RW04 - Task Force Blue

by Richard Marcinko

  He double-clicked on his Internet icon.

  And I looked on in horror as the screen filled with a golden image of the SEAL Budweiser, followed by a hand giving him the finger, followed by the words FUCK YOU, LC.

  Followed by blackness.

  The billionaire double-clicked two, three, four times. Nothing happened. He whacked the mouse on the desk surface and tried again. Nothing. He smashed the case with a bony fist and got no result. He tried the master switch to reboot. The fucking computer wouldn’t boot.

  Of course not: Wonder’s one-time trap door had fried the fucking thing—and everything inside it.

  LC looked up, his face livid and panicked. “What … how …” he blustered. I answered him with silence.

  I turned to the Priest, who’d gone white, too. “I don’t know what the fuck you and the boys back in Washington planned,” I said, even though I actually had a pretty good idea about what was going on, “but don’t worry—there’s a bunch of domestic tangos being swept up right now by local cops, all across the country.”

  The Priest was enraged. “I told you—”

  I knew damn well what he’d told me. And if you think I’d ever trust him, I have some beachfront property in Arizona to sell you.

  I picked up movement at my back—LC’s hand crept across the desk, toward the intercom phone. I half-turned and slammed my fist atop it. I heard bones break.

  He screamed.

  Dawg saw the look in my eyes. He reached inside his suitcoat and moved to come between us. Doc cut him off. Dropped him right where he stood with a single, devastating blow. That was good—because I didn’t want to waste any energy on Dawg ever again.

  One down, one to go.

  LC Strawhouse’s face took on a real panicked expression. Cradling his hand he rose from his chair and backed away from me, but I stayed with him. I took the front of his shirt in my hands.

  I got close enough so that he could hear me loud and clear. “Remember Detroit?”

  “Detroit?”

  “Your penthouse. I told you I’d hunt you down—I said your head was gonna look great on my wall.”

  His eyes went wide. I never let go of his shirt.

  I looked at Doc. “What time is it, Master Chief?”

  “Thirteen sixteen, Skipper.”

  I had an hour left. Plenty of time. Good safety margin. I cracked the Tabun capsule between my teeth, brought LC Strawhouse nose to nose with me, and stage-whispered, “I have your computer files. I have your lists. I have your army of wanna-bes—and now I have you.” I watched his eyes widen. I said, “It’s time for you to die, LC,” exhaling as wetly as I could, directly into his face.

  I let loose of him. He stared at me goggle-eyed, his mouth moving incomprehensibly. Then he sucked in a single breath, clutched his chest with his good hand—and dropped like a stone.

  Hey, that fucking Tabun works.

  “Whoa—” I swallowed the capsule and grabbed at LC’s body as it sagged to the floor. “The motherfucker’s having a heart attack!”

  “You start chest massage—let me breathe into him.” Master Chief Hospitalman Doc Tremblay knocked me aside and began mouth-to-mouth right away.

  I knew what he was doing. I thought, Right on, Doc—nothing like a double dose, just to make sure.

  We dutifully CPR’d LC Strawhouse’s limp-as-an-NIS-agent’s-dick body for fifteen minutes. But he didn’t respond.

  Gee, I wonder why.

  Finally, I’d had enough of the charade. I stood up. I looked at the Priest. “You can clean this mess up, sir,” I said, careful to spell it with a c and a u. Yeah, knowing him, he probably had the assets to do it parked somewhere close by.

  I wrote thirteen words and a date on a sheet of paper and handed it to him. “But first, you can sign this.”

  It was a short message but a good one. It went: “I resign from the U.S. Army effective immediately. Major General Stonewall Jackson Harrington.”

  He protested. He objected. He remonstrated. He inveighed. But he signed.

  He signed because he knew that I had a pretty good idea what they’d been planning—an endgame that was the most fucking cynical and dirty thing I’d ever come across.

  You don’t get it? Let me postulate, gentle reader. It was my opinion that the Priest and his politician handlers had planned to let the tangos have at it—to allow a brief but violent wave of domestic terrorism, then crack down, hard, on the perpetrators. It was my opinion that LC Strawhouse was going to turn over his lists and files—the very ones Wonder had purloined from LC’s now-defunct computer—to the Priest.

  I see you all out there waving your hands like kids in a classroom. You are asking, Why would anybody let tangos kill people, when they could be stopped beforehand? It does kind of boggle the mind, doesn’t it, gentle readers?

