RW11 - Violence of Action

by Richard Marcinko

  His words sliced through me. For an instant I wanted to jump out of my chair, to push Trace away, to stop this truly evil and brutal savagery over which I was standing watch. Karras was a SEAL. He was one of my countrymen. How the fuck could I allow this to be done to him? I felt Trace’s gaze. I knew if I looked at her with doubt, broke faith with her, she’d stop and walk right out of the room. I mentally reached down between my hairy frogman’s legs and grabbed hold of my own nutsack for courage. “Trace,” I said, “if he doesn’t answer immediately and truthfully to your next question…cut that damn ball free and start working on his pathetic little needle dick. I’m through fucking around with this turd. As far as I’m concerned you can open up his belly and maul around inside his guts next.”

  Karras began shaking as if with fever. It’s one thing to take a beating and quite another to be slowly, methodically cut to ribbons. There are no schools that teach how to survive that kind of treatment.

  I sensed Dahlgren’s gaze slipping away from me. Shit! I steeled myself for what was to come. If Karras somehow found it within himself to hold out it was going to be a long, messy afternoon.

  “The Mexicans taught us how to use a knife, you know,” Trace said in a far-away, singsong kind of voice as she drew a long, thin cut all the way down Tony’s exposed inner thigh to his knee. He began gasping for oxygen and twitching violently. I thought he was gonna stroke on us. Trace continued as if she were telling herself an often repeated story, unaware of what her hands were doing to the man beneath her. “They would raid our villages and take the women and children captive. Many times they would play games with those who were wounded, or too old, or too sick to be of value as slaves or whores.

  “They would tie them up and then amuse themselves for hours with their knives. It was the Mexicans who taught us how to scalp, and how to sell scalps for money. The Apache has beautiful hair. A scalp was proof a Mexican had killed Apache merde. He was paid good money for the hair of my People!”

  “I never hurt no Indian!” moaned Karras.

  “No?” replied Trace as she tapped the flat of the blade against the remaining healthy testicle she now held in her hand, “I thought I heard you say you fucked little Indian girls up the ass. Was that a lie, Mr. Karras? Are you lying to me? This is what happens when you lie to me!”

  Well, fuck. I winced as his second nut was separated from its tiny little rappel line and sent flying across the room to join his brother. Karras went ape-shit, wild-ass crazy. He tried rolling away from Trace but she leapt over him and pinned him hard with one knee on his chest. With two quick flicks she sliced off both his nipples then ran the edge of the blade down the center of his tanned chest. Blood was now flowing everywhere. Trace straddled him and dropped all her 130 pounds of she-devil on his sternum. Bent like he was, I heard joints cracking and ligaments popping under the sudden stress. I felt like I was glued to my chair. I’ve seen a lot of shit in my roguish life but what I was now part of was beyond anything I’d ever imagined. The demon sitting atop the bloody mass of heaving, gasping human flesh was no longer Trace Dahlgren. It was the ghost of a blood-soaked past I’d never imagined existed. I’d unleashed it. I did a gut check and bit my tongue. We were in it together. To the fucking end.

  Trace began chanting in the tongue of her native people. I’d heard her do this once before after we’d grabbed a kidnapped child and were in the process of blasting our way out of a shithole in eastern El Salvador. It had spooked me then, and hearing it again now was having the same affect. It appeared Trace was making perfectly good fucking sense to Karras because he opened his mouth wide and let out a long, deep scream toward the ceiling.

  Trace pushed the knife’s blade into the upper portion of Karras’s belly. It sunk in about two inches. He went silent for a few short seconds and his eyes rolled around in his skull. He coughed once, then twice. Bloody drool flowed out the corners of his mouth. His teeth were stained red. Then, hallelujah, he started to answer her questions.

  I had to lean forward to hear him. The fight within had evaporated. Trace had broken him. He’d answer anything she asked from here on out and he’d be truthful. He was certain she would know if he lied and that she would make his pain that much more horrible for it. “Yes, I was involved…. But I didn’t kill Beckstein. The colonel did. I was there to be eyes-on target afterward. The colonel killed him, not me….”

