Red Cell

by Richard Marcinko

  Well, Tosho would find out. He was a very thorough man. Especially when it came to traitors. He also solved our transportation problem: he made us a present of Hideo Ikigami’s private jet. It was a Gulfstream-IIIA with auxiliary gas tanks. The plane’s 5,800-mile range allowed us to fly Tokyo-Fairbanks, and then Fairbanks-Washington. Best of all, Matsuko would be stuck paying the gas bill.

  Given the amount of evidence he’d collected at the warehouse, as well as the confessions from the five Matsukos he’d taken off the tanker, Tosho decided Ikigami-san could be kept on ice by the Kunika for about forty-eight hours without causing undue ripples either in the Japanese justice system or Ikigami’s organization. The old man had been known to vanish from time to time, off on some private mission. This disappearance would fit his pattern.

  Forty-eight hours was enough time for me, too. It would let me deal with Grant Griffith and Pinky Prescott. There would be no warning messages from the Jap kingpin to his pals back in the USA.

  Red Cell slipped into Tokyo in a big closed van and showered and cleaned up at Kunika headquarters. Tosho opened the private bar in his bottom desk drawer, and fortified by a healthy prescription of Dr. Bombay, I called Mike Regan and asked him to put my goodies in a Federal Express box and post them to Stevie Wonder. Then I called Stevie and told him what he was about to acquire.

  He was positively eloquent: “No shit. For what I am about to receive I am truly grateful.”

  I’ll bet you are, I told him. Wonder had no use for people like Grant Griffith, or Pinky, either.

  “What you want me to do with them?”

  “Hold on to ‘em.” A plan was forming in my gin-numbed Slovak brain. “Remember where we had so much fun in the country last November?”

  I could just see his head swiveling left/right/left, right/left/ right. “Ah—near the old inn?”

  “Bingo.”

  “Yeah. Nice place.”

  “I’m glad you approve. Rent two vans and leave them at Warrenton Airpark.” The runway there was long enough to accommodate the Gulfstream, and I didn’t want to land at Dulles, which was more convenient, but which also, according to Wonder, was crawling with feds. “Put the keys inside the bumpers. Chalk the vans so I’ll know which ones are mine. Then go visit Uta and Don. Wait for me there with the FedEx package from Mike. Just remember to protect yourself at all times.”

  “No prob.” Wonder, a combat-proven veteran of the USMC (which stands for Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children), won two Silver Stars in Vietnam for doing unfriendly things up close and personal to Mr. Charlie and other assorted malefactors. He actually relishes that sort of stuff. Jarheads are all alike—they’re crazy motherfuckers. That’s why I like them so much.

  Then we trucked out to Haneda airport, just south of Tokyo, where under Tosho’s careful supervision, we packed the Matsuko corporate jet. It was a tight fit, but we managed to squeeze everything on board, including our weapons and ammo, as well as the evidence we’d gathered on the Akita Maru. Tosho sealed the most sensitive stuff with diplomatic seals—where he’d gotten them I had no idea. Pick would fly first seat with one of Matsuko’s corporate pilots dragooned as his backup.

  To make sure everything went smoothly, Tosho assigned his punkster, Yoki, to ride shotgun. Yoki, who came complete with diplomatic passport and fluent English, was the reason U.S. Customs wasn’t going to give us any trouble about the weapons. So far as the Americans were being told, the Matsuko jet was on official GOJ—that’s Government Of Japan to you civilians out there—business, and its cargo, suitably secured with diplomatic seals, was inviolable.

  If there was going to be any problem, it was us American Navy people. There was, after all, an alert out for us. Moreover, we weren’t carrying passports, and our credit cards and IDs were all bogus—and probably well-known to the feds by now. The plane and its cargo might be sacrosanct. We, on the other hand, were dog meat.

  It took Tosho almost two minutes to solve that one. He came up with seven Costa Rican diplomatic passports. They’d been confiscated during a crackdown on citizenship-selling at the Costa Rican embassy. “They’re real,” he said. “The question is whether or not we can get them put together in time.”

  We sat at Haneda for six hours while a five-person crew from Kunika’s equivalent of Technical Services Branch—they’re the forgers and ID changers—took our pictures, pasted and sealed them into the passports, and then provided visas and entry stamps from Japan, as well as U.S. visas.

