In fact, most of today’s missions are conceived, designed, and executed by war gaming and computer database statistical models. Then, after suitable deliberation by a bunch of managerial assholes (during which time the situation on the ground changes by 100 percent, of course), the shooters are, by the grace of these systems-analyst-Piled-higher-and-Deepers, allowed to go out and try to accomplish a small percentage of their mission—without hurting anybody, of course.
And how do these portion-control war gamers set real-life mission requirements? The answer too often is: by using still more toys. Example? You want an example? Okay. Today, instead of sending SEALs, Blanketheads—SEAL-speak for Army Special Forces—or Force Recon Marines to snoop and poop, the portion-control crowd do reconnaissance by using RPVs—Remote Pilotless Vehicles—ditsy model airplanes with TV cameras in their bellies flown over the target area to send pictures back.
But what happens when a remote-controlled, pilotless plane takes a picture of a beach and it looks like sand, but it actually is quicksand, your four-starred panjandrumcy?
A clusterfuck similar to the Bay of Pigs happens, my son.
And what happens when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says, “Please, fellas, be careful not to wax any Iranians, and by the way that’s an order and if you disobey it you’ll get court-martialed,” your six-striped worship?
Desert One is what happens, my hairy-assed Frogman.
And what happens when the computer database statistical model says there’ll be calm seas and no winds, your flag-frocked grace?
Mr. Murphy of Murphy’s Law fame will hijack your operation and four SEALs will drown off the shores of Grenada, my child.
And what happens when the secretary of defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the four-star CENTCOM commander believe in their hearts and souls that SEALs and Special Forces are just a bunch of kill-crazy cowboys, and besides, they’re apprehensive about absorbing the 40 to 50 percent SpecWar casualties the statistical models predict because it would look bad for them politically? What happens then, your scrambled-egg-hatted majesty?
Saddam fucking Hussein gets off easy is what happens, you worthless shit-for-brains numb-nuts no-load geek, and nothing changes inside Iraq.
My roguish reverie was interrupted by a slow, low drawl. “Captain Marcinko, I see you’re as handy with your fists as ever.”
I swiveled on the bar stool. I recognized the beautiful gold-colored ostrich boots—as well as the face and the voice.
“I’VE ALWAYS LIKED SITTING ON THE CAN ALONE,” LC STRAWhouse said as matter-of-factly as if we were old friends. “When I was a kid, the outhouse was the only place I ever got to go to think.”
Not very many of us remember outhouses anymore. I do. We had one in back of our first house in Lansford, Pennsylvania—a ramshackle row house owned by the coal mining company where my father, my uncles, and my maternal grandfather, Joe Pavlik, all worked. “Was yours a one-holer or two-holer?”
“Aw, hell, we were too poor to build more than a one-holer, Dick—ya mind if I call ya Dick, Captain?”
I shook my head.
“Good—and you just call me LC, okay? Well, then, Dick, the bottom line is that sometimes the fellas that work for me get a little overprotective, y’know, and when I tell ’em I want to be alone in the crapper so’s I can think, they take me absolutely literally. Willy Bob—that’s the one you banged up some—was that way.” LC Strawhouse shook his head. “Young people. No sense of proportion. In fact, proportion was what I talked about today at the Association luncheon. Didja get a chance to hear me?”
I told him that I’d arrived almost five hours late and missed his lunch appearance.
That didn’t appear to bother him. “Well, just so long’s you’re around for the banquet tomorrow—I’m gonna get ’em so worked up they’re gonna be runnin’ through walls to change things in Washington.”
I must have seemed skeptical, because he smiled the kind of ingratiating smile you see on great salesmen and clapped me on the shoulder. “You come by afterward, too. Bunch o’ people been tellin’ me the two of us should get together and chaw the fat.”
I wondered who the bunch of people were, but wasn’t about to ask. “Sounds good to me,” I said noncommittally.
LC continued his monologue. “They say you got big balls, you ruffle lots of feathers, and you get things done. I like those qualities. I like the way you dealt with them tangos over in London, too—decisive. You’re a man o’ war, Dick—and there aren’t many like you anymore.”
