I strapped my NV on and slid through the door into the warehouse, Beretta in my right hand. In my earpiece came the sound of heavy automatic weapons fire, followed by Cheeks’ raspy voice, “Well, get the mothers, already!”
The front and back doors had been blown open, and smoke grenades were filling the warehouse with opaque, white fog. I could hear my guys working the room and the staccato buzzsaw brrrrrp of return fire from M16s.
It was easy to tell who was who. The SEALs fired their MP5s in controlled, three-shot bursts. The bad guys were letting whole mags go at once.
I crawled to the pallet and reached left-handed into my vest for an atomic detection device. There was movement behind me, and it wasn’t one of us. I swiveled and fired at a shadow in the smoke, then rolled back toward the pallet.
The indicator told me whatever was in the crate was nuclear.
I heard PV’s voice in my ear. “Hostage clear. Alive and well.”
“Okay. Cheeks?”
“Call you back.”
“Jew?”
“A-okay.”
From my left I heard the Alpha squad leader. Fingers, shouting, “Alpha side clear.”
There was another long M16 burst from the far side of the warehouse, then six shots in rapid succession from a Beretta, then silence. Gold Dust Larry, Bravo’s squad leader, called out, “Bravo side clear.”
I pulled off the night-vision goggles and stowed them.
“Anybody down?”
“Not us, boss,”
“PV?”
“Nope.”
“Cheeks?”
“No.”
“Jew?”
“Ain’t seen no action yet. Skipper.”
“You won’t be disappointed.” I looked at the timer. Seven minutes, ten seconds.
I pulled SATCOM from my vest. “Six—all sites clear. Hostage and package under control. Nobody down but bad guys.”
That was because we were all firing blanks—but even so, it was damned good work by my guys. I stood up and secured my Beretta, windmilling my arms in the opaque, white smoke that still obscured much of the warehouse. “Anybody see a fan to get this smoke outta here? Let’s get on it.” I slapped the wood crate and called over to Gold Dust Larry, “Somebody get the three-quarter started. Let’s get this goddamn thing loaded and moving.”
“Aye-aye, Skipper.”
“PV—”
“Boss?”
“ETA to the LZ?”
“The hostage is pretty shaky. We’re gonna have to carry him out. Tangos were working him over when we arrived—nothing serious, just harassment, but he’s not used to it. I’ll be ready to up and out in six, seven minutes.”
“Ten-four. Cheeks?”
“I’m getting some hostile action here. I’ll withdraw clean in four to five minutes. We got a shitload of intel, Skipper.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” I heard a satisfying roar as Gold Dust Larry revved the truck’s engine. “Gotta go. See you at the LZ.”
The smoke was finally clearing out of the warehouse. “Somebody find a couple of two-by-fours or pieces of pipe. Let’s get this thing moved.”
I checked the Casio again. Elapsed time: sixty-three minutes. Twenty-seven minutes until the choppers touched down.
God, how time flies when you’re having fun.
We slid three rails under the crate. Four men to a rail, and two to stand guard. I showed them the atomic particle counter. They watched as the indicator moved into the red zone. “This shit is radioactive, so any numb-nuts dumb enough to drop it is gonna suffer. On three, heave and up.”
It was like the weightpile, but easier. The average Six bench press was just under four hundred pounds. It wasn’t going to take twelve of us to lift a 2,500-pound container, but I wanted everyone to have a piece of the action.
I watched them load while I checked the recon photo in my pocket. I’d marked an escape route with crayon. That was a stupid thing to do. What if I ate a bullet and the bad guys pulled the map out of my pocket? I rubbed the photo on my fatigues until I’d obliterated the red line. I knew where the hell we were going.
Gold Dust Larry rolled the balaclava hood down onto his neck, revealing a crooked, gritty smile on his mustached face as he held the truck on course. I hung off the passenger-side running board and navigated. As we came to the gate, I saw Horseface, who’d just cut the locks. As he waved us through, I heard firing from the barracks area. “Just keep moving.”
