Red Cell

by Richard Marcinko

“Kill ’em,” I said, removing my fifteen-inch-long, razor-sharp Field Fighter knife from its scabbard. I loved the look of panic in the prisoners’ eyes when I did that. They went wide as saucers.

  “Be serious.”

  “I am.”

  “Dick—”

  “Okay, okay. We tie ’em up to trees and we leave ’em. Buckshot’s people’ll find ’em sooner or later. But we booby-trap ’em. Let’s make it quick because we’re behind schedule.”

  It was close to daybreak when we finally reached the first objective—a half-demolished shed about one hundred yards from the county road. I signaled for everyone to take up defensive firing positions while I belly-crawled to the target. That way, if I got caught in an ambush, the dweebs could kill the bad guys. It took me about fifteen minutes to make the approach because I took no chances, coming from the blind side through a patch of dead poison ivy and live huckleberry bush.

  When I finally got there, I was happy for two things. First, that I had come in alone, and second, that Ev Barrett had taught me to do things the hard way.

  From my position at the side of the building I could see the instruction envelope. It was wedged in a crack of an old board about fifteen inches above ground level next to the doorframe. That was just too inviting to be true. I double-checked the ground, and about a full body length out, right in front, I found a monofilament trip wire about ankle high running parallel to the doorway. I tracked it and discovered one end of the wire attached to a sapling; the other end was rigged to a paint-filled IED. The device wasn’t camouflaged, which told me that either the damn thing had been placed there hastily or whoever’d rigged it thought we’d storm the target area in the dark.

  It took a couple of minutes to defuse the squib. Then I back-crawled to the doorframe and ran my hand around the upright as tenderly as if I were getting ready to finger-fuck a virgin. Rule One, as Ev Barrett had knocked into my thick Slovak skull so many times, was never assume.

  I could hear his throaty New England—accented growl rumbling between my ears even now. “You know what happens when you ass-sume, Petty Officer Second Class Marcinko, you worthless blankety-blanking blank-blank blanker-bleeper bleeper-blanking no-load geek? Every bleeper-blanking time you ass-sume, you make a blanking ass of you and me.”

  Once again, I had to give credit to Ev. The envelope was attached to something. I investigated further. It had been secured by wax to a hair-thin wire … it was a goddamn pull device. That fucking ingenious bastard Manny.

  Holding my breath, I eased the envelope back into the crack so I wouldn’t accidentally pull it. Then, sliding a razor-sharp Emerson CQC6 Close Quarters combat folding knife out of my BDUs, I carefully slit the envelope about one-third of the way along its upper edge. Gingerly, I slipped the directions and our team card out without disturbing the wax-and-wire arrangement. By the time I’d copied the new location into my notebook, I was sweating copiously.

  I double-checked to make sure I’d copied everything correctly, then I slid the directions back up into the envelope, sealed it with tape, and withdrew.

  Our first goal was to get the hell away from the target. So we crawled directly north for about ten minutes, moving quickly but carefully. I led the way, probing for booby traps and antipersonnel mines and IEDs with the Field Fighter. I was anxious to put as much distance as possible between us and the shed. We finally stopped, winded, just below the crest of a small rise. While Joe and the boys read the new directions, I rolled over the top and called Wonder on the secure transmitter.

  “Yo, bro.”

  “Yo, asshole.”

  “Anything?” Stevie was tasked with monitoring all communications from The Hustings.

  “Nah. Lots of normal message traffic. A lot of it is cellular—in Japanese.”

  That was interesting. I wondered if it was significant. “Sounds—” Our conversation was interrupted by an audible explosion back at the target site. I smiled at Joe. Somebody hadn’t been paying attention.

  “What the hell was that?” Wonder asked.

  “It used to be the competition.”

  He giggled. I could just see his head swiveling.

  I explained about Manny. He whistled. “Anything I can do?”

  “Not for the moment. Keep your ears open. If you hear something, call.”

  “Roger-roger.”

  Joe watched as I put the phone away. “Who’re you talking to?”

  “That’s compartmented, Joe.”

