No Hero: The Evolution of a Navy SEAL

by Mark Owen

  I jammed my rifle between my legs and started shooting back toward the enemy. I could feel the spent cartridges hit against my thigh. I wasn’t aiming through my EOTech and couldn’t see where my IR laser was pointed. Front sight focus was out the window as I fired rounds at the target by feel alone. This time, I was spraying and praying. My teammates were also firing back. We needed to get some rounds back toward the fighter as quickly as possible.

  Machine gun rounds slammed into the ground around us. Tracers buzzed by my face, slamming into trees and shrubs all around my team. Had any one of us stood up, we would have immediately been shot. The Taliban fighter was having trouble aiming the machine gun as it kicked up and down in his arms. But with each passing second, he was wrestling it under control.

  All of a sudden I began hearing something a short distance to my left. It was the sweet sound of an MK46 machine gun. We typically shoot six- to eight-round bursts to conserve ammo and to help control the accuracy. But these weren’t short bursts. Steve’s gunner wasn’t letting up on the trigger. He let fly one super-long continuous burst. He and Steve were about ten yards to our left and had a perfect angle on the enemy position. I could see his tracer rounds sending bits of wood and bark flying into the air as he walked the rounds directly on top of the enemy position.

  The enemy fire completely died at this point, but the Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) gunner and Steve were still providing covering fire. My team peeled back away from the PKM.

  “Go,” I yelled to a pair of my teammates while I continued to fire. Another member of my team stayed to help me cover the first pair.

  After the first teammates bounded back a short distance, they found a safer position. It was my turn to move. I rolled onto my side and jumped up, careful to stay as low as I could. I was sure it would be only a moment before the PKM began firing again. This was our one chance to get out of the direct line of fire. Sprinting down the driveway, I slid to a stop just past my teammates. I leveled my rifle and started to fire in an attempt to provide covering fire for my teammates.

  “Set,” I yelled. “Go, go.”

  With all my guys back at the edge of the field and behind cover, we turned and provided as much covering fire as we could so Steve and his gunner could sprint to safety. The gunner had emptied an entire two-hundred-round box in one pull of the trigger. As he and Steve ran past me, I could see the gunner reloading his machine gun while in a dead sprint.

  Once Steve and the gunner made it back, the troop chief cleared the Ranger platoon hot. They opened fire with heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, and small arms. It was impossible to hear anything over the roar of the guns. The Rangers were laying down a wall of bullets. I took a quick glance back toward where we had just been and saw trees exploding into kindling.

  The troop chief and troop commander were huddled nearby working the radios.

  “Get head counts and let me know we’re all up,” the troop commander said.

  It was the team leaders’ responsibility to make sure we all had one hundred percent accountability of all our guys. We certainly weren’t going to leave anybody behind. I walked back to the line where my team had set up.

  “Hell yeah,” said one of my teammates.

  I could just make out a smirk under his night vision goggles.

  “Yeah, dude, what the fuck?” I said.

  I don’t think I could form a complete intelligent sentence if I wanted to. I had other things on my mind and knew I needed to get a head count before our JTAC could start dropping bombs. If we’d left a guy wounded back in the line of fire, we weren’t going to be able to call in air support until we went back and got him. Luckily, everyone had made it back to the line.

  I keyed my radio.

  “Alpha is up,” I said.

  “Charlie is up,” Steve said over the radio.

  I held my breath as each team checked in over the radio with their status. In my mind there was no way in hell everyone got away uninjured. The fighters had gotten the first rounds off at us. They had a head start and with the PKM firing six hundred and fifty to seven hundred and fifty rounds a minute, someone must have been hit.

  All the reports came in clean. No one was injured. We didn’t have to be good all the time. Sometimes it was better to be lucky. And so far our luck was holding.

  Steve and his gunner had saved our lives. We all saw the same situation unfolding and he knew where my team was going to be and put his team in place to support us. If it weren’t for Steve’s team and the close bond we shared, there is no doubt we would have taken casualties. He instinctively knew what to do based off the terrain and our immediate reaction to the enemy fire. We thought the same way. We knew each other’s position without thinking about it.

  Think of a pickup basketball game out on the playground, but imagine that game being played by NBA players. No one is on the sideline diagramming plays with a chalkboard. They are individually great athletes and they can read off of each other to make amazing plays. We were doing the same thing, just not on the court and certainly not for the same paychecks.

  “Stand by for CAS,” I heard over the radio.

  The JTAC was on the radio calling in Close Air Support. Fighters overhead started to circle, preparing for a bombing run.

  “Three minutes,” the troop chief said.

  If there were any fighters left in the trees, they had three minutes to clear out before the bombs started to fall. I made sure my team had cover and waited for the strikes.

  I hunkered down in a small ditch and waited for the whistling noise the bomb makes just before it detonates. Then I saw the bright flash lighting up the sky seconds before the thunderous crack of the explosion. I could make out the trees and compound in silhouette against the explosion as dirt and debris landed on us.

