I plugged in the Chairman’s secure phone and dialed Kenny Ross’s number.
“Ross.”
“It’s me.” Quickly, I summarized the stream-of-consciousness thoughts that had been running through my brain. “Did Paul ever call you about any of that?”
“No.”
“But it makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“You bet it does. Especially in light of what you’ve already passed on to the Chairman.”
“Ken”—it was the first time I’d used his Christian name since we’d been on the USS Humpback together—“I gotta talk to the Chairman about this, right now.”
“I think you do, too,” Ken Ross answered, his voice grim.
Less than two minutes later, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was on the line. I didn’t waste his time. Once more, I laid things out the way I saw ’em. The only sound I heard was the scratching of Kenny Ross’s rollerball on paper.
I finished speaking, only to be answered a second time by silence. I waited until I found it impossible to wait any longer. “General?”
I heard him sigh. “You’ve gotta be right,” he told me. “Given the way things are going at the White House—plus the way Langley. State, and the National Security Council are treating us—you’re probably absolutely on the money.” I could hear him breathing heavily. Under his breath, the Chairman said to no one in particular, “Those lying, cocksucking sons of bitches.”
I broke in. “So?”
There was another pause. This one longer than the first. “I spoke to the secretary of defense after your last call to Ken,” General Crocker said. “I took your faxed material over to his house and explained what is going on. SECDEF has made it clear to me that he cannot allow those naive idiots to screw things up any longer. Let me quote his words to you exactly, Dick, so there is no mistake about his feelings. ‘These people are placing our national security in jeopardy.’ is what he said. And when he saw your fax concerning that, that”—the Chairman struggled to find the right word—“diplomatic embarrassment who’s currently the DCM in Moscow, that put him right over the edge. He called the White House and took everything to the president. Straight away. Saw him in the residence, alone.”
That was good news. It has been a while since our civilian leadership did much leading. “What happened?”
The Chairman’s voice was tinged with bemusement. “The president caved. You know how he is—he goes with the last piece of advice he’s been given, and SECDEF made sure he was the only man in the room. He came back to the Pentagon with a goddamn handwritten National Security Finding in his hands.”
There was a pause on the line. Then—it was quite incredible—I could almost see General Cracker’s right thumb and index fingers pointing like a Colt .45 in my direction. “So, go to work, Dick,” his voice came through loud and clear. “We’re not gonna let this happen. It’s wrong. Plain wrong—and immoral to boot. You go get ’em, Dick—get’em. And don’t fail. But do it quietly—stealth. No ripples, because we don’t want to alert anybody at Langley or Foggy Bottom. And work fast, because by this time tomorrow when the matter of Bart Wyeth has been brought up at the cabinet meeting—which it will—the DCI, the national security adviser, and the secretary of state are all going to know that they’ve been outflanked, they’ll pile on and the president’ll probably reverse himself, and ask SECDEF for the finding back.”
Avi returned at 1830. He’d managed to get two PCMCIA cards, and one of AMAN’s explosive-packed telephones. “But don’t we need detonators? We can’t use the computers, can we?”
Wonder shook his head. “Nope.” He scratched his red hair. “I can improvise a detonator out of a .223 cartridge. But we’d still need some kind of fusing material.” He looked at Avi. “You know anyplace to get blasting caps or fuse?”
Avi’s face was blank.
Lightbulb. “I do—” I punched Wonder’s shoulder. “There’s that construction site down the street—the town houses we passed on the way here.”
Wonder’s face lit up. “Let’s go shopping,” he said, reaching for his set of lock picks.
“Maybe we should wait until it’s dark,” I suggested.
