ROGUE WARRIOR®

by Richard Marcinko

  “What is that?”

  “It’s a radio transmitter that broadcasts the frequencies commonly used to detonate car bombs. It has a range of about one thousand feet. We suggest that you set a pair of these on the roof. That way, any radio-controlled car bombs in the vicinity will detonate before they get close enough to do any damage to the embassy.”

  He looked at me incredulously. “You mean, we’d destroy the car bomb before it got to the embassy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But that would cause casualties.”

  “Well, yes, sir, but—”

  “That is unacceptable,” he said.

  “What is?”

  “Causing casualties. We can’t cause casualties. Indiscriminate casualties would be bad for our diplomatic image.”

  “Pardon my French, but screw your diplomatic image. We’re talking about keeping you and your people alive, sir.”

  “Not like that.” The senior official looked at the black box distastefully. “Such things aren’t … correct. That’s not a proper way to do business, Commander. Such devices would be unfair to the Lebanese population, and I refuse to have anything to do with them.”

  He stood up. “Now, if you’ll excuse me. Thank you for coming, Commander. I hope you and your men have a safe journey home.”

  Well, bugger him and screw all diplomats. That same day we packed our toys, drove through the Marine lines, flashed Navy IDs, ferried out to the USSIndependence, and were COD’d to Sigonella, then back to Norfolk.

  The senior American official wasn’t one of the sixty-three people killed when, on April 18, about ninety days after we left Beirut, a suicide bomber driving a truck laden with explosives turned his seven-story diplomatic fantasyland into rubble. He escaped with hardly a scratch, which says something about the luck schmucks sometimes enjoy. Car bombs have backup radio detonators just in case the suicide drivers get cold feet at the moment of truth. Had our black boxes been on his roof, the bomb would, in all likelihood, have been detonated before it was driven through the pair of flimsy barricades and right up to the embassy’s front door.

  But as he said when we briefed him, our black boxes might have caused Lebanese civilian casualties. And God forbid that Lebanese die when Americans can die instead.

  Chapter 21

  I TURNED OVER COMMAND OF SEAL TEAM SIX TO CAPTAIN Bob Gortnly on July 5, 1983. It was not my idea to leave, but I’d had a three-year stint (most commands run two years), and I began to sense through a series of subtle hints that the Navy wanted me elsewhere.

  How subtle were those hints? One example. Letter ratings on fitreps are similar to school grades. A is the best, F is failing. Ted Lyon regularly gave me B’s and C’s. He shiwed me with comments like, “While still under my administrative control, Cdr Marcinko is under the operational control of the Commander, Joint Operations Command and it is the latter who can best say if the achievements of Seal Six are worth retaining a commanding officer who flaunts authority and impacts negatively (outside his command) on good order and discipline.”

  Vice Admiral J. D. Johnson, the man who ran SURFLANT (SURface Force AtLANTic), had regularly taken Ted’s side, until Dick Scholtes came for our uniform inspection. After Scholtes’s visit, Dave Johnson’s attitude changed. He became supportive and helpful—and for every nasty fitrep Ted wrote me, Admiral Johnson filed a dissenting report. “SEAL TEAMSIX is a highly classified command with direct White Housel JCS interest” Johnson’s response said. “There is no other organization exactly like it. Thus its structure, procedures and training had to be conceived without benefit of role model. … He has had to overcome the inevitable inertia of a ‘system’ geared to less urgent requirements. He has often had to go outside the system to meet the stringent time requirements of SEAL TEAM SIX development. Inevitably, he has raised eyebrows. I know of no way he could have avoided this. Doers and talkers often disagree…. It is unfortunate that the highly classified nature of this project, coupled with a confusing chain of command, should have caused Commander Marcinko to be evaluated less than enthusiastically by his immediate superior.”

  But all of Vice Admiral Johnson’s praise couldn’t help in the long run. The SEAL establishment wanted me gone. So, on my final fitness report as CO of Six, I received H’s and I’s—grades so low they were off the scale. You get an H if the chief of naval operations catches you making the beast with two backs in his bed, with his wife, on their anniversary. You get an I for deflowering the CNO’s 14-year-old daughter on a pool table in the local saloon to the cheers of an appreciative crowd of horny SEALs.

