Admiral Watkins looked at me wide-eyed. “You carried all that on a commercial flight without being stopped?”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
He laughed. He looked at me. “Dismissed, Captain. Don’t forget your toys.” He turned toward Ace. “Ace, I’m glad the boy’s on our side.”
I’d learned in Vietnam that the back door was the best way to hit Charlie; now I’d get to be Charlie and hit the Navy through its own back door. Red Cell’s mission, just as Ace and I had conceived it, was to test the vulnerabilities of base installations, command and control facilities, operations centers, and naval assets. They were actually going to pay us to mud-suck people—it was too good to be true.
Despite my cavalier speeches to the men, Ace had formulated a thick book of guidelines to make sure Red Cell did its job according to the rules. A Navy lawyer traveled with the unit to ensure that we operated within the law. Each scenario was developed carefully to expose a base’s weaknesses, then approved—first by Ace, then by VCNO Hays and his staff, and finally by the CINC of whatever theater in which we’d operate. Ace knew all too well my predilection for improvisation: “Stray from what we’ve agreed on, and you and your boys are history,” he warned me. I believed him. And—most of the time—I followed his orders.
Each of the base commanders would also be briefed in advance on precisely which targets we would hit, and when we would hit them, so they could beef up security. If it was necessary, umpires would be used to rule about the number of casualties in exercises where we used bombs directed against personnel. And to help each base fix what was wrong, every exercise would be videotaped. Using low-light equipment and former SEAL operators as cameramen, we would provide televised object lessons in how not to deal with terrorists. The video would also provide hard evidence that the Cell did what we said we’d done—no base commander could dispute where we had or hadn’t been.
“The idea,” Ace growled, “is not that you assholes shoot and loot like a bunch of crazies. The idea is that we teach the Navy how to make life difficult for terrorists. They’re like goddamn burglars. If a terrorist group is doing target assessment against two bases, and one of ’em looks prepared, he’ll hit the less prepared base instead. That’s what we want our base commanders to understand.”
Early in the spring of 1985, Red Cell pulled a dress rehearsal in Norfolk. The turf was familiar, so the operation didn’t require much advance work by the Cell. The real work was discovering ways in which to integrate the camera crews into our terrorist “attacks.” After all, not only did my men have to get through the security cordons—each op had to be taped as well. Fortunately, a trio of former SEAL Team Six sailors had been hired as cameramen, and they could sneak and peek almost as well as Red Cell. In the space of only a few days we managed to wreak havoc on the Second Fleet and LANTFLT headquarters with bombs, booby traps, and smoke grenades—and get most of it on tape.
After Norfolk, I called a Cell meeting at Shooter’s. I toasted my boys with Bombay. “Okay, cockbreaths, we’ve gotten our act together—now it’s time to take it on the road.”
CNO Watkins was a nuclear submariner. So where better to start our series of hop-and-pops than New London, Connecticut, home of the Trident- and Boomer-class nuclear submarines. I visited New London and briefed the appropriate commanders, who were not happy about our imminent arrival. Despite their lukewarm reception, we worked out a series of scenarios, which were “chopped” up and down the chain of command. Finally, early in June, we drove north to pay ’em a visit.
The base—two bases, actually—sat on the bank of the Thames River about six miles north of Long Island Sound. An upper facility contained the usual Navy creature features—BOQ, commissary, movie theater, PX, and barracks, as well as the command-and-control functions for both bases. More significantly, there was an ordnance compound—where tactical weapons such as torpedoes and more esoteric, nuclear devices, were kept. Below, on the river, were the pens where the Boomer-class subs were tied up (Tridents, which were too big to sail under the U.S. I-95 highway bridge, were moored elsewhere).
We set up shop in Groton, Connecticut, just down the road, and began to probe. The base, it didn’t take long to discover, was wide open.
How wide? It had no real front gate, only an entranceway. There were train tracks running on a north/south axis between the upper and lower bases. The chain-link fences to keep people from wandering from the right-of-way onto the base were rotted and eroded. Along the easternmost perimeter of the upper base, there was no fence at all—only a 100-foot schist cliff dotted with scrub, bayberry, and thistles. At its foot was the ordnance facility, surrounded by a single chainlink fence eight feet high.
