All Secure: A Delta Force Operator’s Fight to Survive on the Battlefield and the Homefront by Tom Satterly and Steve Jackson

Author:Tom Satterly and Steve Jackson [Tom Satterly and Steve Jackson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Center Street
Published: 2019-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Summer 2000

Lahore, Pakistan

WE WERE CRUISING PAST the golf course on the outskirts of Lahore when Jake nudged me. “Check out the caddies.”

Taking my eyes off the road for a moment, I glanced over to where a traditionally garbed foursome and their caddies were getting ready to tee-off on the first hole. But what got Jake’s attention was that in addition to humping golf bags for their bosses, the caddies all had AK-47s slung over their shoulders.

The caddies had noticed us, too—a couple of white guys in Western-style clothing, Oakley sunglasses, driving a rental car. There was nothing hostile in their look, just bodyguards pulling security, wondering who the “new guys in town” might be. The AKs stayed on their backs, and they went back to digging out the proper clubs for their bosses.

I shrugged and cracked a smile. While the rifles might have been out of place on any green and well-tended course in an American city, this was Pakistan. AK-47s were everywhere. Every nice house had a guard shack in front with an armed guard who spent all day sleeping. Every hotel and professional office with the financial means also had guards with rifles standing out front. Even the cops strolled around with the ubiquitous assault rifle.

It didn’t particularly alarm us. Along with our experience and confirmation from a contact at the US Embassy, we knew that the plethora of weapons was due more to the high crime rate than because of terrorists. Jake and I weren’t there to get in a fight, anyway; we weren’t even armed. Our objectives were to assess security at the embassy and get an impression about feelings toward the United States in some of the major cities and tribal areas.

A lot of water had passed under the bridge, carrying with it many life changes, since my deployment in war-torn Sarajevo.

Returning from a mission in early 1997, I learned that my second wife, Brandy, was cheating on me with a Special Forces soldier who was trying to get into the Unit. Her paramour didn’t make it in, and I kicked her out of the house.

However, I made a strategic error in not having the locks changed before I went on another training mission to Israel. So, for the second time in as many wives, and trips to the Holy Land, I came home to find out that I’d been cleaned out. Given the circumstances, I decided I wasn’t going to miss Brandy, but I concluded that trips to Israel were bad for my marriages and keeping my home furnishings.

A more mixed blessing was that I was made the leader of the team I’d been assigned to since the beginning. On one hand, it meant that the Unit command felt that I’d earned the right to lead other operators, which due to their independent nature could be a challenge of its own. On the other, it added more stress—not just in what was required of me as a team leader, but also the recognition

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