  “How the hell did you get these?” I pointed to the red, white, and blue embossed seal on the fifth page where, according to a U.S. consul named Marilyn Povenmire, I had been given a diplomatic entry visa to the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stood.

  “There are some things even you should not know,” Tosho said. “This is one of them. But it’s a real visa stamp.”

  Let it be known that I am willing to take yes for an answer. “Thanks, Tosh—fuck you very much.”

  He gave me a Japanese bow and an American hug. “You stay out of trouble, you no-load hairy gaijin asshole.”

  “Fat fucking chance, sashimi-breath.”

  “Well, in that case, at least have fun.”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  There was an air phone in the Gulfstream, and once we were over Montana, I used it.

  “Admiral Prescott’s office.”

  “Tell him Dick Marcinko’s calling.”

  There was an audible gasp. Then: “Yes, sir, Captain.”

  Pinky was on the line in no time, growling and threatening in language thick with wheretofores and what-the-hells. I let him rant. I wasn’t paying for the call.

  When he calmed down, sort of, I got a few words in edgewise. What I said brought him to attention. I told him what I wanted, and how I wanted it, and that if he didn’t do it my way, he’d be breaking large stones into small stones out at Fort Leavenworth for the rest of his natural life.

  Then I bid him a not-so-fond farewell. I checked my watch. Three hours until we landed at Warrenton. It was time for a combat nap.

  We took out Grant Griffith’s security force at The Hustings with no problems. They weren’t expecting anybody, and in any case they weren’t carrying meaningful weapons. So by the time Grant and Pinky arrived, the eight uniformed rent-a-cops from Centurions International, as well as Griffith’s three houseboys, two butlers, his cook, his valet, and his stable manager, had all been trussed up and stored in a nearby barn.

  I’d opened up the bar in The Hustings’ huge atrium room and helped myself to a dollop or three of Bombay Sapphire. Stevie, who’d joined us for the festivities, sipped real English bitter that was piped up from a keg in the basement. The rest of the boys stuck with Coors Light.

  By the time we heard the cars outside, we’d set everything up.

  Griffith was the first one through the door. He saw me, and reflexively his tongue played lizard with his lower lip. “Dick—”

  “Fuck you, cockbreath.”

  As he moved into his foyer, Nasty came up from behind and frisked him thoroughly, then pushed him in my direction. “He’s clean, Skipper.”

  Now it was Pinky’s turn. Half Pint worked him over, removing a stainless steel folding knife from his uniform jacket and handing it to me.

  Pinky glared in my direction.

  Outside, there was scuffling. I checked through the glass in the front door and saw that Cherry, Nod, and Pick had apprehended the three drivers and six NIS security men Pinky’d brought along. The poor schmucks lay on the gravel driveway facedown, arms handcuffed behind their backs. It was raining, and they’d probably catch colds. Too bad. They weren’t going anyplace, because Nod, his suppressed MP5 at the ready, stood under the portico and watched them. Shooting from the hip, Nod could hit a dime at ten yards with his MP5.

  I led the two prisoners through the foyer, my heels tapping on the pegged pine boards, down the long hallway, through the arch, and into Griffith’s atrium, where hidden spotlights
shone down on the suits of armor. I pointed at two straight-back chairs I’d set in the middle of the space.

  “Sit.”

  Griffith started to say something. I took him by the lapels of his chalk-striped Savile Row suit and raised him six inches off the ground. “I said sit, numb-nuts.”

  I put him down and he sat. That was gratifying. I like a man who can take direction.

  Pinky didn’t have to be asked twice.

  Griffith adjusted the crease in his trouser leg. He played with his Roman ring. He shot the triple-button cuffs of his brightly striped Turnbull & Asser shirt. He ran a hand through thick white hair. I let him fidget.

  I looked them over. “Y’know,” I said, “this is like one of those fucking Charlie Chan movies, where Charlie—that’s me—and his number one son—that’s Nasty over there—and all his other sons—you met most of’em outside—they assemble all the suspects in one room. Then Charlie goes over the case and tells us who’s the guilty party.”