We prepped for three days. Cheeks went to an Ace hardware store and bought three bags of goodies, which he turned into incendiary devices, bombs, and booby traps. The bombs were wired with flash paper; the booby traps and incendiaries had flashbulb “explosives.”
I rented a small plane, and Horseface flew us under the I-95 bridge, wetting our wheels in the Thames as we swooped low. We buzzed the sub pens. No one waved us off. We rented a boat and flew the Soviet flag on its stern, then chugged past the base while we openly taped video of the subs in their dry docks, capturing classified details of their construction elements. The dry docks were exposed and unprotected—if we’d decided to ram one of the subs, nothing stood in our way.
We scouted the local bars. Hartman, who’d served on nukes based out of New London, provided a list of the best ones. Terrorists—especially the middle-class Eurotrash variety that make up such groups as the Red Brigades, Baader-Meinhof, or Direct Action—love to scout bars. That’s where they overhear base gossip, pick pockets, and steal IDs. An enterprising terrorist can go to a bar where military folks hang out and come away with IDs for himself and his car, safe combinations, which are often stored in wallets, believe it or not, even operational schedules, which people toss unthinkingly into their briefcases. We discovered the bars frequented by Navy guys, and the places that folks from the General Dynamics shipyards—where they built Tridents—hung out. It was tough work, but we never complained.
Then Minkster—who did the best Arab accent—phoned in the first threat. He called New London’s main number.
“Naval Submarine Base, may I help you?”
“Yeah,” Minkster said, “this is the Movement for the Free Ejaculation of Palestine. Free all our prisoners or you Zionist infidels will suffer.” Then he hung up, just as the poor operator was going, “Whaaaaaa?”
That night, the base was on full alert. Marine guards patrolled the fence line near the main entrance. Naval Security pickets manned the side gate where a single road ran to the base hospital. The motion sensors deployed around the ordnance facility were turned on. But the sensors protected only two sides of the building. After all, who’d be rude enough to hop and pop from the rear?
Ricky’s Raiders is who. As Cheeks and I watched from the top, Frank, Larry, Snake, and Pooster quickly lowered themselves down the cliff, moving silently through the wide-open “back door.”
I nudged Cheeks. “It’s like Ilo-Ilo Island all over again. Everybody’s watching the front door—and we shoot and loot up the back.”
After the quartet of SEALs made a secure infiltration, we lowered the camera crew, which positioned itself to catch the action.
Roll tape. Larry and Frank burrowed under the chain-link fence and snuck around one side of the ordnance facility; Pooster and Snake went the other way. A sentry carrying a shotgun with no round chambered challenged them. Before he could react, Snake “shot” him with a silenced pistol and he went down. An umpire ruled him dead. Then the fun began. Pooster booby-trapped a pair of propane tanks. Then he and Snake picked a side-door lock and positioned a timerdetonated explosive charge next to a nuclear weapons prep area. More IEDs—Improvised Explosive Devices—were hidden among the torpedoes.
To add insult to injury, Larry and Frank hung a huge sign made from a bedroom sheet on th
e ordnance building. It said, “KA-BOOM! Love and kisses, the Movement for the Free Ejaculation of Palestine.” Then everybody climbed up the cliff, we jumped into the cars we’d parked in plain sight at the side of the road, and we drove away.
A passable night’s work under our belts, we went out for some serious terrorist partying. At one of the bars we’d scoped out, we picked up a pair of General Dynamics’ better-looking female employees. While they were dirty-dancing with Pooster and Gold Dust Frank, I stole their ID cards.
Doom on you, ladies.
We’d hit the upper base with no problem. On Day Two, we scored hits on the hospital, communications center, and HQ buildings, all with no resistance. The reason was apparent from the very beginning: submariners are very orderly people. They work from checklists. Once something has been checked, it is crossed off the list and not checked again. Terrorists do not work from checklists, they hit targets of opportunity. So we’d wait until a location had been visited by security, then we’d hit it, confident that no one would be waiting for us.