By 2230, we had two pencil detonators, three blasting caps, and twenty feet of fast-burning fuse. While Wonder built IEDs in the kitchen, Avi and I checked the weapons, loaded magazines, and finished packing the equipment we’d be taking. It would take Wonder a bit of time to rig the plastic explosives. The phone was easier: it had an ingenious, multifaceted remote device. You could make the instrument ring—as if there were an incoming call—then set it off. That, Avi explained, was because many of the targets had learned to let their wives and kids answer their phones. So you’d call, wait until you heard the right voice on the other end, then blow the fucker’s head off. Or, in basic mode you could just make the phone go boom by releasing the safety, then pressing the transmit button on the detonator.
Having the explosives obstacles solved left us only one small problem: our method of insertion. Frankly, I didn’t think we had much of a choice. We didn’t have documents to get us into Lebanon through Cyprus, and without military support, a wet approach—that is, a covert insertion by sea—was going to be hard. Besides, such tactics take time—and time was something we didn’t have much of. I took one of Avi’s huge pilotage maps from the file of them on his desk, and spread it out on the floor.
“We go by air,” I said, my finger tracing what I thought might be an acceptable route.
“Huh?” Avi was confused.
“We drop in on ’em—do the job, and get out as best we can, using whatever we find.” I turned the pilotage chart so he could see it. “Here’s where we have to go. If we can come up with a plane that will take us to twelve thousand feet, we can jump here”—I pointed to a spot twenty-five kilometers west of the target—“and HAHO in.”
“HAHO?” Avi shook his head. “Don’t understand.”
“High altitude, high opening—we use flat chutes and we parasail. We come down five, six kliks away, and go the rest of the way on foot.”
“Dick—” Avi’s face had a panicked look that I didn’t like at all.
“What?”
“That HAHO part makes me very nervous.”
“Why—you made it through jump school.” I’d seen Avi in uniform. He wore silver jump wings above his ribbons.
“Five jumps,” Avi said. “Five jumps get you your wings. All of them were automat.”
“Automat?”
“Where you hook your line inside the plane—”
“Static jumps.”
“Static, yes.” Avi swallowed hard. “And I hated each one more than the last.”
He was actually sweating now. “Dick—they had to throw me out of the damn plane every time. I mean it. Somebody really picked me up and threw me out the door.”
“The hatch.”
“You can call it whatever you like—but no matter what you call it, I didn’t go through it willingly.”
I had to laugh. Here was a man who could talk his way through a roadblock of hostiles without losing his cool. Who could operate in half a dozen countries where, if they knew who he was, they’d literally skin him alive. And he’d conquered his fears enough to make those five jumps and wear his wings. And now he was nervous about HAHO.
Let me tell you something about human character, my friends. It is this: when I go into battle, I would rather have with me a man who knows he is afraid but goes on anyway, than a man who professes no fear at all. That’s how I used to select my shooters. I didn’t want the gazelles—the ones who’d breezed through training seemingly without breaking a sweat. I wanted those men who tried, almost failed—maybe even did fail—but came back again and again and again until they’d made it. Those are the men with heart. Those are the shooters who will go until the end. Those are the true Warriors, who will not stop until they have completed their mission.
“I’m not laughing at you, Avi—I’m laughing with you.”
&
nbsp; “That doesn’t make me feel any better about doing something I’ve never done. Dammit, Dick, I’ve never even used a flat chute.”
He had a point there. It’s one thing to drop out of an aircraft at five thousand or seventy-five hundred feet in a static jump, and float into a nice, flat drop zone that’s been scouted for wind conditions. It’s a whole ’nother thing to go out of a plane at night into weather and wind currents you know nothing about, and drop into hostile territory. Moreover, things get compounded by the presence of Mr. Murphy when you’re trying to parasail eight, nine, even ten miles.
“We could practice,” Wonder interjected. He’d wandered downstairs and was looking at the map over my shoulder. “Are there any parachute clubs around?”
“Yes, but—”
I cut him off. I saw the look in Avi’s eyes. There was no way he was going to learn the fine art of HAHO. And certainly not in the next twenty-four hours or so. Mr. Murphy had obviously joined us tonight.
