Cheeks returned the gesture. “You’re welcome, sweet cakes.”
Automatic weapons fire from the rear. “Let’s be careful out there,” I shouted. “No time to start losing people now.”
I’d been about to light the flares to guide the choppers in, but it didn’t make sense to tell whoever was shooting at us precisely where we were.
I saw Jew emerge from the scrub at the far end of the clearing. I waved him over.
“Jew, what’s up?”
“They must have had more people than we knew about— or some of those guys we shot Just got up and walked away.
We’re taking fire.“
The kid was good. He was right about the tangos just walking away — except he just didn’t know it. I gave him a concerned look. “Anybody hurt?”
Jew nodded. “Two — nothing serious. One sprained ankle on the path, one ran into a thom bush in the dark.”
“Just keep the tangos out of our hair until the choppers get here.”
“Aye-aye, Skipper.” Jew melted back into the jungle.
It was time to illuminate the LZ. We set out six white strobes and three red ones. To guide the choppers in on final approach we had neon-green light-sticks.
The firing got closer. I looked skyward anxiously- The goddamn Air Force was probably taking a coffee break- That’s how they worked — like union bus-drivers — most of the time.
Six or seven hours of flight time (not to exceed this or that altitude, of course), and then it was bye-bye for a didy change, a nap, and a cup of cocoa.
We could run for a week with no sleep, then do a 35,000foot-jump hop-and-pop exercise, pick ourselves up, and do it all over again. Not fly-boys. I checked my watch. They were now late.
I called JSOC. “Where the hell are our choppers?”
“They’re on the way. Relax.”
“Relax?” Who the hell were these idiots, anyway? I put the German under the truck and hunkered down with PV. It seemed tike an eternity until we heard the sound of rotorsThey’d kept us waiting eighteen minutes. On a hot LZ, you can lose your entire force in eighteen minutes.
The quartet of choppers, their long refueling nozzles projecting from the noses of the aircraft like knights’ lances, circled the LZ lazily to pick the spots where they’d set down.
Unbelievably, they were doing an admin — administrative— approach. That is, they were landing as if they were coming into a runway at an Air Force base. To them, this was only an exercise — so why the hell should they put themselves out?
Assholes — I’d kill the sons of bitches after we got out of here.
I shook my light-stick at them to drop quickly. This was supposed to be a hot LZ- They were supposed to fly as if there were ground fire. Their job was to come in, drop their ramps, scoop us up, and get the hell out. I waved my arms like a madman. The pilots were oblivious. They settled in as if they were landing on the White House lawn — and started to cut their engines.
“No no no no no. Keep ‘em revved up. Move it,” I screamed, windmilling my light-stick. I pointed PV toward the nearest chopper, which was dropping its aft ramp. “Get the hostage on board.” I watched while PV and his crew hustled the German up the ramp. That was fourteen plus one.
I ran the light-stick in a circle at the pilot. “Get the hell outta here.”
He gave me a thumbs-up. The six rotors started up again, the jet turbines reached full thrust, and he lifted off. Three to go. Cheeks was loading the intel in one bird while my platoon ran the nuke into the second. As soon as they’d strapped it down, I tossed Alpha squad aboard and waved the chopper into the air. That was two. Twenty-one SEALs airborne.
I stuck my head into the third chopper’s forward hatch and screamed at the pilot- “Rev it up — I’ll tell you when to go.”
I ran to Cheeks’ position on the perimeter and pointed toward the chopper. “Get the strobes and the chutes and take my Bravo squad, then get the hell out of here. I’ll ride with Jew.”
“Affirmative.” He got his guys working. One group collected the lights and heaved them onto the chopper while the other retrieved our chutes from the underbrush where we’d concealed them and threw the piles of silk up the ramp, past Cheeks, who stood at the top, his HK pointing skyward, waving men on, counting. “Let’s get moving.”
When I saw they were all loaded and aboard, I pointed at the pilot. “Go!”
Another twenty SEALs gone. That left Jew’s fourteen— and me.
I shouted for Jew into the Motorola mike. No answer, “Jew, goddammit—” I realized I’d pulled the plug out of its socket.
I fixed it and shouted his name again.
“Coming, Dickie.”
I waited as Jew’s platoon emerged from the darkness, running in leapfrog pattern, their route punctuated by short bursts from the MP5s. I grabbed a couple of them by the vests and threw them toward the chopper. Jew and I were last on board.
As the ramp shut, we gave the LZ a good burst of submachinegun fire. “Move it!” I shouted to the crew chief.
Then we were airborne. Mission perfect. Rehearsal or not, I was one happy goddamn SEAL CO. I checked my watch.
I slammed my palm into Jew’s chest, knocking him ass over teakettle into a startled Air Force master sergeant. I perused my SEALs. “You guys are wonderful.” h.
I could see the C-141 StarLifter’s huge, black fuselage as we banked into the air base on the main island. I hoped the flight crew had some cold beer on board — we were going to need it. The first of the choppers was already on the ground, disgorging SEALs and the hostage. The second and third were just settling in. I felt so good I forgot about putting the chopper pilots in the hospital for their 18-minute delay and admin approaches back at Vieques.
We set down. I was first off, hitting the ground before the ramp did. I ran to the StarLifter. Yeah — there was beer on board. Terrific — we were going to party on the way home. I loped over to PV and Cheeks and slapped them on the back.
I assembled my troops. “Great job. Terrific. Fuck you all very much, you merry murdering cockbreath shit-for-brains assholes.”
Oh, I was full of myself. But justifiably, goddammit. Justifiably. Exercise or not — what we’d done tonight had never, ever, been done before by a military unit. We’d ftown three thousand goddamn miles, inserted four SEAL platoons in a clandestine, high-altitude, high-opening, mass, night jump, parasailed ten miles to our objective, landed in a single group on a drop zone no bigger than a couple of football fields, assembled, taken down a bunch of bad guys, rescued a hostage, snatched back a nuke, and hadn’t lost a single SEAL in ‘the process.