It took us a little over ten minutes to make the LZ where we’d touched down. We parked the truck at the side of the old runway, set up a perimeter, and waited. About five minutes later PV’s platoon arrived, he and one of the petty officers supporting a thin, gray-haired man well past middle age, in a filthy white shirt and stained gray trousers, and a pair of heavy-framed eyeglasses worn with an elastic band to keep them on his head. I went over to him and shook his hand.
“You all right, sir?”
He nodded. “A bit shaky, Commander.”
The accent was pure Deutschland. I wondered where they’d found him. It didn’t matter. I role-played as if I didn’t know we were all following a script. “German?”
“Yes. Thank you for coming for me.”
I did an exaggerated Three Musketeers bow. “Commander Otto Von Piffle at your service,” I said in a passable Otto Preminger accent. “It vass mein pleasure to koming to der rescue because zay heff vays of making you talk, you know.”
The hostage’s eyes went wide.
PV spoke a burst of rapid-fire German. He’d learned the language during a 26-month stint with the Kampfschwimmerkompanie—the combat swimmers who were the West German equivalent of SEALs. The hostage laughed.
“What’d you tell him?”
“I told him, ’What the commander meant to say is that he’s glad you’re okay.’ Then I added that you’re not as stupid or ugly as you might appear at first sight.”
PV’s two squads reinforced the perimeter. The watch said nine minutes until the choppers arrived. Cheeks and his two squads showed up moving at a trot. Four or five of the SEALs carried boxes on their shoulders.
“Intel goodies,” Cheeks said. “All sorts of stuff—plans, maps, receipts. And diagrams—bases in Puerto Rico and on the mainland, too. The DIA dip-dunks’ll have a field day with it all.”
I threw an exaggerated salute at Cheeks. “I do love it so when you make the dip-dunks happy, Lieutenant. It keeps ’em off my back.”
Cheeks returned the gesture. “You’re welcome, sweet cakes.”
Automatic weapons fire from the rear. “Let’s be careful out there,” I shouted. “No time to start losing people now.” I’d been about to light the flares to guide the choppers in, but it didn’t make sense to tell whoever was shooting at us precisely where we were.
I saw Jew emerge from the scrub at the far end of the clearing. I waved him over.
“Jew, what’s up?”
“They must have had more people than we knew about—or some of those guys we shot just got up and walked away. We’re taking fire.”
The kid was good. He was right about the tangos just walking away—except he just didn’t know it. I gave him a concerned look. “Anybody hurt?”
Jew nodded. “Two—nothing serious. One sprained ankle on the path, one ran into a thorn bush in the dark.”
“Just keep the tangos out of our hair until the choppers get here.”
“Aye-aye, Skipper.” Jew melted back into the jungle.
It was time to illuminate the LZ. We set out six white strobes and three red ones. To guide the choppers in on final approach we had neon-green light-sticks.
The firing got closer. I looked skyward anxiously. The goddamn Air Force was probably taking a coffee break. That’s how they worked—like union bus-drivers—most of the time. Six or seven hours of flight time (not to exceed this or that altitude, of course), and then it was bye-bye for a didy change, a nap, and a cup of cocoa.
We could run for a week with no sle
ep, then do a 35,000foot-jump hop-and-pop exercise, pick ourselves up, and do it all over again. Not fly-boys. I checked my watch. They were now late.
I called JSOC. “Where the hell are our choppers?”
“They’re on the way. Relax.”
“Relax?” Who the hell were these idiots, anyway? I put the German under the truck and hunkered down with PV. It seemed like an eternity until we heard the sound of rotors. They’d kept us waiting eighteen minutes. On a hot LZ, you can lose your entire force in eighteen minutes.
The quartet of choppers, their long refueling nozzles projecting from the noses of the aircraft like knights’ lances, circled the LZ lazily to pick the spots where they’d set down. Unbelievably, they were doing an admin—administrative—approach. That is, they were landing as if they were coming into a runway at an Air Force base. To them, this was only an exercise—so why the hell should they put themselves out? Assholes—I’d kill the sons of bitches after we got out of here.
