KBL

by John Weisman

  Capture/kill, just like the heart of all special operations, relies on the theory of relative superiority, which was first formalized in 1995 in Bill McRaven’s seminal book Spec Ops. Briefly stated, relative superiority occurs when a small group of assaulters gains a pivotal tactical advantage over a larger adversary. They do this through the use of six basic principles listed by McRaven: speed, surprise, simplicity, security, repetition, and purpose.

  Think Entebbe, July 4, 1976, or Skorzeny’s September 1943 rescue of Benito Mussolini, missions conducted by small units that, because of speed, surprise, and violence of action, overcame much larger opposing forces and achieved their objectives successfully. What had worked for the Nazi captain Otto Skorzeny were the same dynamics that allowed Yonatan Netanyahu’s Israeli shooters to rescue a hundred hostages from their terrorist captors: the six basic principles of relative superiority.

  It was those basic principles that T-Rob and his Red Squadron assault element would hone in their shoot houses at Dam Neck, up north at Fort A. P. Hill, where they practiced fast-roping and assaulting compounds from modified Black Hawk 60-J special operations helicopters, or the one hundred square miles of desert near Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, where they dropped out of perfectly good aircraft six miles above the ground and free-fell almost four miles before popping their chutes at eighteen thousand feet and parasailing two miles to their drop zone.

  Today T-Rob’s Charlie Troop and his DEVGRU mentor Danny Walker’s Alpha Troop were working a scenario that had been dropped on them at 0630. It was a live ammo drill, their tenth since Red Squadron had been reactivated eight days previously. They’d started with walk-throughs, then progressed to empty weapons. Then, three days ago, they’d commenced live fire exercises. It was all about bringing their shooting and moving skills—frangible skills—back online.

  The problem: Stage a helicopter insertion of a twenty-four-member assault element to capture/kill an HVT living in a multilevel villa in an urban environment. It was the same basic scenario they’d worked for the past two days. Only the shape of the target had changed. On the tenth, it was a two-story townhouse; yesterday, a split-level house; today there were three floors.

  They’d been supplied with a rough drawing of the villa’s exterior and the parcel on which it sat. There was one other structure, a square building that was marked out of bounds, which sat directly opposite the front door. There were no other entrances marked and no windows on the ground floor. They were not given any information about the interior design, but were informed they would be rehearsing a nighttime operation.

  This was SOP so far as the SEALs were concerned. Most HVT missions took place at night. That was when the target was most vulnerable and SEALs were in their element, given the array of night-vision, infrared, and thermal equipment available to them.

  Charlie’s 6-Team of six shooters was the entry team, which would breach the door, then follow 2-Team and work the starboard side of the ground floor. Charlie’s 2-Team, which comprised six assaulters, would clear the ground-floor rooms and hallways. One-Alpha’s shooters would take the second and third floors, and 3-Alpha’s SEALs would be exterior security.

  The two dozen men met in Red Squadron’s workroom, a nondescript space that closely resembled a large, midwestern high school classroom. Two flags, the Red, White and Blue and the Navy’s Blue and Gold, stood on stanchions at the front. The walls bore pictures taken during missions and photographic portraits of Red Squadron’s previous commanding officers. There were individual desks for seventy-two on a spatter-patterned linoleum tile floor, a reference library sporting IKEA shelves, an array of AV equipment whose cost probably went into the mid-six figures, a coffee dispenser, and half a dozen each secure and nonsecure computers.

  The Red Squadron CO, Commander David Loeser, waited until the Sailors settled in. Then he rapped on one of the front row desks and said, “Okay, guys, listen up. We’ve got another scenario from JSOC to work.”

  Loeser, a Marylander who’d grown up on the Eastern Shore near Cambridge, was thirty-nine and would probably make captain by the time he was forty-five. He was pretty happy with the squadron in general, and this particular group specifically. There was a good mix of youngsters and seasoned veterans. They had gelled, too, come together into a real team. They could work in pairs, quartets, half-dozens, or dozens. They were cross-trained and could handle one another’s assignments if necessary.

