Part 35 (1/2)

”You are thirty years old,” she said. ”Who does that?”

There's a side of me that loves to pull pranks on people, to get them to laugh. You can't just do regular stuff-I want them to have a good time. Belly laughs. The more extreme the better. April Fools' Day is a particularly tough time for my family and friends, though more because of Taya's pranks than my own. I guess we both like to have a good laugh.

On the darker side, I was extremely hot-headed. I have always had a temper, even before becoming a SEAL. But it was more explosive now. If someone cut me off-not a very rare occurrence in California-I could get crazy. I might try and run them off the road, or even stop and whup their a.s.s.

I had to work at calming down.

Of course, having a reputation as a SEAL does have its advantages.

At my sister-in-law's wedding, the preacher and I got to talking. At some point, she-the preacher was a lady-noticed a bulge in my jacket.

”You have a gun?” she asked.

”Yes, I do,” I said, explaining that I was in the military.

She may or may not have known that I was a SEAL-I didn't tell her, but word tends to get around-but when she was ready to start the ceremony and couldn't get anyone in the crowd to be quiet and get into place, she came over to me, patted me on the back, and said, ”Can you get everyone to sit down?”

”Yes, I can,” I told her.

I barely had to raise my voice to get that little ceremony going.

Taya:

People talk about physical love and need when someone comes home from a long absence: ”I want to rip your clothes off.” That sort of thing.

I felt that way in theory, but the reality was always a little different.

I needed to get to know him again. It was strange. There's so much antic.i.p.ation. You miss them so much when they deploy, and you want them to be home, but then when they are, things aren't perfect. And you feel as if they should be. Depending on the deployment and what I'd been through, I also had emotions ranging from sadness to anxiety to anger.

When he came back after this deployment, I felt almost shy. I was a new mother and had been doing things on my own for months. We were both changing and growing in totally separate worlds. He had no firsthand knowledge of mine and I had no firsthand knowledge of his.

I also felt bad for Chris. He was wondering what was wrong. There was distance between us that neither one of us could really fix, or even talk about.

BREAKING AND ENTERING

We had a long break from war, but we were busy the whole time, retraining and, in some cases, learning new skills. I went to a school run by FBI agents and CIA and NSA officers. They taught me how to do things like pick locks and steal cars. I loved it. The fact that it was in New Orleans didn't hurt, either.

Learning how to blend in and go undercover, I cultivated my inner jazz musician and grew a goatee. Lock-picking was a revelation. We worked on a variety of locks, and by the end of the cla.s.s I don't think there was a lock that could have kept me or anyone else in our cla.s.s at bay. Stealing cars was a little harder, but I got pretty good at that, too.

We were trained to wear cameras and eavesdropping devices without getting caught. To prove that we could, we had to get the devices into a strip club and return with (video) evidence that we'd been there.

The sacrifices you make for your country ...

I stole a car off Bourbon Street as part of my final. (I had to put it back when we were done; as far as I know, the owner was none the wiser.) Unfortunately, these are all perishable skills-I can still pick a lock, but it'll take me longer now. I'll have to brush up if I ever decide to go crooked.

Among our more normal rotations was a recertification cla.s.s for parachuting.

Jumping out of planes-or, I should say, landing safely after jumping out of planes-is an important skill, but it's a dangerous one. h.e.l.l, I've heard it said the Army figures in combat, if they get 70 percent of the guys in a unit to land safely enough to rally and fight, they're doing well.