  “What is the colonel’s name?” asked Trace. Unnoticed by Karras, she had slipped off of him and was now sitting cross-legged on the floor at his side, watching his face carefully. Her tone was soothing, consoling. She was an angel of death considering a reprieve. She was the scariest fucking thing I’d ever laid eyes on.

  “Blanchard. Colonel Max Blanchard.”

  Fuck me. That was a name I knew from years gone by. He was a tight-assed, reclusive son of a bitch who had created Nemesis as his final assignment before retirement. I thought he’d moved to a farm somewhere a year or two earlier—seemed to me I’d even been invited to a retirement party for him. I’d first met him during my early visits to the old DELTA compound at Ft. Bragg but we’d never really taken a liking to each other. I thought he was a tight-assed prig and I’m sure he thought I was a fuckup who got allowed a lot of rope by the Brass. People aways said Blanchard was tough as nails, but he struck me as far too concerned with petty regulations and discipline to be more than a middle manager. Maybe I’d underestimated him, or maybe he’d changed.

  “Did Nemesis take the SADM from NEST today?” Trace continued.

  Karras weakly nodded. “Phineas Priests. The war begins with us. Needed something decisive. No more half-stepping. Blanchard is the Chosen One. We are all priests. We serve only Yahweh.”

  Trace glanced at me. I nodded. We were on a roll. “Where is Blanchard now?”

  Karras balked. I saw the hesitation in his eyes. Trace caught it and in a flash she slid the knife deeper into his belly. Pulling the sharp edge out, the Emerson ripped through taut, well-worked muscle. A hard burst of bright red blood erupted from the gaping wound. Karras screamed…and screamed…and screamed some more. The screams slowly became whimpers. The whimpers turned into sobs. The sobs dissolved into silence.

  I thought that we’d killed the bastard. But then his chest rose and he exhaled like a lung cancer patient giving up the ghost. He was still alive.

  I sat still and let the whole scene wash over me. My humanity had been erased. I was empty. I was outside myself watching Trace skillfully field dress a human being in a soundproof room in the heart of the nation’s capital. I’d never gone this far in my life. Never pushed the envelope to such an extreme. I am a rogue, yes. I am a warrior, certainly. But now I had become more than the Rogue Warrior. I was beyond whatever “he” had ever been. And I was sanctioned by my government to become this thing.

  That was seriously fucked up.

  But there was no going back. I was beyond whatever it was that once held me in check. I looked at Trace and I saw recognition. I saw acceptance. The circle was complete. My path was clear. I was grateful to Karras. He was the vehicle. It was a shame he would have to die.

  Trace continued. “Where is Blanchard now?”

  Tony’s eyes flickered open. Life was seeping out of them. They were growing dim. He’d given up all hope. In his own way he was preparing for his fate. But he would tell Trace what she wanted to know before leaving. He had to. She had taken his manhood from him. She now owned him. He could only obey her. She was his master. Only she could give him release. “Oregon.”

  “Where in Oregon?”

  “My brothers and the colonel will destroy the place where the mud people, the Jews, the queers, the race traitors, where all who are filth in Yahweh’s eyes have gathered to keep His People from securing our own nation.”

  “Will he—will Yahweh—use the nuclear weapon to accomplish this?”

  Karras smiled. The effort was gruesome to watch. “Yes. Yes. They must burn. Their city must be destroyed. All must see the light of Yah
weh before they die. Then victory—the final victory—will be at hand.”

  “He’s speaking in the language of his religion,” said Trace. “I don’t know that I’ll get much more that will be useful. He’s slipping into the protection his faith gives his mind and soul. It would take more time, more pain, to draw him out of that place.”

  “I want all he’s got to give.”

  Trace looked at me. Her face was emotionless, impassive. She was caked in Karras’s blood. Her hands and arms up to her elbows were a wet red sheen. Her features were smeared with splatters from his ruptured body. “You cannot go back,” she said to me.

  “I know,” I replied.

  Trace twisted the knife deeper into Tony’s guts. He bucked weakly but made no sound. “I’ll let your spirit go if you answer me,” she whispered. “This is my promise to you.”

