by Mark Owen
I felt the truck slow and then stop. The driver cut the engine and seconds later threw open the back door. I climbed out of the truck with the other three divers and trudged through the snow to the water.
We got into pairs and attached a line to each other so no one would get lost. I would never be more than four feet apart from my swim buddy. We waded into the water. I took two long and slow deep breaths, put in my regulator, and slipped into the creek. With our goggles on and dive rigs ready to go, we gave each other a quick thumbs-up and began submerging ourselves in the frigid water. I had to stifle a gasp as the ice-cold water washed over my head and face. In seconds it was pitch-black.
“I hate diving,” I thought.
I was nervous. This was one of my first missions—it was training, but we were in an uncontrolled environment and the dangers were real—and I wasn’t completely comfortable in the water. I knew being a SEAL meant underwater operations, but I dreaded them. The water portion of BUD/S was hard for me. The long runs and push-ups during BUD/S never worried me, but the water tests did. I wasn’t a surfer. I wasn’t really a swimmer. I had never done a lot of swimming as a kid in Alaska.
I can remember my dad challenged me once when I was almost a teenager to swim across the river in front of our house. The current pushed against me as I slowly swam. By the time I reached the far bank, I was a quarter of a mile downriver from where I’d started. That was the farthest I’d swum before I started training for BUD/S. When it came time to pass the fifty-meter underwater swim during BUD/S, I had the same nervous feeling as I had getting ready to dive under the dock in Alaska.
The fifty-meter underwater swim is one of the first pass-or-fail tests during BUD/S. I remember it was a sunny day in June, the clouds having burned away to reveal a blue sky. The pool was across from the BUD/S training area on Naval Base Coronado, which sits across the bay from San Diego.
My BUD/S class ran over to the pool in the morning. We’d already spent hours in the cold surf doing flutter kicks and running for miles in the sand. We all knew the test was coming, and there was a nervous energy up and down the ranks. We crowded on one side of the pool in our tan shorts, shirtless and barefoot, and listened to the safety brief.
“If you want to stay in this training, you’re going to have to do this swim,” the instructor told us as we huddled on the deck. “The key is to stay as relaxed as you can.”
The swim wasn’t timed. Swim fifty meters in the twelve-foot-deep pool—down and back in one breath. Safety swimmers were positioned above and below us as we swam. Doctors and an ambulance waited poolside in case of emergency.
The test was simple, on paper. But that was before the instructors took away any advantages. No diving off the wall. We had to step out far enough to do a front flip underwater, so once you started toward the far end of the pool you had no forward momentum.
The underwater swim was part of the first phase of BUD/S, which includes a grueling five-and-a-half-day stretch called Hell Week. During Hell Week, each candidate sleeps only about four total hours but runs more than two hundred miles and does physical training for more than twenty hours per day.
BUD/S is all about training your mind and body to achieve more than you think possible. It is the first test in a SEAL’s training and career. The SEAL motto, “The only easy day was yesterday,” was about to become very clear to us.
I don’t think I realized it at the time, but BUD/S is a series of building blocks starting with the fifty-meter swim and Hell Week in the first phase, followed by dive training in the second phase, and then firearms and explosives training in the final phase. Basically, you start with baby steps and end up doing the things that can kill you if not handled correctly. You have to pass each one to keep going. Fail once and you wash out.
I knew, coming from Alaska, that swimming was going to be my weakest skill. My SEAL buddy in college taught me the breaststroke and the sidestroke, which is all I needed. And for one semester, I worked out with my college club team. But of all the tests in BUD/S, this one worried me. I knew it was all or nothing. I knew no matter how tired, nervous, or scared I was, I couldn’t let doubt creep into my head. I had to make it.
After the safety briefing, we sat in lines—nut to butt, as we say—in our tan shorts. Over my shoulder, I could hear splashes as my classmates jumped into the pool. The night before, guys had been full of tips and advice. We’d talked about trying to stay deep. I didn’t want to be a foot underwater, because I might be tempted to poke my head up. I had decided to try to stay at six or seven feet.
There was no talking as I waited for my name to be called. A few minutes before I stepped to the edge of the pool, I took two deep breaths. I wanted to slow everything down in my mind in an attempt to relax and focus.
“This is easy,” I told myself as I walked to the edge of the pool. “All the instructors did it. It’s not impossible. Chill out.”
When it was my turn to go, I stepped feetfirst into the pool and disappeared under the surface. I pushed my head down and kicked my legs over into a flip. I could feel the water surge up my nose, forcing me to blow out some of my last breath. I was uncomfortable from the start.
I pushed my hands up and using the breaststroke started toward the far end of the pool. It looked more than twenty-five meters away. I knew the test was a battle of distance, not time. I didn’t hurry. Instead, I concentrated on slow, deliberate strokes. There is a saying, “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” I was living proof as I glided below the surface.
I felt good physically, but I couldn’t stop my mind from thinking about how far away the wall looked. At the bottom of the pool, I spotted one of the instructors. He had a regulator in his mouth connected to a scuba tank. I watched as he tracked us from the bottom, ready to spring up and rescue one of us if we started to drown.
