What Happens When Delta Force, SEAL Team 6, Combat Controller, and A Naval Gunship Enter A Country?

His name was Basher. So we linked up with Basher. Browns come cracking right across the front of me.

Brady and I both look left at the same time and dudes are maneuvering up the ridge line. There's four or five guys that are coming up the ridge. It's kind of whack-a-ole.

Brady and I ended up shooting rounds between a bunch of rocks and just ricocheting a bunch of rounds into the dudes about some naval gunfire. [laughter] The [music] three of you just decided you were going to go do this. And we're like, "Yep.

" And he's like, "Man, you guys have some huge balls. [laughter] You went to Africa. Yeah.

Towards the end of your towards the end of your time. Yeah. So, the end of the '06 rotation, um, I came back.

Uh, a guy that I had worked with that had been my team leader for a brief stint had moved to a different place in the building, um, doing more clandescent work, um, or or advanced forces AFO stuff. Um, so in the years leading up to 2007, um, General Mcrister, who was a J-A commander, had been slowly but surely spreading out intelligence collection kind of around the globe. Uh, and I think, you know, the phrase was you need a network to fight a network.

Um, and he was smart enough to identify that al-Qaeda's got cells all over the world. There's a network of folks that are communicating. Uh, the long and short of it is there's a lot of people out there that want to kill Americans and that have been a part of that.

um and we need to be forward and collect intelligence in other countries besides Afghanistan and Iraq. Um so in in uh late ' 06 um I got asked to to try out to come up and try out for this other part of our organization um that was really focused on stuff outside of of Iraq and Afghanistan. Uh and at the same time that I had gone through that and done that and and joined that part of the building, um they stood up a new task force in DC and the task force was designed with combating AQ threats um greater GWAT stuff outside of the Middle East.

Uh the Horn of Africa was a particularly big hotbed. Um what they had figured out was that Somalia being the lawless land that it is um was the perfect place to not only recruit from but to ship foreign fighters from various countries around Africa and the Middle East down to to train them, prepare them, give them skills like IED building and marksmanship and whatever. Um and then put them on boats, ship them up to Yemen, and then via Yemen back into the Middle East to to go kill Americans wherever that may be.

So it was an integral part of the firefighter network. Um and we wanted to do something about it. Um so in early ' 07 [sighs] or I guess early spring of '07 um I got to deploy to the Horn of Africa.

Um working out of the embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. Uh we had you know intelligence collection in various countries throughout the Horn. Um but I was one of two guys from my organization.

Uh we had two guys from from Dev Group. Um, two guys from from the Air Force equivalent of those two organizations. So, a combat controller and a par rescue guy.

Two guys from another army organization um based out of Virginia. Uh, and then a couple of Ranger re recon detachment um operators. So, we called it the Rainbow Coalition cuz it was two guys from each color of the rainbow.

Two guys from green, two guys from blue, two guys from red, two guys from white. That was our little joke along with a bunch of other assets that were involved with uh really intelligence processing and understanding. Um yeah, Africa was different in that it was new.

I wasn't surrounded by my squadron mates. Um I was lucky in that the SEALs that I ended up with were guys that were a part of the exchange back early on in the war that Mcrist had directed and we were all kind of at the same points in our career. Um, so while they were moving into the, you know, the clandestine element of their organization, I was doing the same.

So when we met in Africa, it wasn't the first time we'd ever seen each other. Um, so it made for a very easy, comfortable environment where we could do some highle stuff together without a whole bunch of time to train together, if that makes sense. Yeah.

Um, limited assets. We didn't have much. Um, we had no like ISR, we had no predators, we had no close air support, we had no AC-130.

Uh, Our intelligence collection was humid, was meeting with people on the ground um and gathering information. We had a signal intelligence platform. So we had one airframe that flew overhead that listened to real time voice calls [snorts] um via the iPhones and other handheld satellites that the terrorists were using.

