Detachment Bravo

by Richard Marcinko

  I looked straight back at him and said, “I don’t think so.”

  “Frankly,” the Putz said, “I don’t care what you think, Dick.” He retreated a step and plunked himself into his chair, tilted it back, and placed his loafers on the tooled leather surface of the desk. He didn’t invite me to sit down. “What you think is simply opinion, and I don’t respect your opinions.”

  This asshole was being as petulant as a spoiled child. But I wasn’t in the mood for petulant right now, because there were lives at stake. Even so, instead of coming around the desk and bitch-slapping the shit out of him, I pressed on. “Look, Mel, we’ve had our differences in the past. But this is serious. I have come upon some intelligence indicating that you will be hit.”

  “Intelligence.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Dick, let me give you what you always liked to call a ‘no-shitter.’ There are two of us in this office, and one of us—me—is an intelligence professional. So, you tell me what you have, and I’ll tell you whether or not it is intelligence.”

  No, I did not throttle the conceited little motherfucker, although I gave it serious thought. I stood my ground and I gave him the same kind of concise, succinct, direct, and factual briefing I have given to the president of the United States, the secretary of defense, the secretary of the Navy, and other high government officials. I never take a lot of time. But what time I do take is filled with unassailable fact. And that, despite any professional misgivings I might have had about him, is what I did for Mel.

  The monologue took six minutes. When I was done, he took his feet off the desk, scrunched closer to it, and played a silent arpeggio on the leather surface. Then he looked up at me and said, “Dick, what you have told me is not intelligence. It is nothing but bullshit, complete and utter horse puckey.” He paused so he could see my reaction and then, satisfied with what he was provoking, he continued.

  “Let me do something for you, Dick, that no one has probably ever done before. And that is, to define intelligence. What is intelligence? It is product, Dick, product which results from the collection and processing of information concerning activities and situations both actual and potential, and relating to activities and situations both foreign and domestic. That product is of great potential value to policy makers, because it allows those at the highest levels of our government to understand both the capabilities and the intentions of America’s friends and its adversaries.” He paused. “That,” he said, “is what intelligence is.”

  His palm slapped the surface of his desk. “You, Dick, have not satisfied my definition of intelligence. And therefore, what you have told me is not intelligence. Why? Because it is not product. It has not been processed, or analyzed. It has not been categorized, or assessed. It has not been appraised, or evaluated. It has not been weighed, or deliberated. It is simply … your opinion. And your opinion, Dick, no matter how experienced you may be at—how do you refer to it? Ah, yes: ‘hopping and popping,’ and ‘shooting and looting,’ isn’t it? Anyway, no matter how proficient you think you are in those areas, you are not an intelligence professional. And what you have told me, while marginally interesting as crude, raw, unvetted, unsubstantiated in-for-ma-shun, is inapplicable, unsuitable, and probably irrelevant to the current security operation at this embassy.”

  I’ll tell you, this prissy motherfucker sure had learned how to use twenty-dollar words, hadn’t he? No wonder he was in the Senior Intelligence Service with the equivalent rank of a two-star general. He certainly talked just like most fucking two-star generals. Frankly, friends, I’d had it with the Putz, and with his fancy vocabulary. I’d come here to help. I’d broken out of stealth mode and come over here because I knew American lives were at risk. And now I was about to be shut down by this pompous, arrogant, self-important bureaucrat.

  I looked down at the Putz. “Y’know, I’ve heard most of that shit before, Mel.”

  He looked up at me, surprised. “Oh?” he said. “You have? When?”

  “I heard it from intelligence professionals just like you just before Prince Khaled Bin Abdullah’s people killed nineteen Americans at Khobar Towers in Saudi,” I said. “And I heard it again from assholes just like you in the weeks before our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were blown up,” I said.

  And because I was speaking reassuringly, I was able to draw closer. When I’d approached where I wanted to be, I reached across the desk, took hold of Mel’s tie, and then slowly reeled it in around my extra-Rogue-size hand, and pulled it up close, so that I could examine it, and him. Now, my friends, here is a variation on the Rogue Warrior®’s First Law of Physics:38 grab a stupid asshole by his tie and the rest of his body will follow wherever you take the tie.

  And that is precisely what happened here. As I yanked, Mel’s round face followed the big double-Windsor under his double chin, until I had him right where I wanted him—right up against my own hairy, Roguish face.