  They were, Dave Loeser thought as he looked at them, exactly what Roy Boehm, the maverick Mustang lieutenant and godfather of all SEALs, had in mind when in 1961 he’d conceived the idea of a Navy special operations unit of rugged individualists who worked together like the proverbial well-oiled machine, who could do everything from picking locks, to falling out of the skies holding an atomic submunition, to rescuing hostages, to dropping behind enemy lines to break things and kill people. A team that could go anywhere, do anything, and come out the other side having prevailed against all odds.

  Except for one factor. The Linda Norgrove disaster of November. Loeser thought of it as That Horrible Episode. The Norgrove debacle had, if not shattered their self-confidence, certainly dinged it badly. Red Squadron’s deployment had been curtailed. Until this past week, they’d been allowed to do nothing but administrative duties.

  After Norgrove, the entire squadron—six troops totaling seventy-eight Sailors—had been stood down. Because they were a team, the innocent suffered along with the guilty. There’d been no training, no range time, none of the classes in everything from battlefield medicine to hand-to-hand combat to other skills that kept their unique capabilities in top form.

  The day the inquiry ended, with one Sailor dismissed from DEVGRU and the others cleared, Loeser talked about his troop’s condition with Captain Tom Maurer, DEVGRU’s commanding officer. Maurer was sympathetic, but firm: either your people will get past this, or we’ll replace your people. The OPTEMPO, the pace of any operation, he reminded Loeser, was unforgiving. Either Red Squadron would pull its weight, or changes would be made.

  Loeser knew he had first-class personnel. Indeed the squadron CO thought the newly redeemed T-Rob and his shipmates were making excellent progress. Their tactical skills were first-class; their problem-solving abilities were good. What they needed now was the self-confidence they’d had prior to Norgrove. That was the nut that had to be cracked. Yes, they’d screwed up. Terribly. But they had to learn to live with it, and they had to learn from it. Loeser understood that the guns, knives, and grenades they carried were only tools. The most dangerous weapon a SEAL possessed was his brain. Right now, that particular weapon wasn’t operating the way it should. And it was his responsibility to fix the problem. What these kids needed, Loeser understood, was a nudge, an ineffable and indefinable something that would give them back the super edge that the very, very best of DEVGRU SEALs had. When that happened, Loeser would have Red Squadron back again.

  Loeser glanced appreciatively at the Alpha Troop master chief. Danny Walker had that edge. He was, in Loeser’s opinion, the best master chief in the Navy. Danny epitomized what Loeser considered Old Navy, the Navy of wooden ships and iron men. He was rough around the edges, but he demanded—and he received—110 percent from all who served under him. He achieved this, Loeser understood, because he led from the front. Led by example.

  It was a paradigm that had not been lost on Dave Loeser, who learned as much from Danny Walker as any of the enlisteds. That was one reason Loeser loved his job so much, loved Naval Special Warfare so much. NSW was a small community, a tight community. As an ensign just out of the Naval Academy he had seen that, just because some officers made it through BUD/S and wore the trident, they weren’t necessarily Warriors.

  But Loeser’s goal was to be a SEAL in the Roy Boehm mold, a lead-from-the-front Warrior. So even at the Academy, he had conscientiously sought out Warriors and tried to learn from them. He listened to chiefs as they talked about what they had done and how they had done it. He read Sun Tzu, Mu
sashi, and Clausewitz; he devoured books on tactics, history, and warfare.

  But even then he realized that he still had a lot to learn about both warfighting and leadership. That was why he applied to NSW and went to BUD/S, where he learned a lesson that all too many of his colleagues and Annapolis classmates failed to learn.

  It was during BUD/S Class 198 that Dave Loeser came to understand that from-the-front leadership is a two-way street. The Navy of ship drivers and Airedales revolved around a caste system set in stone: it was all about the ward room and the chiefs’ goat locker.

  In contrast, NSW was collegial. Officers and enlisteds went through BUD/S together. Suffered together, pulled together, and ultimately either prevailed together or failed together. Same in real life—it was . . . the Team.

  And the officers who didn’t pull together, who tried to maintain the caste system and didn’t trust their NCOs? Usually they did their fourteen months and then they left. For a staff job somewhere or a slot aboard one of the big gray monsters where they could hide in the ward room, away from all the scoffing chiefs and truculent Sailors, and be officers, managers, bureaucrats. Screw that. Which is why, after talking things over with his senior NCOs, Loeser decided to use shoot house exercises to bring back his squadron’s self-confidence.

