Red Cell

by Richard Marcinko

  Shock works. Especially on people whose whole life has been spent in civilized activity. I didn’t give them a chance to catch their breath. “Here, your lives depend on doing what I tell you to do—when I tell you to do it. And you don’t have to like it, cockbreaths, you just have to do it.

  “Here, if one of you screws up, then all of you will suffer. That’s the way it is from now on—so get used to it.”

  They started grumbling immediately, of course. Dagwood opened his mouth to say something. Before he could get a syllable out, I was in his face.

  “You complaining already, dweeb?”

  “I—”

  “Get down and give me twenty.”

  “Huh?”

  “Push-ups, asshole. Twenty. On your knees.”

  He balked. I shoved. He sat down hard on the macadam.

  “Okay, roll over and give me twenty.”

  His eyes flashed. His jaw worked. But he rolled and assumed the position.

  “Hold it.” I looked at the others. “What are you shit-for-brains no-loads waiting for? Didn’t you just hear me say that if one of you fucks up, you all suffer?”

  Joe stared at me in disbelief. He hadn’t figured on this kind of treatment. The look on his face said, “Hey, I’m paying you.” He gave me The Face. It is a look all bosses have mastered. It is guaranteed to work on employees. “Now, Dick—” he began pedantically. Then he closed his jaw and took a good look at me.

  Except for the day we’d met, Joe had always seen me in a suit, tie, and polished Gucci loafers. When it rained, I wore a Burberry trench coat. I was every inch the gentleman.

  Today, things had changed. It was November. It was about thirty-five degrees in the morning chill. Joe and the dweebs were shivering. Yet, I was standing there dressed in six-pocket fatigue shorts, a T-shirt that had a picture of a malevolent alligator named Phideaux on it, and thong sandals over bare feet.

  My hair and beard looked as if they hadn’t been combed in about three days. There was a nine-inch, handmade Field Fighter battle knife in a black ballistic nylon sheath on my belt.

  I put my big, broad Slovak nose about an inch from Joe’s. “You talking to me, asshole?”

  He saw I meant business. He dropped. The others did, too.

  Good. They didn’t have to like it—they just had to do it. I counted off while they performed. Joe did eight push-ups. Dagwood and Crabcakes made it through four each. Normal managed about two. Holy shit. I was working with corpses.

  I told them to stand. “Okay—let’s get your equipment dirty and break in your boots.”

  Crabcakes wheezed, “Can we catch our breath first?” Joe asked for a break.

  I laughed sinisterly. “What are you, crazy? Give me twenty more.”

  As they groveled and did more push-ups, I walked up and down like a drill sergeant and explained how we’d be starting with a basic land-navigation course. I’d marked a series of trees stretching across a nearby pasture with yellow paint. They’d follow a compass course from tree to tree, reading the azimuths and degrees, which would allow them to get comfortable with the compasses.

  I watched as they worked their way across the field, moving deliberately from point A to point B to point C to point D. They were engineers. They knew which end of the needle to follow. No problem.

  After an hour I extended the course beyond their line of sight and made them start pacing the distances, so they’d have an idea where the markers—I was using a bunch of old Kewpie dolls I’d bought in a thrift shop—should be. So far so good.

  By midday the four of them had made progress—albeit as individuals. Each was able to follow his own compass and walk in a straight line through a series of fallow fields. The quartet was happy with its progress. Good. Now it was time to start the mind games.

  I brought them back to the Manor for a quick bowl of hot chili and a couple of beers. Joe and Normal wanted diet Cokes. I insisted on beer. The alcohol would loosen them up—and help disorient them. I let them use the facilities, then set them off on their first dogleg course through the underbrush. I instructed them to form pairs. That would begin basic teamwork—and instill competition. I also took away two of the compasses.

  They hardly noticed. By now, they figured they’d mastered land navigation, so they set out confidently, galumphing through the dry vegetation like a herd of moose.

