He paused at the Air France waybill. “Hot freon,” he said. “Remember when I explained the process of bootlegging nuclear material?”
“Yes.”
“Well, hot freon is part of the purification process that comes in the final stages of manufacturing. If they need this stuff, they’re well under way.” He lapsed into silence, wheeled his big leather chair back from the desk, tilted it, and set his feet up again. He made a temple roof of his hands and gazed at the ceiling of his office. He sat like that for five or six minutes. I didn’t interrupt, because I knew what he was doing: he was thinking.
And then, having thought, he brought his feet back onto the rug, began collecting the evidence I’d brought, and sorted it into orderly stacks.
“What’s up, Admiral?”
I watched as he picked up the phone on his desk and punched a number. “It’s Kenny Ross,” he said to whomever answered. The admiral covered the receiver mouthpiece with his hand and looked at me impatiently. “What the heck are you waiting for? Get this stuff organized and packed.”
As I began reaching for the piles of paper, he nodded. “Yes, yes, I can.” He waited, drumming his fingers silently on the desk’s surface, looking at my efforts impatiently. “Uh-huh. Right. Ask if he can see me on an urgent matter.” He paused. “Five minutes.”
Kenny Ross looked in my direction and saw that I was not moving at flank speed. “Dick,” he said quietly, “get the fucking paperwork packed up—in proper order—right now!”
When he used language like that I knew it had to be serious.
Eight minutes later we were sitting in the secure, riverview, hideaway office of General Thomas E. Crocker, a former West Point wide receiver who for the past two years has been deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Two months ago, the chairman, a Marine four-star named A. G. “Gunny” Barrett, unexpectedly resigned for what the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff press release stated were reasons of health. Within eight hours of Gunny’s retirement, General Crocker, a career armor officer whose previous assignments included service as the deputy NATO commander in Brussels, and a short stint as the CINC of U.S. Army, Europe (USAREUR), was appointed to the job.
Unlike his predecessor, Tom Crocker didn’t jog or play golf with the president. He didn’t spend much time in the Oval Office. Neither did he court the press, nor anyone else, for that matter. As CINCUSAREUR, he’d been known to take off his blouse and tie, cover his stars with a sweater, and visit the troops anonymously, sans aides and retinue, listening to their gripes in mess halls, enlisted men’s clubs, and commissaries, then acting to fix those gripes quickly.
He was what they call a soldier’s soldier. He was not a manager who wanted to go on to greater things in the corporate or political worlds; he was a leader who knew he’d already reached the apex of his career when he was put in charge of his men. He’d been appointed, according to the conventional wisdom, exactly for that reason: he was the apolitical choice, the man who’d get the job done without complaining.
From the way they greeted each other, you could see they had what’s called in Spanish a cuate relationship. That translates literally as “twin,” and in the idiomatic, it means being an asshole buddy. Now, frankly, gentle reader, I had no idea how a one-star submariner and the four-star CJCS got to be such close friends until the Chairman explained that they’d both been detailed to the National Security Council during the Bush administration. “Long hours make for unexpected relationships,” is how General Crocker put it. “After six weeks of eighteen-hour days, which is what we put in during the Gulf War, even the Army and the Navy saw eye-to-eye on a few matters.”
The Chairman looked at me curiously. “Don’t I know you from somewhere, Captain?” he asked, the hint of a twinkle in his eye. “I never forget a French braid.”
I explained that we’d met very quickly in Gunny Barrett’s office about half a year back. He nodded but didn’t ask for any further explanation. Instead, he sat down in a well-used leather wing chair, raised his knees by putting his shoes on a low ottoman, and balanced a legal notepad in a black leather binder with four gold stars emblazoned on it on his lap. He held his right thumb and index finger, as if they were a .45caliber pistol, then pointed his hand in Ken Ross’s direction. “Fire away, Kenny,” said General Crocker.
Kenny Ross looked as confident as if he had an Ivan boomer in his sights, the torpedo-firing sequence programmed into his computers, the twin firing keys firmly in their locks, and his hands on the “launch” buttons. “Aye-aye, sir,” he said. “Dick—report what you told me to Chairman Crocker.”
