One Perfect Op

by Dennis Chalker

  Now we were ready to start our Red Cell scenarios. Subic Bay was the main Naval Base, and then there was Cubi Point, which was the nearby Naval Air Station (NAS). At Cubi Point were the runways where the planes and helos came in, as well as the support and storage sites to maintain the aircraft.

  In effect, there were two separate bases making up the Subic Bay facility. Only a single road connected the two points, the main base and the NAS. Security was starting to set up checkpoints along that road, which was going to make our scenarios more difficult.

  For our first hostage rescue scenario, we had to decide who was going to be the target. After going over the requirements of the scenario and who might be available, we decided on snatching the XO of the Cubi Point NAS along with his secretary, a Navy yeoman. The secretary was included after we decided to take the XO right from his office during the day.

  To start our mission off, we had to acquire a local vehicle. Cheeks had a nice old car he used to drive around the area. He was offered the option, either loan us the car or we were going to hot-wire it. Cheeks loaned us the car. Handing me the keys, he said, “Just don’t wreck it.”

  “Oh, I won’t wreck it,” I assured him.

  Knobber and I went out the night before the operation, scouting the jungle area near the XO’s office. We found a spot to park Cheeks’s car where it would be convenient to the office but not easily seen. Duke was going to act as a backup team to Knobber and myself and would bring the car down in the morning.

  When we began the scenario the next morning, Duke brought the car and moved it into position. I took the driver’s seat, and Duke joined Knobber for the snatch. The two of them came out of the building with the XO and his secretary in tow. The fact that they were holding the officer and the yeoman at gunpoint was a fair clue to everyone that things weren’t as they should be.

  No one stopped the group when they came out of the building. There wasn’t any challenge. People stopped and looked, but that was all we could see. Someone did get to a phone fast and called security, though. Once Knobber, Duke, and the two hostages piled into the car, I took off on our preplanned route.

  As soon as I got up on the road and out of the jungle, I turned left and hit the gas. To our right, the O-Club was coming up, and we were on the main road between Cubi and Subic. Down the hill in front of us was a winding road, lined with monkeys up in the trees who could be a greater danger to us than the security forces. To the security guys, we were the enemy but it was an exercise. Those damned monkeys didn’t know what an exercise was, and they would attack you if they could.

  Not that the security people weren’t doing their best to stop us. Near the O-Club, security had blocked the road with a Toyota pickup turned sideways. In the back of our car were the XO and his secretary along with Knobber. Duke was up front with me. Seeing the small pickup trying to block our way caused me to laugh out loud; it couldn’t cover the whole road. Duke just told me to go around them.

  The left side of the road was pretty well blocked, so all I could do was go over to the right side and ram past. The right side of the road was also where the O-Club had a lot of landscaping in the form of bushes and other foliage. The bushes didn’t slow the car down much when I plowed through them, getting around the Toyota in the process, but the shrubbery wasn’t quite up to inspection standards after Red Cell had gone by.

  Now we were past the roadblock and moving down the hill with a free lane in front of us. There was no oncoming traffic coming up the hill. The security forces had established a checkpoint between Subic and Cubi that left only one lane of traffic open. Going toward Subic like we were doing, our lane would be the one that was open.

  Now I saw another security vehicle coming up the road toward us. He turned sideways and blocked the road, but I just kept heading straight for him, his eyes growing larger as I approached. At the last moment, I veered around behind him, just missing his rear bumper.

  Reaching the bottom of the hill, I turned right and started toward the checkpoint. Security already had traffic stopped, and the left lane of the road was blocked with some wooden barricades. Not slowing down, I moved into the left lane and started smashing through the barricades.

  There was one Marine guard at the checkpoint, and I have to give him a lot of credit. When I came up to the checkpoint, I had slowed down to keep the barricades from flying up and smashing the windshield. That Marine stood directly in my way and refused to move, forcing me to stop. It was either stop or drive right over the man. When the vehicle came to a halt, that Marine leaned forward and put his hands on the hood of my car.

  This wasn’t going to be enough to stop us, but I wondered just how hard-core this Marine was going to be about the situation. Slowly mouthing the words “One . . . Two . . . Three,” I began revving the car’s engine. On three, I gunned the engine and the Marine rolled out of the way. With that, we blew through the checkpoint.

  A fire station was on the right just half a mile or so down the road. Another unit from Red Cell had taken over the fire station while we had been grabbing the XO and his secretary. The fire station would be the location for the hostage rescue portion of the scenario.

  Turning into the parking lot, I stopped the car and we all piled out. Moving quickly into the fire station with our guests, we put up barricades to block the door and waited for security to show up.

  The local forces weren’t a disappointment. They quickly secured the area and negotiations began. The local Naval Investigation Services (NIS) detachment took control of the negotiations as the security forces got into their long sit and wait posture. Neither security or the NIS office had a team prepped and ready to come in and negotiate or deal with the situation specifically. The negotiations began with NIS establishing communications with us. The security forces had put up their cordon around the area quickly, but not as effectively as they might have thought.

