Commanding on the high seas and in crowded shipping corridors on its first commissioned deployment, a new ship, of a new type, with a new crew, is not easy. All the more so when the destination is war. Rensselaer was cautious because—although the way was open—the weather was coming in, the sea was already agitated, and some of the sailors had, as he put it, a deficit of experience. “Stand by your lines,” came his amplified voice over the 10MC. “All right,” he said, unamplified, and then once again held down the microphone button. “Cast off bow spring line.” The sailor next to the bow spring line remained immobile. “Cast off bow spring line,” Rensselaer repeated, wondering why his order hadn’t been executed. Still, the sailor didn’t move.
“Is he deaf?” Rensselaer asked Movius, the XO. The command had echoed off the buildings next to the wharf.
“He’s new,” Movius said. “Maybe he thinks he’s on the bow line.”
Rensselaer went back on the 10MC, the communications channel appropriate to this evolution. “Sailor most forward.” The sailor turned to look up at the bridge. “You’re on a spring line, the bow spring line. We have no bow line. Cast off your line.” He did.
“Cast-off breast lines.” It was done, lively. And then, “Cast-off stern lines.” As the ship slightly cleared the wharf, Rensselaer commanded, “Shift colors,” and the national ensign was run up the gaff, although it would not be there for long, as it was late in the day. “Left ten degrees rudder, indicate two and a half knots.” The bow moved slowly to port. The inner harbor had no current, and the wind favored the maneuver. “Rudder amidships. Indicate three and a half knots.” They began to move ahead. When they reached the passage north, Rensselaer commanded, “Hard right rudder, steady at three and a half knots.” Athena swung to starboard, her stern moving to port. Then, before the bow hit the centerline of the passage, Rensselaer commanded, “Left ten degrees rudder.” Athena straightened. “Rudder amidships, indicate five knots.”
As they cleared the harbor and headed for the gap in the Bay Bridge-Tunnel, they increased speed. The ocean wind began to flow over the deck. You could almost see it, and it hardly ever stopped. Eventually, you came to expect it, and when it wasn’t there, you could hear your heart beat. They cleared the gap, and soon Fort Story disappeared off the starboard side. The command was given to increase speed to thirty knots. Rensselaer had approved the course the quartermaster (the navigator) and the XO had set for Gibraltar, ordering that it was to be followed electronically as well as plotted by hand on the chart table every hour, and checked with sextant and chronometer at noon each day and two times nightly whenever the stars were visible. “Verify as well with RDF and depth soundings,” he had said. “I want all methods recorded on the chart. I know the GPS is almost infallible, but I want to see how everything aligns. It’s good practice if something goes wrong.
“In regard to sextant and chronometer, you’ll like it. You’ll see. They aren’t as precisely accurate as the electronics, but you’ll come close, which means you’ll have agency, you won’t be just a passive receiver. There’s something wonderful about using a sextant. If you catch a fish and roast it over a fire you yourself have made, it tastes better than if it’s served to you at a fancy restaurant. That’s because, without effort, enjoyment is corrupted into nothing.”
The distance to Gibraltar was 3,840 miles, which at thirty knots would take four and a half days. But due to wind, currents, and the possibility of heavy seas, and thus allowing for an effective speed of twenty-five knots, they would reach the Strait in five and a half days. Thence to Haifa to refuel—the high number of naval vessels transiting the Mediterranean necessitated replenishment at an expanded range of ports—through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and to the Gulf, although this had yet to be formally communicated to the crew.
Rensselaer spoke to everyone aboard via the 1MC (the one-main circuit), which spread universally throughout the ship. It was his first general communication at sea. “This is the captain. Move from condition five to condition four. No email or telephonic personal communications, EMCON otherwise normal. Watches will be manned per posted bills and standard practice. Absent heavy weather, I’ll address the crew at the first opportunity in daylight. There’s bound to be some confusion at the outset. If you have a concern, speak to the chiefs, the XO, or me, in that order, save for emergencies when the chain of command may not be appropriate. You’ll know when that is if it happens. I’ll remain on the bridge at least through the evening watch, or possibly until the heavy weather subsides. Chiefs, double your reporting. Captain out.”