  Trace’s words must have resonated with him, because he finally exhaled the words I’d been waiting to hear: “Portland will be sacrificed…”

  When Tony Karras died three minutes later, he’d given me the piece of information I needed to plan the next step of our mission—the location outside Portland where he was to hook up with two of his Nemesis pals. I’d kill the cocksucker Blanchard for making this necessary. That was my promise to him!

  “Blanchard and his crew are way out in front of us,” I said as Trace stood over Karras’s corpse. “We need to talk to Karen’s whiz kid about this Christian Identity bullshit to figure out what some of Karras’s mumbo-jumbo meant. But Portland makes sense as a target for these assholes. It’s as liberal a motherfucking Sodom and Gomorrah as you can find—outside of San Fran-Fucking-Frisco.”

  A hard knock at the door interrupted my train of thought. I hate it when that happens! “What!”

  “Dick? It’s Paul. We need to talk…now!”

  I caught the Emerson in midair as Trace tossed it to me. “You get cleaned up,” I told her. “Have Karen’s people get you some clean clothes. I….”

  Trace pulled her hair back with both hands. Now it too was streaked with the dead man’s blood. She looked up at me. I held her gaze. “Don’t worry about me, Captain. We’ll get through this and come out stronger on the other side.”

  “Coming out!” I yelled as Paul began knocking on the fucking door again. As Trace and I left the room I jerked my thumb back at where Karras was lying in his own stew. “Get Clay in here and tell him to clean this mess up. Blondie’s got to disappear. I don’t care how or where. Just tell Mulcahy to bury him deep. Clear?”

  Paul stepped aside and then glanced into the room. The smell was overpowering. When he saw what was left of Karras I heard him start to gag. The man on the carpet, hog-tied and de-nutted with a face full of blood and his guts hanging out, was not a pretty sight. “Holy shit,” exclaimed Paul, grabbing onto the doorframe to support himself.

  I stopped and spun around to face him. “You got a problem with this?”

  Paul looked me dead in the eye. He was a young, tough, ball-busting stud and I liked the hell out of him. But he would either ride the tiger with me or find another berth in safer, saner waters. It was his call. Moment of Fucking Truth time. He broke eye contact with me and looked over at Trace. She stood tall. She offered no excuses. “No problem here,” he said quietly.

  I looked over at Trace. She turned and started down the hall. “Yeah, kid,” I replied. “Good man. Get that shit in there squared away and meet us in Karen’s office. Bring your ball and bat. We’re heading for fucking Oregon unless these crazy sons of bitches blow it up before we get there!”

  “Aye, aye, Skipper!”

  I closed my eyes. For the first time in my life I hated being called Skipper.

  Chapter

  9

  “The best way to make a terrorist talk when he refused to say what he knew was to torture him…I was indifferent. They had to be killed, that’s all there was to it.”

  GENERAL PAUL AUSSARESSES,

  “Algeria Special Services 1955–1957”

  Karen tracked me down in between my taking a whore’s bath in the men’s room and attending the last briefing before we lifted off for Portland. The quick wash-up had given me my first few minutes alone since the helo had landed at the Manor and whisked the kids and me away. I needed the break in the action. Already tired and sore, the nasty session with Karras had overloaded my senses. I’d needed a few moments alone to refocus on the mission.

  That came to a quick end when Karen stormed down on me, declaring, “Torture. Dick, you and Dahlgren tortured that man to death!” She was pissed and I couldn’t have cared a fuck less. I was in the mission-prep mode and had no time for bullshit. Danny Barrett was in-house and in the process of getting dialed in to what had occurred since we’d left him with a ton of paperwork. With Danny along for the ride I was feeling a bit more comfortable about the shitty odds we were facing. Mulcahy had arranged for an Air Force Lear to take us from nearby Andrews Air Force Base to a base near Portland, Oregon. The most direct line of travel had been plotted and approved by those on high. We’d break all speed records getting to our anticipated ground zero, courtesy of the Air Force’s best flight crew. Marine One, the president’s helo, was standing by on the White House helipad to move the team and me from OISA out to Andrews. Three armored SUVs were down on the street wasting gas as we fiddle-fucked around getting our shit in order. Their mission was to get us from OISA to Marine One by the most direct route available. The clock was ticking and here I was getting a lecture on appropriate conduct when I needed to be with my team and getting gunned up.