Sometimes, gentle reader, the answer is so simple that you do not see it immediately. I slapped the map with the palm of my hand. “Let’s keep it simple, stupid—Avi jumps with me.”
The Israeli looked confused.
“If you have commercial jump schools in Israel, you have tandem chutes here, too. They have about half again as much surface as your normal chute, so they can take the extra weight.” I grinned at him. “And frankly, you probably don’t weigh much more than my combat pack, so maybe we only need a single chute for us to jump together.”
“Don’t make jokes, Dick.”
“Avi, it’s simple. We hook up—your harness gets attached to mine—we go out the plane, and I fly your ass in.”
“But—”
“It beats walking.”
“Lech la-azalel—sgo to hell.” He rolled his eyes. He groaned. He sighed. He hyperventilated. But I knew Avi was gonna do it. And so did he.
“Okay, if we’re really going to do this I’ll call Koby.”
“Who’s Koby?”
“A sergeant I know. We were in the same unit some years ago. He has a farm near Zichron.”
“So?” The significance of what Avi was saying escaped me.
“Zichron—Zichron Yaakov—in English it means Jacob’s memorial. It was built in 1886 by the Baron de Rothschild. Just about twenty-five kilometers south of Haifa. They have a little flying school up there—and they sport jump. Zichron is high—on a mountain overlooking the sea. Koby’s a pilot, too—he flies every chance he gets at the jump school at Binyamina.”
Wonder repeated the word. “Binyamina?”
“The next town to the south from Zichron,” Avi explained. “Originally, Koby was in the Air Force. He loved it, but they told him he didn’t have the right disposition to be a fighter pilot, and they washed him out.”
“What do you mean ’the right disposition’?”
“He was too aggressive—way off the charts on the Air Force personality tests. And he hated officers. Made a habit of beating the crap out of them. So he was transferred to the Army, and he became a commando—I met him in Saye’eret Egoz.”
I liked Koby already—in fact, there were a few officers I would have liked to introduce him to—starting with one Pinckney Prescott the Turd. “Give him a call. Can you tell him what we need without being specific?” I didn’t want to alert anyone who might be listening in.
“Can do. The only question is how soon you want to go?”
“Tonight—now.”
“So soon? But—”
“Avi, we don’t have time to waste. You know it, and I know it. My Chairman wants to move—now. Besides, sooner or later somebody in Jerusalem or Washington is going to guess what we’re up to. So—we go before they have a chance to react. If we’re successful, they’ll find a way to make us look good. If we screw up—WTF, we’re expendable, right?”
Avi shrugged. “You know, I never really wanted to make tat-aluf—brigadier general—anyway.”
I laughed. “What’s your point?” Avi and I were cut from the same cloth—the rough kind that doesn’t look as good in stars as it does with scars. The day I took the oath to become an officer I knew I’d never make flag rank. In fact, that was a part of the deal I made with myself when I went to OCS. I became an officer to lead SEALs into battle—not to become CNO or command a fleet. “So?̶
In response, he walked over to the telephone that sat on his small, teak desk, plucked the receiver, and dialed a number from memory. The only words I understood during the next four minutes were the first two—“Koby—hi.” The rest was unintelligible. Avi hung up the receiver. He swiveled the desk chair and gave me a thumbs-up. “We’re a go,” he said.
0100. We pulled the car inside the gates so we could load up in private. Avi went upstairs for a few minutes. When he came down, he said, “Mikki says ’Shalom.’ ”
“I hope you told her the same,” I said.
“Absolutely.” He ruffled the dogs behind their ears. “Tovim klavim—good dogs.” Using his knee, he kept them from coming through the front door. “They think it’s time for their early morning walk,” he said. He spoke to them again in Hebrew, and closed the door. “I told them—when I get back,” he said. “C’mon, c’mon—hava na moova.”
