2010 as it had from Iraq three years earlier, he wondered what his son’s former roommate was working on at the same moment in the country where 9/11 was planned.

  America had changed dramatically in the eight and a half years since Brendan, Travis, and millions of Americans had watched the Twin Towers fall on live television. On November 4, 2008, the American people elected Barack Obama as the first African American president in US history. In his January 20, 2009, inaugural address, the new president echoed his theme of change:

  We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort, even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We’ll begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan.

  With old friends and former foes, we’ll work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat and roll back the specter of a warming planet.

  We will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense.

  And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that “Our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”

  Although a Democratic president had replaced a Republican in the White House, the burden shouldered by military families was largely unchanged. Two days after the new commander-in-chief took office, twenty-one-year-old US Army Specialist Matthew Pollini, of Rockland, Massachusetts, was killed near al-Kut, Iraq, in a vehicle rollover. Two days later, twenty-five-year-old US Marine Lance Corporal Julian Brennan, of Brooklyn, New York, was killed while supporting combat operations in Afghanistan’s Farah province.

  Almost three years before the last US troops would leave Iraq, and with no end in sight for the ongoing struggle in Afghanistan, thousands of American service members still faced danger on a daily basis. At home, their loved ones continued waiting, worrying, and sacrificing.

  As assistant officer in charge of his SEAL Team Three platoon, Brendan saw the terrorist threat firsthand in a way few Americans could in the spring or summer of 2010. He was driven not by ideology, but by the same promise he and Travis had made when they were called to action after 9/11. As long as evil men wished to do Americans harm and demonstrated the willingness and capability to do so, brave men and women like Brendan and his fellow US service members would step forward to confront them.

  With the Taliban launching its annual spring offensive, Brendan and his platoon started to see more action in May, just as he had predicted in his e-mail to Tom and Janet. Surrounded by jagged cliffs, extreme poverty, and acute desolation, which many of the younger SEALs had never experienced, it was Brendan’s responsibility to keep them optimistic, focused, and sharp. But considering that the SEALs were sleeping on an FOB “in the middle of nowhere,” thousands of miles from home, setting a positive tone was never an easy task.

  Rather than barking out orders to the SEALs under his command, Brendan was “Loon-Dog.” The enlisted SEALs, or “E-Dogs,” as they were nicknamed, loved working for the twenty-nine-year-old lieutenant, because even though Brendan was an officer, he still thought of himself as just one of the guys.

  During his deployment, Brendan spent roughly the equivalent of two full weeks on “over watch” missions above three districts in northern Zabul province, where the lieutenant and SEALs under his command would look down from the cliffs to make sure their brothers in arms operating below were safe from lurking Taliban and al Qaeda fighters. But after only a day or two on the high ground, Brendan was concerned that his primary responsibilities as an officer and squad commander weren’t enough of a contribution to his platoon. Upon returning to base, he started training on a .50 caliber sniper rifle so he could directly help his teammates blunt the enemy threat.

  After only limited training, Brendan was a consistent shot from a thousand yards. Over the next few months he made some of the most accurate shots his teammates had ever seen to protect Americans and Afghans in the villages below.

  Wearing a half-shell helmet and carrying heavy gear and the .50 cal sniper rifle in his huge backpack, the bearded warrior patrolled, exercised, ate, and hung out with his entire platoon. When there was extra gear to carry, the officer threw it on his back instead of ordering enlisted SEALs to carry it. Regardless of the command structure or rank, Loon-Dog treated everyone with the same respect.

  When things got dicey on the battlefield, however, there was no mistaking who was in charge, like one day when gunfire rang out beneath the over watch position Brendan’s SEAL team had established above a small, Taliban-controlled Afghan village.

  “Incoming!” Brendan yelled.

  As bullets pounded the mountain rocks that were shielding his team, who took cover as soon as they heard their leader’s unmistakable voice, Brendan’s commanding officer (CO) asked for a status report over the radio.

  “We’ve got enemy fire coming from just outside the village,” Brendan said. “Nobody’s been hit, and we’re prepping the counterattack.”

  “Lieutenant?” the CO asked.

  “Sir?” Brendan repeated what he had said a few times before realizing the signal was dropping in and out, as it had been for most of the day.

  “Lieutenant,” the CO repeated. “If you copy, call me on the SAT [satellite] phone.”

  As soon as Brendan heard the order, he broke his crouch and stood up. The SAT phone was a few yards in front of the boulder that was protecting him.

  “Whoa, Loon-Dog,” exclaimed a surprised fellow SEAL, Petty Officer First Class Vic Nolan. “Be careful, sir.”

  Brendan knew his CO wouldn’t ask him to call unless it was extremely important, and for all he knew, retrieving the satellite phone could be a matter of life and death. Without blinking, Brendan hustled toward the phone, picked it up, and returned to his position as bullets whizzed by.

  “Loon-Dog . . . you alright?” Nolan said.

  “I’m okay,” said Brendan, acting more like he was taking an afternoon stroll than engaging in an intense firefight.

  Brendan then told his CO that his men were ready to strike back at the enemy. Moments later he aimed his sniper rifle at the enemy position. When the day was over, the Navy SEALs had once again disrupted the Taliban’s plans.

