Detachment Bravo

by Richard Marcinko

  Atop the wheelhouse, a radar dish revolved. Behind the radar was a short, streamlined antenna mast, attached to which I made out a series of UHF and VHF antennas. Behind the mast, partially sheltered, was a pair of four-foot-high white spheres—no doubt telecom antennas. I heard the metallic crunch of anchor chain as it paid out six fathoms to the bottom of the harbor. Then—all was silence once more.

  I swept the ship with my night vision, searching for any sign of the missiles. I saw nothing explicit. The Écureuil’s forty-foot, dome-shaped cover sat bulbous on the upper deck above the main cabin, five or six yards aft of the low funnel. That, obviously, was the only location large enough to conceal a pair of Exocets and their launcher. They’d probably off-loaded the chopper and hidden the missiles there.

  I shifted my gaze. There was a pair of crewmen just aft of the chopper pod, dressed for lookout duties. I swung my monocular forward. I could make out three crewmen in the wheelhouse, their silhouettes illuminated in my night vision by ambient light from the ship’s instrumentation pods. I picked up movement on the port-side aft quarterdeck, below the wheelhouse and main saloon with its indoor swimming pool. Two more crewmen lowered an accommodation ladder and float off the inboard side of the vessel. Four more worked the stern davits and lowered a small launch, which was towed forward and tethered to the float attached to the accommodation ladder. But that was all the crew did. Once the launch had been lashed securely to a cleat, the crew disappeared.

  That made sense to me. There were no tenders at Horta. And so, Báltaí would have to tie up to the pier—which she would dwarf—in order for her fuel tanks to be topped off, to take on fresh water, and load other supplies. But that would be done only after 0600, when the marina opened. Until then, the boat would rest at anchor.

  0955. I remained out of sight. There was no need for Gerry to see me. Not yet. I sent Boomerang, Nigel, and Hugo on the morning recon. They ambled down to the marina, and Boomerang and Hugo struck up a conversation with one of the dockworkers helping to refuel Báltaí. It didn’t take more than a couple of minutes’ worth of oohing and ahhing about the luxurious craft to learn that Gerry Kelley and Brendan O’Donnell had already moved aboard. Nigel stayed in the background, quietly making sketches and taking notes. By 1025, Boomerang heard that Báltaí was due to leave at zero dark hundred the following morning. Zero three hundred to be precise. The harbormaster was already complaining publicly about having to work additional hours. By 1100, Nigel was able to finish his diagrams, which would help us find our way during our attack. He also noted that Báltaí had a small diving platform attached to her stern. That would make our initial assault much easier to accomplish. Believe me, trying to fight your way along an improvised climbing rope to a ship under way is not an easy thing to do.

  Two things occurred to me at that point. The first was, I didn’t want Báltaí slipping away at night. Keeping up with her would be hard enough on the open sea. I didn’t want to have to worry about losing her in darkness or, more to the point, fog. Night vision does not help you if your target is enshrouded in fog. And so, we’d have to come up with some ploy to keep Báltaí in port overnight. I didn’t want Báltaí disabled for more than a few hours—just enough to keep her around until midday of Day Twelve. I put Rotten Randy Michaels, Nigel, Digger, and Goober on the problem and gave ’em a 1400 cutoff.

  Second, I wanted some idea of what Báltaí’s target was going to be. That way I’d know generally in which direction she was going to head.

  Obviously, we’re talking a maritime target here. And so, what I needed to know was which vessels would be within range—range being between tomorrow, Day Eleven, and Day Sixteen.

  1100. Mick and I started working the phones. But without much result. It’s hard to hit up people for intel when you’ve been labeled too hot to handle, even if national security is involved and lives are at stake. After I smacked snout-first into a series of dead ends, I decided that maybe we could develop the intelligence we needed ourselves, using OSINT—Open Source INTelligence.

  1210. We jury-rigged Nod’s laptop to his cell phone, and he logged onto the Net. By 1350, he’d come up with five possible tango targets. Two were cruise ships that were scheduled to visit Madeira, which lies southeast of the Azores, about four hundred miles off the African coast. I discounted them: the passengers were mostly French, Spanish, and Scandinavian.

