1555. I’d just finished disabling the first locking device and Boomerang was in the RV preparing the charge when Duck Foot called in.
“Visitors, Skipper.”
I squished across the pasture (taking the long route, because you don’t want to wear a trough into the soft grass so folks will know you’ve come a-calling), peered up the road into the rain, and saw ’em. Two green and white Opels, blue and white flashing lights going full-tilt boogie.
Ach, du Lieber—die Polizei had arrived.
I jumped the fence and made my way to the RV just as the first of the cars pulled up and switched its flashers off. Behind the windshield sat a pair of road-weary cops, rain gear covering their gray-green uniforms. But they didn’t do anything for the moment. No—they waited until Car Number Two had arrived. Only then did the first pair haul themselves out of the little car and Took Notice of the surroundings. And once I got a good look, I realized that they may have appeared to be bored, but these guys were pros.
The first team had waited for backup. And now that it had arrived, they went into action.
The first cop, a long, thin piece of work with blond hair and a thin mustache the color of corn silk, sauntered over to where I stood, next to the RV. His partner came up behind him and stood three feet back and to his left.
The tall officer touched the dripping brim of his hat. “Guten Tag.”
I wiped my dripping face off with the edge of my hand. “Hi—good afternoon.” I looked at the brass name tag that was pinned above his left breast pocket. It read: BRENDEL, K.
He nodded, as if he understood. “Gut afternoon,” he said. “And what is it that you are doing out here in this nice German weather? Perhaps you are trying to have a picnic, ja?”
I laughed, raised my face skyward, and let the rain hit my beard. “Oh, it’s a great day for a picnic, officer.” I paused. “We stopped to have some lunch. Cook up a little wurst. Dry out.”
The cop’s eyes smiled. But his body language, indeed his whole attitude, told me he wasn’t necessarily buying the story. Which frankly puzzled the hell out of me, my friends, simply because he had no reason to doubt it.
He stepped back, putting an arm’s length between us. “Do you have any identification?” he asked.
“But of course.” I reached into the back pocket of my jeans, brought out my wallet, extracted my military ID, and handed the laminated card over to him.
He thumbed the plastic and played with the card in the light to make sure the Great Seal of the U.S. holograph was authentic. He examined the picture on it, looked at me closely, then passed the ID on to his friend, a short, dark officer with a bristly mustache whose name tag read RACKEL, V.
Rackel took the card, repeated the whole process, then walked back to the police car, climbed in, and as I watched, punched a series of characters—probably my name and my ID number—into the computer terminal that sat affixed to the dashboard.
Brendel looked over at Boomerang, who stood slightly behind me and to my right, and at Duck Foot, who’d just come up from his sentry position. “And you two—you have identification?”
“Hey dude, course I do.” Boomerang ran a hand through his long, wet, silver hair and smiled.
Duck Foot’s head nodded up and down. “Sure.”
Brendel gave them a suspicious once-over. “May I see them, please?”
There was something awfully wrong here. German cops do not roust tourists. Not tourists who have enough money to have an RV, two BMWs, and a Mercedes. Not American military tourists. And this was a roust, friends.
Before either of my men had the chance to do anything, I stepped forward. “Excuse me, officer—”
Brendel stepped back, his hand up as if he were stopping traffic. “Please,” he said, a warning tone creeping into his voice. He stepped away from me, creating defensive space. “Stay where you are.” His right hand dropped toward the Sig autoloader that sat in a flapped holster on his belt.
“Whoa—” I stayed where I was, and my eyes told the rest of my men to do the same. We had no fight with these guys. All I wanted to know was WTF. I mean, this was a little crazy.
I raised my hands. “Look, Officer Brendel—”
“Ja. You just wait, okay?” The tall cop backed away toward his patrol car. We stood in the rain and watched as he and his partner conferred.
