Hunting Che

by Mitch Weiss

  But Che stayed in the news. He was blamed for uprisings in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The U.S. State Department declared him “a dangerous enemy to democracies,” and the CIA was charged with tracking him down. But Che had slipped away. He’d become a ghost, a boogeyman.

  And now he might be here in Bolivia, in Barrientos’s backyard.

  The diners finished their entrées, and Barrientos exuded his usual confidence. He told the guests that he was continuing to push the United States for more military aid and was getting a positive response. And why wouldn’t they help us? Barrientos asked. Look what happened in the skirmish. Bolivia needed arms to keep these Communist guerrillas at bay. With more weapons our army will crush the bastards, he boasted. It was just a matter of time.

  The guests nodded their heads in grave agreement, but Prado was incensed, torn by indecision. He supported Barrientos, but he also knew it would take more than just weapons—and bullshit—to defeat the guerrillas, especially if Che was their commander. The Bolivian military was headed for disaster unless it adopted new tactics to fight the rebels. It would be disrespectful to publicly disagree with the president’s optimistic assessment. This was a dinner party, not a debate, and his father had taught him to respect authority. But so much was at stake. Prado had spent six months of extensive training in counterinsurgency at a U.S. base in Panama. It had confirmed what he already knew: that his commanders were living in the past. They still embraced tactics used in World War II—where you had a front line and a rear area. That was fine in a conventional war, but his commanders didn’t understand that in a guerrilla war you had to move quickly—and aggressively—to root out the enemy. He had to make Barrientos understand that the old military ways wouldn’t work anymore. Prado thought about the soldiers killed in the ambush. If nothing was done, more would die.

  “No, Mr. President, I don’t think more weapons will solve the problem. We’re doing things wrong,” Prado declared, flattening his palms on either side of his plate.

  A hush fell over the room. No one spoke to the president like that. Not even the son of one of Bolivia’s most respected generals. But Barrientos admired his balls—his machismo—and let him continue.

  “Why do you say that, Captain?” Barrientos asked.

  Prado explained that conventional tactics wouldn’t work on the guerrillas.

  “We should isolate the area and train troops to hunt the insurgents. They are always hiding, always on the move. So you have to find them, fix them in place, and destroy them in close order,” Prado said. He felt passion creeping into his voice. “What we’re doing now is sending out untrained troops—we’re sending them to be picked off by disciplined killers. Our officers, without training in this kind of combat, will suffer the same.”

  There was an uneasy silence. Barrientos stared into Prado’s eyes. He could feel the young officer’s determination. We need more men like this one, Barrientos thought.

  “You make very good points, my friend. Very good points. Very soon we will see.”

  Barrientos turned his attention back to the other guests. Prado, meanwhile, began to wonder if he’d done the right thing. He slipped away from the party soon after. Was the president going to follow his advice, or had he just sunk his military career?

  Two days later he got his answer, and his orders.

  He was to report to a new Ranger battalion being formed to hunt and kill guerrillas. He would be part of the experiment.

  CHAPTER 4

  Pappy’s Mission

  Major Ralph “Pappy” Shelton picked up his old blue-and-tan Gibson guitar, strummed a few chords, and then leaned it against the barrack wall.

  It was late afternoon at Fort Gulick, Panama, and Shelton was ready to go home. He had been in the army for twenty years and was getting ready to retire from active military service. It’s time, he thought. He just had to sell himself on the idea.

  His wife, Margaret, wanted him home. She was tired of being a single mom, shuffling five kids to Little League games and art class, doing the parent-teacher meetings. She did a two-person job, and he knew it. He was already a soldier when they’d got married, and she handled it pretty well for a long time. But as the years dragged on and the kids got bigger, it became more difficult. When orders came for a move to Panama, she and the family shipped out alongside him, as they always did. But Panama didn’t agree with Margaret. She couldn’t adjust to the island-like life on the base. After she’d given it her best try, the family packed up and went home to Tennessee. She waited for Shelton there, ready for a secure, settled civilian life.

