RW03 - Green Team

by Richard Marcinko

  The first report of communications came at 2232. They had a cellular phone inside, and they were using it to make an international phone call to Geneva. How did I know that? Because the passive cellular monitor Sir Roderick had installed had caught them as they punched the international access code, then 41, Switzerland, then 22, the Geneva area code. What the hell was in Geneva?

  They let the phone ring five times. When no one picked up, they dialed another number—this one in Cairo. Now I was really confused.

  “Mick—can we trace those international numbers?”

  “Sure.”

  I studied the digital readout and read them off to him. He scribbled everything down and handed the sheet of paper to a sergeant, who was back in less than half an hour with results. The Geneva number was a leased cellular phone—the kind you rent at airports for $50 a day plus calls. The other number was a ditto—except it was a Cairo exchange.

  I was confused—for about half a minute. Afghanistan. Tangos. Plane tickets. Travel documents. Maps and drawings. Lists of demands. I’d brought them back and handed them over to Mick for analysis, but things had happened so fast here that there’d been no time to get the results.

  Now, I didn’t need any analysis. I knew all too well what was happening.

  “Mick—”

  It all made perfect sense. The tangos weren’t making demands because it wasn’t on their schedule to make demands—yet. This was, I explained, but one part of a six-part operation. The guys inside were going to hook up electronically with the other five groups. Then, when they were tied together, they’d make their demands known.

  But not just to us here in London—they’d be dealing with the whole fucking world.

  Except—doom on you, tangos—Demo Dickie and his band of merry marauders had stymied their plans.

  This group was the one that had departed before I’d hit the terrorist camp. They didn’t realize their compadres were dog meat—that there’d be no answer when they dialed Geneva, Cairo, Moscow, or wherever.

  That gave us an upper hand—we knew something they didn’t. It also meant that we had to act quickly, before they realized that there would be no linkup.

  “Wonder.”

  “Yo.” Obviously, he was in a good mood because he was wearing rose-colored lenses in his shooting glasses.

  “How do you make somebody think their cellular isn’t working?”

  “Simple. Jam the frequency.”

  “Yeah—but I want them to think there’s a problem with the phone. Otherwise, they’ll waste the hostages and set off the fucking anthrax.”

  “You got a point, Holmes.” Wonder’s head swiveled left-right-left, right-left-right, while he pondered the possibilities. “Grid failure,” he finally pronounced. “We cut the power to the grid where all the local repeater stations are located. The phones’ll go dead.”

  That sounded pretty good to me. But Wonder wasn’t satisfied yet. He frowned and drummed his fingers on the table, then shook his head. “Nah—bag that shit.”

  “Why?” It sounded good to me.

  “Because cellular systems are set up to restart themselves—to go around electrical problems. They switch automatically from dead lines onto a working power grid. Like when there’s a power blackout at home—there may be no electricity, but the phones still work.”

  He was right. “So?”

  He crossed his arms in a passable imitation of Jack Benny. “I’m thinking, I’m thinking.” Then, a huge, shit-eating grin spread slowly across Wonder’s face. You could watch it unfold, like a sunrise. “Natural gas. A natural gas explosion would kill the repeaters. No way they could come back on-line for a while.”

  His knuckles rapped a paradiddle on the tabletop. “Here’s what we do—take one of the Brits’ EOD trucks. You know—one of their bomb-disposal units. Okay, we drop about three pounds of C-4 inside and set it off—but we leave the top lid open so the blast’ll channel straight up into the atmosphere where it won’t hurt anything, but the fucking thing will sound like a goddamn gas main going ka-boom. If that doesn’t convince the assholes there was a fucking explosion, nothing will. Then you jam their cellular—play ’em a recording that the system’s down. They’ll believe it.” He looked at me with a self-satisfied grin. “Whaddya think?”

  What did I think? I thought the boy was sick. I thought he was twisted. I knew he was brilliant.

  Mick wasn’t wasting time. “Consider it done.” He took Wonder by the earlobe and led him away to supervise the maneuver.