  I got my H’s and I’s because, by 1983, I’d done more than ride roughshod over Ted Lyon. What I’d done with Ted, I’d repeated with the NAVSPECWARGRU ONE commodores in Coronado, Dave Schaible, and his successor, Cathal “Irish” Flynn. By 1983, I’d pissed off, threatened, alienated, provoked, offended, and screwed with the SpecWar commodores on both coasts. So far as I was concerned, I’d acted justifiably—I’d had a mission to fulfill. In their view, I’d gone past the point of no return. I took their best men. While they scrambled for pennies, I—in their eyes—lighted cigars with hundred-dollar bills. I got all the nicest toys. Worst of all, I played havoc with their system. I treated my lowest-ranking seaman with more respect than I did most SpecWar captains and commodores. I ate and drank with my enlisted men and chiefs; I threw loud parties; I said “fuck” to flag-rank officers.

  There were phone calls and memos and meetings. A decision was reached—and in June 1983, I was advised I was about to be replaced, and told who my replacement would be. I had always hoped Paul Henley would follow in my footsteps. It was not to be. Less than four weeks later, I was gone. I had no say in the matter. My departure had been decided by the Navy’s chain of command, at the instigation of the SpecWar commodores and their chiefs of staff. I had no vote. Nor did I have any clout: my commander was an Army brigadier general. He could protect me while I was CO of Six. But he couldn’t stop the Navy from removing me. Doom on you, Demo.

  There were few of the usual celebrations that precede change of command, and none of the nostalgia, esprit de corps, and camaraderie. I received no plaques nor any of the other goodies usually given to departing COs because my troops didn’t know that I was going in time to have them made up.

  There was no red carpet, no chief boatswain’s mate piping me ashore, no ship’s bell, no white gloves, no swords, no spit and polish at my ceremony. I’d had the big parade ground and a Navy band serenading me when I left SEAL Team Two at Little Creek. This change of command was held behind closed doors at our top-secret facility at Dam Neck. I was in civilian clothes. I spoke for less than ten minutes, recapping some of the physical and bureaucratic hardships we at Six had been through together.

  Then Bob and I read our orders. I lied when I came to the part where I said I was ready to turn over my command. It didn’t matter. The words were said. The transfer of power was accomplished. It was over. I felt empty, alone, betrayed, enraged. All, I believed, with good cause: in many ways I’d spent most of my adult life preparing myself to command a unit like SEAL Team Six and lead it into action. I’d achieved a great portion of my dream—I’d conceived, designed, built, equipped, and trained what I believed to be the best group of warriors in the nation’s history. But now I was being pushed aside before I was able to accomplish the goal I had always considered the most fundamental—leading my men into battle. I felt decapitated.

  I took a handful of people to the Dam Neck O Club for a few cold drinks, and then—I was gone.

  Yes, I am often abrasive and obnoxious. But even my enemies will admit that SEAL Team Six was the best-trained, deadliest, and most capable counterterror unit ever formed. Yes, we broke the rules. Hell—we shattered the rules and tossed them out the window. But the rules we threw out were rules that had been written for carrier battle groups and nuclear submarines, not seven-man squads. As SEALs we’d had to write our own book of rules—an improvised Bible of unconventional warfare
doctrine. That had been hard enough in a system that has historically been harder to turn around than a battleship at full speed. The problem was compounded by SEAL Team Six, which not only rewrote the rules of the conventional Navy, but also revised the hell out of the SEAL book, too. SEAL Team Six didn’t fit anywhere within the Navy’s system. We were orphans, outcasts, pariahs—and I was the chief pariah.

  Once I’d been moved aside, things started to change at Six. Bob enforced a Ted Lyons-style dress code: no Fu Manchu mustaches; no ponytails; no earrings. Hair could touch the collar but not descend below it. The men I’d selected for their dirtbag looks now began to resemble yuppie scum.

  More crucial to the success of SEAL Team Six’s mission, however, was the change in leadership style that Bob established. He was a passive, not an active, CO. I had always led from the front. Bob led from behind. He stayed in his office and sent his men to the field. He did not train with them. He did not drink with them. He did not socialize with them. Under Bob Gormly, unit integrity did not extend to the CO.