Um, and we had a couple of indigenous speakers that we would put on the plane and would listen to those real-time phone calls and had been doing it for the last 5 years and could recognize key players voices. Uh, and so that was literally how we were targeting. Um, to fast forward uh in [sighs] I guess [gasps] the tail end of May, early June, um, we started getting some traffic in Mombasa, Kenya.

So we had some human intelligence that directed us to there. Uh and then we put some asset that one asset that we had overhead. Um and lo and behold they got a hit on on the two probably two of the most wanted guys in the world which were guy named Harun Fazul and a guy named Slay Nabhan which were responsible for the US embassy bombings in um Nairobi Kenya and Dar Salam Tanzania in 1993.

Uh and so longtime target it's been on the list for a long time. was 2007, so it's a long time later. But what they were involved in was basically that foreign fighter trafficking into and out of southern Somalia um and the training of those guys and then subsequently moving them back into the Middle East.

So we knew we needed to do something. We just didn't have the assets to like go interdict anywhere and we certainly couldn't do a hit in downtown Mombasa, Kenya. Um so we got lucky.

Um the last communication we had from them was that they were boarding a boat and it was 18 to 20 terrorists or so and that they were headed north. Um they were stopping in southern Somalia and then continuing on to SA Ye Yemen uh where they were going to dump their guys off for movement into the Middle East. So on the onset we had what we thought were the number two and three most wanted dudes on the planet.

Osama bin Laden being number one, this was two and three. And outside of the Middle East, we had him on a boat. we had him moving north along the coast of Somalia.

Uh but we had no way to interdict him at sea. Uh so we came up with a hasty plan. Uh we had been working um the the CIA over the years leading up to that had developed a relationship with some folks in Somalia.

Um and one of them was the the Puntland Defense Force. So northern Somalian town of Baso. Um these were basically Somali that were recruited uh via various means but mostly money um to help us achieve things in that country.

Um so they were the best friends money could buy at the moment. Um but uh yeah we ended up flying from Nairobi, Kenya up to Djibouti where there was a US naval base. Um, we dumped half of our guys there.

Uh, and then three of us flew from Djibouti. When I say half, it's like so six guys. We left three in Djibouti um to coordinate some assets or what we had, you know, like an aircraft if we needed it for Kazavvak.

Start talking to our higher headquarters about what's going on and what we're trying to do. Um, and then we flew and forwardstaged in in Baso, Somalia, and linked up with the the PDF as we called them. Uh the PDF there was led by a guy that was basically a former Somali warlord.

Um but again, he was uh sympathetic to our cause and was not a fan of foreigners and foreign fighters coming into Somalia to train. Like that just wasn't he wasn't good with that either. Um so his name was Basher.

Um and so we linked up with Basher, handful of his guys, uh and we basically tried to figure out what we were going to do about this boat moving north. and we were kind of hoping and praying that we would pick them up again and get a good fix on their location or that they would stop and they would give us some course of action. Well, about the time that all this is going on, we're flying a plane up the coast of Somalia, you know, trying to gather some whatever we can.

Uh, and they catch them on the phone and they had so high seastate off the Horn, which is a notoriously bad like shipping lane in terms of sea conditions. They had rough seas had forced them a ground uh on the coast and actually damaged their ship. It was in the town of Bargal and they got in a shootout with locals in the town.

They stole a bunch of supplies like water and food from the town's people and then they moved up into the hills just outside of town. So they couldn't get back on their boat because their boat was damaged. All [snorts] we got, so now we're getting real-time human intelligence.

All we got out of the town's people was that, hey, these guys are all foreigners. Like, they're all from other places and they they're heavily armed. They have a bunch of guns.

There's a bunch of them. Um, and we don't understand why they're here. Like, this is the conversation that's going on.

So, you know, the three of us that were in Baso, it was me, um, a a guy from Dev and a CCT guy. Uh, we're like, well, we got to do something. Like, we have an opportunity to get, you know, number two and number three most wanted dudes on the planet.

like we we got to do something. So, we came up with a plan with with uh with Basher and the and the PDF guys that we were going to fly um and get as close to Baral as we could, stop about 2 hours west of the town, and then he was going to coordinate for some folks in the area to come pick us up and then, you know, we were going to drive into Baral and figure out, you know, what we were going to do with this. So, that all went down.