Then, my ID card in his hand, he returned. This time his body language told me that everything was okay. He handed the card to me with a smile. “I am sorry for the confusion, Captain Marcinko,” he said. “But it was just reported to us that a bunch of cattle thieves were in the neighborhood—what you Americans call rustlers. They”—his hand made a pistol—“shoot . . . ja? A cow, then they butcher it, on the spot, and they store it”—he pointed at our RV—“in something like that.” He smiled, pleased with his command of English. “And zo, you realize that we had to check out here your story.” He stood straight and extended his hand in my direction. “I am sorry for the inconvenience to you and your friends, Captain Marcinko.”
I smiled at Officer Brendel and gave him my hand. “Understood,” I said. “It was nothing.”
But it wasn’t nothing at all. I mean, dear readers, think of the game that’s just been played. First, the cops had been put on the scent by that convoy of big Mercedes sedans. And if the folks in that convoy had any juice with the locals—and I had no reason to believe that they didn’t, given the quick response of the Polizei—then they’d also learned who I was.
But all of the above was conjecture. I needed affirmation. I decided to play dumb. “Can you do me a favor and explain how you got the report about us, because we haven’t seen anyone here.”
“Oh, yes, Captain. We have here, near this place, the”—he struggled for the right word—“estate? Yesss . . . estate, of a man named Lothar Beck. He is”—Officer Brendel struggled for the right word—“a big, a very important businessman, ja?”
“Ja?”
“Ja. And he saw you and he called from his car to his friend the assistant minister of Polizei in Berlin, and the minister, he had his assistant call the local commandant, and then . . . zooo”—he paused and shrugged—“we are sent here, because Herr Beck he is afraid that you are schtealing cattle.”
Now, this is starting to make some sense to me. Is it beginning to make sense to you? No? Let me explain.
First of all I suddenly realized, as it so often happens after the fact, precisely whose ugly, scarred Kraut puss I’d seen in the front seat of that big car with the coat of arms on its rear door. His name is Franz Ulrich, and he used to work for my friend Ricky Wegener, when Ricky commanded GSG-9,35 Germany’s top counterterrorist unit.
Franz is a big boy, who cut his teeth at Mogadishu back in October of 1977, when a bunch of Ricky’s shooters took on the hijackers of a Lufthansa 737 aircraft and rescued ninety-one passengers and crew. In those days, he was the unit’s point man—the first shooter up the assault ladder. He put down the first terrorist he encountered—it was a female, but you don’t say “Après moi” when you’re hitting an aircraft. Anyway, Ricky liked what he saw, and Franz went on to become Ricky’s number one hood.
And then, some years ago, Franz retired. Abruptly. Oh, there was gossip at the time. Whispers about a drug problem. Nasty buzz about kickbacks on some contracts for GSG-9’s weapons. Vague rumors about other, more nefarious activities. To be honest, I don’t recall the specifics. But Franz Ulrich dropped out of sight like a rock in a quarry. And Ricky? To Ricky, it was as if Franz had died. Ricky never mentioned his name again. Once I brought the subject up, but the look he gave me was more than sufficient to tell me to S2 and not mention it again.
And now, hier turns up Franz Ulrich, riding shotgun in the lead car owned by a big industrialist named Lothar Beck. Franz of the rumored drug problem. Franz of the alleged kickbacks.
And now I knew instinctively where Beck’s HQ was located. I decided to check anyway. “By any chance, Officer Brendel, do you know where Lothar B
eck’s headquarters is located?” I asked.
“BeckIndustrie?” the policeman asked rhetorically. “It is in Düsseldorf, Captain—a huge tower of glass and steel right on the river. There are even postcards of it. It is on all the tours. You can see the revolving clock on the roof from ten kilometers away.”
Game, set, and match.
You are still confused. Okay. Here it is plain and simple:
• Item: Düsseldorf is where Heinz Hochheizer the RIP weapons dealer told me he’d originally gone to score an ADM.
Coincidence? Happenstance? You tell me.
• Item: The name of the man der winzig Heinz told me about in Düsseldorf, the very selfsame one with the cocaine problem bragging about being able to lay his hands on USGI ADMs, was . . . Franz.
Coincidence? Happenstance? You tell me.
And now I discover that Franz Ulrich, former GSG-9 shooter whose name Ricky Wegener won’t even mention, works for a big-time industrialist named Lothar Beck.
