Red Cell

by Richard Marcinko

  So how do you motivate them? I’d give ‘em a big fat bonus for every piece of contraband they discover. But that solution is too simple for most airlines. What they do is yell and scream. So, what you get is a security guard who doesn’t give a rusty fuck whether I’m carrying an attaché case filled with papers or an attaché case filled with grenades.

  I armed the timer and closed the suitcase. Well, maybe this would teach them something. Doom on you, assholes.

  In less than two minutes I was back at the bar. I gave Tosho the wallet, drained my beer, and stood up. “Time to prowl and growl. Save my place.”

  With Tosho watching, I picked a lock and descended two flights into the commissary area. To my right lay the access ramp from the dock where the food trucks drove up and delivered their cargo. A brace of freight-elevator doors sat off to the side—keyless operation, too. That meant anybody could ride them. Down a long passageway to my left, the quarantine area and employee locker room doors were visible.

  The main kitchens were straight ahead, through a set of double pneumatic doors. I pushed and stepped inside and was greeted by a blast of frigid air. The temperature must have dropped by twenty-five degrees. No salmonella here. The place was all white tile and bright, green-tinged fluorescent light. It reminded me of the kitchen at Petersburg prison. Well, time to move around. I started toward the big reefers, where I intended to leave one of my MARCINKO THE TERRORIST SAYS HAVE A NICE DAY stickers, but a sumo-sized cook in a white jacket and paper chef’s cap intercepted me before I’d gotten ten feet. He was carrying a cleaver in extra large.

  “Sumimasen?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Wakarimasu ka Nihongo?”

  “Eigo—English,” I said. “No Japanese.”

  “No come here,” said Sumo sternly. “No come here.”

  Smoke and mirrors time. I bowed. “My name is Marcinko. I’m an American journalist writing a story about airline food preparation in Japan.”

  “Oh.”

  “Hai—yes.”

  “Oh.”

  “Can you show me around? I’d like to see the facilities here. I visited Haneda yesterday.” Haneda was Tokyo’s other airport—smaller, and much closer to the city.

  Sumo shook his head and explained in halting English that I would have to make an appointment to view the commissary areas with the airport authorities. Furthermore, he explained, I would need a health certificate. “It is too easy to contaminating the preparation areas otherwise.”

  He ushered me back up the stairs and opened the door for me. I heard him double-check the lock before he returned to work. That guy would get an A in my memo.

  I retired back to the bar in the passenger waiting area. Tosho had moved us to a pair of stools with a better view of the security office.

  I checked my watch. “Should be coming up soon,” I said.

  Three minutes later, we heard a muffled whomp, and the door flew open to reveal thick yellow smoke. Half a dozen rent-a-cops came stumbling out into the crowded passageway, coughing and gagging. There was screaming and yelling, and within minutes dozens of cops, soldiers, and security people were outshouting each other, while they tried to figure out what the hell had happened to them and who was to blame.

  After a few minutes, two blue-uniformed men with oxygen rigs on their backs and fire extinguishers shouldered their way through the crowd and back into the office. Tosho laughed at the mess across the hall. “What a clusterfuck.”

  We prowled and growled for another hour. Despite the fact that the airport had been put on alert, it was absurdly easy to penetrate supposedly “secure” areas, and heads would roll when I wrote my report.

  Tosho and I took the train back to town. He wanted to spend the rest of the day hitting his favorite bars, but I begged off and cabbed to the Okura, took a shower to collect my thoughts, then wrote another long cable to O’Bannion. At about five I ambled downstairs to the Garden Lounge, where I sat watching the sunset and nursing a Bombay until seven-thirty, when I was accosted by something small, buxom, blond, and Australian. For some wonderful reason, Aussie women just love me. Maybe it’s the way I say “Sheila.” Maybe they think I look like a koala. Maybe I remind them of home. Maybe it’s the promises I make. Whatever the case, half an hour later we were upstairs in my big Japanese tub with a triple order of room-service sake and I was assaulting Mount Suribachi yelling, “Banzai.”

  By 0-Dark Hundred—that’s the wee, wee hours of the morning to you civilians—the pressure relieved, I was back in my favorite culvert, dressed in my basic black, cold and wet, watching and waiting.

