3
FROM THE MOMENT WE RECEIVED THE ORDER to plan Kurt Muse’s rescue, Delta didn’t see taking down Modelo as a big deal. We really didn’t. Noriega’s thugs were experts at torture, but they were amateur soldiers. We felt we could strike quickly, grab the “Precious Cargo” (Muse), and be gone before the PDF could react.
But we did have two concerns. Noriega’s military headquarters, the Comandancia, sat right next to the prison. If we inserted by helicopter, PDF soldiers walking regular guard rotation would likely send some stray rounds zinging our way. We also worried about other Americans caught outside U.S. bases. The Pineapple had been ratcheting up harassment of Americans living in the Canal Zone. When he found out we’d snatched his political prize out from under his nose, no American would be safe.
In May 1989, Noriega allowed the presidential election to go ahead, and it appeared that the popular uprising aided by La Voz would win the day. As the vote count proceeded, the three-candidate ticket running against Noriega’s puppet candidates pulled into the lead. Immediately, Noriega tried to rig the results, but his fake tallies arrived at the election centers too late: The real results were already public and the anti-Noriega ticket won. Jubilation broke out in the streets, and the next day, the winners, including president-elect Guillermo Endara, rolled through Panama City in a motorcade. But Noriega’s goon squad intercepted the winners and beat them to a pulp. Pictures of the bloodied men were broadcast all over the world, bringing Noriega’s brutal rule to the world’s attention.
Noriega named a longtime associate, Francisco Rodriguez, as acting president. But the U.S. declared Endara the real president. That was when Delta’s mission was expanded: Now President Bush wanted U.S. Special Operations not only to snatch Muse, but also to take down Manuel Noriega’s entire regime.
4
FOR MONTHS, tensions between the two countries boiled up then subsided before heating up again as America alternated between saber rattling and diplomacy. During the most volatile times, Delta would deploy to Howard AFB in Panama City, and stand by in case the mission became a go. I spent time traveling between Howard, Quarry Heights, and a couple of the American installations in the Canal Zone. I had trained with Delta in the jungles of Panama many times and knew the country well. I thought it absolutely beautiful.
The tropical air there swelters almost year round. It’s just a question of whether you’re going to be hot and wet from sweat, or hot and wet from rain. Still, the country’s quaint, narrow streets, the hacienda-style architecture, and lush jungle captivated me. I often found myself thinking, though, what a shame it was that such a brutal man controlled it with fear and oppression. A metaphor for Noriega’s regime could be seen at the Comandancia: Graveyards flanked the small military complex on two sides, and the headquarters stood across the street from a pathetic barrio, where entire families huddled in rude shacks built of cardboard, corrugated plastic, and hubcaps.
Because Muse had possibly broken Panamanian law (such as it was), America was in no position to demand his release. But since Annie Muse was a DoD school teacher, that made Kurt Muse a DoD dependent entitled to full legal protection under the Canal Treaty. That enabled the U.S. to strong-arm Noriega and the PDF into allowing regular visits from an American doctor and a lawyer.
Under the terms of a deal negotiated by Jimmy Carter, the U.S. was about to surrender the canal to Panamanian control. Even Noriega wasn’t crazy enough to want to screw that up. So, three times a week, Marcos Ostrander, a tough Army attorney, visited Muse in Modelo, as did Jim Ruffer, a fighter pilot turned Air Force flight surgeon.
Officially, Ostrander and Ruffer were there to ensure that the PDF didn’t abuse an American in their custody. But secretly, the two men also carried messages between Muse and his family. Even more secretly, the doctor and the lawyer gathered information for Delta. How many guards patrolled the corridor where Muse’s cell was located? How are they armed? Which ones are Noriega loyalists? Could any guards be turned? We even had the doctor and the lawyer count their steps as they walked from place to place within the prison. After each meeting with Muse, analysts at Quarry Heights debriefed them, and passed us the information at Bragg. In return, we relayed them more questions to ask.
The more Delta learned about Muse, the more we liked him. The information coming back from Ostrander and Ruffer told us he was tough and resilient. We also respected the fact that he had been able to withstand some of the hell the PDF had put him through before the U.S. intervened.