Um, when we were on the way out of town, uh, Brady and I, the CCT guy and I were in one vehicle and and and Phil, the the Navy guy was in the other vehicle and we're with Somali's and we're driving down the road and this vehicle comes screaming down the road behind us like high rate of speed, like dirt spilling out everywhere and we're freaking out like none of the guys in the car speak English. The only person that does is Basher. He doesn't know what's going on and this car is chasing us down.

So, they're honking their horn. They're honking their horn and our guys pull over and we're like, "What are you doing? " So, we're ready to go thinking this is somebody that spotted us coming out of town and they pull up, [clears throat] stop, get out.

It's guys that they know. What it was was they had forgot their big bags of cot and they didn't want to leave without them. They forgot their drugs.

Yeah. So, and that was typical working with Somali. You know, about midday they would start chewing cot.

Mid-after afternoon they were useless. So, if you didn't get it done in the morning it wasn't happening. But, uh, yeah.

So, that was a little high stress moment leading up that. We ended up getting on a plane, flying out. Um, his guys showed up.

So, it was the three of us, uh, Basher and a handful of his of his loyalists. Uh, and we drove into Bargal. Um, on the way into Baral, we were kind of working on a hasty plan and we had nothing, you know, so we just kind of worked with what we knew to be true, what we had hard facts on, and we kind of backwards planned from there.

So, you know, Brady, the CCT guy, was like, "Look, man, we need a way to get out of here. Like, what are our options? Like, we got a fixed wing plane in Djibouti that could come get us.

We got our guys that are coordinating there, and we've got some PJs that were stationed there, so we've got some options, but it's like 5 hours away. " He's like, "Well, there's a Russian airfield that's south of the city that I saw on the map, old dirt strip. " He's like, "Why don't we stop on the way into town and survey that airfield and make sure we can land that bird there just in case?

" Perfect. Great idea. So, we stopped, surveyed the airfield.

It was probably the quickest airfield survey a CCT guy has ever done. But he felt good enough that we could land a plane on this dirt strip. So we picked up, we left from there.

Phil, the Navy guy's like, "Hey man, there's a Navy destroyer off the coast. Can't see him, but he's out there somewhere doing antipiriracy operations. " So this is before Captain Phillips, a year before that all went down.

But so they're out there just burning holes in the ocean trying to deter Somali pirates from doing what ended up happening a year later. And so he's like, "Why don't we call that destroyer? " It's it was the USS Chaffy.

And Brady's like, "Cool. " He's like, "I can do that. " Like we'll call him in the blind and be like, "Hey, you got US forces on the ground.

" He's like, "I can pre-plan some targets. You know, they got deck guns. Like if we get in trouble, we've got some naval gunfire.

Awesome. Great. " And they're like, "Well, how are we going to do this?

" And I'm like, "Well, I think we just basically need to get there with our dudes. We need to set up a patrol base between the town and wherever we think they are cuz we don't have an exact on their location. I said, "It's 110° outside.

Let's bring the aircraft down so they can hear it. Let's bring the boat in over the horizon line so they can see a US naval warship off the coast and set up a patrol base out of small arms range, but where they can see us. Let's just wait them out.

" I'm like, "There's nowhere to go. They're thousands of miles in any direction from the next town through the desert. It's 110° outside.

Their boat's damaged. " I go, "They're going to start being heat catchy soon. " Like, they weren't prepared to be here.

We are. We have the ability to access the town, whatever. And we've got some friendlies, Somali friendlies with us.

We'll just wait it out. So, we pull in, everybody's good with it. The three of us feel good about it.

You know, it's basically the three of us and and eight or 10 Somali. So, to our knowledge, there's 18 to 20ome of them, and they got bellfeds and a bunch of other stuff. We didn't have [ __ ] We had rifles and pistols uh and a handful of Somali with AKs.

