RW11 - Violence of Action

by Richard Marcinko

  “Where are the kids?” I asked Danny.

  “Asleep. I made ’em get some rack time. They got spirit, I’ll give ’em that. After I had my little heart-to-heart with Fuck-face, I ran our two misguided youths down and sent them to their rooms. We got all sorts of Cracker Jack admin types running around this place now. Fucking post is shut down, locked down, and staffed with the cream of the crop from everywhere you can imagine. No need for Paul and Trace to do more than they have already.”

  I opened the small fridge in the tiny kitchen. It was stocked with fruit and power bars and bottled water. I grabbed some water. I was dry as a boneyard! Taking a long swig from the clear plastic bottle, I reveled in the feel of the liquid as it ran down my throat. Looking at Danny from across the room, I nodded. “Good call. What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Did you get some rest, you crazy motherfucker?”

  Barrett smiled. “Nope.”

  “Silly question. Okay, then. Next. What do we know now that we didn’t when we left the Fitz?”

  Danny snubbed his smoke out. “Blanchard is smart,” he began. “Nemesis is still broken down into cells. While the colonel has the bulk of the team with him and the nuke, our boy told me Karras only knew to link up with him and his pal at the Fitz. From there they’d get their orders from the team’s control cell, which is still at least a link away from Blanchard himself.”

  “If not Blanchard, who?”

  “Jack Laski. SF. Nemesis. His bio says he’s a top dog when it comes to intelligence work and tradecraft. All the big boys wanted him on their payrolls but he hooked up with Blanchard and Nemesis. File says he’s as cold as they come. Likes to use a knife. He’s Blanchard’s techno wizard and he’s operating solo out of the Hotel Campbell in Tigard, just outside Portland.”

  “Does this Laski know what Blanchard intends to do, and where and when?”

  “Our little bird seems to think so. He told me Brother Jack is Colonel Max’s numba two man in the organization. Laski is the operational control for all the cells. He runs them. They report to him and receive their orders from him. They only know what they need to, when they need to. Our songbird knew Jack was setting up at the Campbell because he overheard Blanchard talking to Laski on a secure cell before the crew left some little burg in eastern Oregon called Bend.”

  This was good. Real good. We’d bagged three out of twelve and had a fourth in our sights. And if Danny was right, we were ready to close in on the information hub of Nemesis and therefore a direct link to Blanchard and the SADM. I finished my water and grabbed an apple. I was starving! We needed to move. Take a note: There’s no wickedness for the rested in my book. “Have you confirmed that Laski is still at this hotel?”

  “Yep. Local law enforcement showed his old army pic to the hotel desk clerk. He’s registered under the name of Morgan. Room 910. Top floor, corner. No exterior balconies, you’ll be glad to hear, but the hotel is built around a big central courtyard, a glassed-in atrium kind of thing. The guest rooms circle the courtyard. Fountains, pool, eating areas, the works are all open to guests and visitors. Safety railings run the length of each floor. You can step out of your room and from the comfort of your doorway look down and see what everyone is doing in the lobby. The entire place is very posh and very busy. And it’s a very smart place to run a clandestine command and control pod from.”

  “Do we have eyes on target yet?”

  “HRT is setting up now. Exterior perimeter. Soft clothes. No uniforms. They have scouts inside. Laski is in his room. Made a call for room service about twenty minutes ago. Maids say the room is neat and clean when they come in. No booze. Two carry-on bags and a daypack. Daypack is in the main room by the door. Laski is quiet, friendly, the perfect guest. Room is on a credit card in the name of Gregory Morgan. Using it instead of cash means no driver’s license checks and copies at the front desk. Our boy probably created the identity alongside his various covers at Nemesis and masked the paperwork from the brass hats. After all, these guys were trusted.”

  “Get Paul and Trace up. We’re going now. Snatch and Grab. He won’t fight. He’ll run first. The daypack probably has his techno shit in it. Close to the door, easy to shit and git. Blanchard needs Laski to coordinate the players and the hit. He’ll have a safe house to run to, probably another hotel or motel within five miles of the primary. He’ll have secure cell capability and an escape and evasion plan. If we miss him now, we’re not gonna find him again so easily.”