Like when they murdered a man in front of Muse to try to get him to confess. Before they tossed him in prison, the PDF held Muse in a small room in another facility. When Muse refused to admit he was an American spy, three Panamanian Defense Force soldiers hustled a Colombian man into the room.
Driving him forward like a tackle dummy, all three soldiers smashed the Colombian’s face into a brick wall, shattering his teeth and the bones in his face. Then one soldier grabbed the prisoner’s right arm, wrenched it backward and radically upward, pinning his wrist between his shoulder blades. The prisoner howled in pain. Another soldier twisted his left arm into the same excruciatingly unnatural position. The prisoner screamed. To snap handcuffs on, the soldiers had to get the Colombian’s wrists to meet between his shoulder blades, so they jerked hard on both his arms at the same time. Both his shoulders popped out of their sockets.4
The Colombian screamed like a dying animal.
“Have you been watching?” a PDF lieutenant told Muse. “This is your future.”5
Then, as the Colombian begged for his life, the three soldiers beat him into the human equivalent of ground meat. Over and over, they drove their steel-toed boots into his testicles, kidneys, ribs, and gut. They stomped on his head, tearing the flesh from his face with soles of their boots. They ground their heels into his eyes. And when the room smelled of blood, and the prisoner could scream no more but only moan softly, the PDF lieutenant crushed the man’s chest with a lug wrench.
He made sure Muse watched the Colombian die.
We knew what kind of hell Muse had been through and we respected him for it. After awhile, Delta pinned the big guy with an affectionate nickname: Moose.
5
BY AUTUMN 1989, Noriega had stepped up his harassment of American military personnel. By then, Special Operations engineers had constructed a three-quarter scale model of Carcel Modelo in Middle-of-Nowhere, Florida. Over and over, Delta’s assault teams blew the cupola door, poured down the stairwell to Moose’s replica third-floor cell, blasted the lock off, and spirited the Precious Cargo away in an MH-6 Little Bird, double-tapping all PDF actors who got in the way. Easy pickins.
In October, an elite Panamanian police unit staged a coup, toppling the Noriega regime. But by the end of the day, the Pineapple had grabbed the reins of power again. The days and weeks that followed brought two developments: First, Carcel Modelo rang with the screams of torture as Noriega sent a steady stream of “political prisoners” to their doom. Second, relations between Panama and the U.S. broke down completely as Noriega blamed America for the coup. The Pineapple made militant speeches bragging about the bloody end U.S. soldiers would come to if they took on his PDF. Then he made his boldest threat yet: Any American attempt to unseat him from power would be met with violent resistance. And the first person to die would be Kurt Muse.
To show that he meant it, Noriega ordered that a chair be placed outside the bars of Muse’s cell. That chair was to be occupied at all times by a guard whose only job was to wait for the order to put a bullet in Moose.
6
BY NOVEMBER, we had deployed down to Howard several times (rehearsing the prison takedown using a DoD elementary school as a stand-in for Modelo), then returning to Bragg when tensions subsided. During the first week of December, we held a big exercise with the Rangers and the rest of the task force. Operation Just Cause, the removal of Manuel Noriega from power, would begin with Acid Gambit, the rescue of Kurt Muse.
After that, a
n entire menu of mayhem would thunder down on the Pineapple. SOUTHCOM General Max Thurman’s battle plan called for 4,000 Special Ops troops—Green Berets, SEALs, Rangers, Air Force commandos, and us—to execute raids all over Panama in the early hours of the invasion.
The entire Just Cause task force consisted of 22,500 troops, plus tanks, APCs (Armored Personnel Carriers), AC-130 Spectre gunships, fighters, and six F-117A Stealth bombers. The 82nd Airborne would storm El Racener prison and rescue its sixty-four captives. The SEALS would descend on Punta Patilla Airfield and disable Noriega’s private aircraft. The 7th Infantry Division was tasked with hitting targets on the Atlantic side of the canal and elements of the 5th Infantry Division were assigned missions in support of the Special Ops elements. LTG Carl Stiner from the 18th Airborne Corps would be the tactical commander of all operations.