  Joe and Dagwood took off first, followed by Normal and Crabcakes. That made sense to them. Joe was the boss, and the men would expect him to lead—even though he might not be the best point man. Well, I thought, they’d discover things like that later. Meanwhile, I brought up the rear, loafing behind, watching their pace, movement, and level of confidence, and listening to the office gossip. They’d learn not to talk later.

  To keep ’em honest, I’d reduced the size of the targets. Instead of whole dolls I used only doll heads now—and, oops, I forgot to inform my guests. And guess what? Oops again—I’d partially concealed the heads, too. Doom on you, dweeb dip-dunks.

  Did they notice? No way. They were filled with the kind of dumb self-assurance that gets men killed on patrol. They even started cracking jokes—and missed the first target. In fact, they marched right past it, flapping their lips like Lucy and Ethel, and their arms like a bunch of merry mummers on New Year’s Day.

  It was Joe who finally realized the error of their ways. About forty yards too late he called for a head-shed and suggested a circle search.

  He also wondered aloud whether I’d changed the targets in any way. When asked directly, I admitted they were smaller and might be a wee bit harder to find.

  More grumbling. Now I introduced another element: time. I gave them nineteen minutes to find the next marker. They set off again, this time slower and less confident. Real life was beginning to set in: the terrain was no longer flat and the honeysuckle and briers were starting to fuck up their pace count. I watched as Joe and Normal argued over whether they’d gone forty-eight or fifty-eight paces at 230 degrees. Joe won—and he was wrong. I watched as they passed the marker and thrashed through a quarter-acre patch of what had, last summer, been poison ivy, following Joe’s lead. The man was a masochist.

  What the hell. The fresh air was invigorating, the day was getting warmer, and the woods were as lovely, dark, and deep as any Robert Frost had ever written about. So I let my Boy Scouts march on. And on. And on. After half an hour Joe realized that something was probably amiss. He called a halt and walked back to where I leaned against a tree. “Okay—you got us.”

  “I didn’t get you, Joe. You got you. You were all so fucking sure you knew what you were doing that you screwed up.”

  I called a powwow. “Look,” I said, “this is harder than it looks. But it’s not impossible.” I explained how to simplify the task. They nodded. It made sense. “Think KISS,” I said.

  “Huh?” Crabcakes was befuddled.

  “Keep it simple, stupid. That’s the SEAL way. That’s how you stay alive.” I let the concept sink in.

  Dagwood cleaned his glasses. “What you mean to say is that by discarding all the extraneous elements and concentrating only on the most consequential matters at hand, we’ll enjoy a longer MTBFR.”

  I was stymied. “What’s that? A motherfucking titsucking bastard French renegade?”

  Crabcakes and Dagwood laughed. Joe giggled.

  Normal tsk-tsked and wagged his index finger under my nose. “Everyone knows that MTBFR stands for ‘mean time between failure rate.’”

  Everyone but this SEAL. “Could you put that in English for me, cockbreath?”

  “Sure,” interrupted Joe. “More time between fuckups.” That broke them all up.

  I clapped him on the shoulder. “Spoken like a true Frogman.” I pulled a map from my pocket. “Now, let’s see if you can act like SEALs and find your own way back to the Manor.” I gave them the map—a 1:5,000 geographic survey on which I’d marked the location of the Manor. I took a pen and showed them where they were.

  “It sho
uld take you half an hour—maybe forty minutes—to make it home. If you come to a river, you’ve gone one hundred and eighty degrees the wrong way. If you’re not back by morning, we’ll send out the dogs for you.” I waved as I struck out down a narrow footpath. “See you.”

  They straggled back to the Manor six hours later—just after 1700. They looked as if they’d been on the road for weeks. Their clean BDUs were now filthy and stained. Their new boots were scuffed and caked with mud. They were hungry and thirsty and looked as if they wanted to murder me.

  I greeted them from the second-floor porch. I’d showered and changed into a clean set of black BDUs and a pair of high-top Gore-Tex boots.

  I’d spent an hour punching the computer databases to see what I could find out about Grant Griffith’s war games—and had come up dry. That puzzled me. The man was a publicity hound. But there were some areas of his life—the games were one—over which he seemed to have drawn a curtain. His ability to do so intrigued me.

