Red Cell

by Richard Marcinko

  THEY CAME TO GET ME BY CHOPPER. I WAS OUT BACK, WORKING ON the weight pile when I heard them closing—they were in a UH-1H from the whump-whump-whumping sound they made. They must have landed way out on the south forty—that’s what I call the ten-acre cornfield beyond the mailbox—because it took ’em about fifteen minutes to hump up the road, down the driveway, meander through the house, and discover me bench-pressing 350 pounds of iron down in the little hollow behind the deck.

  Outdoor PT was a routine I’d begun in jail. The weight pile at Petersburg Federal Peck’s Bad Boys’ Camp and Medium Security Prison was about two hundred yards downhill from the dorms, on a hundred and fifty square feet of concrete slab sitting next to the White Men Can’t Jump-style basketball hoops. Every morning at six, seven days a week, rain or shine, I’d walk past the tower, wave to the guard, then set about doing my PT. I dressed only in a pair of nylon running shorts, a pair of Nikes, and a headband. I dressed that way whether it was ninety-five degrees out or fifteen degrees. I did it for a couple of reasons. First, it was mental exercise for me—to see how much self-discipline I could muster day after day after day. Second, it was a mind game I could play on the other prisoners. I wanted them to know—without my having to say anything overtly—that I was not to be fucked with.

  Guess what? No one messed with Demo Dick, or, as I came to be known at Petersburg, Lobo the Wolfman. The crooked politicians, drug dealers, snitches, white-collar criminals, and mafiosi all took one look at me working the weight pile bare chested in January, my fingers freezing to the steel bar, and knew that I was absofuckinglutely crazy. They saw me come back from an hour’s workout with steam rising from my body, ice in my matted beard, and a madman’s gleam in my roguish eye, and they understood that I wanted to be left alone.

  Funny thing was, I discovered—this is typical for a Frogman, incidentally—that I actually liked the no-pain/no-gain feeling I got when I did my PT outdoors. So, when I bought the Manor—which came complete with a sauna and Jacuzzi for heating up my old, tired, and soon-to-be C-O-L-D bones, I poured ten by ten feet of concrete slab, set an industrial-strength weight bench and a ton of iron on top of it, and got back to my daily prison routine.

  This particular morning it was about eighteen degrees at the Manor. I’d been lifting for half an hour and there was already ice in my beard and steam on my chest when the pair of staff four-stripers in heavy bridge coats, plus two burly security types in dress blues and Dixie cups, showed up, all huffing and puffing from their half-mile walk. They looked funny from my point of view, but I wasn’t about to interrupt my routine, so I lay there pumping iron and staring up their nostrils.

  Finally, the tall one with dark nose-hair spoke. “Commander Marcinko?”

  I did five more reps. “Who wants to know?”

  “I’m Captain Tobias, this is Captain Burger. We’re from CNO’s office.”

  “I’m impressed. Does that make you archangels or something?” Another five. “So, why the visit?”

  Tobias walked over to the head of the bench and stared down at me. He put his hands on the weight bar, which rested just above my chest. “You’re being recalled to active duty. Please get dressed and come with us.”

  I let him spot for me, did ten more reps, replaced the bar, and swiveled off the bench. I shook the ice out of my beard. “Fuck you very much, gentlemen, but that’s a BTDT so far as I’m concerned.”

  Burger, a tall dip-shit who had both freckles and dimples, growled, “Huh?”

  “Been there—done that. No need to repeat myself.”

  “You’re not volunteering,” said Tobias, a pretty boy wearing an Academy ring. He presented me with an unsealed envelope.

  I opened it and read the bad news. There is a naval technical term for what they were doing to me. The term is goatfuck. “You can’t do this.”

  “Beg to differ, Commander,” said Burger, brushing the dandruff off his shoulders. “It’s both legitimate and binding. I’m CNO’s legal adviser, and you can take my word for it.”

  “But—” For once in my life I was speechless.

  “So, if you please,” said Tobias, “you can either get dressed and come with us on your own, or we’ll have these first-class boatswain’s mates here bring you along in manacles. Choice is yours, bub.”