  Well, even though I had nothing I could take to court, I accepted that they’d do it because some misguided twenty-something confidential assistant sphincter to an ill-advised, ambitious deputy assistant asshole in the White House had probably figured if the fucking president’s ratings had jumped thirty points after Oklahoma City, they’d jump fifty points after half-a-dozen or so similar incidents. And this was an election year.

  I fixed the Priest in my sights. So far as I was concerned, anybody who’d sign on to a gambit like that was a disgrace to the uniform. Stonewall Jackson Harrington had stopped serving his country when he became a political errand boy.

  There is a long stretch between civilian control of the military—which is a good idea, friends—and political manipulation of the military. By turning politician he’d betrayed the military brotherhood, and all the brave warriors who have died to defend our nation. I would have killed him on the spot—except I wanted to use him to take a message back to the assholes who had used him as their errand boy. I wanted them to know I had LC’s files, I had the paperwork from the oil rig, and I knew that hundreds of tangos were being scooped up right this very minute, thanks to Mugs, to Grose, and two dozen or so local police agencies all across the country.

  I walked over to the copier in the corner and ran half a dozen prints of the Priest’s resignation. “You have forty-eight hours,” I said, giving him a copy. “I expect to read about a huge fucking bunch of resignations in Washington in the papers. If I don’t, I’ll come after you—and all the people who sent you here.”

  I paused long enough to look at LC’s corpse. “Just the same way I came after him.” I paused for effect. “Got it, sir?”

  The Priest nodded dumbly. Yeah—he got it. Except, I could see that he didn’t quite get it. He had absolutely no idea how what had just happened to LC Strawhouse, had, in fact, happened to LC Strawhouse. Except that he was stone dead, and that I’d killed him without leaving any trace.

  Well that was just fine with me. Because the truth of the billionaire’s fate was exactly the same as the fucking sign on the door to the Priest’s own soon-to-be-vacated suite back at DIA.

  It was Nobody’s Damn Business But Mine.

  Glossary

  ADAM: Alpha Detachment Armed Militia. Underground tango group bent on violence.

  Admirals’ Gestapo: what the secretary of defense’s office calls the Naval Investigative Services Command. See SHIT-FOR-BRAINS.

  AK-47: 7.63 X 39 Kalashnikov automatic rifle. The most common assault weapon in the world.

  ATF: antiterrorist task force, or ambiguous (amphibious) task force.

  Atropine: antidote for biological warfare nerve agents such as Sarin or Tabun.

  AVCNO: Assistant Vice Chief of Naval Operations

  BAW: Big Asshole Windbag.

  BDUs: Battle Dress Uniforms. Now that’s an oxymoron if I ever heard one.

  BIQ: Bitch-in-Question.

  BLU-43B: antipersonnel mine currently in use by U.S. forces.

  BOHICA: Bend Over—Here It Comes Again!

  Boomer: nuclear-powered missile submarine.

  BTDT: Been There, Done That.

  BUPERS: Nava
l BUREAU of PERSONNEL.

  C-130: Lockheed’s ubiquitous Hercules.

  C-4: plastic explosive. You can mold it like clay. You can even use it to light your fires. Just don’t stamp on it.

  C2CO: Can’t Cunt Commanding Officer. Too many of these in Navy SpecWar today. They won’t support their men or take chances because they’re afraid it’ll ruin their chances for promotion.

  CALOW: Coastal And Limited-Objective Warfare. Very fashionable acronym at the Pentagon in these days of increased low-intensity conflict.

  cannon fodder: See FNG.

  charlie-foxtrot: polite radio talk for CF, or clusterfuck.

  Christians in Action: SpecWar slang for the Central Intelligence Agency.

  CINC: Commander IN Chief

  CINCLANT: Commander IN Chief, AtLANtic. CINCLANTFLT: Commander IN Chief, AtLANtic FLeeT.

  CINCUSNAVEUR: Commander IN Chief, U.S. Naval forces, EURope

  clusterfuck: see FUBAR

  CNO: Chief of Naval Operations.

  cockbreath: SEAL term of endearment used for those who only pay lip service.

  CONUS: CONtinental United States.

  CQB: Close-Quarters Battle—e.g. killing that’s up close and personal.

  CQC6: Ernest Emerson’s titanium-framed Close Quarters Combat folding knife.

  crackers: CRiminal hACKERS—cyperpunk tangos.

  CRRC: Combat Rubber Raiding Craft. Latest generation of SEAL inflatable small boats.

