Prologue
This book project, like my Naval Special Warfare career and subsequent work in the private professional security contracting arena, is all predicated on a dare. I wish I could claim that my military career was a result of single-minded preparation coupled with a correlating set of specific coincidences, but instead, I’m the victim of a ruthlessly executed ambush by my resilient father, hell-bent on “saving my life,” in a restaurant in Houston, Texas. You will read about it later.
During my eight years of military service, SEAL Teams were kept shrouded in mystery. These were the 1980s, and Al Gore had not yet invented the internet. Additionally, the SEAL community was not on Hollywood’s radar. The existence of a kick-ass waterborne special forces team operating within certain confines of the United States Navy were known, but only marginally and only on a “need to know” basis. Most of those in uniform who were aware of the existence of SEAL Teams and their activities either loved us or loathed us. We were a military enigma. As highly trained, self-supportive, small direct-action units, we were ridiculously successful in the execution of the unique missions assigned to us. Away from the battlefield or training exercise environments, SEAL Teams fell within a spectrum ranging from an inconvenient necessity to an outright boorish rogue element of marauders devoid of self-discipline or military bearing. During my career, specifically the second four years, these sentiments landed almost entirely on the latter end.
During this second military term, I served with a formidable and highly specialized small unit that was created in the mid-1980s to engage and suppress the rise of global terrorism. It was a classic Hollywood extravaganza—a harebrained “black” program featuring a group of snake…