Once we’d made secure and shut the engines down I had Nod and BH lower the accommodation ladder. I lifted the rail, secured it, then clambered down onto the low concrete pier. The colonel headed in my direction.
“Captain Marcinko.”
It wasn’t asked as a question, so I guess he recognized me from the salt spray in my French braid and my Roguish good looks. “Datsa me. Bon giorno, colon-nello . . .” I stopped cold, because I’d been staring at the breast pocket of his neat but well-used BDUs looking for a name tag. Hmm. There was none. I guess he was one of those generic-type officers.
“Suter, Captain. John Suter.” He extended his hand. “Pleased to meet ya.”
I took his big hand. The grip was firm, his skin was cool and dry to the touch, and his fingers were as rough as sixty-grit sandpaper. This guy was no desk jockey. “What can I do for you, Colonel Suter?”
“Hey, let’s dispense with the formality, okay? Just call me John, and I’ll call you whatever you want,” he drawled in a soft southern accent that was somewhere between North Carolina and West Virginia.
“Dick sounds good to me.” I paused and waved my arm toward the uniformed assemblage on the quay. “So, John, what the fuck—over?”
When he laughed his eyes crinkled. That was another good sign. “Well, since you asked so nice, I’ll tell ya. First thing is, according to the message that ripped me and my guys a bunch of new assholes, ya got your hands on a device that once belonged to us.”
“You have a copy of that message, John? And maybe some kind of ID, too?” I didn’t want to be unfriendly, but since ADMs are valuable commodities these days, I wasn’t about to take any chances. Frankly, it’s reasonably easy to get hold of starched, well-worn BDUs and colonel’s eagles. In fact, it’s not wholly inconceivable to purloin a Pave Low, either. I know—I’ve done it.
“Gotcha.” He retrieved a current ID card from his breast pocket. I checked the holographic device carefully. It was real. Then he cracked the brown leather folder, so I could see what was inside. There was a red-tabbed fax message lying there, secured by leather straps top and bottom. It was printed on TS/SCI paper, so I knew that it was authentic, too.
The message was on JCS letterhead, and signed by Thomas E. Crocker, General, USA, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was also, as is General Crocker’s habit, PFS—which stands for Pretty Fucking Straightforward. Since it’s brief, let me show it to you in its entirety.
TOP SECRET
From:
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
To:
Colonel John C. Suter, Fifth Special Forces
Security Group, USA
231077-042/1250
SUBJ:
Recovery of ADM Serial Number 79-20113
1. It has come to my attention that ADM 79-20113, originally supplied 03 September 1982 to components of Fifth Special Forces, Patch Barracks, West Germany, has been seized by United States Naval Special Warfare personnel during a TS counterterrorism operation.
2. As part of your current project (see Tab A) you are ordered to retrieve the device from Captain Richard (NMN) Marcinko, USN, at Mazara del Vallo, Sicily, immediately upon Captain Marcinko’s arrival.
3. You are ordered to use all appropriate means to secure the device and transport it to Patch Barracks under Threatcon Charlie conditions.
4. You will report using encrypted means to this office and only to this office at the earliest opportunity, giving precise details of how and when ADM 79-20113 was removed from under the military control of the United States.
5. You will treat this matter in strictest confidence.
6. (signed):
Thomas E. Crocker
General, U.S. Army
Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
REF: 10 USC 167
Att: Tab A (TS/C)
Tab B (Unclassified)
TOP SECRET
John Suter looked at me, his face Huckleberry Hound long. “Maybe I’m being paranoid, but from the way I read this, my whole group’s been fucked.” He pursed his lips and focused on imperfections on the concrete of the quay between his boots. “Y’know, I don’t mind taking a fall. That’s my job as an officer. But my men had nothing to do with this. Most of ’em weren’t even in grade school when the fucking ADM was first deployed here.”
It was good to meet this guy. He was the kind of officer Roy Boehm would have liked. I shook my head. “That’s not the way the Chairman works. Sure—he wants results. And he’s reamed me so many new assholes that my hind end looks like fucking Swiss cheese. But he’s not looking for scapegoats. So far as I can tell, the memo’s written to satisfy the politicians—and keep your ass out of it. So I don’t think you have much to worry about unless you lose the fucking nuke between here and Stuttgart, in which case I hope you like life in the brig. Hey, the Chairman’s tough, but he’s fair, and he’s a fucking Warrior.”
