One Perfect Op

by Dennis Chalker

  Knobber had helped me trailer the bike in to where I wanted to penetrate the site and helped me get the bike through the brush and past the fence. Even pushing along through the woods, we would hit a hole every now and then that was the right size to have been an old gator wallow. After getting through the fence, Knobber took off back to where he left his vehicle. I don’t think he felt that meeting a leftover dinosaur was the thing to do either.

  Once I was on the base proper, I took the bike past the railroad tracks and through some heavy woods. The area was pine forest, fairly flat, and ended near some ammunition bunkers. Staging from the edge of the forest, I moved to the bunkers to conduct my operation.

  Placing IEDs on a few of the bunker doors, I stuck around for a while to see who might come along. About 6:00 A.M. I picked up one of the phones that was on a pole at the bunker complex and called in the threat.

  “This is a Red Cell exercise,” I told the person who answered the phone. “I’m down here at your bunker area. I have just placed an IED on these bunkers,” and I gave him the numbers.

  It wasn’t too long before a couple of security vehicles showed up. Sitting on the bike, I had been revving it, keeping the motor warm and waiting for the response to my call. With security there, it was time for the chase to begin.

  The earth-covered bunkers had sloping sides and were easy to drive the bike up and over. The security vehicles, on the other hand, had to stick to the roads going around the bunkers to keep me in sight. When I finally cut into the woods on my bike, they lost me completely. With no paths wide enough to accept the security vehicles, they would have had to chase me on foot, a losing proposition against a man on a dirt bike.

  But then again, maybe they could have caught me if they had kept up the chase. It certainly seemed that Mr. Murphy was on their side. As I rode through the brush, my fuel line broke right where it entered the carburetor and the bike died on me. There was nothing I could jury-rig to repair the fuel line, so I was out of transportation. But while I was having my difficulties, the rest of the guys were holding their barricade operation on another part of the base a couple of miles away. So security was busy that day, and they didn’t bother to try chasing me very far.

  With my bike dead, I had to pull it along while I worked my way through the woods. Finally getting to a gate in the fence near a local highway, I left the bike in the woods to come back for later. Walking along the inside of the fence line, I decided I would give myself up to the next security force I ran into. My part of the scenario was pretty much over without transportation.

  People passed me by without stopping. It wasn’t like you couldn’t tell I didn’t belong there, not with my long hair, civilian clothes, and the pistol I was waving with the red tape on it. But everyone on the base I could surrender to seemed to be involved with our barricade situation.

  I wasn’t in any kind of personal difficulty. I had a radio with me and could communicate with the rest of my team. I was just bored! There was nothing for me to do but continue walking. Eventually I covered the three miles or so that had separated my bunker op from our barricade situation. Security had set up an outside perimeter around the building that Red Cell had taken over.

  Okay, this looked interesting. Since no one wanted to arrest me, I was going to join the party. Getting on the radio, I said, “Hey guys, open up the door. I’m going to make a dash through the perimeter.”

  Two security men were crouched behind their vehicle, watching the building, so they didn’t see me coming out of the woods behind them. They did notice me as I ran past them both, but by then it was a little late. Darting up to the building, I made a grab for the door to join my Teammates inside.

  For a simulated weapon during our exercises, we took a number of M80 firecrackers and wrapped them completely with flat dry sponges so that only the fuse was showing. With a wrist rocket slingshot, we could launch these “grenades” a long way with fair accuracy. Before firing, we would wet down the sponges from a squirt bottle of water we carried with us. The wet sponge would contain any blast, and all we would get was a good flash and a loud noise. It wasn’t the kind of thing that could be mistaken for a car backfire or other common noise.

  The combination of slingshots and firecrackers had worked well for us. The system let us mess with the security forces, placing them under fire in a reasonably safe manner, though we still had to make sure we didn’t shoot the “grenades” close to anyone.

  During my mad dash though the security forces, one of my Teammates offered his version of covering fire. Yeah, right. I saw him launch one of our sponge-wrapped firecracker grenades at me as I was running up to the building. It went off behind me, but that was probably just because he misjudged my speed when he shot at me.

  Things didn’t get a whole lot better when I finally made it to the building. Demonstrating that wonderful SEAL sense of humor, some of the guys thought it would be a lot of fun to watch me try to get through a locked door. As I was banging on the door for them to let me in, the rest of the security force started training their weapons on me. It looked like I was finally going to get some attention from security when the guys unlocked the door and let me in.

  During the debrief, my adventures with the motorcycle weren’t pointed out as a mistake. Instead it was made to look like everything that happened was intentional. Yeah, we planned it that way.

  Red Cell had been running exercises for over a year and we had learned a lot, in addition to teaching Navy facilities how to eliminate some of their vulnerabilities. Earlier we had announced to a base or facility when we would be conducting an exercise against them, giving a short time window for when the operations would take place.

  What we had learned fast was that bases would immediately go to THREATCON RED when they knew Red Cell was on its way. At RED, the base is all but closed up tight, full examinations are given to all IDs and incoming vehicles, and the watch is often doubled, with twice as many men on duty as normal. This can run twenty-four hours a day, but for how many days before efficiency suffers?

