Impossible Odds

much deeper than a loss of American soldiers; the ambush spoke out loudly against the rule of sanity and reason. The rule of mob violence called into serious question an entire system for capping the wells of passion in international conduct.
    His background supported that worldview. Swedes have survived on the concept of neutrality, and have long kept a wary eye on international politics, living as they do in a small country vulnerable to European warfare.
    Unlike other passing news stories, this one got to Erik. He was otherwise consumed with his junior year of high school, in days filled with his passion for soccer and for spending time with a wide circle of friends, so remote disasters seldom had much impact on his life. This one was different. The Somali massacre made his dream seem naïve, and he hated the feeling that it was merely some callow, boyish fantasy to think he might one day actually work to help boost the process of peaceful reason among nations.
    In spite of the distances and cultural differences separatingErik’s family in Sweden and Jessica’s in America, his parents were just as concerned about instilling a strong moral code in their children as Jessica’s folks were. His father worked as a specialist machinist in the nuclear industry and his mother taught special education programs for adults. While the driving motive in Erik’s life wasn’t a matter of spirituality, as it was for Jessica’s Christian family, it was strongly propelled by the desperate straits of so many of the world’s people. His parents lived out the reality of their social concern, which was to do something with one’s time in this world, in this life, and make things better for others.
    They didn’t need to force lectures on him; he witnessed their daily commitment to standing against unfair social forces in favor of the health and dignity of the individual. He observed that in his household, such sentiments were not matters of table talk but of practical and proper survival.
    In this fashion, as early as 1993, the lives of both Jessica and Erik were already charting a course to intersect. The forces at work had begun to weave the invisible net that would ensnare them, first as individuals and later as a couple.
    •  •  •
    During the same hours of 1993 when the chopper crews in Somalia were slowly being overpowered and gunned down, there were twenty-four young boys back in the United States who would grow up to be future players in that African struggle. They had no way to know anything yet about the unique fighting group every one of them would eventually strive with all his determination to join. They also couldn’t know, though they would one day find out in person, that this particular battle corps is so elite, the candidate must first be a Navy SEAL just to attempt to get through the training—and even then, three out of four of those superb warrior-athletes fail to qualify.
    The group has had numerous military names during its long rise from the murky history of the early “frogmen” swimmers, to the black operations of the Underwater Demolition Teams whose only calling card was to render their targets dead, to the latest appellation as the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group—or DEVGRU, for those who prefer names ugly and short. But the group is better known to the general public as the near-mythical warriors of “SEAL Team Six.” Their complex training supports a brilliantly simple task: to be the very last thing their opponents see, if they are ever seen at all.
    •  •  •
    While the battle of Mogadishu flared in Somalia and those two dozen young boys peacefully slept in the United States, a young Harvard Law School graduate was building a new life as a married man. Young Barack Obama settled with wife Michelle into their new home in the liberal middle-class neighborhood of Hyde Park in Chicago. Having married a former staffer for Mayor Richard M. Daley, Obama was a Chicago newbie eager to make friends.
    His personal ambition had already displayed itself at Harvard, but no doubt he would have been astounded to learn he would one day sit as chief executive in the White House and—as a part of the covert side of his daily duties—approve a plan to send SEAL Team Six into Somalia. Their lethal mission: to attempt a night-raid rescue of American citizen Jessica Buchanan and her colleague Poul Thisted from their desperate criminal captors. Complication: The target subjects