Modern American Snipers by Chris Martin

Author:Chris Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466876231
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

10

Punishment Due

By the conclusion of his first combat deployment as a U.S. SEAL Sniper Course–trained sniper, Chris Kyle had stacked up enough confirmed kills to solidly establish himself as one of the most lethal snipers in American military history.

Word of his accomplishments had just started filtering through the usual SEAL channels, but Kyle’s status as an emerging historical figure was still largely unknown. However, one SEAL officer was keenly aware of what the big Texan had been up to.

The last time Lt. Larry Yatch had seen Kyle he was just another new guy on his first deployment. He wasn’t “the Legend” at that point. If anything he had been rather unremarkable, although that was considered a positive in itself because it meant he hadn’t done anything terribly boneheaded to draw attention to himself as new guys tend to do.

It’s not as if he had many opportunities to stand out either. Their shared deployment back in 2003 just as the Iraq War was kicking off had been disheartening to all of Team Three—and an utter debacle in the eyes of both Yatch and Kyle, who had expected so much more from their first experience in combat.

SEAL Team Three’s embarrassing opening in Iraq had been softened somewhat by the deeds of its snipers the following year in the Second Battle of Fallujah and elsewhere, albeit largely in an augmentee capacity rather than as part of a larger ST3 campaign.

But now the SEAL officer was placed in a position to address the deficiencies that had afflicted the Teams from the ground floor. Following his ’03 deployment, Yatch was assigned two senior chiefs, a warrant officer, and a mammoth task: to head up Naval Special Warfare Group One’s nascent internal intelligence effort, then known as “NSWG-1 Special Activities.”

It also provided him an opportunity to closely monitor Kyle’s mounting success in Iraq. He paid closer attention than he normally might due to the fact that the Texan hailed from Team Three’s CHARLIE platoon—Yatch’s former outfit back when his was a third O. And its OIC, Lt. Leif Babin, was also an old friend. Their connection went back to their very first day at the Naval Academy together, further solidifying his interest.

And what he observed astonished him. “At Group One I spent a lot of time reading the intel traffic,” the SEAL officer said. “I remember very vividly reading all of those after-action reports and just being amazed.”

The macabre statistics alone were undeniable. “You’d read that he’d had nineteen confirmed kills in a twenty-four-hour period. It was almost unbelievable. It was also neat to read that those guys were finally getting into it. That was a testament to the leadership.”

* * *

Whereas the Joint Special Operations Command—including SEAL Team Six—had hugely benefited from its amped-up intelligence emphasis, the vanilla SEALs had found themselves handcuffed. Worse than that, they’d even needlessly been put into danger on occasion due to an ill-suited ad hoc intelligence apparatus—one devised for blue water analysis, not commando raids.

JSOC was increasingly able to parlay the efforts of its organic assets into actionable intelligence.

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