The same thing proved true for the sub pens. Also on Day Two, I sent Minkster, Baby Rich, Horseface, and Wiseass Artie upriver about a quarter mile to a yacht basin. There, they changed into wet suits, put their clothes in waterproof bags, and swam down to the sub pens. They climbed the pilings, changed clothes again, hung the bags off the pier, and went to work. First, they found the sentries—who were secure in their shacks drinking coffee—and silenced them. Then, they concealed explosives behind the diving planes of one nuclear sub. They boarded another Boomer sub and placed demolition charges in the control room, in the nuclear-reactor compartment, and in the torpedo room. When they were challenged, they talked their way out of the situation by claiming to be maintenance people from GD. No one asked them for IDs—and if they had been asked, they had the cards I’d stolen the previous night. They’d have flashed them—thumbs conveniently covering the pictures—and no one would have been the wiser.
The SEALs finished their work, climbed back into their wet suits, and swam upriver to the yacht club, where we picked them up.
Then we all went out and partied again.
The base commander, a captain, was not happy when we showed him the tapes. His boss, a two-star squadron commander I’ll call Admiral Cocksure, was even less enthralled.
“Captain,” he said, “this exercise wasn’t fair, and it shouldn’t count. You people didn’t play by the rules.”
“What rules, sir?”
“Well, you climbed down the cliff to raid my ordnance facility. You never told me you’d do that—you only said you’d attack it. You swam downriver and came up the docks when you attacked the submarines. If we knew you’d come from that direction, we’d have been waiting. We can’t have people watching everywhere.”
“I’m sure that Abu Nidal or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine will take your views into account if they decide to stage a hit on your base, sir.”
“Don’t smart-ass me, Captain.”
Moi? Dickie? “No, sir. Wouldn’t even think about it, sir.”
The base commander glared at me. “Your so-called terrorists called and said they were going to hit the PX. We were ready, but they didn’t.”
“No, Captain, we attacked the communications center instead.”
“That’s not right.”
“Look, gentlemen, let me lay it out for you. Terrorists don’t operate by any rules. You have a nice neat base here, and it probably runs very efficiently. But so far as security is concerned, you are extremely vulnerable. You don’t show any initiative. The tapes, which the CNO will just love to see—because, as you know, he’s a nuclear submariner—show how I blew up two of your nuclear subs, and if I’d wanted to, I could have blown ’em all up.”
Admiral Cocksure bristled. “That’s another thing, Captain, your men weren’t authorized to board nuclear submarines. They don’t have the clearances.”
“Then why didn’t you stop us?”
“That’s not a fair question.”
“Admiral, fair has nothing to do with it. We agreed the subs were fair game. The best defense against enemy subs is to keep ’em in port. So, all the bad guys need to do is bend one shaft or screw up one diving plane or alter one screw—and your fleet of multimillion-dollar nukes is bottled up.”
I tossed the ID cards we’d stolen onto Cocksure’s desk. “You may want to return these.”
“Jesus,” he gasped, “that’s—”
“Admiral.” I interrupted, “the Marines that look after your main entrance don’t have the same radio frequencies as the rent-a-cops you use to patrol the perimeter of the base. The rent-a-cops can talk to your security office, but not to the NIS men on the pier. Nobody carries loaded weapons. Nobody challenges intruders. Your perimeter chain-link fences are only six feet high. And anybody can sail right up the river into the sub pens. Security here sucks.”
Cocksure got all huffy. “Don’t be insubordinate, Captain.”
He was beginning to piss me off, but I held my tongue. “Admiral, I’m not being insubordinate. The deputy CNO for plans and policy is worried about your installation’s security. I believe he has good cause for concern, too, because the security here does suck—and that’s exactly what I’m going to say in my report.”
As I left, the good admiral was already writing Ace a strong letter of complaint. It was to be the first of many Ace would receive about me.
