Part 10 (1/2)

Somehow, I managed to slip as well. My elbow flew out and landed straight on his face.

A couple of times.

That pretty much took the fight out of him. I rolled him over and cuffed him.

Boarding and searching s.h.i.+ps-officially known as VBSS, for Visit, Board, Search, Seize-is a standard SEAL mission. While the ”regular” Navy has specially trained sailors to handle the job in peacetime, we're trained to handle the searches in places where resistance is likely. And in the lead-up to war during the winter of 200203, that meant the Persian Gulf off Iraq. The U.N. later estimated that, in violation of international sanctions, billions of dollars of oil and other items were smuggled out of Iraq and into the pockets of Saddam's regime.

Smuggling took all sorts of forms. You'd find oil being carried in wheat carriers, hidden in barrels. More commonly, tankers took on thousands and thousands of gallons in excess of what they were permitted in the U.N. Oil-for-Food program.

It wasn't just oil. One of the biggest contraband s.h.i.+pments we came across that winter were dates. Apparently they could fetch a decent price on the world market.

It was during those first months of my first deployment that I became acquainted with the Polish Wojskowa Formacja Specjalna GROM im. Cichociemnych Spadochroniarzy Armii Krajowej-Special Military Formation GROM of the Dark and Silent Parachutists of the Polish Army-better known as GROM. They're the Polish version of the Special Forces, with an excellent reputation in special operations, and they worked on the takedowns with us.

Generally, we worked off a big s.h.i.+p, which we used as kind of a floating home port for our RHIBs. Half of the platoon would go out for one twenty-four-hour period. We would sail to a designated spot and drift in the night, waiting. With luck, a helo or a s.h.i.+p would radio intel about a s.h.i.+p coming out of Iraq sailing pretty low in the water. Anything that had a cargo would be boarded and inspected. We'd go out and take it down.

A few times we worked with an Mk-V boat. The Mk-V is a special operations craft that some people have compared to World War IIera PT boats. The craft looks like an armored speedboat, and its job is to get SEALs into harm's way as quickly as possible. Built out of aluminum, it can haul serious a.s.s-the boats are said to hit sixty-five knots. But what we liked about them were their flat decks behind the superstructure. Ordinarily, we would load two Zodiacs back there. But since the Zodiacs weren't needed, the whole company would board from the RHIBs and stretch out to grab some sleep until s.h.i.+ps were spotted. That beat leaning across the seat or twisting yourself around to rest on the gunwale.

Taking down s.h.i.+ps in the Gulf quickly became routine. We could take dozens in a night. But our biggest takedown didn't come off Iraq; it was some fifteen hundred miles away, off the coast of Africa.

SCUDS

In late fall, a SEAL platoon in the Philippines snuck alongside a freighter. From that point on, the North Korean s.h.i.+p was literally a marked vessel.

The 3,500-ton freighter had an interesting history of transporting items to and from North Korea. According to one rumor, she had transported chemicals that could be used to create nerve weapons. In this case, though, the s.h.i.+p's papers declared that she was carrying cement.

What she was really carrying were Scud missiles.

The s.h.i.+p was tracked around the Horn of Africa while the Bush administration decided what to do about it. Finally, the President ordered that the s.h.i.+p be boarded and searched: just the sort of job SEALs excel at.

We had a platoon in Djibouti, which was a h.e.l.l of a lot closer to the craft than we were. But because of the way the chain of command and a.s.signments worked-the unit happened to be working for the Marines while we were directly under a Navy command-we were tasked to take down the freighter.

You can imagine how happy our sister platoon was to see us when we landed in Djibouti. Not only had we ”stolen” a mission they considered theirs, they had to suffer the indignity of helping us offload and get ready for action.

As soon as I got off the plane, I spotted a buddy.

”Hey!” I shouted.

”f.u.c.k off,” he answered.

”What's up?”

”f.u.c.k you.”

That was the extent of his welcome. I couldn't blame him; in his place, I'd have been p.i.s.sed myself. He and the others eventually came around-they weren't mad at us; they were mad at the situation. Grudgingly, they helped us prepare for the mission, then got us aboard a mail-and-resupply helicopter from the USS Na.s.sau, an amphibious a.s.sault s.h.i.+p out in the Indian Ocean.

Amphibs, as they're called, are large a.s.sault s.h.i.+ps that carry troops and helicopters, and occasionally Marine Harrier attack aircraft. They look like old-fas.h.i.+oned aircraft carriers with a straight-through flight deck. They're fairly large, and have command and control facilities that can be used as forward planning and command posts during a.s.sault operations.

There are several ways to take down a s.h.i.+p, depending on the conditions and the target. While we could have used helicopters to get to the North Korean freighter, looking at photos of the s.h.i.+p we noticed that there were a number of wires running above the deck. Those wires would have to be removed before we could land, which would add time to the operation.