Not too long ago, a group of SEALs boarded a vessel that was racing for Iranian waters. The SEALs had watched the vessel for some time. The vessel's lights had been extinguished, and it was traveling late at night at the edge of the shipping lane. It rode low in the water, and its hatches had been welded shut. Barbed wire wound around its deck, and its windows had been boarded up, except for small slits to allow the crew to navigate. Whatever was in its hull would eventually help pay for several ex-Soviet ballistic physicists, surface-to-air guidance systems, and new microbe incubation chambers. The SEALs moved quietly along the main deck, around funnels and hoisting cranes, until they approached the pilothouse. One hatch on the pilothouse had not been welded shut, but it had been bolted on the inside.

The SEALs surveyed the structure and then announced to whoever was inside that they were on board. They demanded that the hatch be opened. They were ignored. There was an outside chance that these were innocent civilian merchants; if they had not been, the SEALs would have blown through the walls immediately. Instead, they kept their weapons pointed toward the structure while they unpacked their manual cutting devices. The crew inside could be heard chattering nervously, but they still refused to open the door. In a few moments, their protests were irrelevant. They were in restraints.

Their master was being questioned. The vessel had been stopped just short of Iranian waters. Soon, its contents would be offloaded and the hull would be auctioned off in Mombasa or Dubai. Six weeks later, on a Saturday afternoon, the second SEAL in charge of the group that had boarded the vessel sat and nursed his beer in a nondescript bar in San Diego. The platoon commander finished mowing his lawn. Later, he played soccer with his kids and cooked dinner on the barbecue for his wife. The platoon chief worked in his garage on his 1972 Vega. The petty officers studied for college degrees, practiced with their bands, worked out, or went surfing.

If you saw any of them that night or the next morning, you wouldn't know who they were or what they had done. Professionalism has been a SEAL theme since the first two SEAL teams were formed in 1962. That was when President Kennedy recognized the need for commando shock troops that could counter the growing number of insurrections, guerilla movements, and terrorist organizations in the world. Today, there are eight SEAL teams, four on each coast. There are also four special boat detachments that control the fast boats that insert and extract SEALs along coasts and waterways. Despite their Navy lineage, SEALs are as proficient on land as they are in water and in the air, something that is frequently overlooked. They parachute and conduct ambush and sniper operations. They train as heavily in land navigation and land warfare as they do in water operations.

In fact, the only real difference between taking down a beach house and taking down an inland house is that SEALs have more options for approaching the beach house because they can also use dive gear or boats. The actions at the target are the same. And taking down either type of house doesn't approach the complexities and hurdles of taking down a moving cruise ship or container vessel at sea. SEALs train continuously and hard. The initial SEAL training , at Basic Underwater Demotion School (BUD/S), is 6 months long and routinely stresses its students to such a degree that there is an 80 percent dropout rate. Following BUD/S, students attend courses in parachuting, mini-submarine operations, sniping, communications, demolitions, field medicine, languages, and a wide range of other areas. By the time they enter a SEAL team and are selected for a SEAL platoon, they will have received their "masters" in unconventional commando warfare.