When Navy SEALs Call 9-1-1, This Is Who Picks Up

They are the military's "guardian angels." They are trained paramedics, paratroopers, and combat divers. This is the story of one such soldier, and the mission of a lifetime.

The Savior Elite: Inside the Special Operations Force Tasked with Rescuing Navy SEALS  "RAMP DOOR!" The jumpmaster screams the command over the roaring engine, and the back hatch of the HC-130 aircraft yawns open into night. A cold wind enters the cabin. It brushes past the seven soldiers seated in rows, sending stray pieces of paper, fabric, and tape fluttering in the thin air. In front, the team leader, Tech. Sgt. Jordan St. Clair* looks out past the ramp door. He can see nothing. A low blanket of clouds blots out the moon and stars and erases the distinction between the black sky and the black Atlantic Ocean beneath. He turns back to his men, each strapped with over a hundred-and-fifty pounds of gear. Their faces are lit only by the lambent glow of chemlights.   "STAND UP!"   The seven soldiers rise. At the next command—"HOOK UP!"—they clip their parachute line to a red steel cable running over their heads.   Fifteen hundred feet below, their target: the Tamar, a commercial shipping vessel two thirds into its voyage from Baltimore to Gibraltar. Earlier that morning, there had been an explosion onboard, some unknown ignition that had set fire to four sailors working inside the hull. In his distress message, the ship's captain wrote that the men had been burned from head to toe. They were in the middle of the Atlantic; the nearest land—the Azores Islands—was over five hundred miles to the east. They were out of range of both U.S. and Portuguese Coast Guard helicopters as well as rescue boats. The men's injuries were severe, requiring expert attention. The captain's message was routed from Lisbon to Portsmouth, then to Boston, and on to the soldiers in Long Island. Within hours of the explosion, two of the sailors died. The two other men—charred, skin flayed—wait now without pain medicine. Read the Full Story The Best TV Shows of the 2010s Manage to Stand Out in the Greatest Decade of Television The term "Peak TV" might have been coined almost exactly halfway through the 2010s, but the groundwork had been set long before the decade began. The origin of this era of prestige television is marked by the phenomena that was The Sopranos, which began in the waining days of the 20th century and ended in June of 2007. That same year The Sopranos ended, it passed the baton to Mad Men, AMC's '60s drama that carried Peak TV into the 2010s where it exploded across cable and streaming services. Mad Men ended in 2015, the same year the term Peak TV originated when we were two years into the next era of streaming originals, past the stunning conclusion of Breaking Bad, and well into the cultural fascination with the swords and dragons and fantasy that was Game of Thrones. Read the Full Story How the Barbour Jacket Has Stayed a Must-Own for Over a Century On a cool summer morning in South Shields, England, Barbour factory workers are beginning the approximately 650 jackets they complete in a day. At the start of the production line, a man named Gary cuts lengths of waxed cloth; a woman named Mary cuts pattern linings. Every worker gets a specific uniform color—machinists in green, supervisors in blue, quality control in purple—and they sit in rows, school photos of their children taped to the arms of sewing machines, as the disembodied yet recognizable elements of a Barbour jacket proceed down a modest assembly line. Read the Full Story Take That Haul of Holiday Cash and Buy These Ridiculously Good Slippers Immediately I have long been an advocate for the wearing of slippers. From drafty windows to splinter-prone floorboards to all the hard-angled stuff that kids and pets tend to leave lying around, there are a lot of reasons for keeping your feet warm and protected in your home. But I never considered myself an advocate for the wearing of a specific kind of slippers. I just endorsed the idea broadly, without focusing on the items more narrowly. Read the Full Story LeBron James Is No Socialist, But His New Nike Ad Makes a Good Case for Socialism Every so often, the men's style world at large gets a full head of steam and decides LeBron James is not, to the best of my knowledge, a socialist. In the past, he has plainly stated that he would like to become a billionaire athlete, and nothing about his career suggests he was lying. James signed a lifetime deal with Nike in 2015 for an undisclosed amount, but that was rumored to be worth a billion dollars on its own. Every new endorsement deal he inks also provides him with equity in the company. He has a media company, Uninterrupted, and an entertainment production company, SpringHill Entertainment, both of which continue to expand. He is part owner of Liverpool FC, the English soccer club. If his recent Instagram stories provide an inkling of future endeavors, he may also be getting into the tequila business. Oh, and then there's the whole matter of making more than $30 million a year playing basketball. Read the Full Story The 40 Most Important Restaurants of the Decade Some people like to argue that decades are nothing more than arbitrary demarcations of time. But if I were to ask you to free-associate, and if I were to say the Fifties, the Sixties, the Seventies, the Eighties, the Nineties, et cetera, certain songs and movie scenes and sartorial flourishes would arise in your mind for each one. So what will we someday see as the emblematic flourishes of the past 10 years, when we think about going out to eat?  Read the Full Story   Follow Us     Unsubscribe  Privacy Notice   esquire.com ©2019 Hearst Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Hearst Email Privacy, 300 W 57th St., Fl. 19 (sta 1-1), New York, NY 10019