Before we did our operation, we had to do a reconnaissance of the shoreline of Ford Island, preferably one where we wouldn’t be easily noticed. That same USS Arizona National Monument and the guided tours that were given there less than a few hundred yards from our target were going to provide our recon.
The tour was conducted from a ferryboat run by the Park Service. The USS Arizona had been declared a national cemetery after the Pearl Harbor attack. In her rusting steel hull were the bodies of hundreds of U.S. sailors, which had never been recovered during the war. We conducted our recon of Ford Island, but we also made note of just where we were.
The USS Arizona memorial is a moving one to most of its visitors, even more so to a member of the Navy. You couldn’t help but think of those thousand sailors entombed in the steel hulk below. One of the guys got pretty emotional during the visit. Being a SEAL and a member of Red Cell, he was not particularly soft-spoken or used to keeping his feelings to himself. Basically, he growled at all the Japanese tourists who were visiting the memorial along with us. We quickly left before anything could happen, with our snarling Teammate firmly in tow.
In spite of the distractions, the recon showed us what we wanted to know, and the kayak insertion looked like a good one. That night Doc Holliday and I got into the kayak and moved out toward Ford Island. There were Navy patrol boats in the harbor running searches, but we were never detected. When we passed over the USS Arizona, though, things turned a little weird.
It was a warm, humid night, like so many on Oahu. But over the hulk of the sunken battleship, it felt as if the temperature dropped to just above freezing. It seemed like a lot more than just cold chills running down your back; more like a wind chill factor that passed right through you. It was not just water and steel that we were passing over. The battleship Arizona was a piece of history, and it seemed that she didn’t like being disturbed.
After passing the memorial, we were easily able to get ashore, pull up, and camouflage the kayak. Our primary target area was on the other side of Ford Island, so we had to trot across the width of the island, crossing a golf course and another open area. Security vehicles came into sight, but we concealed ourselves in the grass until they had passed, and then continued on.
One of our targets was a warehouse where we did a quick in-and-out, leaving an IED in our wake. Penetrating one of the administration buildings, we placed several IEDs and returned to the kayak. There hadn’t been many personnel on the island when we hit it, more of a skeleton crew than a full alert staff, and the operation went without a hitch.
For a hostage rescue scenario, we took over a barracks, which was on the main base, close to a gate and the main civilian highway beyond. We simply climbed over the fence at the gate to gain access to the base and our planned target. Securing the building, we gathered up anyone inside and made them our hostages for the duration of the exercise.
The security force of the base had incorporated the SWAT team from Honolulu into their overall plan of reaction. The SWAT cops were also staged on base for our exercises. We received word that they were setting up to do a dynamic entry on the barracks.
To set up our escape, we called Sluggo and told him to meet us at the back gate by the highway at a preset time. Once he was at the gate, we would abandon the barracks, climb over the gate, and get the hell out of there.
The word came in that the SWAT forces were on their way, and we quickly left the barracks, slipping out the back windows and running for the fence. Once we had cleared the fence and were off the military base, we figured we were good. We were in a civilian area, and Sluggo was on his way to get us. The only problem was, no Sluggo.
Walking down the road a little, we kept our eyes open for our missing transportation. Duke, Doc Holliday, Bullet, myself, and a couple of other guys were in our little mob. After about half a mile, we just sat on the guardrail, waiting for our next action. The next move wasn’t made by us. It showed up in the form of blue flashing lights on top of a bunch of SWAT police cars.
The police stopped all the civilian traffic with their three police cars set sideways across the road. A bunch of the biggest law enforcement guys I have ever seen got out of the cars and stood there behind them. Funny thing was, all these cops were wearing mouth guards, like they were getting ready for a full-contact football game. Which may have been what they had on their minds, only we were the visiting team.
They shouted, “Freeze! Nobody move!” We shouted back, “Exercise!” Neither one of our groups had much impact on the other. Ronnie had one of our red-taped pistols, and he pulled it out, shouting “Bang! Bang!”
That wasn’t quite as bad as his follow-up yell of “Hey, I got you.”
Our exercise was quickly deteriorating to a game of cops and robbers. Only in our case they were real cops and had real guns, though they hadn’t pulled them yet. And we thought it would be nice to regain control of the situation before they did.
“Hey, Ronnie,” we said, “relax man, just relax.” The cops looked like they meant business and weren’t in the mood for any lighthearted games. So, of course, that was when Sluggo finally showed up with our getaway vehicle.
Slewing the car sideways and stopping right in the center of our little standoff, Sluggo leaned out with his red-sealed weapon, also shouting “Bang, bang, bang, bang! You’re all dead!”
This was starting to get a bit silly. Duke shouted out to Sluggo, “Sluggo, get the fuck out of here. You’re late! We’ll talk later.”
The cops took us back to their headquarters on base and the exercise ended there. They were a really good bunch of guys, and I was glad we hadn’t had to meet up with them on a serious occasion. In person, they were very professional, as well as being some of the biggest cops I’ve ever met.
