One Perfect Op

by Dennis Chalker

  It was a good thing we weren’t as active on that last trip as we had been earlier. This time the word went around fairly quickly that we were back in town. One name in particular, A-Has, “snake” in the local language, made the rounds. The word was out that A-Has was back. Later on, I learned that the XO we had dealt with that first time decided to take leave when he heard the rumors of our return.

  CHAPTER 23

  THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN

  The island of Guam in the Pacific, some 2,200 miles southeast of Japan, was one of Red Cell’s last stops on its Pacific tour during the summer of 1985.

  We had developed a little ritual every time we flew in our DC-9. Sundance took a boom box with him on the flights, and when we were landing or taking off he would play “Live and Die in LA,” the theme song from the movie, and just crank it up.

  On one flight coming in to Andrews Air Force Base during the winter, the situation got a bit dicey. The airport was closed due to a winter storm, but they turned the lights on for us since we didn’t have enough fuel to get anywhere else. With “Live and Die in LA” blasting out, we landed. And we could feel the plane skid and start to slide. We had a female pilot, and that lady really knew her stuff. She fought to keep the plane under control, and we finally came to a stop in one piece.

  The only other time we had a hairy landing was when we were flying in to Guam. There was a big thunderstorm over the Pacific and we were flying right through the middle of it. We had lost our way in the air, and the plane had to be vectored in by the control tower radar on Guam. In spite of the directions, we overshot the field on the first approach. Gunning the engine, we pulled up and around for another try. On the second attempt, we managed to put down safely while getting beaten by wind and rain all the way in.

  That landing turned out to be kind of an omen for the rest of the Guam exercise. Personally, I didn’t like some of the operations we did on the island due to our own rules of engagement and the local situation.

  Though Guam had been a U.S. territory since we liberated it from the Japanese during World War II, and our forefathers in UDT 4 back then had blown open the way, many of the locals didn’t like foreigners on their soil. We were not allowed to carry live weapons on our operations, but more than once in the field on Guam, I wished I had a few rounds with me and a pistol that wasn’t sealed up tight.

  The locals knew we were out there in the brush. In fact a number of them augmented the security force at the U.S. base, and they had been told we were out there. That made us prime targets. A number of U.S. patrols had been jumped by locals in the field and their weapons stolen. Rules of engagement affected a lot more members of the U.S. Military than just Red Cell.

  Once, Pooster and I were out on a night patrol doing a recon when we detected someone on our trail. Turning off the trail and curving around back, we were able to watch our own trail, and it wasn’t long before we saw three locals tracking us. We decided to abort the operation because there was nothing we could see that justified the risk of our being hit and our weapons being stolen.

  On Guam, we were trying some new techniques to breach sensor fields that surrounded sensitive sites. The trouble with sensor fields is that people can get lax when they trust the machines to do their work for them. One of our people was very athletic, even for a SEAL, and he managed to pass a field without setting off any of the alarms. When we penetrated the site, there was a big uproar about how we couldn’t have breached the sensor perimeter. Our man simply took the doubters along and showed them how he had done it. Modifications to the system were very soon in place that made that particular type of entry impossible.

  In this case, we hadn’t beaten the Marines who were on guard, we had simply beaten a sensor system. But that didn’t prevent the Marines from quickly doubling the number of guards on duty. The uproar died down before too long and they went back to their standard guard mount, with a considerably upgraded system.

  Sometimes we could beat the area, and sometimes the area beat us. Pooster came back to our hotel after an op where he had moved off separately from the rest of us and run into a mud slide while climbing a hill. Back at the hotel, he looked like some very young child’s idea of a mud man.

  Japan was also on Red Cell’s Pacific tour, which included the U.S. Navy facilities at Sasebo on Kyushu, the southernmost of the main Japanese islands. Most of our scenarios involved direct water work, though we did some activity on the base itself. Because of the political arrangements between the Japanese and the U.S. Navy, we had to remain on the base proper to conduct our operations. This limited our flexibility and made operating a bit harder than in other situations. What we did was stay on half the base and keep that area out of play for our scenarios, restricting our active operations to the other half of the base.

  Since the half of the base that we considered fair game held the airfield and other facilities, we still had a good set of targets. For one operation against the airfield, Sundance and I acquired a couple of flight suits from an unguarded locker area. Wearing the flight suits, with our hair tucked up under blue caps, we walked into the ready area where the jets were.

  The base was supposed to be at a higher than normal state of alert, either THREATCON (terrorist threat condition) RED or YELLOW. Either way, they knew we were in the area and would attack targets of opportunity. Wearing our flight suit camouflage and carrying a sack full of IEDs, we spotted an excellent target in the form of an F-14 fighter parked next to a hanger.

  While we walked over to the F-14, we were passed by several security vehicles. Looking over the jet with flashlights, peering into the jet intakes and whatever, we appeared to be maintenance men or pilots performing preflight checks. We made certain that we could have opened the inspection plates over the engine compartment of the F-14, then proceeded to place an IED in plain sight on one of the wings. If we had placed the IED inside the engine compartment, it might not have been discovered before the jet was put into service. So to prevent FOD, or foreign object damage—what the military calls it when you leave tools in the wrong places—we placed our package on the wing of the plane.

