Later came the marked units but the little green men had done their job: Cause confusion, diversion and pave the way for armored units.
These guys are all dressed in black.
I shake Jennifer,
“Jennifer!”
She’s still unconscious.
I now realize I still have on my ridiculous yellow jacket and bright red fishing pants thinking:
We might as well have been wearing bull’s eyes!
I look at the water and realize this is our only escape route.
Just my luck:
Again, with the cold and the wet.
And I’m the slowest swimmer in the U.S. Navy!
I take a deep breath, breathe into her mouth and then close it, holding her nose. I turn Jennifer around so her back is directly against my chest.
Then I fall on my back, protecting her as much as I can.
My first thought as I hit the water:
Damn!
This’s cold!
I take another breath and give it to Jennifer. I then immediately place her on my side and begin a sidestroke, pulling Jennifer, so I can see around the back of the barge.
The Special Forces team is half way down the dock heading right for me.
I notice the water is deeper at the back of the barge right up to the coastline.
A tiny cove is there.
I decide this is our only chance.
I give another breath to Jennifer before disappearing into the icy black waters under Jack’s boat.
The water temperature must be under forty degrees.
Hypothermia occurs when the human body cannot generate enough heat to compensate for the warmth it loses. You have maybe ten minutes, if you can breathe, before all the blood rushes to the core of your body as your extremities go numb. But I’m underwater pulling another body and every second feels like eternity.
I’m right back in SEAL training.
Miles and miles and miles of swimming.
Pain, pain and more pain.
I rolled out with a broken leg and then I couldn’t pass Phase II. I had to repeat Phase II with a completely new class.
Your underwater times are the slowest the Navy has ever seen, son! was all I could now hear. That instructor was the meanest, cruelest son of a b…
I stopped myself because I then remembered graduation day when that same instructor walked up to me and said, I’m proud of you, son. I have never, ever in twenty-five years, seen a more determined guy than you!
That helped.
That helped right now.
I could use one of those other SEALs arms and legs right about now. What I wouldn’t give for a breath of air. I can do it. Only a little further. It’s only fifty meters underwater! I had to do twice that for Hell week!
And thanks for bringing up that painful memory, JD.
When I retired from the Navy I swore I would never do anything ever again that involved cold and wet.
And now look at me!
In addition, looks like I’m up against a full blown team of operators. It was like another reoccurring bad dream I had in BUD/S training. I dreamt I was being drown by someone I couldn’t see. By someone I couldn’t reach. All I remember is that I’d wake up in a cold sweat trying to catch my breath.
These operators I could see: Big, mean and decked for warfare.
I’m outta here!
If they were Russian Special Forces I am in trouble as they train in just about every form of combat the same as SEALs: HALO, SCUBA, demolitions and all have specialized training.
There’s no way I can go on.
These guys are just going to track us down and shoot us where we wash up.
I pop Jennifer’s head out of the water first.
We’re about 100 feet away from Jack’s fishing boat.
It’s at least another 100 feet to land but I needed air.
The Russians are still on the dock, nearing the barge, and don’t notice us, yet.
Jennifer’s lips are blue and so, probably, are mine. I breathe another breath into her lifeless mouth while holding her nose. I continue my sidestrokes on my way into a tiny cove, somewhat hidden from the boats.
I’m thinking to myself I can’t quit; I’m so close to the beach. With every breath it seemed as if my heart was growing fainter and fainter. Again, I thought back to my Navy SEAL training.
One instructor said:
Mind over matter. If I don’t mind, nothing else matters!
Pain is just weakness leaving the body!
That was what another instructor yelled at me one day when I almost quit.
Everybody has something that makes them push way beyond where they thought they could go.
In SEAL training, you were taught: Never put your faith in a friend or the toughest guy in the group. If they quit, you’ll likely walk out right behind them.
The instructors taught you to put your faith in something deep inside you, preferably something eternal, bigger than you.
At Coronado, I’d look back to the 32nd Street Naval Base, see some ugly ship and say,
Hey, I’m in the sun! I sure don’t want to be stuck in the bowels of that ugly tug in some God-awful part of the world!
Some of the smallest guys in my SEAL class had the biggest hearts and the fight and strength of guys much, much, bigger. In the combat classes it was like watching a Chihuahua nipping at the heels of a pit bull. The Chihuahua is much faster and has the heart of a lion. And when the Lion soon tires the Chihuahua pounces.
Suddenly, the rain pours!
Thank God!
The rain will make it harder for them to see any trace of us.
I took another deep breath and continued to swim, if you can call it that.
It was a chore to push my legs at all. The strain of holding a hundred-pound woman’s head now above water would have been tough enough at these temperatures and with only one arm pushing through the water, it’s too much.
I’m standing still!
It was like the reoccurring dream I had as a child.
With a high fever, I was running down my grade school hall.
The harder and faster I ran, the further and further the door seemed to get.
The harder I paddled, the further away the beach seemed.
I’m giving up.
On the other hand, this is much easier than that five-and-a-half-mile ocean swim!
The cult I lived in with my mother banned all electronic devices but I found this old cassette tape recorder left at a rest stop picnic table on Interstate 5 and after asking everyone, no one seemed to own the it so I took it!
It had one cassette tape with one song:
When all else failed, that one song got me through Phase II underwater SEAL training.
I started singing what little I could remember:
I couldn’t remember any other verses so I just kept singing the ones I knew over and over and over.
Strange as it sounds:
It worked!
After what couldn’t have been more than ten minutes,
7
[AUTHOR’S NOTE: Listen to the four octave, “otherworldly falsetto” voice of Philip Bailey live at 24:00-25:00] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qehsJRbwZ0