  It was a clever ploy. If we could convince the news media that other terrorists were striking in London at the same time as our boys at CINCUSNAVEUR, we could disorient them and use their confusion to our advantage.

  2352. The explosion must have awakened all of metropolitan London. It was big. And just as we’d hoped, there were immediate bulletins. The IRA actually took credit for the “bombing” in a phone call to Channel Four. The airwaves were filled with erroneous reports about casualties, all fed by Sir Roderick and his team of briefers.

  Our tangos nibbled the bait—the first thing they did was try to find out what the hell was happening. They must have panicked because guess what number they dialed. Okay—let me tell you. What came up on our digital readout was a phone that rang on the bedside table at Brookfield House in Hampstead.

  I love it when bad guys screw up. Now, we had concrete evidence—admissible evidence—of a connection between the tangos and Lord Brookfield. His ass was mine. I asked Mick to keep Brookfield on ice for me—and to cut his communications. He sent a troop and a Metropolitan Police squad up to Hampstead with orders to bottle the place up tight.

  Meanwhile, the bad guys played and played with their telephone. Of course, they never completed any calls because we were jamming their equipment. What they got was a lot of beeps, bells, and electronic hiccups, as well as an unctuous recorded message, which explained that cellular links were down because of an “unforeseen incident” (I liked that!), and that it might be some hours until they were restored.

  I checked in with our SAS eavesdroppers, who told me the tangos had swallowed the bait—they’d debated amongst themselves and decided to hold off doing anything until they could make contact with at least one of the other groups. That made me breathe a bit easier: we’d bought ourselves some time. Not a lot of time. I knew the bad guys would get impatient within a few hours. But at least we now had a window of opportunity—and I wasn’t about to let it slam closed on my fingers.

  I set things in motion. H hour would be 0400, when resistance would be at its lowest. You had to figure that the tangos were exhausted. They’d been on edge all day and were probably operating on pure adrenaline now.

  I’d been along this road before. When I commanded Red Cell, I learned that security troops are easy to wear down. Why? Because base commanders seldom provide their security people any bench strength. That means that the first string can be on its feet for days and days without any rest.

  While the defense sweated, Red Cell was pacing itself—probing here and there, then going back to the motel for a cold beer, a hot shower, and a few hours of shut-eye. They were ragged, exhausted, and frustrated. We were rested and well fed—we even had time for pussy.

  I knew we’d have to keep the tangos on edge. But I wasn’t about to make the mistake the FBI did during the Waco siege, when their attempts at disorienting psy-ops merely served to make the Branch Davidians all the more resolute. So, instead of doing things that said “Psychological Operation in Full Swing—prepare yourselves to be boarded” to the tangos, I went with subtlety. There were no choppers swooping overhead or loud atonal music played on rockband loudspeakers—some of the things that the FBI tried (and failed with) in Waco.

  Tonight, police cars with loud ougah-ougah sirens blasting would drive by CINCUSNAVAVEUR in a random but never-ending procession. To make sure the tangos developed migraine headaches, I sent a team of Special Branch police constables dressed in overalls into the street half
a block away and had them play chopsticks—using half a dozen jackhammers on steel plates to make the music.

  Meanwhile, we plugged our ears and took combat naps. I set the alarm for 0245.

  Before an op, everyone feels a certain amount of gut-wrenching, sphincter-puckering nervousness. I don’t care how seasoned, proficient, and competent you may be, how cool you are under fire, or how many times you’ve gone shooting and looting. Until you’re actually over the rail and the bullets are flying, you’re going to experience a few butterflies.

  So there was the usual unusual silence as we strapped and buckled ourselves into our assault gear. The only sounds I heard were the rip of Velcro straps being adjusted and readjusted, the metal slaap of submachine-gun bolts as the men slapped them and let them fall forward, and the scuffing of boots shuffling on the floor. Each man was lost in his own thoughts; each was preparing himself mentally for the tasks ahead.