  I slid the Glock from my pocket, checked the magazine, then chambered a round. Better safe than sorry. It hit me that I hadn’t fired the gun, but it was in perfect shape, and what the hell—what’s life without a surprise or two? Then I thought of Tosho—oh, shit, I hadn’t called him. Well, it was better that way. Why keep him up all night when he could be in bed lolling in the hay or whatever Japs do.

  I caught a ride on a Coca-Cola delivery truck, jumping for the rear bumper while the driver punched in his access code, and holding on for dear life as he jounced over the speed bumps going down the ramp to the subterranean passageways. He parked near the concourse elevators, so I figured I was right under the main terminal area—the perfect location for ten pounds of C-4 explosive. I rigged an IED so it would go off when the elevator doors were opened, then placed a sticker nearby. Then I wandered along a series of hundred-foot-deep, six-foot-high concrete bays where drivers parked and recharged the electric delivery vehicles that shuttled baggage and packages up and down the three miles of underground highway. Peering and poking at cargo that had been parked between flights, I made my way toward the short-term freight area to do some other damage.

  I moved along the walls from bay to bay, using the shadows cast by the crates, containers, and vehicles to my advantage. It took three hours to move the thousand or so yards down the subterranean road, examining each bay for signs of pilferage as I moved through the dimly lit passageway. Nothing. So I affixed my have-a-nice-day stickers to crates and left seven IEDs behind, each rigged with a slightly different booby-trap mechanism. Doom on you, security forces.

  It was four A.M. as I eased into the rearmost departure bay. I stopped short. Flashlights shone at the far end and I heard the scraping of wood on concrete. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. My whole body tingled with a delicious mixture of fear, anticipation, and tension. It was like the first patrol in Vietnam, or the first jump from thirty-five thousand feet—a mystical sense of apprehension coupled with the exhilaration of finally being able to get the job done. At last, I’d come upon something unexpected. I moved forward, inch by inch, to see what was going on, easing my way around a pile of six-foot containers, working my way toward the noise.

  I squinted in the dim light. By the sound of it, someone was muling around large crates. I didn’t understand why they weren’t using the forklifts I’d seen in the main passageway—except that perhaps they didn’t want to attract attention. I crept closer until I could make them out—four men, jabbering at each other as they worked on a crate with a crowbar.

  I watched for a few seconds, wondering whether they were ripping off an incoming shipment or stashing drugs in an outgoing container. I worked my way closer, and all of a sudden the rhythm and cadences of their chattering hit me like a club. Geezus—these guys weren’t Japs, they were Koreans.

  Shit. Koreans have no sense of humor. Zero. Zippo. None. How could they? They live on kimchi, which is a foul mixture of garlic-laden sour cabbage laced with hot peppers, poured into a clay pot, buried like a rotting corpse, and left in the ground to ferment for months. It is impossible to eat kimchi and have a sense of humor.

  I dropped and scuttled across the floor to get closer. But I wasn’t alone. Mr. Murphy of Murphy’s Law fame had snuck up on me in the dark, and he hooked my foot on a dolly handle as I crawled. Kerrrrang! It hit the hard concrete with a ring that sounded like Big Be
n. Doom on you, Dickie.

  The Koreans turned in my direction and broke out firepower. I did, too. I raised the Glock. I hadn’t shot a gun since before I’d gone to jail, but what the fuck—they say that shooting is like riding a bike.

  As the first of them charged in my direction, I dropped him with a double tap. From my vantage point and pucker factor it looked like a gut shot at four P.M. and a rise to the neck. Was it the surge of adrenaline that made me squeeze and heel? Who cared—the SOB went down.

  My heart was doing about a hundred miles per hour. I rolled right to draw fire. It worked—a piece of wood splintered somewhere above my head and I saw a muzzle blast at ten o’clock.

  April fool, motherfucker. I rolled again and came up on a knee, my Glock’s night sights three even green dots in the semidarkness.

  Bingo. Kimchi Number Two was right in my sight picture six feet away, his round face amazed that this bearded gringo ninja had him and he was about to meet his ancestors.

  “Fuck you—” I pulled the trigger three times and rocked him back, a triangle of holes in his chest. Doom on you, asshole.