  I also got a fax from Tosho that detailed one of Griffith’s Japanese connections. The minister who’d tried to quash the Kunika investigation was one of Japan’s leading ultranationalists—he was a real Jap military hero, one of the pilots who’d attacked Pearl Harbor. He and Griffith owned real estate in Tokyo and had met through one of Griffith’s clients, Matsuko.

  The name was familiar—I’d just started to go through my files when I heard grunts and groans outside. That would be my nerds approaching. I sauntered out on the balcony, holding a glass of Bombay in my fist. I saluted the men with the gin. “Have a nice day at the office, boys?”

  No one answered, but if looks could kill, I would have been a dead man.

  I let them wash and dry their equipment and shower while I rustled up dinner. We ate grilled T-bones and salad in the basement, where they looked longingly at the sauna and Jacuzzi. Over our steaks we reviewed the day’s events and discussed options that might have made things easier for them. I talked about the history of small-unit tactics—handing out copies of the nineteen rules of warfare written by Maj. Robert Roger in 1756.

  Roger was the commander of what came to be known as Roger’s Rangers, the original unconventional warfare unit in the New World. Roger’s Rangers fought in the French and Indian War, pioneering tactics in patrolling and reconnaissance that are still used today.

  His rules may sound rudimentary, but they are as valid today as they were more than two centuries ago. I read them off to Joe’s dweebs:

  Don’t forget nothing.

  Have your musket clean as a whistle, hatchet scoured, sixty rounds, power and ball, and be ready to march at a minute’s warning.

  When you’re on march, act the way you would if you were sneaking up on a deer. See the enemy first.

  Tell the truth about what you see and what you do. There is an army depending on us for correct information. You can lie all you please when you tell other folks about the Rangers, but never lie to a Ranger or an officer.

  Don’t never take a chance if you don’t have to.

  When we’re on the march, we march in single file, far enough so one shot can’t go through two men.

  If we strike swamps or soft ground, spread out so it’s hard to track us.

  When we camp, half the party stays awake while the other half sleeps.

  If we take prisoners, we keep ’em separate till we have time to examine ‘em so they can’t cook up a story between ’em.

  Don’t sleep beyond dawn. Dawn’s when the French and Indians attack.

  If someone’s trailing you, make a circle, come back on your own tracks, and ambush the folks that aim to ambush you.

  I finished Roger’s list of dos and don’ts, then went on to explain how a squad works, and what role each man plays. I told them about fields of fire, and how to carry weapons in the field. Their bobbing heads may have indicated that they understood what I was saying, but their body language said, “This is in-one-ear-and-out-the-other material.” They probably thought I was just telling war stories.

  Wrong. As the grizzled chiefs who taught my classes at Organized Chicken Shit (that’s OCS, or Officer Candidate School) used to say, “You will see this material again, assholes.”

  I watched as the quartet ate and drank, letting the day’s hardships slip away from them. They approached life from an office worker’s point of view. They’d done their eight hours—and they now considered themselves home for the night: dinner, a little down time in front of the TV, then seven hours of flower dreams tucked in beddy-bye.

  Fat fucking chance. Not in Marcinko’s Navy.

  While they snored in front of the fireplace with an Alan Ladd western on AMC, I hit the trail, stashing goodies.

  I rousted them at 2300 using my ship’s bell and a police whistle. The resentment was immediate and vocal.

  I, however, was brooking no flak. “Listen up, you worthless, stinking trainees, you’ve got six minutes to dress and turn out in front of the manor house, ready to prowl and growl.” They were about to experience an abbreviated version of hell week.

  The fifth week of BUD/S training is called motivation week in the training manuals. In real life it is known as hell week. Usually, about 50 percent of the BUD/S class drops out during hell week, five days of unmitigated torture. For the trainees, hell week tests their ability to keep going despite pain, discomfort, lack of sleep, and intense psychological pressure. For the instructors, it is the time to discover who has the guts and the heart to make it through an intensive, brutal series of nonstop exercises, and who gives up. Often the gazelles—the sailors who have done the best in swimming or running the obstacle course during normal training mode—are the ones who give up when the going gets tough. The grunts, guys who ran in the back of the pack and so always had to tough it out, just keep going and going. It is grunts, not gazelles, who make it through hell week.