  I looked over at Wonder as he checked each round before loading it in his Glock magazine. His lips were moving as if in silent prayer. No rosary for him, though: he was going over the sequence of events until he had it down cold. Rodent counted cadence on his fingers. He, too, was making mental notes. Nasty Grundle worked the length of abseil rope, checking it for flaws. The intensity of the moment showed on his face. Duck Foot tightened the laces of his high-top boots and then, satisfied with the way they felt, tied the ends in double knots and cut the excess cord. No way would his shoelaces hang up on a protruding nail or ledge.

  The solitary sulker was Tommy Tanaka, walking wounded. Intellectually, he understood that the hole in his thigh was bad enough to keep him from coming with us. The work would simply be too physically demanding, and there was no way I was going to risk the mission to satisfy his ego. He knew that. He understood it. But the SEAL in him chafed and bitched—he felt as if he were deserting us, and he let us know it. I would have liked nothing better than to say, “Tank—let’s go.” But being a CO means putting the mission ahead of everything else. So I let him curse me out. There was nothing to do but take the heat.

  We wore British assault equipment: Nomex fireproof coveralls and balaclavas, and SF10 respirators with integrated goggles that could be used in conjunction with SAS’s CT100 communications rig. Over the top of the coveralls, we strapped ourselves into ceramic body armor—more than twelve pounds per man, but worth it, as the reinforced plates we wore can defeat even the most advanced rounds. We used the British AC100 composite helmet as our cover because they were built to accommodate both the respirator and communications gear. A Velcro patch on the front of the vest held the two-inch mike-control button—big enough so that it could easily be pressed with a forearm.

  I would have preferred SEAL Team Six communications. We’ve miniaturized our comms more than the Brits have, so we don’t have to carry as much weight per man. But—as Mick put it succinctly—“buggers can’t be choosers—and you assholes are the poor buggers here.”

  I tell you, the man’s all heart.

  Mick and I ran the revised sequence one last time. No tunnels through the sewers, or Arleighgrams through the roof. We were going to Keep It Simple, Stupid. My SEALs and I would be the tip of the spear. We’d go over the Marriott roof to CINCUSNAVEUR, make our way high above the security cameras’ ability to focus, let ourselves down the side of the building to the sixth floor just behind the cornice camera on the building’s northwest side, cut through the bars silently, and make our way surreptitiously down to two, checking as we went for the anthrax. When we were in position, four SAS teams would hit the building simultaneously. Their assignments: rescue the hostages in the basement, and neutralize all tangos between the basement and the second floor. As SAS hit, my unit would move on the conference room and take down the hostage holders there.

  It was so KISS it would probably work. Unless, of course, we couldn’t get through the bars on six and had to abseil down to five, where we might run into a few tangos, which would spoil the surprise, which would allow the bad guys on two to hose the hostages. You get the idea.

  0344. We made our way up to the Marriott’s roof, climbed out, and began the crossing sequence. If it was cold, I didn’t know it: between the four layers of clothes and the pucker factor, I was sweating heavily. I heard Tommy T’s voice in my earpiece, telling me that it was all quiet on the western front. I liked getting good news.

  The ladder we were going to use to make the crossing was a twenty-two-foot aluminum (or, as they say in London, aluminium job—giving us two feet of security at each end. The feet and top were wrapped in foam and taped so that they wouldn’t scrape on brick and give us away.

  Things had been going too well so far. Mother Nature, knowing how well I like a challenge, had called in some rain. What had, half an hour ago, been a mild drizzle, now gained in intensity, moving up the scale to moderate downpour. It’s amazing how slippery an aluminum ladder can become when it’s soaking wet, and you are wearing thirty-five pounds of equipment and carrying thirty more. I went first. Instead of walking across from rung to rung, much like you’d do on a rope bridge, I was reduced to hands-and-knees crawling, trying to balance my gear, my weapons, as well as all my other sundry supplies, while the goddamn ladder shook and quaked beneath me as if King fucking Kong was jostling one end.

  Who was it said getting there is half the fun? Please tell me—I’d like to shoot the optimistic cocksucker.