We we did have two machine guns um but not a ton of ammunition for either one of those that the Somali brought with them. And so we set up our little hasty patrol base and we're waiting. And in the early days, early part of the day, it's hot and we're dying.

And Basher's like, "We need to go get these guys. " And we're like, "No, man. We can't do it.

" And again, he's the only one that speaks English. He's like, "No, we need to go do And he keeps pressing and like we can't figure out why. And he keeps pressing, keeps pressing.

Still can't like Basher, just calm down, man. And what it was is he didn't understand. He's like, he can see the boat, too.

We didn't say anything about it. He can hear the plane. And he's like at one point he's like, "Why don't you just drop a bomb on them?

" And we're like, "One, we don't know exactly where they are. We have no way of geoloccating them. Two, the battery died on their phone.

They're not talking anymore. So we don't know if they moved. We don't know what's going on.

We just know they're in those hills somewhere. " [snorts] or like three, like we haven't worked a whole lot together, so like this is a dangerous thing. Like we just need to wait these guys out.

Well, he loses patience. So it's probably 2:30, 3:00 in the afternoon and he comes over to the three of us. So the Somali are kind of spread around just doing their thing, chewing cot.

And the three of us are like just trying to figure out like what's next cuz we can't just shoot naval gunfire. Like we basically have to get in an engagement to do anything. And we're in a country we're not supposed to be in.

We got no air assets, no casts, no nothing. So Basher walks over and he goes, "I'm taking my guys and I'm going over the hill to kill them. " And I go, "What?

" And he goes, "You can come with me if you want, unless you're scared. " He punked us. Literally punked us.

Holy [ __ ] And so I'm like, "All right, Basher, you know, straight face. I'm like, I I I get it. I get it.

Like we we need to do something. I understand. " I go, "Can you give us a minute?

let us talk and come up with a little hasty plan here. And and I'll be right back with you. He says, "Fine.

" So he walks off to his guys and I turn around where he can't see me. And I start laughing and Phil and Brady are like, "What are you laughing at? " And I go, "You guys aren't going to believe this.

" I was like, "But when you go through Robin Sage in the Q course, you have a G chief, a gorilla warlord guy that's pretending that's his thing. " And he has his little G's. And I go and they act like complete [ __ ] and they do things like this.

And when you're in the Q course, you're like, "No way this ever happens. " And here we are in Somalia and this former warlord is going, "Are you too scared to come with me? " And so, you know, we had a quick conversation and I'm like, "Look, we're going to lose the faith of these guys.

These are our only security. We're a 5-hour flight, a really long swim to a boat. We got no assets, no nothing.

Like, we can't lose this. Like, we need to keep these guys on our side. " We didn't trust them to begin with.

You know, we hadn't worked with them a whole bunch. And it wasn't a very comfortable feeling. It wasn't like we had been training these guys and working with them for months on end.

Yeah. Um supposedly the CIA trained them for the last few years, but I can tell you what we saw was not a highly trained force. So anyway, so we end up pulling Basher in and we explained to them that basically we're going to do a movement of contact, you know, bounding overwatch.

Um and we ended up putting the gun teams on either side, not so much because of the tactics, but because we were afraid about having them too close to us and what would happen. So we had a gun team to the to our right flank, a gun team to our left flank. The three of us were staying together no matter what.

And then we had a couple other Somali and Basher with us. And so we start this bounding overwatch. We'd move a gun team up, move another gun team up, so on and so on.

And so we crest over the first hill. About the time we get over the first hill headed up to the larger ridge, we hear a Belf open up and it's to the north of us and they're shooting at the guys on our right flank. can't tell exactly where it's coming from, but we can tell that that's the only ones that they can see.

So, we continue to move up to gain the high ground on this ridge line to try to get a better fix on their position. About the time we get up there, we realize where they are, not too far from our position. We engage those guys, but then all hell breaks loose.