Suter nodded. “That’s good to know, given the pussy-ass can’t cunts I have to deal with most of the time.” He patted the Beretta on his pistol belt. “It took me six hours of wheedling to get the one-star weenie in charge of base ops to sign the req form for us to draw ammo this morning. And this is with me holding this fucking note from the fucking Chairman of the Joint fucking Chiefs telling me I’m supposed to provide Threatcon fucking Charlie security for a fucking stolen nuclear fucking device.”
While I appreciated John Suter’s familiarity with ironic use of the F-word, the sorry truth, my friends, is that antimilitary behavior from flag officers is all too common these days. Or, as the godfather of all SEALs, Roy Boehm, puts it so well, “There are too fucking many dickless fucking admirals and pussy-ass fucking generals who choose to fucking sit down whenever they have to go fucking wee-wee.”
Y’know, in the old Navy, the Navy of wooden ships and iron men, they say (and they is right) that leadership comes from the top. And y’know what? It does. But in today’s Navy (which had been morphed into a Navy of iron ships and wooden men), the Navy of which the fucking commander in chief is a draft-dodging, pussy-whipped, hate-the-military coward, you can just imagine how all those one-stars who’d like to become two-stars will act when a decision that may appear to be warlike has to be taken. It’s doom on warriors time, hence we are all fuckee-fuckeed these days.
Endeth the soliloquy. “Amen, bro.” I extended my hand in John Suter’s direction.
“Yeah,” he grinned. “Those pus-nuts would probably shit a brick if they knew I’d cumshawed a two-pound block of C-4 when I drew the ammo.”
That brought a smile to my face. “You grabbed a block of C-4?”
“Hey, you never know when you’re gonna have to redecorate, right?”
I liked this asshole. He thought like I do. I slammed him on the shoulder. “Well, good luck, John. I hope you kick some ass, and do some redecorating.” I paused. “By the way, can you give me a hint about what’s in the attached tabs?”
He looked at me strangely. “Say what?”
“Chairman’s message has a tab attached—tab A. Top secret. Compartmented.”
Suter’s face reddened. “I’d love to, Dick—but y’know how it is with TS/SCI.”
I did—although I’d have loved to have known what the Chairman had asked him to do. I shook my head. “Message received. What about the other tab—the unclassified one?”
A crafty smile crept across his face. “I think I can bring you up to speed on that one, Dick.” He reached behind the TS fax and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “Tab B,” he said, as if he was remembering a piece of trivia, “it’s a love note from the Chairman for you.”
I unfolded and perused. There was no classification on this one and it was just as KISS as the message to John Suter. No need to repeat it, but the gist was that I was to hand all the intel I’d gathered on the Kuz Emeq over to representatives of the judge advocate general’s office. I would then transport myself, my men, and all our equipment up to Rhine Main Air Base, just outside Frankfurt,
within twenty-four hours of transmission of this message. At Rhine Main I was to check in with an 0-5 (that’s a lieutenant colonel) named Smith, who worked in the Intelligence section, and comply with his instructions. That was all. Over and out.
I looked at the time stamp on the fax. Then I stared at the little-dick-big-watch watch on my hairy left wrist. Sixteen hours had passed since the Chairman’s transmission. I was standing on a fucking dock on the fucking southwest coast of Sicily in a wet suit I’d been wearing for three days. I had no papers, no travel orders, not even a fucking ID card. When one goes to war, one don’t usually bring the fucking AMEX or driver’s license along. On most of my missions, which tend to be clandestine, covert, or UNODIR,16 I tend not to carry any identification at all. That way, should my Roguish ass get waxed and wasted, I won’t be an embarrassment to my country.
I scanned the single sheet of fax paper again. Transport myself, my men, and my equipment, the message ordered. Forthwith, the message ordered. WTF was I supposed to use, a fucking oxcart?
