RW14 - Dictator's Ransom

by Richard Marcinko

  I know what you’re thinking: Dick, you just found the missile. But I’m something of a connoisseur of explosions, and even as I crouched behind the barrels I realized they weren’t coming from a rocket on fire. They were more like what you would expect if you threw a match into a room filled with kerosene fumes and large barrels filled with the fuel, with maybe a few grenades cooking off for good measure.

  We weren’t the only ones having fun. One of the gun-ships whirled above and began firing rockets into the southeast corner of the yard. And there was heavy gunfire near the second building. With our objective now covered in flames, I decided to put my Russians to work backing up the unit taking the second building. We circled back around a cluster of barrels to get a look at what was going on. As we did, we came under machine-gun fire from the northwestern corner of the yard. Mikhail and two other marines were pinned down.

  “Cover me!” I yelled, turning and heading back in the direction I’d come in.

  I planned to crawl up along the fence line and surprise the machine gunner from the flank. The plan wouldn’t have been a bad one, either, except that the way was blocked off by a wall of barrels. There were two alternatives: frontal assault into the teeth of the machine-gun nest, or a sweeping attack from the flank. The latter meant I’d have to run to the back of the building we’d just set on fire, go up and over the fence, then sneak around behind the machine gunner’s back.

  I enjoy frontal assaults as much as anyone—which means not at all. Opting to climb the fence, I did my best wind sprint to the back of the building, gritting my teeth as a fresh round of explosions shook the ground. The flames were a good incentive to hit the fence, sending me up the chain links in four short pulls. Strung across the top were three rows of old-fashioned barbed wire, more a pain in the neck than a real hindrance—I pushed the rows down with my gloved hands and did a forward somersault over the top, spinning around and grabbing the fence with one hand as I started to fall.

  Well, almost.

  Mr. Murphy pushed one of the barbs up as I went over, grabbing my shirtsleeve and ruining my flip. My left hand slipped from the fence, and I slipped more or less straight down. I was lucky to hit the ground feetfirst, though I was so off-kilter I shot face-first into the weeds and rocks behind the yard. Dazed, I had to rest for a minute before getting up. I grabbed the AK7419 Setrovich had loaned me and ran toward the back of the machine-gun nest, which was still firing in the direction of my men.

  The machine gun was a real machine gun, a DshKM M1938/46 12.7mm weapon dating back to the time when bullets were bullets and machine guns were machine guns. There’ll always be a special place in my heart for the “Ma Duce”—the Browning M2 heaving machine gun that first began supporting American troops in the 1930s—but the Russian “Dushka” is nearly as good a weapon. You really can’t say you’ve come under heavy machine-gun fire until you’ve had the Dushka’s half-inch bullets whizzing a few inches from your fanny. It’s a feeling you’ll never forget, though you’ll probably wish you could.

  I know I certainly wished I could as the barrel of the gun swung in my direction and lead started buzzing like a hive of angry bees around my head. I squeezed off a burst from my own weapon just for form’s sake as I hit the dirt, burrowing into the scant cover behind the gun emplacement.

  Scant as in nonexistent. The only thing that saved my butt from being perforated was the fact that I was so close to the gunner that he couldn’t lower his weapon far enough to actually hit me. I could have waited until he went through his 250-bullet belt, but being the naturally rambunctious sort—and not trusting that he wouldn’t take out a handgun—I rolled onto my back and took one of the flash-bangs from my vest. I tossed it over my head in the direction of the gunner. As the grenade went off, I rolled over and began firing, emptying the gun’s magazine. Half my bullets found the sandbags they’d used to protect the rear of their position. The other half found the head of the son of a bitch who’d been firing at me.

  Ugly. But a very pretty ugly.

  I slammed a new box into the gun and jumped up, making sure there was no one else with the machine gun. Then I ran back to the spot where I’d come over the fence, not wanting to take the chance that one of the Russian marines might mistake me for a bad guy moving to take over the gun.