*
At any moment, hundreds of thousands of vessels are at sea, from super-tankers and immense Panamax container ships to warships, small yachts, battered trawlers, and flimsy junks. In day after day of emptiness without sight of another, each will have been seduced to believe that the sea is empty and clear. And yet hundreds of thousands of courses will cross, even if seldom at the same time, as they are traced from port to port. Wariness of collision must be exercised not merely at the bow but abeam and astern, and though a whole lifetime on the sea may pass without a close call, the sense of another ship bearing down in the darkness or from fog and gray rain must be cultivated and maintained. Even in the empty quarters of the oceans, which should be the most relaxing places on earth, one must forever be alert.
The bridge on Athena would thus be continually as professional as it was now, but perhaps not as tense as on this, her very first watch, as night approached in challenging weather and through the heavily trafficked sea-lanes converging on Norfolk. Lack of visibility while navigating causes physical exhaustion, and for an hour the rain transformed the windows into nauseating lenses uncorrected by windshield wipers at even their maximum speeds. Then the rain stopped and the wind pressured remnant drops across the glass and into oblivion, as if the ship were in the drying phase of a carwash. Ahead was a low ceiling of black cloud with downward, tornadic-looking funnels and continual flashes not of white but of golden lightning in what appeared to be short, almost curly strikes from the bottoms of the clouds to the horizon. Above the dark clouds a peaceful-looking, luminous screen of white was flushed with pink. They were not yet out of the OPC Weather Area, from the Baltimore Canyon to Cape Charles Light, and not even one hundred nautical miles offshore.
The captain and XO glanced at the approaching storm and went about their work. The XO circulated among the stations, checking radars, plots, meteorological instruments, depth soundings, communications. Rensselaer made regular inquiries on the various MC circuits, and frequently polled the lookouts. When not thus engaged, he wrote in the log or on the chart, recording so many readings and observations that it was hard to believe the only thing happening was otherwise uneventful forward progress. The bridge was hushed and darkened except for quiet, formal commands and responses, instrument glow, and dim red lamps that were still hardly visible due to lingering natural light.
Josephson, a newly commissioned ensign, approached Rensselaer to ask if the funnel clouds and lightning were a threat. “They seem to be passing, sir,” he said, “at great speed, and should be behind us in fifteen or twenty minutes.”
“Probably so,” Rensselaer replied.
“Then calm sailing, sir?”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Really? It looks like it. The background looks clear—well, white—and unmoving. Won’t it be tranquil once the black clouds pass?”
“What do you think makes that wall of white?” Rensselaer asked. “Cloud? Fog? Haze? No.”
“Sir?”
“That’s rain, Mr. Josephson, so packed and driven that it looks like a white wall. The sea is now southeast at seven feet, wind twenty-two knots. Soon the lightning clouds, which are mostly dry, will have passed over us with much drama. Then the peaceful white curtain will hit Athena like a cannon. The sea will run from fifteen to twenty feet, the wind to fifty or sixty knots. You won’t be able to see anything. The ship will rise in the air until you think it’ll somersault backward, and then it’ll plunge like a diving submarine. The waves will cover the foredeck, slamming into us with tens of thousands of pounds of water weight, which is why we tie down with welds, turnbuckles, and steel. Which is why I gave the order to inspect the tiedowns, secure outside doors and hatches, and make sure no one is topside.
“I could be wrong. We’ll see.”
A minute or so later the first strike came out of nowhere and hit an undistinguished patch of sea. It was near enough to rattle the bridge windows, within a second of the flash, with a report like a cannon blast. Other strikes followed, as random as the flashes of fireflies.
Rensselaer took a step forward, then turned back a little toward Josephson and the helm. “Somehow at home the mountains seem to soak up the lightning and thunder. Not on the sea. The strokes can be so close you feel like you’re between two cymbals.”
“Home is on the Hudson, sir?”
“Yes.”
“There are mountains there?”
“Beautiful mountains.” Rensselaer addressed the helmsman. “Helmsman, stay on your mark. Lighter touch. When she swings, she’ll want to swing back. All she needs is a little help.”
“Aye sir, lighter touch.”
Rain began to bang against the windows, in huge, wind-propelled drops.
*
The captain had neglected to mention the groaning bulkheads, decks, and superstructure; the feeling of gravitylessness during twenty-foot drops through the air before the bows found water again; the blasts of wind that held wiper blades still and caused their motors to grind as gears moved against gears that had been stopped; and the alarming sound of the screws half out of the sea.
Lightning strikes that had been nearby as the dark clouds passed over now were directly astern, but jagged branches of light remained impressed upon the eyes long after the bolts of lightning had vanished, each an addition to an electric forest of ghostly dead trees, their former lives the color of the sun.