I shook my light-stick at them to drop quickly. This was supposed to be a hot LZ. They were supposed to fly as if there were ground fire. Their job was to come in, drop their ramps, scoop us up, and get the hell out. I waved my arms like a madman. The pilots were oblivious. They settled in as if they were landing on the White House lawn—and started to cut their engines.
“No no no no no. Keep ’em revved up. Move it,” I screamed, windmilling my light-stick. I pointed PV toward the nearest chopper, which was dropping its aft ramp. “Get the hostage on board.” I watched while PV and his crew hustled the German up the ramp. That was fourteen plus one. I ran the light-stick in a circle at the pilot. “Get the hell outta here.”
He gave me a thumbs-up. The six rotors started up again, the jet turbines reached full thrust, and he lifted off. Three to go. Cheeks was loading the intel in one bird while my platoon ran the nuke into the second. As soon as they’d strapped it down, I tossed Alpha squad aboard and waved the chopper into the air. That was two. Twenty-one SEALs airborne.
I stuck my head into the third chopper’s forward hatch and screamed at the pilot. “Rev it up—I’ll tell you when to go.” I ran to Cheeks’ position on the perimeter and pointed toward the chopper. “Get the strobes and the chutes and take my Bravo squad, then get the hell out of here. I’ll ride with Jew. ”
“Affirmative.” He got his guys working. One group collected the lights and heaved them onto the chopper while the other retrieved our chutes from the underbrush where we’d concealed them and threw the piles of silk up the ramp, past Cheeks, who stood at the top, his HK pointing skyward, waving men on, counting. “Let’s get moving.”
When I saw they were all loaded and aboard, I pointed at the pilot. “Go!”
Another twenty SEALs gone. That left Jew’s fourteen—and me.
I shouted for Jew into the Motorola mike. No answer. “Jew, goddammit—” I realized I’d pulled the plug out of its socket. I fixed it and shouted his name again.
“Coming, Dickie.”
I waited as Jew’s platoon emerged from the darkness, running in leapfrog pattern, their route punctuated by short bursts from the MP5s. I grabbed a couple of them by the vests and threw them toward the chopper. Jew and I were last on board. As the ramp shut, we gave the LZ a good burst of submachinegun fire. “Move it!” I shouted to the crew chief.
Then we were airborne. Mission perfect. Rehearsal or not, I was one happy goddamn SEAL CO. I checked my watch. I slammed my palm into Jew’s chest, knocking him ass over teakettle into a startled Air Force master sergeant. I perused my SEALs. “You guys are wonderful.”
I could see the C-141 StarLifter’s huge, black fuselage as we banked into the air base on the main island. I hoped the flight crew had some cold beer on board—we were going to need it. The first of the choppers was already on the ground, disgorging SEALs and the hostage. The second and third were just settling in. I felt so good I forgot about putting the chopper pilots in the hospital for their 18-minute delay and admin approaches back at Vieques.
We set down. I was first off, hitting the ground before the ramp did. I ran to the StarLifter. Yeah—there was beer on board. Terrific—we were going to party on the way home. I loped over to PV and Cheeks and slapped them on the back. I assembled my troops. “Great job. Terrific. Fuck you all very much, you merry murdering cockbreath shit-for-brains assholes.”
Oh, I was full of myself. But justifiably, goddammit. Justifiably. Exercise or not—what we’d done tonight had never, ever, been done before by a military unit. We’d flown three thousand goddamn miles, inserted four SEAL platoons in a clandestine, high-altitude, high-opening, mass, night jump, parasailed ten miles to our objective, landed in a single group on a drop zone no bigger than a couple of football fields, assembled, taken down a bunch of bad guys, rescued a hostage, snatched back a nuke, and hadn’t lost a single SEAL in the process.
This is what we’d groomed ourselves for; why we’d busted our asses. We’d practiced each risky element—shooting, jumping, parasailing, clandestine infiltration, hostage snatch, and extraction—separately. But we’d never put all of them together before; never run a real-time, full-tilt boogie war game until tonight.
The German came toward me. “You and your men did very well,” he said.
“Thank you. I’m proud of them.”
“You should be.”