  I was just about to put my hand onto the fence to climb up when I heard Trace yelling something along the lines of “Stop that son of a bitch!” I looked toward the railroad tracks and saw not one but two sons of a bitch running down the wharf.

  Trace and her marines had been covering the side of the building near the water, waiting to grab anyone trying to get away from us. When the building first caught fire, she backed up a bit, still watching to make sure no one was inside. As the building continued to burn, she left two marines to hold the position and went back to the other building, intending to join the team clearing that building. Three men jumped from a window at the back around the time Trace arrived; one fired at her, slowing her down enough for the other two to jump the fence and run off.

  Which is where I came in.

  I started running after them, angling out in the direction they were going in an attempt to head them off. The field I was in was overgrown with grass, which partially hid a spiderweb of railroad tracks that made it hard to run through. There were dozens and dozens of empty vodka bottles, some intact, most shattered into large but sharp pieces. By the time I got past the tracks and other obstacles, the two men had disappeared somewhere along the wharf.

  As I was trying to figure out where they’d gone, I heard the loud blast of a horn behind me. I whirled around and saw a small diesel engine chugging on the track to my right, pulling a row of flatcars behind it. The train was moving at a good clip, and I wasn’t—it passed in front of me, cutting me off from the wharf.

  It was a long train, and I wasn’t in a patient mood, so I did what any normal red-blooded American would do when faced with an interminable wait—I cut in front of the line.

  Or more precisely, I started jogging alongside the train car, then grabbed the small ladder at the end of the car as it came by. Flatcars are among the easiest train cars to hop, though easy or not I still had a tough time pulling myself against the ladder. I managed to get my right knee onto the rung and pushed upward, slapping my left foot onto the ladder and then sprawling across the deck of the flatcar. I got up and did a stutter-step toward the side, losing my balance and jumping before I was really ready to. I twisted in midair, flipping over like a bag of mail but at least clearing the tracks. I landed on my shoulder and lost my gun. By now my clothes were soaked with sweat; my left ankle hurt and my right knee was pulsing with a beat that would have made a salsa band jealous. It occurred to me that I might be getting too old for this sort of thing, but I did what I always do when that thought pops into my head: I grit my teeth and keep going.

  As I made it to the wharf, I realized where the two men had disappeared to. There was a small dock below; they’d grabbed a small boat and were now sailing northward out of the harbor. Out of frustration, I fired a few rounds from the AK74, cursing and looking for the helicopter gunships that were supposed to be guarding against just this kind of escape. I was about halfway through my list of Russian curses when I noticed another speedboat coming up alongside the wharf. I turned, ready to fire, then realized Trace was at the wheel.

  “Dick! Jump down!” she shouted.

  I hung over the edge of the wharf, waiting until she was below. I jumped, hit the deck—and she hit the gas. By the time I managed to get back upright, she had pulled the boat to within two or three hundred yards of the escaping Russians.

  “Careful!” she yelled as I raised my gun. “Setrovich wants them alive. They’ll know where the missile launcher and Yong Shin Jong are.”

  Maybe they would and maybe they wouldn’t, but trying to find out was a good idea. Especially since we were steadily catching up to them. I lowered my aim, sighting the outboard at the stern of their boat. Just as I st
arted to push on the trigger, our boat abruptly slowed. Now I realized why the bad guys had left us the faster boat—we were out of fuel.

  My shots at the outboard on the other boat missed, and as it rapidly pulled away I once more began exhausting my knowledge of curse words, this time in English as well as Russian. I got through only a small portion before Trace pointed skyward.

  “The helicopter!”

  “What?”

  “Helicopter!”

  The gunships had finally broken away from the firefight in the compound and were coming to see what was going on. But as the cannon beneath the closest helo rotated in our direction, we realized this wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

  “We’re on your stinking side!” yelled Trace.

  She still had her radio—I’d lost mine somewhere along the way—but they either didn’t understand her English or weren’t tuned to the right frequency. The helo did a slow turn above, then came back at us, cannon blasting.

  “Out!” I yelled, jumping into the water about five seconds before the boat was demolished by cannon fire.