Above me, another instructor with a scuba mask and snorkel kept pace. He looked like a predator ready to dive after his prey.
The whole swim takes only forty seconds to a minute, but it felt a lot longer. My lungs kept reminding me I needed air and my mind was begging me to surface. As I reached the wall, I spun around and set my legs to push with all my might. It felt good to have some momentum heading back to where I started.
By now, the burning in my lungs was impossible to ignore. I knew I’d be “chicken necking” soon. That is the first step before you pass out. Think of it as a gag reflex. I could feel my head start to bob as my body tried to force me to breathe. The first feelings of panic started to tingle, but I quickly pushed them deeper into my mind. Instead, I focused on my slow, deliberate stroke, as the wall grew larger and larger.
“Just keep swimming,” I pleaded with myself. “Keep swimming.”
But I couldn’t stop the gasping. It wasn’t mental. It was my body in revolt. My lungs were on fire, threatening to come out of my chest. My mind started to panic and my focus began to wane. It isn’t natural to deny your body air. We’re hardwired to survive, and we need air to do it.
But I fought to get control of my mind. I focused on the ever-growing far wall. I committed to staying underwater. I refused to give up. This was the first real test. If I couldn’t do this in a clean, heated pool in sunny San Diego, what was I going to do in the North Atlantic during a storm?
The chicken necking eventually stopped, and with each stroke, I got closer to the wall. But I could also feel myself losing consciousness. My vision blurred around the edges. With each stroke, the darkness started to crowd my vision. Like a fog, the shadow started in my peripheral vision and I knew in a few seconds I might pass out.
I had to be near the wall. I reached out to touch it. Rough hands grabbed me under my arms. The instructors pulled me out of the water like a trophy fish. I flopped down on the pool deck and took a deep breath. I could feel my lungs draw in deep, and my body relaxed. I took several more deep breaths and then tried to get up.
“Sta
y down,” I heard one of the instructors bark at me.
I rested my head back on the warm deck. It’s rare for instructors in BUD/S to let you rest, and I was going to take full advantage. One by one my classmates finished. I watched the instructors throw the limp body of one of my classmates up onto the deck. He was out cold. After a few quick breaths, he gagged and coughed his way back to consciousness. The minute he did, he looked at the nearest instructor.
“Did I make it?”
The fact that seconds before, he was unconscious seemed like a minor detail. I understood because, like him, I didn’t want to fail. Failure was almost worse than death.
“Stay down,” an instructor said. “Relax.”
I was enjoying the sun on my back. It was paradise, for a few seconds. The instructors saw I was fine.
“Get the fuck up and head over to the pass line. You did it.” Those were great words to hear.
No one who makes it through BUD/S ever thought he’d fail. BUD/S is relentless and forced me to dig deep. I never doubted myself. I knew I’d pass. I think people mistake a SEAL’s confidence for arrogance. But after the fifty-meter swim, Hell Week, and dive training, where the instructors do their best to drown you, we know our limits and we know how to push well beyond them. During BUD/S I overcame dozens of obstacles that looked insurmountable at the time, and that gave me the confidence to know I could do it again.
But bobbing in the near-freezing river in Alaska, I had to work hard to muster that confidence. I wasn’t sure I could do this, but tied to my buddy and nearing the opening to the pier, I didn’t have a lot of choice.
It took only a few minutes before I couldn’t feel my face. We let the current push us toward the harbor. At its widest the Ketchikan Creek is only about twenty feet and only five feet deep, so we bobbed at the surface until we crossed the first bridge. We were using Draeger diving rigs, which use pure oxygen. There are no bubbles when we exhale, keeping us much quieter.
As we passed under the bridge, I could hear the snow crunching under the tires of the cars above. Somewhere above us, I knew guards patrolled. Spotlights from the ship crisscrossed the black water, looking for us.
The water got deeper under the bridge, and before we crossed underneath we dipped below the surface. It was difficult to see anything in the ink-black water. We swam to the right bank and started searching for an opening in the pylons that led under the pier.
I could feel the tug of the rope on my belt as my partner swam nearby. I found the edge of the first pylon, figured out the direction I needed to move, and plunged farther into the darkness. I held my hand out in front and slowly kicked my way past the first pylon. My hand brushed against it, sinking into the green algae clinging to the wood.
Any minute, I expected to be pummeled by the dolphin’s nose as it forced me to the surface. We crept more than swam as we picked our way through the maze of algae-covered pylons.
Debris littered the bottom. Several times my flippers brushed against metal or trash. Each time we got close to a pylon, we had to be careful of jagged nails. If we tore a hole in our dry suit it would be more than just cold; it could be fatal because water would fill the suit, making it impossible to surface. Drowning was a real possibility.
I knew my swim buddy was near because of the tension in the rope. It was so dark that I remember lifting my hand and putting it directly in front of my face. I couldn’t see anything. Besides the dark, we had to deal with the cold. Beyond the cold we had to worry about the dolphins, and besides the dolphins we had to worry about getting lost under a town built on pylons. It felt claustrophobic.
