Article: Smoke on the water: when the U.S. special forces need safe passage a river, they call on the best-trained boatmen in the world. Meet the elite fighters of special boat team 22.

The first gun to shoot doesn't sound like a gun at all. The noise is high and buzzing, like a chain saw or a leaf blower. It stops, then starts up again. From my perch on the engine cover of a special operations gunboat, 1 can see the source of this weird racket someone on one of the other boats gliding down Kentucky's Salt River is firing a minigun into the woods. Every. second, hundreds of 7.62 mm bullets pour out of the spinning machine-gun barrels. I'm pushing up my helmet, trying to spot the gunners' targets, when someone close by yells "Contact," and the boat I'm sitting in erupts in gunfire. Now the shell casings are landing in my lap as twin M240B machine guns ...

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