Fearless Read online

  Praise for Fearless

  “As a rule, we don’t endorse books or movies or anything regarding the command where I work—and Adam Brown worked—but as the author writes in Fearless, you have to know the rules so you know when to bend or break them. This is one of those times. Read this book. Period. It succeeds where all the others have failed.”

  —ANONYMOUS, SEAL Team SIX operator

  “There is a quote from the Bible etched on the memorial that stands in the shadow of World Trade Center steel that resembles a massive trident: ‘Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send? And who will go for us? And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” ’ That was Adam Brown. Fearless is a clear and deeply honest portrait of an authentic American man who lived and loved with an intrepid personal velocity. For most of us, the failures and disappointments in life take their toll. Not for Adam Brown. He vanquished all life’s heartbreaks with faith, humility, and hard work. His commitment to his family and his friends helped forge Adam Brown into the rarest of warriors. Long live the Brotherhood.”

  —KURT JOHNSTAD, screenwriter of Act of Valor and 300

  “Adam Brown’s zest for life led him down a few dark alleys and more than one dead end. Kindhearted and wild, Adam led a life that lacked direction. God, a woman, and the U.S. Navy gave it to him. Fearless is a love story … several love stories: a man for his woman, a warrior for his team, parents for kids, and soldiers for their country. There is no greater love than that a man lay down his life for his friends. Be warned—reading Fearless will change the way you see the world.”

  —STU WEBER, veteran Green Beret, pastor, and author of Tender Warrior

  “When people know they are going to die, often their one regret is that they didn’t say ‘I love you’ enough. Adam Brown never had to worry. His life was about love: love of God, family, friends, country, his fellow SEALs, and the Afghan children who worshiped him. In Fearless, Eric Blehm does a marvelous and moving job uncovering the man—the men—beneath the SEAL mythology of elite, rock-hard warriors renowned for their courage and skill. The SEALs in Fearless hug their children, seek comfort from their wives, wear Batman briefs, answer to names like Big Bird and Fozzy, mourn lost buddies, and risk their lives to rescue civilians from the field of fire. This is a stirring, revelatory, heartbreaking story.”

  —JAMES CAMPBELL, author of The Final Frontiersman and The Ghost Mountain Boys

  “Fearless is a vivid account of one man’s journey from all-American boy to all-American hero. Blehm’s writing takes you beyond the battlefield and right to the heart of the personal battles, sacrifices, and triumphs of one of America’s elite warriors. Anyone looking for an inspiring story of inner strength and courage will be richly rewarded by this book.”

  —ERIC GREITENS, former Navy SEAL and New York Times best-selling author of The Heart and the Fist

  “This is not another SEAL book about ego; this is a powerful book about perseverance that will absolutely inspire everybody. Adam was a warrior in the truest sense—courageous, compassionate, intrepid, and humble. And his dedication to God, country, family, and the Brotherhood was genuine and exceptional. This book will motivate you to challenge yourself to be … fearless.”

  —SEAL teammate of Adam Brown, BUD/S Class 226

  “Fearless stands unique among works of modern combat literature through author Eric Blehm’s masterful weaving of a fallen Navy SEAL’s professional war-fighting life with his complex personal victories and travails. Rich in detail and captivating in its honesty, you won’t put Fearless down once you read the first page. Read it and prepare to learn a whole new world of life as a Navy SEAL.”

  —ED DARACK, author of Victory Point: Operations Red Wings and Whalers—The Marine Corps’ Battle for Freedom in Afghanistan

  “Fearless is a timely book for Americans transfixed by our military elite and the fight against terrorism. Author Eric Blehm provides an intimate look at the stamina, toughness, and mindset of Adam Brown, who, against all odds, became a Navy SEAL. Fearless is also a timeless book about the human condition. This true story is an emotional roller coaster about betrayal and love, despair and faith, tragedy and triumph, life and death, the grace of God. This story will bring tears to your eyes, and yet your spirit will soar. Fearless is destined to be a classic—a story about hope, now and forever.”

  —LARRY BECK, PhD, professor, San Diego State University, and author of Moving Beyond Treeline

  “Eric Blehm’s Fearless is an unforgettable tale of bravery, loss, redemption, joy, sorrow, serenity, and integrity. As topical as today’s headlines, Fearless at its heart deals with eternal verities that are timeless in their importance and significance.”

  —JIM O’NEILL, author of Laus Deo, BUD/S 62, UDT-21, SEAL Team TWO

  ALSO BY ERIC BLEHM

  The Last Season

  The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How

  Eleven Green Berets Fought for a New Afghanistan

  Molly the Owl

  FEARLESS

  PUBLISHED BY WATERBROOK PRESS

  12265 Oracle Boulevard, Suite 200

  Colorado Springs, Colorado 80921

  All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica Inc.TM Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com.

