American Sniper: The Autobiography Of The Most Lethal Sniper In U.S. Military History Part 55

All right.

We went back over to our side of the bar and had a few more drinks. In the meantime, Scruff started running his mouth about the war and everything and anything he could connect to it. President Bush was an a.s.shole. We were only over there because Bush wanted to show up his father. We were doing the wrong thing, killing men and women and children and murdering.

And on and on. Scruff said he hates America and that's why he moved to Baja California. 9/11 was a conspiracy.

And on and on some more.

The guys were getting upset. Finally, I went over and tried to get him to cool it.

"We're all here in mourning," I told him. "Can you just cool it? Keep it down."

"You deserve to lose a few," he told me.

Then he bowed up as if to belt me one.

I was uncharacteristically level-headed at that moment.

"Look," I told him, "why don't we just step away from each other and go on our way?"

Scruff bowed up again. This time he swung.

Being level-headed and calm can last only so long. I laid him out.

Tables flew. Stuff happened. Scruff Face ended up on the floor.

I left.

Quickly.

I have no way of knowing for sure, but rumor has it he showed up at the BUD/S graduation with a black eye.

Fighting is a fact of life when you're a SEAL. I've been in a few good ones.

In April '07, we were in Tennessee. We ended up across the state line in a city where there'd been a big UFC mixed-martial-arts fight earlier that evening. By coincidence, we happened into a bar where there were three fighters who were celebrating their first victories in the ring. We weren't looking for trouble; in fact, I was in a quiet corner with a buddy where there was hardly anyone else around.

For some reason, three or four guys came over and b.u.mped into my friend. Words were said. Whatever they were, the wannabe UFC fighters didn't like them, so they went after him.

Naturally, I wasn't going to let him fight alone. I jumped in. Together, we beat the s.h.i.+t out of them.

This time, I didn't follow Chief Primo's advice. In fact, I was still pounding one of the fighters when the bouncers came to break us up. The cops came in and arrested me. I was charged with a.s.sault. (My friend had slipped out the back. No bad wishes on him; he was only following Primo's second rule of fighting.)

I got out on bail the next day. I had a lawyer come in and work out a plea bargain with the judge. The prosecutor agreed to drop the charges, but to make it all legal I had to get up there in front of the judge.

"Mr. Kyle," she said, in the slow drawl of justice, "just because you're trained to kill, doesn't mean you have to prove it in my city. Get out and don't come back."

And so I did, and haven't.

That little mishap got me in a bit of trouble at home. No matter where I was during training, I would always give Taya a call before I went to sleep. But having spent the night in the drunk tank, there was no call home.

I mean, I only had one call, and she couldn't get me out, so I put it to good use.

There might not have been a real problem, except that I was supposed to go home for one of the kids' birthday parties. Because of the court appearance, I had to extend my stay in town.

"Where are you?" asked Taya when I finally got a hold of her.

"I got arrested."

"All right," she snapped. "Whatever."

I can't say I blamed her for being mad. It wasn't the most responsible thing I'd ever done. Coming when it did, it was just one more irritant in a time filled with them-our relations.h.i.+p was rapidly going downhill.

Taya:

I didn't fall in love with a frickin' Navy SEAL, I fell in love with Chris.

Being a SEAL is cool and everything, but that's not what I loved about him.

If I'd known what to expect, that would have been one thing. But you don't know what to expect. No one does. Not really-not in real life. And not every SEAL does multiple back-to-back wartime deployments, either.

As time went on, his job became more and more important to him. He didn't need me for family, in a way-he had the guys.

Little by little, I realized I wasn't the most important thing in his life. The words were there, but he didn't mean it.

FIGHTS AND MORE FIGHTS

I am by no means a bad-a.s.s, or even an extremely skilled fighter, but several instances have presented themselves. I would rather get my a.s.s beat than look like a p.u.s.s.y in front of my boys.

I have had other run-ins with fighters. I like to think I've held my own.

While I was serving with my very first platoon, the whole SEAL team went to Fort Irwin in San Bernardino out in the Mojave Desert. After our training sessions, we headed into town and found a bar there, called the Library.

Inside, a few off-duty police officers and firemen were having a party. A few of the women turned their attention to our guys. When that happened, the locals got all jealous and started a fight.

Which really showed some truly poor judgment, because there had to be close to a hundred of us in that little bar. A hundred SEALs is a force to be reckoned with, and we did the reckoning that day. Then we went outside and flipped over a couple of cars.

Somewhere around there, the cops came. They arrested twenty-five of us.

You've probably heard of captain's mast-that's where the commanding officer listens to what you've done and hands out what is called a nonjudicial punishment if he thinks it's warranted. The punishments are prescribed by military law and can be anything from a stern "tsk, tsk, don't do that again" to an actual reduction in grade and even "correctional custody," which pretty much means what you think it means.

There are similar hearings with less critical consequences, heard by officers below the CO. In our case, we had to go before the XO (executive officer, the officer just below the commander) and listen while he told us in extremely eloquent language how truly f.u.c.ked up we were. In the process, he read off all the legal charges, all the destruction-I forget how many people got hurt and how much money's worth of damage we caused, but it took a while for him to catalog. He finished by telling us how ashamed he was.

"All right," he said, lecture over. "Don't let it happen again. Get the h.e.l.l out of here."

We all left, duly chastised, his words ringing in our ears for ... a good five seconds or so.

But the story doesn't end there.