I started to say something else when a Beetle Bailey Army colonel in starched fatigues and half-inch-thick glasses marched across the tarmac. “Commander Marcinko?”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
“I have a message for you to call Joint Special Operations Command.”
“Sure.” I took the SATCOM from my vest and punched up JSOC.
“It’s Marcinko.” I waited. A familiar voice came on the line.
“Dick.”
“Sir—”
“You did wonderfully—better than we expected. The Joint Chiefs are impressed.”
I liked that. There had been some real skepticism at the Joint Chiefs about whether or not we’d been ready for a mission. Unlike Delta, which was based on the British SAS and went through an SAS-like administrative certification process, I had refused to let my men be graded by outsiders.
My argument was simple: what we were training to do hadn’t ever been done before. So how the hell would some four-star, pencil-dicked Pentagon paper-pusher know whether or not we were good at it?
My conclusion was, they wouldn’t. What I’d told the chain of command in no uncertain terms was, “Thank you very much, sirs, but I’ll certify SEAL Team Six myself.”
But it wasn’t to be. The command structure can—and had—imposed its will on us, no matter how I felt. The Vieques exercise was ample evidence of that. The voice in my ear continued, “Dick, this has been a first-rate exercise. I think you and your troops need a couple of days off while we analyze and evaluate.”
Analyze and evaluate. Those bureaucratic syllables made me cringe. Ever since Vietnam, even the military’s vocabulary had shifted from martial to managerial in tone. Goddammit—we didn’t need managers, we needed leaders, warriors, hunters. Instead, we got accountants. It seemed that every time I’d get prowling and growling some three-star asshole would slip a choke-leash around my neck and give it a yank to show he could make me heel. Well, it was time to growl back. Throw a shit fit. Chew the carpet. Play crazy. I owed it to my men. Shit—I owed it to myself. I raised my voice to let them hear as I shouted into the mouthpiece. “Exercise? Analyze? Evaluate? What the fuck, General? Over.”
He played his role well, too. “I couldn’t say anything until now, Dick. It was imposed by the Joint Chiefs on me.” He paused. “And you did great. Six is certified. You’re in business—as of right now.”
“Well, thank you for that valuable information, sir. I’m sure my men will appreciate your opinion.” I wondered whether he caught the irony in my voice. Surreptitiously, I flicked the transmit button on the SATCOM to off and covered it with my hand. Then I continued my “conversation.”
PV, Cheeks, and Jew drifted closer as my voice grew louder and more disturbed. “You did what? You switched ammunition on us in the armory?”
I shouted into the dead SATCOM, “Sir, this was a goatfuck. Goddammit—you can’t hang up on—”
The Beetle Bailey colonel was peering into the fuselage of my C-141. He turned toward me. “Commander, you have beer in there—that’s against regulations.”
I started toward him. “Hey, Colonel—how’d you like a new asshole?”
PV tackled me and grabbed my combat vest with both hands, slowing me down like a sea anchor. He’s five inches shorter than I am, but he was a boxer at the Academy and he’s a tough little scrapper. “Lighten up, Dick.” He turned to the colonel. “I think it’s better if you leave us alone right now, sir. We’re all just a little worked up, and it could be, ah, dangerous for you to stay around.”
Paul’s heels were dragging on the tarmac. The colonel saw the look of mayhem in my eyes as I pulled my XO toward him, and he beat a hasty retreat.
Paul let go. “He’s not worth it, Dick.”
“Screw you.”
Cheeks and Jew slammed me on the back. “Hey, Skipper,” Jew said, “about the Joint Chiefs and all that crap—chill out. It’s okay. We knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That it was a full mission profile,” said PV.
“Had to be an exercise,” said Cheeks. “No casualties. Lots of firing and no scratches. Plus—the tangos wore shooting glasses—every one of them.”
I was smiling inside. I’d picked these men because I believed they were smart. Goddammit, they were smart. “So why didn’t any of you numb-nuts say anything?”
“I remembered the sign every SEAL sees the day he begins his training,” PV said. “The one that reads, ’The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat.’ Besides, we’d never put it all together before, boss—seemed like a good idea to play it out and see if it worked.”
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