  Danny pulled the door open for me and I rushed past him. My mind was going a million miles an hour again. A little rest, a little food…

  “Speaking of plans, Dick. Do we have one?”

  “Of course we have a plan! I’m making it up right now, Danny Boy. Fire up the helos, we’re airborne in fifteen minutes!”

  I actually meant that when I said it. The best laid plans…

  I was in the communications center at base headquarters about to place a call to Karen in Washington when the news flashed across a bank of television monitors installed by the PANG’s crisis management team. A local Portland station was announcing an unconfirmed report that a nuclear device had been found near the Chinatown section of the city. A ten-block radius of town was being roped off by the local police and the Oregon National Guard was reported to be en route from their airport staging area. The pretty female announcer promised she’d be back with late breaking news so we shouldn’t change channels!

  Fuck me to absolute tears.

  “Mr. Marcinko? Your call, sir. Ms. Fairfield’s on the line for you. You can take it over there if you like.”

  I thanked the airman and grabbed the hardline phone’s receiver off its cradle. “Karen? Have you heard the news in the last two minutes?”

  “Yep. That information is coming out local. No leaks here yet. We came down hard on the press in New Mexico about the NEST team story in the interests of national security. I can’t guarantee how much longer before they run with it anyway. With this latest in Portland, I’d say all hell is about to break loose.”

  “Agreed,” I replied. “You heard about our little party earlier today?”

  “Yes. We got a good report from HRT. It’s national news, in case you hadn’t heard. The FBI is playing it off as a ‘Ten Most Wanted’ shootout. But that story will be in the toilet once this nuclear bomb in Chinatown bullshit starts rolling downhill. Are you okay, Dick?”

  The tone of concern in Karen’s voice was real. “Yeah, I’m okay. A few bruises, that’s it. Trace and Paul got the worst of it but they’re okay. Danny’s fine. Didn’t even muss his hair. How about you?”

  I smiled as she laughed softly into my ear from clear across the country.

  “Tired. The president is going day and night. I don’t know how he does it. I’m okay, though. Thinking about you.”

  Well fuck me to tears again! “Does this mean I’m forgiven?” I asked.

  “It means I understand more now than I did then. Clay sat me down and gave me a lecture on the real world. Your world. We intellectuals forget there are lions and tigers and bears out there, you know. I couldn’t do what Trace did in a thousand years. But I understand why she did it and why you approved. You get this mission done and come back to D.C., understood Captain?”

  “Understood,” I growled. “We’re going after Blanchard’s 2IC in a few minutes. If we’re lucky and get him alive it could be the break we need. We’re hunting a needle in a haystack but the haystack is getting smaller. This nuke thing downtown is a surprise, though. It doesn’t make sense. Blanchard wouldn’t just set the fucking thing down in a bus terminal and walk away. I’m not liking this.”

  “I can’t say, Dick. You’re there. You deal with it as you see fit. If you need anything just call Clay. I’ve got to brief the president in ten minutes. Bye for now.”

  The line went dead. As I hung up, Paul and Trace made their way toward me from the far end of the busy command center. I could see Danny talking with the pilots ou
tside by the two helos. Two teams of black-suited HRT shooters were loading into the birds. They would be our security teams on this hit. There was no time to run down the source of the breaking story downtown. I’d have some hotshot civil affairs geek here at the PANG monitor that shit for me. Right now we needed to get airborne.

  “Who’s next on the hit parade, Skipper?”

  “How’s your face, kid” I asked.

  Paul gently touched the row of stitches running along his lower left jaw. “Hurts.”

  “Only fair—your face has been hurting me for a long time. Ready to go hunting again?”

  “Who’s the target,” asked Trace. She was likewise stitched up. A bullet had zinged her alongside her carotid artery on the right side of her throat. Another millimeter and she’d have faced a little problem of bleeding to death.

  “Let’s get out to the birds. I’ll fill you in as we walk. One thing I can promise you is that we won’t be fast-roping onto a postage stamp balcony on this trip!”