“Fewer and fewer shooters all the time,” I said.
He grinned. “That category could include you, too, right?”
I didn’t understand what he was getting at, and told him so.
“Well, considering the fact that you’re always in deep shit with the Navy, you might want to be thinkin’ about a new line of work sometime in the near future. That’s why we should talk—see if we can work something out.”
“Maybe.” I asked where he was staying.
Strawhouse smiled. “Got me the penthouse suite upstairs—kinda like livin’ in my foyer back home, but it’ll do. There’ll be a few folks droppin’ by for vittles and fatchaw. Why don’t you come at, oh, ’bout twenty-two hundred or so. Just tell the young fella at the door I’m expecting you.”
“LC, there’s something about the young fellas you hire to stand in front of doors that makes me nervous,” I said.
LC Strawhouse laughed. “Point taken,” he said. “But you won’t have no more trouble—I’ll see to that.”
He reached over, grabbed the bar check that sat behind my Bombay glass, and handed it to someone behind him without even looking. Now that, friends, is confidence—just the fact that he knew someone would be there was incredible. It’s the kind of close-knit, small-unit behavior I try to encourage in my men.
I looked around—a quick recon—because it had occurred to me that I was with someone who was about as famous as anybody in America, and we were standing at the bar, and nobody was asking for his autograph, or barging in on our conversation.
I saw that we were in the middle of a protective bubble. There were three yards of air between the two of us and anybody else at the bar. All the other patrons had simply been moved away—so quietly and efficiently that I hadn’t noticed until now.
I congratulated LC on his security, which brought a smile to his craggy face.
“I tend to hire ex-Delta troopers and SEALs, Dick. And they stay current because I make sure they enroll in Special Forces reserve units, and they train at my place in the desert. Besides, they got a damn good boss.”
He stuck a long finger in the air, then crooked it vaguely in our direction. “Yo—Deppity Dawg, front and center.”
A heavyset specter in an ill-fitting gray pinstripe suit, blue button-down, and thick-soled brogues emerged from the shadows, “Hello, Dick,” Major General Elwood T. Dawkins growled ominously. “Long time no see.”
The second year I commanded SEAL Team Six, Dawg Dawkins became the CO of Delta Force.
When Charlie Beckwith led Delta, I had an open invitation to send my SEAL platoons down to Bragg regularly so our men could cross-train. That is a polite way of saying my guys and Charlie’s guys would fuck with one another for about a week. They’d stage live-fire hostage rescue exercises, compete fast-roping off choppers, and hold one-on-one sniping contests. The final events, which Charlie and I habitually led from the front, were the ten-mile pub crawl, followed by the two-day hangover.
Then Dawg took command of Delta. He got the job because his rabbi, a four-star, grade-A, U.S. government-inspected, ruby red sphincter named Jacques Malone, took over the Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base. Dawg had been Frère Jacques’s chief of staff and head ass-kisser. In return for his loyalty, he was given command of Delta.
Within days, the mood down at Fort Bragg changed. It was as if a thundercloud had suddenly blown over the Stockade. Dawg was one of those o
fficers who’d spent more time on staff than in combat—he’d been in Vietnam for less than six months, and out in the field for less than eight weeks—and he just didn’t think like a warrior. As a CO, Dawg was a lot less willing to share information with me, and with other SpecWar commanders, than Charlie had been. It was, we began to think, as if he saw us more as adversaries than colleagues.
Well, friends, there’s a problem with that. SpecWarriors have got to stick together, because we already work at a huge disadvantage. The conventional military—and it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking Army, Navy, Marines, or Air Farce here—doesn’t particularly like snake eaters of any pattern, stripe, or spot.
Another thing: I have always taken the point of view that as a SpecWarrior, I should have no future except as a SEAL—an operator. I wear my scars proudly. I’ve never wanted an admiral’s stars the way others have. When I was a rowdy UDT enlisted man, I once told a four-striper that I’d rather be a chief in the Teams than an admiral—because I’d get more done and have more fun. When I became an ossifer, the most important job I believed I could ever get would be to command a SEAL team and lead men into battle. God has been good to me—he has given me that opportunity not once, not twice, but more than half a dozen times.
