“Sorry I am not better-dressed, sir. I was just—” He was cut off quickly.
“Oh, I was here for the whole thing, BM3. Good work out there. You like working under pressure, huh?” the O-4 said, looking Baron up and down, judging him intently with deep ice blue eyes.
“Yes, sir,” Baron said, looking at the tip of his nose trying not to make eye contact with him.
“Why?” the officer countered.
“It…it calms me.”
“Oh? How’s that?” the pitch in the officer’s voice raised with curiosity.
“We all keep demons, sir. I have some from my past. When I am under pressure, they…kind of go away. I think only about the current situation I have been placed in, and I become very focused and perform well. The stress it…it focuses me,” Baron continued. “I am sorry, sir. Did I fail the tests? Is that why you are here?” Baron asked, trying to change the uncomfortable subject.
“No, Baron, I am here because you passed the tests. Actually, out of all the applicants, you came in first in most of the evaluations.” The words hit Baron like a ton of bricks in the chest. He had passed. He had a real opportunity to make a tangible difference, not only in the lives of families on vacation in Michigan but also to the whole country.
“So…um…what’s my next move, sir?” Baron asked, trying not to show too much excitement.
“Well, we will have to do a background check on you, of course, then you will have to fill out an SF-86 form, provide some information, and if all that comes back clear, you will be granted an interim TS-SCI clearance. Once you are given your new security clearance, orders will then be cut for you, and someone from ONI, the Office of Naval Intelligence, will be by here to pick you up. After that…well, you don’t have the clearance to know at the moment, so I will just say, it’s classified.” He finished, staring at Baron, trying to decipher his emotions.
“Roger that, sir. I will get to the paperwork first thing tomorrow.” Baron smiled and replied. “I do not mean to be rude, sir, but I have an AAR to file from the rescue and a boat to clean.”
“Of course, BM3, I came here just to congratulate you and inform you of your acceptance to the SEAL program. I have done both, so with that, I will be on my way. Bravo Zulu, BM3, that’s what you coasties say, isn’t it?” Chief Maynes and Baron both smiled at the Navy officer trying out coast guard phrases. Bravo Zulu was what coasties said to each other to mean good job or congratulations. It didn’t have one meaning but was ultimately congratulatory.
“Yes, sir, that’s correct. Thank you.” The officer stood up, and they shook hands again. Chief Maynes walked the commander to his car, saluted, and watched him drive off the station grounds. After he had cleared the station’s property, Baron was assaulted by questions about who the man was, why he was there, and if Baron was in trouble or not. He answered them quickly, then sat down at a computer and wrote up his report. Once the report was printed and signed, Baron went to his room to be alone for a minute. He smiled, holding a picture of his dad he took out of his left breast pocket. I did it, Pop. I am going to make it up to you. I will make up for all of it, he thought.
After a hot shower, Baron put his blue coast guard T-shirt, pants, and boots on. He left off the uniform blouse for a more relaxed posture befitting a Saturday evening. Falling into the broken-in brown couch, he dipped a hot burrito in Sriracha sauce and turned on college football. LSU had just beaten Michigan State with a field goal in the final seconds of the game, and Baron allowed a small chuckle to himself.
*****
As Baron was sitting in full combat gear, helmet, and air mask in the back of a C-130 Hercules, he remembered that day fondly—the day his whole life changed. Those days were what he hung on to when the missions got too hard or when life became almost too much to bear. The interior light of the plane turned from a pitch-black to a deep-red hue as the ready light turned on and the rear hatch to the plane began to drop. Baron and the rest of his team stood up in unison going over last-minute checks. The night was cloudless and vast, and he could see the endless stars with perfect clarity. Although the four-engine turboprop engines were loud, vibrating every bone in his body, he could still hear the mic clicking in his helmet as it came on.
“Thirty seconds.” A collection of clicks responded, symbolizing the team’s acknowledgment of the information. With each member placing a hand on each other’s shoulder in a straight line, the elite team of SEALs waited calmly and professionally. No jitters or nervous habits, just another day at the office. The light turned a bright green, and they piled out of the C-130 without hesitation beginning their free fall, northeast of St. Petersburg, Florida.
4
Mission
After landing in the warm early June waters of Tampa Bay, Baron and the rest of his team disengaged the black parachutes and donned their self-contained underwater breathing apparatus gear, allowing their weight and empty air bladders to help them sink to a depth of thirty feet into the warm black waters. The SEALs had specially made SCUBA gear for them and their extraordinary missions. Their equipment, unlike normal commercially available gear, had no bubbles that raced to the surface when the divers exhaled. Instead, the exhaled air was recycled through a series of tubes and filters that would recycle the breathable air and contain the rest, resulting in the submerged divers undetectable from the surface. The team swam half a mile inland to the Terra Ceia Preserve State Park.
They began their surface slowly at first, raising just their eyes out of the black water to get a visual scan to ensure no targets were in the area. Once the ingress point was deemed clear, the elite operators came rushing out of the water onto dry land. In trained silence, the team removed their heavy SCUBA gear; then unzipped their waterproof duffle bags, removed their weapons, then proceeded to reassemble with practiced precision and loaded them with ammunition. Their mission was a simple snatch and grab. Make landfall, then proceed to save a kidnapped senator being held hostage somewhere in the woods. Intel reports put him and his captors near a small house on the southern edge of a water feature named Moses Hole. The team had come in north of it near Harbor Key and now had to slog through the thick swamp and foliage to get to their target. Carefully, keeping their weapons above water and staying in a straight column, the team made it to the rendezvous point of Kitchen Key, a few hundred feet away from their goal.
“Weapons check,” the leader, Lieutenant Coleman whispered over the communication channel. Gently pressing his fingers against the headset in his right ear, he heard five soft clicks in response, signaling all of his members were ready to go. The commander gave the code, double click over the com channel, and the team moved out surrounding the water feature.
“This is Trident 2,” Baron whispered. “I have a visual, target one hundred yards, my twelve o’clock.” Five clicks chimed in response to his report. Baron advanced on the shanty house, then waited until the rest of his members were in position surrounding the ancient wooden shack in the woods. The shack resembled a more dilapidated barn than a proper structure though reports said it had at least four separate rooms and a concrete basement. Baron didn’t like unknown variables in the missions such as numbers of the opposing force, status of the target, whether he would be ambulatory or not, or, in the case of the building that looked near collapse, what would happen if an explosion charge brought the house down. However, these unpleasant situations were inevitably always part of the job.
“Prepare to breach,” Coleman’s voice came across the line.
Baron placed a saline bag charge on the door near the doorknob. Simple saline bags, that aren’t too dissimilar from saline IV bags in a hospital, were wrapped with