  I rolled again, my shoulder smashing into the concrete as I scrambled for cover, firing wildly down the bay while I shifted. A ricochet came too close and I felt wetness on my cheek. No time to check how bad it was, just move, roll, and fire. Shit—the mag ran dry. I reached for the backup in my pocket.

  Goddamn—where the hell was it? I fumbled around, cursing.

  The pause to change magazines must have given them a thirst for success or some other damn kamikaze syndrome because I heard a big scrambling of feet, and the next thing I knew, one of them was on top of me. I could see the whites of his eyes as he rounded a crate at full gallop, his hand wrapped around a big knife. My gun was still empty.

  I could almost hear the profane growl of my old UDT platoon boss, Chief Gunner’s Mate Everett E. Barrett, in my brain as the kimchi rushed me. Do not be a fucking fumble-fingers, Marcinko. Take the fucking magazine. Now, put it in the motherfucking gun, release the fucking slide, and shoot the son of a bitch. Do not screw up. I said, shoot the son of a bitch, Marcinko, you shit-for-brains no-load cockbreath pus-nuts pencil-dicked asshole geek!

  It felt like it took me a week, but I finally wrapped my sweaty fucking fumble-fingers around the magazine, pulled it out of my pocket, slapped it home, dropped the slide, and shot the son of a bitch—all in the space of about a second and a half.

  Not a moment too soon, either. By the time I’d loaded and locked he was on top of me, charging like a bull, his face ratcheted in anger or fear or both, knife coming for my eyes, a scream in his throat. I never even had a chance to raise the weapon. All I could do was fire from a crouched position and hope he’d fucking drop like a stone.

  It was so easy to pull the three-pound trigger I put five rounds in him before I could stop. Shit—don’t waste bullets, you asshole. What if they had reinforcements outside—what the hell was I going to do, wave my lizard at ‘em?

  Kimchi Three went down but his momentum carried him into me. I ducked the blade and hit him in the face with the side of the gun to knock him away. He stopped moving. I rolled him over and shot him again in the head at close range to make sure he was dead. After all, when there’s a question, leave no doubt. I gave the kimchi a quick once-over. I’d walked the rounds from his right thigh through his groin to his heart and then shoulder. It was reflex firing—and lots of luck.

  Now on to Kimchi Number Four. There was movement at my two o’clock. I saw him scramble for the main corridor, about fifteen yards away. I tried to get a sight picture but I was so pumped up I was shaking. I braced my forearm on top of the nearest crate, acquired front-sight picture, and squeezed off a controlled three-round burst as the Korean was silhouetted against the passageway light. Controlled burst—like hell. Only one of them hit, but he still pitched forward. Goo-bye.

  Sure I shot him in the back. I have no pride about things like that. A back shot is still a shot, and whether you believe it’s fair or not, it does the job—it kills your enemy.

  I collapsed, sweaty, bleeding, and still shaking. But as I lay on the cold concrete, I flashed on something great: all the days of stress-firing at SEAL Team Six had paid off. I don’t remember how many times I’d chased through rooms full of furniture and boxes, firing at moving targets, dinging my old shins and brittle elbows on sharp edges, trying to impress my baby SEAL shooters with the importance of being able to shoot when you’re pumped up and under incredible stress, your heart is going a mile a minute, and you don’t know what the hell’s gonna happen to you next.

  They’d bitch at me. Complain that they knew all this shit and there was no need to do it again and again and again and again. “Fuck you,” I’d tell ’em. “The more you bleed in training, the less you’ll bleed in combat.” I felt I was right, but I had no proof. But I said it anyway because it made perfect sense.

  Now, lying out of breath on my back in the subterranean cargo bay, the pulse racing in my ears, I remembered how, over cold beer with the troops after we’d spent the day stress-firing, I’d count my newly gained scar tissue and wonder if it really was all worthwhile.

  Tonight, I could answer that question unequivocally.

  Tonight, I’d been alone. Sans backup. Sans friends, allies, or fellow shooters.

  It was the edge I’d honed during SEAL Team Six training that got me through.