And what does Beck do, I wondered? I asked Officer Brendel, who consulted with Officer Rackel. “Herr Beck? Well, BeckIndustrie has groBe contracts with the defense ministry, und the ministry of interior, and many other government”—he paused and shrugged and conferred with his colleague in schmeisser-rapid German—“agencies.”
Officer Rackel pointed toward the police car. “Beck-Industrie. They make the radios we use. And the”—he, too, struggled for the right word—“zoftware on our computer terminals.”
Golly gee, gentle readers. Let me tell you something about the folks who make radios and communications software programs for military or police use. It is: they’d better be honest, because if you make radios or software, you can install bugs in it so that you can eavesdrop on what your customers are saying. And eavesdropping, if your customers are in the shooting-and-looting business like I am, can be dangerous to life and limb.
Now, here was a sophisticated man of business, Lothar Beck, who makes many of the things that shooters like me, or officers Brendel and Rackel, use. That in itself is not ominous. But let’s add a couple of elements.
Element One: Colonel John Suter tells me there have been a number of recent probes at U.S. stowage facilities and other installations. Some have used ELINT—ELectronic INTelligence to try to break in. Evidence of COMINT, or COMmunications INTelligence, has also been tracked of late. And finally, John Suter tells me he has evidence of several human penetration efforts.
What does that tell me? Well, I did the same thing when I ran Red Cell. I probed. I sent out my best sneak-and-peekers and tested the opposition. I tapped phone lines and ran lasers against their communications systems. And what did that all tell me? It told me what my opposition’s capabilities were—how fast they’d react; how easily I could defeat their security systems. It told me who was serious about counterterrorism, and who wasn’t. And that is how I gauged this series of ops. Somebody was trying to get us to show our capabilities, so they could be measured.
Element Two: Chairman Crocker has Colonel John and his boys, and me and mine, working overtime to retrieve ADMs and other weapons stashed in POMCUS caches here in Deutschland. That’s the political side. We had to retrieve all this stuff without letting the Germans know we’d put ’em in place. So we were walking on eggs here.
But here’s Element Three: somebody is selling our ADMs—the same ones I’m supposed to be retrieving.
Which brings me to Element Four: I now discover that one of the biggest contractors in Germany’s defense industry has hired what is known in the trade as a BA, or Bad Apple, named Franz Ulrich, and that selfsame big contractor sees me, and all of a sudden he calls the cops because he thinks I am . . . a cattle rustler.
Well, friends, whoopee ky-yi-yay motherfucker, as Bruce what’s-his-name says in those Die Hard action adventure movies. If you believe that’s why Franz and Lothar made the call, I have a real nice bridge in Brooklyn to sell you—very cheap.
Here’s what really happened. Franz recognized me—we both saw his eyes go wide. He gets to my name faster than I got to his, tells Lothar who I am, and Lothar punches up the old cellular to his pals at some ministry in Berlin to find out WTF some Roguish, hairy-assed SEAL named Marcinko is doing prowling and growling nowhere near any fucking body of fucking water.
Lothar’s request takes about half an hour to carom down the chain of command from Berlin, to wherever. And then, all of der zudden, officers Brendel and Rackel appear, complete with backup. They look over my ID card, count who’s here, and report everything in a sit-rep to their boss.
Who sends it back up der chain of command. Und now, Lothar and Franz know for sure that I’m me, and that I’m on the scene with a squad-sized group of SEALs, and we’re all parked next to a big fucking pasture. And in the middle of that big fucking pasture, there is a pump house where no pump house should be.
So far as I am concerned, it’s time to stop explaining things and get to fucking work before Franz and some of his friends come back to see what they can find.
Und zooo, we made nicey-nicey with the Polizei, and made all the appearance of getting under way. We climbed into and onto our assorted vehicles, pulled out, turned around, and headed back in the vague direction of Bassenheim, with Officer Brendel and his pal Officer Rackel watching us closely until we were out of sight.