Two hours and fifteen minutes later, I knew my rabbi problem had been solved for the immediate future. First, General Crocker asked us to leave his office so that he could place a secure call. I started to say something, but the look on Ken Ross’s face told me it was way above my pay grade to ask who the Chairman was dialing up. So we exeunted, left, into the office of General Crocker’s confidential assistant, while said CA, a ministerial straight-leg colonel wearing a telephone headset whose wires were connected to a red scrambler phone, took shorthand with a series of old-fashioned yellow Ticonderoga pencils as the Chairman and whomever he was speaking to palavered. Eight minutes later, when the conversation was over, the notes were slipped into an orange-bordered Top Secret folder. The folder was placed reverently in the CA’s safe, which was then locked. The process finished, we were readmitted to JCS Valhalla.
“This is now officially a ‘go,’” the Chairman said as we resumed our seats. Two minutes later, with a single cordial yet tough phone call to the acting CNO, the Chairman had me detailed to his office, to engage in what he described as a sensitive special project of an ongoing nature. In requesting my services, he reminded CNO that jointness—which is the current fancy and bureaucratic way of defining interservice cooperation during mission planning and execution—was very much on Congress’s mind these days, and that my services to the JCS would be favorably remembered when it was time to testify at appropriations hearings, and the Navy’s funds were being threatened with even more severe cuts than ever before. Because of CNO’s help in this matter, the Navy, Chairman Crocker promised, could count on at least one Army four-star’s unqualified support at budget time.
That settled, he and the acting chief of naval operations worked out a chain of command for me. The Chairman got what he wanted there, too. He had Kenny Ross removed from under Pinky Prescott’s jurisdiction and detailed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff J-2—its intelligence staff. Then the Chairman called the three-star who ran the JCS’s J-2 operation. He explained that Kenny was reporting tomorrow morning to handle a compartmented program that was being run out of the Chairman’s office, and that Ken was to be given full cooperation.
General Crocker aimed his index linger at my nose. “Dick, you will report directly to Rear Admiral Ross.” He looked over at Kenny. “And you, Ken, will report directly to me.” He cracked a half grin. “We’re going to ‘keep it simple, stupid.’ That way maybe we’ll actually get something done.”
I asked for my men hack. That was the one big disappointment of the session. The Chairman insisted that reassembling my unit would be impossible. Doing so would cause too many waves within the system—and perhaps even alert someone to what was going on. I was, Chairman Crocker said, on my own—at least for now.
His decision disheartened me. SEALs do not ordinarily operate alone. From the very first days of training, you learn to act as a part of a team. From swim buddies, to boat crews, to SEAL platoons, everything is done in a way to promote unit integrity and interdependence among shipmates. So sending me out solo made me tactically less efficient than I would have been with a small unit.
On a more personal note, I believed that allowing Pinky’s decision to stand sent the wrong signal to my men—that signal being, that they were being punished because of me. I considered that specious reasoning on his part. I have always believed that an officer’s foremost duty is to his
men. He may be punished for his poor decisions—or decisions that make too many waves—but they shouldn’t suffer for ’em. Obviously, Pinky the Turd didn’t think the same way I did—and now my men were suffering because of it. Worst of all, there was nothing I could do about it—for the present.
It may have hurt, but there was no time for ruminations now. There was a mission to be fulfilled—and for the moment, at least, I was going to have to do it alone. And, in some ways, the results of the past few hours were gratifying—they meant that once again, I could work around Pinky Prescott and the Navy’s cumbersome bureaucracy with relative (and I stress that word) impunity.
But manipulating the system, as personally satisfying as it might be, was not what this particular little exercise was all about. It was much more serious than that. The people who’d set in motion the chain of events that had ended with the death of Paul Mahon and his family were still out there, and untouched.
The Russians were up to something new and dangerous, and my country was in jeopardy.
It was time for me to go to work.