  Danny and Charlie Troop’s senior NCO, Kerry Brendel, suggested a basic incremental approach. They’d start with dry runs, then move to live ammo, and finally force-on-force using Simunition training ammo. Loeser realized it was a perfect solution because it combined the SEAL fundamentals of approaching a target stealthily, attacking it swiftly and ferociously, while simultaneously honing frangible shooting skills, with the principle of learning from your mistakes.

  Dave Loeser projected a PowerPoint slide on the workroom’s wall-mounted flat screen. It showed the outline of the villa, an X marking the single entry. “No windows on the ground floor. One door—material unknown. Hostiles? Unknown. Family: wife, kids, and probable relatives.” He paused. “Ideas?”

  “Pretty straightforward—just like yesterday, except we don’t know about the hostiles.” Ken Michaud was, like Troy, one of Red Squadron’s youngsters; he’d just turned twenty-three. He had the lean, sinewy build of a marathoner, which he was. Tall and bearded, Padre, as the knuckle-scarred veteran of a Catholic education was known, had been top of his class at BUD/S. He’d been spotted as a potential DEVGRU candidate within weeks of his arrival at SEAL Team 2, and he had made it through selection less than a year ago—one of the squadron’s newest members. He’d been reassigned from Delta Troop to Charlie’s 6-Team to replace the Sailor who had fragged Linda Norgrove.

  Loeser asked, “So?”

  “Are we working against Jihadis?” Gunner’s Mate First Class Len Elliott was Alpha 1-Team. Tall, solidly built, with short blond hair going prematurely gray. His call sign was Rebel, and he’d been at DEVGRU for seven years and two wives.

  “Don’t know,” Loeser said. “All I was given was the layout.”

  In fact, the colonel from JSOC who’d given them the scenario had told Loeser to be vague about target, location, and occupants. “That’ll be pretty easy,” Loeser had responded, “because you haven’t given me any of that data anyway.”

  The colonel had laughed. “Ain’t life grand when it’s full of surprises.”

  Charlie 6-Team’s Machinist Mate First Class Jerry Mistretta, call-sign Cajun, cocked his head in the whiteboard’s direction. “You don’t know? Then we gotta factor dem Jihadis in.”

  “That could mean suicide vests.” Quartermaster First Class Blair Gluba, call sign Gunrunner, was a round-faced pocket rocket from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He had four filled-to-capacity gun safes at his home just off London Bridge Road, behind Oceana Naval Air Station, and whether he was on or off duty, he never carried fewer than two weapons on his person.

  The tall, angular boatswain’s mate first class from Florida, Roger “Heron” Orth, broke in: “Which means we got to get in and shoot them first.”

  “That would be the general idea, Heron. What’d they say on that TV cop show—‘Do it to them before they do it to us.’ ” Loeser popped another PowerPoint frame on the screen. “Unless, of course, there are women and children.” He let that possibility settle in for a couple of seconds, then put a new frame up. “Here’s the landing site. The scenario begins with a fast-rope insertion.”

  Troy’s hand went up. “Time?”

  “Five minutes or less.”

  “That’s doable, “ Padre said.

  “I’ll break it down, and we’ll talk it over,” Danny Walker said. “Be with you in a couple of minutes, Boss.”

  “Works for me.” Loeser dropped the remote on the desk. “Work it, then jock up. H-Hour is 0800.”

  8

  Dam Neck, Virginia

  January 12, 2011, 0812 Hours Local Time

  It was cold enough in the shoot house that the SEALs could see their breath. The target villa was three stories high, perhaps forty feet to its roofline, and seventy feet in width. There was one door, right in the center, and no windows. There were two circles taped on the shoot house deck to indicate the fast-rope locations; in the center of each, a sixty-foot, soft, thick fast-rope was suspended from the ceiling. The platform from which the SEALs would drop was just over forty-five feet above the deck.

