Chapter 22
IN CIVILIAN LIFE, LABOR DAY SIGNALS THE END OF SUMMER vacation, the time when, even though the seasons haven’t actually changed yet, there’s this ineffable feeling of permutation—a visceral sense that something is about to happen. That’s the way it was for Red Cell on Labor Day weekend of 1985. We’d had a good spring and a great summer, shaking up commands and embarrassing COs all over the country.
Best of all, I felt as close to the men in the Cell as I had to my first command in Vietnam, Bravo Squad, Second Platoon. Except that instead of Patches Watson, Eagle Gallagher, Ron Rodger, Jim Finley, and Joe Camp—who were as crazy a bunch of shoot-and-looters as I’d ever known—I now had fourteen guys who could shoot and loot with the best of ’em—and fly their own planes and choppers, andHAHO jump from seven miles up, and come equipped with a selection of goodies we hadn’t even dreamed of in Vietnam, and screw around with admirals in ways heretofore unknown in naval history.
But change was definitely in the air. Ace Lyons had just received word he was being promoted. He was about to receive his fourth star and be sent to Hawaii, where he’d becomeCINCPACFLT—Commander-IN-Chief, PACific FLeeT. The implications of that move were immense. A quick scan of CNOs or vice CNOs showed that many of them served with the Seventh Fleet, headed the Pacific Command, or were appointed CINCPACFLT. There was a possibility, therefore, that Ace’s move would ultimately lead to his selection as CNO.
In hindsight, however, the promotion was, in fact, an efficient—even insidious—way to get Ace out of town and out of the power loop. He was perceived by much of the Navy establishment, which was mainly peopled by bureaucratic nuclear types, as a troublemaker, a rabble-rouser, a hard-liner. Ace may have been able to represent the Navy ably at the 1984 Incidents at Sea talks with the Soviets in Moscow, but at home he represented a hardheaded, seemingly intractable point of view that other four-star admirals found difficult to digest.
What they found most unsettling about Ace was that he had a warrior’s mentality. He was audacious and unconventional. He could swear like a chief, he respected the men who served under him, he insisted on shaking up the system, and he wasn’t afraid to call a spade a spade. This combination made him too much of a threat to too many others. So, Ace was promoted out of his staff job at Plans and Policy, where he didn’t command a lot of men—but what he said and did had a substantial impact on the entire U.S. Navy, twenty-four hours a day. Instead, he was shipped off to Honolulu, where he commanded more than 250,000 personnel and managed an annual budget of more than $5.5 billion, but was safely removed from the political mainstream.
More significantly, so far as I and my little Red Cell operation were concerned, Ace would now be six thousand miles away from being able to protect Demo Dickie’s rear end.
Of course, the dire implications of Ace’s transfer didn’t hit me right away. Not by a long shot. Indeed, if my senses about getting ambushed had been as keen in 1985 as they were back in 1967, the hair on my neck would have been standing straight up and I would have stalked the Pentagon corridors with my M16 locked and loaded. But that didn’t happen. I was having too much fun. Me and the boys were about to spend Labor Day weekend, 1985, with Ronald Reagan. Well, we weren’t actually with the president, but with his plane. Air Force One was housed at Point Mugu Naval Air Station, about 125 miles south of the president’s ranch in Santa Barbara, whenever the Reagans vacationed there. With all the extra security around, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to play our unique brand of fun and games.
The base commander at Mugu was a Navy flier named Gordy Nakagawa. Gordy had been a POW twice in his life: first as an internee during WWII, then as a Navy pilot, when he’d been captured by the Viet Cong. I liked and admired Gordy. Unlike most base commanders, he took security seriously. He’d even formed a Pt. Mugu SWAT team—it was unusual in that it contained both men and women—which he lovingly called his Rambo and Rambette SWATs.
Gordy Nakagawa was a world-class marksman and a gameplayer, and he loved the prospect of his people getting the chance to rock and roll with Red Cell when Air Force One was on the ground. The Secret Service had a different point of view. “We don’t play games,” they said. “Period.”
I shrugged. Whatever. Just because they wouldn’t play with us didn’t mean we couldn’t play with them
We took the entire Cell to California, with the exception of Hartman, who was left behind to hold down the office, something for which he has never forgiven me. Luckily for him, Shooter’s was open Labor Day.
