In Navy SEALs: Mission at the Caves, the first book in the Special Operations Files series, highly decorated former Navy SEAL Brandon Webb tells his incredible true story.
Brandon Webb is a Navy SEAL on a mission with his platoon. As the SEALs explore a network of caves in Afghanistan, they encounter enemy soldiers. Outnumbered and with few resources at their disposal, Brandon and his team must call on their training to complete their operation—and to stay alive.
Packed with photos and maps for context, the Special Operations Files series provides insight into the most elite forces in the U.S. military. These uniquely trained soldiers do what no one else can: employ high-tech weaponry and old-fashioned bravery to get the job done!
In Navy SEALs: Mission at the Caves, the first book in the Special Operations Files series, highly decorated former Navy SEAL Brandon Webb tells his incredible true story.
Brandon Webb is a Navy SEAL on a mission with his platoon. As the SEALs explore a network of caves in Afghanistan, they encounter enemy soldiers. Outnumbered and with few resources at their disposal, Brandon and his team must call on their training to complete their operation—and to stay alive.
Packed with photos and maps for context, the Special Operations Files series provides insight into the most elite forces in the U.S. military. These uniquely trained soldiers do what no one else can: employ high-tech weaponry and old-fashioned bravery to get the job done!
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Overview
In Navy SEALs: Mission at the Caves, the first book in the Special Operations Files series, highly decorated former Navy SEAL Brandon Webb tells his incredible true story.
Brandon Webb is a Navy SEAL on a mission with his platoon. As the SEALs explore a network of caves in Afghanistan, they encounter enemy soldiers. Outnumbered and with few resources at their disposal, Brandon and his team must call on their training to complete their operation—and to stay alive.
Packed with photos and maps for context, the Special Operations Files series provides insight into the most elite forces in the U.S. military. These uniquely trained soldiers do what no one else can: employ high-tech weaponry and old-fashioned bravery to get the job done!
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781250114693 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) |
| Publication date: | 08/28/2018 |
| Series: | Special Operations Files , #1 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 128 |
| Lexile: | 640L (what's this?) |
| File size: | 52 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
| Age Range: | 8 - 12 Years |
About the Author
Brandon Webb is a former U.S. Navy SEAL. He is the author of The Making of a Navy SEAL and the New York Times bestseller The Red Circle.
Thea Feldman has written many popular children’s books, including Navy SEAL Dogs, a YA adaptation of the bestselling Trident K9 Warriors by Mike Ritland with Gary Brozek. She lives in New York City.
BRANDON WEBB is a former U.S. Navy SEAL; his last assignment with the SEALs was Course Manager for the elite SEAL Sniper Course, where he was instrumental in developing new curricula that trained some of the most accomplished snipers of the twenty-first century. Webb has received numerous distinguished service awards, including the Presidential Unit Citation and the Navy Commendation Medal with a “V” for “Valor,” for his platoon’s deployment to Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks. He is editor for Military.com’s blog Kit Up, SOFREP’s Editor in Chief, and a frequent national media commentator on snipers and related Special Operations Forces military issues.
Thea Feldman is a prolific author of leveled readers and picture books for children, including Suryia and Roscoe and Suryia Swims!, which she co-authored with Dr. Bhagavan Antle. She has also worked at the Wildlife Conservation Society where she researched and wrote about the animals in the Society's five urban wildlife parks in New York City. She is a former editorial director at Scholastic.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
January 6, 2002, early morning Zhawar Kili Caves Khost, Afghanistan
Brandon Webb and the other members of Navy SEAL Team 3 paused. They were outside the Zhawar Kili caves. It was not yet dawn.
In the middle of the night, they had boarded military helicopters. The helicopters landed in the mountains. Then, in the dark, the men walked 7.5 miles to the caves. The mountain air in Khost, Afghanistan, was cool before dawn. It was also filled with tension.
The caves had a long history. In 1989, Osama bin Laden had declared war on the United States from them. He was the founder of the terrorist group called al Qaeda. Now the Taliban, another terrorist group, was using the caves. The caves were one of the largest Taliban terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. They were well hidden and well protected in the mountains.
