After our initial meeting with Percival in Johannesburg, John and I went to the nearest bar to ponder whether we had been brought over to help make a “terrorists-take-hostages, SOF-led mercenaries-kill-terrorists-and-save hostages” movie, or the African version of Peter Pan.
Percival was chosen as director at the insistence of some of the investors. He obviously wasn’t amused with the technical experts he’d been provided.
“He appears to be intimidated by our attitude, experience, background and earthy language,” stated Donovan.
Early on, when we tactfully suggested to Percival that: “Americans would like a certain level of expertise and proper techniques in their shoot-’em-ups, Percival countered with,
“We’re not making this movie for Americans.”
In our dual roles as actors and technical advisers for Hostage, we should have been in Africa and involved with production weeks before filming began, not two weeks after it started. By the time we arrived in-country Percival had already made some bad technical decisions that could not be changed. For example, 22-year-old fuzzy-cheeked actors portrayed grizzled military veterans.
“We could use Soldier of Fortune magazine staffers,” we suggested to the clueless producer. No go, perhaps justifiably, since the movie’s meager budget couldn’t handle the cost of airfares to Africa for a large group.
“Then how about fleshing out the mercenary force by drawing on an almost unlimited pool of former Rhodesian Selous Scouts and SAS types who were not only the right age but who also knew how to assemble, wear and handle their weapons and who are locally available.”
No go again.
“Well then, how about if we procure uniforms and kit for the movie?” We were trying to salvage his show, but “Noooooo.”
When we arrived on the set for the first day of shooting, we choked when we saw the moth-eaten, antique miscellany of packs, web gear and uniforms Percival had rounded up. Not to mention that we had to listen to Percival say, “OK sonny, here’s how you wear your beret.”
The casting, uniforms and kit were bad, but the weapons were worse. Some of the would-be mercs were to be armed with Armi Jager AP-74s, the Italian manufactured. 22-caliber M-16-lookalikes! We pleaded with the director, “PLEASE position these atrocities as far from the cameras as possible,” but to no avail.
Prop master Mike Folly, a veteran of some 80 films worldwide, including Zulu, Zulu Dawn, Charge of the Light Brigade, Shout at the Devil and The Wild Geese, and who generally imported his weapons props from England, walked off the set when he got a taste of Percival’s production standards. He didn’t want to risk his credibility on the sub-par quality of the props.
Luckily, Donovan and I had enough sense to bring our own uniforms and web gear.
Four weeks into filming, producer Mike Leighton arrived, took one look at what was going on and told Percival to go back to filming church conventions. Folly replaced him, which helped, but with four weeks of film in the can we basically had to march on with what we had. From the time of Leighton’s arrival, Donovan and I did have input, but that late in the game we weren’t able to change much. Fortunately, all the merc scenes took place at night, so the errors that had me and John biting our nails and gnawing our knuckles would not be all that obvious to the average viewer.
Also, there were a lot of obvious implausibilities in the script, over which we had no control. For example the insertion of the male lead, Wings Hauser, into the AO by hang glider; using an acetylene torch to cut an entrance into the bottom of the plane where the hostages were being held while the main body of terrorist troops was only 50 yards away; a garrote scene and a cluster-fuck attack across an open runway. Also, against my better judgment I let them talk me into filming a scene where I pulled a grenade pin with my teeth. I busted the scene and on the retake I refused to bite out the pin and mess up my teeth as I knew Leighton would not pay the dental bill, so they just spliced the two segments together to get what they wanted.
The terrorist-villain lead, Tullio Monetta, found it all as amusing as we did. He had been a real-life merc in the Congo and later participated in the abortive Mike Hoare-led merc operation to take over the Seychelles islands.
The show had a lot of yelling, screaming, whining, crying, shooting, gurgling, smoke, deaths and stupidity. Also, to add insult to injury, Don-avan and I got to go dove hunting only one day. Once we got behind schedule we had to work for 30 straight days. To hell with making movies.