  There was a small task force of U.S. Naval vessels heading from Norfolk into the Mediterranean. I crossed them off, too: the Kelleys had already targeted the American Embassy in BA. No: the objective here would be British. Which left two Brit-flagged supertankers carrying North Sea crude to South America, and Cunard Lines’ Queen Elizabeth 2, on the final leg—Lisbon to Southampton—of a round-the-world cruise. The tankers gave me pause. I mean, just think of the mess a couple of million gallons of crude oil could make if it was spread in a huge slick that covered more than a thousand square miles of ocean. And believe me, it wouldn’t take more than one Exocet per supertanker to do that kind of damage.

  The QE2 was certainly another possible. She was the flagship of the British commercial fleet. According to one of the unofficial QE2 Web sites we browsed, she was currently carrying more than two thousand passengers and crew. Sinking her would definitely thrust the Kelleys into the Abu Nidal class of international terrorists. But then, so would breaking apart two supertankers and causing the largest oil spill in history. The two tankers were currently sailing southward, heading toward the mid-Atlantic from the North Sea. The QE2 was currently en route from Senegal to Funchal, Madeira, where it would overnight. From Funchal, it would head to Lisbon, and thence to its home port at Southampton.

  I left Nod to see what he could find while I listened to Rotten’s plan for keeping the Kelleys bottled up in port until Day Twelve. Given my druthers, I wanted Báltaí to leave Horta sometime after 1200—noon to you civilians out there. There was still daylight until 1730 or so. We’d have to track the ship until it was at least sixty miles from Faial, which would put it over very deep water. We’d overtake Báltaí in semidarkness, board from the stern, neutralize the crew, disable the missiles, and then scuttle the sumbitch in eight-nine-ten-thousand-plus feet of water. Once the sea cocks were opened and Báltaí was sinking, we’d slip back into our Zodiac and skedaddle back to Horta, using our battery-operated Magellan GPS to show us the way.

  You are probably asking yourself why I didn’t plan to take Báltaí down and then sail her back myself, with the crew, the Kelleys, and Brendan O’Donnell in handcuffs so we could put ’em all on trial. Well, the answer is complex. And the first portion of it has to do with my feelings about how terrorists should be dealt with.

  Which is terminally. A dead tango cannot tie up your legal system with a series of appeals. A dead tango cannot make himself/herself a victim instead of a murderer by spinning his/her story in the press. No: I wanted to put an END to the Kelleys and their brand of terrorism. These people were killers. They had caused the death of one of my Warriors. I wanted them and their vessel simply to disappear. It would be neat, and above all, it would be FINAL.

  Second, there was a lot at stake here. Eamon the Demon was after my scalp. So were any number of other admirals, generals, and assorted senior government apparatchiks. By sinking Báltaí I gave myself deniability. After all, we had traveled under French documents. We had paid for all our tickets in cash. And neither Gunny Jarriel, nor Robert Evers, nor Rae Lloyd was going to talk about where we’d been or what we’d done while we were on their turf. With Báltaí in twenty-five hundred fathoms of water, there’d be no evidence of what the current Pentagon crowd thinks of as unfair gamesmanship. So: sinking the Kelleys’ yacht protected me, and Mick, and most important, it protected my men from all those politically correct assholes who believe that Warriors aren’t necessary anymore, that WAR is reprehensible, and that we can deal with our enemies more effectively by reasoning with them than we can by killing them.

  Besides, the whole op was so KISS
that it would probably be no more than a POC (look it up in the damn glossary), right? Oh, yeah. Just a simple hop & pop. And if you believe that I have some nice real estate to sell you at a bargain price. It’s in the Ukraine, and the property glows in the dark.

  1422. Rotten said the best way to keep Báltaí around for a few hours would indeed be to tie the cocksucker up. Literally. But in a way that didn’t betray the fact that it was an act of sabotage. The consensus was that as soon as it got dark, we should slip into the water, work our way over to where Báltaí was berthed, and wrap her prop and shaft with fish netting into which we’d slipped a metal cleat or two. When they powered up, the resulting damage would be severe enough to keep Báltaí around for eight or nine additional hours, because they’d be unable to attempt any repairs until daylight. That would give us the WOO66 I’d told Randy we needed. Rotten had a wide grin on his big, round face when he finished detailing the op-plan. “We kept it simple, stupid, didn’t we, Skipper?”