The US military wanted to shut down the training camp. The night before, the military pounded the area with Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs). Today, Brandon's platoon was going into the caves. They would look for any survivors. They would also collect information and equipment. Then they would radio air support with their exact location. More bombs would destroy whatever was left.
The entire mission was supposed to take twelve hours.
Brandon kept his breathing slow and steady. He waited with the other men for the signal to go in. None of them knew what they would find. Would the caves be booby-trapped? Would there be armed terrorists waiting inside? No one knew. But they were trained Navy SEALs. They were ready for anything.
Twenty Marines were also there. They were fanned out on a ridge high above the caves. They would cover the SEALs down below. They would deal with anyone who tried to enter the caves while the SEALs were inside.
The signal came. The men went to work. They cleared the caves, one at a time. Four men moved quickly into a cave. They turned sharply around tight spaces and corners.
The JDAMs from the night before had done their job in the first caves. Brandon stepped over rubble. There was shattered equipment and furniture. There were also the remains of human bodies. A lot of them.
Some of the caves were very dark and deep. The men had night-vision goggles, but they didn't do much. The goggles needed a tiny bit of natural light to work. These caves were pitch-black. The SEALs used their flashlights. They used the small beams of light mounted on their weapons, too.
Brandon and the others could see that the bombs had not reached the deep caves. They found a medical clinic. There was also a kitchen and several sleeping areas. There was a mosque and more.
The SEALs did not find any people. They did find a lot of ammunition and fuel. It was stacked from floor to ceiling. It looked like this one US mission might have stopped many terrorist attacks.
Brandon entered a classroom. There were posters on the walls. The posters had anti-American words and pictures. He stopped in front of one poster. It had a photo of Osama bin Laden in the center. In the background, two airplanes crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.
"What the ...?" Brandon said. He realized the photo was doctored. This poster had been created way before the day of the actual attack. It was probably meant to "inspire" terrorists in training.
"This is hands down the creepiest thing in here," Brandon said to the other SEALs. It was also a strong reminder of why he was there in the first place.
CHAPTER 2October 12, 2000
More than a year before the mission at the caves, Brandon was on his first deployment as a Navy SEAL sniper. His platoon was on the USS Duluth. Their mission was to stop Iraqi tankers from smuggling oil out of Iraq. At the time, the US military was not involved in any major conflicts anywhere in the world.
That was about to change.
On October 12, 2000, the Duluth was in Bahrain. The men got word that another American ship had been attacked. The ship was the USS Cole. The damage was bad.
The Cole was not far away. It was in the nearby Gulf of Aden in Yemen. It had stopped there to refuel. Two men in a speedboat approached the ship. No one knew it at the time, but the speedboat was filled with explosives. The speedboat rammed into the Cole. The speedboat blew up. The two men on board were killed. Seventeen sailors on the Cole were killed. Thirty-nine more sailors were injured. The attack left a gaping 40-foot hole in the side of the ship.
The Duluth immediately headed to the scene. The Marines had already arrived. They had set up a defensive area around the Cole. The remaining crew members of the Cole were hard at work. They were trying to prevent the huge ship from sinking.
The SEALs set up a sniper team on the bridge of the Cole. The snipers would make sure no other terrorists got near the ship. Brandon was part of the sniper team. So was fellow Navy SEAL sniper Glen Doherty. They took turns on watch. They worked around the clock. Each shift was twelve hours long. Each man had a .50 caliber sniper rifle and four LAW rockets with him on the bridge.
The United States and Yemen did not have a great relationship. There was a lot of anti-American feeling in Yemen. Yemen also had a history of helping terrorists. During his shifts on the bridge, Brandon could sense Yemeni weapons were trained on the Cole. "This is one serious standoff," he said to Glen at a shift change.
A few boats got close to the Cole. None, though, crossed the invisible line the Marines and SEALs had set up around it. Eventually, the Cole was hauled back to the United States. It took fourteen months to repair.
Brandon realized that this attack was different from any other. A small speedboat had crippled a huge naval destroyer. Two men with homemade explosives had killed seventeen military men. They had injured thirty-nine more. The side that had seemed less powerful had won. This was a new kind of terrorism.
Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack on the USS Cole. Their next attacks were already in the works.
CHAPTER 3September 11, 2001
That morning, there was barely a cloud in the sky. The sky was a brilliant shade of blue. Everyone hurrying to school or work or to the airport noticed how beautiful the day was. That is not what September 11, 2001, is remembered for.