Then the storm passed, night fell, and Athena cleared the convergence zone close to Norfolk, where shipping lanes were compressed together for entry from all points. The sea ahead was open and calm, as if having passed through a barrier in space and time Athena had entered the ante-room of another world.
At 2200, having skipped dinner to remain on the bridge, Rensselaer went to get something to eat.
“The XO has the con,” he announced.
“Aye, sir, I have the con,” Movius answered. Rensselaer went below. He knew he would have to get used to trusting the ship to others even in the first hours out.
Athena had a tiny wardroom, but as the refrigerators were in the crew’s mess, Rensselaer went there, took out a ham sandwich and a Diet Coke, grabbed a bag of potato chips, and sat down across from Di Loreto, who, upon Rensselaer’s appearance, rose and stood at attention. “As you were,” he was told.
“Captain, sir, I can awaken the cook.”
“Absolutely not. He has to get up to cook at the close of midwatch.”
“Too bad you missed dinner, sir: steak and spaghetti.”
“This is fine. Uh . . . Marine Mammal Specialist Di Loreto?”
“Sir?”
“Why are you here alone? You’re not eating.”
“I didn’t want to stay in my rack, sir.”
“Soon it’ll be lights out.”
“Yes sir. Then I can go back.”
“Did something drive you up here? You’re not studying, or writing a letter. You’re just sitting there. What’s going on below?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Nothing?”
“Yes sir. It’s nothing. It’s just that they’re doing something that makes me uncomfortable.”
“Spill it.”
“They’re watching a pornographic movie, sir.”
“You don’t have to watch it, do you?”
“No sir, but I have to hear it.”
“And why does that distress you?”
“My fiancée, sir. She’s a woman. I get upset when I think that people would treat women this way. I can’t explain it exactly, sir. It’s like when people would make jokes about Lucy, saying they wanted to . . . violate her, sir. Or put her in a tuna salad. She was better than they were.”
“I understand. Go back to your quarters. This meeting never took place. When I finish eating I’m going to make a surprise inspection. You, too, will be surprised. Am I clear?”
“Aye, sir.”
The last thing Rensselaer wanted was to come down hard on his new crew the first night out. But the best soldiers were those with the strongest ethics in service of the highest purpose. Clear and unfettered sight, unburdened by corruption, was necessary in combat. Not only that, but from the perspective of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a warship in which such corruption was endemic would be deserving of defeat, and although their perspective was not his, Rensselaer didn’t want to give them that.
The IRGC could not know that some of the Athena’s crew had been watching a pornographic movie, but he would, and in the most subtle, unchartable ways, this might influence his decision-making, his feeling for battle, and his confidence in the justice of action. Every impulse told him to do what he did next.
After he finished his sandwich, his potato chips, and his Coke, he took his time in going below, and then stood for a moment at the entrance to the crew’s quarters. Inside, everyone was turned toward a laptop across the screen of which passed flesh-colored patches to the accompaniment of an almost comical faked orgasm. Rensselaer cleared his throat. The sailors turned, panic arose, the laptop was slammed shut, and someone called out, “Attention on deck!”
Men jumped from their berths or rose from where they were sitting, and stood at attention. He let them hold position for longer than usual, began to leave, and said, “Carry on,” with more than a hint of skepticism. They relaxed, but remained standing and motionless.
“You know,” Rensselaer said, turning back, “before Nine-Eleven, the hijackers went to Las Vegas to watch nude dancing, and, maybe, consort with prostitutes. A lot of Americans thought this was to have a last fling before death. It wasn’t. It was to allow them the justification for killing, in their view, corrupt and sinful non-believers.
“They treat their women like cattle, it’s true, but they’re onto something in regard to us. Let me ask you, not aggressively, but kindly, I hope. . . . Y’all”—he picked this up in New Orleans; Katy, too, said it sometimes—“have mothers. Some of you have wives, sisters, including little sisters, and some—I know—young daughters. Would you like them to be in a movie like that?” he asked, pointing to the closed laptop.
“These women are all daughters. Some are sisters, wives, mothers. Once, they were little girls. Okay, something happened to them, so now they sell their bodies. The golden rule of the New Testament—do unto others as you would have them do unto you—was lifted from a different formulation in the Hebrew Bible: do not do unto others, as you would not want them to do unto you. It’s less proactive, and presumes less.
