Red Cell

by Richard Marcinko

  I ordered both SDVs to surface for a look. When we poked our noses above the water, we saw that the freighter had all its interior lights on, as if it was setting up for a load-unload sequence. The lights didn’t bother me. I knew from all the Z-5-Oscar E&E exercises I’d ever done that illumination doesn’t bother a swimmer unless he’s on the surface, and even then he can function if there’s a lot of flotsam and jetsam in the water. So we moved in cautiously at about three fathoms, then bottomed the SDVs in about eighty feet of water just outside the illumination limit of the hull.

  Nasty and Cherry went up for the recon and observations while Half Pint, Pick, and I muscled the device onto the bottom and started filling the ballast tanks with air. We were hoping to get a negative buoyancy at about thirty-five feet, which was the approximate depth of the keel. I patted the device. It contained about two hundred pounds of C-4 explosive. When it went off, the shock wave would lift the ship right out of the water. The explosion would enter the cargo bay and rupture the ballast tanks, then drop the freighter back in the water with its asshole wide open, sucking water like an enema.

  My reverie was interrupted by the seventh member of our assault team. Mr. Murphy had tagged along for the ride. I heard blade tonals and looked up to see a kimchi minisub approach from out of the darkness. I admit my first reaction was close to panic. Then I realized that the sub was operating blind—there were no TV camera lights on, and so we were safe. I watched, fascinated, as the sub slowly made its way alongside the mothership. Then it bottomed, settling on the harbor floor so the captain could begin the long process of ballasting, which would allow the sub to maneuver up under the cargo bay hatch opening.

  Cargo bay hatch opening—shit—Nasty and Cherry were up there shooting pictures. I explained to Half Pint and Pick through our swimmer-to-swimmer comms what I was about to do and waited until they gave me thumbs-up. Then I left the bomb and swam up to see what was happening. I found Nasty at twenty-five feet, clinging to the mothership. Clinging is right. The mothership had started its own recovery sequence, and it was beginning to shift in the water. This was going to be much hairier than I’d thought. I explained what was happening with hand signals. Nasty nodded and pointed toward the stem, where Cherry had taken the camera.

  We made our way back along the hull hand over hand, fighting the vibration of spinning screws and the sea suction that was coming from the induction ports. We discovered poor Cherry hanging on for dear life to a stabilizer, the cumbersome camera slung over his shoulder like a dead-weight. I took him by one arm, Nasty grabbed the other, and the three of us kicked our way to freedom, heading down toward the SDVs and the explosive device.

  We would have to wait until the minisub had actually entered the hatch and begun to unload before we could make a move. I have always hated this stage of an operation. There’s nothing to do, you’re getting cold sitting on the bottom on your SDV, and bodily functions still have to take place. Well, I’d shower later.

  Finally, after two hours of what might be called sitting and shitting, the minisub made it up into the cargo hold and blew its ballast. Now it was time to move—quickly. I wanted to get the bomb rigged before the minisub changed position and snagged one of the girdle lines rigged to our device. Pick had rigged a triple-threat detonator: there was a remote firing device, an antiremoval device, and a tremble switch that would activate when water turbulence hit five knots. The six of us swam the device up under the mothership just aft of the underwater hatch, used our limpet-mine magnets to secure the girdle lines, then suspended the cigar-shaped, six-foot plastic tube about twelve feet below the keel, and about the same distance from the minisub’s hull.

  I sent Nasty and Cherry into the mouth of the cargo hold with their camera to try to get a snapshot or two of what was going on.

  I pointed at my watch and held up five fingers. That’s how much time they had. Cherry gave me a thumbs-up, his hand signal clear in the ambient light from the freighter. Then I pointed down toward the SDVs. That’s where they’d go when they finished. Another affirmative.

  Pick, Half Pint, and I swam around making a last check. Everything looked right. I gave Pick a thumbs-up, and he armed the device. We turned and dove. I checked my watch. It was 0300, and I was sweating profusely inside my wet suit.

