Howard Wasdin - The Last Rescue: How Faith and Love Saved a Navy SEAL Sniper

2014 by Howard Wasdin and Debbie Wasdin

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Scripture quotations marked NLT are from Holy Bible, New Living Translation. 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scriptures marked NKJV are from THE NEW KING JAMES VERSION. 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5955-5595-3 (eBook)

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

ISBN: 978-1-5955-5594-6

14 15 16 17 18 19 RRD 6 7 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down ones life for his friends.

JOHN 15:13 NKJV

HOWARD

Dad, shes gone. Raquel is gone.

What do you mean, shes gone? I asked from my helpless vantage point in a hotel room in Utah, a thousand miles away.

She didnt come home last night, he said. I kept waiting and waiting. Her car was gone. Finally, I looked in your room and her closet is empty. She took all her stuff.

There was an unusual urgency in Blakes voice. Gone? I thought. She cant just be gone. People dont just up and leave their families.

Are you sure she took all her stuff? Maybe shes just out with friends, or at the dry cleaners, I said.

Dad, theres nothing left.

Those words captured the truth better than he knew.

Howard Wasdin, supposed tactical genius, elite warrior, survivor of the Black Hawk Down Battle of Mogadishu, had just seen this op go down in flames. It was 1998. Slowly, the events of the past few months clicked into focus, and I realized that all the signs had been there. As in the past, I had simply chosen to ignore the truth until it whacked me in the face.

All Id ever wanted, beneath the macho exterior and the constant striving for achievement, was to belong to a loving family. Instead, I had spent my life watching families around me fall apart. Now it was happening again right before my eyes. And there was nothing I could do.

God, please, not again, I prayed. Why does it always end this way?

My biggest concern was not for myself, but for Blake. We were living in Tennessee with Raquel, my second wife, a woman I had married mostly because I enjoyed her family. We had met on the police force in a community near Miami and moved away to start a new life. The trouble was, I wasnt the rock star in rural Tennessee that I had been in Miami. The men and women on our old police force had been fascinated by my SEAL experiences and my tactical background. They treated me like a minor celebrity. I lapped up their hero worship like a thirsty dog laps up water, not realizing how shallow that kind of adulation can be. Our mutually beneficial relationship kept my ego inflated and gave them stories to tell their friends.

But hero worship had distorted Raquels view of me, and my view of her. In Tennessee, nobody was knocking on my door to shake my hand and thank me for my service to the country. Nobody knew who I was at the grocery store. Instead of a figure of awe, I was just a normal guy. My own view had been equally warped because I thought I could do anythingeven start a romantic relationship based on virtually nothing and build it into something that would stand the test of time.

Those notions were now gone, just like Raquel was gone. The promise of love I had felt for her was as empty as the clothes hangers swinging in her abandoned closet. Howard Wasdin, war hero, proud veteran of the US Navy SEALs, had been left by his second wife. That does a lot for a guys self-image.

The worst part was that Blake, who was fourteen, had started to bond with Raquel. God made boys to need their mothers, and when your real mother isnt around, youll lean on whoever is nearby. For a while Raquel had been that person, especially when I was away. I enjoyed getting home and watching them talk after school and over dinner. They had created their own relationship, a way of interacting, daily routines together. They seemed to be forging the kind of bonds I had always hoped for in a family. The kind of bonds I hadnt been able to create myself.

Now I was far from home and our household was collapsing. My employer, a specialized body-armor company, had sent me to a bigwig golf tournament in Salt Lake City. I was their tactical body-armor expert and was traveling all the time to promote and demonstrate the bulletproof vests we form-fitted to each of our customers. That included the Kevlar that had saved my life. I loved the job. It put biscuits on the table and was the most interesting thing Id done since my career with SEAL Team Six had ended abruptly in the Battle of Mogadishu five years earlier. Having several inches of bone instantly removed from your leg by an enemy gunman sort of changes your career options.

The leg had healed okay, but the rest of my life was, shall we say, a work in progress.

Where are you now? I asked Blake, going into reaction-and-recovery mode. I may have failed at building a family, but I knew how to protect.

At the neighbors house, he said. I breathed easier. The neighbor family, which included a son Blakes age, had welcomed Blake into their home on many occasions for dinner or just to relax. He was in good hands there.

Okay, stick with them and Ill figure this out when I come home, I said. Im sorry about all this, Blake. Are you going to be okay?

Im fine, he said, as if to indicate I should worry about her, not him. Typical male: Nothing wrong here. Shes the one who freaked outworry about that.

You hold tight, I said. Call me if she comes back.

Okay, he said. We both knew she wouldnt.

I sat there in the empty hotel room feeling like Id been kicked in the stomach. A tender trust had blown up in Blakes face. While Raquel was there, he had responded to her attention and care. Now she had scarred his heart, betrayed his confidence, and pushed him one step closer to the kind of person I had become: hard, wary, cynical.

Since that day in Mogadishu, I had fallen into rhythms of wandering, drifting from one job, one city, one relationship to another. It was like someone had snapped the rudder off my boat. Whether I went fast or slow, it didnt seem to matter. I never got anywhere. I didnt want Blake becoming familiar with those rhythms. My lifes mission now was to protect his heart while it was still young and had hope. I didnt want him to turn out like me, craving love but never connecting. I didnt want him to experience the abandonment that haunted me.

At that moment, I decided never to have a real relationship again. Even if I dated, it would never be serious. My new family would be Blake and me, plus my daughter Rachel, who I only saw occasionally as she lived with her mother. I would defend them from anything that might hurt them. I would guard them with my life. I would build a wall around their emotions so nobody could get to them. I would never grow close to a woman againbecause that might breach the wall. I would refuse anyone access to their hearts.