  I planned on reaching the second objective just before 1330. It would be a long morning—marching through seven miles of foothills, meadows, and high pastureland, taking a circuitous path right up to the edge of the Appalachian Trail, where Target Two was located. We stopped on the way at 14/12 Charlie to pick up another package of goodies Wonder and I had stowed during our sneak-and-peeks. This cache sat in a waterproof pack tied to the southeast concrete foot of the county-road bridge that crossed the river about two miles due north of Griffith’s house.

  It was at the bridge we received a gift from God. Before I retrieved my package I checked the bridge for booby traps. Attached by a wood frame to the underside of the concrete span, which sat about five feet above the shallow water, was a big envelope. I went into the water and checked for wires and other trigger devices and, finding none, tied a rope to the wood frame and pulled myself up. There were three separate booby traps attached to the envelope. I disarmed them, retrieved the envelope, brought it back to shore, and opened it carefully to see which team’s objective we’d blundered onto.

  Eureka! There was a Team ANT card inside, along with a Team Matsuko card, as well as directions to Target Number Four. Joe and I high-fived. It wasn’t even 0930 hours yet. This put us way ahead of the game.

  The smart thing now would be to play it safe—proceed alone to the second target, retrieve the ANT card, and then cruise on to the fourth and fifth targets, hours ahead of the others.

  But something was gnawing at me. Something was not right. Suddenly it struck me: Buckshot had pitted Manny and me against each other because he—or more likely Grant Griffith—wanted us to go at it. A couple of knuckle-dragging gladiators engaged in blood sport for the gentry’s amusement. They’d all be expecting us to face off at the last target—if we both got that far. Probably have video cameras going. That pissed me off. If the goddamn former SECDEF wanted to see me kill somebody, let him pay me for the pleasure. He could afford it.

  So, fuck him. Doom on you, Grant—I’d take Manny here, in private, for my own enjoyment.

  First, I showed the dweebs how to rig a pair of pressure mats (they look like shower mats but they have a built-in switch that detonates when weight’s put on them) to Claymore mines, each rigged with Simunition red paint and an artillery simulator. I anchored the pads on the muddy river bottom underneath the bridge and wrapped vines around the det cords. We stuck the Claymores on the vertical bridge supports, then Normal camouflaged them with mud.

  Then, we built a series of booby traps laid in concentric circles out from the bridge. We ran M-1 pull detonators attached to trip wires. I planted multiple pressure mines attached to paint squibs. I set a series of Claymores. Dagwood looked at my wiring and shook his head.

  “Negatory, Dick.”

  “What’s the prob?” I’d never had a problem setting this kind of trap before.

  “You have set the charges serially. If you set them this way”—he changed the wiring—“they can be fired from either direction, or from the middle out.”

  Son of a bitch. He was right. It was so simple it was elegant. “Fuck you, Dagwood. I’m gonna get you a job teaching booby traps at Little Creek.”

  He smiled back at me like a toothpaste billboard. “Anytime, Dick. Anytime at all.”

  As we finished preparing our tenth old-fashioned smoke-grenade trap, Joe wondered aloud whether I was perhaps overcompensating.

  The maniacal look on my face told him that was a question that shouldn’t be asked.

  The idea, I e
xplained as we worked, was to run Manny’s Matsuko team through a gauntlet of explosives and funnel them into a killing zone, where we could decimate ’em. We worked at a frenzied pace. Even so, it took us just under two hours to rig the explosives.

  As soon as we finished—just after 1115—I got on the horn to Wonder. Eight minutes after I called, Stevie’s maroon Dodge Ram approached the bridge.

  I opened the right-hand door and motioned Joe and Dagwood over. “Get in.”

  Joe was confused. I stuck my thumb in Stevie’s direction. “This is your tour guide. He’ll take you to Target Two.”

  “But—”

  “Hey, Joe, this is no time for discussion.” I handed Wonder the directions. “Bring ’em both back alive, okay?”

  He grinned from behind the wraparound shades. “No prob.”

  I went around to the back and pulled a cammo tarp off the truck bed. “Later, bro.”

  Under my direction, the squad dug two long, deep pits in the soft loam of the heavily wooded areas directly to the north and west of the bridge. I lined them with pieces of Wonder’s tarp, and we camouflaged the tops with brush and leaves. Then I found two good-sized downed trees and secured each of them to a sapling.

