Added to those problems is the current government, which does not rule by a clear majority but has been forced into a coalition with the left-wing Green party.74 Now, if someone could employ these elements to foment civil unrest, it might just be possible to “flip” the German government—and take it over, using a right-of-center political party as cover. And I already knew, courtesy of my research, that Lothar had a wide range of contacts in politics, industry, and the government, not to mention all those ultranationalistic, foreign-worker-hating scumbag groups of skinheads and other assorted malcontents. If he could fuse all of that, he might indeed have a shot at achieving his nasty goal.
Indeed, that’s just what we found when we scanned the Zip disk I’d pocketed. The one marked OPTION DELTA.
Option Delta outlined a covertly planned blitzkrieg; a putsch that would overthrow the government in one blow (let me quote directly here for you), “and change the course of German history by blood and by fire.”
To accomplish the blood and fire number, Option Delta called for the theft of weapons and ordnance from German military sites, and from U.S. installations as well. So much for those probes John Suter was investigating out of Stuttgart.
Here’s the most troubling information. The plan called for the pilfering of as many POMCUS caches as could be located—with emphasis on ADM locations.
Holy shit. They knew about our pocket nukes. It was bad enough that Lothar had stolen God knows how many weapons and supplies already. But had they grabbed any ADMs?
Of course they had. Remember my interrogation of Heinz Hochheizer, the ex-Stasi agent I’d captured with Khaled? Remember what he told me?
No? You need to take a fucking reading retention course is what you need. Okay. I will go to the videotape. Der winzig75 Heinz said that he’d gotten the ADM he sold Khaled from a Georgian Mafiyosi named Gabliani; and that Gabliani’d gotten it from some German in Düsseldorf.
What did that tell me right now, as I stared down at the computer screen with Fred looking over my shoulder, helping me translate?
It gave me two choices, neither of them very pretty. Choice One was that Franz Ulrich, former GSG-9 shooter, had been skimming from his boss, Lothar Beck, to support a cocaine habit. And what had he been skimming? Well, at least one ADM, which he’d sold to Gabliani the Mafiyosi. And if he was able to do that, it told me that Lothar had at least one more—and maybe two or three. Choice Two was even worse: Lothar himself was selling U.S. ADMs to folks like Gabliani, because he knew that Gabliani would sell them to terrorists like Khaled.
That was an even nastier scenario. And as much as I wanted to believe that Franz was simply a venal, greedy little puke who was selling out his boss the way he’d betrayed Ricky Wegener and GSG-9, it made more sense (remember the surveillance photograph of Khaled, Lothar, and Franz at die Silbermieze) that Lothar was the brains behind this noxious little operation, and Franz was die braun.
It further occurred to me that, since we had the disk for Option Delta, there had to be at least three other options—Alpha, Beta, and Gamma—as well—which made for a Class A migraine for Fred. Since the Delta option was the most violent, the others were obviously covert or clandestine plots. And it would be up to him to ferret ’em out.
But that was going to be Fred’s problem. Mine was to get as much of this info as I could to General Crocker, and as soon as I could. As I have said many times during the course of these books, I’m not a political animal. I’m a War-SEAL. It would be up to the Chairman to deal with the political fallout.
While I sit-repped the Chairman, my guys would take one of Fred’s cellular phones and drop out of sight. I didn’t want them being Fred’s responsibility—after all, he had enough problems to face. And I didn’t want them moving south, under John Suter’s wing, because we were going to fight our fight in this neighborhood, not near Stuttgart.
And so, with Boomerang in charge, my seven merry, murdering marauders would take the RV, the Mercedes, and the two bikes, quietly track Lothar Beck and Franz Ulrich’s movements, and wait for my call. The sneak-and-peek would do them some tactical good (the more you train the better you get), and it would help keep them out of the Bierstuben while I was gone.
Gone? Oh, yeah. As you probably know, the Chairman has his own secure communications system. Indeed, all the service chiefs have dedicated, secure communications systems, known in the trade as CINCCOMs. That allows ’em to talk politics and gossip to one another without being overheard by NSA or any of the other alphabet-soup agencies that like to eavesdrop on private chitchat.
Now, I knew that the four-star in command of USAREUR (U.S. Army Europe) had a CINCCOM shack close to his office. But there was no way this SEAL was gonna get to use it without jumping through the well-known hoops. No. I had to get to a CINCCOM that I could use clandestinely.
