American Sniper - Boekje Pienter

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and wsait for the next guy to come over with his. There’s usually
enough light from above that the second diver is silhouetted and easy
to see. So when the victim—I mean, diver—comes to plant his mine,
the first diver comes up, grabs his fin, and jerks it.
That scares the shit out of the second diver. Usually he thinks
there’s a shark in the water and screws up the rest of the exercise. And
his gear may need a special cleaning.
On this particular day, I was beneath the ship and had just planted
my mine when something grabbed my fin.
SHARK!!!
Then I put my heart back in my chest, remembering all the stories
and warnings about my brethren SEALs.
Just one of the guys messing with my head, I told myself. I turned
around to flip him off.
And found myself giving the finger to a shark who’d taken a particular
liking to my flipper. He had it in his jaw.
He wasn’t a huge shark, but what he lacked in size he made up for
in pure orneriness. I grabbed my knife and cut off my fin—no sense
keeping it now that it was all chewed up, right
While he was munching on what remained of it, I swam up to the
surface and flagged down the security boat. I grabbed onto the side
and explained that they were taking me in RIGHT NOW!! because
there was a SHARK!! out here, and he was one hungry mother.
During another training exercise—this one was before my first deployment—four
of us were inserted on the California coast from a submarine.
We came ashore in two Zodiacs, built a hide, and did some