  I looked at this quivering piece of jelly and was sickened. “Y’know, Mel,” I said, “Americans always seem to die because stupid motherfuckers like you refuse to see the clear and present danger.”

  He wasn’t getting it. So I continued. “You assholes set idiotic rules of engagement, and then after it’s all over, you blame some fucking sergeant for not manning his post.” Mel’s eyes started to wander. I pulled on his tie.

  “You will be attacked,” I said. “It is simply a question of how, and when.”

  I shook the tie in my hand and watched as his reddened face mirrored every movement of my hand. I turned my head and gave him a nose-to-nose War Face. “Got that message loud and clear, Mel?”

  His head shook up and down, wattles wobbling in the affirmative.

  That’s what he signaled. But here is what I knew: I saw in his eyes that he didn’t believe me. I saw in his eyes that he would probably never believe me.

  And the result of his skepticism would be inevitable: once again, Americans would die. And Mel would weasel out of any responsibility.

  I looked down at the wide striped tie wrapped around my hairy fist. The gold Budweiser tie tack was atop my right index-finger knuckle. I unrolled the tie just enough so that I could release the tie tack’s pin from its holder, then held the miniature gold Budweiser in my hand by its five-eighths-of-an-inch-long pin, and examined it carefully.

  Let me stop here long enough to tell you that I am always moved by the sight of the SEAL trident. It is the symbol of a brotherhood. I come from an unbroken line that descends from the first volunteers who braved the cold waters off Fort Pierce, Florida, in the early days of World War II. Scouts, Raiders, NCDUs,39 UDTs,40 and SEALs—we are all a band of Froggish brothers. The Scouts and Raiders and NCDUs sometimes took 70, 80, 90 percent casualties—but they always PERFORMED THEIR MISSIONS. UDTs never refused an assignment, no matter how demanding it might have been. My brother SEALs have never left a wounded or dead teammate in the field. All my brother Frogs have been forged on the same anvil of pain, hammered and tempered until they realize in the depths of their souls that THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING THEY CANNOT DO.

  That is why I become so emotional whenever I see our sacred Trident. MY sacred trident. And it is why I am offended when I see pimple-ass wannabes wearing SEAL T-shirts with tridents, or come upon no-loads sporting SEAL Team trident patches at Soldier of Fortune conventions. It is why I want to commit mayhem and violence when I look at the current avalanche of Trident-intense fake SEAL equipment sold in gun magazines or military-equipment catalogues. It is why I want to beat the crap out of former SEALs who encourage the wannabes by marketing ersatz SEAL shit.

  Hey, you pencil-dicked, shithead, can’t-cunt marketing-slash-sales assholes, YOU ARE MESSING WITH MY HISTORY, AND I DO NOT LIKE IT.

  Anyway, that was what ran through my brain in the few seconds during which I was looking at Mel Potts’s Budweiser tie tack.

  Now, let me make myself perfectly fucking clear: I was not upset that Mel was wearing the sacred Trident. He had, in p
oint of fact, earned it. Just as I earned it. Mel Potts was a brother SEAL. The sorry fact of life was, that even though I hated Mel the Putz’s guts, if we were in battle together I’d die for him, because those were the rules of the Froggish bond between us.

  Of course, just because he wore the Trident didn’t mean he was necessarily a good guy. There are good SEALs and there are assholes. There are Warrior SEALs and there are, well, putzes, just like Mel. And just because Mel was entitled to wear the Trident didn’t mean I had to like the way he was wearing it. I mean, he should have worn his Trident proudly. On his chest. Not like some piece of fucking costume jewelry.

  The more I thought about that, the more I knew I was right—and what I had to do. And so, I opened up his pinstripe suit coat with my left hand, then took the Trident, and placed it on his shirt, my left hand holding it steady on his greater pectoral muscle, two inches above his left nipple, which is where I wear the sacred Trident on my own uniform.

  Mel watched what I was doing with a sort of dumbstruck, bemused detachment, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He watched in silence right up until the instant that, having let go his tie, I Hoo Ya, motherfucker! hammered the Trident smack through the muscle and cartilage of his pec and stuck it straight onto his chest. And since he didn’t work out, and didn’t have very much in the way of pecs, the blow was hard enough to spike the tip of that five-eighths-inch pin right down into one of his fucking ribs.

