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Province. Using technical means—laser technology from the National Security Agency and imagery from the National Geospatial Agency—it was determined beyond a doubt that the kidnappers intended to mutilate and kill the hostages.
    A nighttime rescue mission was put together. A six-man assault element from Red Squadron was assigned the task by Task Force 131’s commander.
    Six of Norgrove’s kidnappers were killed in the initial assault, and during the chaos of that firefight, Norgrove managed to break free. But none of the SEALs saw this, and from the roof of one of the huts on the compound, one of the SEALs caught movement and instinctively tossed a grenade. Moments later, a mortally wounded Norgrove was discovered near the shredded body of a kidnapper.
    During the mission debrief, the Red Squadron shooters never mentioned the grenade. First reports said Norgrove was killed because one of her captors exploded the suicide vest he was wearing, which paralleled the story the SEALs told during their initial debriefing.
    But subsequent questioning by the Joint Special Operations Command task force commander, an Army Ranger lieutenant colonel who’d been watching the mission on Predator video, made it clear there had been no suicide vest. The commander’s review of the video showed one of the SEALs lobbing a grenade.
    It was only then that the SEAL who had done it stepped forward. He was certain to face an inquiry that could lead to disciplinary action up to and including a less than honorable discharge. But the others were liable, too, because they had committed the sin of omission. They hadn’t lied; they had remained silent. Betrayed their honor code. The fact that Norgrove had been killed by mistake troubled Troy, but didn’t affect him, or the rest of his shipmates. They had all participated in scores of similar missions and understood that war is messy and that people—sometimes innocents—get killed, often by friendly fire. What was more troubling was the psychological disruption to the team. The incident and the subsequent investigation jarred them out of synch. The dynamics of the inquiry caused them to become individuals, as opposed to acting in unison. For the present, their unit integrity was shattered. Plus, their careers were in limbo. It was not a healthy situation.
    Nine weeks later, Troy’s career was still on the line. Charlie Troop’s deployment had been curtailed. These days he was shackled to a desk at Dam Neck while the powers that be mulled his and his shipmates’ fates.
    Worse, Red Squadron itself, and by extension all of DEVGRU, was under microscopic examination by some of the Navy’s manager-bureaucrats up in D.C., many of whom—ship drivers, Airedales, or submariners—bore no love for SEALs, whom they thought of as cowboys, loose cannons, or worse. And the Norgrove disaster only served to reinforce those negative opinions.
    But this was a different Navy and a different SEAL team from the old days. The old days, so Troy had heard, resembled the stuff that went on in the old movie Navy SEALs : lots of drinking, fast cars, and faster women. Outrageous behavior was all too often encouraged by SEAL officers and senior NCOs.
    Not today. Today a single DUI could cause you to lose your top-secret clearance—and your job with the teams. So could a morals infraction. Today’s SEALs were far less likely than the frogs of the 1980s to spend nights out drinking at one of Virginia Beach’s many saloons. For T-Rob and most of his shipmates, it was one beer, maybe two, polished off at home. Because God help you if you got a short-fuse summons on your BlackBerry and you weren’t sober and ready to deploy.
    But the situation wasn’t hopeless. Troy had two aces up his sleeve who might help his cause: JSOC’s ultimate commander was one; Troy’s close friend and teammate was the other.
    COM/JSOC, the man to whom all DEVGRU SEALs ultimately reported, was himself a SEAL. Vice Admiral Wesley Bolin, USNA