  I’d put a request in for the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team to assist in the mission. They would outload for Portland from Andrews as well. It would take their C-141 Starlifter a bit longer to make it to the West Coast than our Lear but I needed the HRT’s shooters as backup. Blanchard’s team were among the best. Their training and real-world experience were extensive. They were almost as good as Red Cell had been in its heyday under my command. The hit on the NEST team was a stark reminder of just how lethal Blanchard’s boyz were. I knew no local police department stood a chance against his operators in a running gun battle…if the cops ever found them to begin with. I wanted as much firepower and expertise on the ground with me as possible once we started kicking doors and taking names. And I needed guys who know nukes. Before he’d gone on to the happy hunting grounds Karras had given us the location of the two-man Nemesis cell he was supposed to link up with after finishing his surveillance in D.C. His civilian flight across the country didn’t leave until 0900 tomorrow morning. With what I knew now, thanks to Trace’s handiwork with my Emerson, I figured we had perhaps twenty-four hours before Blanchard intended to detonate the SADM.

  Twenty-four hours at most.

  “The president said any and all means. You were there. You heard him.”

  Karen flared. “Dick! I highly doubt the president could have imagined that five minutes after he hung up you’d be gutting an America citizen on the floor of a U.S. government agency and using his turn of a phrase to justify your butchery!”

  I was tired. I was worn down. I was pissed off and I was ready to take my people into Harm’s Way. I didn’t need a lecture on ethics or morals or any other such bullshit just now. Especially from a professional manager, and despite her talents and abilities, that’s what Karen is. She sends others to carry out the policies she only puts on paper. She never gets wet, she never gets dirty, she never pulls the trigger, and she never watches those who carry out the ground wars bleed and die. She never writes the letters home to their loved ones who never halfway get the truth about how their husbands, sons, and brothers…and now wives, mothers, and sisters…serve their country and make the ultimate sacrifice for it.

  That is what they pay me to do.

  And I do it very fucking well, thank you.

  It was time to cut this shit short. “Listen close Fairfield, because I haven’t got a lot of time to waste soothing over your outraged sense of propriety. Karras was a
fucking terrorist. Sure, he had a U.S. passport and looked and talked like you and me, but he was a terrorist just the same. You think he was going to happily tell me what we need to know right now? He was yapping about his rights and his lawyer and the civil suit he was going to file from the moment he woke up after Trace clobbered him with her fucking .45. If I’d followed the rule book, Karras would be chatting it up with some slick-shoe mouthpiece at $300 an hour while Portland and most of its people were getting roasted on a nuclear spit!

  “Take a note, Karen! Extraordinary times demand extraordinary means. I’ll take the lives of half a million American citizens over the rights of one fucking lunatic any day of the week. I didn’t like what we did, I didn’t enjoy it, and I sure as hell hope I never have to do something like that again. But it had to be done and I did it! So either shut the fuck up and help me get this show on the road or put the cuffs on me. I can’t wait to read about how the president let half a million voters be turned into black glass as I’m doing reps on my old friend the weight bench at Club Fed. It’ll make for good jail-house conversation and maybe even another Rogue Warrior best-seller!”

  Karen took two steps back and looked hard at me. She’d heard me loud and clear. It was decision time. Leaders lead and overcome all odds to get the job done. Managers manage and give leaders all the wrong reasons why they can’t possibly accomplish the mission at hand. I was about to find out if Karen was a dyed-in-the-wool manager or if there was hope for her in the future. When she spoke her voice was low, dangerous, and about as sexy as a jury’s guilty verdict. “You know the president absolved you of any wrongdoing this afternoon. You damn well know he accepted all responsibility for whatever had to be done! You’re free and clear, Captain Marcinko.

  “But perhaps you’ve forgotten this? The president didn’t give carte blanche to Trace or Paul or anyone else on your team. I may not own you, but I sure the hell own them. I could put Dahlgren away for life for what she did to that poor son of a bitch. And Kossens, too, as an accomplice and conspirator. Did you bother to consider them, you arrogant bastard?”