At 8:46 A.M., terrorist hijackers crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in downtown New York City.
At 9:03 A.M., United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower. Everyone on board both planes died. Thousands of people in the two buildings were also killed. Some died from the force of the crashes. Some died from the raging fires that the crashes started. Others died when the buildings collapsed.
A total of 2,606 people in the two buildings and surrounding area were killed.
At 9:37 A.M., American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The Pentagon is the headquarters of the US Department of Defense. The Department of Defense is in charge of the US Armed Forces and all US agencies that deal with national security. The force of the crash started a huge fire. Five stories in one section of the Pentagon collapsed. One hundred and twenty-five people died.
At 10:03 A.M., United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The passengers on board had heard about the other attacks. They fought the hijackers for control of the plane. They did not want this plane to hit anything. All forty-four people on board Flight 93 were killed upon impact.
A total of 265 people in the four airplanes were killed. This included nineteen hijackers. In all, on that day, 2,996 people were killed. More than 6,000 others were injured.
It was the first attack on the mainland United States by foreign enemies. The day became known as 9/11. No terrorist organization stepped forward to claim responsibility. Investigators worked quickly. They linked all the hijackers to al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
* * *
Brandon was stateside when the attacks happened. He was between deployments overseas. He was home in California with his wife, Gabriele.
At the crack of dawn that morning, Brandon was surfing. He enjoyed riding the strong waves. The morning air was cool and crisp. The only sounds were the ocean waves and the seagulls.
When Brandon got back to his house, Gabriele was in front of the television. "Brandon," she said. "We're under attack."
"What are you talking about?" asked Brandon. Then he looked at the TV. He saw the live broadcast of what was happening. "This is unbelievable!" said Brandon. He could not take his eyes off the screen.
Brandon was eager to get back overseas. The 9/11 attacks made him want to defend his country more than ever. But this was something he had first dreamed of doing when he was just a teenager.
CHAPTER 4In 1987, when Brandon was about thirteen years old, he got a summer job. He went to work on a dive boat called the Peace. A man named Bill Magee owned the boat. People rented the boat to go scuba diving.
The Peace was docked in the harbor in Ventura, California. Brandon and his family had their own boat. It was called the Agio. Brandon's family lived on the Agio at that time.
Brandon had always been very strong. He was a good athlete, too. He was able to do whatever was needed on the Peace. He was the most junior guy on the boat. So he had to do chores no one else wanted to do. This included diving down to free the boat's anchor if it got stuck on something. Sometimes this happened in the middle of the night. Brandon would be shaken out of a deep sleep. Within minutes, he would be in the dark water with a flashlight.
"So much for my fear of the dark," he said before taking the plunge one night. "Never mind my fear of sharks." Brandon was terrified at first. He soon got over his fears. He quickly grew to love these nighttime dives.
Brandon loved everything about working on the Peace. He became an expert diver. He eventually became a rescue diver, too. He also became skilled at stalking and hunting fish in open water.
He had great relationships with Bill Magee and the boat's captain, Michael Roach. "These guys are all about respect and responsibility," said Brandon. "They have me thinking I can be somebody. Maybe I really can do something special with my life."
Brandon worked on the Peace every summer for the next few years. At the end of Brandon's freshman year in high school, his parents decided to sail around the world in the Agio.
"I really don't want to go," Brandon thought. "I've got more important things to do than sail around the world with my family. Like dive, surf, date, and get my driver's license."
He hoped his parents would change their minds, but they didn't. Brandon and his younger sister, Rhiannon, were put on independent studies for a year. Then the family set sail.
Even though he had not wanted to take the trip, Brandon enjoyed a lot of the time out at sea. He and his sister watched dolphins jump and play in the water near the Agio. They all caught a lot of fish, which they cooked and ate for dinner.
Everyone did chores on the boat. Brandon and his father split night watch. During his shift, Brandon was the only one awake from midnight until 4:00 A.M. "Wow!" he said each night when he looked up at the stars in the sky for the first time. Out in the middle of open water you could see the stars much better than you could from land.