  CT: CounterTerrorism.

  detasheet: olive-drab, ten-by-twenty-inch flexible PETN-based plastic explosive used as a cutting or breaching charge.

  DEVGRP: Naval Special Warfare DEVelopment GRouP. Current designation for SEAL Team Six.

  DIA: Defense Intelligence Agency. Spook heaven based in Arlington, Virginia.

  Dickhead: Stevie Wonder’s nickname for Marcinko.

  DIPSEC: Diplomatic SECurity.

  dipshit: can’t cunt pencil-dicked asshole.

  dirtbag: the look Marcinko favors for his Team guys.

  Do-ma-nhieu (Vietnamese): Go fuck yourself. See DOOM ON YOU.

  doom on you: American version of Vietnamese for go fuck yourself.

  DSD: Defense Signals Directorate. Australia’s SIGINT agency.

  dweeb: no-load shit-for-brains geeky asshole, usually shackled to a computer.

  EEI: Essential Element of Information. The info-nuggets on which a mission is planned and executed.

  EEO: Equal Employment Opportunity. (Marcinko always treats ‘em all alike—just like shit.)

  ELINT: ELectronic INTelligence.

  EOD: Explosive Ordnance Disposal.

  flashbang: disorientation device used by hostage rescue teams.

  FNG: Fucking New Guy. See CANNON FODDER.

  four-striper: Captain. All too often, a C2CO.

  frags: fragmentation grenades

  FUBAR: Fucked Up Beyond All Repair

  GFC: Ground Force Commander.

  goatfuck: what the Navy likes to do to Marcinko. See FUBAR

  GSG-9: Grenzchutzgruppe-9. Top German CT

  unit.

  HAHO: High-Altitude High-Opening parachute jump.

  HALO: High Altitude, Low-Opening parachute jump.

  HK: ultrareliable pistol, assault rifle, or submachine gun made by Heckler & Koch, a German firm. SEALs use H&K MP5-Ks submachine guns in various configurations, as well as H&K 93 assault rifles, and P7M8 9mm, and USP 9mm, .40 or .45-caliber pistols.

  HUMINT: HUMan INTelligence.

  humongous: Marcinko Dick.

  IBS: Inflatable Boat, Small—the basic unit of SEAL transportation.

  IED: Improvised Explosive Device.

  Issi-doombu:

  Pidgin Zulu for dead.

  Japs: bad guys.

  Jarheads: Marines. The Corps. Formally, USMC, or, Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children.

  JSOC: Joint Special Operations Command.

  KATN: Kick Ass and Take Names. Marcinko avocation.

  KISS:

  Keep It Simple, Stupid. Marcinko’s basic premise for special operations.

  LANTFLT: AtLANTic FLeeT.

  M-16: Basic U.S. .223-caliber weapon, used by the armed forces.

  MagSafe: lethal frangible ammunition that does not penetrate the human body. Favored by some SWAT units for CQB.

  Mark-O Mod-I: basic unit.

  MILCRAFT: Pentagonese for MILitary airCRAFT.

  MK V SOC: Mark V Special Operations Craft. The latest SEAL delivery vehicle. It is eighty-one feet long, cruises 550 nautical miles, and fits aboard a C-5 aircraft. It takes a fiveman and can hold a SEAL Platoon, four CRRC craft, and six outboard motors.

  NAVAIR: NAVy AIR Command.

  NAVSEA: NAVy SEA Command.

  NAVSPECWARGRU: NAVaL SPECial WARfare GRoUp.

  Navyspeak: redundant, bureaucratic naval nomenclature, either in written nonoral, or nonwritten oral modes, indecipherable by nonmilitary (conventional) or military (unconventional) individuals during normal interfacing configuration conformations.

  NEXIS: private database.

  NIS: Naval Investigative Service command, also known as the Admirals’ Gestapo. See SHIT-FOR-BRAINS.

  NMN: No Middle Name.

  NOC:

  Non-Official Cover. Spook talk for covert operator, usually from Christians in Action.

  NRO: National Reconnaissance Office. Established August 25, 1960, to administer and coordinate satellite development and operations for U.S. intelligence community. Very spooky place.

  NSA: National Security Agency, known within the SpecWar community as No Such Agency.

  NSCT: Naval Security Coordination Team (Navyspeak name for Red Cell).

  NSD: National Security Directive.

  OBE: Overtaken By Events—usually because of the bureaucracy.