  Pinky had changed for the worse in the five years since I’d laid eyes on him. He was the same dour-faced, nervous, skinny beanpole as always. His uniform was swimming on him—the Budweiser on his uniform breast seemed oversize and out of place. Indeed, how he’d become a SEAL I never knew. He didn’t have a muscle in his body. As he rose from his armchair when I came through his door, he seemed to do it in stages, unfolding himself the way tall clowns extricate themselves from those tiny cars in the circus ring, joint by joint by joint. It struck me that he was completely pliable, like whalebone, or, more aptly, chicken cartilage.

  He’d aged—badly, too. His hair, once dirty blond, had now gone slate gray, something that gave new emphasis to the sepulchral qualities of his face. And he’d become more stoop-shouldered than ever, as if he’d been worn down by carrying the great burdens of his office. He had the overall look of a harried accountant.

  When he saw me, his eyes went wide as saucers. I don’t know whether it was the nonregulation hair and beard that bothered him most or just the fact that I was still alive and kicking.

  I extended my hand. “Hey, Pinky, still getting hazardous-duty pay for counting those beans?”

  “Hello, Dick,” he said sullenly, turning away toward the window so he wouldn’t have to shake my hand.

  But Pinky wasn’t alone in the office. Grant Griffith was there, too. The former secretary of defense sat behind Pinky’s desk, looking like the Cheshire fucking cat, twiddling with his Roman ring. In his three-piece, pinstripe suit of ministerial Oxford gray, starched white shirt, and sincere blue pin-dot tie he looked right at home in the high-backed judge’s chair—the only thing missing was a gavel. It was he who began speaking.

  “Dick—Pinky, please.” Griffith pointed toward the two armchairs that faced the desk, indicating that we should take our places.

  We sat as directed. Then Tobias and Burger opened a heavy leather dispatch case and presented me with a half-inch-thick pile of papers, all marked with an x and highlighted where my signatures were to go.

  The agreements were filled with wheretofores and herebys and hereafters and notwithstandings. If they were ever translated into English, they would have said that I’d been involuntarily recalled to active duty because of my unique and irreplaceable expertise in certain areas—notably the area of sending bad guys to their just rewards. I was, furthermore, now frocked as a captain, which meant I had all the rights of a four-striper, except I hadn’t been (and would never be) confirmed by the U.S. Senate. I knew about that. I’d been frocked to captain before, until my enemies—Pinky Prescott among the leaders of them—got to Secretary of the Navy James Webb and convinced him to remove my name from the list.

  The promotion was the good-news part. The contracts also stipulated that if I ever repeated a word of what I heard, read, saw, or was told during the time of my activation, I’d be thrown in jail for the rest of my life sans benefit of due legal process. Furthermore, I pledged never to write another nonfiction book about my activities unless I got written permission to do so in advance from the Navy. Okay—I’d write fiction from now on. There was nothing in the agreement about writing fiction. Doom on you, Navy.

  I signed. I found it ironic that, with the stroke of a pen, I gained a stripe but lost most of my First Amendment rights. Now let me ask you—is that Newton’s Law at work, or Murphy’s?

  The paperwork over, Griffith flicked a glance at my two four-striped escorts, who nodded and withdrew as silently as the Victorian butlers they were.

  “I guess the cliché would be to say, ‘You’re both wondering why I called you here today,’” Griffith began, his long index fingers pressing together in a steeple. “Well, let me explain.” />
  It wasn’t Moses and his tablets, or the Sermon on the Mount, but it was close. Grant’s monologue, which went on for the better part of half an hour, contained the following major points.

  First, he’d managed to convince his pal the CNO to recall me because he believed I could help the nation solve its most critical security problem—to wit, the hemorrhage of nuclear technology to North Korea, as evidenced by the episode I’d witnessed at Narita.

  Further, it was apparent to Griffith there was an organized program of clandestine nuclear theft going on, and that Red Cell—led by me—should be used to stop it before the media got wind of the problem. That way, everything could be handled quietly from within the defense establishment.

  After all, Griffith rhapsodized, administrations come and administrations go—but the system stays in place forever. The system is eternal.