  Some dates, locations, times, distances, and names (including those of some civilians) have been changed; faces in photographs obscured; and military tactics, techniques, and procedures altered in order to maintain operational security for the safety of the U.S. Navy SEALs and those who work alongside them.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-73071-8

  Copyright © 2012 by Eric Blehm

  Cover design by Kristopher K. Orr; cover image of Navy SEAL Trident by Corbis

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published in the United States by WaterBrook Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc., New York.

  WATERBROOK and its deer colophon are registered trademarks of Random House Inc.

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.

  v3.1

  This book is dedicated to the fallen American heroes killed in action on August 6, 2011, in Wardak Province, Afghanistan.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  1 Foundations

  2 Something Special

  3 The Wolf Pack

  4 Slipping

  5 The Dark Time

  6 In God’s Hands

  7 Kelley

  8 Rising Up

  9 Pays to Be a Winner

  10 A SEAL Is Born

  11 The Calling

  12 War

  13 Something Important

  14 Green Team

  15 Top Secret

  16 Heart of a Warrior

  17 Objective Lake James

  18 I Got It!

  19 Unconquerable Soul

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  In Memoriam

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Adam Brown’s civilian and military life has been recounted to me by his family, friends, and teammates—all eyewitnesses to each event por
trayed in this book, including what Adam told them directly about his history and spiritual testimony. I also used official documents, statements, military records and reports, criminal records, family archives, letters, e-mails, and journal and diary entries. Some dates, locations, times, distances, and names (including those of some civilians) have been changed; faces in photographs obscured; and military tactics, techniques, and procedures altered in order to maintain operational security for the safety of the U.S. Navy SEALs and those who work alongside them.

  All information about the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, the SEALs, and individuals (including the use of real names) has already been published widely by the media and is deemed common knowledge. Nearly a dozen active-duty SEAL operators—including those in leadership roles—have unofficially, but no less meticulously, reviewed this manuscript for factuality and to point out any issues that might endanger lives in future operations. I have removed or rewritten sections to their approval, and in the few cases of discrepancy among the operators, I went with the majority. Any vagueness in the manuscript is intentional, to protect these men and their allies.

  All quotes, slang, inner thoughts, dialogue, and descriptions have been conveyed to me by those intimately involved in the story to the best of their ability and individual memories. Nothing has been contrived, dramatized, or fabricated.

  What you are about to read is the account of an American hero who bravely gave permission in his final written requests to share his journey, from small-town America to the gutter to jail to Jesus to war to the top tier of the U.S. military: SEAL Team SIX.

  Prologue

  FROM MAY THROUGH JULY 2011, when it seemed that every journalist on the planet was scrambling to get an inside angle on the Osama bin Laden kill mission in Pakistan, I was making my way around the United States interviewing over a dozen U.S. Navy SEALs. Although most were from the Naval Special Warfare Development Group or, as the Obama administration announced to the world, SEAL Team SIX—the team that had taken out bin Laden—I was meeting with them for a different reason altogether.

  I traveled from California to Pennsylvania to Alaska to Virginia to Arkansas, interviewing each of the SEALs for several hours. Although the mission of a lifetime that some had taken part in only days before was still on their minds, we weren’t there to focus on bin Laden. They’d met with me, an outsider to their ranks, for something equally important and deeply personal to them: the family of one of their fallen SEAL brothers—Chief Special Warfare Operator Adam Brown—wanted his story told.

  And if the world was to learn about Adam Brown, the SEALs wanted it done right. As one of the men, Thomas Ratzlaff, humbly said to me while we stood in the rain watching the muddy currents of the Copper River flow through the Alaskan wilderness, “Adam is the one SEAL from our command whose story absolutely deserves a book.”

  “When I first heard about Adam’s past,” Matt Mason said, looking out over the stormy Atlantic Ocean, “I didn’t believe it. It was hard for me to wrap my mind around what he overcame, and how Kelley stood by his side.”

  “You need to tell the whole story,” John Faas admonished me as we ate at a favorite restaurant of Adam’s near the Virginia Beach boardwalk. “There are enough books that show how tough SEAL training is, there’s enough Tom Clancy fiction. What there isn’t enough of is the humanity. When you start digging, you are going to find a whole lot of humanity in Adam Brown.”

  Slapping his hand against the desk in a small hotel room, Kevin Houston said, “You need to promise me: don’t start this story at BUD/S—that is so cliché. You have to go to Hot Springs and tell those stories.”

  “Has anybody told you about his last mission?” Chris Campbell asked as he prepped his gear for a week of training in Alaska. “The whole purpose of that op was to protect our brothers, these conventional Army guys who were just getting pounded by this thug, that was the mission. But then within that, you’ve got what we do individually for our troop, and that’s protect each other. That’s what Adam was doing.”

  In back-to-back interviews, Brian Bill, “Big Bird” to Adam’s children, explained how Adam made him want to be a better person and was the model of the father he himself hoped to be one day, while Heath Robinson said Adam was both fearless and compassionate on operations. Adam was the first to volunteer to go through that “black hole,” a breached doorway into an enemy building; the first to help carry an Afghan’s load; and the first to sit down and try to calm women and children after a raid.