It was about to be doom-on-Dickie time, and I said so in the sort of SEAL technical language that made Colonel Suter roar with laughter. He clapped me across the shoulder. “Hey, Dick, we can probably come up with eight sets of coveralls, if you don’t mind wearing Army OD. I took the liberty of bringing a pair of Conex lockboxes with me so you can stow your weapons and ammo and whatever other goodies you may have.”
I was grateful, and told him so. You don’t find many officers these days who’ll take that kind of initiative.
“Hey,” John Suter said, “you’d do the same for me, right?”
I offered him my hand. “Anytime, John.”
“Cool,” he said. “And look—I can give you a lift as far as Sigonella. It’s less than an hour if we put pedal to metal. They’re always running shuttles between there and Frankfurt. You’ll make it, no sweat.”
That was easy for him to say. After all, he had his own fucking aircraft. My men and I were about to become hitchhikers. Mendicants. Untouchables in the hierarchy of the fucking military air transport system. But since the Chairman is my boss these days, and he and I are on a first-name basis (he calls me “Dick,” and I call him “General”), and I like my work, I groaned, said a silent “Yes, sir,” took the Chairman’s message, and set about complying.
Well, sorta. I didn’t hand over the suitcase of cash I’d removed from Khaled’s stateroom. Nor did I surrender the interrogation notes I’d taken during the fifty-three hours it had taken us to sail the Kuz Emeq to Sicily. Interrogation notes? Yup. Lots of ’em. And believe me, the ex-Stasi agent, der winzig Heinz Hochheizer, had been extremely talkative during the cruise.
That was to be expected. Y’see, I have this certain, shall we say, persuasive quality about me. Especially when you are naked and duct-taped to an uncomfortable chair, and I am waving a hot soldering iron in my big, Roguish paw. Now, Heinz hadn’t actually survived the trip to Sicily. He’d died on me—a heart attack, probably, but without a medic aboard, who could tell. Hey, it wasn’t my doing. He just fuckin’ croaked. Anyway, we gave the former Stasi agent a decent burial at sea, which was probably more than he deserved. And since neither John Suter (nor anyone else) mentioned Heinz, I didn’t bother to bring the subject up either.
Anyway, back to what I’d discovered. I’d learned that Heinz had paid $800,000 for the damn thing—bought it from a Georgian Mafiyosi named Gabliani, for cash. It was his understanding, Heinz told me, that the vor17 had traded the weapon from a Russkie colonel working for the Ministry of the Interior in Moscow. The Russkie’d paid off the man who’d sold it to him—some German—with three vintage-1985 Soviet suitcase nukes. Gabliani took the Americanski ADM off the Ivan by paying him with a ten-kilo chunk of Afghan flake heroin and fifty keys of Bolivian cocaine.
I didn’t give a shit about the drugs. What I wanted to know was how the Ivan had scored a USGI18 ADM in the first place.
“I think the German was from Düsseldorf,” Heinz had wheezed.
That’s not what I’d meant. What I meant, was how had the Kraut gotten his hands on the bomb in the first place.
“But then, you do mean Düsseldorf,” Heinz had insisted.
“Okay, Ja, Düsseldorf,” I’d said, humoring him.
He shrugged his shoulders as best he could, being taped up to the chair. Before Düsseldorf, the little Kraut insisted he had no idea where the ADM came from. I was convinced that he was telling me the truth, too, because he and I (and the soldering iron) went over that ground a number of times, and no matter how well he might have been trained (and the Stasi trained its operatives pretty damn well), I can sense when I’m being lied to. And Heinz wasn’t giving off any bad vibes, except, that is, for his BO, and all the shit in his skivvies.
But Heinz did share one piece of disturbing information with me in the course of our lengthy interlocution. He was absofuckinglutely certain that the ADM he’d bought wasn’t the only American device for sale. In fact, he mentioned that before he’d been able to contact Gabliani the Georgian, he’d gone to Düsseldorf himself to check the market out, because word on the street was that Düsseldorf was the happening place, so far as pocket nukes were concerned.
I made a mental note of that factoid, then wondered aloud if the little Kraut had found anything out.