“I can tell you, that even if you don’t know it, this kind of thing lowers your value to yourself in your own eyes and makes you less confident in your own defense. Perhaps, though it may not be much, enough to tip the balance in a closely run fight. That wouldn’t be good, would it?
“The people who in not so many days we may be fighting believe that they’re pure and we’re impure. Purity before combat was the rule in ancient times, and has been ignored in the scientized West. Let me assure you that impurity of any kind will weigh upon you in a struggle even if you are unaware of it.
“When we confront those bastards who would kill us, we’ll know what they think of us, and we’ll know who we are. It’s important, gentlemen, that we know they are wrong. It’s a mystical but undeniable element of the fight. It’s part of staying alive. Really.”
“Yes, sir,” someone said.
Rensselaer let some moments pass, and then bluntly added, “There’s a moon out tonight.”
For a moment, they thought he might be mad, but then he went on. “Would it be against Navy regulations to throw garbage overboard?”
They were beginning to cotton. “It would, sir,” someone said meekly.
“It would. But would it be interesting to see how moonlight makes an interference spectrum across a DVD? In regular light you see a rainbow, but would you in moonlight?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“That’s a worthy physics experiment,” Rensselaer stated. “And, as you know, DVDs are famously slippery, especially in the wind.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Carry on.”
After he left, there was silence during which everyone looked at one another in unfeigned shock. Then they went topside into the moonlight and the wind.
*
Morning on the first day at sea was auspicious as Athena swifted through almost flat waters in a world of blue. Better than completely still waters, they rose and fell like gentle breathing, and the crew not on watch had slept that night with the constant song—if it can be called that—of waves meeting the ship. The color blue is the mariner’s happiness, for so much of one’s time on the sea is gray. This was one of those blue days between giant weather systems visible on computer screens and from space as their white pinwheels swirl like global cotton candy.
A passenger on a cruise ship or liner cannot fail to be impressed by the sameness of the sea. Flat and featureless, it is torturously unrelieved for days and weeks. But for the mariner, especially in the Navy, this is not so. Civilian maps of the undersea are detailed enough, but undersea warfare has necessitated military maps of astounding detail, for this is one of the ways submarines navigate. Thus, for the officers and bridge watch of Athena, the Atlantic crossing had waypoints and features that in giving character to their journey made it far more measurable and tolerable than were it just another species of partial sensory deprivation.
Nearly every foot was charted and identifiable, but they would be pleased the most as they glided above many great “seamarks.” Departing, they had passed over the Albemarle Shelf Valley and would continue, in the Western Atlantic between the Sohm Plain and the Bermuda Rise, on to the Washington Canyon, and then the Hudson Valley. The latter was indeed the Hudson Valley and, although hidden in the depths, the same feature of the earth’s crust as that in which Rensselaer had grown up amid apple orchards and whitewater kills that tumbled down to the river. After the Hudson came the Carstens Valley, and then Athena would sail just south of the Mytilus Seamount. The Picket Seamount would be left behind. Then across the Newfoundland Plain, over the Iberian Basin, north of the Ashton Seamount, between the Tagus Basin and the Tagus Plain, over the Lagos and Faro Canyons, and into the Strait of Gibraltar.
Prevailing westerlies would speed the ship entirely to its advantage until north winds sweeping the Atlantic edge of Europe necessitated a vectored course into the busy sea-lanes leading into the Med. What with wind, weather, light, and storm, and the continual activity and watchfulness over the ship and its functions, the passage was carefully worked and richly observed.
At 0900 during the forenoon watch, Rensselaer ordered all engines stopped and all hands on deck. The bridge watch stayed in place behind him, but they could hear every word as he addressed the crew, who had crowded on the starboard side, the younger ones sitting somewhat precariously on perches to which they had climbed, like the sailors clinging to every horizontal surface of the Missouri during the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay.
Some captains are menacing, some aloof, some too friendly, some too drunk on their pasts and their futures to see clearly what is in front of them, and a very few, in the dry Navy, drunk. Rensselaer’s manner was that of a much older man, whose velocity of speech was slowed and compressed by experience and sorrow. But surprisingly for a man who had no children, it was paternal.
“You’ve seen the P.O.D., the watch bills, and the various supplementary schedules. I don’t have to tell you that every day you’ll be busy until you sleep. I’ll be brief, so that you can return to your tasks.