  At night in the cold, largely uninhabited land where he was serving, Brendan usually returned to his FOB, where he would unwind by lifting weights. At the same time, Amy would be starting her day in warm, sunny San Diego.

  Before Brendan called home, he would give his teammates a chance to call their wives and girlfriends first. He wound up calling Amy about once a week. On one particular night, he was relaxing after an all-day mission and called his wife.

  Amy was running around getting ready for work, making a cup of coffee with the birthday present Brendan had given her on the day he left for Afghanistan. Instead of spending money on pricey lattes at Starbucks, her husband had said, she’d now have her own machine and enough coffee to last the full six months.

  “Damn it, I just spilled my coffee,” said Amy.

  She told Brendan that nothing out of the ordinary was happening. But Brendan, who missed home, asked his wife to tell him anyway.

  “Well . . . things are crazy,” Amy said. “I can’t figure out how to merge our bank accounts online, work has been nuts, and Hayley and Lexi keep tearing up the furniture and peeing on the rug because I’m usually not home in time to take them out.”

  Amy was dealing with the stress that military spouses across the country, including wives o
f Brendan’s teammates, experienced every day. The young couple didn’t have children, but managing a household, its finances, two dogs, a full-time job, car repairs, and life’s daily curveballs was starting to wear on Amy after almost three months.

  “It’s just hard, Brendan,” she said. “Sometimes I can’t even think because there’s so much to do. . . . Things get so hectic.”

  With the same calmness he had displayed on the battlefield, Brendan offered a gentle retort.

  “Just one quick question,” he said. “Did you get shot at today?”

  Amy abruptly stopped what she was doing and pressed the phone closer to her ear. After she asked Brendan if he was okay, the SEAL asked his wife to please answer the question.

  “Of course nobody shot at me today,” she said with a nervous chuckle. “What do you? . . .”

  Stopping herself mid-question when she understood her husband’s point, Amy felt bad for making such a big deal out of her relatively painless hassles.

  “See? There ya go,” Brendan said. “Believe me; I know it’s hard on your own. I totally get it, but just remember . . . only three more months.”

  “Three more months,” said Amy. “See you later.”

  “See you later,” Brendan said.

  After hanging up, Amy initially worried that she had upset Brendan, which she always told her friends was a big no-no during an overseas deployment. But when Amy checked her e-mail later that day, a PowerPoint presentation was waiting in her inbox. Brendan, who had a combat mission the next day, had stayed up late to send his wife instructions on how to merge their bank accounts online.

  Even though Brendan saw the sun set while Amy watched it rise, the young couple, separated by thousands of miles, were closer than ever.

  Later that night, when Brendan returned from his patrol, another assistant officer in charge, Lieutenant Steve Esposito, asked him what had happened during the day’s mission.

  “Nothing much,” Brendan responded, as he often did. “It was good.”

  It wasn’t until later—at the weekly Sunday dinner their CO scheduled to reinforce the platoon’s motto of “brotherhood”— that Esposito heard what had really happened outside the wire. Along with stories of his predeployment mountain training exploits in Alaska and Utah, in which Brendan wowed his teammates with his dogged approach and sheer might, the SEALs liked to joke about Loon-Dog standing up in a hail of bullets because he needed to make a phone call.

  Each Sunday evening before they broke bread, the SEALs, prompted by their CO, would go around the table and each say something nice about the teammate to his left. Though some SEALs initially compared this to a classroom exercise, it boosted morale and made the team even closer, just as the CO intended.

  Sitting to Brendan’s right was Esposito, who was routinely impressed by his fellow officer’s valor, character, and humility. Instead of pumping up his accomplishments or exaggerating stories from the battlefield, Brendan’s “nothing much” response embodied what being a SEAL was all about: accomplishing remarkable things without caring who got the credit.

  “So what do I like about Loon-Dog?” Esposito said. “Where do I start?”

  With every ensuing Sunday dinner and combat mission, the platoon’s motto of brotherhood was being woven ever more deeply into its fabric. Much of that was thanks to Loon-Dog, whom every SEAL on the FOB was starting to model himself after.

  One day Brendan and his fellow SEALs went house to house clearing terrorists from a collection of tiny villages in a one-mile radius. As the combat mission wore on, the team was becoming exhausted from carrying its gear and dealing with the constant, heart-pounding intensity of the unknown. When they flung open the doors of houses or huts, enemy fighters could be waiting to ambush them. During most searches, however, they encountered civilians, including frightened, confused children still living in the grip of the Taliban’s iron fist.

  On this day Brendan made a surprise discovery while searching a mud hut. Instead of IEDs or AK-47s, they found a litter of puppies. Starving and thin, the brown and black dogs, which were probably around eight weeks old, would almost certainly die or wander around the war-torn village for the next few months as strays.

  Thinking of his dogs back home, Brendan gave a unique order to Petty Officer First Class Nolan.

  “Hey, can you put that pup in my pouch?” he said. “We need a camp dog, and this little guy is perfect.”

  “Yes, sir,” Nolan said.