The task force, under the command of Major General Wayne Downing, rehearsed it all, debriefing and fine-tuning along the way. Then Downing got word from the Pentagon: The situation in Panama seems stable for now. Stand down for Christmas.
Yeah. Right.
On Sunday, December 17, my home phone rang.
“Jerry, it’s General Downing. Looks like we’re a go,” he said. “They just had an incident in Panama City. The Panamanian police killed a Marine lieutenant named Paz and have physically abused his wife. President Bush has made the decision—we’re going to execute Just Cause. Start assembling as quickly as you can. We’re deploying tonight.”
“Yes, sir. I’m on it.”
I broke the connection and dialed again, reaching the staff duty officer. “Execute the unit alert.”
Pete was out of town, but I was able to reach him on the satellite phone in his car.
“Come on back as quickly as you can,” I told him. “It’s a go.”
“I’m on my way,” he said. No more details were necessary.
Within thirty minutes, I was on my way, too. That’s the way it often was: The phone rang and within minutes, I had to kiss Lynne and the kids goodbye and walk out the door. Though I’d been with Delta for eleven years by then, April, Randy, and Aaron still didn’t know exactly what I did for a living. They just thought their dad was in the Army and had to travel a lot. I knew my comings and goings were a strain on Lynne.
I headed for the Delta compound. By then, Delta had increased its numbers to three operational squadrons—about two hundred men—and about three hundred support personnel, including logistics, communications, and engineering. Within four hours, about half of us were strapped into a pair of C-141s and on takeoff roll out of Pope AFB. Four hours after that, we touched down at Howard AFB. And three hours after that, the hangar had been transformed from an empty shell into a fully operational base, buzzing with activity. The JOC, or joint operations center, was up and running, as were training and planning areas. In one corner, the logistic folks set up a couple hundred cots in case anybody had a moment to grab some sleep.
The aviators from the 160th set up in the hangar with us. The Rangers were going to fly in from CONUS and parachute directly into the fight on D-Day. The SEALs would operate out of Rodman Naval Base, located about a mile away on the Panama Canal. Also bivouacked in the Canal Zone’s various American installations: The 5th Mechanized Division and various logistics and support groups.
The sheer mass of firepower now assembling meant one thing: The Pineapple had better get busy mixing his last margarita.
7
TO REDUCE OUR PROFILE, we kept the entire force inside the hangar. A lot of Panamanians worked on the base, and we were pretty sure some might be occasional or even regular informants for the PDF and local police. We wanted to maintain the element of surprise and felt fairly sure that our arrival hadn’t seemed out of the ordinary, since we’d flown in and out so frequently during the year. To Noriega, our arrival on December 18 should’ve appeared to be just another batch of C-141s landing and offloading the same few hundred guys who had always simply flown back out again.
On December 19, we deployed snipers up to Quarry Heights. They dug into strategic firing positions that would enable them to pick off targets along the Little Birds’ flight path to the prison. Leading the sniper element was Pat Hurley, Pete Schoomaker’s and my tent mate during the Delta selection course. Throughout the day, he reported movements at Carcel Modelo and along the flight path.
H-Hour was set for midnight. All day long, a warm breeze carried the scent of ocean salt through the hangar, which hummed with the sound of planning meetings as the various mission commanders hunkered down with their elements. Two main factors were critical to my op, the rescue of Kurt Muse, code-named Acid Gambit: The helo assault on the prison roof, and the complete destruction of Noriega’s comm center, located in the Comandancia next door.
In the hangar, we ran a communications rehearsal to make sure all our equipment was up and running. We ran tabletop drills of the assault on the prison. We had been rehearsing for months, but it never hurt to go over the finer points one more time. Pete and I met with leaders from the SEALs, Rangers, the 18th Airborne Corps and the 82nd Airborne division to make sure their pieces of the mission were fully coordinated. In another corner of the hangar, I met with the planners for the two Spectre gunships. Their mission was to take out the Comandancia.