“The weather and the sea are now ideal, but where we’re going will be even bluer and brighter. The deck will be so hot sometimes that it’ll burn your feet through your shoes, and the light will assault you. Although you’ll think you might, you’ll never quite get used to it.
“Were we a larger ship we’d have no need for cross-training. The various departments on destroyers, cruisers, and carriers have little need for it. There’s no reason that engineering and combat systems should be on a command track, or that SWOs on that track should immerse themselves in other specialties to the point where they lose competency in ship handling and overall command.
“But we’re different, and because we’re different, we’re going to train until exhaustion. When shells are slamming into the ship, the decks are slick with blood, your wounded shipmates are screaming in agony, the officers have been killed, and the smoke is thick and choking—if all this should come to pass—I want you to be able to do automatically that which will keep you alive, keep the ship afloat, and keep her fighting. So we’ll drill in flash gear even in unbearable heat. We’ll know where every single battle lantern is kept not only in our own spaces but everywhere. We’ll load and carry ammunition almost in our sleep. We won’t just shoot into the sea when we practice, we’ll put out targets, hit them, and keep score. Every man will become adept at fixing a breach, driving a wedge, putting out a blaze, and placing a tourniquet. I want us to be the fastest, the most accurate, the most automatic, the most disciplined and yet the fiercest fighters you can imagine. That’s how we’ll stay alive, throw back the enemy, and animate the courage and best traditions of the Navy. Those, if we’re lucky, will flow into us and give us strength, illuminate the great and good parts of honor, and connect us to the American sailors who came before us. When you fight on the sea as they did, you’ll bring them back alive inside you, a rare and joyous thing that makes the world seem close to just.
“And we’re almost sure to fight not only on the sea but on land. You may not have signed up for that, but war modifies all contracts. Half the ship’s crew apart from the SEALs should expect to become naval infantry. Those left on board will have to do twice the work and must be prepared to operate outside their specialties even in the event of no casualties.
“Now, you may ask . . . who signed up for naval infantry, of which the United States, having Marines, has none? No one. And you don’t have to do it. You can volunteer or not. It won’t be held against you if you don’t.
“And you may wonder what it’s all about. We’re likely to go ashore, a lot more than once, and the force we’ll need has to be greater than our six SEALs if we’re going to do it right and survive. Normally at Bahrain we home port ten PCs and four minesweepers. Now they’re fully engaged. I don’t know the present order of battle in the Gulf, but I imagine that we’ve got a line of destroyers and cruisers to protect Saudi oil facilities, and carriers close by in the Arabian Sea to join the airpower we’ve surged to Al-Udeid, A’Dhafra, and Saudi and Kuwaiti bases.
“The Gulf now sees constant combat. Most of the major Iranian surface combatants have been sunk, but Iran seems to have an unending supply of shore batteries, small craft, mines, and missiles. We’re not going to the Gulf per se.”
This struck everyone as odd, and it showed in their faces. Some of the bridge watch turned around to look at Rensselaer’s back, as if to ask, What?
“Our job, because we have more speed, more weapons, and can stay on station longer than the other PCs, is to scrub the Iranian coast from inside the Strait of Hormuz at Bandar Abbás, around the southwest corner of the Iranian landmass, and three hundred miles east, almost all the way to Gwadar in Pakistan.
“This is a wild, poorly surveyed coast. We don’t know exactly everything they have there, but we do know that there are anti-ship missiles, raiding craft, and garrisoned bases. To reduce the distance for our aircraft to get to their area of operations, the carriers and their screens are not that far out to sea. The screens are not as heavy as they should be, and even if they were, there’s no question that we would take the fight to the threat.
“We’ll be alone and will attack, by sea and by land, numerous bases, some heavily defended. Because of the scarcity, we have six SEALs rather than the nine we should have. So you’ll want to learn and practice as much as you can. Harden yourselves like SEALs, know how to handle wound trauma, how to operate your weapons as if by second nature, and otherwise prepare in every way for what lies ahead.
“God willing, the war will be over by the time we get there, but, in war, God seldom seems willing.”
*
Many hours of planning and scheduling made it possible to coordinate training, work, and intervals of programmed rest. Although every last one of the crew had volunteered for Rensselaer’s naval infantry, fifteen were selected on the basis that, if necessary, their jobs could be done by others. The engineering department spared only one man, weapons operators other than gunners spared none. Most of the enlisted crew who customarily served as officer of the deck would remain on board, with the understanding that in the absence of those men who were allowed to volunteer, watches would be lengthened even beyond what they might expect in combat.
