Warrior Soul The Memoir of a Navy Seal

Chapter 1 GOODBYE TO ALL THAT It was a Friday night, and Gate 14 at Norfolk International was not crowded. American Airlines Flight 405 was a scheduled hop from Norfolk, Virginia, to Miami, with continuing service to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The maybe two dozen people in the departure lounge were hardly sufficient to fill even a third of the seats of the 727 now completing fueling at the end of the jet way. The bulk of American 405's passengers were said to be boarding in Miami for a weekend junket to the casinos and nightlife of San Juan. When my row was called, I lifted my carry-on, showed my boarding pass, and walked down the jet way. Through the windows, I could see thunderclouds pressing low on the horizon. It was 8:25 p.m., only ten minutes before our scheduled departure, and the last red light of day was showing in the west. As the flight attendants closed the doors and made ready for departure, I found my seat and managed to push my duffel into the overhead rack. I had definitely exceeded the recommended dimensions for carry-on luggage. Concealed in my bag was an MT-1-X military parachute. I wasn't going to Miami. Like a dozen of my fellow passengers, I was going to jump from the airplane. A closer look at the people in the departure lounge might have been instructive. Most of the passengers were under thirty-five, and the men all hard-eyed and fit. Some might have noticed that the passengers had a predilection for Rolex watches and expensive running shoes. Beyond that, they hardly seemed remarkable. The passengers were no mixed bag of civilians; they included a twelve-man Navy SEAL assault team. The balance of the people on American 405 included members of the Defense Intelligence Agency, air force combat controllers, navy parachute riggers, and a handful of officers from the Special Operations Command, based in Tampa, Florida. All were in civilian clothes; all exhibited what the military calls "relaxed grooming standards." In short, they blended in. I was as unassuming as my fellow passengers. My reddish hair was collar-length, and my face was swathed by a luxuriant Wyatt Earp mustache, something I'd grown to add some authority to my perennially freckled face. My father used to tell me that I looked like a shaggy tennis pro, or some kind of overmuscled yachtsman. I certainly didn't look like what I was-an active-duty lieutenant in the United States Navy. Not just any lieutenant. As far as I was concerned, next to being a space-shuttle pilot, I had the best job in God's navy. I was an assault element commander at the navy's premier counterterrorist unit, SEAL Team Six. The other men hefting duffel bags were my shooters, my "boat crew," as the parlance went. I was in charge of tonight's festivities, a low-profile exfiltration and insertion exercise. Two hours before flight time, we packed gear and weapons in the SEAL Team Six compound and individually proceeded to the airport. We checked unmarked suitcases containing our weapons and assault gear, and were issued tickets on a flight that was never intended to reach its scheduled destination. With the complicity of the airline, we were conducting a practice run for a covert mission. There are a hundred ways that SEALs can insert into a target area. We can scuba dive from a submerged nuclear submarine. Boats can be dropped from airplanes in an event we call a "rubber duck." We can patrol across glacier, jungle, or desert. We can parachute or fast-rope from helicopters. Jumping out of commercial airliners is an operation, or op, we call a "D. B. Cooper." Using scheduled air traffic to insert into a hostile country, or a denied area, is a SEAL specialty. Most people do not parachute on purpose from jet aircraft. The planes are too fast, and the turbulent air dragging in their wake can snap your spine and pop your hips from your pelvis. We were trained to jump fPfarrer, Chuck is the author of 'Warrior Soul The Memoir of a Navy Seal', published 2003 under ISBN 9781400060368 and ISBN 1400060362.