For the most part, the exercises at Pearl Harbor went well. One of the senior commanders gave the Skipper a bit of an argument during the debriefing. The senior officer insisted that a kayak attack by Red Cell had been thwarted by one of the security people under his command.
Apparently a female security officer claimed to have taken out one of our boats with a Stinger missile launcher she had available at her station. The Stinger is a shoulder-fired heat-seeking antiaircraft missile, not the most proper weapon to fire at a small unpowered boat floating on the water. Our cameraman had been filming the incident and spoke to the security officer after the exercise.
Red Cell insisted that our exercise had gone forward legitimately. What the Skipper finally used to seal his argument with the senior officer was a bit of the videotape where the female said she didn’t even know how to fire or operate the Stinger, just how to pick it up and which end to point at a target. She hadn’t known how to work the weapon she “saved” her ship with.
CHAPTER 29
ANOTHER MOVE, ANOTHER COMMANDER, AND THE END OF AN IDEA
Around the time Dick started Red Cell, investigations were just beginning to get under way back at SEAL Team Six. The investigations involved the starting up of the unit and how materials had been obtained and suppliers decided on—all things that were well above my position in the unit. I didn’t know what was going on, if anything. Most of what was being investigated didn’t involve my specific work, and there was enough of that to keep me busy.
Dick’s style of leadership centered on trusting the men under him. And he may have trusted people more than he should have. But in the Navy, the commanding officer of a unit or a ship is given a great deal of responsibility and power. That responsibility wasn’t something Dick had ever ignored before and he wasn’t going to start now.
When the investigation was building up, Dick had to leave Red Cell. He wasn’t relieved of command. It was just that he had to go up to the Washington Navy Yard to be available to the Naval Investigative Service based there.
While all this was going on, Duke, who had been second in command at the unit, took over running Red Cell in Dick’s absence. We didn’t see any problem with Duke running things. Things had to b
e kept going, and that’s why Duke took over. We still had missions to complete. Taskings were sent in from various commands for us to test different facilities. Red Cell still had a mission to perform, and we got on with what we had to do.
Admiral Lemoyne had taken over the position that had been held by Admiral Lyons earlier. Now we had an overall commander who wanted things run tighter, especially while the investigation was going on. At Admiral Lemoyne’s direction, all Red Cell operations were suspended for six months pending the results of Dick’s investigation. We couldn’t stay at home, and we couldn’t operate in the field. What we did do was go in every day to the warehouse at Dulles and work out to keep up our general training and fitness levels. There was little else we could do.
When the investigation reached the point that a trial was going to be conducted and Dick had to defend himself legally, he had to relinquish command of Red Cell. This wasn’t something any of us could do anything about directly. It was a loss for us, but the best thing we could do for Dick was move forward with the unit he had created and do the very best job we could. All of us at Red Cell had been questioned about how things had been done years before at Six, but most of what they were looking for was so far above our positions that we couldn’t tell them anything.
The only good that came out of the end of the investigation for us was that we finally went operational again. Now under Duke’s leadership, we conducted exercises again.
Command now made the decision that we should be closer to a military installation for our support and training rather than in a converted warehouse at Dulles. Following our directives, Red Cell moved its base of operations to the Indian Head Naval Ordnance Facility in Maryland, on the Potomac River south of Washington. Another warehouse, this one just outside the base, became our new home base.
Kitty and I were living in Herndon at that time and Ho Ho was living nearby. Just about every day Ho Ho and I would drive some fifty miles to Indian Head. Pooster had moved to another place when Kitty and I moved to Herndon. So the penthouse was closed, and he commuted from the D.C. area down to Indian Head every day on his own. On rare occasions during the week I would spend the night at the warehouse, but I wanted to spend time with my family, so I made the drive.
Duke had been running things fine after Dick left, but when we arrived at Indian Head we had a change of command to go along with our new location. Captain Rick Woolard took over running Red Cell. He had been a Teammate of Dick Marcinko’s in Vietnam and had also been the CO of SEAL Team Two from June 1982 to June 1984.
In spite of any feelings we may have had as individuals about what had happened to Dick, nothing had changed for the unit. We still had our mission statement and tasking at hand. The feelings toward Rick Woolard were no different than they would have been toward any other new CO stepping aboard a Navy command. He was new to me and a number of others, but some of the guys in the unit had served under him before.
The new captain had a reputation as an operator and knew how to get together with his men, SEAL style. After the change of command, we had a get-together at the local VFW hall. The “meeting” went on into the wee hours of the morning. Unit business wasn’t the topic of the night; it was more the wetting down of a new commander and a chance for us to get to know him as an individual.
To save time the next morning, we slept right there in the hall. The next day we were introduced to Mrs. Woolard when the new commander’s lovely wife came down to the hall. Something about looking for her car, which Rick had taken the night before.