AND TV’S NO BETTER
SOF’s next exposure to the entertainment industry focused around a 199798 TV series, initially entitled, strangely enough, Soldier of Fortune. For several years I had been pursued to get involved in a SOF TV series by a Neil Livingston, a self-styled terrorism expert and author, along with Neil Russell, who I never did learn much about other than that he hosted some very expensive dinner parties for SOFers and friends that easily ran to sev-eral thousands of dollars. Finally, they put together a deal for the SOF series to be funded by a Hollywood outfit named Riecher—to the tune of 45 million dollars!
From SOF’s point of view, it was a boondoggle from the beginning. The theme of the series was about a Special Forces operative who got deep-sixed by the army bureaucracy because he did what he thought was right but violated orders. Upon discharge, he was tasked to recruit a team to perform “non-authorized, deniable missions” for the U.S. government. The basic premise was reasonable but it all went downhill from the first episode.
Inept leadership ended up pissing away immense amounts of money. First they sent some yo-yo to travel around Eastern Europe looking for locations. Too expensive! Too Expensive! Then they were going to shoot it in South Beach, Miami, å la “Miami Vice.” Finally, they decided to shoot in L.A. to save money.
Reicher decided to syndicate the show rather than go with a major network, as they did not want a network “sticking their fingers in the editorial pie.” I could agree with this. However, it ended up that the series was aired with no consistency. It might show at 2:00 a.m. on Saturday in Chicago, 4:00 p.m. on Monday in Miami, 10:00 p.m. in Denver . . . you get the idea. Furthermore, they had blown all their PR budget on a couple of massive press parties to which neither I or any SOFers were invited and had no funds available to promote the series in TV Guide, etc.
Of course, far be it for the Hollywood know-it-alls to consult with anyone at the SOF offices about a TV series titled Soldier of Fortune. At one point, I threatened to break Jerry Bruckheimer’s legs; joking of course. He didn’t find it amusing and that didn’t help things. At a dinner thrown by the Hollywood pukes at the 1997 SOF convention in Vegas, being unhappy with the way things were playing out, I got a bit into my cups and allowed, stealing a line from Full Metal Jacket, that “SOF was getting fucked without a courtesy of a reach-a-round.” That didn’t help things either.
The only redeeming aspect of the show was that former SEAL Harry Humphries was the very competent technical advisor, and a very creditable Brad Johnson played the lead. The ratings weren’t what the Hollywood pukes wanted so, without consulting SOF, they changed the name of the series to Special Operations Force and made one of the dumbest casting decisions I have ever seen. Some dunderhead decided they would raise the ratings if they cast Dennis Rodman as one of the covert team members. Talk about stupid! Inserting a six-foot-six pierced-up black guy with yellow hair into a team of covert operatives? Way to blend in. With such an incredible mistake, the show’s ratings went lower than ever. They canceled the second season after shooting only 17 episodes, whereas they had shot 23 for the first season.
I’d love to meet up with the nutso that came up with the Denis Rodman idea.
27
SURINAM: SLOW BOAT TO A SLOW WAR
I was in the steamy hellhole of Surinam, the land that God did not forget, only because he was fortunate enough never to have been there in the first place.
BOOM! I opened one eye from my siesta and groggily speculated on what foolishness the guerrillas were up to.
Another boom, and a third. No commie aircraft overhead, so it had to be the guerrillas. The hell with it, back to sleep.
“The booms you heard were when the guerrillas’ leader, Ronny Brunswijk, was detonating homemade rockets we made for him to impress his followers,” the British mercs in country told us when we asked what the hell was going on.
The “booming” was another example of the foolishness, fantasy and frustration we’d been threading our way through ever since we left SOF headquarters in Boulder the previous week to visit, write about and, if we were lucky, assist in an obscure, primitive anti-communist insurgency deep in the jungles of South America.
What started out as a straightforward reporting project slowly turned into an attempt to overthrow a corrupt president. I kick myself for not keeping a diary during all those years of running around the world. This was one of the rare times that I had enough self-discipline to keep one but only because I had to for the assignment.
This latest SOF adventure had started innocently enough. SOF’s G.B. Crouse, a former Marine, had contacted the Sygma Photo Agency seeking photos to supplement a number of articles we had in inventory.