  Shelton promised her he’d leave the army when this rotation was over, and he always kept his word. But he was struggling. Despite all the bullshit—and there was always a lot of shit you had to put up with in the military—he loved army life. He had no qualms about living in the barracks. He enjoyed the camaraderie and was beloved by his men. His combat experience in Korea and Laos was well respected. He lived for the action, which he had been seeing more of since joining Special Forces in 1961. In fact, all the good things in his life could be traced to the military.

  His was born in Corinth, Mississippi, and his father left before he was born. Shelton had enlisted in the army as soon as he was old enough. Back then, joining up was a smart move for a young man at loose ends, an opportunity to see the world and get some job skills. No matter what branch, it was honorable to be in the military. He worked his way up from private to major. He fought in Korea and served with the Green Berets in Laos and the Dominican Republic. Only dumb luck had kept him out of Vietnam—and maybe his ability to speak Spanish.

  But what would he now find to do in civilian life? He was thirty-seven years old, with a big family to support. How would a lifelong professional soldier fit into a country that had lost its respect for him?

  The Vietnam War had changed things. Over decades of Cold War maneuvering, America found it couldn’t win anymore with sheer troop strength and military hardware—it was mired in a brutal war with guerrillas who used frustrating hit-and-run tactics. The enemy brazenly attacked U.S. troops and then disappeared into the triple-canopy jungles.

  By April 1967, nearly 400,000 U.S. soldiers were stationed in Vietnam. Casualties mounted: Close to 10,000 men had been killed—6,100 in 1966 alone. Still the generals in charge called for more troops and more weapons—it was the only way they knew to stop the Communists in the north from conquering South Vietnam. If that happened, other Southeastern Asian nations would fall like dominoes to the Communists—and that would threaten U.S security. At least that was the theory.

  But the public was tired of the war and souring on the once-respected military institutions—and soldiers. They were questioning military and political leaders and losing patience and trust in the government. Antiwar protests were breaking out in cities and colleges, and things there were turning ugly—tear gas, arrests, draft protesters who refused to go and fight for freedom. Heading into the “Summer of Love” in 1967, rock musicians tapped into the discontent, some, like the Beatles, preaching: “All You Need Is Love.”

  For Shelton, the venom aimed at soldiers was disturbing. It was one thing to attack politicians. It was another to criticize fighting men. They didn’t create policy. They were bravely fighting—and dying—for their country, to stop the spread of Communism. He wondered what he would do if, back home, hippies insulted his choice of a military life.

  A soldier tapped on his door and poked his head inside.

  “Major Shelton, Colonel Smith wants to see you.”

  Shelton was curious because he had only told a few people he was planning to leave the army. Maybe the colonel had found out and wanted to talk him out of it.

  He headed over to Quarry Heights, headquarters for U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM)—the office complex that oversaw U.S. military programs and actions in the Southern Hemisphere and the Panama Canal Zone.

  T
he door was open to Colonel Magnus Smith’s office, and the big man told Shelton to close it behind him and take a chair. Smith was a straight shooter. He’d known Shelton for years, and he didn’t waste any time detailing his next mission.

  Smith was in charge of the Eighth Special Forces Group, and SOUTHCOM had told him to assemble a mobile training team (MTT) for a secret mission in Bolivia. The army there had formed a new, 650-man Second Ranger Battalion in response to an imminent threat. The Americans would have only nineteen weeks to train the Bolivian Rangers in the intricacies of counterinsurgency tactics. They didn’t have much time. Communist guerrillas were already at work in the jungles there, threatening Bolivia’s stability.

  “We need a Ranger-qualified Special Forces captain or major,” Smith said. “There are only two Ranger-qualified officers available, and one of them is in Vietnam. That leaves you, Shelton. I know you are ready to bug out of here, but we need you to take this.”

  Shelton simply nodded and sat back in his chair.

