Red Cell

by Richard Marcinko

  Then all of a sudden the goddamn knapsack got in the way, I hit my coccyx on the concrete trying to straighten myself out, and my head snapped back and bounced off the apron a couple of times.

  Shit—that hurt. I rolled to my left, scrambled to my feet, and hustled into the shadows between the ramps.

  Since the planes were empty, there was nobody watching. Narita was no different from the hundreds of other targets I’d hit. Human nature is the same, whether it’s Japanese or American.

  Who’d want to screw around with an empty plane, right? Only Dickie and his explosives.

  I made my way under the fuselage and climbed into the nosewheel well. A red plastic streamer was attached to one of the struts, a reminder to the mechanics to check for hydraulic leaks. I attached an IED—I chose a yellow smoke bomb with a whistle screamer—to the strut and tied the end of the streamer to the detonator. Whoever pulled on that was going to get a nice surprise.

  It didn’t amaze me that nobody’d discovered me yet. I’d simply slipped between the security cracks. Most airports are sieves—Narita was no different, just bigger. It handled an average of three hundred and fifty flights a day from an assortment of forty different airlines. At any one time somewhere close to five hundred security people were at work in and around the grounds. But that didn’t necessarily mean they were on the job.

  Why? Segmentation. Each airline at Narita hired its own rent-a-cops, whom they paid minimum wage. Most can barely read and write—they’re no threat to anybody. That’s one. The perimeter of the airport, as well as the warehouses, cargo buildings, operations center, and admin spaces were patrolled by Narita’s private security force—that’s two—while the terminals, concourse, gates, ramps, and other public areas were under the jurisdiction of several Japanese Defense Force units—that’s three. The roads outside the airport perimeter, including the two-lane blacktop that ran along the fence and the Tokyo expressway, were patrolled by national highway police. That’s four.

  And, as always, the left hand seldom knew what the right hand was up to. Example: communications. The airline security people had one brand of walkie-talkies, while the Narita rent-a-cops had another. The army and the real cops, meanwhile, talked on two other frequencies. And if an airline rent-a-cop needed to talk to a real cop? Well, there was always the public phone. Sure, there were cameras and electronic fences; there were locked doors and access codes and all the nitnoy dip-dunk security bullshit common from Tempelhof to Taiwan. But none of it worked together, in concert, as a team. Each element was separate—each reported to a different authority.

  In the Navy, we called these sorts of organizational compartments stovepipe commands. Like, the hospital at Subic—when we had a base at Subic—didn’t report to the admiral there. It reported to a three-star at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The security officer at Pearl Harbor doesn’t report to CINCPACFLT, he reports to the one-star in charge of Naval Investigative Services at the Washington Navy Yard. In peacetime, this stovepiping creates a paper chain that gives the bureaucrats something to do.

  In war, it’s a goatfuck.

  In wartime, by the time you say “May I?” to some asshole halfway around the world, the bad guys are pulling your skivvies down around your knees and humping you like a prison ho.

  I started to lower myself. Footfalls. Somebody was coming. Back up into your hole, Marcinko.

  I squeezed up into the wheel well and tried to make myself invisible.

  I saw the back of a head, and a wooden shaft. It was a broom man. At Narita, they’ve got guys who sweep the tarmac clean. Talk about your anal retentive society.

  He was sweeping—and doing a great job—when he stopped and peered at something on the ground. I caught my breath when I saw what he was looking at. It was blood. My blood.

  Obviously, he thought he’d found an oil leak. He took a rag out of his pocket and wiped the droplets off the concrete, then looked to see where the drip was coming from. He looked straight up at me. The broom clattered to the apron.

  His mouth opened in astonishment. But before any sound came out, I dropped on top of him.

  “Murrf—”

  I cupped a hand over his lips, wrapped an arm around his neck, and began to apply a sleeper choke hold to his carotid artery.

  The son of a bitch swiveled, dropped, turned, and threw me over his shoulder. I bounced off the concrete. “Shit.” The little motherfucker knew judo.

  He turned to run away and sound the alarm. There was no time to fool around. I tackled him from behind, knocking his legs out from under him. I reached into my boot for my sap as I lay on top of him. Then I let him have it gently but firmly behind the left ear—thwoock.