“Interested in a story on the war in Surinam?” the Sygma editor queried Crouse during the course of the conversation.
“‘I’d like to look at it,” replied Crouse.
“I’ll send it out for your amusement,” shot back the Sygma rep. A few days later we had a piece on a handful of Brit mercs and ill-equipped but intrepid anti-communist bush commandos, by the daredevil French military photojournalist Patrick Chauvel. Short, always wired, thin and totally fearless, Chauvel tore through the streets of Paris his motorcycle as if every destination was about to burst into war any second. Not as if just riding through Paris wasn’t as dangerous as any battleground. The fact that he loved his booze no doubt enhanced his confidence.
We called Chauvel: “Can you get us in?”
“A piece of cake,” Chauvel replied. Chauvel jetted into Boulder, where we debriefed him, and then phoned the leader of the Brit mercs, Karl Penta, who got our adrenaline pumping.
“If you get down here in the next three days, you can get in on something big,” Karl hurriedly explained. We were on. How could we miss an anti-communist coup de main? We made calls to various manufacturers to round up miscellaneous equipment. Chauvel assured us that his connections could get us through French Customs in French Guiana. We had to infiltrate into Surinam from the neighboring French colony. with anything except guns and ammo. We were leaving in 48 hours. In a whirlwind two days, we Federal Expressed gear to Miami, and hastily got malaria pills, plane tickets and visas.
I took Derry Gallagher and Bob MacKenzie with me. Gallagher was a slim, blue-eyed blonde who was wound tighter than a watch spring. He was a Vietnam vet who was my SOF Assistant Director of Special Operations. MacKenzie, a Vietnam combat vet with many years in the Rhodesian SAS during their Bush War was a great one to watch your back and take out anyone trying to stick a knife in it. We headed to Cayenne, French Guiana, by way of Miami and Puerto Rico, or so I thought. We busted our ass and the bank when I decided to get a haircut. Rush was the name of the game. However, in Puerto Rico, we had sufficient lag-over time to get my not so golden locks, what was left of them, trimmed. As I relaxed in the barber chair, Gallagher stomped into the barbershop.
“Brown, you missed the flight,” he grumped. I had failed to take into account the change in time zones from Miami. Panic time. I would miss the action. MacKenzie and Chauvel caught the flight to French Guiana while leaving Gallagher behind to round up my sorry ass. There were no more direct flights to Cayenne until the following week. What to do? Catch a flight to Caracas and overnight, a flight to Rio and overnight the next day, a flight to Belem, Brazil with a connecting flight to Cayenne. Right? Wrong. In Rio, pompous immigration officials said. “No. No. No. Have to leave the country tomorrow.”
“But we just want to go to Belem and catch a connecting flight,” we argued to no avail.
Gallagher and I got to watch the Rio Carnival on TV from the inside of the immigration office. The next day we flew to Lima, then to Bolivia, then to Cayenne. The coup would not wait! Or so I thought.
Cayenne, administrative capital of French Guiana, was a slow-paced tropical town, hot and humid, with the required amount of sea and sun. The only eyebrow raisers for the jaded SOFers, until our guides finally showed up, were the bare-breasted French beauties lounging around the hotel pool. We had a week of impatient waiting before we were finally off to St. Laurent, at the head of the Maroni River across from Surinam, to link up with our guides to the guerrillas and the mercs. As mentioned, I kept a diary during our “sojourn”:
4 MARCH 1987
After a sleepless night in a roach-filled $6.00 room located over the town’s disco, which boasted a three-piece band and one chubby hooker with bad teeth, we overloaded our gear on a leaky pirogue and shoved off for guerrilla HQ.
“Government gunboat on the starboard,” Chauvel muttered.
Our adrenaline levels rose slightly as the gunboat moved out into mid-channel. However, we lost her in a maze of jungle river channels in a few klicks. I took to thinking about what our course of action should be if we were ambushed at a narrow portion of the river. Over the side? Not to worry, we were assured. Piranhas don’t attack unless there’s blood in the water. Perhaps we should just point our cameras toward the ambush and hope the bad guys realize we’re journalists?
