practiced boarding cruise ships, tankers, and container vessels under way using flexible caving ladders and pure brute upper-body strength; honed assault tactics on everything from oil platforms to passenger jets to railroad trains. They deployed from submarines and commercial aircraft. They cross-trained with our allies’ best counterterror units: Britain’s Special Air Service and the Royal Marines’ Special Boat Squadron, Germany’s GSG-9, and Israel’s Sayeret Matkal.
But by the mid-1980s, ST6 had come under a cloud. Despite the undeniable fact that Six’s shooters were among the most capable in the world, unit discipline was known to be lax. Excessive drinking was commonplace, and fiscal restraint was acknowledged to be virtually nonexistent.
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service initiated an investigation. Ultimately several of Six’s personnel, including its former commanding officer, Marcinko, were indicted, and some were subsequently convicted of felonies. Marcinko himself served a year in the minimum security section of the federal prison complex at Petersburg, Virginia. The charge: “Conspiracy to defraud the United States to commit bribery, Title 18, U.S.C., section 371.”
The upshot was that in 1987 the Navy changed the unit’s name in the hope that the stains on its reputation would be forgotten. They weren’t—not for another decade.
Nor did the new name really enter the lexicon. The Navy may have called the unit DEVGRU, but to most Sailors, and in popular culture, YouTube videos, computer games, and Rogue Warrior boy-book novels, it was—and always would be—SEAL Team Six.
0512 Hours
The temperature read thirty-six degrees as Troy turned into the wind and kicked into stride. The cold didn’t bother him; he always ran in shorts no matter what the weather, although his body core was protected by three layers of state-of-the-art, virtually weightless windproof and waterproof clothing topped by a fleece watch-cap.
Running had always been therapeutic for Troy. Even during BUD/S, the six months of hell all SEALs go through during their initial selection process, when all selectee candidates run a total of more than eight hundred miles, he had used the running sessions to zone out and let accumulated stress drain from his exhausted body.
Selection for DEVGRU was even tougher. Of the fourteen selectees who entered the six-month training cycle at Green Squadron in the fall of 2007, Troy was the only one to make it through.
But BUD/S—even Hell Week, when Class 237, which had originally numbered more than eighty, was whittled down to a few dozen and ultimately to eighteen—wasn’t anything compared to what was happening now.
His career at DEVGRU was on the line, which meant his Navy career was, too. Because Troy couldn’t see himself as anything but a SEAL. He’d enlisted in the Navy at eighteen, volunteered for BUD/S at the earliest possibility, and after two years at SEAL Team Four, made the selection cut for DEVGRU.
The bottom line was this: he was fully aware that he was living his dream and he’d never be able to settle for less. What would happen to him if they yanked his security clearance? He’d be out in the cold. With the economy in the toilet, a mortgage, Brittany with only a part-time job, their five-and-a-half-year-old son, Corbin, in day care, and a baby on the way. They’d lose the house. Everything. What would his pastor say? Troy was a devout and committed Christian. He and Brittany were active in their church.
This was not good. Not good at all.
It had been two months ago, almost to the day, when Troy was a member of the SEAL element tasked with rescuing a British national named Linda Norgrove, a thirty-six-year-old aid worker for a U.S. nongovernmental organization. Norgrove had been kidnapped on September 26 in Kunar Province, eastern Afghanistan. U.S. drones tracked her and her three Afghan colleagues as they were taken to a walled compound in Korengal
But by the mid-1980s, ST6 had come under a cloud. Despite the undeniable fact that Six’s shooters were among the most capable in the world, unit discipline was known to be lax. Excessive drinking was commonplace, and fiscal restraint was acknowledged to be virtually nonexistent.
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service initiated an investigation. Ultimately several of Six’s personnel, including its former commanding officer, Marcinko, were indicted, and some were subsequently convicted of felonies. Marcinko himself served a year in the minimum security section of the federal prison complex at Petersburg, Virginia. The charge: “Conspiracy to defraud the United States to commit bribery, Title 18, U.S.C., section 371.”
The upshot was that in 1987 the Navy changed the unit’s name in the hope that the stains on its reputation would be forgotten. They weren’t—not for another decade.
Nor did the new name really enter the lexicon. The Navy may have called the unit DEVGRU, but to most Sailors, and in popular culture, YouTube videos, computer games, and Rogue Warrior boy-book novels, it was—and always would be—SEAL Team Six.
0512 Hours
The temperature read thirty-six degrees as Troy turned into the wind and kicked into stride. The cold didn’t bother him; he always ran in shorts no matter what the weather, although his body core was protected by three layers of state-of-the-art, virtually weightless windproof and waterproof clothing topped by a fleece watch-cap.
Running had always been therapeutic for Troy. Even during BUD/S, the six months of hell all SEALs go through during their initial selection process, when all selectee candidates run a total of more than eight hundred miles, he had used the running sessions to zone out and let accumulated stress drain from his exhausted body.
Selection for DEVGRU was even tougher. Of the fourteen selectees who entered the six-month training cycle at Green Squadron in the fall of 2007, Troy was the only one to make it through.
But BUD/S—even Hell Week, when Class 237, which had originally numbered more than eighty, was whittled down to a few dozen and ultimately to eighteen—wasn’t anything compared to what was happening now.
His career at DEVGRU was on the line, which meant his Navy career was, too. Because Troy couldn’t see himself as anything but a SEAL. He’d enlisted in the Navy at eighteen, volunteered for BUD/S at the earliest possibility, and after two years at SEAL Team Four, made the selection cut for DEVGRU.
The bottom line was this: he was fully aware that he was living his dream and he’d never be able to settle for less. What would happen to him if they yanked his security clearance? He’d be out in the cold. With the economy in the toilet, a mortgage, Brittany with only a part-time job, their five-and-a-half-year-old son, Corbin, in day care, and a baby on the way. They’d lose the house. Everything. What would his pastor say? Troy was a devout and committed Christian. He and Brittany were active in their church.
This was not good. Not good at all.
It had been two months ago, almost to the day, when Troy was a member of the SEAL element tasked with rescuing a British national named Linda Norgrove, a thirty-six-year-old aid worker for a U.S. nongovernmental organization. Norgrove had been kidnapped on September 26 in Kunar Province, eastern Afghanistan. U.S. drones tracked her and her three Afghan colleagues as they were taken to a walled compound in Korengal
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