Page 135 of The Fourth Option
This was the test.
“If you can’t get comfortable under the water,” Harlan had said, “then you’ve got no business being a frogman. Panic is the enemy.”
Panic is the enemy.
Then don’t panic.
Air. That’s the priority.
Walker moved to his knees.
Without his mask his sight was blurry, but he could go through the correct procedures in the right order with his eyes closed. He reached back for his hoses to find that they had been tied to the manifold at the top of the tanks.
That was to be expected.
He felt his heart rate slowing to conserve what little oxygen was left in his lungs, his body constricting the flow of blood to his extremities and directing additional blood to his vital organs.
He unclasped the nylon that harnessed the tanks to his back, reached behind his head, and grabbed the mess of hoses and manifold, pulling it over his head in front of him.
Work the problem.
He concentrated on the knot.
Some instructors saw their jobs as gatekeepers to the SEAL Teams. Others saw themselves as mentors. Master Chief Harlan was the latter. It was from Harlan that Walker first learned that the wordpanicwas derived from the Greek god Pan, who was associated with nature, wild places, and sudden uncontrollable fear. Every Friday and before each major evolution, Harlan addressed the classes that passed through his phase of BUD/S. He was a warrior poet passing along what wisdom he had acquired via life experiences to the next generation of frogmen. He told the class that the Greeks believed Pan inflicted irrational fear in soldiers.So much so that the wordspanikon deimameant “fear of Pan.” Panic, he had told them, was not just fear; it was primal, internal, a fear of fear. Panic was the enemy, and that enemy came from within.
After that Friday sermon, Walker had taken to the web to research psychologists who had studied panic. He initially came across Freud and Jung, who explained that the physical symptoms—a rapid heartbeat, cottonmouth, and tingling—were a response to unresolved trauma and a confrontation with what they called the shadow self. Did panic come from within or without? Walker found that Stoic philosophers Epictetus and Seneca declared that panic was a failure of reason. If panic was a failure of reason, then reason was the antidote.
Trust in the procedure.
Trust in reason.
Walker untied the knot, brought the regulator to his mouth, and sucked.
Nothing came.
He felt his carbon dioxide levels rising, his brain telling his body to breathe. If he succumbed to that instinct, he would take water into his lungs. Here at BUD/S it meant failure. On a mission it meant death.
Reason.
He reached for the valve knob and twisted.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
New Orleans
Present Day
DARKNESS. COLD. PRESSURE.
The river pressed in from all sides. Paladin clawed at his back. Objects tumbled, striking his head as the van rolled.
It was not so different from the test in the Combat Training Tank when he had employed his reason to visualize the problems and solve them step by step. He learned to prioritize, trust the procedures, work the problem, and fight the forces of irrationality.
His success in the pool that day kindled a lifelong passion for philosophy. It had also become a weapon.
Black water and chaos. The van was still moving; tumbling, scraping, groaning as it was dragged down by the current.
Panic is the enemy.