  He collapsed. I rolled him over and dragged him and his broom under the plane. He was going to have a hell of a headache. I hoped I was covered by Black Jack’s insurance—I didn’t want the SOB suing me.

  I bound his hands and feet with nylon restraints, gagged him with tape, then tied him to the nosewheel of the 747.1 unpeeled a sticker, which I attached to his overalls. It read, in Japanese and English, “Dead hostage. Security exercise. Fujoki Corp. Have a nice day.”

  It was time to say sayonara to the tarmac and do some serious damage elsewhere. My goal tonight was to get into the underground baggage area and leave a series of IEDs to illustrate how terrorists could devastate the entire baggage-handling capability of Narita with one or two well-placed explosive charges. I had a second goal, too: showing how dismal the security of the baggage-transferring system was.

  If you can slip a bag into the system and get it on a plane, you can blow up the plane. I was going to scope out the area this evening. Tomorrow, I’d come back with a suitcase and slide it into the system, onto a Hawaii-bound plane, where O’Bannion would retrieve it.

  The Narita most tourists see when they arrive comprises only about one-third of the airport. Two-thirds of the huge complex is below ground—three subterranean floors filled with acres of cargo bays, miles of roadway and baggage conveyor belts, endless conduits filled with electrical wiring, air-conditioning ducts, and fuel lines. They prepare all the airline food at ground level, store it two levels down in huge drive-through refrigerators, then truck it out to the planes. All baggage is shuffled, shifted, and transshipped below ground. Freight, too, is moved by a series of underground shuttle trains to one of the five huge cargo warehouses that sit directly to the north of the main terminal area.

  I was at the Number Four Satellite, the southernmost tip of the passenger area. I moved under the nose of the plane, walked ten yards, and stared down a long ramp. It was from there the baggage-handling carts, service vehicles, and catering trucks drove up onto the apron. The path was clear. I moved the knapsack, wrapped the kerchief around my hand so I wouldn’t leave a bloody trail for the good guys to follow, and started my descent. This was going to be fun.

  Two and a half hours and a $175 cab ride later, I was back in my room on the fourteenth floor of the Okura Hotel, nursing a $15 Bombay and soaking my tired old bones in the huge Japanese tub. My first night on the job had been a success: I’d planted six IEDs without any trouble. That would get their attention. The only snag I’d run into was my bomb-on-the-plane plan.

  Narita—like most big airport facilities—had recently installed a sophisticated system for checking cargo and baggage. Using a combination of electromagnetic and sensory devices, any container holding explosive or radioactive components was immediately flagged, isolated, X-rayed, and searched. The system worked on all forms of plastique and nitro-based explosives. It was, I’d discovered, virtually foolproof. Well, doom on me.

  After half an hour of hot-water therapy, I dried off, wrapped myself in one of the thick terry-cloth robes that come with the rooms, turned out the lamp, and peered out the window. My room faced north. I could make out half a dozen government ministry buildings and, in the distance, the lights on Uchibori-dori Avenue, which ran around the perimeter of the moat surrounding the Imper
ial Palace and its formal gardens.

  Tokyo hadn’t changed much in the decade since I’d been here with Red Cell. The city was bigger now, and more expensive. But it was still the bustling, hustling city I remembered. Twelve million people lived and worked here, packed like sardines without benefit of oil into a metropolis that had been built for half that number.

  I refilled my Bombay from the minibar. Another $15 in expenses added to the Fujoki Corporation’s tab. It would be light soon. Time to grab some shut-eye before writing a few graphs on my night’s work and faxing them back to O’Bannion. I killed the gin and headed for the futon. That was just like the Japs—to name their hard-as-nails bedrolls “fuck you” in French. Devious little sons of bitches.

  My head had hardly hit the mat when a Klaxon horn interrupted a perfectly good dream about a perfectly good woman. I groaned and reached for the telephone.

  “Marcinko-san? Ohayo gozaimasu and fuck you, you round-eyed, hairy-knuckled son of a bitch.”