  I poured fresh Bombay into the cut-crystal glass. “Well, gents, in this case there are only two guilty parties—and you’re both here.” I helped myself to more ice. “And the unhappy fact is, not all my sons made it back.”

  I swirled the drink and sipped. “Gentlemen,” I said, “I don’t want to confuse you with technical language, but this has been one big solly clusterfuck.”

  Pinky’s mouth opened. I raised an index finger in his direction and wiggled it. “Not yet. You get to talk later. As Charlie Chan used to say, ‘Field telephone attached to admiral’s nuts makes for interesting conversations.’”

  “Good God—” His eyes went wide.

  “Relax, Pinky, it was a joke.”

  “It wasn’t funny.”

  “Neither is what happened.” I sipped and set the tumbler down on one of Griffith’s antique French tables. He gasped as the crystal touched the naked wood.

  “Oh, Grant—I’m so sorry. Did Dickie make a nasty ring on your table?” I flicked open the knife Half Pint had taken from Pinky and buried half an inch of it in the table, punching right through the intricate wood inlay. “Now you don’t have to worry.”

  Griffith started to rise. “That’s a Louis Quatorze, you—”

  I backhanded him across the face. A trickle of blood appeared in the corner of his mouth. I put my face about an inch from his. “I don’t care if it was made by the fucking Sun King himself. I lost men because of you. I lost men because you are a greedy fucking traitor.”

  I waved at Pick, who removed the tarp from the crates of Tomahawks we’d piled in the atrium.

  “He stole these from Seal Beach,” I said to Pinky. “He was selling them to his pal Hideo Ikigami, who owns Matsuko Machine. You remember them—that’s the company that sold milling machines to the Soviets so they could make their missile subs as quiet as ours.”

  “I know he did,” Pinky said.

  “You did? Golly gee, Pinky, then why didn’t you do anything about it?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said.

  Pinky sighed, then whined, “I didn’t do anything—”

  “You didn’t do anything, Pinky,” I interrupted, “because this asshole”—I stuck my thumb in Grant Griffith’s direction—“was blackmailing you so you’d help him.”

  “What’s your point?” Pinky said.

  “My point is, you’re a fucking traitor.”

  Pinky chose to disregard my accusation completely. “Frankly, Dick, I’m surprised that you haven’t caught on to what’s been happening yet. I thought you were smarter.”

  “I know enough.” I picked up the Bombay and took a drink. “I know he was blackmailing you, and a bunch of others, too—I have his fucking files. But that’s getting ahead of myself. You think I haven’t caught on? Listen, numb-nuts, I catch on fast. I know that from the minute I blundered into those four fucking kimchis at Narita, my life has been a goatfuck. I know that you and Grant had me recalled to duty because it would be easier to eliminate me as a threat to your smuggling operation if I was back in uniform. I know you tried to set me up—tried to set Red Cell up. You sent us out to the Navy Yard to get caught.”

  Pinky didn’t look convinced, so I continued. “When that didn’t work, you assigned us Seal Beach. Why? Because when the next audit was done and missiles were discovered missing, we’d be blamed for what Griffith and his compadres from Centurions were doing.”

  I looked at Pinky again. He didn’t seem worried. That was because he was an asshole. It made me happy to know I was going to kill him tonight.

  “Then you assigned us North Korea. You hoped the kimchis could do what you hadn’t been able to—which is, waste us all.”

  Pinky sighed. “You had it all figured out, then.”

  “Bet your ass.”

  His expression changed. “You’d lose.”

  “Don’t shit a shitter, Pinky.”

  “I wouldn’t.” He stood up and walked over to a phone that sat atop a marble-and-walnut washstand. “Pick up the phone.”

  Okay, I was game. I picked up the phone. There was no dial tone. I said, “Hello?”

  A voice answered me. “This is Colonel McCarthy.”

  Who the fuck was Colonel McCarthy?

  He must have been prescient because he answered me right away. “U.S. Marine Corps Provost Marshal Command.”

  A Quantico gook. “What can I do for you, Colonel?”

  “Put down your weapons. The compound is surrounded by an overwhelming force.”

  My face must have betrayed me. Pinky smirked. “I told you.”

  “You told me nothing, cockbreath.”

  “Pour me a Bombay, Dick.”