  This was only going to be a short problem. At the absolute maximum, we would be at the fire station for three hours. Near Cubi Point, we blindfolded the XO, taped his mouth, and put a pillowcase over his head. In the sleeping quarters of the fire station, we taped the muffled officer into one of the bunks.

  The secretary we treated a little differently. We took her into another room, out of earshot of the XO, and talked to her. We told her that we weren’t going to handcuff her, secure her, or anything else. What we asked her to do was role-play a position with us. Our goal was to see how well the XO could deal with the situation of being a hostage. Once we explained that to her and asked her if she was willing to go along with us, she readily agreed.

  Now it was time to start messing with the XO’s head. It can be a lot easier to deal with your own discomfort than with that of a coworker or subordinate. The XO might be able to handle what we were allowed to do to him under the rules of the scenario, but would his imagination run away with him if he thought we were out of control with his secretary? This would be a stress builder for sure.

  The woman got into it with us once she saw how we were doing the stunt. We told her what we would do in detail, and she got a big grin on her face. When we asked her if she could scream, she answered, “I think I can do that.”

  So now it was time for the show. While other members of our team dealt with the negotiators, we tore sheets, making a loud ripping sound, and the woman screamed at us not to tear her clothes off. As we hit lockers and smacked our hands together, she got into her role even further, screaming and sobbing.

  The XO went absolutely nuts. He was trying to yell, but the tape kept it pretty muffled and incoherent. I yanked the pillowcase off his head, tore the tape off, and then stuck the pillowcase back on.

  “That’s it!” he yelled. “This problem’s over! You can’t do that! You can’t do that!”

  Then we pushed the woman into another room. As this was going on, the XO was struggling and twisting around. Sitting on him, I slipped up his hood and stuck some Copenhagen snuff I had with me into his mouth. He had no idea what I
had slipped him, and while he was startled, I lightly tapped him in the face and shouted, “Shut up!”

  He just lay there quietly, more than a little stunned. Now that he was shocky, I took the pillowcase off him. Knobber came over to me, having left the woman in the other room, and we both started interrogating the officer. He stood up to the interrogation pretty well, but we could tell he had been badly shaken by the incident and that the reality of this being just an exercise was slipping away from him.

  He was looking at us with close to real fear in his eyes. Enough sudden shock and you can forget where you are, and we had this guy pretty well gone. Backing off a little, we gave the guy a breather, then came back on strong. This kept him off balance. We told him that if security tried to come in, he would be the next one. “The same thing that happened to her could happen to you,” we told him.

  Outside the building, the security forces were trying to figure out a way to breach the building. We saw some of their guys moving around behind the firehouse. Telling the negotiators that we knew what was going on, we said we’d kill some more hostages if they didn’t pull back. So whatever the security people had been trying to set up, we derailed their plan and they had to pull back.

  One of the first things security had done when they arrived at the fire station was to control and secure the area. One of the orders that had gone out was not to let any vehicles into the area. So when this huge yellow school bus showed up, no one could figure out how it had gotten onto the site.

  Dallas had stolen the bus earlier and just driven it past the checkpoints and up to the firehouse. While security was still wondering how the bus had gotten there, we all piled out of the firehouse and into the bus. The chase was now on.

  The plan was for the bus to take us to our DC-9, where we would stage an airport standoff for the balance of the exercise. Once on board the plane, we would let the negotiations continue. But when we left the parking lot, Dallas turned right toward Subic Bay rather than left and back to Cubi and our plane. We were all yelling at Dallas, shouting “Where in the fuck are you going?” along with other choice comments.

  Apparently Dallas thought better of his original choice of direction and decided to turn the bus around with a bootleg turn we had learned at driving school. With the bus going forward, Dallas put on the emergency brake and, on two wheels, spun the bus through a smooth 180 degrees. As the back of the bus drifted through the turn, we watched it miss a telephone pole by about six inches. Releasing the parking brake, Dallas stepped on the gas, and now we were headed back toward Cubi Point and our plane.

  As we started back the other way, we passed though the checkpoint where I’d had my little face-off with the Marine earlier. Security let us go through the barricades, but now several Toyota trucks were speeding up to us, each with several security personnel in the open back of the truck.

  At the Cubi Point NAS, Dallas turned right onto the runway, so we were speeding down the center of this wide concrete runway in a yellow school bus with pickup trucks trying to catch up with us. But we thought we might have a way of dealing with the security trucks. When Dallas stole the bus, he had brought aboard a selection of munitions, mostly smoke grenades, that we had originally planned to use at a barricade if they refused to let us through.

  When the security trucks pulled up alongside us, some of the guys pulled the pins on several smoke grenades and lobbed them into the backs of the trucks. Now these guys were choking on thick red, green, and white smoke. Our pursuers lost ground quickly and let us continue on our way.