The quartermaster would remain, as navigation to rendezvous points had to be precise for exfiltrating landing parties. Movius, the XO, would have to stay on board, which disappointed him mightily. He didn’t know that Rensselaer intended to lead every shore engagement, which was entirely out of the ordinary, but so was Rensselaer. During his cock-up in the Oval Office, he had thought that if he were president he would be duty bound, contrary to sense as it might be, to go with the first wave of troops into any battle to which his decisions might lead. It seemed only just, and even while he was speaking with the president he was thinking about this. He knew of course that he would never be president, because, among many other things, leading troops into battle as president was exactly what he would have done.
In the privacy of his small cabin, he told Movius of his plans to go ashore. Movius tried to dissuade him: Rensselaer should be in overall command, from the ship. It was important that the captain stay with his ship for many reasons, including an attack at sea. No captain should risk himself unnecessarily. He was much older than, and might be a burden to, the younger, fitter men. He had done his time, he had fought many battles. It was almost a duty to give way to others.
As Movius spoke, Rensselaer listened and was able to hear in the background the SEALs on deck as they began to instruct their new charges. His eyes fixed on the shelves above his desk, skipping over dozens of naval books and reference volumes, and landing upon a section he wondered if he might ever be able to touch: Tocqueville, De la Démocratie en Amérique, a fat French dictionary, a Bible, the collected poems of William Butler Yeats, those of Emily Dickinson, and a textbook of economics, a subject in which he deemed himself—and all others—highly deficient. When he read Emily Dickinson he was transported to the austerity and quiet of nineteenth-century, rural Massachusetts, neither far from nor more wintry than the Hudson Valley. So saintly, pure, and austere was she, that reading her was almost a religious exercise.
When Movius finished, Rensselaer, who hadn’t paid that much attention, said, “Those are all excellent arguments, perhaps irrefutable, but they don’t outweigh the fact that I’m going to have to send kids, and some family men, ashore, where more than a few of them may die. If I’m still alive, I’m the one who’ll have to write the letters and visit the families.
“I won’t be able to do that unless I take the same risks. If Athena were a destroyer or cruiser, I’d stay, but she isn’t. Almost half the crew will be ashore, and you’re overqualified in every way for command of a PC, so what I’m doing is not irresponsible.”
“I understand. But—”
“No. Just answer this question: if you were in my place, what would you do?”
“All right,” Movius said, relenting. “I suggest, then, that you do some refresher training, and let the SEALs tire you out a bit.”
“That was my intention from the start, and once things run smoothly, I will.”
“And, sir?”
“Yes?”
“I think I should tell you that I overheard a discussion among some members of the crew. It was a kind of argument about whether or not you were going to get us all killed.”
“What did they conclude?”
“They didn’t. But they did seem to take very seriously the need to train, and a few were of the opinion that it was just the opposite: you were the kind of CO that would help them stay alive.”
“That’s what I intend to do.”
*
The next day, word spread below to come on deck. The engineering watch could not. Athena was sailing through and amid an agitated cloud of shearwaters, spectacular birds known mainly to seafarers. They migrate from one end of the earth to the other, forty thousand miles of flight in a year. Upon seeing a shoal of fish, they fold their wings and hit the water like bullets, streaking their lines thirty and forty feet down, a kind of rifle fire into the sea.
The sailors were awestruck as birds in their hundreds plunged into the waves. The ocean was clear blue, so the underwater trails were visible. Birds shot into the water, swam a bit, then emerged to take flight, all very rapidly, coming dangerously close to each other. Their abilities in air and water, the distances they traveled, their speed, and their grace were almost beyond belief.
They lived more than half a century, flying millions of miles, surviving where a man would die in a few minutes. They sheared the wave crests, taking energy from the air. And their name—descriptive to a T, onomatopoeic, and beautiful—was perfect. Every sailor on Athena who saw them was elevated, and would never forget.
*
In a feat of organization, the fifteen chosen volunteer auxiliaries to the SEALs—to whom Rensselaer referred as “The Chosin Reservoir”—were run through an NSW training pipeline integrated with their watches, meals, and rest. The six SEALs manned six stations, rotating so that they themselves could train in all of them.
A volunteer would start with a six-mile run on one of the treadmills, which was set to measure his progress at each session, advancing by degree until he could run the distance at a constant speed of ten miles an hour. Some would not make that benchmark, but all would improve immensely.