But Dawg Dawkins, I realized soon after he’d assumed command of Delta, had never earned scars. All he’d ever wanted were stars.
Our relationship defined itself when he grudgingly accepted my challenge for a head-to-head competition just like the ones I’d done with Charlie. After a month of negotiation, I flew a platoon of my very best dirtbags down to Bragg, and we went at it for a week.
It was nose to nose right up until the last day—that was when we were scheduled to do live-fire, dynamic room entry in Delta’s five-story, modular kill house. In Special Air Service fashion, Dawg and I played hostages. The theory goes that if you’re not comfortable letting your men shoot in your direction, you don’t deserve to lead them.
The rules allowed me to set the scenario for Delta, and for him to do the same for SEAL Team Six. Since the home team bats last, we went first. He gave us a pretty conventional problem: three hostages in an upper-floor embassy office, held by six hostage takers. Dawg and I were positioned on the floor, next to a desk. Frankly, it was pretty much a mediocre variation of the SAS assault at Princes Gate in London, and my men, who’d debriefed the SAS Pagoda troopers who had performed the rescue, breezed through it.
They did their preliminary search well. They used silent drills to position tiny cameras so they could see where everybody was. They ran miniature mikes up through the walls and crawl spaces, so they could keep track of the “tangos.”
Then, after they’d checked, double-checked, triple-checked, and locked Mr. Murphy in a closet, one squad rappelled off the roof and came through the windows with flashbangs and CS gas; the other blew the door. It took them seven seconds to complete the mission from the “go” signal.
It was our turn. I gave Dawg a real nasty: five hostage takers and three hostages on a Gulfstream-III jet. It was a bitch of a scenario because the interior of the Gulfstream’s fuselage is small and narrow, and visibility—hence target acquisition—becomes a huge problem for the assault force. Then I made the situation worse: two of the tangos and one of the hostages, I dictated, would be women.
Why did that make things tough? It is because no matter how well your guys have been conditioned, no matter how much they have worked at it, it is harder to shoot a woman than it is to shoot a man. In point of fact, terrorists know this—and female tangos have been tremendously successful, because in that tenth-of-a-second delay when you hesitate because they are women, they will wax your ass.
Moreover, Dawg’s entry teams would have to make a split-second decision about which of the females they encountered were the tangos, and which were the hostages. I didn’t tell him that the nasty “girls” (actually, they were mannequins) wouldn’t be carrying guns. Instead, they’d be holding small, electronic detonators.
My guys played the tango role well. They frisked us thoroughly. And guess what? They discovered a tiny radio transmitter in Dawg’s clothes.
Oops—that’s breaking the rules. Of course, in SpecWar, there are no rules. So, my command master chief, a brazen, copper-topped dirtbag I’ll call Two Dogs, appropriated the transmitter efficiently and quietly before Dawg had a chance to say anything untoward.
From the playful look on his face, I knew what Two Dogs was about to do. He was going to broadcast all sorts of false information to the opposition. Well, all’s fair in war and war—and if you’re a hostage rescue team, you’d better factor disinformation into your game plan.
My men tied Dawg and me in adjoining seats, facing forward. Opposite us they placed a dummy representing a female tango holding a detonator. In the rear-facing seat directly behind Dawg’s head was the female hostage—another dummy—clutching a small, rectangular purse. Directly behind me was the second lady tango mannequin, a detonator that resembled a handbag in her lap.
It took them only about half an hour to do their recon. That is a very short time, and it occurred to me that perhaps Delta was relying on information from the transmitter. Except, it wasn’t Dawg broadcasting to them, but Master Chief Two Dogs.
Now you’re probably wondering why the folks on the receiving end couldn’t tell the difference between their own CO, and my master chief. The answer is because these minimikes are normally concealed under layers of clothing, and hence you don’t get much voice quality. What you hear is intermittent. It’s not the kind of information you should base a mission on—it is simply an ancillary intel source that can be factored in to help you understand what you’re up against.