  Chapter 3

  TOSHO AND A CREW OF SIX ARRIVED IN TIME TO PICK UP THE pieces. It took them less than half an hour from Tokyo, which meant he’d probably scrambled a chopper. Actually, he’d scrambled a pair of them, and as it turned out the expense was worth it. The kimchis turned out to be North Koreans—citizens of a country not recognized by the United States, but legal residents in Japan. The papers they carried indicated they all had jobs. One worked at the North Korean embassy as a clerk. Tosho knew about him—he was an intelligence agent. Another did menial labor in Tokyo. And two carried corporate IDs from Matsuko. I knew that name—and I didn’t like it very much. Matsuko had made millions by selling top-secret, seven-axis milling machines to the Soviets back in the late seventies. The two-story-high, three-hundred-ton tools had made it possible for the Soviet Navy to build eleven-bladed submarine propellers that ran as quietly as the ones on U.S. attack subs. In its quest for profits, Matsuko had forever changed the dynamics of undersea warfare.

  Before he got down to business, Tosho gave me a dressing down that would have done Ev Barrett proud. “You dumb cocksucking shit-for-brains asshole,” he began. “What the hell did you think you were doing blowing people away without calling me first?”

  He answered his own question. “You were fucking up!” he shouted, his nose about an inch from mine. “You were fucking up and causing me great personal loss of face.” Pause. “Goddammit, Dick—”

  I tried to get a word in edgewise. Tosho was having none of it. “Not a fucking word until I see what the hell happened here.”

  He calmed down when he discovered what I’d blundered into. The goods the kimchis had been muling around in the cargo bay when I interrupted them was a container of high-speed detonators—electronic switches virtually identical to krytrons, the small, precise electronic triggers used for nuclear weapons.

  These were small detonators, the kind that could be used on tactical missiles such as Tomahawks. I’d seen similar ones during Red Cell infiltrations of naval weapons depots. This crate had been innocuously labeled ACME AIR-CONDITIONING PARTS and shipped to Narita through a roundabout odyssey that included London, Frankfurt, and Rome. The final destination on the polyglot manifest stapled to the side of the box was an electronics firm in Hong Kong.

  Obviously, I’d interrupted the Koreans playing a Pyongyang version of three-card monte, in which the detonators were the ace in the hole, and the kimchis’ sleight of hand would cause them to end up in the North Korean nuclear program, while the empty crate continued to the Crown Colony.

  Two of the tangos were sti
ll alive—I guess my marksmanship wasn’t what it used to be—and Tosho had them transferred under heavy guard to a hospital where they’d be patched up before interrogation. I received first aid for the ricochet wound on my cheek, then he and I choppered back to Tokyo, where I debriefed at his HQ and called O’Bannion to let him know about my adventures and the capacitors, so he could inform Fujoki about the Koreans.

  I was still in overdrive. My mind was moving at warp speed, reliving the shootout, trying to extract whatever I could. But I kept getting the same error message every time: “Something is wrong with this picture.” I was just too crazy or tired or hyper to figure out what the bad element was. Doom on me.

  By then it was 0900. Tosho’s researcher told me the company that made the capacitors was called Jones-Hamilton. I got on the computer and played with Nexis and Dow Jones for a while and discovered that Jones-Hamilton was a California-based contractor that did a bunch of hush-hush work for the Defense Department, mostly because one of its directors was a former secretary of defense named Grant Griffith.

  I vaguely knew Griffith’s name—he was some big muckety-muck. Probably a crook, too, given the fact that it was illegal to ship nuclear detonators. While I played Sherlock, I had Tosho run a trace on the air-conditioner company on the manifest. It was owned by one Grant Griffith. One time can be an accident. Twice is not. This guy was dirty.

  We called Hawaii. When I told O’Bannion what I’d discovered, he instructed me at once to pass the word on through channels. Between the nuclear detonators and the involvement of a former SECDEF, the proper authorities would want to know.

  Tosho drove me to the American embassy. I phoned the naval attache’s office from the Marine security booth and asked for an immediate appointment. His royal highness Commander Blivet Sphincter, Jr., or whatever his name was, was too busy to see me right away, so while I waited, I dropped by the commissary to pick Tosho up a case of tax-free Haig & Haig “Dimple” Scotch as a way of saying thanks for the Glock, the ammo, and the moral support.