So, in the draw behind the ridge that we're on, we're taking heavy fire. Ineffective. We're behind like this ridge of rocks.

So, we've got some cover. It's good cover, but man, they are just um so we got a couple of dudes that have been dealt with on the north side, but they have shot and wounded both of the guys in our gun team to our right flank. About the time that we're trying to figure out exactly where they are below us now.

We got no grenades. We've got nothing. Like I said, [ __ ] small arms.

[snorts] About that time, bullets come. I'm here. Phil and Basher are over there.

The two Somali are a little bit further to his left. And then the gun team is beyond them. And then Brady's on my right.

And then the wounded gun team on his right. And so rounds come cracking right across the front of me, the cover I'm standing at, like skip off the rock right in front of me. And Brady and I both look left at the same time.

And dudes are maneuvering up the ridge line. There's four or five guys that are coming up the ridge. And so all this in a split second.

That first like barrage of fire. Basher is like just standing out in the open. Gets shot three times.

So Phil grabs him, pulls him down behind cover and is like packing like curlex and gauze in his holes. Brady and I both turn and I move to a piece of cover between me and the guys on the left flank. Yell to Brady, "Hey, move to me.

Move to me. Move to me. " Suppressive fire.

Brady moves to me. Now it's the two of us. The two Somali that are up here with us are now cowering down behind the rocks and terrified like not returning fire, not anything.

And I think, well, at least they're not going to shoot us, right? They're there. The gun team between us and them are now in a shootout with the guys.

So, half the guys that are coming up the ridge are shooting at the two Somalies on our left flank. The other half of the guys are shooting at Brady and I. It's kind of whack-a-ole.

Um Brady and I ended up shooting rounds between a bunch of rocks and just ricocheting a bunch of rounds into the dudes and they would peel out to one side of the other and, you know, we kind of dealt with it. But anyway, in the midst of that portion, um, we ended up dealing with all those guys, but they had wounded not just Basher, but the other two guys. So now I've got five wounded Somali, including the only one that speaks English and the three of us.

So everybody on the ridge is down. I'm not worried about, it doesn't seem to be we have good visibility that we've got any more threat coming up the ridge line above or below, but we're still [snorts] getting hammered from down below. And I'm like, I don't like I don't know what our move is from here.

Like the three of us were like, we don't have a lot of options here. And Brady goes, how about some naval gunfire? [laughter] And so, you know, we kind of the three of us kind of looked at each other and we're like, "All right, yeah, we can do this.

Like, let's just ham they're all in one spot. Let's hammer this draw. " We had already talked to them, pre-planned targets.

Um, so the boat was ready and aware and they were jacked up. Like, they didn't even know we were there. I bet they were a [ __ ] pump.

We called them in the blind. It was a really funny like 20-minute conversation before we had gotten into that position. And and you could hear them in the background like, "Yeah, like they knew they were getting ready to get some.

" [snorts] And so Brady is on the horn with the boat. I have a handheld satellite radio because I'm like, "We can't do this unless I call troops in contact over the satcom. like they got to know we've been engaged that we didn't just shoot naval gunfire into a country we're not supposed to be into.

And so yeah, so Brady's talking to the boat calling in naval gunfire. I'm calling in troops in contact over sackcom. I said that we had wounded, but I didn't say who.

Um because I was worried that if it was just Somali, we weren't going to get the same reaction. Uh which I don't know if that was the right call or the wrong call, but it was the call that I made at the time. Um, and so we ended up grabbing up as many of the Somalas as we could and we started pulling back off the ridge.

Right about that time, rounds come overhead. I I think Brady shot had them shoot like 24 rounds or something off the deck guns into the valley and walked them up and down as we pulled back off the ridge. So, we get back down to our patrol base.

There's no more fire coming from the hills other than, you know, the smoke and everything that's left, dust from the naval barrage. We get in the patrol base. Um, Phil basically like almost on his own.

I think I helped him with like the first two guys treating casualties, but Phil basically patched up all them dudes by himself. Um, I was talking to Baso. Baso was talking to Djibouti.