  That was the most intelligent thing he’d said all night. “Wonder …” I nodded in Wonder’s direction. Wonder dumped an inch of gin in a glass, added ice, and handed it off to Pinky. “Enjoy, Admiral.”

  “Thank you.” Pinky looked closely at Wonder’s wraparound, mirror-lensed shooting glasses. “Do I know you?”

  “I hope not.”

  Pinky took the glass and sat down on a comfortable chair. He sipped the gin. “Well—Wonder, is it?—you mix a hell of a drink.” He turned toward me. “We knew about Griffith, but there was nothing anyone could do. He was wired. If anyone started an investigation that even hinted obliquely at Grant Griffith, it got shot down from above. He had too many friends in high places. It was worse than Tailhook, and potentially more damaging. After all, we’re talking about our security, talking about nuclear weapons.”

  Pinky sipped. “So we needed a real rogue to stir things up.”

  “Me.”

  “That’s a roger, Captain. I know how much you hate authority. I know how you operate. I could almost guarantee that when I gave you direct orders, you’d disobey them and go UNODIR.”

  Factoids and info-bits began to filter through my thick Slovak skull. “You wanted me to run amok.”

  “Affirmative. We knew something was going on. But frankly, Dick, the system has its limits, and as much as I’d like to be able to say otherwise, Griffith and his people knew how to manipulate the system. They were better than we.”

  He looked at me with a half smile, half grimace, kind of like if he had a bad case of gas, and sighed audibly. “You, however, are better than they.” Pinky sipped his Bombay. “Dick—would you mind adding some more ice to this?”

  I took his glass and walked toward the bar. His voice followed me. “I don’t like the way you operate, Dick. Frankly, I believe that when the nation’s not at war, you should be kept in a cage. But, sometimes, you need an animal to do the job. That was the case here. When Grant went to CNO about you, we saw a golden opportunity—and we took it.”

  I reached into the ice bucket, brought out a fistful, mashed the cubes in my fist, and dropped them into the glass.

  “Oh,” Pinky said, “no need to crush. Cubes are just fine.”

  I returned the drink to him. “Thanks, Dick.”

  I looked down at Pi
nky. He was a fucking geek, a bean-counter, a dip-dunk, a no-load. He was a prissy self-important pus-nutted shit-for-brains pencil-dicked asshole. “You mean to tell me you set this whole chain of events into play? You’re not smart enough, Pinky.”

  He stretched his long legs out and crossed them at the ankles, sipped his gin, and waved me off. “Dick, Dick—don’t do to me what you perpetually accuse the Navy of doing to you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Underestimating you.”

  That brought me to a full stop. He had a point. “Okay, Pinky—let’s give you the benefit of the doubt. How did you get me into this in the first place?”

  Pinky explained. He’d heard about my involvement at Narita when the cable from naval attaché/Tokyo landed on CNO’s desk. Narita, Pinky explained, was a sting he and Griffith had set up with CNO’s approval. But there was a twist to it: it had actually been designed to test the level of Griffith’s involvement in weapons smuggling. If the detonators were lost in what was allegedly an airtight operation, then CNO and Pinky would add another guilty mark next to Griffith’s name.

  Then the cable arrived detailing my heavy-handed presence. A lightbulb went off when the CNO read my name. He’d called Pinky, who, after consuming a quart of Maalox, had called his friend Tony Mercaldi at DIA.

  I said I found it surprising that he knew Merc, too. Pinky said that his circle of acquaintances probably ran a lot wider than I’d ever suspected.

  Anyway, he continued, he knew that Merc and I had been friends for almost twenty years, since the Air Force Command College at Montgomery, Alabama, where the two of us spent most of 1976. So he asked Merc to act as a cutout and recommend me to a businessman who’d suddenly started getting death threats—a man Pinky knew wanted Grant Griffith to represent his company for Navy work.

  So Pinky had been the one behind the Joe Andrews threats. It had been a “dangle” after all. “And then?”

  “And then we let you run amok and let nature take its course.”

  “Just who is ‘we,’ Pinky?”

  “Me. Me and CNO. We sent you where we hoped you’d find evidence to use against Grant. You came up dry at the Navy Yard, but you hit pay dirt at Seal Beach.”