  As we walked and I explained the situation to them, the pilots climbed into their cockpits and Danny issued last minute instructions to the HRT security teams. The sun was starting to set out over the western hills ringing Portland’s very pretty skyline. Beyond them, I knew there were some of the prettiest beaches to be found anywhere in the world, created over centuries by the constant ebb and flow of the Pacific Ocean. Why anybody would genuinely think it was a good idea to detonate a nuclear bomb in the middle of all this God-given perfection was beyond me.

  I belted Trace and Paul in, then climbed aboard our helo and sat next to Danny on the deck. The crew chief checked us out and then closed the doors so we’d be a little warmer during the short flight over to Tigard. I began digging through my daypack and hauling out the shit I wanted to take in with me this time around. Danny and the kids were busy doing the same. My brain was working overtime turning the general plan I’d come up with into a more precise and detailed map of attack. I wanted Jack Laski alive and well. At the same time, if the news reports were accurate about the threat now being handled by Portland’s finest, I was half-afraid I’d be seeing the city evaporate before we got close to Laski. Shit was moving too fast for my liking. I could imagine the local and national media igniting a general panic. If that happened we’d have chaos on the streets. All of Portland and the surrounding area would go into gridlock. Emergency response systems would be overloaded. Law and order would go out the window since the cops would be incapable of getting where they needed to, when they needed to, and in any sizable numbers.

  I felt the bird lift from the landing pad and slowly begin a gentle rotation into the wind. There was no turning back now. And there was no place to hide if we wanted to. The stakes had just been jacked up a thousand fold and the hand I was holding couldn’t beat Blanchard’s. At least not yet. As the hawk lifted us higher and higher into the setting sun I ran my hand over the well-oiled receiver of the 12-gauge cut-down I’d dog-robbed off a DEA agent in Colombia years ago. At just fifteen inches from stem to stern, the little equalizer was the best close-in manhandler I’d come across in a long time. Although it held only three shells in the tube and one up the pipe, the devastation it could wreak more than compensated for the little gun’s small combat load.

  With any luck at all, I’d be jamming its barrel down Jack’s throat in just a few minutes. Anyone on-site and in my way would get cut in half, courtesy of Dr. Remington and his four little friends from Federal. This had to be an easy do compared to what we’d been through earlier in the day. After all, it was just one guy and I had the best three shooters I knew on my team plus the good lads from HRT as backup.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  Chapter

  13

  “It is fatal to enter into any war without the will to win it.”

  GENERAL OF THE ARMY, DOUGLAS MAC ARTHUR, 7 July 1952, “Address to the Republican National Convention”

  There is never a right way to do a wrong thing. At least that’s what was pounded into my head from the moment I showed up at UDTR Class 26 at the U.S. Naval Amphibious Base in Little Creek, Virginia, looking to become a Navy frogman. On the other hand, I’ve learned over the years that there’s a hundred ways to do a wrong thing with the results always coming out, well, wrong. Mistakes are more often remembered than successes. Mistakes are embarrassing and sometimes lethal; successes grow in magnitude and often become legendary war stories as more time elapses from the actual event. Mistakes, on the other hand, can kill. In the run and gun world of special warfare doing something wrong will get you or someone close to you zapped. That’s why throughout my career as both a frogman and a SEAL I’ve always, always made realistic, balls to-the-wall training the number one priority for those under my command. Training, good training, is the time when you are allowed to fuck up. It’s from our fuck-ups that we learn how to do it better, and therefore eventually to do it right. The battlefield is not the place to experiment. The battlefield is unforgiving. This is true in both warfare and business. Training is where you hone and perfect your skills. The field of battle is where you find out if your training was worth a shit. Anyone who thinks otherwise is one dumb motherfucker.

  At least in my book.

  Which is why I wanted the hit on Jack Laski to be done right. We’d lost an operator earlier today, with another two wounded and in serious condition. This, to me, was unacceptable. Only our training, the blood and sweat we and the shooters from HRT had paid with hour upon hour of hard fucking work, had allowed us to adapt, improvise, and overcome. This time the plan would be simple. Straightforward. And I would lead from the front, as always. Of course I’ve learned to expect the unexpected, and that’s the x-factor managed by the infamous Mr. Murphy, of Murphy’s Law fame. What is Murphy’s Law, you ask? Allow the older and wiser Rogue to refresh your short-term memory, true and faithful reader.