“The key is that when we call for fire, the first round you are to fire is into the communications center in the Comandancia,” I told the Spectre planners, pointing to a precise spot on a map of Noriega’s fortress. “Here’s the comm center. I want you to put a 105 round right through the roof. If you have to put a second round in there, do it. But make sure you knock it out so that Noriega can’t control the PDF.”
Next, I met with the crews of the MH-6s, the Little Bird guns that would lead the rooftop assault on the prison. One of the known threats was a seventeen-story building flanking the flight path. We knew the building contained apartments, many occupied by PDF soldiers and their families. We also knew from intel those soldiers were armed and, as crazy as it sounds, even had crew-served weapons, including M-60 machine guns.
The lead MH-6 pilot was Randy Jones, a cheerful, stocky guy from West Point, Mississippi, who was the undisputed Davy Crockett of Little Bird gun aviation. Randy could take out an individual man-sized target using nothing more than a grease pencil mark on his windshield as a site. The thing about Randy was that he was always, always smiling—and not just to cover up any sort of dark side. He was a genuinely happy man. To meet him, you never would have guessed he was also absolutely lethal.
“Whatever you do, check out that seventeen-story building,” I told Randy. “If anyone’s firing at us from there, take them out. Once you cross the roof, I want you to punch rockets into the Comandancia. Take out anything you think is a threat, particularly their armored vehicles.”
Randy looked at me and grinned. “That I know how to do.”
Day melted into night and H-Hour drew closer. By 10 p.m., Delta’s operators were in full battle gear and ready to roll, and the 160th aircrews were ready to board their aircraft. Then at about 11:15 p.m., Pat Hurley checked in again from Quarry Heights.
“Looks like the PDF is setting up triple-A at the road junction outside the prison,” he told a Delta communicator. “Fifty cal.”
Noriega knows we’re coming.
That was confirmed minutes later when Wayne Downing walked over to Pete and me. “Well, guys, looks like they know we’re coming,” he said. “The American media has been reporting that the 82nd Airborne launched from Bragg.”
So much for the element of surprise. A free press cuts both ways. That was fine. We’d deal with it.
“Can you move the operation up?” Downing asked us.
“Yes, sir,” Pete said. “We can launch at any time.”
“Good. Let’s see if we can go anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes early.”
8
AT 2215 HRS, all of our folks and most of the aviators gathered before a platform at the end of the hangar. Pete
got up there and spoke about the mission, about the people of Panama, about liberating them from a dictator.
Then he said, “Now I’m going to ask Colonel Boykin to pray.”
Pete and I never discussed that. The tradition of pre-mission prayer that Charlie began now seemed to have become a torch the Delta commanders passed along to one another. This time our group was larger, about five hundred people in all.
I climbed up on the platform. “You know, when you’re going into combat, you have to depend on each other,” I said. “And you also need to depend on God, not only for success but for your own protection. Let’s join together and ask for God’s hand to be upon us tonight.”
Then I prayed for our protection and the success of the mission. Bucky had retired by then, so I dusted off my singing skills and launched the first few bars of “God Bless America.” Five hundred voices lifted the lyrics to the roof of the metal hangar, and the huge space echoed like a concert hall.
Then the Delta operators, wearing jungle camouflage for this mission, and the aviators, in olive-drab green, began streaming from the hangar to the flightline. I headed out to the command-and-control bird, a Black Hawk, and took my seat at the communications console with the rest of the crew. As I settled into my seat, I silently said another prayer for the success of our mission and for the safety of the man we meant to rescue.
In addition to the command-and-control helo, the Spectres and Randy Jones’s four Little Bird guns, the firepower lifting off from Howard that night included two more Black Hawks and four Little Birds carrying the prison assault element on the pods. Commanding the element was Lieutenant Colonel Eldon Bargewell, who as a staff sergeant in Vietnam was wounded four times, earning the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions during heavy combat. I was honored to serve with him. It seemed that again and again, God was answering my prayer to serve with men of valor.
Jerry Boykin & Lynn Vincent Page 18