Heinz was quite proud of himself. After all, he was a former intelligence operative. He bragged that it hadn’t taken him even half a day. He’d called one of his old agents in Berlin, a West German government official code-named Rottweiler, whom he’d run during the Cold War. Rottweiler wasn’t especially happy to hear from Heinz, but the Stasi man knew the West German wouldn’t give him away. If he did, Heinz would see to it that Rottweiler learned a whole bunch of new tricks—in prison.
Anyway, it didn’t take long for Rottweiler to put him in touch with someone from one of the neo-Nazi fringe groups, who put him in touch with some fucking ultranationalist scum, who tried to peddle Heinz two hundred kilos of Semtex plastic explosive.
The story was getting a little long. I licked my finger and touched the end of the soldering iron, and after Heinz had heard the hiss, I told him to pick up the pace.
The little Kraut began talking so fast he sounded like a 33-RPM LP playing at 78. The Semtex dealer knew a cocaine dealer, who sold to someone named Franz. Franz had an expensive habit. Franz needed money to support that habit. The cocaine dealer allegedly told the Semtex dealer that one night, at one of Düsseldorf’s pricey discos, Franz had told him that he’d be willing to exchange a Russkie pocket nuke for a hundred pounds of grade-A, uncut, highest quality Colombian blow. For a hundred keys of coke, Franz said he could perhaps get his hands on an American pocket nuke. Much better quality than the Soviet nukes he already had in stock.
Now Heinz was beginning to make sense. “And who is Rottweiler,” I asked, the soldering iron in my hand closing in on Heinz’s withered weenie.
Unlike his old boss, Markus Wolff, who went to jail rather than name names, Heinz saw the Roguish look in my eyes and decided to spill his guts. “His name is Grüner. Peter Grüner,” the little Kraut wailed.
“Did Peter Grüner put you in touch with the coke dealer?” I asked.
“Nein,” Heinz said. He’d started the ball rolling, but before things fell into place, Heinz had received the call that finally put him in touch with Gabliani, the Georgian mobster he’d been trying to contact for a month, and who, Heinz had already confirmed, had an American ADM for sale. That was it: Heinz checked out of his hotel, took a cab to the airport, and climbed on a flight to Sofia. He’d never checked out Düsseldorf Franz, or the disco.
And what was the name of the disco, I asked rhetorically (I’m real good at rhetorical when I have a hot soldering iron in my hand).
“Die Silbermieze,” Heinz caterwauled. “The Silver Pussycat.”
I asked Heinz why he hadn’t taken the easy route and scored one of the Russkie suitcase nukes on the market. I mean, the eight hundred thou Heinz paid
for the SADM he’d planned to sell Khaled was at least twice the going price of the stolen Russkie devices I knew were being sold to Iraq, Iran, and Libya these days.
The little German told me he’d actually tried to save the Saudi some cash by obtaining an Ivan bomb. But Khaled had insisted on nothing but American goods. He’d gone on and on, Heinz bitched, about the Koranic justice of using the captured sword of the oppressor to put him to death. And since money was to be no object, and since Khaled was such a first-class putz, Heinz had decided to buy high and sell even higher. So he’d gone straight to Sofia, been picked up at the airport by a squad of goons, blindfolded, tossed in the back of a big black Zil, and driven who knows where. Finally, he was taken to a godforsaken house where he sat, guarded by a couple of real thugs, for two days. “I guess they were checking my bona fides,” Heinz whined. Then he was blindfolded again, and driven to meet the Mafiyosi.
He first set eyes on the vor v zakonye19 named Gabliani in the back room of a Georgian restaurant in the back streets of Sofia. They haggled for three days over plates of mayonnaise-enhanced salads, greasy herring, and black Georgian bread, all washed down by countless glasses of Napoleon cognac, Chivas Regal, and vodka. Well into his cups (his tumblers, actually), Gabliani the Godfather had bragged to Heinz that, given the price of flake heroin in Afghanistan, and his high-level contacts with the old mujahideen leadership, his mullah friends in Iran who helped him transship the drugs, and despite the higher cost of payoffs for authorities in Turkey, Albania, and France, the fucking weapon hadn’t cost him even two hundred thousand dollars.
Option Delta Page 6