  For days I heard similar accounts from Adam’s family, friends, and teammates—all of whom had one goal: to honor him by ensuring that his legend among the SEALs lived on.

  Since many of the SEALs from Adam’s squadron were about to embark on yet another rotation into Afghanistan, they wanted to speak with me sooner rather than later. As warriors, they were firmly grounded in the reality of their job.

  “We’re about to deploy,” one of Adam’s closest SEAL buddies said as we began our interview in June. “You never know what might happen—I could get killed on my next mission. I want to do Adam right, so let’s get it done.”

  “Where would you like to start?” I asked him.

  “Let’s begin with March 17,” he said. “Let’s get that out of the way first.”

  1

  Foundations

  WHEN ADAM BROWN WOKE UP on March 17, 2010, he didn’t know he would die that night in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan—but he was ready.

  Seven thousand miles away, in a suburb of Virginia Beach, his ten-year-old son, Nathan, was worried about him. From the moment he’d opened his eyes that morning, he felt something bad was going to happen to his daddy, but he kept it to himself, rolled out of bed, and got ready for school. It was Saint Patrick’s Day, and he made sure to wear something green so he wouldn’t get pinched.

  On a previous deployment, Adam had written in his journal to both Nathan and Savannah, Nathan’s seven-year-old sister, a letter they weren’t meant to see unless the worst happened:

  I’m not afraid of anything that might happen to me on this Earth because I know no matter what, nothing can take my spirit from me.… How much it pains me … to think about not watching my boy excel in life, or giving my little baby girl away in marriage.… Buddy, I’ll be there, you’ll feel me there when you steal your first base, smash someone on the football field, make all A’s. I’ll be there for all of your achievements. But much more, Buddy, I’ll be there for every failure. Remember, I know tears, I know pain and disappointment, and I will be there for you with every drop. You cannot disappoint me. I understand!

  Adam Brown did understand what it meant to disappoint, to feel the shame he’d experienced on a hot, humid August afternoon years earlier when his parents had him arrested. “It’s time for you to face what you’ve done,” his father had told him in 1996, just before Adam was handcuffed and escorted to the backseat of the Garland County sheriff’s cruiser. When the deputy slammed the car door shut, Adam watched his mother’s legs buckle, and as she collapsed, his dad caught her and held her tightly against him. She began to cry, and Adam knew he had broken her heart.

  That vision—of his mother sobbing into his father’s chest—would haunt him for the rest of his life, but it also sparked the journey that defined who he would become.

  Officially known as a Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL), Adam Brown was one of the most respected Special Operations warriors in the U.S. Navy. He worked for the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (NSWDG), a.k.a. DEVGRU. Before May 2011, details about Adam’s unit—popularly called SEAL Team SIX—were neither confirmed nor commented on by the Pentagon and the White House. One night changed everything; the wave of publicity following Osama bin Laden’s death thrust the little-known unit into the spotlight.

  When Adam’s team deployed to Operation Enduring Freedom in March 2010, the SEALs were spread across Afghanistan to cover a range of responsibilities dictated to them by the generals and admirals in charge of
strategic operations. Adam and part of his team were stationed at an assaulters’ base in a remote corner of northern Afghanistan. This region along the Pakistan border was still, after nearly eight and a half years of the War on Terror, a safe haven for Afghan insurgents, foreign jihadists, and terrorist cells—often working in concert. It was a land of high-value targets: raids in the region almost always resulted in fruitful intelligence, which led to further dismantling of the insurgency against the Afghan government and yielded more pieces to the puzzle that eventually revealed the whereabouts of bin Laden.

  Since late 2009, intelligence networks had been tracking a Kunar Province Taliban leader—code-named Objective Lake James—who had already taken credit for numerous deaths among coalition forces. The most recent intelligence confirmed that “James” planned to attack a U.S. Army battalion preparing to relocate from its current position adjacent to the Pech River Valley. The valley was a deadly piece of real estate where insurgents could strike coalition forces and then retreat into their mountain strongholds—villages and valleys whose inhabitants, in many cases, had never seen an American. There were lines on the map beyond which the insurgents knew they would not be pursued.

  That was about to change. Intelligence pinpointed James’s current location, a compound in a secluded village in the mountainous Chapa Dara district of Kunar Province. Even though this particular hamlet was a way-over-the-line safe haven for insurgents, Adam and his teammates began planning to either capture or kill James.

  First they viewed images of the compound. Confirming details of the landscape and structures was always difficult until the SEALs were on the ground, but the target residence didn’t appear any more problematic than the hundreds of other compounds they’d raided during multiple deployments. Further surveillance of the valley revealed men armed with rifles, mostly AK-47s, as well as light machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. The men in the photographs were of fighting age, which in the past had meant men with beards. Lately, however, the insurgents and jihadists had begun shaving to appear younger and were even donning burkas to disguise themselves as women, to better their chances of escape. So it was difficult to accurately determine overall enemy numbers.