“No, ma’am,” Dwyer corrected, “it’s the toughest training. The media really don’t capture how tough. Yeah, you may get some pushback from some of the other elite units around the world — SAS, Sayeret Matkal, Spetsnaz, GSG-9—but don’t listen to them. The dropout rate in BUD/S and SEAL Qualification Training is extremely high. The thing is, there’s really no way of telling who’s going to make it and who’s not when a new class first arrives. Some of the toughest, meanest, fittest SOBs drop out before Hell Week, and some guys with the faces of angels go all the way through. What you have to understand about success in the teams is that it’s a function of mental toughness. Show me a SEAL squad and I’ll show you eight men who have never quit, and will never quit, anything in their lives.”
“Where does Garin fit, SOB or angel?”
“Both. Mike’s one of the mentally and physically toughest men I’ve ever met. But he’s somewhat of a warrior-poet paradox. He’s a Grade A predator and yet he’s pure Boy Scout. Goes to Mass, prays the Rosary, rarely curses. But he can drink you under the table without so much as pausing to breathe, then rip out your liver to replace the one he just ruined. A ruthless Boy Scout, but a Boy Scout nonetheless. One of his mottos is Patton’s line, ‘Better to fight for something than live for nothing.’ I mean, the guy’s got mottos, for cripe’s sake,” Dwyer said, grinning. “He knows when to pivot, when to stand down. He’s very savvy, and he understands gray areas. That said, he really belongs in the twelfth century. Age of chivalry. Where everything’s black and white.”
“How can the Big Bad Wolf also be a Boy Scout? Especially after all he’s done?”
Dwyer brightened theatrically. “Thanks so much for letting me play amateur psychologist. It’s my true calling.”
“Seriously.”
Dwyer shrugged. “The Big Bad Wolf wasn’t always big and bad?” Dwyer offered. “When I recruited him for Annapolis, I was a grad assistant on the Navy football team, something to keep me occupied while I was recuperating from two broken legs.”
“How…”
“Don’t ask. Training accident.” Dwyer made air quotes with his fingers.
Olivia blinked acquiescence.
“When you recruit players, you’re actually recruiting the whole family — Mom, Dad, siblings, girlfriends — to encourage them to get the recruit to sign with you.”
Olivia nodded. “My father played for Bear Bryant.”
“No kidding? Really? Then you know how it goes. I got to know his sister, Katy, pretty well. Major babe, though she’s probably even tougher than Mikey. Over beers she tells me Mikey was a runt as a kid. Their mom had serious complications when pregnant with him and his twin. Doctors recommended she abort. Mikey was born almost three months premature. His twin died in utero. Mikey spent a long time in the NICU before coming home. Grew up undersize for most of his childhood, chronically ill. He wasn’t a Big Bad Wolf back then. He was prey, not predator.”
“That wouldn’t necessarily turn him into a Boy Scout. Some people might be resentful or vengeful once they got strong and healthy.”
“Look,” Dwyer said. “That’s about the limit of my psychoanalytic abilities. All I know is Mike is not someone you want as an enemy. You definitely want him on your side.”
“But he never became a SEAL. If he’s so smart and tough, why did he drop out?”
“He didn’t. Not technically, at least. Mike was going through all the evolutions during BUD/S and coming out at, or near, the top in all of them. He was definitely a candidate for honor man of the class. Push-ups, pull-ups, running. Didn’t matter how much or how many. He just kept plugging. Never lagged. And he seemed oblivious to the cold — getting wet and sandy all the time. Everybody else is frozen, teeth chattering. Guys were dropping out like flies. But there he was, with that determined look in his eyes. I’ll tell you, it can be unsettling. We sometimes get star athletes that come through. Many of them, most of them, can’t hack it. Not only could Mike hack it; he thrived. No, he didn’t DOR. He went to SEAL Qualification Training. But then he just disappeared.”
“DOR?”
“Drop on Request. Anyone dropping out just places their helmet on the grinder — an asphalt area — and rings a bell. No questions asked. Mike didn’t do that. He didn’t ring the bell. Like I said, he was in SQT and then he was just gone.” Dwyer shook his head as if still trying to sort out what happened. “Mike’s disappearance stunned the rest of the class and the instructors. Naturally, there was some talk — not much; we don’t dwell on those things. But people were trying to figure out what happened. We asked around a little. No one knew anything. There was some speculation that he got sheep-dipped, but that was about it.”
Dwyer noticed Olivia’s eyebrows knit in confusion. “Sorry. Sheep-dipped. Some thought he might’ve been snagged by the OGA — the CIA — and trained at the Farm, Camp Peary,” he explained.
“He wasn’t?”
“Hell, I still don’t know.”
“When was the next time you heard from him?”
“The next time I heard about him was more than a year later. Rumors of Garin sightings. One night, back when I was with Task Force 121 looking for Saddam Hussein, some guys came back to Baghdad Airport buzzing about how they got ambushed, but some guy with an M4 shows up out of nowhere and takes out eight of the enemy. When the smoke clears, he’s gone. But one of the guys who knew Mike from BUD/S claims it was him.”
“Was it?”
“Who knows? I asked Mike about it once and he just got quiet like he always does.”
“Like you did when I asked you about DEVGRU this morning.”
Dwyer pursed his lips. “Anyway, over the next year and a half, I heard the occasional Garin story. Someone saw him in the Ma’laab District in Ramadi. Then all the way over in Kandahar. And the stories.” Dwyer rolled his eyes. “The stories got more and more ridiculous.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, they sounded like he was Batman or something: Garin wipes out ten al-Qaeda fighters with a dull can opener; Garin leaps tall buildings in a single bound. Unbelievable stuff.”
“You’re confusing superheroes,” Olivia needled. Dwyer could see that Olivia was becoming absorbed in the story despite its marginal relevance to Iranians and Russians. “Was it really Garin?”
“Again, don’t know. Sounded over-the-top. But operators aren’t generally given to hyperbole.”
“Do you know what Garin was supposedly doing in those areas, presuming it was him?”
“He never told me. But clearly, he was killing bad guys.”
“Do you believe the stories?”
“I believe one of them, that’s for sure.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I was there.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The crevasse ran deep and long, high in the Hindu Kush. A short distance ahead, no more than a two-hour walk, was the mountain that intel had identified as the safe haven for Taliban fighters who had been harassing allied troops for the last three weeks, often with devastating effect.
Lieutenant Dan Dwyer led his team cautiously through the narrow passage, alert for any signs of the enemy’s presence. This was their territory and they knew how to remain hidden in the rocky crags and nooks until it was often too late for allied patrols to react.
The crevasse was perfectly constructed for ambush, with only one avenue of retreat. To the team’s left was a steep four-hundred-foot slope, behind which the midday sun was already beginning to disappear, casting hideous shadows throughout the canyon floor. On the right was an imposing wall of rock that rose more than three hundred feet at a sheer ninety-degree angle. Between the steep wall and the more gradual slope, the floor of the crevasse was no more than forty feet wide, with massive boulders throughout.