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Standing on the ramp of a C-130 in the dead of night, at 5,000 feet, in thick clouds over the Indian Ocean 12 miles east of the Horn of Africa, Terry Houin and his five teammates, all part of a secretive intelligence unit within the U.S. Navy SEALs, strained to see the warships floating in the chop below.
Neither the guided missile destroyer USS Bainbridge nor the frigate USS Halyburton, part of a task force deployed to curb rampant piracy in the region, had experience retrieving operators out of the open ocean. The ramp was down and the jump light red. A Special Tactics airman still had the ship's crew on the line, talking them through the mechanics of plucking these four SEALS and two airmen out of the cold water.
Thirty seconds out, all Houin could think was They'll figure it out. There was no other way to think about it. Then, the jump light went green. Lights from the ships below were just barely visible in the pea soup conditions. Then, the jumpmaster called it, and Houin and his teammates were off, in free fall, screaming toward the most hostile stretch of water on earth.
That morning, Houin and his small team of SEALs had been laid up in a hotel in sub-Saharan Africa when the phone rang. “Turn on the news,” said a voice from headquarters. Somali pirates had taken the cargo ship Maersk Alabama and had forced its captain, Richard…