Gordy and I had settled on that particular weekend because, even with Air Force One on the tarmac, the base would resemble Sleepy Hollow. Function is not in the Navy lexicon during weekends—especially long holiday weekends. Alert has never been a proactive word on Navy Sundays, when everybody sleeps late. It’s historic: remember Pearl Harbor?
The Cell arrived ten days before the festivities were to begin, filtering in on commercial flights to Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. The guys rented half a dozen vehicles ranging from Cadillacs to pickup trucks. We drove to Mugu and checked into the same motel used by Air Force One’s Secret Service and Air Force security details. That would allow us to keep an eye on the opposition. Meanwhile, the heavy equipment and camera crews arrived aboard a Navy jet that flew into Alameda Naval Air Station.
Once settled in, Red Cell began to scope out the base. I stayed in the background, playing the Abu Nidal role, allowing the Cell to function at its own speed. The men knew our goal was to test every element of the base security apparatus. The question of exactly how they did that was up to them. I might suggest a few specifics or design a particularly evil operation I wanted to see mounted in a distinctive way. But for the most part, they were on their own.
My major role was to observe, so I could help make suggestions after the exercise. So I spent time with Gordy, to see what his people were up to, or went out on patrol with Bob Laser, Mugu’s security chief, to show him the sorts of things he might want to watch for. Most of the time, however, I floated between my teams, watching their preparations, keeping them on a long leash as they discovered new and cunning ways in which to have their perverse forms of fun.
Pooster the Rooster (I always thought we should have called him Pooster the Booster) “borrowed” a ten-speed bicycle and cruised every piece of road alongside Pt. Mugu. His meanderings brought him to a seldom-used back gate behind the flight line. He found, much to his delight, that the wide gates were secured with a simple lock and chain. He bought a bolt cutter, snipped the chain, deep-sixed the lock, and replaced it with his own lock and chain.
Duke, meanwhile, rented a boat from a local marina. He and Larry trolled offshore, looking for women sunbathing topless. They also scanned the Pt. Mugu shoreline for likely ground-sensor positions. Through field glasses, they also kept track of the base’s SWAT team, rent-a-cop patrols, Navy security sweeps, and Marine guards as each detail made its predictable, by-the-clock rounds. The terrorists took copious notes, just like real bad guys do.
To ensure its own unit integrity. Red Cell checked out the local bars and saloons en masse. Once again, we gleaned valuable information. Who drank where? What was the gossip? What kinds of badges did people carry? Often, whilst the point men were inside, forcing themselves to become part of the crowd by imbibing cold beer, Bombay gin, or other assorted beverages of quality, two or three laggards stayed behind in the parking lots, peeling base stickers off windshields and bumpers so the Cell could use them on our own rental cars.
By Friday afternoon, we were ready. The Cell had probed the base, searching for weaknesses. Many had been found. It was child’s play to get someone over the fence—even in broad daylight and right next to the main gate. How? Horseface drove by the gate, honking and cursing at the guards, tossing a couple of cartons of milk in their direction as he went past. Yoo-hoo—everybody watch Horseface.
Meanwhile, ten feet away, Ho-Ho-Ho and Doc Tremblay were vaulting over the eight-foot chain-link fence and
jogging away. Doom on you, gate guards.
That was basic. We also broke into junction boxes and tapped phones. We monitored police radio frequencies with Bearcat scanners. We made our own tactical maps, complete with shortcuts, back doors, and escape routes. Targets were assessed, selected, and prioritized.
Air Force One was already on the ground and parked in a remote corner of the field, surrounded by Secret Service dipdunks and Air Force blue-blankets—security personnel in blue berets. It didn’t matter to us whether there were twenty men guarding the plane or two hundred. We’d deal with ’em as our grand finale.
Then, we went to work. For a base that was allegedly on full alert, the place seemed to be barely breathing. The sentries watched TV in their sheds. The flight line with its F-18 Hornets was deserted. The rent-a-cops came and went by rote. Nobody was taking care of business. Even the telephone operator who took Minkster’s threat from the Movement for the Ejaculation of Palestine wasn’t running on all her cylinders.