  Now all we had to do was get back to the Humpback before the motherfucker blew. Because if we were within half a mile of the explosion, we’d be killed by the concussion ourselves. I sat on the back of Half Pint’s SDV and made the universal hand sign for a cavalry charge—let’s get the hell out of here!

  We’d been under way about thirty minutes when we were hit by the shock wave. You don’t hear anything—it’s like you’re just picked up and slapped around by a big, angry bar bouncer. The SDVs bucked like broncos and rolled uncontrollably. The glass in the instrument panels shattered. That was incredible—no noise, but it was like they just blew up. Then my ears took one hell of a beating, and I almost lost my mask.

  I signaled to surface, and we fought our way up from six fathoms. The chop was bad—about eight feet—and the wind was terrible. We bobbed like fucking apples on Halloween. I tried contacting the sub. Nothing. The fucking comms were out. Blown by the concussion. I pointed toward the compass. Half Pint gave me a thumbs-down. I saw the other SDV about a hundred yards away and pointed. Half Pint steered toward it. Riding the surface was like riding a roller coaster, and I felt like whoopsing my dinner. I would have if I hadn’t shat it in my pants three hours before.

  We lashed the SDVs together. If we were going to die, we’d do it as a team. Unit integrity to the end. I looked over at Nasty Nick. The motherfucker was actually smiling. I wondered why until he tilted something in my direction. It was a Silva compass that had survived in his waterproof container.

  He verified our direction. God bless Grundle. Once a point man, always a point man. We turned due south, our backs to the harbor, submerged to twenty feet to get out of the chop, then hauled ass. I figured we’d go another twenty to thirty minutes, then surface again and sit. Maybe the sub would see us. Maybe, by some miracle, it would pick up our props. If not, we had our underwater assault rifles, and we could shoot each other. Or we could swim for land—a mere twenty miles. Neither prospect enthused me very much. We ducked under the surface and drove on south. After half an hour we surfaced again. Still no contact.

  Maybe he’d see us if we stayed on top. So we bobbed like corks for another forty minutes. I was just about to take us down again when Cherry caught site of a periscope. My sphincter pucker factor increased until I discovered it was one of ours by looking at the cammo pattern. Damn—Captain Ken was doing one hell of a job. There was no way in hell we could have found him.

  He slowed his boat to a hover; we cast a line around the periscope and waited for the recovery crew to surface to help us down and in. Frankly, we were too exhausted to do it ourselves. We left the SDVs and swam down to the hangar, went through the locks, peeled off our gear—God we smelled bad—then checked each other for lumps and bumps. I examined everybody’s eyes for signs of concussion. Nothing. Nada. We were all okay.

  That was when the pandemonium broke loose. Shit, we’d done what SEALs are supposed to do—we made a lot of noise with high explosives and probably killed a bunch of people in the bargain. That felt good.

  We were still high-fiving each other when the recovery crew brought in two mangled pieces of shit masquerading as SDVs. Damn—Pinky was going to have a cow. Those vehicles weren’t going anywhere—except as donations to the UDT/SEAL Museum at Fort Pierce, Florida, where my old point man from Vietnam, Jim “Patches” Watson, is the curator.

  Showered but still hyper, I made my way to the bridge and thanked Kenny Ross for saving our butts. In my book he was a real hero, and I let him know it.

  He took my gratitude modestly, explaining that he’d heard the explosion, changed course to place himself in a straight line with it, and cruised slowly, listening for the sound of our SDV screws, which he’d p
rogrammed into his computers. I told him I’d never make fun of computer wonks again, and the look on his face told me he believed me.

  Then he held up a message that had my name on it. “This came in about two hours after you left. I figured there was no rush to give it to you.”

  I took the envelope out of his hand, opened it up, and read. The words brought a smile to my face:

  “RADM Prescott to Capt. Marcinko: Under no circumstances put any targets of opportunity under attack. This is an unequivocal direct order.”

  I showed Ross the message. “Captain Kenny, I swear that I had nothing to do with anything other than my original mission.”

  His expression was all business. “That better be the case.”

  “It was the case. Yeah—there was an incident. But I was there. I know what happened.”

  “Okay,” he said with more than a little skepticism in his voice, “you tell me what happened.”