  Once I crossed, things got easier. I held the far end in place while the others crossed. Unable to restrain himself, Tommy T had come out on the roof just after I crossed over, and he held the far end of the ladder while Duck Foot, my favorite mountaineer and the last man in the stick, sauntered across the slippery metal with nary a second thought.

  I saluted Tommy with my middle finger and gave him a silent signal to get the hell back inside. He gave me a Fuck You Very Much double bent-arm wave—it looks like a SEAL version of the Funky Chicken—and withdrew. Good—I needed him inside, on the radio, keeping me informed. He had to keep tabs on the security cameras and audio monitors so I’d have some idea about what the bad guys were up to.

  We made our way single file, just below the ridgeline of CINCUSNAVEUR’s roof, one foot at a time probing the wet slate so that our progress wouldn’t be interrupted by any slip-sliding. It was not fun. The fucking roof was encrusted with bird crap, which made the already-wet stone even more slippery. One false step, and someone would roll off the edge and slam down seven floors. And where would our element of surprise be then?

  Halfway to our goal, the roof line changed. The top of the building had been reinforced to hold three huge air-conditioning units that cooled the comm center below. We worked our way around them, making sure not to disturb the dozens of sensitive antennas and satellite dishes placed in clusters.

  Below, two police cars raced north on North Audley Street, their ready electronic horns blasting atonally. I peered over the top of the roof, toward the square. I couldn’t see them, but I knew that at least one SAS sniper team was following our progress through their 6X42, night-enhanced scopes. It did me a lot of good to know that we had some reinforcements out there.

  0356. Above the northwest cornice. With Nasty and Wonder holding my feet, I wormed my way down to the edge of the roof, right above the security camera. It was pointed east—down the alley. No security camera covered the southern front of the building. I knew that because I’d recommended having one installed when I’d brought Red Cell through London a few years ago to do a security study at the request of the admiral. Of course, the four-striped admiral’s aide to whom I’d posited my report promptly ’posited it in the round file. Why? Because he held the title of security coordinator and believed that the discovery of even one chink in his precious Maginot Line might ruin his chances for selection to admiral.

  I windmilled my arm and they drew me back up the canted roof. We uncoiled two thirty-foot lengths of nylon rope and looped them around the base of an air-conditioning unit. The end of one rope I took in my
hands so I could tie it to the window bars. The other rope was attached as a safety line to the abseil belt cinched tightly around my waist.

  Headfirst I went over the edge of the roof, Nasty and Wonder again holding my feet and Duck Foot and Rodent paying out the safety line. The barred window was four feet below the gutter, and by the time I reached it, I felt like fucking Spider Man—except that he, as a cartoon character, has the advantage of sci-fi suction-cup gloves, while I wore real-world Nomex that slipped on the wet surfaces.

  Quickly, I took the rope and looped it around the bars with two half-hitches. I was able to get off a muffled “Okay” by pressing the transmit button on my right tit against the wall of the building, and I watched as the rope tightened against the bars. Good—they’d tie it off up there.

  I let go and swung free. Did you know that working upside down can make you light-headed? Well, friends, it can, and does. In some perverted corner of my mind, all I wanted to do now was swing like a goddamn pendulum, back and forth for a few minutes, because it seemed like fun to do.

  I shook my head to clear it and got back to work. Around my waist was a ballistic nylon fanny pack, which I now unzipped. Secured inside was a small pressurized bottle, to which was attached a three-foot length of hose. The hose ended in a small version of an acetylene cutting torch. There was a built-in igniter, too.

  There are times when you want to get inside somewhere without using a shotgun or an explosive charge to blow a door, because the sound will give you away. My old friend Chargin’ Charlie Beckwith had first ordered this minitorch cutting tool for Delta Force back in the eighties. It is still in use today with CT units all around the world.

  I turned the valve, pointed the nozzle away from me, and hit the igniter. The thing came to life with a fwoomp—a brilliant blue-white point of light. Quickly, I started on the farthest bar.