  Grunt story. There was once a big, strong, barrel-chested young sailor from Colorado named Harold Aschenbrenner who wanted to become a Frogman. Finally, the Navy sent him to Underwater Demolition Team Replacement Training, as it was called in those days.

  The first day at Little Creek, Ash took the basic Frogman test—which, in those days, meant that he was given two buckets of stones and ordered to jump into the deep end of a fifty-yard swimming pool. The idea was that you jumped in holding the buckets, released them on the bottom, surfaced, then dove for the buckets, grabbed ’em and swam them as far as you could, then surfaced, breathed, dove for the buckets, swam as far as you could, and so on and so forth until you got to the shallow end of the pool. It was supposed to test your endurance and basic swimming skills.

  Ash grabbed the buckets and jumped. But instead of surfacing, the instructors watched him as he held the buckets tightly and schlepped them the entire length of the pool, underwater, without surfacing once.

  A crusty mustang Frogman lieutenant named Roy Boehm (who later went on to become the first commanding officer of SEAL Team Two) was waiting for him at the shallow end. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Boehm asked the sputtering Aschenbrenner, who was depositing his buckets of stones on the rim of the pool.

  “I can’t swim,” said Ash by way of explanation.

  “Aw, shit, we can teach you to fuckin’ swim,” said Boehm, a World War II veteran who’d been a chief boatswain’s mate and had a destroyer shot out from under him long before he became an officer. Mustangs like Roy Boehm knew enough to appreciate Mark-I Mod-0, nonquitter grunts when they saw them. “Welcome to the fuckin’ program.”

  “Gentlemen, what we have here is called a night exercise. That is because it is night and you need exercise. If you perform well, you’ll be in the woods less than three hours. if you fuck up, you will still be there tomorrow at this time.

  “We will rotate jobs. Joe will begin as point man, Dagwood as squad leader, Normal as deputy, and Crabcakes as machine gunner. Then after a half-hour interval, we’ll switch. They’ll probably be taking captives in this goddamn war game you-a
ll want to play so bad, and each of you has to know everyone else’s job.”

  I gave three of them four-foot lengths of four-by-four lumber to carry. I gave Crabcakes a five-and-a-half-foot length of compressed pine six-by-six. They groaned as they hefted the timber.

  “These are your weapons. Three HK-93 assault rifles and an M60 machine gun. You’ll carry ’em as if they were loaded. Remember what I said about fields of fire?” I was greeted by blank stares. I repeated myself, adding some Everett E. Barrett spice to the language.

  “There are three targets tonight. The first is a bright red Cyalume stick. The second is a bright green Cyalume stick. The third is a bright yellow Cyalume stick. They can be seen from ten yards away. But the red stick has a life of only three hours, and I lit it an hour and a half ago, so you’d better find it fast.”

  They stood, feet shuffling and arms uncomfortable with their wooden “guns” as I went on to explain that we’d be going over familiar terrain, and that the real purpose of the night’s events was not so much the navigation, but learning how to cope with darkness. I added that we’d act like a “real” five-man patrol—the same way we’d be functioning in the war game.

  “I’m going to play rear security and keep my mouth shut. All the decisions will be made by the squad leader—so if he fucks up, you all fuck up.

  “One more thing. I want you to consider this night patrol a mission through hostile territory. Act accordingly.”

  They laughed at that. Except I wasn’t making a joke. We were in the middle of hunting season, which meant the local good ol’ boys were running packs of dogs on foxes, the wild turkeys were out, and we were deep enough in the woods to have local poachers, who sure as shit wouldn’t appreciate a band of unidentified merry men in cammo stumbling around their backyards. I knew that many of my neighbors would respond to their dogs’ barking by firing a few rounds off the back porch. That would keep this squad alert—and probably cause a few wet trouser legs as well.