  Getting to our DC-9, we all piled out and climbed up the ladder into the plane. Pulling the ladder up behind us, we moved on to the next stage of the exercise. Now the negotiations were going to begin again. We had our own pilots on board the plane, all of them familiar with the role-playing aspect of being our hostages.

  Once on board the plane, our original hostages, the XO and his secretary, were done with their involvement in the exercise. All negotiations between us and the security forces were going to continue using our plane’s crew as the hostages. Duke took the XO to a seat near the front of the plane where he could sit and watch the show.

  The XO asked if he could smoke, and Duke told him it was all right with us. As the officer lit up a cigarette, his hand shook from all the stress he’d been under. The funny thing was, every time I walked by the tremors stopped and he would stiffen up like a board. We had really bothered this guy by using his secretary. That, and the bus ride to the plane hadn’t been the most calming thing in the world.

  We continued the negotiations with the security people. At one point we were roughing up our own people to give the security people something to see and keep them off balance. All our guys knew what we would do and how we would do it, so no one got hurt. Besides, we had all gone though a hell of a lot worse just getting though BUD/S and into the Teams.

  But this kind of role-playing wasn’t something the security people had ever seen. We were simulating what a real situation could look like and what the results of bad handling of that situation could be. But the negotiators held firm, and finally the exercise came to an end.

  Since we never stayed on base if we could help it, we returned to our rooms in the Marriott. The Whiskey River was our hangout for this trip, and we blew off steam there. Back in the rooms, we had our own debrief on the ops and what had gone down.

  We celebrated another successful op against the U.S. Navy, which had been useful in showing some of the strengths and weaknesses of the base. Now they could make improvements and increase their security. But our celebrations were never against our own service. They were more a way of breaking free after a number of days of long, weird, mostly sleepless hours.

  Other traditions of the Teams continued at Red Cell. For instance, if you weren’t being harassed, something had to be wrong. So when we relaxed after this exercise, Dallas wasn’t left alone for his spectacular turn in the school bus. Too bad he had to do it ’cause he was going the wrong way. Personally, I was really impressed that he did the turn successfully, and missed the telephone pole too.

  Back at the site a few days later, we went to the big theater on base and talked to everyone who had been involved in the exercise. During the big debrief, the Skipper got up behind the podium and told everyone the good and bad aspects of what they had done. The security people had done a great job of trying to contain the situation and reacting quickly to the changes we kept throwing at them. We told them about the lessons they should have learned from the exercise and the areas where they were already very proficient. Then we continued with the way they could improve their actions and prevent what we had done from being repeated. This was something we did on every exercise.

  While we were all sitting up there on the stage, Knobber nudged me and said, “Hey, Denny, don’t look, but the XO’s sitting off to my left and he’s staring at you.”

  So I continued looking ahead for a while at the audience in general, then turned my head and gave the XO my dead-eyed snake stare. The officer immediately stiffened up again and turned to look straight ahead. This guy was never going to calm down or quit smoking as long as I was around the Philippines.

  “Damn,” I told Knobber quietly. “We must have really shook that guy up.”

  This was another of those situations that would probably grow into a story about Red Cell beating up hostages. The people who were actually involved knew what we were doing and how we were doing it. But others, who maybe couldn’t see but could only hear the situation, like the XO had, would get the wrong idea. Even later, when they had the chance to see for themselves that no one was hurt, they wouldn’t believe it.

  This situation kept building up over time, giving Red Cell the reputation of being out of control. The Mutt and Jeff routine, or good cop/bad cop, worked really well on people, more so than they would readily believe. And you could intimidate people by just approaching them and talking to them in the right manner. Physically handling a person could intimidate
them without a blow ever being struck. You just have to keep them off balance and everything they experience is magnified, both the good and the bad.

  We only had so much time to take control of the situation during an exercise. To make the best use of our time, the people we would secure had to be disturbed as much as possible right from the beginning. The bit with the secretary had really worked with that XO, and we hadn’t done anything. He had just filled in the blanks with his own imagination. What was kind of funny at the time was how much the woman had enjoyed the role-playing. She never knew how it had affected her officer until after the scenario was over.

  Some time later, during one of our last Red Cell missions, we returned to the Philippines and Subic Bay. This time we weren’t there to conduct any scenarios but instead to assess the improvements that had been made in overall security since our last visit.

  We did conduct one scenario during that last visit, one we hadn’t tried during our first time there. We took one of the local fishing boats, a Bonca boat, sort of a flat open canoe that was common throughout the waters off the Philippines. Using a number of smoke grenades to simulate explosives, we slipped out to where U.S. warships lay at anchor.

  The test was to see how long it would take the harbor patrol boats to stop and seize the fishing boat. They responded, but not quite fast enough. Our boat was able to pull alongside a ship at anchor and pop smoke, simulating the detonation of an explosive charge.