Mark Owen - No Hero

As we passed under the bridge, I could hear the snow crunching under the tires of the cars above. Somewhere above us, I knew guards patrolled. Spotlights from the ship crisscrossed the black water, looking for us.

The water got deeper under the bridge, and before we crossed underneath we dipped below the surface. It was difficult to see anything in the ink-black water. We swam to the right bank and started searching for an opening in the pylons that led under the pier.

I could feel the tug of the rope on my belt as my partner swam nearby. I found the edge of the first pylon, figured out the direction I needed to move, and plunged farther into the darkness. I held my hand out in front and slowly kicked my way past the first pylon. My hand brushed against it, sinking into the green algae clinging to the wood.

Any minute, I expected to be pummeled by the dolphin’s nose as it forced me to the surface. We crept more than swam as we picked our way through the maze of algae-covered pylons.

Debris littered the bottom. Several times my flippers brushed against metal or trash. Each time we got close to a pylon, we had to be careful of jagged nails. If we tore a hole in our dry suit it would be more than just cold; it could be fatal because water would fill the suit, making it impossible to surface. Drowning was a real possibility.

I knew my swim buddy was near because of the tension in the rope. It was so dark that I remember lifting my hand and putting it directly in front of my face. I couldn’t see anything. Besides the dark, we had to deal with the cold. Beyond the cold we had to worry about the dolphins, and besides the dolphins we had to worry about getting lost under a town built on pylons. It felt claustrophobic.

I could barely make out the reading on the glowing green compass on my wrist. I tried to keep a steady pace on the right heading, but every few feet I had to dodge around a pylon. It took us an hour to get to the ship. I was relieved when we finally reached the ship’s hull. It’s surprising when you’re swimming in the pitch black with your hands in front of you and you swim into the massive hull of a warship. It makes you feel so small. I quickly snapped out of congratulating myself for making it when I realized we were only half done. In order to complete the mission, we had to place the device and make it back to our truck without being detected.

From below the water line, the ship was massive. I ran my gloved hand over the rough steel and waited for my partner to remove the collapsible pole strapped to my back. The pole was like the one used to replace letters on a sign at a gas station. The head of the pole had magnets and rollers on it. I pulled one of two dummy bomb devices out of a bag on my belt and attached it to the head. I ran my hand over the wheels on the head to make sure they rolled freely and tapped my partner on the shoulder. He placed the rollers on the skin of the ship and slowly slid the training device up the side, letting it roll along the hull until it was in place. The device attached to the ship by magnets. As it broke the water line, we got the device’s magnets too close to the skin of the ship. I felt the device grab hold of the hull of the ship with a “thunk.” I pushed the pole back and forth until the bomb came free. I worried the noise of the magnet pulling the device toward the ship had given away our position.

I closed my eyes and tried to focus. I was doing it all by feel only. I couldn’t see anything anyway, and my mind was playing tricks on me. I kept seeing movement in the black water. Each time, my heart raced, waiting to feel a dolphin or killer whale barreling into my side at full speed.

Inch by inch we slid the device up the hull of the ship until it reached the three-foot line.

After we got the second device in place, my partner helped me collapse the pole. He lashed it in place on my back and we started the long, cold swim back to where the truck had dropped us off. It was a total relief when we swam back under the bridge. This time, there were fewer cars passing along the bridge and from a light posted by the road I could make out that it had begun to snow again. I was tired and my nerves were frazzled after working in complete darkness for well over two hours. But in my head I knew the only relief was up the creek and into the back of a U-Haul truck.

My legs shook when I stood up onshore. Someone threw a blanket over me and helped me drag my gear to the truck. I could barely talk because my face was still numb. Minutes later I was back in the dark as the truck rumbled back to the hotel. I couldn’t feel my face, but I know I had a smile.

We were a bunch of new guys fresh from BUD/S and we’d just completed the mission. It was a training mission, but diving under the pier wasn’t easy. We’d been on other training missions before, but this time our officer trusted us to plan and execute the mission on our own and we succeeded. It felt good to be trusted.

“Anybody see the dolphin?” a teammate said.

“Nope,” I said. “I couldn’t see shit.”

“Every time I felt the water move, I tensed up, ready to get the shit beat out of me,” my partner said.

It turns out the free-swimming dolphin had spotted the smorgasbord of fish in the harbor and taken off. The two dolphins in the cages—used to the warmer San Diego Bay—stayed near the surface and every ten minutes rang the bell to get a fish. The dolphins didn’t want to be in the cold water any more than we did. The steady noise from the tanks masked our approach from the dolphins, and nobody had seen or heard us plant the training devices. We had actually pulled off the mission.

I was nervous the entire time. But I used the exact same focus to get through this mission as I did the fifty-meter underwater swim back in BUD/S. My confidence was growing, but it wasn’t a hundred percent yet. When I got into combat a few years later, I couldn’t focus on the negative—the dark, the cold water, killer dolphins. There can be zero thought of failure or quitting once the fighting starts. Looking back now, I can see that my confidence grew stronger with every experience, in training and in combat. The sense of purpose I had learned from my parents had gotten me started, and once my confidence kicked in, I was on my way to becoming an effective operator and an asset to the team.

Of course, I still had a lot to learn.

My bodywas frozen against the smooth rock face.

I couldn’t move no matter how much I willed myself to get going. I could feel my arms shaking from the weight. Sweat ran down my face and my palms were damp, making my attempt to hold on even harder. My eyes shifted to the right and caught a glimpse of the glittering Las Vegas Strip far in the distance. I quickly closed my eyes, shaking my head and hoping when I opened them again I’d be in a better place.

When I finally opened my eyes, I was still more than one hundred and fifty feet up, barely hanging on to my hand- and footholds. I had a rope hooked to me, but I had no intention of testing its strength, because that meant falling, which was what I was scared of in the first place.

I had been a SEAL for four years, but I still hadn’t mastered my intense fear of heights. The rock face looked like a sheet of brown glass, with no place to get a handhold. My mind and body were in a full-on civil war. My mind screamed at me to move, but my body refused. All I could do was hold on and curse myself for losing one hundred percent of my focus.

By this early point in my career, I’d been on one training deployment to the Pacific and my platoon was training for its next rotation, which would be to Iraq, and which would be my first chance to get into combat. As we got toward the end of the training cycle, one of the last trips was to Red Rock Canyon outside of Las Vegas. I’d gone on one other climbing trip, where I learned the basics, but on this trip we were going to learn how to lead climb and set our own protection.