THIS IS WHAT RECRUITING looked like at the 12 Hours of Temecula mountain-bike race in California this past June: In a dusty pit area next to brand-laden canopies bearing names like Trek and Spinergy, the SEAL crew sat in the shade of its own black pop-up canopy. It was 12 feet long on each side and carried a three-foot-tall rendering of the gold SEAL trident insignia on top, with WWW.SEAL.NAVY.MIL printed underneath that in ten-inch letters. A mural-size photomontage of SEALs in Humvees, helicopters, and scuba gear hung between two poles at the back of the canopy. But otherwise the scene was the same as at any other team tent. There was no table stacked with brochures, no recruiter in dress whites. If anyone had a question about signing up, he'd get an answer from one of the racers sitting in the shade, downing calories between laps. The only people the SEALs spoke with unsolicited were the guys at the Intense Cycles tent, where Smith and a few of his teammates asked if they could demo some bikes.

"I was kind of tripping on it at first, like, What are the Navy SEALs doing here?" said Dylan Scharf, who was staffing the Intense booth. "But they're ultra-fit, well trained, so it makes sense in a way." Race director Jason Ranoa, a former Army Airborne Ranger, has been welcoming of Smith and his teams but was a bit surprised to find that he was far from the only rider who felt that way. "Mountain bikers tend to be a little hippie-ish," he says. "But you see a lot of them going over and talking to them. I think they see the SEALs as like an adventure race for a living."

Recruiting in a demographic unaccustomed to the attentions of the military requires a delicate touch, but that's not the only reason the SEALs avoid the hard sell. "We recognize there's strength in being subtle," Smith explained after the race, in which his teams finished first and third in the five-person division. "What we want, really, is for them to come to us."

For an example of the kind of recruit he wants and the way he wants to find him, Smith introduced me to an ex-SEAL named Chris. (Now a private security contractor, he asked to be identified by first name only.) Chris started looking into a career in the SEALs a couple of years after meeting one at the 1996 Eco-Challenge, where both were competing. A former ski-patroller and paramedic, he was 30 at the time and working as a park ranger at Yosemite. Eventually the Navy granted him an age waiver—not uncommon for qualified candidates—and at 33 he entered BUD/S. He credits his multisport background with helping him get through. "To be a SEAL," he explained, "you have to be the sort of guy who, if someone tells you this is the hardest climb in your area or this is the hardest trail to run, you say to yourself, 'Well, I wonder if I could do that.' "

The SEALs also go out of their way to be clear about the dangers and stresses of life as a maritime commando. BUD/S doesn't look like a mountain-bike race, and it shouldn't. "Everyone knows this is a frontline job—it's right there staring at them," says one instructor from SEAL Qualification Training, the skills-intensive six-month phase that follows BUD/S. "Last class, six days after graduating, some of the guys went down range." SEAL-speak for combat deployment, going "down range" is not a question of if but when. Virtually every SEAL who's been active since 2001 has put in at least two deployments to war zones, some many more.

"I would never try to talk anybody into this," Captain Herbert said. "We say this is who we are and, even more important, this is who we are not."