  I hadn’t heard the voice in ten years, but I knew who it was. “Good morning to you, too, Tosho, you little yellow monkey cockbreath. How the fuck are you?”

  “I’m pissing away half the morning on the phone with you, gaijin. Pick your ass up off the mat, throw your body in gear, and haul yourself down to the Terrace Restaurant. I’ll be waiting.”

  “Aye, aye, Sergeant.”

  “That’s lieutenant inspector to you, dog breath.”

  “No shit—okay, Tosho, I’m on my way.”

  Toshiro Okinaga was a sergeant—no, a lieutenant inspector, now—with the Kunika, a so-called Special Action Unit of the Japanese National Police. In English, that means he was, like me, a SpecWar operator.

  The Kunika used extensive undercover operational, surveillance, and counterintelligence techniques and were targeted against terrorists, guerrillas, and most recently, organized crime. Tosho and I first played together when I brought the Red Cell to Japan to test readiness at the joint U.S.-Japanese naval base at Yokosuka. Tosho was assigned to be my point of contact with the Japs, and we’d worked together like old swim buddies from the very first day.

  In many ways he was more like a SEAL than a Japanese cop. He had a roguish sense of humor. He chased women. He liked his whiskey, his sake, and his Kirin Ichiban beer in copious amounts, and he could even be persuaded to take a drink of the Deadly Bombay once in a while.

  He was also an expert pistol shot and a seventh-degree black belt, and he’d rappelled down the sides of buildings with the best of ’em. But that was all to be expected of someone who represented what I thought of as classic Jap warrior personality.

  What I really liked so much was the fact that there was nothing Tosho wouldn’t do. I’d thrown him out of a plane and tossed him into the ocean, but he just kept coming back for more. He was absolutely fearless.

  And he could pull the trigger, too. I respect a real hunter—a man who can kill another man face-to-face. Tosho had gone nose to nose with the Japanese Red Army—twice. The score to date was Tosho three, JRA zero.

  He was working on a stack of pancakes and a side of bacon when I got there. No fish, pickled veggies, soup, dried seaweed, rice, and raw egg for Tosho in the A.M. Not when he could be visited by his favorite relative—Aunt Jemima.

  He looked up from his syrup-drenched plate and waved me over. “C’mon, c’mon, sit down.”

  He hadn’t changed at all. Maybe a tinge of gray around the temples, but he was the same solid, Japanese fireprug he’d been a decade ago. Tosho was built like a running back—five eight or so, 180 pounds, most of it thighs and biceps, a narrow waist, and a bull neck atop which sat a round face.

  His unaccented English came from four years at Notre Dame (BA in poly sci), two at Indiana, where he’d received a master’s in criminal justice and married a big-hipped, round-eyed woman named Katie, who was as Midwest as Jell-O-mold salad. Yeah—Tosho’s English was perfect and idiomatic, although he liked to fraunt his ls and rs like a Hollywood Japanese villain, circa 1943, if he thought he could outrage somebody by doing so.

  He poured me a cup of ¥1,500 coffee from the ¥6,000 thermos decanter he’d ordered for the table. “So, Marcinko-san, how does it feel to be a convicted felon?”

  “You stay current, don’t you?”

  Tosho nodded. “Intelligence is the name of the game, bub. Like Sun Tzu said, ‘Every matter in war requires prior knowledge.’”

  “Then you already know that it feels lousy.”

  He nodded. “I guessed it.”

  “Especially because I was innocent.”

  Tosho waved his finger at me. “Innocent isn’t a word that could ever be applied to you, you stupid asshole. But I’ll bet you weren’t guilty of the charges they threw at you.”

  He had a point. “I wasn’t.”

  “I believe that. Want to know why?”

  “Sure.”

  “Two reasons.” He rubbed a forkful of pancake wedges into the sticky puddle of syrup on his plate, stuck them in his mouth, and wiped a dribble of Vermont Maid off his chin. “First, because you’re such a devious son of a bitch that if you’d wanted to steal money, you’d be a millionaire by now. You were working with a goddamn black budget, for chrissakes—millions of dollars, much of it in cash.”