16 MARCH 1987
I had a one-and-a-half-hour interview with Michel Van Rey, Ronny Bruns-wijk’s military adviser, graduate sociologist and former Surinamese Army lieutenant. The mercs considered him a “snake” whom Karl had threatened to kill, apparently because Van Rey wanted to get rid of the mercs. Van Rey stated that the guerrilla headquarters had radio contact with five of II guerrilla commandos scattered throughout the northeast of Surinam. He also provided an estimate of the situation, which boiled down to the guerrillas having insufficient arms to overthrow the Marxist regime headed by Desi Bouterse, which had been in power since 1980.
Lunch consisted of a few cans of whatever got thrown in the pot— beans, carrots, peas, sausages. A young guerrilla in a red beret, with whom I traded badges, was making a voodoo charm out of metal cable. The kid said the charm would have more power if it was made in the presence of a white man.
Earlier in the day, the French pilot contracted to fly a captured Cessna 204 flew a practice-bombing run with homemade rockets. They did not explode, as they did not land on the detonator due to the crude firing pins and the lack of fin stabilization. A ground party could not find all of those rockets and apparently they are still there, armed.
Karl was disillusioned with Brunswijk’s lack of aggression. He planned to move with 20 Hindus to the west, carry out an ambush and blow up a POL (petrol, oil, lubricants) facility. Karl said the Hindus spoke English and had a higher level of education. He envisioned organizing this group into a 200-man nucleus and seizing the predominantly Hindu western part of the country. The idea was to further shut the economy down. Karl planned to leave half the weapons captured in the ambush in a cache in the jungle; he would send two of Ronny’s men back to the cache, and the rest of the captured weapons would go with Karl and his Hindu cadre to the west. The plan sounded interesting, as Ronny was inactive.
The Mercs sincerely appreciated the web gear and equipment we had brought as they had none and desperately needed that equipment in order to facilitate their move to the west. Good rapport was established since arrival. Charlie Mosley, a three-tour veteran of the U.K.’s Coldstream Guards and who served with the Grey’s Scouts in Rhodesia, said Ronny had a “movie star” mentality. There were a number of reasons for him thinking this:
Ronny would replace the pilot of his plane and would taxi it down the tarmac after landing so his men would think he flew it.
His voodoo doctor, a Hindu, went into a trance and then said that Ronny should not go into battle.
A merc said Ron
ny fired bullets into a shirt, then had a man put it on to demonstrate that he is impervious to bullets and, therefore, Ronny had powerful voodoo.
Bush commandos believed that if they stood on one leg and put a leaf in their mouths they would be invisible to their enemies. Charlie told of four of them caught in the middle of the road by a government-armored vehicle. They utilized this technique and were all blown away. Perhaps they had the wrong type of leaf!
Ronny had blown up most of the rockets and bombs because he liked to make loud noises to impress his followers.
Karl captured a spy in St. Laurent and got him to confess to throwing grenades in Cayenne, which resulted in his control, the Surinamese consulate in Cayenne, being expelled. Ronny made the spy the jailer and storekeeper in his guerrilla headquarters.
The mercs were planning a homemade napalm air attack for Albina, located in Surinam, across the Marone river from St. Laurent, on Wednesday night. They planned on using an LPG canister with field-expedient drogue chute to stabilize the bomb into a nose-down attitude. They were to drop it on Albina, then they would strafe the Surinamese gunboat with the single guerrilla MAG out the door of the plane. The pilot didn’t know about this phase of the mission and we weren’t told how they were going to convince him to fly it. Perhaps with a pistol to the head?
The “plan” called for us to leave for St. Laurent by pirogue the day of the napalm attack so we could photograph the attack from across the river. We were then to link up with MacKenzie, who was going to be the gunner on the plane, after it landed at a small strip outside of St. Laurent. We were then to leave the shit hole and proceed to Cayenne. We needed to figure out commo with Karl so when we got back to Surinam at a later date, we could link up.
I Am Soldier of Fortune Page 35