  For the next three hours, including a tense stint just outside a village, where Brendan kept his rifle at the ready in case any Taliban fighters jumped out and fired on his fellow SEALs, the puppy peeked out of the greenish-brown pouch on Brendan’s left side. Next to a first aid kit and box of ammunition, the Afghan puppy got its first taste of freedom.

  Battle-hardened and more muscular than ever after ramping up his already fanatical workout routine inside the war zone, Brendan was a nightmare for insurgents and terrorists. But even as the Navy SEAL peaked as a warrior, he was still Brendan. Compassionate and caring, he shared Travis’s view that a combat deployment wasn’t all about killing bad guys. It was also about respecting different cultures and religions while bringing hope to distant, faraway lands.

  Back at the FOB, Brendan knew the names of every Afghan local who worked on the base and became acquainted with several janitors and cooks. On or off the battlefield, Brendan didn’t view civilians as an obstacle to accomplishing SEAL Team Three’s mission. To Brendan and those around him, the Afghans truly mattered.

  Brendan’s soft spot for the locals meant he had no sympathy for the insurgents and terrorists trying to kill them. Three years after his friend’s life was cut short by a sniper terrorizing Fallujah, Brendan used his own high-powered rifle to bring murderers of men, women, and children to justice. As a former intelligence officer who was now meticulously planning missions with SEAL commanders, Brendan knew whom to target before ever putting his eye to his rifle’s scope. When he did, however, the results were clear, precise, and devastating for the enemy.

  In the heat of battle, even the strongest, best-trained warriors become engulfed in chaotic, unpredictable dilemmas. Once, as SEAL Team Three held another over watch position near a cliff’s peak, Brendan and his men were taking incoming fire from insurgents in the valley, which echoed with sounds of gunfire.

  “Hey, I need you to grab that box of ammo,” Brendan told a fellow SEAL, Petty Officer Second Class Joe Battaglia, while talking to his CO over the radio.

  Bullets were smashing into rocks and tree branches, as well as ricocheting all around them, and if an American stuck his head out for even a few seconds, it could mean death. Unless they quickly regained the upper hand, every Navy SEAL on the mission was almost certainly in grave danger.

  Brendan was out of ammo, as was almost everyone on his team. The problem was that the box was a few yards away, in an exposed position.

  “I’ll get it,” Battaglia said. “But I’m waiting a minute or two until this shit calms down.”

  Putting down the radio, Brendan repeated his order.

  “No, we need that ammo right now,” he said.

  Brendan, who never minced words, did not give an order unless it was for good reason. Nothing meant more to the lieutenant than the safety of his men, but as he worked with the CO to plan a counterattack, which would include air support, he simply did not have time to retrieve the ammunition himself.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but that’s suicide,” Battaglia said as gunfire from the valley grew even louder. “Look behind you. . . . Rounds are landing right above our heads!”

  Without speaking, Brendan put down the phone, stood up, and retrieved the ammunition. Looking at the SEAL who hadn’t followed his order quickly enough, he slammed the box on the ground as insurgents shot at him from below. They missed.

  “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Brendan asked before resuming the strategy call with his CO.

  Far from showing up a teammate who he had no doubt was
courageous, Brendan was demonstrating that he would never ask someone to do something that he wouldn’t do himself. It was the last time anyone under his command ever hesitated before following an order.

  “Loon-Dog, I’m really sorry about what happened today,” Battaglia said after his team had eliminated the threat and returned to the FOB. “I fucked up.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Brendan said. “I trust you, brother.”

  Back home, Amy had invited several Navy SEAL wives, fiancées, and girlfriends on a “girl’s trip” to Las Vegas. It was summer, and if everything went as planned, Brendan’s platoon would be coming home soon.

  Amy knew her friends were feeling the same tense, burgeoning sense of anticipation while waiting for their significant others. A Lady Gaga concert in Vegas was the perfect antidote to counting every hour and minute until their loved ones finally returned.

  For the first time, Brendan was deployed in a war zone without Sarver, who was on a separate mission in Iraq. Amy, who had become even closer to Sarver’s girlfriend, invited Heather on the Vegas trip.

  On a lazy Sunday by the pool after the raucous Lady Gaga show the previous night, Amy, Heather, and their group were discussing “the boys.” As the wives talked about whether they and their husbands might soon start families, Amy turned to Sarver’s girlfriend.

  “I think you have it so much harder than us,” Amy said. “At least we know that when they come home, we’re already married. . . . The future is pretty much set.”

  Sarver’s girlfriend was touched by Amy’s remark. Heather wondered how Amy could put the plight of others first while her own husband was fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan. Amy, Heather realized, was truly selfless.

  After the Vegas trip, Heather called her boyfriend in Iraq. After seeing a brief news report about violence there, she was concerned for his safety.

  “I’m not the one you need to worry about,” Sarver said. “Brendan is the one you need to worry about.”

  Brendan? Heather remembered how Sarver had called him “a machine” during BUD/S, and she knew the larger-than-life reputation that had followed Brendan around ever since. Though she didn’t doubt the seriousness of the danger Brendan faced, Heather mostly dismissed her boyfriend’s remark. Brendan was invincible.