And that, friends, meant London. Where Eamon the Demon held court at CINCUSNAVEUR.
Yes, there were risks involved. Eamon doesn’t particularly care for me (and that is a fucking understatement). And going to London meant abandoning—for the moment at least—my hunt for Lothar and Franz, and the ADMs that I had a pretty good idea they were holding. That was all on the debit side of the tally sheet. On the credit side was that I know London like the back of my hairy hand; and I can get into Eamon’s CINCCOM shed sans making any waves.
Why, you want to know? Well, because Hans Weber, the old master chief who actually runs CINCUSNAVEUR day in, day out, is one of the old-fashioned, black-shoe fleet sailors who make up my informal safety net, a net that has kept me from a captain’s mast or a court-martial more times than I care to remember.
I met Hans when I was a wet-behind-the-bare-balls ensign snipe (that’s engineering for those of you not familiar with fleetspeak) aboard the USS Joseph K. Taussig, and he was a gangly twerp E-3 fireman. As I have said before and will repeat here, E-3 firemen and bare-balled ensign snipes are both just one step above smudges of soot.
Today, the hair on my balls is turning gray, and that other sooty smudge has become an E-9, as high as any enlisted man can go. Hans was assigned to London more than a half decade ago, and he has managed to stay on through three vastly different admirals, which means he’s managed to get things done quietly and capably. He has a compact but luxurious office down the hall from the CINC’s that may not have the admiral’s square footage, or its four-star collection of English antiques on display, but Hans’s corner office commands a better view of Grosvenor Square than the admiral’s quarters does. Moreover, it is the actual office once occupied by General Dwight D. Eisenhower when he planned Operation Overlord, the D-Day invasion.
And so, a copy of the Option Delta disk in my pocket, a small duffel over my shoulder, and a hearty “Fuck you very much” to my guys, I jumped in the back of Wolf’s Beemer and headed for Frankfurt, where I’d grab the first commercial flight I could find to London. The whole fucking exercise wouldn’t take more than a day or so. Then I’d be back, and we could all go hunting together.
15
I TRUDGED UP THE STAIRS AT THE GREEN PARK TUBE station hung out, wrung out, and strung out. Obviously, the travel gods had decided that my quality of life was altogether too good, and so they’d put me on the flight from hell. What was billed as an easy, British Airways puddle jump from Frankfurt to Heathrow turned into a six-hour chamber of horrors. We’d rolled back from the gate, then spent so much time on the taxiway system that I started to think we were going to drive to fucking Heathrow. Then the pilot (and I use that term very loosely) pulled over and parked, engines idling, for an hour and a half without bothering to tell us passengers WTF. Then he taxied back to the gate, where we were not allowed to disembark while the mechanics tinkered with something or other in the landing gear for another hour and fifteen minutes. Then he refueled. And then, because we’d lost our takeoff slot, we had to wait sixty-eight more minutes until we finally wheels-upped, slipping in behind a green Saudi 747. Have you added that up yet, friends? It comes to 233 minutes, just
under four hours.
The flight, when we finally got to it, was another ninety minutes, followed by sixteen more minutes of taxiing, followed by a sixteen-minute pause because of a British Airways gate that the fucking British Airways ground crew somehow couldn’t manage to attach to the plane’s hatchway.
So what am I complaining about, you ask. All of the above is normal treatment when you’re flying British Air, you say. You’re right. And, so, you ask again, why do I call the flight such hell?
It was hell because in addition to all of the above, the bathroom leaked. Yes, leaked. All over the rear of the cabin. Have I mentioned the fact that I was sitting in the very last row of seats? Next to the leaky head. On the aisle? In a puddle? Wearing my nylon running shoes?
Yes, I know that SEALs can exist in almost any hostile environment. But frankly, given the fact that by the time we landed, my shoes and socks and thick-soled feet were all very wet and somewhat fragrant, this was one environment I would have opted not to be tested in.