Within a month at sea, Brandon finished his schoolwork for the entire year. He also read a ton of books. He taught himself to juggle. And he practiced navigating the old-fashioned way: by using the stars. Long before electronic equipment was invented to help people sail from one place to another, people used the stars to guide them.
The family had sailed from San Diego, California, all the way to Papeete, Tahiti, in just thirty days. They had stopped at several places in Mexico and in the Marquesas Islands. Unfortunately, during the trip, Brandon and his father were having a lot of trouble getting along. They fought over how to manage the boat. Brandon had learned a lot on the Peace. He wanted a say on the Agio.
"Look," Brandon said in frustration. "I know what I'm doing."
His father replied, "There's only one captain on this boat. And you know who that is."
Brandon knew he was being a teenager with a bad attitude. He just couldn't help himself. He kept challenging his dad. The two kept fighting. Rhiannon stayed in her room to get away from the tension. Brandon's mom tried to make peace. She would beg Brandon, "Please just chill out. I know you have a lot of experience, but this is your dad's boat."
The arguments continued. One day, Brandon's dad had had enough. He told his son, "You're off the boat. Get your stuff and find yourself passage aboard another boat. Go wherever you want. I'm done. I mean it."
Brandon was shocked. And scared. He was also relieved, because he knew he and his dad could not keep fighting this way. His mom pleaded and pleaded with Brandon's dad to change his mind. He would not. So Brandon's mom arranged for Brandon to go back to Bill Magee and the Peace. She even got him on another boat, Shilo, as a crew member. The Shilo was docked in Tahiti and headed for Hawaii.
Brandon was busy working on the Shilo during the day. At night he was alone with his thoughts. "My whole family is gone," he thought. "I am truly alone." The first few nights he cried himself to sleep. He knew his dad was right: there is only one captain on a boat. But he still felt his dad hadn't always made the right decisions. He did not regret speaking up for himself.
Once in Hawaii, Brandon flew back to California. There, he went back to work on the Peace. Because he had already done all his schoolwork for the year, he was able to work on the boat full-time.
One day a group showed up for a few days of diving. Some of the guys really impressed Brandon. They were rugged and clearly knew what they were doing. But they did not show off in the least. They did not act tough or have any kind of attitude.
In turn, the guys were impressed with how serious a diver Brandon was. One of the guys started chatting with Brandon. "You know," the guy said, "you should check out the SEALs."
Brandon was confused. He had no idea why the guy was talking about seals. "Is this guy into seals the way some people are into whale watching?" he wondered. Or was the guy making some kind of joke? Brandon did not get it.
The guy saw the look on Brandon's face. "I mean SEALs," he explained. "As in the Navy maritime Special Operations Forces. SEAL stands for Sea, Air, and Land. SEALs. To become a SEAL," he added, "you go through the toughest military training in the world."
Brandon had never heard of them. He realized, though, that these guys were Navy SEALs. "That's what makes them stand out the way they do," he thought. He also liked what this guy was saying about becoming and being a SEAL.
Brandon thought for a minute. "I love the water," he reasoned. "And I'm a pretty good diver. This sounds like it could be the right challenge for me." Suddenly, he knew that it was. At age sixteen, Brandon had found his calling. "I'm going to become a Navy SEAL," he said.
CHAPTER 5As soon as Brandon graduated from high school, he enlisted in the Navy. By now, he and his dad had made their peace. And his dad totally supported Brandon's decision.
Brandon arrived at boot camp in Orlando, Florida, with his fellow recruits at 10:00 at night. At 4:00 the next morning, senior recruits woke them up. They were yelling and banging on aluminum trash cans. This wake- up call set the tone for boot camp.
Brandon had always been physically active. He was in good shape. His time on the Peace had taught him many things that would help him in the Navy. He had learned how to be part of a team. He had learned how to respect authority, how to work hard, and much more. But one thing he had no experience with was how to walk in step with the ninety-nine other new recruits in his company!
The new recruits had to learn to walk in step together. They had to pivot, turn, march right, and march left together. During training, every time anyone messed up, the entire company had to drop to the pavement. They had to do ten or more push-ups. Then they had to get up and keep practicing.
Before long, someone else messed up. So down they all went to the pavement again. This was one of the mostunexpectedly grueling parts of the early training.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Navy Seals"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Brandon Webb.
Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
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