  He was right. If I’d wanted to steal, I’d had ample opportunity: Red Cell carried cash by the suitcaseful. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Tosho.”

  “You haven’t heard the second reason.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re too stupid, Marcinko-san. You could have never carried it off.” He pointed at his forehead. “You have fucking rocks up there.” He laughed. “Rocks. Anybody who thinks throwing himself out of a plane at thirty thousand feet is fun has rocks for brains. And anybody who does it with a stress fracture of their right leg is certifiable.”

  What could I say? He was right. I’d once gone seventeen months with a stress fracture in my right leg. “But I let the dentist use Novocain.”

  “Where? In the balls? Is that why they call you numb nuts?” Tosho laughed and scooped up another load of pancakes. “So, you’re here on a security detail.”

  “Your intelligence net really is working overtime I see.”

  Now it was the bacon’s turn to be washed in syrup and consumed. He nodded his head while he chewed. “O’Bannion called. I help him out occasionally. Black Jack was always good to us, so I’m not averse to an occasional favor for the admiral.”

  “Ah, so.”

  He wrinkled an eyebrow in my direction. “Cut the inscrutable-Oriental shit. Anyway, Tom asked me to keep an eye on you. He wants me to make sure you don’t kill anybody.”

  “That sounds boring—”

  “Or if you do, it’s legal.”

  I laughed. “That’s better.” I sipped the coffee. I hated Japanese hotel coffee. It was so weak I could see the bottom of the cup. “Speaking of killing,” I said, “what’re the chances you can get me a little piece?”

  His eyes mocked amazement. “You want to get raid?”

  “I always want to get raid. But that’s not what I’m talking about.”

  Tosho looked hurt. “You’re asking me, a police officer sworn to uphold the law, to supply a gun to you—a convicted felon?”

  “That’s the general idea.”

  He smiled. He nodded. “Sure thing. Say, you want a Blowning or a Grock?” Tosho liked to think of himself as funny.

  I prayed arong. “I’d rike a Ruger or a Luger, but I’ll settle for a Grock.”

  “Glate.” Tosho chortled. I hated when he chortled. “I rike Crocks, too. Accurate. Easy to crean. Rightweight. Big capacity.”

  I switched back into English. “And an extra mag or so, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  “No prob, guy.” He slurped his coffee. “Now why don’t you give me a dump about your trip.”

  “Sure.” I drew him a quick verbal sketch. He liked what he heard.

  “It’s about time. That place is a mess
. What makes it worse is that we’re not allowed inside—our jurisdiction stops at the fence line. It makes trying to keep tabs on all the bad guys a big prob.”

  “Who are they, these days?”

  “Same old faces. JRA tangos.” Tosho used the radio slang for Japanese Red Army terrorists. “Heroin smugglers from the Golden Triangle. North Koreans. Our own Yakuza mafiosi, and occasionally some right-wing kooks. The usual cast of characters.”

  “My kind of people. Makes life worth living. I’m going back today to walk the concourses, maybe try to get into the food area. Maybe tomorrow I’ll probe the underground cargo areas.”

  “Want some company?”

  “Do brown bears shit in the woods? Sure.”

  “Good. It’s been a while since I got to play those sorts of games with you Amerikajin assholes.”

  “Don’t you work with the Cell when it’s here?”

  “Yeah.” Tosho’s impassive face screwed up into a frown. “But they don’t get here very often anymore.”

  I knew what he was talking about. I’d heard the rumors from other SEALs while I was in prison. They spoke carefully—all my calls were monitored—but I could read between the lines. Leadership sucked. Nobody fought for the men anymore. A CO’s slot was just another ticket to be punched on the way to an admiral’s star. So you took no chances. You saved money by cutting back on travel and training. You played it safe—and you screwed your men.

  Tosho cracked his knuckles. “You know that these days they do most of their exercises by building a computer model and playing the war games on a screen. And when they do get a chance to deploy, they’re required to wear uniforms. Polo shirts that say Red Cell, and black hats with some kind of logo on them.”

  “That’s crap.” How the hell could they function like that? The whole idea of Red Cell was to infiltrate and exploit the facility’s weaknesses, just like real terrorists would do.