  I swam away underwater as fast as I could, holding my breath for about a minute and a half before coming up for air. Trace popped up about ten yards away. Chewed-up fiberglass and boat parts filled the water where the boat had been. I’d taken about two strokes toward shore when I heard the sound of a helo approaching hot and heavy behind us.

  “Duck!” I yelled, thinking it was the attack chopper, back for more. But when I surfaced, I saw it was the Hind, low to the waves and dangling a sling for us.

  Trace went up first. I treaded water, fighting the wash of the propellers as the helo hovered directly overhead. Finally it was my turn: I grabbed on to the sling and hung on as it yanked my arm practically out of its socket, spinning me through the twelve or fifteen feet to the chopper’s cabin.

  “Very sorry about the boat,” shouted Setrovich, who helped pull me in. “Mistake. Sorry.”

  Trace was standing in the corner with a blanket wrapped around her. She didn’t say anything, but I knew what she was thinking—“sorry” didn’t begin to cover it.

  The helicopter spun around and headed out to sea, following the two gunships. The Havocs were crisscrossing ahead, buzzing the other boat like a pair of angry bees. The boat had stopped, apparently convinced that the gunships would blow it out of the water if it didn’t.

  Inside our chopper, two of the men had stripped to their shorts and were pulling on wet suits.

  “We will take over the boat, take these men as prisoners,” said Setrovich. “They will give us information.”

  “Did you find the missile at the yard?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” said Setrovich.

  Since I was already wet, I volunteered to go with the marines who were jumping to take the boat.

  “Not enough for one day?” Setrovich smiled, but put up his hand as if to restrain me. “No, no, these men will take care of the situation. You have time to rest. Then we have drinks, no? Vodka, not seawater.”

  Setrovich picked up a microphone as the helicopter reached the boat and began broadcasting a message, telling the men inside it they were under arrest and the only way out would be to surrender. He promised leniency if they gave themselves up.

  The offer appealed to them so much they answered by peppering the side of the Hind with rifle fire. The helicopter jerked away, but not before a handful of bullets smacked through the open side door. One ricocheted off the pipe of the bench where I was sitting, missing me by a few inches. Another broke the top of a fire extinguisher strapped to the bulkhead, sending white spray through the cabin.

  The Hind answered with cannon fire, turning the boat and its occupants into fish food—little fish food, the kind goldfish eat.

  [ III ]

  SETROVICH WAS WEARING a very long face when we returned to shore. Three of the marines had been killed in the raid, and two other men had been severely wounded. Worse, we’d found no trace of Polorski, a missile, or Yong Shin Jong. Twelve defenders had been killed at the yard, and the warehouse that didn’t blow up contained enough rifles and grenade launchers to equip a small South American country. Three computers had been seized from the building, so there was some hope of getting more information on the gang. And here’s another bright note: the barrels that I’d hidden behind during the battle turned out to hold rounds of small-arms ammunition. But Setrovich still figured the ledger strongly favored Polorski when he tallied it on the ground.

  “We will find him.” Setrovich pounded the desk in the office of the remaining warehouse. The marines were busy inventorying the weapons cache; it was far too big to move by helicopter. “I make solemn vow. I will get bastard. Crush him.”

  I pretended to be impressed, then slipped outside, looking for Trace. I found her in the field across from the yard, talking to one of the gunship pilots about how the bird was flown. I went over and got her attention.

  “He’s going to give me a ride,” said Trace. “And I can drive. What do you think?”

  She said it with enough of a smirk that made me think she might be interested in something more than just a helicopter ride. The pilot surely was—I could see his leer from where I was standing.

  “Go to it,” I told her.

  The Russian was about six-six, but Trace already had him wrapped around her little finger. He not only showed her to the cockpit, but helped her into it. Then he scrambled into the forward seat. Trace had the rotors turning before he even had his hatch cinched. The helicopter took a few hops forward, then suddenly surged into the air. Trace took it into a wide orbit around the yard, then pushed its nose down and accelerated out to sea. I could just about hear her “yah-oos” as it whipped back in my direction.