Djibouti was talking to Nairobi. Nairobi was talking to Joocket Brag. Jocket Brag was talking to SECD in DC.

So, this was like damn like it was wild. Um, and again, they asked me twice about casualties, and I said, you know, we're currently, we have a casualty collection point. We're treating our wounded.

Um, we're unsure of their status at this moment, but that we were working on it and we were all right, but we needed Kazvak and we needed it now cuz they were a 5-hour flight away. So, we patch up the Somali. It's getting dark now.

There's no sounds, there's no fire, there's no nothing coming out of the hills. And basically we don't have an the ability to like go over there at night. We've got no workforce anymore.

We had three Somali I think down in the village that had weapons, but they weren't really a part of what we were doing. So we had those three stay in the patrol base and we commandeered a couple of vehicles from town. We loaded up the wounded and we drove the, you know, 10 minutes down the road to get to the dirt airfield.

uh however many hours later they landed AASA on the dirt airfield and our guys from Djibouti got out um along with a bunch of PJs that they brought from Djibouti to secure the wounded and treat those guys. Uh they got off with us so ammo resupply, brought some other stuff with them. Um the bird left with the wounded to fly back to Djibouti.

Uh and then the five of us went back to the patrol base and basically just camped out for the night until the sun came up. Um, [snorts] we didn't tell anybody that there weren't any Americans on the plane, the wounded. So, when it showed up in Djibouti, it was PJs with a bunch of wounded Somali and no one in Djibouti was even aware of the operation.

So, they ended up they ended up in the hospital there on the naval base in Djibouti. Uh, and all those guys ended up living, which is cool. But um but yeah, we kind of surprised him with that one.

So the sun comes up the next morning. Uh we ended up going over the hill as a as a more capable force. Um cuz now there were six of us.

Uh and we had one local that we had recruited out of town that spoke enough English that we could at least communicate with the Somalies that were with us. Um they weren't really willing to go over the hill again cuz they had witnessed what happened the day before. Um but they eventually and reluctantly came with us and we thought at least they could help us with recovery of some of the bodies if it was two and three or whatever.

Yeah. No, they're Arabs and they weren't touching a body after that much time later. So we ended up moving through the area.

Um a couple of guys dying. Most of them were already dead. Um we had a guy that we thought for sure was uh Harun Fazul.

Uh looked just like him. I mean, same skin tone and uh had a pair of glasses. Like, it was a lot of similarities that we thought it was him.

Nobody that looked like Knoban. Um, and the rest of the guys were like a who's who of bad guys from around the globe. Like two guys with British passports.

Uh, like legit British passports, a Yemeni Assyrian. Like it was this random collection of it was exactly what we thought it was. Um, and so we're on the radio.

Oh, we've got a possible for for, you know, Harun Fazul, whatever his call sign was at the time. [snorts] And they're like, "All right, well, uh, we're going to fly in an SSSE team to do DNA testing and confirm. We need you to take them up to the site.

" And we're like, "We're not doing that. " And they're like, "What? Why wouldn't you do that?

" I'm like, "I'm not taking an FBI team that's never been to combat, never been trained into the hills of northern Somalia where I don't know how many guys are still running around out here. " like I had no way to confirm or deny if we'd gotten them all. I knew we had a bunch of bodies, but I had no way of knowing if we had gotten everybody.

And so there's some back and forth on the radio. What we ended up agreeing on was we bagged up the guy that we thought was in Fazul and we carried him off the mountain, threw him in the back of a truck and then drove him down to the airfield. So when they landed, all they had to do was get off the plane and deal with the possible um and then we could give them all the other intel we collected.

So passports and money and computer. They had laptops and all kinds of stuff. Smoresborg of Intel was a decent decent hit in that respect.

But but yeah, so the the FBI guys get off the plane. I [clears throat] unzipped the body bag for him, you know, they peel it back. It took him two seconds.

They grabbed him. They rolled him up on his side. They pulled his shirt up and he had no scar.