0154. We’d driven most of the way in silence. Traffic had been light—a few trucks and a sprinkling of cars on the main highway as we flew past Netanya. The road signs spelled out names I’d first learned from the nuns back at Saint Ladislaus Hungarian Catholic School: SHEHEM—114 KM. MEGGIDO—65 KM. NAZARETH—142 KM. Just south of Hadera, where an orangy blaze of sodium spotlights illuminated the twin smokestacks of a huge power plant that sat on the sea, Avi veered off onto a smaller, unlit highway. We sped past farms and small villages. At one point the interior of the car filled with the pungent aroma of fresh manure. “Duck farm,” Avi said by way of explanation.
A few minutes later, he swerved off the highway onto an unmarked dirt road. The small car bounced along the ruts, scraping the muffler as we began a long, slow ascent up a series of S-curves that took us higher and higher. The air got much cooler. “Look—” Avi pointed. A small deer stood, transfixed by the headlights, thirty yards in front of us. “We’re almost there.” he said, gunning the engine and sending the deer scampering into the thorny underbrush.
0205. The road leveled off, bringing us onto a wide, flat plain. As the car’s headlights swept the area in front of us, I realized that we’d driven onto one end of a basic rural landing strip. I could make out a series of large sheds whose sides bore huge Hebrew lettering some distance away. Two of them had lights on inside. A pickup truck was parked next to the smaller of the sheds. Avi drove up and parked beside the truck, switched off the ignition, climbed out, stretched and yawned.
Wonder and I did the same. “Where are we?”
“Just north of a little town called Binyamina. This is a private airstrip—mainly it’s crop dusters that hire out to the farmers. But Koby flies out of here, too—he ferries jumpers for the jump school.”
We walked into the shed, and I felt right at home. It was a rigger’s loft—long tables for packing chutes at the near end, offices and supplies on the far side. A huge bear of a man in his fifties, his face as suntanned as stained oak, stood packing a sky blue, flat chute. He was dressed in an olive drab flight suit, its sleeves rolled past his muscular forearms. Cinched around his waist was a black nylon pistol belt. From the belt a tactical holster descended, attached to a thick thigh. I could make out the easily recognizable butt of a Browning High Power pistol protruding from the double-tied flap. The man looked up, and a big smile spread over his face. “Avi, ahlan.”
“Shalom, Koby.”
I watched as the two grasped one another the way Warriors do after long separation. Avi led his shipmate over to meet us.
“Koby, this is my friend Dick Marcinko—he’s the Amerikai I worked with in Lebanon. Dick, this is Koby Shomron.”
Koby’s size twelve hand was as tough as alligator hid
e. His grip tightened around my own hand like a blacksmith’s pincers. “Good to meet you, mister officer,” he growled like the sergeant he was, his blue eyes meeting my own without blinking. “Avi says you’re a good man—even though you don’t wear stripes.”
“I used to.”
“Did you? Good—I hope you didn’t forget what they mean.”
“I try not to.”
“Good.” He hooked a calloused thumb in Avi’s direction. “He never forgot. Matter of fact he still looks like a skinny marink corporal—I think maybe Mikki doesn’t feed him enough—but he can still get places and do things, y’know, even with his officer’s epaulettes.” Koby ran a big hand through his thatch of thick, silver hair and looked over at Wonder, who stood behind my right shoulder. “And what about you, gingi, can you get places and do things?”
Wonder introduced himself warily. Koby looked him up and down. “I guess he looks as if he can handle himself,” he said to no one in particular. “Besides—I like gingis. I have two myself.” He looked over at Avi and broke out laughing.
“What the fuck’s a gingi?” Wonder’s face took on a petulant expression.
“It means a redhead,” Avi explained. “We used to have a saying in the Army—that after a war, there are a lot of gingi kids born, because, you know—our peckers, they’re rusty from being away from home.”
“Yeah, well, in my family it comes natural,” Wonder said. “We’re Scottish, in case you didn’t know.”
“I like the Scots,” Koby said. “They make good booze—Jewish booze—J&B.”
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