  Boy did that ever bring the cockbreath to life. “Geeeeezus!” he screamed in pain. And immediately, a small but expanding circle of blood formed around the Budweiser. “Geeeeezus H. Christ,” he caterwauled.

  Now blooding, as what I’d just done to him is called, is a serious offense in today’s politically correct armed forces. Blooding has always been controversial. In some circles (the Rocks and Shoals Navy of World War II for example), blooding was frowned upon because it wasn’t part of Old Navy lore. In some of today’s elite forces—certain SpecOps units of the Army and the Marine Corps come to mind—blooding is tacitly accepted by the troops as a rite of passage, even though it is an offense that can get an officer or non-com court-martialed if said rite gets made public. But here is not the time or the place to debate the rights and wrongs of blooding. Besides, since Mel and I weren’t engaged in an official U.S. Navy ceremony, I didn’t think anyone would object if I used the sacred Trident to remind Mel that he was still a part of an elite organization of WARRIORS, and that he should always wear his Trident with PRIDE, DIGNITY, AND HONOR, not as a fucking piece of accent jewelry.

  Of course, this is Mel Putz I’m talking about, and as I just said, just because he was once a SEAL didn’t make him any less of a cockbreath. Tears in his eyes, Mel grabbed at his tit and tried to yank the Trident out from where I’d hammered it. But I’d smashed it down pretty hard, and he was not successful. From the look on his face it was painful going.

  But he kept at it, screaming all the while. “You stuck me,” he brayed, sounding like a fucking barnyard animal. “You wounded me.” Finally (I told you SEALs always complete their missions) he managed to pry the Trident from his chest. He held it between trembling, pudgy fingers and shook his hand in my direction, flicking blood. “You…you…you assaulted me.”

  I looked over the desk at him. Here was the sorry fucking truth: Mel Potts may have made it through BUD/S but he didn’t have the heart or the soul of a SEAL Warrior. He was more akin to my former nemesis, the currently retired Rear Admiral Pinkney Prescott III. Mel and Pinky represented all the pussy-assed, can’t-cunt commanding officers who’d made it through BUD/S but lacked the essential heart, soul, and GUTS to become true WARRIORS. Just because he wore the Trident didn’t mean that Mel Potts was worth anything more than a turd floating in the toilet, a fucking piece of merde.

  I turned on my heel but stopped long enough to say, “Look, Mel, I told you that the embassy is gonna be attacked. Either take steps or suffer the consequences.”

  The Putz’s expression told me he didn’t give a rusty F-word what happened to the embassy. It was me he wanted to take action against. “I am a goddamn CIA chief of station,” he screamed. “I am a senior American diplomat. I am the number-two-ranking American in Buenos Aires. Believe me, you frigging animal, Washington is going to hear about this unprovoked physical attack on me.” He gulped for air, then continued. “I will be on the phone to the chief of naval operations within the hour. If your career isn’t already in the sewer, it will be when I get done with you.”

  I was on him like stink on shit. I shoved him back into his chair so hard that he crashed into his credenza and knocked over most of his “ain’t I great” photographs. “Fuck you, Mel,” I said, over the sound of shattering glass. “Fuck you very, very much indeed, because it ain’t over till it’s over.”

  I was delighted with my performance. Mick’s review was not so positive. “You know he’s already probably gotten Washington on the line.”

  Playfully, I flipped Mick the finger. “So, I’ll call Chairman Crocker and fix things.”

  Actually, that wasn’t such a bad idea. I mean, the embassy was vulnerable, and I didn’t want people killed. Sure, I’d already told Gunny Jarriel to ratchet up the security, but it wouldn’t hurt to let the Chairman know, too.

  I tried the Chairman’s private number. But the phone in his hideaway had been disconnected. I called the JCS staff office and asked to be patched through to the Chairman, only to be informed by an eager-beaver O-4 named Hurley that the Chairman was taking his terminal leave and could not be contacted.

  But, Lieutenant Commander Hurley continued, she could and would connect me to the office of the chief of Naval operations, whose executive assistant had just E-mailed the entire joint staff that if I called, I was to be put through immediately.

  This was obviously Mel’s doing. It was Doom on Dickie time.