His wife may not have been too happy with the immediate situation, but then she had probably seen her husband being broken in to a new command more than once. Our socialization techniques tended to follow the old Team school of thought, in which a proper wetting down was considered necessary.
We spent a lot of the time immediately after Captain Woolard’s arrival getting our Indian Head compound squared away and ready for operations. Red Cell was more than two years old, and officer and personnel rotations were coming up. A bunch of new meat came in and we started breaking them in to what we had been doing.
Most of the original crew at Red Cell started rotating back to the Teams. Some of the guys went with Duke over to SEAL Team Four Commissioned in 1983; others went back to Six. By late summer 1987, Bullet, Sundance, and I were the last of the old crew left at Red Cell. I was the ordnance chief at the time, so my turnover to a new man took the longest. When it came time for me finally to leave Red Cell, I decided to take up the offer Bob Gormly had made to me earlier and went back to SEAL Team Six.
Red Cell continued on for a number of years but never returned to its original charter and method of operating. Gradually the rules of engagement became more and more restrictive. Soon the unit came to be just an advisory one. Red Cell would go to a Navy base, observe their methods of operation and their procedures, and comment on where they could be improved. The unit was finally dissolved in the early 1990s.
CHAPTER 30
RETURN, OPERATE, AND FINALLY LEAVE
I returned to SEAL Team Six from Red Cell to find a few changes in the Team. We had become larger, with an additional technical group to aid the other groups in operating their small boats. Training continued to be hard and long, but with the larger Team came a little more time for a home life. Active missions were still relatively few and far between, but there was enough happening to keep your blood circulating.
MISSION: Search of [Classified]
LOCATION: [Classified]
DATE:[Classifed]
During one of our hot missions, we were operating as a quick reaction force, almost a SWAT team really, with a breacher team assigned to us for dynamic entries. With the breachers opening the door, the rest of the squad would be able to concentrate on getting in and conducting the mission, and we would be at full strength right from the get-go.
We were operating in a semipermissive environment on this op. Most of the population was glad we were there, but we still had to stay alert for unfriendlies who could pop up from almost anywhere. That forced us to keep our wits about us constantly, with no time for any kind of break.
We had been given an intel dump on a building we were going to search for intel and other possible targets. No pictures of the place were available to us and we were working under a fast timetable, so we pored over what information we had, to fix the place firmly in our minds.
We decided to break the platoon into two units and do a simultaneous entry. My unit would come in from the top, working our way down from the roof of the large house, while the second unit went in through the front door and came up from the bottom.
We would get to the roof from a Blackhawk helicopter, fast-roping down as the other unit went into position at the front. The house looked out on a beach, so there was plenty of room for the other unit to fast-rope down from their bird. My unit was in the second bird.
The first helicopter pulled up at the front of the house and blasted sand across the front of the building as the first unit exited. When they went in, we came in fast and low, kicking the rope out and sliding down as the helicopter did a fast flare and stopped right above the flat roof. Over twenty-five armed men had been dropped from the hovering helicopters in seconds.
As we fast-roped down, the semipermissive aspect of our environment became obvious as a figure some distance away started taking potshots at us. It didn’t seem to be a dedicated sniper; more like a farmer in a field some two to three hundred meters away. The crack, crack of the bullets snapping by was familiar enough to me. The weapon sounded like an AK-47, something that had been pointed my way before.
We quickly scrambled to the balcony and lined up for the breach. As we huddled against the wall of the building, one of the guys called out, “Hey, what’s that?”
“Hey, we’re being shot at,” he was told. It was certainly a lot different from my first combat insertion back on Grenada. Then everything concerned us, and eyeballs grew wide as the bullets went by. Now we just
kind of chuckled. Someone was shooting at us, but we weren’t the new guys in combat anymore.
Then something very new happened to me, something I hadn’t experienced before in a combat situation. We had planned to go in a side window of the house, a more unexpected point of entry than a door. But when we came up to our planned entry point, it was heavily barred. A sliding glass door was farther down the balcony, and that looked like the next best point to go through.
As we moved into our new position, I saw an armed guard running in the yard below us with what looked like a guard dog. We couldn’t let this guy get away and possibly bring in reinforcements. So I snapped up my M4 carbine, lining up the sights as the buttstock hit my shoulder. Sighting in on the man, I squeezed back on the trigger, and . . . click.
Click? What’s this click shit? The guard had run out of my line of sight as I yanked back on the charging handle to my M4. As the round popped from the chamber, I caught it in the air and slipped it into my pocket. The immediate action of clearing and reloading my weapon had been almost instinctive and the matter of a second or two at most. But I had never had my weapon fail to fire on me while in combat. That Murphy character who messes things up according to his own rules is a real bastard.
Now the breacher team was in position prepping the front door for entry, and they ran into another aspect of the building’s security. The double oak door had a heavy iron security gate reinforcing it. That made the entrance a lot stronger than our sketchy intelligence reports had led us to believe. They told us about their situation over the radio as they prepared to go through the front door anyway.
One Perfect Op Page 25