If you want to learn more about the real reasons behind General A. G. “Gunny” Barrett’s sudden resignation, you can do so by reading Rogue Warrior: Task Force Blue. Frankly, there’s no time to explain things now.
Part Two: Trust but Verify
Chapter 11
I HEADED BACK TO ROGUE MANOR AT 1330. FRANKLY, I PREFER working at the Manor, and since it didn’t make any difference to General Crocker (as you can see I was now on a first-name basis with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), I drove the sixty-five miles south and west to my two-hundred-plus acres, three beer coolers, four cases of Bombay gin, and five hundred thousand rounds of ammo. I like working at home because the exercise equipment, the sauna, and the outdoor Jacuzzi are all handy. So is a twenty-foot long, copper-topped bar in the basement rec room that would do credit to most Old Town saloons.
But more to the point, the old Pentagon office for Naval Security Mobile Training Teams (even if I’d wanted to use it for my current assignment) was totally unsuitable. The NSMTT office is located in a byway off a back corridor that runs off the third-floor B-ring. It’s little more than a three-room suite with desks, chairs, three phones, and a fax. But I’m not griping about location or decor. The real problem was that there was no access to information there. No computer. No admission to the classified Intelink system, and hence no way of learning about your enemies.
Why was that? Well, according to a memo on the subject Pinky Prescott wrote roughly six weeks ago, NSMTTs aren’t supposed to think—they are simply supposed to … train. Like automatons, I guess. But you cannot train sailors to counteract terrorists unless they know who they are up against, what the stakes are, when the whole problem began, where the tangos are most likely to strike, and why they are fighting in the first place. Then it’s possible to teach how to stop the tangos if they try to kill or kidnap you, and how to stay alive if you are captured.
Those sorts of EEIs—the acronym stands for essential elements of information—are obviously crucial to any training mission. But Pinky had denied them to us, and we had gone to Moscow essentially blind.
Now, things had changed. I guess that with the juice of the CJCS behind me I could have obtained an office in the Pentagon, requisitioned the proper computers, and gone to work. But as you are most certainly well aware, I tend to attract attention—most of it unwanted—at the Pentagon. And since attention was something Chairman Crocker had been emphatic about my not attracting, it was better and more efficient—not to mention a lot more comfortable—for Wonder and me to work at home.
How emphatic had the Chairman been, you ask? Well, friends, he’d been quite specific about my mission’s ROEs, or Rules of Engagement.
He wanted results—he wanted Paul Mahon’s murderers put away. He wanted to know what the Russkies were up to, so we could take whatever steps necessary to thwart what he called, “that damn project in Syria. If it is what you say it is, I want the effing thing neutralized.” But he wanted all those steps done quietly. Sans diplomatic incidents. Sans waves.
He’d looked at me intensely over the top of his big desk. “Remember how SEALs operated in Vietnam?” he asked. He didn’t wait for me to respond, but told me what he wanted to hear. “I do. I was there. They operated SBD—silent but deadly. Go into a village at night, snatch one man, and do it without waking anybody up.” The Chairman paused. Put his elbows on the desk and leaned toward me. “That’s how I want you to do this one, Dick. When it’s all over, I want results—but no newspaper stories. I do not want to have to appear in front of some goddamn congressional committee to wring my hands and perform all kinds of public somersaults and whine mea culpas about some action that you and I know was tactically sound and strategically imperative to preserve our national security, but was neither politically acceptable nor lint free.
“I’m going to eyes-only this arrangement to SECDEF,” General Crocker had said. When he saw my eyes widen, he continued quickly. “Dick, we can’t operate without his consent—there has to be a National Security Finding. After all, this has to be legal. So he’ll get it, believe me, even if I have to wring it out of him.”
He’d paused, noting my concern. “Don’t worry—I’ll take all the political heat. Besides, on this one, SECDEF will back us. The Russians and the Chinese are getting tight all of a sudden, and he’s begun to see that all these budget cuts are really hurting us—cutting muscle, not fat. We can’t fight two wars anymore, Dick—and SECDEF knows it. So, he’s in our corner these days. You just get the job done. You succeed. I’ll protect you.”