I squished my way up Piccadilly, turned left on Albemarle Street, right on Stafford, wheeled into the Goat, one of my favorite pubs in London, and drowned my sorrows in Theakston’s best bitter. The place was empty except for the bartender—a new one who didn’t recognize me—the omnipresent television, tuned as always to CNN, and two Americans. How did I know they were fellow gringos? One: they were ample and audible evidence that Britain and the United States are indeed two peoples separated only by a common language. Two: the shorter and slighter built of the two was wearing a golf shirt that read GULF OF TONKIN YACHT CLUB above the pocket, and a drawing of an F-4 Phantom on the back. That made him a former Navy jock who’d been shot down over Vietnam and plucked from the gulf. Three: the other guy, who was a few years younger and a lot heftier, wore a shirt exalting the virtues of the F-111 tactical aircraft.
They edged to the upwind side of the bar when I walked in, and looked at me v-e-r-y strangely. I gave ’em a roguish “WTF” War Face until I remembered what my feet and shoes smelled like. Then I ordered a round for the house, explained that my aromatic appearance was courtesy of British Airways, and offered to go barefoot if it would help the situation.
After five glorious pints and a welcome bout of drain-the-lizard, they’d discovered that I was a SEAL, and I’d confirmed that Mr. Rick (the F-111 shirt) and Mr. Bob (the Gulf of Tonkin vet) were former fighter jocks who currently worked as pilots for FedEx. They were more than halfway through a three-day layover in England, waiting for a shipment they’d ferry to Frankfurt tomorrow at zero dark hundred. There, they’d offload and pick up some more cargo, which would go to Riyadh. Then they’d head back to Rhine Main and pick up a big load that was headed back to somewhere in CONUS. Then they would deadhead to FedEx headquarters in Memphis, take five days off, and start the long circuit one more time.
I hadn’t realized FedEx’s network was so extensive, and told ’em so.
“One reason for that,” said Rick, “is because we do so much government work. We move lots of embassy goods for the State Department—household effects for Foreign Service officers, computers and other miscellaneous office equipment for the department. We’re moving a whole bunch of DOD files to Rhine Main tomorrow night. And the Frankfurt-CONUS leg is all DOD, too. Some fucking hush-hush flight complete with blankethead armed guards.”
No shit. And if it was so hush-hush, I asked, then why the hell was Rick talking about it to someone he’d only just met?
“Oh, what we do isn’t classified,” Rick said. “Just hush-hush. By which I mean, DOD uses us when they don’t want to run a big old olive drab C-5 or C-141 StarLifter into a civilian airport back in the States.”
He was right about that. When I ran SEAL Team Six, I’d started out using a hufuckingmongous C-5A for the team. But lemme tell you, when you fly a hufuckingmongous C-5A into Ankara, Milan, or Nice; Caracas, BA,76 or Singapore, it attracts ATTENTION. Which is something you don’t want when you’re running a clandestine operation.
And so, I switched to civilian aircraft. Rented three old Braniff jets: one 747, one 727, and a DC-9. It meant it was harder to move my vehicles around, but at the same time, we attracted little or no attention when we flew into the sorts of one- and two-mule towns on the Second, Third, and Fourth World a unit like SEAL Team Six gets sent.
“See, we’re so obviously civilian, that when we land in our big orange and purple plane, nobody gives us a second glance, whether we’re in Cleveland, or Cairo. It’s like ‘Oh, FedEx. Big fuckin’ deal.’ So, State and DOD use us when they don’t want to attract attention. Hell, I could tell you stories—” Then he caught himself and laughed. “But I won’t.”
Rick drained his Theakston, called for another round, laid a tenner on the bar and frowned when not a lot of change came back his way. “Hell, if you wanted to go someplace and not attract any attention, all you’d have to do was stow away with us. We come in, get the onceover from Customs, and that’s it. Ever since the EC, nobody even checks our passports anymore.”
“You guys fly out of Heathrow?”
“Nah,” said Rick. “Up by Cambridge.”
“Lakenheath? Mildenhall?” They were a pair of joint Anglo-American air bases I’d used a number of times. Both of ’em were just a few miles northeast of Cambridge. But with the Cold War over for more than a decade they’d been closed for a couple of years.
“Lakenheath,” Rick said. “It was demobbed back in ninety-six. Too bad—great facility, too. I was assigned two tours there when I flew the F-111. It’s actually kinda nice to be back. And we really like Cambridge.” He looked ruefully down at the pitiful change remaining from his ten-pound note. “The beer’s a hell of a lot cheaper than it is down here. And hotel rooms are about one-fifth the price.”