  Griffith grinned at us. Wasn’t he proof of that point? He, after all, was the personification of the system’s immortality. That little joke aside, he explained, it was the system that had to be protected, not the political goals of any particular president or the objectives of a single administration.

  Why? Because by safeguarding the system, the nation’s security was also protected. That was the long-range view, as he—along with the CNO and others of his ilk—saw it.

  Moreover, it was the safe way of doing business. Any program—from Middle East policy to health-care tax proposals—the current administration tried to undertake would unquestionably leak to the press. The White House was a sieve. The Pentagon was little better. And as for the Hill—well, we all knew that the Hill was filled with petty, small-minded, selfish assholes each out for himself. Griffith laughed cynically. “I’ve been here for three decades and I’ve never yet met a congressman or senator who’s ever even offered to pick up a lunch or dinner check. The only thing they’re interested in is money and getting reelected.”

  He apologized for the digression. Congress, he confessed, was the one aspect of his work he wished he could dispense with. But they did make the laws—with his help, of course.

  Anyway, he summarized, the bottom line was this: the only way to get the job done would be to accomplish our goals covertly. At that sort of thing, Griffith went on, I was a master. There was no one blacker or spookier or dirtier than Demo Dick Marcinko. Therefore, I was the one to volunteer for the mission.

  When Pinky snorted, Griffith shut him up by saying that he—Pinky—had blown it thus far. He commended da Turd’s administrative abilities, then chastised him for his poor operational sense. Pinky glowered, but kept his mouth shut.

  Now, Griffith continued, came the carrot and the stick so far as I was concerned.

  I was, he explained, an enlisted man’s officer—one of those four-stripers who preferred drinking with his chiefs in the goat locker to sipping port in the wardroom. Well, he continued, if I was actually concerned about the fate of my men, I’d better do the job right. Because if I failed, Red Cell would be decommissioned, and its shooters scattered to other SpecWar units. Furthermore, all the men with whom I’d served would be either reassigned or up-and-outed. He’d hate to see that happen, of course—what a waste of talented manpower. But it would happen—don’t doubt it for an instant.

  So—I was to be given command of Red Cell—with the full approval of the chief of naval operations, of course. I would, as noted, hold the rank of captain. But, Grant added, with my newfound prestige would come responsibilities. In this scheme of things, he explained, I would answer to Pinky. Pinky would be my only point of contact with the Navy.

  That brought a smirk to Pinky’s ugly face.

  This specific chain of command, Griffith emphasized, would be observed at all times. Otherwise, news could leak. Word could spread. The operation could become fatally compromised.

  I saw what they were doing, of course, and I didn’t like it at all. I was fucked in every orifice. If things went well and I saved everybody’s ass, then Pinky would take all the credit and I’d be retired again—quietly—with no threat of a “60 Minutes” piece or another Rogue Warrior to upset his apple cart. If I screwed up, then it would all be my fault, and they could court-martial me behind closed doors and send my ass to Leavenworth for ten or twenty years. Or they could, as they used to say on “Mission Impossible,” deny knowledge of the enterprise and say I was a one-man rogue operation who’d hijacked an entire military unit and used it for his own purposes.

  It’s not inconceivable—they’ve done it before. That’s one of the raps they tried to pin on Ollie North, for example. And who better to call me a rogue than the man who’d used reams of Navy paper doing it already, Pinky Prescott. This was a real lose/lose situation for Dickie.

  The room fell silent. “So,” said Griffith finally, “what’s your answer, Dick?”

  He’d planned this operation well. He’d done his homework. He already knew damn well what I’d say. It was too big, too impossible a challenge to turn down without looking like a pussy in my own eyes. He’d probably pulled my fitreps. He knew what was in them—which is, that I never, ever accepted the word impossible; never accepted that there were limits to what I or my men could accomplish.

  “Fucking A. You got a deal,” is what I said. Doom on me. Doom on Demo.

  “Good. Your TAD begins today.” That was Navyspeak for Temporary Additional Duty.

  I chose to think of it as Traveling Around Drunk and said as much. Griffith laughed. “Always irrepressible, aren’t you, Dick?” Then he looked over at da Turd, who sat balefully white-knuckling the arms of his chair. “Pinky?”