And they said, "It's not him. " And I we were like, "What? " They're like, "It's not him.

" I'm like, "How do you know that fast that it's not him? You didn't do anything. " And they go, "Yeah, Harfazul had appendicitis.

he had his appendix taken out in whatever year he's got no scar where his appendix was removed and we're like damn that quick they just show like [laughter] all effort nothing you know we're all proud of ourselves um so we're bummed out we're like all right well let's wrap it up like the rest of those bodies we got plenty of intel like it is what it is like the Somali are all still alive they're back in Djibouti let's get out of here so we loaded up and flew back to Djibouti you know there's a little bit of a reception there from the handful of people that did know where we Um we get to the hanger and you know all three of us are just covered in blood. You know, not our own, but I've got cuts all up and down my arms from the sharp coraly rocks that we had been moving around on the ridge line and then you know the Somali the wounded Somali and all that stuff. [cough] So we looked quite a sight to people that saw us coming into the hanger that we were in.

And about 5 minutes after we're there, a little Navy dude comes knocking on the door, opens the door, comes in, he says, "Hey, uh, the admiral that is in charge of the base needs whoever was just involved in whatever went down to come brief him. " And we're like, "Uh, okay. Um, can you give us a few minutes like to clean up, like whatever?

" And he's like, "Well, I he just said as soon as possible. " And we're like, "Okay, whatever. " So, we'll tell let's tell them we're coming.

So, the kid leaves, we like run through the shower, put on a fresh set of DCUs or whatever we were wearing, pants and shirts. And so, we leave. We walk onto the main compound there off the airfield.

[clears throat and cough] We finally find where his little headquarters is. We [snorts] walk in and his one of his staff or secretary or somebody's like, you know, the admiral's back here, blah blah blah. So, they take us in this little conference room and he's sitting at the head of the table.

He's standing up and a couple of his staff officers, you know, junior guys are are in the room with him and he's like, "Gentlemen, how you doing? Come on in and have a seat. " And so we go and we sit down and he's like, and mind you, the whole way over there we're like, "We're screwed.

" Like this dude is going to flip a gasket. Like, who are you? How is I not aware of this?

How did you involve my warship that I'm responsible for? Who cleared this? We're assuming no conversation has been had and it hasn't.

So he's like, "Look," he's like, "You guys have had a pretty wild uh rough uh 24 hours, huh? " And we were like, "Yes, sir. " Like just waiting.

And he's like, "So, so tell me the story, like how did you get there? " And we're like, "Well," and we kind of gave him the brief like we've been doing some targeting. We've been working on this.

We've been in and out of Somalia a number of times. We had an opportunity um at some really important folks and and to disrupt the network in a substantial way. and we just felt like it was an opportunity that we needed to take.

Um, and he's like, "Well, you know, had you been planning this? " And we were like, "Nope. " It was pretty much a hasty decision that was supported by three-letter agencies and and DC in the moment because of the significance of the targets and and yeah, they asked us if we were okay doing it and that's what we did.

And again, I'm waiting for the reaction and he goes, "That's the coolest [ __ ] I've ever heard. [laughter] That's awesome. " and Phil, who's hilarious, Phil busts out laughing and then it's a comfy conversation and he's like, "So you guys, the three of you just decided you were going to go do this.

" And we're like, "Yep. " And he's like, "Man, you guys have some huge balls. " [laughter] And so to this day, if he if that man, whoever it is, and I don't know, I don't remember his name, but if he's ever out there and ever hears this, I've said it once before, um I would love to hear from him just just to like have a conversation about that day and how funny it was and get like more of his perspective.

But but yeah, so it ended up being a really good engagement and and uh he was grateful, we were grateful that his guys reacted the way that they did, that they shifted mission. You know, they had no clue and they were spot on. Their rounds were spot on.

I mean, all their training and anything they'd ever done in peace time came to fruition. That's some of the coolest [ __ ] I've ever [ __ ] heard. Hey everybody, I'm Shawn Ryan.

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