Then they hit. Ka-bloom—hatches and windows blew and the tear-gas flashbangs went off. Despite my eye and ear protection I was blinded and deafened. I knew if I hadn’t been wearing anything, my eardrums would have ruptured from the concussion.
They came in well—swarmed just like they’d been trained to do. Then the CS gas got under my goggles and my eyes began to tear. I could hear the blam-blam, blam-blam of double-taps.
Fuuuuck—a round cut through the seat between me and Dawg, and my right shoulder and neck burned like hell. Some son of a bitch had shot me.
It was all over in seconds. They brought in fans to vent the CS gas, and a medic to stop my bleeding. The good news was that the fat .45-caliber round hadn’t hit any tendons, bones, or nerves—it passed through the flesh of my neck, leaving a big, ugly, painful hole. And although it hurt like a son of a bitch and bled like a busted dam, it wasn’t serious—I’d cure it later with a hefty double dose of Dr. Bombay on the rocks.
In fact, I told everybody it was more critical that Dawg’s Delta troopers had “killed” the female hostage and rescued the baddie with the detonator, than that some dumb asshole had put a shot through my neck while missing the tango dummy altogether. Of course, if it had been a SEAL who’d screwed up like that I probably would have killed him. But then, I’ve always demanded more of SEALs than I have of Blanketheads.
The other crucial point was why they had fucked up so badly. One reason was because they’d relied on the bad information Master Chief Two Dogs had slipped to them on the purloined radio transmitter. Instead of sneaking and peeking and getting their intel the hard way, they’d taken a short cut—and it had led them astray. Remember when I told you they’d taken too brief a time doing their recon? Well, they had. And that’s what I said to Dawg, too.
Dawg was furious. He didn’t like the results at all. He insisted that we do it all over again so his guys could score better.
I, however, was having none of it. He’d tried to cheat, we’d caught him at it, and skinned him alive. And anyway, these mission profiles were supposed to resemble real life—and in real life, there’s no going back.
So, I gave him my opinion in my normal, diplomatic bedside manner. “Fuck you, cockbreath—you lose.”
As you can imagine, SEAL Team Six and De
lta never joint-trained again. And Dawg? He built himself a command. Charlie Beckwith’s Delta had been lean and mean: 200 men, all of them shooters. By the time Dawg vacated the CO’s office, there were 475 Delta troopers, and another 300 support types. His empire was complete with bureaucrats churning out hundreds of useless memos, studies, and reports that worked their way up the chain of command. He must have impressed a few people, because Dawg got his star. In fact, he finished out his career as the JSOC twostar—the major general in charge of the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg. And when the Navy came after me back in the late eighties, Major General Elwood P. Dawkins made sure that NIS was given access to every bit of unflattering information about me contained in JSOC files.
He’d aged badly. He’d gone from burly to beefy—the sort of suety look you get from too many expense account steak lunches and not enough exercise. It was accentuated because he’d kept the whitewalls and the buzz haircut, except for the fact that it had gone gray and was pretty sparse on top.
The Dawg stuck a paw in my direction.
I looked at it but didn’t do anything.
LC’s coyote eyebrows went up about six inches. “My, oh my,” he said, “I guess you boys have a past.”
“We’ve had our ups and downs,” Dawg said dryly. He paused. “Hear you’re the one who’s killing hostages these days, Dick.”
I couldn’t let that pass unchallenged. “Waxed a fucking unknown who was carrying a fucking pistol. You never could get the facts straight, could you, Elwood.” I turned away and finished the last of my Bombay.
Dawg curled his upper lip. “Well, asshole,” he growled, “here’s a fucking fact for you—my friends at the Pentagon say you’re about to be court-martialed over your fuckup—and that SECNAV’s gonna testify as a prosecution witness.”
Oh, did he know that for a fact? I’m glad he did, because, as you’ll remember, gentle readers, it was moi who’d composed that lovely factoid, that info-bit, that depth charge of disinformation, and buried it in the Intelink.
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