  “The Koreans had a foul-up during the offloading process. A bad accident—a real clusterfuck. They actually lost a minisub and a mothership.”

  He looked at me intently. His career was on the line and he knew it. “Are you sure, Dick?”

  I nodded. “Yes, Ken—that’s the way it went down.”

  He shook his head, a perplexed, pained expression on his face. This wasn’t the way things worked aboard nuclear subs. Improvs weren’t allowed. The world ran according to the plan on your clipboard. But then, as slowly as a Pacific sunrise, a big, happy, shit-eating grin spread mile-wide across his face and he high-fived me. “It was a damn shame, too, Dick. A real damn shame.”

  Chapter 16

  TOSHO GOT US OFF THE SUB. I GAVE HIM A GROWL EIGHT HOURS before landfall on my scrambler cellular, and he came chugging out on a pilot boat run by his Kunika boys. We transferred while we were still ten miles offshore. No need to alert prying eyes as the Humpback sailed hi-diddle-diddle straight up the middle of the channel into Yokosuka, the DDS sticking out below the sail like a sore deck.

  I waved at Ken Ross as we headed northwest into the chop. Ross and his master chief, Bo, gave me a double thumbs-up from the sail. I made a mental note to send two SEAL wall plaques to the Humpback, one for the wardroom, the other for the chief’s goat locker. He was the first nuclear dip-dunk—certainly the first Academy nuclear dip-dunk—that I’d ever actually liked. Pinky had sent six messages requesting my scalp, and Ross had actually deflected them. The shore patrol would probably be waiting for Red Cell when he docked—but thanks to Tosho, we wouldn’t be available.

  Once we were under way, Tosho and I talked in a corner of the wheelhouse, catching up. He said that despite word from above to lay off, he’d been taking a real close look at Matsuko, and he didn’t like what he’d seen. He was running computer taps on the phones, he said—black-bag jobs—but wasn’t picking up much because most of the calls were scrambled and to unscramble them he would have had to go through channels.

  “But there’s been a lot of traffic between here and L.A., and here and D.C.,” Tosho insisted. “They can’t hide the numbers they call, just what they say.”

  “Who do they call?”

  “Your old pal Grant Griffith gets a lot of the traffic.”

  That made sense. “Any other calls to D.C.?” I recited Pinky’s number.

  “Nope. Only to Griffith’s law firm and the Matsuko offices.”

  “Too bad. Was there any time the traffic peaked?”

  “Yeah, about eight hours after you cleared the harbor. By the way, whatever happened at Chongjin?”

  “Where?” I played dumb. I trusted Tosho with my life—but not my operational secrets.

  “Don’t shit a shitter, Dick—I know where you’ve been, and that except for the North Korean reaction to what you probably did, you’d be in the brig by now.”

  “Oh?” I wondered what he meant.

  “The evidence. Exhibit A.” He extracted a piece of paper from his foul-weather gear. It was a top-secret DIA report that was based on findings from the Foreign Intelligence Service—the Russian successor to the KGB, which was now sharing information with its old American adversary. Its date stamp was three weeks old.

  North Korea is performing applied military biological and nuclear research in a number of its universities, medical institutes, and specialized research facilities. It is receiving technological aid from German firms and has also hired a number of scientists from the former Soviet Union. The major port of entry for smuggled nuclear and biological material elements is Chongjin, where FIS sources report concentrated activity.

  “And now, exhibit B for the prosecution.” Tosho extracted a second sheet of paper and handed it to me. It was a CIA telex addressed to Japanese intelligence in response to a query about an explosion at Chongjin. Satellite reconnaissance reports a massive explosion in the Chongjin harbor area. As already reported on open channels, official North Korean reaction is that a domestic NK container ship loaded with phosphates suffered a methane gas incident, hence problem was totally internal. Air sampling obtained through [NOFORN CODEWORD PROGRAM] detects no methane. Further, photo recon of area suggests freighter was broken in half by explosion, suggesting placed charge. Extensive damage also to 20-meter Seawolf-class diesel submarine. Source of damage is unknown to USINTEL.