  With Normal and Crabcakes’ help I bent the saplings back and tied them off, setting the triggers with monofilament trip line.

  The concept was KISS-simple. I’d leave a hint of a trail for Manny and his team to follow. Not too much, or he’d get suspicious. But enough so he’d take the bait. The Japs would move along the path, trip the wire, and the trees would swat them into the pit. I’d used the same device successfully on VC. If the traps didn’t get them, the IEDs at the bridge would do the job—or we’d shoot ’em all from ambush.

  The traps took two hours to finish. I was nervous—we were pushing the edge of the envelope so far as the opposition was concerned. Manny was good. And he’d be coming soon.

  The traps finished, I supervised Crabcakes and Normal as they dug in. What I wanted were SAS-styled ambush positions from which we could maintain fields of fire that crisscrossed the entire bridge area, while remaining invisible, even to Manny’s practiced eyes. I had the men hunker in their shallow holes and camouflage themselves with loose vegetation. Then I double-and triple-checked their positions to make sure they were invisible even to me. I used the 5-S system that we’d learned in SERE, or Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape school. I watched for Shape, Shine, Silhouette, Smell, and Sound.

  By the time I’d finished adding a wisp of brush here and a branch there, or painting an exposed ear with cammo cream, I didn’t care how good Manny was—there was no fucking way he was going to see my squad before they blew his ass away.

  I dropped into my own foxhole and figuratively pulled the covers up under my chin. Now came the hard part. The wait.

  The ambush has come a long way since Odysseus dropped out of the Trojan horse, the Robin Hood gang swung down from their trees in Sherwood, or the minutemen popped up from behind that stone wall outside Concord, Massachusetts. Today, there are a panoply of wonderful mechanical and electronic devices to help us kill our enemy. We’ve got UGS—Unmanned Ground Sensors—that trigger Claymores and other explosive devices when an enemy force moves into the area. There are infrared trigger systems, microwave activators, radio-controlled devices, and laser detonators.

  All of these gadgets are marvelous. They are also expensive. And they only work when your enemy is kind enough to walk along a path where you’ve painstakingly set them up and trip them.

  It’s possible, of course, to convince your enemy to follow a specific route—you can make him believe you’re unaware he’s around. Or that you’ve got something he wants. You could drop money on the trail and let him follow you, picking up the coins as he goes.

  But nothing in warfare is guaranteed. Remember Rule One. Never assume. So, maybe Mr. Bad Guy is independently wealthy and he doesn’t need your coins. Or he’s smart, so he takes the back door. Or maybe he’s lucky, and the batteries in your million-dollar laser system run dry. Or perhaps the company that made your UGS cut a corner or two and it’s not as waterproof as it’s supposed to be. You catch my drift.

  Bottom line: when it comes to an ambush, the old-fashioned way is the best. You use intelligence to tell you where your enemy’s going to be. Then you set up, and you wait for him to show. Then you kill him before he knows what’s happening.

  I had the right intelligence—I knew where Manny had to be. I’d set my traps and put out my bait. Now, it was time to wait.

  He showed up at 1445. By then we’d been in the holes more than a hour, and everyone was fidgety. Despite liberal applications of insect repellent, the creepy-crawlies were doing their creepy-crawling up and down arms and legs, in and out of shirts and pants. The November sun was hot, and we were all sweaty and uncomfortable. I knew Crabcakes and Normal wanted to take a piss because that’s the way I felt, too. But you couldn’t even piss in your pants because Manny would smell it a hundred feet away, and the big mean bogeyman would come and scalp you dead.

  He was still good. Was he ever. You didn’t hear anything—anything No rustle of brush. No change in the way the insects buzzed or the birds chirped. It was just that, all of a sudden, he was here. Manny. The Predator.

  It was like a chapter out of Zen and the Art of the Ambush.

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up. It took all my self-discipline not to move, not to crane my neck to see if he was coming up in back of me.

  I waited. The silence was excruciating.