“Speaking of which,” Bob said, “we’d better drink up. There’s a twelve-hour rule at FedEx—and we take it seriously.” He drained his pint glass. “Besides, we have a train to catch if we’re gonna get back for dinner.” He hefted the Marks and Spencer shopping bag that sat athwart his feet. “We wouldn’t have even bothered coming down to London, except my wife really likes the sweaters from Marks and Spencer, and it’s her birthday in two weeks.”
I waved in their direction as they pulled their jackets on and wandered out into the afternoon chill. “Happy landings, guys.”
“And following seas to you, too,” Bob called. “See ya ’round, maybe.”
Maybe. But probably not. It was time to get to work. I picked up a trio of 10P pieces, sauntered to the phone, and dialed Hans’s number.
One bring-bring, two bring-brings. Then: “Master Chief Weber,” the voice growled matter-of-factly.
“Fuck you, you underweight cockbreath lower-than-whale-shit snipe.”
A pause. Then: “Either the admiral has suddenly developed a puckish sense of humor, or it’s Rotten Richard, you nasty man, and puck you very much indeed.” There was glee in his voice. “Long time no hear, you no-load dickhead. You coming my way and need a place to stay? If you do, I have a garbage can out back you can bunk in.”
As always, Hans treated me with the respect I deserve. “Already on-site, Hansie.”
“Where?”
“Just arrived at our favorite watering hole.”
“Gotcha.” Hans had introduced me to this place some years back. It was just far enough from both the embassy and CINCUSNAVEUR to make it inconvenient for officials from either place to hang out. We were, therefore, unlikely to meet anyone we knew when we drank at the Goat. Hans said: “Give me half an hour.”
I downed two more excellent pints of Theakston before Hans arrived. He’d gone a bit more gray around the edges of his flattop since I’d seen him last, but he was still the same big, ham-handed, angular Kraut New Yorker who I’d forced through his GED when we were shipmates together in the Taussig.
He removed the ten-for-a-fiver cigar from between his teeth and set it into an ashtray, then grabbed me around the waist and waltzed me around the room, my feet
three inches off the deck. The man is a lot older than I, and it’s been years since he’s done any formal PT other than lifting a pint of ale. But he is still one strong motherfucker.
We went off and hunkered down at a small table in the window well where we could talk undisturbed and not be overheard. I explained what I needed. Hans’s face screwed up in a perplexed expression.
“What’s the prob, Hansie?”
“Things have changed since you were here last, Dickie. The CINC’s a real tightass. Worse, he’s brought in a whole new layer of middle management that’s fucking things up. There are eight one-star admirals in residence these days—eight! Plus twelve captains, sixteen commanders, thirty lieutenant commanders, and God-knows how many wet-behind-the-balls lieutenants, jgs, and ensigns. And none of ’em have anything to do but second-guess people like me, so no fucking work ever gets done.”
My friends, let’s pause here just long enough for me to give you some interesting statistics.
Item: the day General Douglas MacArthur initialed the Japanese surrender agreement on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri back in 1945, the Navy had one admiral for every 130 ships. Today, with no global war to fight and no Soviet bear prowling and growling, the Navy has one admiral for every 1.6 ships—an 80 percent increase.
Item: when Marines stormed Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima back in 1945, Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children had one general for every 5,802 Marines. Today, the Corps has one general for every 2,190 Marines—more than double the rate. I could go on, working my way through all the uniformed services, but I think you get the point.
Anyway, one unhappy result of this out-of-control flag-officer inflation is that today’s military is run by bureaucrats, not warriors. Why? Because a majority of this new legion of flag-rank officers has nothing to do with breaking things and killing people, which is, as you know, the only reason to have a standing military.
Instead, the current bloated flag-rank corps is made up largely of C2 apparatchiks: public-affairs specialists, procurement dweebs, financial management experts, lawyers, and other nonessential (and more to the point), non-Warrior types. Eamon the Demon is a prime example. His master’s degree from George Washington University is in economics. His Ph.D. is in systems analysis. He hasn’t been aboard a fucking ship in twenty years. And guess what? He surrounds himself with officers created in his own image, because Warriors make the man nervous. After all, Warriors might kill somebody.
Option Delta Page 24
