SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper by Howard E. Wasdin, Stephen Templin Read Free Book Online

me?”
    “Yes,” she said.
    After the dance, Dee Dee said, “Let’s go to the Ghost Light.” I took her to the old make-out spot—where legend said that the ghost of an old decapitated railroad worker walked the railroad tracks searching with his lantern.
    When we parked the car, I was petrified. When do I put my lips on hers? What the hell does “stick your tongue in and go to town” mean? Do I go around in circles? What am I supposed to do? So I pretty much talked myself out of it. I turned to tell Dee Dee, You know, we better get back home. She had already moved in for the kill. Her face was right on mine. She gave me my first French kiss. Needless to say, I figured out, This is not quantum physics, and this is OK. We dated the rest of the school year until spring.
    The prom was coming, but someone had already asked Dee Dee to it. During home economics class, I asked her friend Laura to the prom—our first date. Laura had a nice body and big breasts. After the prom, in the car, we kissed for the first time. Well, she kissed me and I didn’t resist. Because I grew up in a family that didn’t show affection, her interest in me meant a lot.
    *   *   *
     
    Thinking back on my teenage years, I can remember my first surveillance op. There’s not a lot to do in Screven, Georgia, so sometimes we had to create our own fun. One Friday night, Greg, Phil, Dan, and I drove down to the river. We found an old suitcase that had fallen off somebody’s car. We opened it. Inside were some clothes. We threw it in the back of Greg’s truck and thought nothing else about it. As we camped near the river, sitting around a campfire drinking beer and roasting wieners, a malnourished, mangy cat approached us. It looked too wild to come near us, but it must’ve been desperate for food. We threw it a piece of wiener, and the cat gulped it down. One of us tried to pick up the feline, and it went berserk—claws and teeth everywhere. That cat was bad. We used the suitcase to set a trap for it, propping the lid open and putting a wiener inside. When the cat went inside to eat, we dropped the top and zipped up the suitcase. We laughed. Hearing the cat go crazy in the suitcase made us laugh harder. The cat kept going until it was exhausted.
    I got an idea. “You know how we wanted to open the suitcase? If we put this on the road, someone will stop and open it.” So we took the suitcase to the road and stood it up on the shoulder near a bridge. Then we concealed ourselves nearby, lying flat on a slope that descended from the street. We waited awhile before the first car drove by. It wasn’t a well-traveled road.
    Another car came by, and the brake lights flashed. Then it proceeded forward, did a U-turn, and came back. It passed us and did another U-turn, finally stopping next to the suitcase. An overweight black woman stepped out of the car and picked up the suitcase. After she returned to the car and closed the door, we heard excited talk, as if they had dug up a treasure chest. The car moved forward. Suddenly, the brake lights came back on and the car screeched to a halt. Three of the four doors popped open, and three people ran out of the car cussing at the top of their lungs.
    We tried not to laugh.
    One of the passengers threw the suitcase down the hill.
    “Get it out from under the seat!” another yelled.
    A third person grabbed a stick and started poking inside the car to get the cat out from under the seat. The cat finally escaped.
    We hadn’t expected them to open the suitcase in the car while it was moving, and we hadn’t intended to harm anyone. Fortunately no one was hurt. The incident gave us a story to keep the laughter roaring at night. I’ll bet those people never picked up anything from the side of the road again. It also became my first covert observation operation.
    *   *   *
     
    When I graduated from high school, I stood 5'11" tall, and I’d saved up money for a car and Cumberland College in