  It took another six or seven minutes before I actually saw him. He was coming from downstream, working his way through the woods on the southern bank of the river. The approach was proof of his professionalism—he was coming through the back door, just as I would have done.

  And, like me, Manny was alone. He’d left his Japs behind, probably somewhere safe in the woods nearby, while he did the recon solo. Just the way I’d hit Target One earlier in the day.

  We had our radios on. I whispered, “Quiet, steady,” and, “Four o’clock,” into the lip mike, hoping the men would understand.

  He was bare chested. His muscular body was covered in camouflage war paint that blended almost perfectly with his tiger-striped BDUs and the cammo rucksack he carried over one shoulder. He’d tied a cammo kerchief over his long Indian hair, and he wore another around his neck. In one hand Manny carried a CAR-15. In his other was a wicked bowie knife with which he probed the ground, testing for mines. Manny moved at a slow, consistent pace, his eyes making a methodic sweep of the area, his moccasins leaving no tracks in the soft earth. He knew enough to look in a 360, watching above and below as well as side to side.

  He came upon the first of my IEDs—an M-1 pull device attached to a series of squibs by a trip wire secured a foot above the ground. That is high for a trip wire. But I’d wanted Manny to see it.

  Bingo. His eyes followed the path of the wire as it led across the leaf-strewn path, to where the detonator was concealed behind a tree. Slowly he moved his hand into his shirt pocket. He withdrew an M-1 firing pin and inserted it into the pull device’s safety. Then he snipped the trip wire. The booby trap was disarmed.

  He paused, looking around, as if asking himself who it was who’d done that. You could see his nostrils flare, as if he were trying to sniff out the opposition.

  He stopped. He slipped the rucksack off his shoulder and hung it on a convenient tree. Then he backtracked, peering around to see what the alternatives were, should he need them. He knew about Rule One.

  He tacked away from the path, moving in my direction. I held my breath as he edged closer, inch by inch, toward my SAS position. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. I prayed that Manny couldn’t.

  He stopped, two yards away, and looked right at me. When someone does that, the only thing to do is nothing. If you believe you are invisible, you will become invisible. I willed myself to be invisible, and Manny looked right through me. It seemed like he s
tared for an eternity, even though it was only a few moments. Then, having seen nothing, he moved on.

  I didn’t breathe again until he was ten yards beyond me. Then I watched as he crept in a thirty-yard circle, backtracking to his original position. Smart.

  Now, he began a systematic search of the area for other booby traps. One by one he found them, each time getting closer to the bridge. My concentric lethal circles were being peeled like an onion.

  It took him an hour to sweep the southern approach to the bridge alone. Then, having deemed it safe, he vaulted over the rail and began a systematic search of the bridge itself. He went over every nook and cranny. He’d do the bridge itself now, then search the northern approach. I had to admit it: Manny was good. Nothing escaped him. That worried me. We’d concealed ourselves on the north side of the bridge—and I knew he’d discover us. It was just a matter of time.

  I watched as he lowered himself into the water. I held my breath. We had two pressure plates down there. If he touched bottom—and it was less than six feet deep under the bridge—then he’d go boom.

  No way. Manny floated downstream on his back, looking up at the envelope secured to the concrete five feet above his head. Then, as I watched, he breast-stroked against the current, then dead-man-floated downstream. He was looking for booby traps. This was one careful half-breed.

  Okay, I know you’re wondering why I just didn’t stand up and shoot the son of a bitch. I mean, here I am, all camouflaged, locked, loaded, and lying in ambush. So why not ambush Manny right then and there?

  The answer is that I didn’t know where the others in his team were. I was certain he’d stashed them in the woods. But, if he was a pro like me, he’d have left them in a defensive posture, weapons ready. Even if they were complete assholes, they’d be able to fire their guns or toss a grenade or two, and I’d be dog meat. Good-bye, game; good-bye, Joe Andrews; and most important, good-bye, Grant Griffith. No—this was an all-or-nothing deal, and I wanted it all.

  Finally, Manny began sniffing around the envelope like it was a bitch in heat. He swung himself under the bridge and worked his way up and down the structure. He disarmed the booby traps attached to the envelope. Then he took the cards and the directions and slipped them into his BDUs.