  “Cleared hot for immediate re-attack,” I heard over the radio. “Three minutes out.”

  The impact of the bombs in the tree line definitely made me happy that I wasn’t on the receiving end. As each bomb impacted the ground and exploded, I could feel the shock wave thumping the terrain. It felt like a giant smashing his fists into the ground.

  After the second bombing run, I met with the troop commander, troop chief, and other team leaders.

  “We’re going to clear out the tree line,” the troop chief said. “Let me know when your teams are ready to roll.”

  A mix of guys from my team and Steve’s team got up out of the ditch and prepared to move back up the driveway. We set up on a line and cautiously patrolled back into the tree line. As I got closer, the tree line looked like how I imagine a World War I battlefield would look. Craters where bombs had landed still smoldered. Charred trees shorn in half stood like broken teeth. A layer of smoke hung over everything. All of the trees were burning, creating a blinding green blur in our night vision goggles and making it almost impossible to see anything clearly.

  Halfway up the driveway, I could see the area where we had taken the initial contact. It didn’t look anything like it had looked a few minutes prior. The bombs had chewed up the thicket of trees, leaving just a smoking hole. Up ahead, I could make out the silhouette of something life-size lying in a small ditch. I held my rifle on the object as I approached. Moving closer, I saw it was one of the fighters. His body was badly burned. His clothes were still smoldering. I could see where shrapnel had cut through his long, baggy shirt. A chest rack hung from his torso. Another badly burned body was lying nearby.

  We continued clearing through the burned-up tree line, stepping over pieces of debris and moving around the large craters left by the blast. I was about to pull my team back and start searching the compound and camp for any additional fighters or intelligence when the drone pilots circling above came over the radio.

  “We have multiple movers one hundred and fifty meters to the west,” the pilot said.

  Six fighters had popped out of the tree lin
e after the last bombing run. They must have been the luckiest six Taliban in the world. They somehow survived our initial firefight, the Rangers’ heavy-weapons barrage, and now two bombing runs.

  As the radio call came through, I looked over and saw Steve and his team to my left. We were both thinking the same thing. There was no way these guys were going to get away.

  “Alpha Team has it,” I said over the radio to the troop chief. Immediately following me on the radio Steve chimed in.

  “Charlie Team has it.”

  Our troop chief paused for a second.

  “Roger that,” he said. “Alpha and Charlie, take control of ISR and the AC-130 gunship and let me know if you need anything else.”

  I checked in with the drone over the radio.

  “ISR, this is Alpha One,” I said. “I have an element of eight and one dog moving west at this time. Please advise with enemy numbers and position.”

  The drone pilot got us oriented and we quickly moved our two teams into position and started to patrol toward the enemy location. The dog handler pushed his combat dog out front. I could see it searching the ground for a scent. On the radio, we were getting reports from the ISR.

  “Alpha One this is ISR,” the drone pilot said. “We have multiple movers that are located at the southwest corner of an open field roughly five hundred meters to your west.”

  “Roger, ISR, please sparkle,” I said.

  The drone’s sensor operator fired an infrared laser, like a giant laser pointer, at the fighters’ location. Under our night vision, it looked like a giant finger pointing to the fighters’ exact location. It was something out of a video game.

  Once we broke out of the trees, we slowed way down. The tree line opened into a large field with a small levee and a thicket of trees running along the south end.

  I watched our dog handler let his dog off the leash and push him ahead of the group along the edge of the trees. Steve’s team moved on a line perpendicular to the trees. I noticed Steve’s team was again taking a wide arc to my left, covering our flank.

  I pushed my team farther to the right, hoping to get a better angle on the fighters. We didn’t have the Rangers with us. It was up to the two assault teams. If we got into contact now, we would have two teams in position to open fire.

  I stayed focused on the “sparkle.” It hadn’t moved since we cleared the tree line, which was good. But I wanted to close with the fighters before they could set up a defense. My hope was the fighters were trying to hide and not fight.

  I checked to my left and right. My team was spread out and silently moving across the field. I glanced to my left over toward Steve’s team and happened to notice our dog—nicknamed the hair missile—dive into the thicket of trees. The dog disappeared and then I heard a man let out a scream. The dog had locked onto the scent of a fighter and now I could hear its snarls and the man’s screams.

  My team kept an eye on the group of enemy fighters up ahead. Steve and one of the snipers moved into the tree line to help the dog. We could hear the man yelling as the dog tore into him. The yelling stopped after a few quick shots from the sniper’s suppressed HK416.

  Steve came over the radio.

  “Fellas, watch your step. We just stumbled across a fighter hiding in the ditch with an RPG and ready to fire,” he said.

  The group of fighters we were chasing had dropped this guy off to ambush us as we passed. The dog found him and likely saved our lives in the process. These fighters weren’t rookies. They weren’t running scared but instead attempting to set up on us.