  I heard about these unsettling developments, but from a distance. I had thirty days’ leave coming, and I wanted to take it all. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had thirty days’ leave. My wife was visiting her family in New Jersey, and I spent the month slapping a fresh coat of paint on our house. The exercise did me good—it helped work out some of the frustration I was feeling. Then, rested and tanned, I drove to Washington. The Navy still owed me a year at the National War College, and it was time to take them up on it.

  Except, I wasn’t going to be allowed to go to the National War College. No one told me I was about to be barred. As a matter of fact, if it hadn’t been for some chiefs who whispered what was about to happen, I would have appeared at Ft. McNair to register and suffered the ignominy of being told publicly that the Navy had removed my name from the list of attendees. But my SEAL Team Six intelligence network was still operational. So I was warned, and I never showed up. Instead, I went to the Military Personnel Command and confronted a rear admiral I’d known for some years. I’ll call him Dave. He didn’t look happy to see me.

  “I hear I’m not going to be allowed to go to the National War College.”

  Dave hemmed and he hawed and finally he spoke. “Well, Dick, policy is not to send people who don’t have a ninetyfive percent chance of promotion to captain.”

  “Does that include me?”

  “It appears that way. You have an Article 15—an official letter of reprimand—on your record.”

  “I’m appealing it. I was reprimanded for an auto accident in which I wasn’t even driving. My driver got into the fender bender, not me.”

  “The question of who’s at fault isn’t applicable. The letter says your driver had been on duty for more than eight hours—that’s working him too long.”

  “We didn’t punch clocks at Six, Dave.”

  “I know. But a rule is a rule. You broke it, and you got caught. Besides, that’s all water under the bridge. Bottom line is that your appeal hasn’t been honored. You won’t attend the War College.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I haven’t written my appeal yet. How the hell can they not honor something that hasn’t been written?”

  Dave smiled weakly. “Hey, Commander, it’s above my pay grade.”

  “So screw me, right?”

  He shrugged. “Listen, Dick, you have a super record. You punched good tickets. I can get you something great in Hawaii. Or Norfolk—snare you a staff job until 1988. Then you retire with thirty years on the job.”

  “Sounds real cushy.”

  “It’d be better—we’re talking country club. Norfolk would be perfect. It’s close to home for you. You can go in late and leave early—you’d be home sitting by your pool by fifteen hundred every day. Build a real estate portfolio. Get yourself set up for retirement.”

  “No offense, Dave, but fuck you. I’m not going home to die. Not yet.”

  “It’s up to you. But if you were smart, you’d take my advice.”

  “Shit, you’ve known me for fifteen years and I’ve never been very smart, Admiral—that’s my whole goddamn problem. I’m just one of those assholes who likes to work.”

  My old boss Ace Lyons had been transferred back to the Pentagon. For the past two years Ace, who had been promoted to vice admiral—three stars—had been commander of the Second Fleet, and his area of responsibility had run from the Caribbean to the North Sea. Now, he was given Bill Crowe’s job as deputy chief of naval operations for plans and policy. Ace Lyons was, in effect, the ops boss for the entire U.S. Navy.

  I went straight to his cabin and cried on his shoulder. He, sea daddy that he was, sat me down on his lap, patted my head, wiped my nose, and made sympathetic clucking sounds. Then he drop-kicked me in the ass and encouraged me to find some work to do.

  By the fall of 1983, Ace saw to it that I’d been tucked safely away in a crowded corner of the Pentagon’s Navy Command Center, a bustling, crowded series of rooms on the fourth floor D ring, where I worked as one of the sweat hogs who kept constant track of naval movements and tracked crises worldwide. One day in September, I glanced up to see a gaggle of intelligence squirrels come out of their SCIF and start poring over a series of nautical charts on the wall. A little red light went off in my head. Normally, these guys didn’t leave their desks unless they’d just won the Super Bowl pool, or some DefCon Four international disaster was imminent. Being September, it was too early for Super Bowl.