“This is the Movement for the Ejaculation of Palestine. If the Israelis do not free one hundred and seventy-three of our political prisoners within two hours, your facility will be bathed in American blood. The mother of all wars will begin on your accursed Zionist-loving territory.”
“Could you spell that name for me again, caller?”
“That is E as in ejaculation, J as in ejaculation, A as in ejaculation, C as in ejaculation, U as in ejaculation … ,” Minkster droned in his very best Yasir Arafat accent.
Ah, yes, Pt. Mugu was just like a sleepy little southern California town in the hours before the Labor Day weekend began. Which is precisely why my very own MEP guerrilla, Lieutenant Trailer Court, wearing a purloined commander’s uniform instead of black pajamas and a kaffiyeh, checked in at 1900 Friday evening. He drove up to the gate and explained to the guards he was supposed to report for work Tuesday, but had arrived early so he could spend the weekend at the BOQ and not pay a motel bill. Trailer carried an ID card we’d stolen at a bar two nights before, but it wasn’t necessary: the screwups in Navy Security let him in without checking a thing.
He went straight to the BOQ, jimmied his way into an unused room, and unpacked the weapons, night-vision goggles, radio equipment, and explosive devices we’d had him smuggle onto the base for us. Then he used his vest-pocket scrambler to call us on the phone in his room to report the coast was clear. Great. I dispatched Ho-Ho-Ho, Horseface, and Baby Rich, dressed in fashionable basic black, over the fence. No one saw or stopped them. They went to Trailer’s room, changed into work clothes, picked up their explosives equipment, and went out to steal a weapons carrier we’d spied sitting by the motor pool the previous day.
The trio drove the WC to the ordnance warehouse, broke in, jump-started a forklift, and stacked the truck with a palletload of bright blue, dummy 500-pound bombs they found there. They rigged the bombs with remote-controlled detonating devices and booby traps, covered the bulky load with a camouflage tarp, and drove the whole consignment back to the BOQ parking lot where Trailer could keep an eye on it. Then, looking as innocent as Huey, Louie, and Dewey, they ambled out through the main gate, waving at the rent-a-cops as they went.
Meanwhile, Frank and Snake had slipped into wet suits for their own version of a quiet evening of infiltration. Pooster drove them to a location on the Pacific Coast Highway just above a wildlife refuge that ran alongside the north end of the base. Accompanied by a former SEAL Six teammate, our cameraman named Neil, they swam about a mile down a small river until they reached the marshy wildlife preserve. The men tried to infiltrate straight across the preserve, but were stymied by four-foot-deep mud. So they reversed course and took the land route, working their way around the game refuge’s perimeter, moving southeast in a methodical, painful belly crawl.
About eight hundred yards of slow crawl later, as they came through a culvert that security had forgotten to blockade with bars or screens, the terrorists ran into a Rambo/Rambette patrol. A quartet of SWATs, in black fatigues, was patrolling the perimeter of the base.
The SEALs lay silently in foot-high marsh grass as the cops’ boots passed inches from their noses.
One of the SWATs squatted down on the edge of the culvert and lit a cigarette. Another joined him. Meanwhile, Frank, Snake, and Neil kept themselves busy trying to ignore the ants crawling on their faces and up their wet suits. After what seemed a lifetime, the Rambos and Rambettes finally resumed their patrol, but not before one of the cops unknowingly left his bootprint on Frank’s blacked-out hand.
Alone again, they resumed their mission. Moving slowly, Snake, Frank, and Neil crept up a ditch alongside a taxiway. Snake and Frank broke into a hangar, changed into coveralls they found, then walked onto the flight line and stuck explosives inside the air intakes of half a dozen F-18 fighters. Neil got it all on tape, using a low-light lens. The mission complete, they marched straight to the back gate, unlocked it, slipped out, and relocked the gate. Pooster was waiting for them—after all, it was Miller time.
Minkster and Cheeks didn’t make Miller time. They were my first-day cannon fodder. I needed a diversion to ensure that Frank and Snake would get onto the flight line. So I sent them to the fuel farm at the other end of the base, where they made enough noise to elicit a response.