  I was waiting for her to try an invert when my sat phone began to ring. It was Matthew Loring.

  “What’s up, Junior?” I asked.

  “Polorski and his people have another ship. That one’s just a decoy.”

  “You think?”

  “I’ve been tracking through their financial transactions,” Matthew told me. “Dick, there’s a lot more to this than it seems.”

  Duh.

  “I’m pretty sure it was a decoy as well,” I told him. “Where is the other ship?”

  “About a day south of Vietnam. Doc got somebody he knows at the navy to check with—”

  “That’s all right, Junior. I don’t need the details right now. What I need is transportation. I want to get back to Japan, and then I’ll need an airplane that can get us to that ship.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” said Setrovich behind me. “Transportation is not what you need at all.”

  I turned around and saw Setrovich standing there with a very wide grin on his face.

  The grin didn’t bother me. The gun in his hand was an entirely different matter.

  16 A newer version of this missile is still being manufactured in Russia, which has declared it is no longer bound by the START treaties.

  17 “No Suchers,” as in members of “No Such Agency,” aka the National Security Agency, which as we all know doesn’t exist and wouldn’t if it did.

  18 See Rogue Warrior: Vengeance.

  19 Yes, AK74, not AK47. Among its alleged improvements is the fact that it fires a smaller, NATO-sized round. I greatly prefer my MP5.

  7

  [ I ]

  THERE WAS A very good reason that Setrovich hadn’t caught Polorski and the mafiya group he worked with—the FSB colonel was paid good rubles not to.

  Or euros, or possibly even American dollars. But I digress.

  “Who are you talking to, Marcinko?” asked Setrovich. His English had measurably improved, as had his snarl.

  “Just getting the time to set my watch,” I said.

  “Hang up now.”

  I turned the phone off.

  “Drop the phone.”

  I did so.

  “Take the gun from your belt,” said Setrovich.

  “Tell me first, was this par
t a setup?” I asked. “Did these guys know we were coming?”

  Setrovich didn’t answer. My guess was that it wasn’t—Setrovich knew that the raid would please his superiors, and would probably argue that to Polorski. Certainly it would let him take the heat off the mobsters while they got away with the missile. Dead bodies make wonderful trophies, even if the real heart of the operation is untouched. Knowing that I was interested in Polorski, and that the CIA was involved, even if at arm’s length, Setrovich had probably decided that a little raid might divert me. But the fact that I had found the real ship changed everything.

  “Where is your woman?” asked the colonel.

  I probably should have had a snappy, in-your-face comeback for that, but I didn’t. It would have been drowned out anyway: Trace, still showing off, flew her helicopter directly overhead at about eight feet off the ground.

  Dirt and dust flew through the air. So did I. Setrovich fired, but by then he was already falling backward. I’d hit him square in the chest with a tackle that would have made an NFL linebacker proud. We wrestled around in the dirt as the helo circled above us. It wasn’t exactly a match worthy of WrestleMania—I punched, squeezed, and shoved, while Setrovich mostly rolled and tried to get away. He hit me with the butt end of his gun, but since he was hitting my skull, there was little chance of damage.

  He twisted around, his back to me and his belly on the ground. The gun was underneath him. Somehow, it went off.

  Maybe my finger on the trigger helped.

  He was dead when I pulled the gun out from under him and stood up. Our little fracas had attracted the attention of several nearby marines. They weren’t sure what was going on, and I didn’t trust my ability to explain. Nor did I think the little peashooter I’d taken from Setrovich—a Pistolet Makarov, aka PM, a dead ringer rip-off of the Walther PP—was going to hold them off for very long.

  Fortunately, the marines had a great deal of respect for the 30mm cannon in the nose of the Havoc, which swooped down in front of me. They didn’t realize that the cannon was controlled by the Russian in the forward compartment, who at that very moment was punching his dashboard in a vain attempt to figure out a way to override the controls Trace was using to fly the chopper, and I certainly wasn’t going to tell them—I was too busy trying to figure out how to get the hell out of there.