  I snuck around the room and bullied my way into the group. “Hey, guys! What country are we losing today?” My humor was not appreciated. But before I was shooed away, one of the squirrels screwed up, and I heard a word I wasn’t supposed to hear: “Grenada.”

  I tried my version of witty repartee. “Grenada? What’s going on there—carnival?”

  No response.

  “Come on, guys—if there’s the slightest chance of pussy, I wanna be included.”

  Silence.

  I departed with a polite “Up yours,” directed at their backs, and headed for my desk—and the secure telephone thereon. They should never have put me in the command center with a secure line and a computerized directory that had priority calling. It made stealing information too easy. Three hours, seven chiefs, and a bunch of junior officers later, I had a pretty good idea of what was about to happen. We were going to invade Grenada—and SEAL Team Six would be part of the operation.

  Shit! I’d relinquished my command less than ninety days before. I still considered Six my unit. Goddamn it—I had staffed it and equipped it. I’d trained the men. I’d honed them into the best shoot-and-looters in the world. And now, someone else would be taking them to war. That wasn’t fucking right. There was no justice in the world.

  Six minutes later I was in Ace’s cabin begging for the opportunity to deploy in some capacity, any capacity—to help, advise, observe, report—anything other than sit on my ass in a windowless room and listen to reports coming over the radio. “I did that before, Ace—during Desert One, and I swore I’d never be stuck like that again.”

  Vice Admiral James A. Lyons, Jr., put it to me as delicately as I deserved: “Fuck you, asshole. You stay put. Five minutes after you got out the goddamn door, you’d start believing you were in charge and there’d be hell to pay. Goddammit, Dick, you’re not in charge—you were relieved. You work here now—for me. So get your shit-for-brains ass back to the NCC where you belong.”

  Noting the humongous pout on my face, Ace lessened the blow. “Okay, okay—look, Dick, keep up to speed on this. I’ll assign you as my primary briefer to SECNAV on Grenada.”

  Brief, schmief. Tail between my legs, I went back to my corner and glowered. But I also kept on top of things. The more I discovered about Grenada, the more I cringed. Talk about your world-class goatfucks.

  How was it planned? Badly. As best I could reconstruct it—and as I briefed Secretary of the Navy John Lehman—here’s
what happened.

  Where is Grenada, anyway, Admiral?

  Damned if I know. Get a map, Captain, I heard the name once—maybe it’s in one of our Islands Op Plans.

  Yes, here it is in the atlas, sir, but damn—we don’t have any tactical maps, just nautical charts.

  Well, go downtown to a travel agency and find some damn tourist maps. They’ll have to do.

  And that’s what they fucking did.

  Here’s the intel package, Admiral CINCLANTICINCLANTFLT.

  Damn. What the hell are U.S. citizens doing going to medical school there? What the fuck are they learning, witchcraft? Voodoo? Hey—what the fuck are all those goddamn Cubans doing there? Why didn’t we know about them before? How did we miss that? What a way to fuck up my weekend! Goddammit, Captain, my wife and I were entered in the doubles golf tournament, and that ain’t gonna happen. I’m in deep shit at home.

  Well, sir, there’s another itsy-bitsy wrinkle, just developed, too. Seems we believe these here Cubans are holding those there students as hostages on that there island.

  Well, who the hell does hostages, Captain?

  JSOCdoes, sir. Delta Force. SEAL Team Six.

  Well, get on the fucking phone and call them. Oh—and Captain, call the Marines. They do islands, too. Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Okinawa—you remember. As I recall, we’ve got that Marine Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) just about to head across the pond to Beirut. I got a great idea. Let’s steam ’em down to Grenada and give ’em some action on the way. Get mud on their boots. Let ’em piss in the bushes. Then they’ll be ready for those ragheads in the Med.

  In one glorious, frenzied weekend, a plan was dusted off, shined up, squeegeed, and modified to include JSOC, and—voil¦—an engagement was born!

  But on every C-141 StarLifter flying Army Rangers south, on each EC-130 C3 I command and control aircraft, on every LSD and LST of the Marine ARG, on every U.S. military plane, chopper, or ship, a malevolent stowaway had managed to creep on board unnoticed. His name was Murphy, and his word was law.