I could barely make out the reading on the glowing green compass on my wrist. I tried to keep a steady pace on the right heading, but every few feet I had to dodge around a pylon. It took us an hour to get to the ship. I was relieved when we finally reached the ship’s hull. It’s surprising when you’re swimming in the pitch black with your hands in front of you and you swim into the massive hull of a warship. It makes you feel so small. I quickly snapped out of congratulating myself for making it when I realized we were only half done. In order to complete the mission, we had to place the device and make it back to our truck without being detected.
From below the water line, the ship was massive. I ran my gloved hand over the rough steel and waited for my partner to remove the collapsible pole strapped to my back. The pole was like the one used to replace letters on a sign at a gas station. The head of the pole had magnets and rollers on it. I pulled one of two dummy bomb devices out of a bag on my belt and attached it to the head. I ran my hand over the wheels on the head to make sure they rolled freely and tapped my partner on the shoulder. He placed the rollers on the skin of the ship and slowly slid the training device up the side, letting it roll along the hull until it was in place. The device attached to the ship by magnets. As it broke the water line, we got the device’s magnets too close to the skin of the ship. I felt the device grab hold of the hull of the ship with a “thunk.” I pushed the pole back and forth until the bomb came free. I worried the noise of the magnet pulling the device toward the ship had given away our position.
I closed my eyes and tried to focus. I was doing it all by feel only. I couldn’t see anything anyway, and my mind was playing tricks on me. I kept seeing movement in the black water. Each time, my heart raced, waiting to feel a dolphin or killer whale barreling into my side at full speed.
Inch by inch we slid the device up the hull of the ship until it reached the three-foot line.
After we got the second device in place, my partner helped me collapse the pole. He lashed it in place on my back and we started the long, cold swim back to where the truck had dropped us off. It was a total relief when we swam back under the bridge. This time, there were fewer cars passing along the bridge and from a light posted by the road I could make out that it had begun to snow again. I was tired and my nerves were frazzled after working in complete darkness for well over two hours. But in my head I knew the only relief was up the creek and into the back of a U-Haul truck.
My legs shook when I stood up onshore. Someone threw a blanket over me and helped me drag my gear to the truck. I could barely talk because my face was still numb. Minutes later I was back in the dark as the truck rumbled back to the hotel. I couldn’t feel my face, but I know I had a smile.
We were a bunch of new guys fresh from BUD/S and we’d just completed the mission. It was a training mission, but diving under the pier wasn’t easy. We’d been on other training missions before, but this time our officer trusted us to plan and execute the mission on our own and we succeeded. It felt good to be trusted.
“Anybody see the dolphin?” a teammate said.
“Nope,” I said. “I couldn’t see shit.”
“Every time I felt the water move, I tensed up, ready to get the shit beat out of me,” my partner said.
It turns out the free-swimming dolphin had spotted the smorgasbord of fish in the harbor and taken off. The two dolphins in the cages—used to the warmer San Diego Bay—stayed near the surface and every ten minutes rang the bell to get a fish. The dolphins didn’t want to be in the cold water any more than we did. The steady noise from the tanks masked our approach from the dolphins, and nobody had seen or heard us plant the training devices. We had actually pulled off the mission.
I was nervous the entire time. But I used the exact same focus to get through this mission as I did the fifty-meter underwater swim back in BUD/S. My confidence was growing, but it wasn’t a hundred percent yet. When I got into combat a few years later, I couldn’t focus on the negative—the dark, the cold water, killer dolphins. There can be zero thought of failure or quitting once the fighting starts. Looking back now, I can see that my confidence grew stronger with every experience, in training and in combat. The sense of purpose I had learned from my parents had gotten me started, and once my confidence kicked in, I was on my way to becoming an effe
ctive operator and an asset to the team.
Of course, I still had a lot to learn.
CHAPTER 3
The Three-Foot World
Fear
My body was frozen against the smooth rock face.
I couldn’t move no matter how much I willed myself to get going. I could feel my arms shaking from the weight. Sweat ran down my face and my palms were damp, making my attempt to hold on even harder. My eyes shifted to the right and caught a glimpse of the glittering Las Vegas Strip far in the distance. I quickly closed my eyes, shaking my head and hoping when I opened them again I’d be in a better place.
When I finally opened my eyes, I was still more than one hundred and fifty feet up, barely hanging on to my hand- and footholds. I had a rope hooked to me, but I had no intention of testing its strength, because that meant falling, which was what I was scared of in the first place.
I had been a SEAL for four years, but I still hadn’t mastered my intense fear of heights. The rock face looked like a sheet of brown glass, with no place to get a handhold. My mind and body were in a full-on civil war. My mind screamed at me to move, but my body refused. All I could do was hold on and curse myself for losing one hundred percent of my focus.
By this early point in my career, I’d been on one training deployment to the Pacific and my platoon was training for its next rotation, which would be to Iraq, and which would be my first chance to get into combat. As we got toward the end of the training cycle, one of the last trips was to Red Rock Canyon outside of Las Vegas. I’d gone on one other climbing trip, where I learned the basics, but on this trip we were going to learn how to lead climb and set our own protection.
