Seal Team Seven by Keith Douglass

relaxed, but only slightly. “Uh, yessir. I mean, thank you, sir. I . . .”
    Coburn sighed. “Spit it out, son.”
    The petty officer fumbled for a moment with the gold Budweiser on his white jumper. Damn. Coburn had thought this was why Wilson had requested the interview, but he’d still been hoping he was wrong.
    Wilson dropped the SEAL badge on Coburn’s desk. “I want to put in for a transfer. To the fleet.”
    â€œShit, Chucker, you know what you’re saying?”
    â€œYes, sir. I think I do.”
    â€œYou just got your Budweiser . . . what? A month ago?”
    â€œI didn’t deserve it, sir.”
    â€œBull. The officers who reviewed your record after your probationary assignment didn’t agree. You questioning their judgment?”
    â€œWith respect, sir, they weren’t at Shuaba.”
    â€œYou don’t want fleet duty.”
    â€œYes, sir. I do.”
    â€œA SEAL? Scraping paint and flemishing lines? You’ll be so bored you’ll be climbing the bulkheads inside of six weeks. What the hell makes you think you want to stop being a SEAL?”
    â€œSir, I was the guy tasked with going through that control tower at Shuaba. I don’t know what happened, but somehow I missed a hostile. And that hostile nailed the L-T.”
    Coburn tipped his steel, straight-backed chair, balancing on the two rear feet as he considered how to answer. “Chucker, we went through this at the inquiry last week. What happened was not your fault. It was not Lieutenant DeWitt’s fault, it wasn’t anybody’s fault. There weren’t enough men with Blue Water’s ground element to adequately search that tower. As I see it, you did your best, you—”
    â€œBegging the Captain’s pardon, sir, but I was there . That last room we checked . . . I should’ve gone in and taken a harder look.”
    â€œYou told us all of that at the inquiry.”
    â€œCaptain, that whole building was dark and empty. It, well, it felt empty, and I must have gone in assuming that it was empty.”
    â€œOkay. So you screwed up. Made a bad call. That doesn’t mean you can’t be a SEAL. Even SEALs make mistakes.”
    â€œI screwed up, and the best officer I’ve ever known bought it. Sir, I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I’m looking at it like this. What happens next time I’m on a combat op? With some new platoon leader? I’m going to be there trying to keep my mind on the mission, and I’m going to be thinking about Shuaba. Maybe spend too much time checking a room. Wondering if I’m going to screw up again. Sir, you know as well as I do that you can’t stop to think about stuff in combat. If you do, you’re dead. And maybe some good guys are dead with you.”
    â€œAnd you think dropping out of the SEALs is the answer?”
    â€œYes, sir. I do. It’s . . . what’s best. For me. And for the Team. Look at it from the guys’ point of view, Captain. They know what I did at Shuaba, and they know what I didn’t do. Think they’re going to want to go into a free-fire zone with a fuckup like me backing them up? I sure as hell wouldn’t.”
    â€œBullshit, Wilson,” Coburn snapped, dropping the father-figure approach in a sharp change in tactics. “The Navy’s got eighty-some thousand bucks tied up in your training, and you want to chuck it all the first time you run into some rough sailing? What are you, a quitter? If Hell Week didn’t make you chuck it all, why should this?”
    â€œThis is different, sir.”
    â€œBullshit. Once you’re a SEAL, you’re always a SEAL. I don’t think you’d be happy any place but with the Teams!”
    â€œMaybe not, sir. But I think it’s better if I get out.”
    Coburn considered the youngster for a long moment. Wilson was just twenty-three years old, and though he had the lean and deadly