Excerpt from Brandon Webb's The Red Circle: My life in the Navy Seal Sniper Corps and how i trained America's deadliest marksmen. @BrandonTWebb Four of us, Cassidy, Osman, Brad, and I went out before dawn to patrol a site where a C- 130 gunship had engaged some forces the night before, to see if we could find any bodies. We heard voices coming from some nearby caves above us. As we watched, a spill of enemy fighters started pouring out of one of the caves. Twenty, at least, and all armed. We were outnumbered at least five to one, and we were not exactly armed with machine guns. These guys were headed our way. We would have to call in an air strike, and do it fast. Brad got on the radio. It was my job to give him the coordinates but there was a snag. Typically we would do this using a high- powered laser rangefinder hooked into a GPS so that when it ranged the target it would give us not only distance but also the target’s GPS coordinates. We’d only planned for a simple twelve- hour mission and didn’t have all our usual equipment. Training, training. As a SEAL sniper I’d been taught to estimate distances on the fly even without all the usual tools, using only my five senses and my gut. Range estimation. They hadn’t seen us yet, but it would be only seconds before they did. If we were going to do this thing, it had to be now. “Brandon!” Cassidy hissed. “You need to Kentucky- windage this drop!” “Kentucky windage” is a term that means basically this: Wing it. Give it your best shot . Now the enemy cluster was so close we couldn’t wait any longer. There were a few alarmed shouts and then the sounds of small- arms fire. We returned fire. I sighted one guy and dropped him. Quickly resighted and dropped a second, and a third. I glanced up and saw vapor trails in the sky. The B- 52 was dropping the first bomb. When you are this close to a big explosion it rocks your chest cavity. You want to make sure your mouth is open so the contained impact doesn’t burst your lungs. We were seconds from impact. We opened our mouths, dropped and rolled. #IgRecon #CombatStories #Teams #SealTeam3 #NavySeals #Afghanistan #AC130