  The colonel told Shelton that SOUTHCOM had planned a similar training school for Bolivia in the coming year, but the guerrilla attack on Bolivian troops in March had pulled the plan onto the front burner. Bolivian President Barrientos had asked Washington for immediate military help, and the Johnson administration had approved the request. The last thing Johnson needed was a Communist-led insurgency in Bolivia—or anywhere in Latin America. They didn’t want another Cuba or (God forbid) another Vietnam. That’s why Shelton’s Special Forces team would only train Bolivian soldiers. They would not conduct any missions there. The U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, Douglas Henderson, was adamant about that: no American troops in the field. The Bolivians would have to take care of the mess themselves.

  One more thing: Shelton could handpick his sixteen-man team, but they would have to deploy as quickly as possible. Smith’s voice was urgent. Shelton knew this was serious. He stood up, ready to start organizing his team, with all thoughts of home banished from his mind.

  “Oh, one more detail, Major,” the commander said. “It’s possible Che Guevara might be behind the trouble.”

  “Che?” Shelton asked. He felt his eyebrows reaching for his hairline.

  “Yeah. Sit down another minute,” Smith said.

  There were so many unanswered questions about Che. U.S. intelligence had no idea whether he was alive or dead. If he was leading this guerrilla war, was it from a distance or actually in the field? Everyone agreed this operation had Che’s fingerprints all over it. Guevara hated the United States, and what better way to cause headaches than to start a revolution in Bolivia? Che probably hoped he could drag the United States into the conflict and open another front in the war on Communism. That’s why the mission was so vital, Smith said.

  Indeed, it was the reason Ambassador Henderson had visited SOUTHCOM a few days earlier. Henderson had spent a morning briefing the high command about the deadly ambush and the guerrilla threat. Henderson was a no-nonsense career diplomat who had for years downplayed the Communist threat in Bolivia. He had been telling Washington that Communism presented little menace to Bolivian stability—even though that opinion ran counter to U.S intelligence reports.

  In May 1965, the CIA’s Office of Current Intelligence in Latin America released a study that placed Bolivia second in line, after the Dominican Republic, as being at risk of a Communist insurgency. It called the political situation in Bolivia “highly unstable” and warned of “Communists and leftist extremists [who] are armed and determined not to permit a prolongation of the Barrientos regime.”

  Even after the ambush, Henderson believed that the uprising had little chance of success in a country so thoroughly sick of war. But with Che Guevara figured in, the equation added up to something much more serious.

  After meeting with Henderson, General Robert Porter Jr., chief of SOUTHCOM, sent U.S. Air Force brigadier general William Tope to Bolivia. SOUTHCOM needed an accurate military assessment of the Bolivian crisis, and Tope was an affable, trustworthy man who could speak fluent “military” with anyone, from the lowliest private to the top brass. Ambassador Henderson gave his blessing.

  Shelton, meanwhile, had his work cut out for him. He would have to find a suitably remote location in Bolivia to train the Second Ranger Battalion and then teach them counterinsurgency theory and practice, all in the space of three months.

  Shelton realized this would be his last mission. Once the training was over, so was his military career. He made himself a promise: When things got tough, he would stay strong and do things his way. This was his unit. His mission. All he had to do was pick the right team.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Meltdown

  Shelton’s driver carefully navigated the bumpy dirt road leading to the village of La Esperanza.

  It was an obstacle course, filled with crater-sized potholes and cattle darting into the road. Animals owned this narrow stretch of dusty brown soil. The herds moved and grazed in clusters, escaping the flat white sunlight in the shade of palm-tree groves.

  “This could be northeastern Mississippi, in July and August,” Shelton told the driver. “Lose the palm trees, add some cotton patches.” Nothing could be worse than toiling in the cotton patches, he thought. He first earned calluses on his hands during those long-ago days in the fields.

  Shelton had worked all his life. It was all he knew. In early days he was a logger, a sawmill operator, an assembly line worker at an auto plant. When the Great Depression came to his hometown, it saw that there was already nothing left to devastate. Corinth, Mississippi, was an old railroad junction for the Mobile & Ohio, surrounded by endless cotton fields. Many farmers lost their land in the 1929 bank collapse, and just about everyone, black and white, seemed to struggle to put food on the table. Growing up rough had made him tough, Shelton said—and there was no substitute for plain hard work.