I’d looked over at Kenny Ross, whose face told me that what Tom Crocker said, Tom Crocker meant.
Even so, I got it in writing. Not that I didn’t trust the Chairman of the JCS, or SECDEF. But I’ve BTDT, and the scars on my beat-up Slovak body are ample evidence of the times I’ve sealed bad deals with a handshake. So I remembered what Ronald Reagan told Mikhail Gorbachev—noviry v proviry—we trust but we also verify, and at my request, the Chairman wrote a memo to Ken Ross outlining my mission, signed it, and gave us each a copy.
Froggishly happy with paper in hand, I headed south, toward moisture—in this case all that Coors Light in the beer coolers. Wonder and I were about to set up shop in my basement.
Our first priority would be research. In the past, most of my research has come from clipping newspapers and magazines. Those clips, filed by topic and date, still repose crammed inside the dozen or so legal-size file cabinets that line the corridor between the basement guest room and the furnace room.
Today, however, I am considered a Luddite. An analog asshole in an age of digital sphincters. What can I tell you? I remember typewriters with some fondness—manual ones, too, Royals, and Underwoods, and—big sigh, big creeem—Smith Coronas. Shit, I even was nostalgic over IBM Model Bs—the same ones Christians in Action liked so much because of their one-time self-destructing carbon ribbons. In fact, until about ten years ago, we SEALs still used manual typewriters. Then, our budgets got expanded, and we were dragged—bitching and moaning, most of us—into the Information Age.
Anyway, just so that I can keep up with the times (not to mention the glut of factoids and infobits). Stevie Wonder has taken pity on me and assumed the job of what he likes to refer to as my Director of Research for Electronic Killing, or DREK. He does this work on the Internet, and he has formed some very interesting, nay—fascinating, even—relationships out in Cyberspace, wherever the fuck that may be.
Moi, I still prefer things I can pigeonhole and retrieve. So I have file cabinets for the UNCLAS (unclassified) papers. All materials that carry security classification designations are secured in a pair of twelve hundred pound, fireproof safes that were originally bought by the National Security Agency for Soviet intercept tapes. The safes are lag-bolted into concrete and sit in the furnace room behind the wood pile. Of course, the most important and sensitive stuff around is what I keep in my he
ad. Yeah—I have a long and detailed memory.
As I turned off the half-mile gravel road into the long, curved driveway I saw Stevie Wonder’s gray VW bug parked on the macadam apron in front of the garage and heard gunfire from way behind the house—double taps coming in the rapid ba-bang, ba-bang sequence known as “hammers.” That meant he was down at the range. I built a hundred-yard combat range down in the back forty a few years ago. Yes, I know that I am a convicted felon and that therefore I cannot possess firearms. But Boy Wonder and the rest of my merry, marauding leprechauns all have current and legal Virginia concealed carry weapons permits. Moreover, when I am on a military assignment, I can—indeed, I must—carry whatever weaponry is necessary to do the job. It’s part of the mission.
So, to make sure that I stay both current and deadly, I built the range, where the guys can sharpen their lethal talents, and—careful always to use only approved military weapons—I can sharpen mine. Shooting, after all, is a frangible skill. At SEAL Team Six we shot daily. I think I’ve told you all before that when I ran SEAL Team Six, I insisted that my seventy-two SEALs put more rounds through our targets on an annual basis than the entire U.S. Marine Corps’ 174,000 leathernecks put through theirs. We did, too—because Pinky Prescott complained long and loud that my ammo budget was bigger than the USMC’s. Pinky doesn’t believe in shooting skills. That’s because he’s never been shot at.
I peeled off the uniform and changed into jeans and a T-shirt that extolled Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. I checked the answering machine—there were a string of messages from the guys, asking WTF and pleading with papasan to fixee-fixee. I’d already vowed to fixee-fixee, but getting back to them would have to wait a while. There were more urgent things to do right now.
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