  “One plus one equals two. That’s what the Jesuits at Notre Dame taught me.”

  “Look, Tosh—”

  “Like I said, Dick, don’t shit a shitter. This came straight from our intel liaison in Washington,” Tosho snapped. He gave me the document. “Keep it. Kind of amazing, huh?”

  “What?”

  “First, that you Americans, with all your technogoodies, can’t trace the source of the explosion. And second, which is more germane to you and me, old buddy, is that even the bureaucrats at CIA trust me—and you don’t.” He scowled at me. “Maybe your goddamn admiral should have thrown you in irons. He was on the phone to my boss, y’know, demanding that if we saw you, we turn you over to the CO at Yokosuka. Then, after the fucking Koreans refused to confirm anything, he had to call back and say it had all been a big mistake. Mistake, my Japanese ass.”

  I stuck my index finger in the center of his chest and pushed back slightly. “How the hell am I to know what you’ve been cleared on and what you haven’t? Shit, Tosh, this thing’s been a goatfuck from the beginning. A fucking former secretary of defense is selling secrets—or worse. He’s probably the ringleader of a fucking nuclear-smuggling cabal. The admiral—my goddamn boss—he’s probably in it with Griffith right up to his ears.”

  “Talk is cheap, Dick. I’m protecting your ass.”

  He was right, of course. “Okay, okay, okay—here’s what happened.” I gave Tosho a thumbnail sketch of what we’d found—told him about the minisubs and the ruse used by the kimchis to mask the unloading process. He seemed mollified, but who could tell. I thought for a second, then added, “We got pictures, Tosho.”

  “Can I see ’em?”

  Of course he could. I mean, this was a guy who’d protected my butt; a guy who trusted me enough to hand over a Glock—which was no small deal in this country, where pistol-toting gaijins were verboten. “Yeah, yeah—if you have the right computer equipment.”

  “Right computer equipment?” Tosho laughed. “This is Japan, Dickhead—land of the rising microchip.”

  The prints were a little fuzzy—Cherry’s no Yousuf Karsh. But the images were clear enough for my needs.

  I used a magnifying glass. “Tosho—”

  “What?”

  “Look at this”

  He peered over my shoulder. “Holy Toledo.”

  The sequence was unmistakable. The minisub wasn’t offloading. It was taking on cargo.

  Tosho scratched his chin. “I wonder where the hell it’s headed.”

  “Me, too.” The answer to that question, I knew all too well, was that we’d never know—because I’d blown the motherfucker, and its motherfucking mothership, to kingdom come.

  Doom on me.
There are times when I have been known to shoot myself in the foot. This was one of them. This time, Pinky’s orders had been righteous. The original intelligence assessment I’d received at the briefing in Washington—which was, that the ships transferred nuclear materials to the subs, which then took them to their final destination—was probably correct. I’d screwed up royally.

  Mike Regan met the plane at LAX. He’d taken care of hiring us three cars. I’d made Tosho a present of the Russian underwater assault rifles. In return, he’d made sure that our MP5Ks, Glocks, and the remaining C-4 explosive were all packed aboard the ANA 747 without a fuss from Japanese customs.

  We claimed our luggage and three trunks, I used my ID card to get our stuff through customs, and we headed for Mike’s place.

  I’d spent my time in the air drawing lists of what I knew and what I didn’t know. Now, with Mike heading for his house, I sat in the passenger seat of his Porsche and read what I’d scrawled.

  I knew that from the minute I’d blundered into the Grant Griffith/Pinky Prescott sting at Narita, my life had become a seemingly never-ending series of clusterfucks, moving from SNAFU to TARFU to FUBAR. Narita was written in capital letters.

  I knew that Grant Griffith had me recalled to active duty. Why? The answer was KISS-simple: because it was easier for him to keep tabs on me as Captain Richard (NMN) Marcinko, U.S. Navy officer, than it was to monitor Dick Marcinko, freewheeling civilian. And who was doing the tab-keeping? Pinky Prescott III. Pinky da Turd. Grant’s probable partner in crime. Their names were also writ large.