  Shelton had taken a few of his trusted soldiers on this reconnaissance mission, and Bolivian Army officers accompanied them. The convoy of jeeps stopped in the village plaza, and they jumped out to stretch. It had been a long drive.

  Shelton looked at the small groups of children running and playing in the front of shabby adobe homes with thatched roofs. Most of the huts sat back from the road, shaded by thick overgrowth. There were a few businesses—one-story wood and brick buildings with tin roofs. The general store doubled as the bus depot, where villagers could embark on the daylong, forty-mile trip south to Santa Cruz. The thatched-roof school was dilapidated. The village had no electricity, running water, or indoor plumbing. Chickens outnumbered villagers, and herds of cattle trotted by the jeeps, raising huge clouds of dust. To Shelton, it resembled the set from a spaghetti western. All they needed to see was Clint Eastwood riding down the main street in his poncho.

  Then Shelton spotted a building that was out of place—an abandoned sugar mill. It stood five stories tall, about fifty feet high in front. It had been built a few years earlier with money from the U.S. Alliance for Progress—a program that helped finance economic development projects in Latin America. The factory created jobs and strengthened the local economy for a few years, and people from surrounding villages came to La Esperanza to work. But poor management finally shut down the enterprise. It was a blow to the area, but a stroke of luck for Shelton. The vacant, steel-framed building was the perfect place to train Bolivian soldiers. The structure could provide ample housing for the troops and a perfect site for rappelling and other exercises. It also had its own well and a storage cistern for water.

  “What do you think?” asked Captain Edmond Fricke, who was Shelton’s deputy.

  Shelton grinned.

  “It could work,” he said.

  That’s what Fricke loved about Shelton—not only was he a professional soldier, but he was upbeat, with an engaging smile. Shelton was about five feet, eight inches tall and thin. He wasn’t muscular, but you could tell he was tough from the way he carri
ed himself. He stood straight and looked you in the eye. His skin was dark from years of working outdoors, and he spoke with a slight Southern twang. People just naturally gravitated to him.

  Shelton walked through the village, ensuring there’d be enough room for maneuvers. He didn’t want too many people living nearby, because night training might disturb them.

  This was supposed to be a secret mission. They didn’t need word leaking out about U.S. Special Forces training Bolivian soldiers. If newspapers found out, it could create a shit storm for Ambassador Henderson, who was fighting to keep U.S. troops well away from the action.

  Shelton counted about twenty homes. Maybe 150 people lived here, and in the neighborhood.

  La Esperanza was surrounded by a wide expanse of abandoned cane fields. They could easily create a rifle range. The village was isolated at the end of a bad road—it would be easy to set up a security perimeter. They had looked at other possible spots on this trip, but this site had no flaws. Shelton turned to Bolivian Eighth Division commander Colonel Joaquin Zenteno Anaya and asked if the place was available. Zenteno nodded his head yes. Shelton smiled. The search was over.

  With the first part of his mission complete, Shelton and his men jumped back in the jeeps and headed to Cochabamba for a return flight to Panama. Two of his men—Sergeant Hector Rivera-Colon and Master Sergeant Roland Milliard—stayed behind to work out the logistics with the Bolivians.

  Bumping along in the jeep, Shelton reflected about the mission. They would only have a short time to train the men. Could they do it? It was a challenge, but Shelton never shied away from one. His life had been filled with people who’d told him what he couldn’t do.

  He was only seventeen when he moved to Detroit and landed a job on an auto plant assembly line. It was 1947—two years after the end of World War II. America was still basking in the glow of defeating Japan and Germany. The Great Depression was in the past and America was looking to the future. That was Shelton’s plan, too. When he heard about possible layoffs, he joined the army for the educational opportunities and job security. No more bouncing from job to job. With the military, there would be structure, stability, and a chance for a better life.