But we didn’t go to Bassenheim. We found a nice little Bierstube in a village called Küttig, piled inside, and treated ourselves to double-sized portions of smoked pork chops—Kasseler, in Deutsch—piles of tangy sauerkraut, rost potatoes, and a couple of gallons of the local Altbier. Then, soon as it got dark, we paid the bill and made our way back to the pasture, where we’d be able to go to work undisturbed.
7
2035. I DESIGNED THIS LITTLE EXERCISE THE SAME WAY my SEAL forbears back in Vietnam ran their nighttime snatch ops. Except tonight we’d be bringing out an atomic device instead of a Viet Cong tax collector, and we’d be using a car not a chopper or a PBR. But just like Vietnam, it would be a clandestine infiltration, followed by a totally stealth retrieval, followed by a quiet exit. If things went as I’d planned ’em, no one would ever know we’d come and gone—and the Chairman would be one happy general.
We stashed the RV eight easy kliks from the target—no sense getting lost if we had to make a fast return—and piled into the Mercedes and onto the bikes to make our infiltration. It had stopped raining, but the roads were slick, and there was a thick ground-level mist that hovered, apparitionlike, two to three yards above the road surface.
Since I’ve always believed that war is an acronym for We Are Ready, we came ready for WAR. We dressed in our basic black sans benefit of pearls. We carried suppressed weapons just in case we came across any malefactors needing suppression. And I’d remembered to bring an ounce of Colonel John Suter’s C-4 plastic explosive just in case the door to the inner sanctum of the POMCUS cache’s stowage area needed any extra persuasion. I’d bought fresh batteries for the radios, so Mister Murphy wouldn’t be able to take over our comms tonight. And Half Pint had even managed to find us some red gel to put over the lenses of our miniflashlights.
2036. Rodent, who was tonight’s point man, secured the LZ on his BMW.
There was a loud squawk in my left ear as Rodent hit the transmit button on his radio. I cursed under my breath, turned my squelch switch down, and then listened to his voice in my ear: “Front door’s open. C’mon up, Skipper.”
I pressed my transmit button. “Roger-roger.”
“Rear door’s locked.” That was Half Pint, who was playing rear security on the other bike, two kliks behind us. By now he’d have concealed himself in the underbrush alongside the road.
2038. There was no sign of Rodent as Baby Huey slowed the blacked-out Mercedes to about ten miles an hour, steering carefully through the mist. Good. That meant he was on his way to his position, two kliks up the road. I reached over and double-checked that the interior light switch was in the off position. It’s the sort of basic o
perational detail you learn as a tadpole, but you’d be amazed at how many CIA gumshoes, FBI countersurveillance teams, and cops just plain forget to do it—and make themselves obvious targets as they get into and out of their vehicles.
From my position riding shotgun, I gave Boomerang, Duck Foot, Nod, and Gator an upturned thumb, smacked BH on the shoulder and told him to stay on the radio in case we needed him to show up on the double, then cracked the door open, and stage-whispered, “Go!”
We tuck-and-rolled out of the big diesel sedan into the blackness just like my SEAL predecessors in Nam rolled over the sterns of their PBRs. Well, not quite. I tucked—but since Mister Murphy was riding in the front seat with me, I caught the heel of my trailing foot on the doorjamb of the car. Now, since I didn’t want to be dragged down the asphalt, I flailed my stuck foot—and it separated from the vehicle. Of course, with my progress slowed, I was about to be smacked by the car’s open doors. I reached up, caught the front door, and used it to throw myself toward the shoulder of the road. The move cleared my body away from the car—but it didn’t remove Mister Murphy’s viselike grip on my lapel.36
With Murphy attached like the leech he is, I began to roll uncontrollably. I bounced off a body—couldn’t see whom I’d struck, but whoever it was gave up a loud grunt—then I coasted eight or nine yards across the blacktop on my right hip (oh, that was going to burn like hell tomorrow), caromed down the rock-encrusted shoulder onto the slicker-than-shit wet grass, and came to an abrupt stop when I skidded—splat!—face first, into one of the fifteen-centimeter-square creosote-coated wire fence supports that sat at ten-meter intervals at the edge of the cow pasture.
Option Delta Page 12