  Mick’s face reflected the seriousness of the problem. “If this Mel chap pushes it, you’re going to be recalled, Dick.”

  “Fuck him, Mick—we’ll survive.” I wiggled my eyebrows in a halfway decent Groucho imitation. “Hey, they gotta find us first, right?”

  “And where do you propose hiding out?”

  “I actually thought about that on my way back to the Hotel Étoile, Mick.” I pulled the drapes, cutting off the view of the Cementerio Recoleta, and turned up the volume on the cable TV, just in case there was anyone with a set of NSA-style Big Ears out there. “I’m willing to bet that your pal Robert Evers has a safe house or two that he’s not using right now.”

  “You’ve already got him supplying us weapons—something for which he could be cashiered, I should add.”

  “So, what’s your point, then, Mick? If he’s gonna get shit-canned for slipping us a few guns, what the fuck’s a safe house or two?”

  Mick looked at me, incredulous. “I have to admit, Dick, you have the biggest bloody pair of solid brass balls I’ve ever come across.”

  I gave him the trademark Rogue Warrior® grin. “Yeah—but they come in handy.”

  I guess he took me seriously, because that’s the way he looked. “Oh?”

  “Hell, yes. I can dive without ever having to use a fucking weight belt. What about you, asshole?”

  12

  MICK AND I treffed41 WITH ROBERT EVERS, AS THE Germans might say, at the Gran Café Tortoni, a fin-de-siècle restaurant on the Avenida de Mayo a few blocks from the Casa Rosada—Argentina’s presidential residence. We left the Étoile and walked past La Biela, pausing just long enough to admire the Porteñas, then walked down to the Avenida del Libertador, took a circuitous route that passed through the Bullrich shopping center to make sure we weren’t being followed, ambled around the Casa Rosada and meandered through the Parque Colón, wandered past the majestic Estado Mayor and Ministry of Defense, cut back across the Plaza de Mayo, walked down into and up out of the subway station across from the presidential palace, and finally marched three long blocks to the rococo entrance of the Gran Café Tortoni.<
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  It was like walking into a time warp. Outside, it was the twenty-first century. Inside, it was Toulouse-Lautrec’s Paris. The Tortoni had dark walls chockablock filled with paintings that ranged from Degas-style cartoons in ornate gilt frames, to large abstractionist oils. The floors were marble, polished and worn by more than a century of Porteño shoes coming and going. A huge, ornately carved service bar dominated the port side of the long, narrow restaurant. There were impressive, rectangular Tiffany glass skylights and brass-and-glass chandeliers from which golden light emanated. The conversation level was loud enough so that, despite the fact that the café had opened up its front windows and expanded onto the sidewalk, by the time you got fifteen feet inside, the street sounds had been completely overwhelmed by cross-talk.

  The place was an eavesdropper’s nightmare. It was packed to the gills, and the decibel level was somewhere between vacuum cleaner and lawn mower. Small, round or rectangular marble-topped tables were crowded with groups of animated Argentines. White-aproned waiters carrying small black trays slalomed heedlessly to and fro. There were clumps of earnest dot.com businessmen working the cellular phones. There were groups of nattily clad politicians cutting into steaks and sipping vino tinto. Ink-stained wretches—old-fashioned journalists—worked their sources, taking notes as they leaned across the table in order to hear anything, nonwriting hand cupped to their ear as they tried to make out over the din what they were being told. Over by the service bar a pair of paint-speckled artists shook their fists in each other’s faces as they loudly argued aesthetics. A single elderly man dressed in a 1940s three-piece suit, boiled shirt, narrow black necktie, and gray flannel spats was a solitary note of calm in this chaotic cosmos. Sparse silver hair pomaded flat against his skull, he pored, lips moving as he read, over a carefully folded newspaper, a single, half-finished cup of espresso on the table in front of him.

  Mick and I progressed down the narrow, bustling aisle between tables. Finally I saw Robert Evers waving at us from a corner table in the rear. We joined him at a two-foot, round marble table with a wrought iron pedestal base, adjacent to the wall separating the main dining room from an area containing six billiard tables and more than two dozen boisterous players. Evers had a Campari soda sitting in front of him in a tall glass. It looked so good I ordered one myself. Mick, ever the Brit, ordered a pair of draft beers.