  From the left side it was just over ten yards to the single doorway, a straight run at about a 40-degree angle. The right-hand circle was just to the right of a square perhaps twelve feet on each side, built out of eight-foot-high moveable wall sections. Troy walked over and—habit—pulled on the fast-rope. Secure. He checked the angle. From the right-hand circle, the door couldn’t be seen.

  “Breachers and entry team have to see the door,” he called out. “So we drop left, Alpha right.”

  Rebel grabbed the right-hand fast-rope and hoisted himself a couple of feet off the ground. “Makes sense.”

  The first two assault elements broke into swim-team pairs and lined up to check equipment. They were jocked up in full assault kit: the newest model light ballistic helmets with dual-tube NODs—night observation devices—and talk-through Peltor hearing protection with boom mikes that were connected to their communications suite M-BITR radios.

  Each assaulter had tailored his kit individually. Most favored lightweight plate-carriers with the stand-alone ceramic plates that made them more battlefield agile. Some wore CamelBak hydration-capable vests. Others had subload from which they attached pistols, magazine holders, and first-aid blowout kits. Other pouches held flexicuffs, rolls of tape, and other miscellaneous supplies.

  The official issue handgun for the U.S. military is the Beretta M-9, a 9mm semiautomatic pistol. Almost universally, SEALs reject that pistol in favor of one they consider more reliable and accurate, the Sig-Sauer 226 semiautomatic 9mm pistol. At DEVGRU the pistols du jour were Sig 226s, loaded with 124-grain +p+ hollowpoint, and Heckler & Koch’s new .45 ACP semiauto, with Speer 200-grain +p hollowpoint. Both pistols were durable enough to survive a maritime environment.

  Long guns were either HK416s, short-stroke, gas-piston-driven automatic assault rifles that fired the 5.56 NATO round, or, for working perimeters and stand-off, 7.62 LWRCI REPRs—gas-piston-driven rapid engagement precision rifles with 16.1-inch barrels, or the 12-inch barreled REPR JKW (joint kinetic weapon)—slung off a variety of slings, depending on each SEAL’s preferences and the mission requirements.

  Altogether the assaulters’ gear weighed close to fifty-five pounds. It was bulky, and it could be cumbersome when a dozen SEALs were crammed into the fuselage of a helo. Especially when the goal was to get all twelve out of the helo and onto the ground in ten seconds or less.

  The reason for the rush? To avoid vulnerability. As Admiral Bill McRaven wrote in Spec Ops, there is an area of vulnerability in every special operations mission during which the probability of mission completion can be compromised—compromised by what Clausewitz called la friction, compromised by the fog of war, com
promised by Murphy’s Law. Whatever the cause, the longer that area of vulnerability exists, the more likely it becomes that things will go south and relative superiority will not be achieved. So, when getting boots on the ground ASAP was key, fast-roping was the most effective insertion method.

  Basically, fast-roping is a controlled free fall. The operator goes out the helo and descends a rope using his hands as brakes. Thick leather gloves prevent rope burns—but not always. In fact, some fast-ropers have been known to adapt extra-thick welder’s gloves as their descent equipment of choice. The fast rope itself is an olive green, multiple strand, right-hand lay weave, soft-woven, multifilament polyester over multifilament polypropylene, with a diameter of one and three-quarter inches. It is known as a Plimoore fast rope. Plimoores come in four lengths: 30, 60, 90, and 120 feet, the most common being 60 or 90 feet. They have a tensile strength that exceeds thirty thousand pounds.

  Today the SEALs would have it easy. They were dropping off a platform on a single rope, not a hovering helo and twin ropes, where the rotor wash could smack them onto the ground if the helo shifted, or toss them into the air as they ran through the wash vortex. Still, between the weight of what they carried and the cumbersomeness of it all, even this sterile exercise could end in injury. Fast-roping is, to repeat, a (slightly) controlled free fall. And the human body free-falls at 180 feet per second—more than 120 miles an hour—once it achieves terminal velocity.

  Or, as Boatswain’s Mate First Class “Heron” Orth was fond of saying, “Ain’t gravity wonderful.”

  0819 Hours

  Dave Loeser came into the shoot house all geared up and carrying a thirty-gallon blue plastic garbage can. He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled to get everyone’s attention. “Change of plans, guys.”