Van of Valor

Brothers in Arms, Partners in Life

Dr. Kevin P. Wallace
Van of Valor

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. – The air at Kraken Customs in Fayetteville smelled of fresh paint, vinyl, and engine oil. Behind SSG (ret) Rick Murillo and MSG (ret) Chad McKeown, a sprawling mural of a kraken wrapped around a muscle car covered the wall, a testament to the custom art they now lived for. 

But long before they were wrapping vehicles and running businesses, they were wrapping tabbed velcro on their shoulders and running missions in some of the world’s most unforgiving places.

Their paths to the army could not have been more different. 

Murillo was born in Belize, raised in Jersey City, surrounded by family. He joined the Army, became an EMT, volunteered for the Rangers, served in Korea, and eventually found his way to Special Forces. 

McKeown’s childhood in Los Angeles was lonelier, shaped by the foster system. 

He had no one to adopt him — “too bad of a kid,” he said with a wry smile. 

At one point, McKeown found himself living on a sofa in a carport in Tijuana.

The military, for him, wasn’t just a career; it was an escape, a structure he’d never had, and a calling that matched his hardened resilience.

They met in 2006 at 3rd Special Forces Group. Murillo was an E-6 with time-in-group; McKeown was a fresh E-7, but green to the unit. 

Their first trip together, a drive to Virginia to train as Raven UAV pilots, set the tone for their friendship. 

It was a convoy of chaos: beers cracked before departure, piss bottles tossed between vans to avoid stopping, and Murillo convincing the team to roll into town wearing matching black hoodies that read, We Do Bad Things to Bad People. 

Fights broke out. 

Stories were made. 

They became pilots, but more importantly, they became brothers.

Both carried the weight of combat. 

Murillo was wounded in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in 2008. He was marking targets with a Viper laser when a PKM machine gun opened up. One of those rounds blasted through him, but he remained calm.

“Pimp down,” he radioed, a call so casual his captain told him to stop joking. 

He was shot in the arm, evacuated sucking on a lollipop, and later snuck back to his team without permission because “the generator just died” and they needed him.

McKeown was wounded earlier, as an 82nd Airborne infantryman in Baghdad. 

His Humvee hit an IED in a complex ambush. 

He returned fire with an ACOG-equipped rifle, watching his tracers find their marks. When an RPG streaked toward his vehicle, he saw it in slow motion, just like in Black Hawk Down. 

The explosion peppered his right side with shrapnel, scars he later covered with a sprawling octopus tattoo. 

“You’ve got to cover your scars,” he said. “So you don’t appear weak for the next life.”

Their bond was forged in shared purpose and dark humor. Murillo didn’t speak Spanish; McKeown, fluent, officiated Murillo’s wedding and teased him in front of his mother. 

They argued over Ranger school class numbers — “fiscal year, not physical year!” — and debated whether a plane overhead was a C-5 or a C-17. It was the easy, needling rapport of men who had seen each other at their worst and still showed up.

Now, decades later, they were turning their brotherhood into legacy. 

At Kraken Customs and their nearby tattoo and print shops, they built something new, a place for veterans and locals alike. And they were organizing a reunion for the 20th anniversary of Operation Red Wings, not for the SEALs, but for the CSAR teams — the Rangers, 160th pilots, and Marines who fought to bring everyone home. It was about healing, about stories untold, about the therapy of shared memory.

“The best form of therapy,” Murillo said quietly, “is reuniting with those who experienced the same thing.”

McKeown nodded. Across from him, Murillo grinned — the same grin he’d had when they wore those hoodies into Virginia bars, when they threw piss bottles out of moving vans, when they landed in war zones and knew the other had their back.

To this date, Murillo and McKeown grab lunch together daily, what they call, “hungry homies.”

Some friendships are born in peace. Theirs was forged in chaos, sealed in sacrifice, and now built to last — in ink, in engines, and in the unspoken understanding that some bonds don’t end when the uniform comes off. They just change shape.

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