We’d done a good week’s work. We’d illustrated the sub base’s glitches and given the security people something to think about. We’d even managed to piss off the admiral—something I took as a compliment. I would have liked to continue terrorizing him through the weekend, but a locally sponsored regatta on the Thames forced us to cancel our plans. Ace was firm about certain procedures: we could screw around with the Navy, but not with innocent civilians. Still, it was too nice a weekend just to go home. So, instead of returning to Washington, we drove north to Massachusetts for a two-day clambake.
One of our civilian film crew was a plank holder at SEAL Team Six—a tall former lieutenant known as the Senator. His Navy career had been cut short by a training accident at Six in which he’d lost an eye. Now, he worked with the defense consulting firm that was coordinating the videotaping of Red Cell’s attacks.
The Senator’s parents had a big house right on the beach in southern Massachusetts, about forty minutes outside Boston, and that’s where we went. We bought enough beer to sink a skiff and spent the weekend eating corn, lobsters, and steamers, all cooked out on the beach in a 48-hour nonstop party.
Party? It turned into Mardi Gras. As the celebration grew louder and more boisterous, neighbors began showing up. Women ogled muscular SEALs. SEALs ogled shapely women. Rooster fell in love. We wrestled with each other and tossed anybody we could get our hands on—especially pretty young things—into the surf. We played SEAL volleyball, which is a full-contact sport. We made neat little Everett E. Barrett rows of empty-beer-can pathways to show off our talents in landscaping.
And we prepared SEAL foods. We built a huge, seaweedlined pit in which we steamed our lobsters, clams, corn, and potatoes. Later, after enough beer, the six-foot bed of coals would be suitable for fire walking.
One of us preferred to prepare his own unique rations. The Senator’s parents watched in fascinated, horrified amazement as Gold Dust Larry really laissez’d les bons temps roulez. He got himself worked up on Coors into a quintessential Gold Dust Larry funk, then went wandering off by himself down the beach. Sometime later—no one could be precise—he returned, carrying a dead sea gull. He stood silent, morosely watching the fire we’d built, and bit the bird’s head off.
“What is that chap doing?” Poppa Senator wanted to know as he watched Larry chaw and chaw.
“He’s making sea-gull tartar,” Duke explained patiently.
The rest of the team had to be physically restrained from embarking on a scavenger hunt to find more dead creatures for Larry to eat. It was a
long, long night.
Sunday morning, after everyone resumed consciousness, we rented a lobster boat, stocked it with five or six cases of beer, and spent the morning cruising the coastline. After about case three, Snake decided he’d ride in the punt the lobsterman was towing. He worked his way down the towline and settled in with a couple of six-packs.
The rest of us were content to lie in the sun, looking at the huge houses that sat above the distant beach. Then Trailer Court had a bright idea: “Cast and recovery,” he shouted. “SEALs in the water.”
An order is an order. Lead by example. Without waiting, I threw myself over the bow rail and into the Atlantic, diving headfirst and swimming away from the port side of the boat underwater. Ouch—the water was goddamned cold enough to make my balls go “pop.” I kicked toward the surface and began treading water just in time to see Snake’s big, muscular arm coming at me like a club. He grabbed me by the throat and swung me easily into the punt.
“Thanks,” I wheezed.
“Anytime, Cap.” Snake pointed as Gold Dust Larry went off the bow headfirst. “Better move it, Cap—Larry’s about to be recovered.”
The bottom half of my body dragging in the water, I worked my way hand over hand up the fifty feet of towline back to the boat. Before I finally hoisted myself over the stern rail, I’d lost my tennis shoes and one of my socks in the prop wash. Exhausted, I groped my way forward on hands and knees.
“How was it. Cap?” Pooster asked.
“Oh, it was peachy-keen ducky, Pooster. Why don’t you try it, too?”
I lay on my back on the lobster boat’s foredeck, cold, wet, and salty. My wallet was squishy. My shoes were flotsam. Snake’s fingerprints were visible like five hickeys on my neck where he’d one-handed me out of the water. My Adam’s apple throbbed in pain. But the sun was bright, and the sky was blue, and somebody was standing above me, dribbling beer into my open mouth.
I thought, God put me on this earth so I could be here and do this, with these men—my men. It was absolutely, totally, incontrovertibly, completely, utterly fucking perfect.
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