  Day Eleven: 1925. Darkness had come early. The temperature had dropped into the high forties by midafternoon, accompanied by westerly winds and ash-colored clouds carrying rain squalls. It was lousy weather for tourists, which made it perfect for SEALs. Since we weren’t carrying skin-blackening cammo cream, we’d improvised with liquid shoe polish. You’d be surprised how much light your skin attracts at night, and I wasn’t about to give the opposition the chance to spot us. The shoe polish stung like hell when we applied it. And I knew it probably wasn’t gonna do my complexion any good. But I never joined the Navy to become a fashion model either.

  Goober, Digger, and I slipped out of our jeans, revealing the shortie wet suits underneath. Shit—they weren’t gonna keep us warm. But they were all we fucking had. The water temperature was forty-three. That meant we had about twenty-eight minutes before hypothermia would begin taking its toll on our bodies and our minds.

  Mick focused a small pair of binoculars on Báltaí, sitting 150 or so yards away. “I see Gerry and Gwilliam in the main saloon,” he whispered. “They’re talking to someone—looks like the captain judging from the uniform.”

  “Lookouts?”

  He shifted from binoculars to our night-vision device, holding it in place with his left hand. “Two of them in front of the wheelhouse,” he stage-whispered, “and one more at the stern.”

  We’d manage. “See you soon. Don’t catch pneumonia sitting here.” I slipped across the street, the thirty-foot length of mesh fishnet slung over my shoulder, made my way to the edge of the quay, and dropped over the side into the dark water, disturbing it as little as possible.

  Oh shit, but it was scrotum-shriveling cold. But cold doesn’t matter. That’s one of the first things you learn during BUD/S. Cold can be handled through SHEER WILL AND SHEER DETERMINATION—not to mention keeping careful track of the time. So, I swiveled the bezel of the diving watch on my left wrist to mark our immersion time, ducked my head under to wet myself completely, surfaced, spat in my mask and washed it out, then fitted the soft rubber flange to my face and made sure the strap was tight. I passed the net off to Digger and took charge of one of the two cleats we’d weave into it. Damn, it was heavy.

  0:02:21. I sidestroked clumsily, the weight of the cleat weighing on my bottom arm, toward the piers to my left. Goober and Digger followed, stroking quietly but determinedly in my wake.

  We swam under the first pier, made our way between a pair of fishing boats, and then stroked across twenty yards of open water to the next pier. I waited, the cold water gnawing at my toes and fingers, for my combat swimmers to catch up with me. Digger wasn’t more than ten seconds behind. But we waited more than a minute for Goober to show. And when he did, he was obviously in agony. I used my hands to ask what the matter was. He signaled back that it was a leg cramp.

  The sumbitch was not going to be any use to me in that condition. I ordered him to go back. He gave me the finger. His hands told me that he would complete the mission.

  I understood his drive. He’d had a buddy killed at the hands of these assholes, and there was nothing in the world that would keep him from evening up the score.

  0:05:55. I surfaced between a pair of twin-masted barks moored opposite Báltaí. I could hear music playing on the big yacht. Keeping the sailing craft between me and Báltaí so I wouldn’t get caught in the ambient light, I swam toward the end of the dock, and went under it. Digger caught up with me, and my hands told him what I wanted us to do. When Goober finally appeared, I was firm: either he would wait here for us, or go back. I wasn’t about to risk his drawing attention.

  His expression told me that he didn’t like what I’d ordered him to do—but he would comply.

  I mouthed, “Good boy.” Digger relieved him of the cleat he was swimming with and passed it to me. I tried to hold the pair of heavy metal cleats one-handed. No fucking way. This was not gonna be any fun at all. But I was in no position to complain. I grabbed a big lungful of air, gauged our position, and dove.

  It was black and it was cold. I swam—if you could call it that—carefully, shielding the metal cleats against my body—I didn’t want to strike Báltaí’s hull and alert anyone—moving along the muddy bottom until I’d kicked the twenty-three kicks that I’d guesstimated would bring me past the big yacht.

