One Perfect Op

No elite military commando unit since the darkest days of Korea and Vietnam has a more storied history than the U.S. Navy SEALs, a stealth fighting force legendary for its abilities to wage covert war on sea, air, and land. Now former SEAL Command Master Chief Dennis "Snake" Chalker takes us deep inside the celebrated SEAL Team Six for an astonishing, firsthand look at the formation, preparation, and deployment of a crack detachment meticulously trained for an ongoing… (plus)

No elite military commando unit since the darkest days of Korea and Vietnam has a more storied history than the U.S. Navy SEALs, a stealth fighting force legendary for its abilities to wage covert war on sea, air, and land. Now former SEAL Command Master Chief Dennis "Snake" Chalker takes us deep inside the celebrated SEAL Team Six for an astonishing, firsthand look at the formation, preparation, and deployment of a crack detachment meticulously trained for an ongoing mission that has become essential to the survival of our nation: counterterrorism.

When Dennis Chalker joined Army Airborne in the early 1970s he was, by his own admission, a fairly typical young man from the Midwest. After his initial tour of duty—and a brief, unsatisfactory stint as a civilian—he volunteered to be a candidate for "the Teams," elite Naval Special Forces units known for their "outside the envelope" approach to warfare and their ability to strike any target, no matter how heavily guarded or impossible to reach.

After enduring BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) training—the most rigorous selection process ever devised—Chalker rose rapidly through the ranks and was personally chosen by "Rogue Warrior" Richard Marcinko for a leadership role in Red Cell. Together they would push special operations warfare to a level it had never achieved before.

From the Granada action to electrifying events in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, Chalker now describes in stunning detail previously classified operations in the war against global terrorism. And at the center of his riveting, compelling, and astonishingly honest account is one remarkable covert mission in which daring, timing, skill, and cunning worked in concert to accomplish what in SEALs parlance is known as a "perfect op": one in which enemy territory is successfully penetrated and the objective achieved without any evidence left behind to indicate that the SEALs were even there.

Never before has a book given readers as spellbinding a look at the detailed inner workings of the U.S. Navy SEALs—from a mission's planning and preparation to its successful completion. And never has there been a truer, more intimate portrait of the extraordinary brotherhood of warriors who today are on the front lines of the most devastating conflict of our age, the war that America must win.