  OOD: Officer Of the Deck (he who drives the big gray monster).

  OP-06: deputy CNO for operations, plans, and policy.

  OP-06B: assistant deputy CNO for operations, plans, and policy.

  OP-06D: cover organization for Red Cell/NSCT.

  OP-06-04: CNO’s SpecWar briefing officer.

  OPSEC: Operational SECurity

  P-3: Orion sub-hunting and electronic-warfare prop-driven aircraft.

  PDFL: Pretty Dangerous Fucking Location.

  PDMP: Pretty Dangerous Motherfucking People.

  PIQ: Platform In Question.

  POC: Point of Contact.

  PT: physical training.

  PUS(NUT): Paranoid Ugly Shithead (Nefariously Unforgivable Tango).

  retarded: Frog slang for retired.

  RSQ-121: secret code-word program No Such Agency satellite.

  S2: Shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down.

  SAC: Special Agent in Charge. FBI’s local office top-gun (all too often a pussy-ass paper-cruncher).

  SATCOM: SATellite COMmunications.

  SCIF:

  Special Classified Intelligence Facility. A bug-proof room.

  SDV: Swimmer Delivery Vehicle. Wet sub.

  SEAL: SEa-Air-Land Navy SpecWarrior. A hop-and-popping shoot-and-looter hairy-assed Frogman who gives a shit. The acronym stands for Sleep, Eat, And Live it up.

  Semtex: Czecho C-4 plastique explosive. Used for canceling Czechs.

  SERE: Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape school.

  SH-3: versatile Sikorsky chopper. Used in ASW missions and also as a Spec Ops platform.

  Shit-for-Brains: any no-load, pus-nutted, pencil-dicked asshole from NIS.

  SIGINT: SIGnals INTelligence.

  633HB: lightweight 9mm submachine gun.

  SLUDJ: Top Secret NIS witch hunters. Acronym stands for Sensitive Legal (Upper Deck) Jurisdiction.

  SMG: submachine gun

  SNAFU: Situation Normal—All Fucked Up.

  SOAUS: Special Operations Association of the United States. Trade group for SpecWarriors and SpecWar wannabes.

  SOCOM: Special Operations COMmand, located at MacDill AFB, Tampa, Florida.

  SOF: Operations Forc
e.Special

  SOS: SAC Of Shit.

  SpecWarrior: One who gives a fuck.

  SSN: nuclear sub, commonly known as sewer pipe.

  STABs: SEAL Tactical Assault Boats.

  SUC: Marcinkospeak for Smart, Unpredictable, and Cunning.

  SWAT: Special Weapons and Tactics police teams. All too often they do not train enough and become SQUAT teams.

  Syrette: self-injection dose, usually of morphine.

  Tabun: deadly and untraceable nerve agent.

  TACBE: TACtical BEAcon. Homing device.

  TAD: Temporary Additional Duty (SEALs refer to it as Traveling Around Drunk).

  TARFU: Things Are Really Fucked Up.

  TECHINT: TECHnical INTelligence.

  THREATCON: THREAT CONdition.

  tiger stripes: The only stripes that SEALs will wear.

  TIQ:

  Tango-In-Question

  TTS: Marcinko slang for Tap ’em, Tie ’em, and Stash ’em.

  UGS: Unmanned Ground Sensors. Useful in setting off Claymore mines and other booby traps.

  UNODIR: UNless Otherwise DIRected. That’s how Marcinko operates when he’s surrounded by can’t cunts.

  VDL: Versatile, Dangerous, and Lethal.

  wanna-bes: the sort of folks you meet at Soldier of Fortune conventions.

  weenies: pussy-ass can’t cunts and no-loads.

  WTF:

  what the fuck.

  Zulu: Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) designator used in formal military communications.

  Zulu-5-Oscar: escape and evasion exercises in which Frogmen try to plant dummy limpet mines on Navy vessels while the vessels’ crews try to catch them in bombus interruptus.

  Index

  Abbas, Cetin, 216–18

  ABSCAM, 68

  ACLU, 67

  ACNO, 42

  Active Countermeasures, 122

  ADAM (Alpha Detachment, American Militia) Group, 18–19, 40–41, 50, 65–71, 86, 89, 108, 110–12, 162, 286–87

  motives of, 289–91

  Afghanistan, 251

  Alpha Units, 144

  ambush techniques, 248–53, 276

  American Phalanx, 110

  ammunition, 144, 166, 167

  Andrews Air Force Base, 7