  Murphy’s Law says anything that can go wrong will go wrong and will go wrong at the worst possible moment. Murphy’s Law cannot be gotten around. It is the one obstacle I have never, ever been able to escape or evade during my career and throughout my many adventures in the Land of the Rogue Warrior. In the process of becoming older, wiser, and just a tad bit grayer around the temples, I’ve learned life is far less stressful if I relent and make Murphy my friend. Especially at times like this when I’m trying to figure out the best way to snatch and grab an asshole like Jack Laski, on the spur of the fucking moment with about as much hard intelligence as I can fit into a thimble. Having Ole Man Murphy nearby to chat with is strangely comforting. I ask him what he thinks of my plan and he tells me it’s damn good. I tell him that’s what worries me because I know it’s Murf’s mission in life to fuck my good plans up. He snorts and says I’m just not trusting enough. I laugh back and tell him I’d rather be a virgin whore in New Orleans during Super Bowl week than trust him. We shake hands and go our separate ways. He’s got his job to do and I’ve got mine. Old Murphy keeps me on my toes. And in my business, being on one’s toes can make the difference between life and death.

  I was sitting at a table in a tiny coffee bar across the street from the Hotel Campbell, the hotel where we’d pegged Laski to be holed up. It was a nine-story, glass and stone box. The ground floor was given over to the usual blend of chain clothing stores and other retailers. From here, the whole complex looked like the kind of service-oriented hotel that catered mostly to anonymous visiting businessmen who wanted their messages and their cocktails delivered on time. Since we were right on the edge of Portland’s so-called Silicon Forest, that made sense. The L.L. Bean down vest I was wearing concealed my Glock and two spare magazines from view. The daypack at my feet added to the impression that I was just a hardworking Hells-Angel kinda guy getting a hot cup of java at the end of the day. Nothing terribly unusual in this part of the world. A chilly evening breeze blew over me every time someone new came in.

  When the ’hawk had dropped us on a soccer field a few blocks from the hotel, I’d told HRT
to sit tight and await my instructions. Right now Trace and Paul were conducting a soft recon of the hotel’s interior. Posing as man and wife, they’d wandered across the street and disappeared into the building ten minutes ago. I stayed put and out of sight. Laski was an intel monster. He’d been around the community as long as I had. There was a fucking good chance he’d know me by sight. I didn’t want to lose him just because he saw me before I saw him.

  A tiny television behind the counter was burping out updates on the alleged nuke found downtown. News crews were already crawling high and low to get a glimpse of what the police and HAZMAT people were dealing with. Side stories were starting to erupt about how the 911 system was getting jammed up with calls from frightened citizens. “Please don’t call 911 unless you have a real emergency,” begged some poor overworked city employee on the screen. Story of my fucking life, I thought. When they needed Dickie and his war-makers it usually meant the world had gone to hell in a hand basket. Nine-one-one had been my home phone number for as many years as I could recall.

  As worrisome as the nuke report was, I couldn’t let it distract me from my mission at the moment. Laski was here and so was I. Sipping at my steaming coffee, I watched Paul and Trace make their way over to the café. A long wool scarf wrapped around her neck concealed Trace’s recent wound, and thanks to his athletic frame and well-worn Nike baseball cap, the scratches on Paul’s face looked more like the result of a rock-climbing incident than a gun battle. They looked every inch the young married couple. Whoever had trained them had done a fine job of it. The kids could take on almost any role at the drop of a hat.

  Role-playing was mandatory training at both SIX and Red Cell when I ran those outfits. A counterterrorist must be able to shed the unmistakable gloss of his or her military background in order to operate safely and effectively in the terrorist underworld. And that underworld coexists alongside your daily life, dear reader. Yes, there are guerrillas in our midst. And terrorists. More so today than ever before. I’ve made my living being smarter, quicker, and more deadly than those I hunt. Being able to look like John and Jane Q. Public helps accomplish the mission. The brass hats and their butt puppets don’t like it one bit. They never will. After they’ve spent years minting the shiniest toy soldiers they can, I turn their pride and joy back into something that looks like just another college student, or yuppie, or streetcorner bum. But looks can be deceiving. And besides, the brass hats don’t like to get their hands dirty. That’s my job.