  The reaction would be fine, but only if they were willing to remain at that alert level for a year or so. Security wasn’t supposed to be beefed up just for the three weeks that Red Cell was threatening a base. It was supposed to run under normal conditions so that we could show any weaknesses in the system.

  But that isn’t how the average military mind works, especially not the minds of senior commanders who thought we were out to make them look bad. Red Cell had a mission to perform, and that mission was to demonstrate holes in a security system and how to seal them up.

  So instead of giving the base a short window of time when they could expect Red Cell to come visiting, we gave them a much broader window. Rather than “Red Cell will be running an exercise against your base sometime during the next three weeks,” it would be “the next quarter year,” or “the next four months.”

  If a base could run under THREATCON RED for four months without a degradation in efficiency, there wasn’t anything we had to show them. But for the most part, the bases had to run under the normal THREATCON WHITE or YELLOW.

  Another problem we saw, but could do little about, was what happened at a base after Red Cell had wrapped operations. If the base had been running under THREATCON RED, it should have dropped back down to YELLOW and remained there for a length of time to ensure that the terrorist threat was over. Instead, bases would drop from RED right down to WHITE when we were finished with our exercises.

  Great improvements have been made in the overall security of all American bases in the last fifteen years. They are much more secure now than when Red Cell began its operations. Some of these operational improvements came about because of advances in intelligence gathering and recognition of the terrorist threat. And I like to think that some of the improvements came about because of what we did in Red Cell.

  Penetrations of military and other installations are always feasible. The question is: Does the threat have the skills or resources
to pull off a penetration? Hardening a site to a possible penetration, turning it from a “soft” to a “hard” target, will help stop an action from taking place. Terrorist groups that see a target that is too hard to attack will move on. Hardening can prevent a situation from ever developing.

  CHAPTER 27

  BACK IN SUNNY CALIFORNIA

  We returned to California and further operations against sites we hadn’t hit the first time we were there. On Terminal Island in San Pedro Bay, just a few miles north of Seal Beach, was the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, a huge complex of buildings, docks, and facilities. For Red Cell’s operations against the Long Beach facility, we again dropped in on Harry Humphries and staged out of his place in Huntington Beach.

  Operations against the shipyard involved our penetrating different parts of the facility, placing IEDs, and otherwise checking the perimeter security. The hostage rescue scenario we had considered was dropped after judging the available time for the ops. My portion of the operation was a more comfortable one than usual, though not for very long.

  One of our people got a room at the Navy Lodge, right off the highway and inside the base proper. That night, I jumped the fence surrounding the facility, made my way quickly through a children’s playground, and got to the room at the Navy Lodge. The key was there for me, though I didn’t use it to get into the room. After my confederate had rented the room, he had unlocked the rear window and left it open just a bit. When I came up to the room, it was a matter of a moment to open the window and slip in.

  For the Long Beach operations, I would be running a control point at the room and have it available as a safe house on base. This would give any of our personnel on base a place to run to if they had to E & E during an op. I had also rented a motorcycle and it was registered on the base. This gave me fast transportation and the option of riding around and checking things out prior to an op. Since the bike had a base sticker, it wouldn’t draw attention, and with my long hair stuffed underneath a full helmet, I wouldn’t stick out too much myself.

  One of the scenarios was done to give base security personnel the chance for a little interrogation practice. To do that, they would have to capture one of us. Seems I was volunteered to be the prisoner when someone told base security where our on-base safe house was at the Navy Lodge.

  A phone call came in to me at the room one night; “Hey look,” the voice said. “They’re going to take your room tonight. We’re just letting you know.”

  “Okay,” I said. This was new but not that unusual. “What’s the drill?”

  “They’re going to take you prisoner. The check is to see how their interrogation procedures work.”

  The conversation was short. I was due to have visitors any moment. Sitting there, I was wondering what I could do to make the capture at least a little difficult for them. Looking out one of the windows, I could see their entry team coming up on the outside, getting ready to bust in and grab me.

  First thing, I dead-bolted the door so they couldn’t come in easily. I had kept the back window of the room open, and since I was on the ground floor, it wouldn’t have been any trouble to slip out the back. I could see that the area behind the lodge was clear all the way to the fence. Escape would have been easy. But I was supposed to be captured.

  Since I was just wearing shorts, I thought of a fast way to mess with their plans a little bit. Skinning out of my shorts, I jumped into the shower. The entry team burst into the room, immediately secured the area, then moved to the bathroom. Bursting in to the bathroom, they tore open the shower curtain to grab me.

  If I had known that was one of the few entry teams to have a woman on it, I probably wouldn’t have jumped into the shower. At least I might have kept my shorts on. Okay, good job, Denny!

  So I put a towel around myself quickly. Normally an entry team does not burst out laughing when they secure a prisoner, especially not a dangerous terrorist like me. So the joke was on me, and I got dressed quickly.