  I eased upward, my right elbow probing ahead of me. It touched the metal of the hull. I moved up, up, up, alongside the big vessel, and surfaced exactly where I’d wanted to: right under the fantail. It was a protected area that couldn’t be seen unless someone climbed over the stern rail and leaned way, way out.

  0:09:33. My hands were now numb up to the elbows. There was pressure on my chest. I felt a little light-headed, all of which told me that hypothermia was beginning to affect me. I caught a breath of the cold, wet air and waited for Digger. And waited. And waited.

  Finally, he came around the starboard side, swimming carefully so as not to disturb the water. He’d gotten turned around completely and ended up under the bow. But then, Eddie’s a city boy who has trouble finding his way without street signs.

  He unhitched the netting from around my neck and we unfurled it right there to make our job easier once we’d gone below the surface, where we’d be working in Braille. Then I worked the two cleats into the net as securely as I could. I didn’t want Mister Murphy pulling ’em free when we attached it to the prop.

  0:11:11. I felt my way under the stern, eased below the surface, and, lacking any way to pull myself along the hull, kicked down toward where I thought the prop and shaft would be.

  Big fucking mistake. I smacked my head on the goddamn propeller blade. Instinctively, I reached up—and knocked my face mask askew. This was not going well.

  I surfaced as quietly as I could, drained and adjusted the mask, and slipped it back over my head. Now I realized that the vision in my right eye was blurred. I was washing my face off when Digger surfaced close by. He examined me up close.

  “You’re cut,” he mouthed, and touched my forehead, two inches above my right eye.

  I shrugged. I couldn’t feel a fucking thing—the cold, I guessed—and so I wiped at my face, fixed the mask strap, and eased below the surface once again.

  0:12:55. This time I managed to stay away from the prop blade. Digger’s hand found mine, and we managed to bring the fishnet over and around the big prop and shaft before we had to surface and suck a fresh supply of air.

  0:16:48. I slipped up to the surface, grabbed a fresh lungful of air, and went back to work. I used my knife to cut the netting so I could wind it around the shaft and tangle it up in the variable-pitch prop. Except, it was hard to manipulate the knife in the darkness. I kept losing my grip, and the fucking thing would drop out of my hand, and I’d have to retrieve it using the lanyard, then identify the piece of net I’d been cutting by feel, and start all over again.

  By which time I’d run out of air and have to surface, breathe, and descend once again.

  0:21:20. I was now numb way past my shoulders. I could
n’t feel my legs. The water was so cold that it burned. But we kept at it, working as quickly as we could without making a sound. Finally, we were able to position the netting so that when the screw began to turn, the cleats would ding the fouled prop.

  0:22:49. We surfaced. Digger’s eyes told me that he was operating way beyond his capabilities right now. Well, so was I. But that didn’t matter. Warriors GET THE FUCKING JOB DONE NO MATTER WHAT IT TAKES. And we had to check the fucking net one more time. I wasn’t about to allow Mister Murphy to screw with this op—now, or later. It was way too critical.

  And so, unmindful of the pain and the cold we dove one more time into the blackness, and we ran our numbed hands over the netting, and made absofuckinglutely sure that the cleats were secured tight and firm and were well positioned to do just enough damage to keep Báltaí around for a few critical hours, but not cause any permanent damage. And then, when we had done all of that, which took us three separate dives, we broke the water’s surface, frozen and breathless and exhausted, and lay, our heads lolling in the water under Báltaí’s stern. We were totally spent. We were physically and mentally gone. Lights out, no one home. I felt…drowsy. My thoughts began to wander. Not good. I forced myself to check my watch, laboring to focus on the E-Z read luminous dial. I tried to put words to what I saw but found myself dumbly incapable of doing so. But I struggled on, my eyes and brain trying to synchronize, and finally decided that our elapsed time was 0:31:33. Didn’t that mean we were operating in the red zone? Didn’t that mean we’d lose muscle control? Somewhere, in the back of my frost-coated mind, a warning light went off, and I knew that if I didn’t fight against it, we’d be in real danger of drowning. And we still had to make it back across a wide expanse of cold, dirty water.