Monsoon season. The night is covered with a blanket of humid air you could cut with a knife. It is perfectly still. The only evidence of movement is a lone, olive drab, thirty-one-foot-long fiberglass patrol boat drifting in the river. On board is a U.S. Navy SEAL Team frozen in time, sweat trickling down camouflaged faces with watchful eyes. Seven men wait silently around the twin .50s--two .50 caliber machine guns--on the front of the PBR (Patrol Boat, River) manned by one of the River Rat sailors. Another River Rat is at a single .50 caliber gun at the rear of the vessel. They watch for any sign that their position has been detected.

There's an old chief petty officer at the wheel, using all his experience to guide the PBR with its two diesel engines and jet pumps to its destination without making a sound. By nursing the throttles ever so gently and using the current, he navigates the river to get the SEAL Team where it wants to go. You can't hear the motors at idle speed because of the foam built around them to kill the noise.

Total darkness. With the thick cloud cover brought on by the approaching monsoon, you can't tell where the river stops and the jungle starts. That's where the fourth River Rat comes in. He's got his sweat-dripping face pushed into a large black rubber cup that has a radar screen inside it. It's the only way he can see the shoreline. A slight breeze begins to blow across the bow, signaling that the rain will start at any moment.

By whispering directions and using a combination of hand signals to the chief, the two of them maneuver the PBR in to the muddy bottom of the shallow water, which is the bank, as careful as a mother handling a newborn babe.

As the boat drift...