  “ISR, Alpha One,” I said. “Any movement from our group of fighters?”

  “Alpha One, ISR,” the pilot said. “Negative. They are still in place and my sparkle is on.”

  I saw Steve’s team get back on line and begin moving forward along the edge of the trees. I didn’t even need a radio call from Steve to know what he was thinking; I could simply tell from his body language. I responded by pushing my team farther out to the right flank to get a better flanking position. We were set up in a perfect “L” formation and would be able to hit the group of Taliban from both sides. The drone kept sparkling the fighters’ location. It was dark and there was no way they could see us.

  Step-by-step we closed to one hundred and fifty yards. Our lasers now joined the drone’s.

  They didn’t have a chance.

  With a massive IR floodlight from the ISR drone, the figures were easily identifiable in our night vision goggles. All five fighters had settled into a small perimeter and were lying there on the lip of a ditch waiting for us to approach.

  They didn’t know it yet, but it was too late for them. They couldn’t see us but we could see them. The first shots killed two. I saw them drop like they’d been pulled into the ground by a cable. I could see our lasers dance around them as fighter after fighter crumpled and disappeared into the ditch. One fighter opened up with his AK-47, spraying our direction, but the rounds sailed well over our heads. The shooter went down in a heap after several rounds slammed into him.

  The fight took only a few seconds and the outcome was never in doubt. We moved forward and searched all the enemy bodies, collecting all the weapons and blowing them in place. While we cleared the bodies and weapons, the rest of the SEALs and Rangers secured the initial target.

  Once we were done, we patrolled back to the compound and then back to the helicopters.

  Nothing we do is rocket science, but being able to work as a team is taught to us throughout our SEAL careers, and a key ingredient in our success. It was like a pickup basketball game, except we were focused on shooting, moving, and communicating.

  There is no secret sauce. Every SEAL has gone through the same training, tested themselves in the same kind of extreme conditions, and typically trained together extensively to the point where we all wind up capable of doing the most basic tasks extraordinarily well. That gives us unshakeable confidence in each other. The relationship Steve and I had developed over years of working together meant we could handle almost any situation, and our trust is what allowed us to succeed even when the fight didn’t go as we planned. The importance we put on those close-knit relationships was the factor that most often tipped the needle from defeat to victory.

  CHAPTER 9

  Follow Your Buddy

  Accountability

  It was the night before the operation was going to launch when I got the call to come over to the joint operations center. It was 2007 and I was on my sixth deployment. Instead of working with my team and doing raids, I had been sent to work with other government agencies as a liaison.

  I’d coordinate air support and help with the tactical plan. I’d also take responsibility for any prisoners that we would detain so they could be turned over to the appropriate Coalition military detention facility.

  The relationships between the CIA, Special Forces, and the 82nd Airborne Division nearby were strained at best. The Special Forces team wanted to go out and patrol but didn’t have the money to pay the Afghan police unit they were training. In order to set up an ambush along a trail used by fighters to come across the border, we had to send up a CONOP, or concept of operations plan, indicating we were going out to train on “ambushes,” in order to get it approved.

  At this point in the war, bureaucracy was slowing everything down. In order to get outside the wire, we’d first put together several PowerPoint slides explaining the operation. The slides would have to be approved all the way up the chain of command, which could take several days.

  A little over halfway into our deployment, I got a call from my squadron to report to a base in eastern Afghanistan. The message was loud and clear.

  It was almost unheard of for them to call us in from our assignment. The rest of my squadron was spread all over Afghanistan doing the same mission. When word came to come back for a mission, I wasn’t upset. I enjoyed my mission, bu
t I also liked the idea of getting back to being an assaulter with the rest of the team.

  Once our squadron was reconstituted, we met in the main planning room. The briefs were held in a long, narrow room with handmade wooden benches running down the middle, like a church. At the front of the room were flat-screen TVs for PowerPoint presentations and to show us drone video or satellite photos. Maps of Afghanistan and the border area hung on one wall opposite wire diagrams showing key players in the various Taliban and al Qaeda networks we were targeting.

  The room was packed full of people. It was standing room only. Up front, the squadron commander started the brief. A source had reported that he had seen Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader, near Tora Bora. It was the same place U.S. forces almost captured him in 2001.

  The Battle of Tora Bora started December 12, 2001, and lasted five days. It was believed Bin Laden was hiding in the mountains at Tora Bora, which is Pashto for “black cave.” He was suspected of being in a cave complex in the White Mountains, near the Khyber Pass. His headquarters was rumored to be a multistory complex equipped with hydroelectric power from mountain streams, hotel-like corridors, and room for a thousand fighters. The cave complex was definitely a historical safe haven for Afghan fighters, and the CIA had funded many of the improvements to the region during the 1980s to assist the mujahedeen during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.