The second station was weaponry. Holworthy began by stating, “Remember, in shooting, weapons disassembly and assembly, and doing things in sequence, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. When you rush, you drop things, you miss, you fuck up. When you jerk, you waste energy and time and things don’t align—a magazine doesn’t insert until you’re forced to wiggle it; a round isn’t fully chambered; a knife not fully grasped falls from your hand; it takes two tries, or more, to get your pistol out of the holster. Things like that. Go slow to begin with, and get smooth. Fast will come as if by magic: don’t push it.”
Each sailor practiced assembling and disassembling an FN 5.7 pistol and an M4 automatic rifle. He learned sighting, ballistics, fire discipline, etc., and he threw live grenades into the sea so as to get comfortable with them—as most people, understandably, are not. This was very dangerous on the ship, which could be badly damaged if someone dropped a grenade that the instructor then failed to throw overboard. Despite his instruction, one sailor panicked at the pop when the handle of a grenade was released, and dropped it. The instructor SEAL tried to kick it overboard, but it went instead into an angle plate. Racing against the six seconds, three of which had passed, the SEAL dived for it, grabbed it, turned on his back, and with one and a half seconds left, threw it backward over his head. It traveled about fifteen feet out and exploded just after it hit the water. He stood up, fetched another grenade, and said to his ashen student, “Try again.”
When they took apart their M4s, Holworthy guided them through each step. The last was the most sensitive. “If you don’t hold the ejector down when you remove the pin, it’ll jump out and you may lose it and its tiny spring. Without the ejector, the size of a vitamin pill, or just the spring, the size of a sesame seed; or the pin, the size of a grain of wild rice, the M4 is dead. You’re supplied with extras, but don’t take them for granted. You can lose them, too—in the dark, as the ship pitches or a truck drives rough, or when someone starts shooting at you when you’re cleaning your weapon.”
Station three was calisthenics. SEALs are good enough at calisthenics to banish the pride of professional athletes. On Athena, they started with warm-ups that deceived their students into thinking of yoga and dancercise. Then they were pushed to and beyond their limits. For example, they were asked how many pull-ups they could do. Most said they didn’t know, and then struggled to do four or five. Their instructor then told him that when he finished with them they would have to be able to do forty. Between other sets he would have them at the pull-up bar until they hurt so much they thought they would be permanently disabled. That would be the concentration one day, and the next day it would be something else, including weights, rope climbing, and if the opportunity arose, a mile swim.
The fourth station was where they received instruction in ambush tactics, infiltration and exfiltration, wound trauma procedures, land navigation, hand signals, radio and sat-phone, and specialty phrases in Farsi and Baluchi: hands in the air, drop weapons, get on the ground, who else is in there, no talking. The sailors were grateful for classroom instruction after their near-death experiences during calisthenics.
The fifth station was marksmanship, a science and art. The science is procedure, the art is the ability to still the body and the mind. The weapon is hot, excitable, and noisy, but the shooter must be as calm as the surface of a mirrored lake. And above all, he must be practiced. They shot thousands of rounds, as did the .50-caliber gunners and the SEAL snipers. Initially it was extremely difficult, as the floating targets and the ship were constantly and separately in motion even when the ship was dead in the water. But this was good, because they learned to hit moving targets, three-quarters of the battle.
The last station was CQC, close-quarter combat: offensive and defensive, hand-to-hand, with knife, rifle, rock, and wall. Walls are the most under-appreciated of weapons. Present at almost all combats—although, in some, rock formations, trees, or vehicles stand in their place—they are an anvil that by means of relative motion can be made to function like a very heavy hammer. The sailors would practice, in alternation, and for an hour, only two moves each session. The SEALs said that was how you made them second nature. “You’ve heard of muscle memory?” O’Connor asked. “There’s no such thing. The memory is in the brain, which tells the muscles what to do. If you practice a move a hundred times a day for a hundred days, you’ll never have to think about it. It’ll be automatic and fast.”
The intense training integrated with regular watches made everyone so tired that when given the opportunity they fell asleep instantly, dragged and pushed into a heavy, blessed darkness from which, to their amazement, they awakened as if just born, full of energy and eager to beat the records of the previous day. Not the chiefs, who were older. But the young ones, moving toward their highest potentials, became different people. And they enjoyed every breath of this new life.