That was important: I wanted to see who would answer the alarm. Would it be rent-a-cops, Department of Defense police, or the Rambo/Rambettes who’d come a-calling? And when the cops captured bad guys, how would they deal with them?
We monitored the authorities’ progress on our police-band scanners. Trailer, sitting with a pair of night-vision binoculars on the roof of the bachelor officers’ quarters, was able to give us a running commentary on who was moving, and where they were going. It was like a travelogue.
The DOD police caught up with Cheeks and Minkster just as they were “planting” explosives. They’d given themselves away by purposely walking across a sensor-rich area. The cops surrounded my boys and took ’em down. Then, they were quickly frisked, cuffed, thrown into the back of a car, and taken to the DOD police station, which was located outside the Pt. Mugu base perimeter.
Except, they hadn’t been frisked very carefully. Cheeks had a handcuff key in his pocket, and a pistol in a crotch holster. He was frisked by a female, who was understandably reticent about giving his groin a businesslike grope, especially when Cheeks ragged her about it—“Hey, baby, how about a lube job—come on, just put your hand down there where it’s hot and hard.”
Big Mistake One. Cheeks was armed and he was dangerous. He used both key and gun to good advantage once he was inside the station. First, he freed the Minkster. Then, the pair of them took all the rent-a-cops, as well as their station, hostage. The rent-a-cops now had to call the SWAT team for help.
Meanwhile, Duke and Snake “blew up” Pt. Mugu’s main radio antenna. All communications between Rambo/Rambette headquarters and the rest of the emergency-response people ceased, as the umpires ruled Red Cell’s bombing had caused sufficient damage to kill the police command and control functions. The “explosion” also brought out the base fire department, which was already being harassed by a series of Red Cell-generated false alarms, thoughtfully provided by Pooster. So much for opening night.
At first light, another security glitch became apparent. We terrorists were fresh—we’d all gotten some rest. The security forces, on the other hand, were beginning to tire—there was no plan for them to rest in shifts. Gordy had built himself a team—but he had no bench. Everybody had been scrambled at once, and everybody was still on duty.
That was Big Mistake Two. A tired policeman is a careless policeman. Just after daybreak, Ho-Ho-Ho, Rich, and Horseface captured half a dozen early breakfasters—including women and kids—at the Mugu cafeteria, which was located off-base, just down the road from the main gate. They blindfolded their captives and turned them over to the Gold Dust Twins to use as human currency. Now the cops were between the proverbial rock and hard place: it was common pr
actice not to trade for cop hostages, but women and kids were another case altogether. A deal was made with the exhausted police negotiators, and just after 0900, Minkster and Cheeks were freed from the police station.
We knew the cops were planning a roadblock half a mile from the station because we’d eavesdropped on their conversations and phone calls. So we did the unexpected. The Gold Dust Twins exchanged their hostages for our men. Then Frank hightailed it in the one direction no one had anticipated: right through the main gate—onto the base.
We listened to screams of frustration on police radios, then—after the initial confusion—we heard ecstatic celebrations. They now believed Red Cell had screwed up royally—because the getaway car was headed straight for the flight line, from which they knew there was no escape.
Frank and his rent-a-car, followed by three jeep-loads of Rambos and Rambettes, led everybody along a merry chase all across the base. He careened through back alleys, slalomed the wrong way up one-way streets, and doubled back to play “chicken” with his pursuers. He lurched onto the flight line and drag-raced the length of the main runway. By the time he wheelied up to the back gate in a cloud of dust and a hearty “Heigh-ho, Silver,” he must have been doing 150.
“Hey,” said Cheeks, “how the hell we gonna split?”
“No sweat,” Frank answered. “Voilà.”
Cheeks peered through the windshield. Who was standing by the back gate? Meesta Poosta Roost, with his ten-speed bike and his cold-steel chain and his Medeco lock and key.
Pooster bowed. Frank drove through. Pooster locked the gate. Everyone drove away. We got wonderful video of the Rambos and Rambettes trying to bust the lock and chain. Which was impossible, of course. The SWAT team had not been issued bolt cutters, and they were unwilling to drive through the gates and ruin their jeeps, not to mention damage government property. Once again, it was Miller time.
ROGUE WARRIOR® Page 39