  Securing me with handcuffs, they didn’t consider a frisk necessary. After they checked my clothes, the team searched the room. I had left some documents for them to find: the routes I took, a log book, things like that. Some of the materials I had hidden. They found them during their sweep, so that part of the exercise went well. Taking me to the security building, they started the interrogation.

  First thing they wanted to know was my full name. “You’ve already got my ID,” I said. “You already know.” With that, I started not fully cooperating with them. If I was asked a question, I would answer it with the least possible information. I wasn’t going to jeopardize any of Red Cell’s ongoing operations on the site, but I did keep them moving forward on the interrogation.

  My little grilling went on for about three hours. Then the word came in that the problem was over. I was released with the understanding that I had to go out through the gate. Almost all the problems were over; there was only one man still on base continuing his exercise. So I was allowed to leave and rejoin my group.

  We had our debriefing the next day. Everything had gone pretty well at the base, security had done a good job, and there hadn’t been any major incidents. We had a meal with the security people during a relaxed get-together. My little shower-room scene was the punchline of a joke or two during that particular social session.

  CHAPTER 28

  GHOSTS

  As part of our Pacific trip, we went to Hawaii to conduct operations at Pearl Harbor and the Navy bases surrounding it. For the Hawaiian exercises, we had specific dates when we would start and stop our operations. The exercises began with a briefing for the base commanders and security forces. Everyone got to know everyone else, what we were there for, and what we expected to accomplish. As usual, we received a less than delighted welcome.

  Red Cell wasn’t operating like any other kind of inspection team the Navy had. We didn’t go in to look at how secure a base was; we tried to breach its security though direct action. In other words, we operated in a real-world situation, and all the higher command officers wanted us to operate under artificial rules of engagement. They didn’t want a terrorist exercise; they wanted a stilted, think-tank type of war game where the chances of winning were much more in their favor. That, and we often disrupted the smooth flow of base operations that commanders are so fond of.

  The Pearl Harbor facilities were laid out quite differently than the other Naval bases we had operated against. Working sugarcane fields butted right up against base borders. And there were recreational shore facilities and beaches that were Navy property but were separated from the base proper. The other Hawaiian installations were surrounded by civilian tourist and vacation sites that we couldn’t disturb. But there were a number of recreation sites set up just for the military families. These sites we looked at as legitimate terrorist targets.

  For my first operation at Pearl we targeted one of the recreational beaches the Navy maintained. The beach was six miles up the coast from the base with sugarcane fields growing between it and the main base. The beach was surrounded by a fence with a gate and some security next to the parking area. Our job was simply to penetrate the beach, plant an explosive device, get away, and then call it in.

  The start of our operations had already been announced, and the whole base and all of its surrounding facilities should have been on THREATCON RED. But the beach hadn’t been closed, and we couldn’t see anything more than ID checks going on at the gate. Since they were checking the IDs, we decided against trying to slip through the gate.

  We rented a jeep and went cross-country a bit to approach the fence line at the beach. I was glad we knew a little about where we were because some of the locals might not have taken kindly to our passing through their fields. Since we were on an exercise, none of us were carrying weapons.

  Taking the jeep as close as we could to the beach, we parked it and started to walk in. Passing a small junkyard, we saw three local Hawaiians who didn’t look any too friendly. The locals kept their eyes o
n us, but there wasn’t any incident as we worked our way past. The hardtop jeep we had left behind wasn’t a big worry; it was insured and we had locked it up before leaving.

  After walking about another half a mile, we could see the ocean. Now it was a simple matter of following the ocean until we hit the fence. Coming up to the fence, we just rolled our pants up and walked into the water and around the fence. If we had been spotted and caught, that was part of the game. We weren’t doing anything fancy, just a straightforward penetration.

  But no one stopped us. Once at the shore, we blended in with the people there. Taking our pants off (we had worn swim suits under them), we went to the center of the beach and sat down. There was a fair crowd of people on the beach and we just sat around for half an hour or so, making conversation and keeping an eye out for security.

  Our long hair and mustaches didn’t blend in very well, but we were tanned and fit, and no one seemed to take much notice of us. In a backpack was our IED. Leaving the pack where it was, we got up and started walking up to where the gate and security guard were, just checking out the area. Finally, we put our pants back on, slipped back out the way we had come in, and made our way to a phone.

  Calling in the IED, we caused a reaction from the security staff. They came out and secured the beach, clearing it of all people before calling up EOD to deal with our little package. Forcing the people from the beach was an inconvenience for them, but nothing compared to what a real bomb would have been if it had detonated. The security staff did what they had to and conducted their part of the exercise correctly.

  Another major target was the big Naval facility on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor itself. Doc Holliday and I had planned to take a kayak from a civilian park on one side of the harbor over to Ford Island for our operation. We would paddle across the water right over the USS Arizona National Monument on the most direct approach to our target. In spite of Red Cell running fast and loose with the rules when we were on an exercise, chances are the National Park Service would have had us for lunch if they caught us going over the USS Arizona in a kayak.