  As soon as we completed placement of the IED, we went to a nearby pay phone and called in the threat. To be absolutely certain the proper aircraft was searched, we read off the tail number to the security people and remained within sight of the aircraft through their arrival.

  When security came around and began their search, it was time for us to go. We just walked away in our flight suits, again looking like we belonged there. No one challenged us or checked our IDs as we left the area. When we returned to our side of the base, the exercise was over and we confirmed that the IED had been found and removed. The object of the scenario had been to see if security was checking people at or near the aircraft or flight line and, if a device could be planted, how long it would take security to arrive on location.

  We had to stay on base for our operations, but we did get to go to Sasebo to eat and see the sights. There was one restaurant that we got to like because we could see sumo wrestling there. Most of us got into the sport, and we had our local favorite. An American, a really big Hawaiian, was starting to make a name for himself as a sumo wrestler. Almost every afternoon found us ringside rooting for our favorite. We even got to know the local guy who was running the shop there.

  But there was more than sumo wrestling and good eating in our little spot in Sasebo. Acupuncture was also being offered as a treatment for whatever ailed you, although none of us were interested enough to try it. I’d had enough of needle sticks when I got a tattoo on my arm back in my Army days.

  Aside from the needles we tried pretty much everything that was offered, soaking up the local culture. Sapporo beer was as good as the food. Kitty was the one who really liked sushi back home, but I got into that too in Sasebo.

  We got a good tour of the harbor, mostly just to look at it and make what suggestions we could on security matters. The area was gorgeous, all mountains, green fields, and ocean
.

  The subject of military attacks came up as part of our mission, and we all had an urge to do a little sightseeing to the spot of one of the world’s most well-known attacks, Nagasaki. The excursion turned into a social gathering, with almost the whole crew piling on board a tour bus for the ride to the site of the last A-bomb attack. We were probably too rowdy for the extremely polite Japanese, but we wanted to see the sights and didn’t really care what they thought. At Ground Zero Park we went into the museum, where there were two stories of pictures and displays. Walking along and drinking a beer might not have been the most courteous thing we could have done, but we didn’t seem to spoil anyone’s day at the park.

  There was one thing that made an impact on me, and that was the before and after pictures of the city. We all knew something of the history of the Teams and how our forefathers, the World War II UDTs, had expected to lose thousands of their numbers during an invasion of the main islands of Japan. As far as we were concerned, it had been a war and dropping the bombs had been the fastest way to end it with the least overall loss of life.

  But the pictures made you pause. In one shot was a living city, showing the ground we were standing on at that moment. In the next picture, taken only a short time later, there was total devastation—all the buildings and structures flattened to the horizon. For myself, it was hard to believe the way the city had been built back up. It also gave me a better feeling for just how important our operations were in keeping weapons of mass destruction from terrorist hands.

  Those guard dogs in the Philippines weren’t the only critters Red Cell ever had to deal with. For one training exercise, we were asked to conduct a swimmer attack against an anchored Navy ship. Several of us working in pairs would try to attach mines or IEDs to a ship secured a distance from shore. Working against us in the water would be some graduates of the Navy Mammals Program, a number of guard-trained dolphins.

  The exercise was a very controlled one. Trainers were in boats nearby, ready to take action if anyone, swimmer or dolphin, was endangered. The trainers had given us a thorough briefing on what to expect and told us not to strike out at the dolphins or otherwise get frisky with them. If we messed with them, the dolphins might get pissed and smack us around a little.

  The average adult bottle-nosed dolphin, like the ones the Navy was using, weighs in the neighborhood of four hundred pounds and can swim over twenty-five miles an hour. They can jump twenty feet out of the water and find a golf ball dropped in an Olympic-sized pool faster than you can throw them in. This was not something I particularly wanted to have mad at me.

  We weren’t worried about hurting the dolphins. Actually, we were pretty sure we could beat them if we were just careful and planned our swims accordingly. Purdue and I worked as a swimmer pair and then on separate attacks, launching from near a bunch of piers. The shafts of the piers gave us some protection, but as soon as we left their cover, we were detected.

  It was a weird feeling to see a body suddenly flash by you in the water, looking as big as the shark in Jaws. It was nighttime and the waters were dark, but that didn’t mean anything to those dolphins. We were in their backyard, they knew all the rules to the game, they owned the bat and ball, and we weren’t even going to score.

  Right after moving onto the open water I was tagged, if getting poked in the back and pushed ten to twelve feet sideways in about a second is being tagged. I was practically surfing for a moment there. And that wasn’t the end of my troubles. The dolphin got its beak tangled in my UDT vest harness and couldn’t pull free right away.

  The trainers were paddling over to me as I was trying to get the dolphin untangled. My problem was made worse by the fact that Flipper was beating me on the back. It felt like someone smacking me with a boat paddle. Finally the trainer got over to us and told me to leave the dolphin alone!

  “I’m trying! I’m trying!” I said as I was being pounded. “Get him off me!”