  He was met by silence.

  “Pinky, I’m waiting.” A look appeared on the former SECDEF’s face that can’t be described except to say that it was frightening, even to me.

  Pinky’s gray pallor grew even grayer—as if he’d swallowed cordite. “Okay, okay. But I don’t like it.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to like it, Pinky,” said Griffith. “You just have to do it.” His tongue flicked across his upper lip twice, right/left, right/left, and he looked at me with a wicked smile that told me everything I had to know. “Isn’t that what real SEALs say, Dick?”

  Griffith left Pinky and me to work out the details. He had a meeting over at the White House, he said. Something or other to do with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and one of Griffith’s Japanese clients. The Jap assholes from Matsuko in their Blooks Blothers suits came to mind. Manny Tanto or no Manny Tanto, Matsuko was still a priority client, and there was money to be made.

  With just the two of us there, Pinky dropped all hint of cordiality. He assumed his rightful place behind his desk (wood, executive grade one), plunked his two-starred ass into his chair (high-back, senior executive grade one), and drummed his long, aristocratic fingers (dumb-shit, grade one) on the desk pad.

  “Let’s get something straight right away,” he said by way of introduction.

  “I’m all ears, Pinky.”

  “I am in charge,” he said, his face growing flushed. “Secretary Griffith said so. CNO said so.” Now he began to hyperventilate. “There will be a chain of command. You will follow orders. Follow orders. Follow orders. So far as you are concerned, I am fucking God, do you hear me? God!”

  I leaned forward, my elbows on Pinky’s desk. “What’s your point, Pinky?”

  I thought he was going to have a heart attack. “Goddammit, Marcinko—”

  Crack! I slammed my palm on his desk. He looked as if I’d shot him. He pushed off on his oversize casters, swiveled his chair, and rolled backward a couple of yards to put distance between us. “Look, you simpering, limp-dicked asshole, I don’t relish this arrangement either. But the fact is, we’re stuck with it—for the present.”

  Pinky’s voice floated petulantly in my direction, “Don’t talk to me like that. I am your superior.”

  I’d grown soft as a fucking civilian—I decided to try tact I gave the back of his chair an earnest look. “Face it, Pinky, J don’t like the fact tha
t you’re in charge any more than you like the fact that I’m here at all. But that doesn’t change the situation—which is, that we’re going to have to work together.”

  Holding on to the arms of his chair like a walker, Pinky umbrella-stepped closer to his desk. “So?”

  “So, I suggest we work out an arrangement.”

  “I have already worked out an arrangement,” Pinky insisted. “The only thing for you to do is work within the boundaries.”

  Tact, schmact. Nothing had changed. Da Turd was the same closed-minded, intractable, pigheaded dickbrain he’d been his entire career. “Would you mind spelling them out for me?” I asked.

  “Not at all.” He slid a single sheet of paper out of his top desk drawer, slipped a pair of half-frame glasses on, and read the chicken tracks that he’d laboriously set down word by word.

  “‘One: Marcinko will be responsible for Red Cell’s prearranged schedule of security exercises in addition to his other duties. The first of these will be a comprehensive sweep of the Washington Navy Yard, which has been scheduled by this office for next Friday at zero eight hundred hours.’”

  “Next Friday? Geezus, Pinky, get real.”

  He never even blinked. “‘Two: Marcinko will be accompanied at all times by representatives of the Judge Advocate General’s Office and representatives of the Naval Investigative Service to ensure that he does not exceed the bounds of military propriety or behavior.

  “‘Three: Marcinko will keep this office informed at all times in writing of all his activities—in advance.

  “‘Four: Marcinko will requisition all supplies through this office.

  “‘Five: Marcinko will coordinate all intelligence activities through this office.

  “‘Six: Marcinko will file a report on his and Red Cell’s activities by COB—close of business—every day.

  “‘Seven: Marcinko’s outgoing message traffic will be approved by this office before transmission.

  “‘Eight: Marcinko will conform to Navy grooming standards during his active-duty tour.’”