Satterly Tom - All Secure: A Delta Force Operators Fight to Survive on the Battlefield and the Homefront

October 2013

St. Louis, Missouri

THEYD BEEN STROLLING around the Clayton financial district for a couple of hours when Jen suggested they stop for a drink at a little bar with sidewalk seating. It was one of those pleasant fall afternoons in the Midwest, wedged between the sweltering summer months and the gray misery of winter. She was in no hurry to end what had been a perfect day.

In a few hours, theyd have to get ready for Toms last night in the city. In the morning, he was flying to Fayetteville, North Carolina, for the twentieth annual reunion of the Unit operators whod been in the Battle of Mogadishu.

Wanting to understand more about Tom, Jen had watched the movie Black Hawk Down to learn about the battle. She still couldnt wrap her mind around what it had taken to fight for eighteen hours against such incredible odds while thousands of Somalis tried to kill him and the other trapped American soldiers.

Although curious about his role in the fight, shed hesitated to ask him about it, unsure if the topic would be taboo or the question inappropriate. She knew only that he carried many scars, both external and internal, and she didnt want to tear them open if he wasnt ready.

However, on this nice afternoon in downtown St. Louis, Tom seemed relaxedas much as he ever was, anywayand that weekend theyd already shared stories that were the most personal of their budding relationship. She felt he might be open to talking about what happened twenty years earlier that first week in October of 1993 in Somalia. She sensed that it could be good for him. The right moment, she thought, might arrive while relaxing with drinks at an outside table watching the world go by.

As the hostess guided them through the restaurant to the outdoor seating area, Jen noted Toms eyes darting around, and that he kept turning his head slightly to glance back over his shoulder. She knew that while she was thinking about what cocktail to order, he was assessing the demeanor of other customers and the staff. As she checked out the art on the walls, she could tell he was memorizing the layout of the restaurant, looking for escape routes in case one was needed.

Outside at the table, Tom sat down with his back to the building, facing the street so that he could watch for potential danger. She was sure hed already determined what weapons were available if necessary. A fork. The butter knife. A glass or bottle to break, which could then be used to stab an assailant. Continually looking for a place to take cover from gunfire, such as a brick wall or parked car.

Toms habit of pulling security on their dates didnt bother Jen. It came with the territory when going out with a retired command sergeant major from the Unit, the most elite and secretive special operations force in the US military. Thinking that visiting some rougher area of St. Louis might trigger a more aggressive mindset, Jen had chosen the gentrified Clayton district precisely because it was a safe enclave, largely free of crime and unsavory characters.

It wasnt so much that Tom was expecting an imminent terrorist attack on Bemison Street. Intellectually, he told her, he knew that the danger was minimal for people living in the States. However, he hadnt spent twenty years as an operator with the Special Forces Operational Detachment known as the Unit, without developing ingrained survival habits. Most of the time he didnt even realize he was doing it until she waved a hand in front of his face and insisted that he actually make eye contact while she was talking.

Jen thought of the hypervigilance and constant threat assessment as a type of muscle memorynot unlike his heralded ability to move and shoot with uncanny accuracy, or to act calmly and deliberately no matter how chaotic the situation. These were traits instilled in him by countless hours of relentless training. Those hours had then been reinforced on thousands of actual missions hed participated in, and usually led, most of them Close Quarters Battle, or CQB, in Iraq and other hotspots around the world. Street to street, house to house, room to roomwhere the hardest lessons were written in blood and not soon forgotten.

Jen understood that this constant wariness is what had kept Tom and his men alive on the danger-filled streets from Mogadishu to Baghdad and a lot of places in between. But those same qualities had also undermined the stability of his previous three marriages and, sadly, made him a stranger to his son, his family, and all too many former friends.

Some of the influences from his life as a warrior were subtle. Trained to carry out missions at night, Toms attempts at normal sleep patterns were ineffective, and what sleep he did get was tormented by nightmares. In the daytime, loud noises made him duck. A car parked innocently on the side of a street might be viewed as a potential roadside bomb and avoided. Someone approaching too quickly could make him switch from a relaxed state to high alert in the blink of an eye.

In addition to Toms mental baggage, his neck and back ached from the times hed been blown up as well as the surgeries to patch him back together. Sometimes he just hurt in ways that were hard to explain or diagnose, but the pain was severe, and it was unrelenting.

On that pleasant afternoon in St. Louis, Tom had been out of the Unit for three years. He was making a living working for a company that contracted with the military to prepare a new generation of special ops commandos for war, as well as a more demeaning entertainment enterprise that trained civilian commandos to kill zombies with paintball guns. But he was still living with a vicious cycle of booze, pain pills, sleeping pills, and antidepressants that had been part of his life in the military, and that the Veterans Administration now handed out to him like Halloween candy to dull the physical painand cloud the memories of the things hed seen and done.