  Finally the trainer got him untangled and free of my harness. I thought I might have provided enough of a distraction for Purdue to continue with the operation and attack the ship. In fact, he got to within ten feet of the hull and was reaching out with his device to plant it when he got hit.

  No matter how we tried, as singles, pairs, whatever, these dolphins could nail us. I really didn’t like those swims. The dolphins had training harnesses with small green chemlights attached. Occasionally you would see a flash of green as one of them shot past you. That might give you just a bit of warning right before they hit.

  None of us made our hits. It was the only time Red Cell was completely beaten by a security force. None of us talked about it later, but we wouldn’t volunteer to operate against the dolphins again either. The trainers were some of the most professional people I had ever met. They were a great bunch of guys, and they really knew their animals. That was one experiment by the Navy that looked like it could be a success.

  CHAPTER 24

  SUNNY CALIFORNIA

  By late 1985, we had finally moved our base offices out of the E-ring at the Pentagon. Now Red Cell was staging out of an airport warehouse building right behind Redskin Park at Dulles International Airport. Instead of worrying how much we stood out in the Pentagon, we could finally forget about our clothes and grooming standards and just work on our missions.

  Our missions were still taking us all over the country. We were just back from Southern California, where we had hit the Point Mugu Naval Air Station, about forty miles north of Los Angeles, right on the Pacific Ocean. The Point Mugu security people had been sharp. They were an all-volunteer force and had their own reaction team. There was a SEAL we called Postman who had been working with the unit, sharing some of his experience, which was considerable.

  From what we knew about Postman, he had been one of the better point men in Vietnam and had also been one of the SEAL dog handlers during that war. The man knew his stuff and eventually came back into the active Teams. After he got out of the Navy the first time, he worked as a postman, delivering the U.S. mail. It was after a dog on his route attacked him, and came out badly for having tried to attack a SEAL, that the name Combat Postman was coined and stuck.

  We hit some strategic targets on the Point Mugu base. Some we swam in on, and for others we slipped onto the base using fake IDs. The IDs were ones we had made ourselves. Sometimes we would commandeer an ID if we could pick one up on base or in the local hangouts. A military ID is supposed to be a safeguarded document, so we would always turn in those we had picked up for our missions.

  On THREATCON YELLOW, the base is supposed to run random checks of personal IDs. For controlled-access facilities, during the same alert status, security is supposed check all IDs. But just flashing the ID card was often enough to get us into the base. If security checked them closely they would find us, and that was what they were supposed to be doing.

  For one of the targets we hit at Point Mugu, we ended up making certain there would be no argument that we had gotten to the site. The high-security target we wanted to hit took some careful planning and observation before we made our move. Late in the afternoon, shortly before nightfall, we moved into our preselected areas. For the observation portion of the mission, we had split up into two teams of two men. Butch Cassidy and I watched the movement of the guard patrols, counting and timing them. There was a roving guard who moved through the area and an occasional vehicle that also moved through on patrol. We marked down the timing of the patrols, roughly every hour for the vehicle and every hour and a half for the guard. It was during that half hour of dead time that we launched our hit.

  Our penetration into the general area was a simple one: We jumped an unguarded gate and patrolled along to our selected site. Between the target and us was a thirty-foot-high cliff. Surrounding the buildings of the compound below us were high chain-link fences topped with barbed tape. But the cliff side of the compound had only a simple little fence, more to keep anyone from approaching the cliff accidentally than to keep people l
ike us out.

  So we entered the target compound by rappelling down the cliff. The target building itself was in a high-security area. It was a classified weapons processing building where devices were packed and prepared prior to shipping. This was one of the situations where we were not going to enter the building or bunker directly, just prove we had been there and could have done more.

  So we placed some IEDs around the compound, paying close attention to the main building. Once the devices were placed and set, we went back to where our rappelling lines were attached to our ascenders and went back up the lines. Taking a page from the book of some World War II frogmen, we stopped halfway up the cliff and unrolled a banner we had made from a bedsheet. Across the white sheet in big black letters it said RED CELL WAS HERE. That pretty much eliminated any argument from security that we hadn’t gotten to the site.

  Continuing to the top of the cliff, we wound our lines up and extracted from the area. Despite the tight security, we had been able to enter one of the most valuable targets on the base.

  In spite of our successes, the base security team was doing a fairly good job. We even let them do a dynamic entry on us for one exercise, and they conducted it well. We critiqued them during our debrief and discussed how the operation could be made even better. Several of the people were invited by the Skipper to join us on some additional operations we were going to conduct on another Southern California naval facility.

  These two men might have been able to handle going against Red Cell on their own territory, but keeping up with us during other exercises could be difficult. We tended not to go in the easy way or slow down much during an op. Duke wanted to be sure the two men the Skipper invited could maintain our killer pace.

  Our next mission site was in the Los Angeles area, Seal Beach, a naval facility just south of Long Beach and a couple of miles from the Long Beach Naval Shipyard. For a staging area, we had dropped in on an old Teammate of the Skipper’s, Harry Humphries.