This is what we’d groomed ourselves for; why we’d busted our asses. We’d practiced each risky element — shooting, jumping, parasailing, clandestine infiltration, hostage snatch, and extraction — separately. But we’d never put all of them together before; never run a real-time, full-tilt boogie war game until tonight.
The German came toward me. “You and your men did very well,” he said.
“Thank you. I’m proud of them.”
“You should be.”
I started to say something else when a Beetle Bailey Army colonel in starched fatigues and half-inch-thick glasses marched across the tarmac. “Commander Mardnko?”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
“I have a message for you to call Joint Special Operations Command.”
“Sure.” I took the SATCOM from my vest and punched up JSOC.
“It’s Marcinko.” I waited. A familiar voice came on the line.
“Dick.”
“Sir—”
“You did wonderfully — better than we expected. The Joint Chiefs are impressed.”
I liked that. There had been some real skepticism at the Joint Chiefs about whether or not we’d been ready for a mission. Unlike Delta, which was based on the British SAS and went through an SAS-like administrative certification process, I had refused to let my men be graded by outsiders.
My argument was simple: what
we were training to do hadn’t ever been done before. So how the hell would some four-star, pencil-dicked Pentagon paper-pusher know whether or not we were good at it?
My conclusion was, they wouldn’t. What I’d told the chain of command in no uncertain terms was, “Thank you very much, sirs, but I’ll certify SEAL Team Six myself.”
But it wasn’t to be. The command structure can — and had — imposed its will on us, no matter how I felt- The Vieques exercise was ample evidence of that. The voice in my ear continued, “Dick, this has been a first-rate exerdse. I think you and your troops need a couple of days off while we analyze and evaluate.”
Analyze and evaluate. Those bureaucratic syllables made me cnnge. Ever since Vietnam, even the military’s vocabulary had shifted from martial to managerial in tone. Goddammit — we didn’t need managers, we needed leaders, warriors, hunters. Instead, we got accountants. It seemed that every time I’d get prowling and growling some three-star asshole would slip a choke-leash around my neck and give it a yank to show he could make me heel. Well, it was time to growl back. Throw a shit fit. Chew the carpet. Play crazy. I owed it to my men. Shit — I owed it to myself. I raised my voice to let them hear as I shouted into the mouthpiece. “Exercise?
Analyze? Evaluate? What the fuck. General? Over.“
He played his role well, too. “1 couldn’t say anything until now, Dick. It was imposed by the Joint Chiefs on me.” He paused. “And you did great. Six is certified. You’re in business — as of right now.”
“Well, thank you for that valuable information, sir. I’m sure my men will appredate your opinion.” I wondered whether he caught the irony in my voice. Surreptitiously, I flicked the transmit button on the SATCOM to off and covered it with my hand. Then I continued my “conversation.”
PV, Cheeks, and Jew drifted closer as my voice grew louder and more disturbed. “You did what? You switched ammunition on us in the armory?”
I shouted into the dead SATCOM, “Sir, this was a goatfuck. Goddammit — you can’t hang up on—”
The Beetle Bailey colonel was peering into the fuselage of my C-141. He turned toward me. “Commander, you have beer in there — that’s against regulations-”
I started toward him. “Hey, Colonel — how’d you like a new asshole?”
PV tackled me and grabbed my combat vest with both hands, slowing me down like a sea anchor. He’s five inches shorter than I am, but he was a boxer at the Academy and he’s a tough little scrapper. “Lighten up, Dick.” He turned to the colonel. “I think it’s better if you leave us alone right now, sir. We’re all just a Uttle worked up, and it could be, ah, dangerous for you to stay around.”
Paul’s heels were dragging on the tarmac. The colonel saw the look of mayhem in my eyes as I pulled my XO toward him, and he beat a hasty retreat.
Paul let go. “He’s not worth it, Dick.”
“Screw you.”
Cheeks and Jew slammed me on the back. “Hey, Skipper.”
Jew said, “about the Joint Chiefs and all that crap — chill out.
It’s okay. We knew.“
“Knew what?”
“That it was a full mission profile,” said PV.
“Had to be an exercise,” said Cheeks. “No casualties. Lots of firing and no scratches. Plus — the tangos wore shooting glasses — every one of them.”
I was smiling inside. I’d picked these men because I believed they were smart. Goddammit, they were smart. “So why didn’t any of you numb-nuts say anything?”
“I remembered the sign every SEAL sees the day he begins his training,” PV said- “The one that reads, ‘The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat.’ Besides, we’d never put it all together before, boss — seemed like a good idea to play it out and see if it worked.”
He was right of course. I wheeled toward the C-141. “Let’s get moving.”
PV punched me on the arm, hard enough to hurt. “Ayeaye, boss.” He pointed his index finger in the air and drew circles with it. “Come on, guys — load up. Let’s go get drunk.”
He was right. Screw ‘em all. It was time to get drunk and go home.
Chapter 3
Going home is not something I’ve ever been very good at. I certainly didn’t do it much as a youngster. I was born on Thanksgiving Day, 1940, in my grandmother Justine Pavlik’s house in Lansford, Pennsylvania, a tiny mining town in Carbon County — appropriate, isn’t it? — just east of Coaldale and Hometown. For the uninitiated, that’s about half an hour northwest of Allentown, and a lifetime from Philadelphia. My father, George, and mother, Emilie Teresa Pavlik Marcinko, never made it as far as the hospital delivery room. Typical.
I’m Czech on both sides. My mother is short and Slavic looking. My father was big — just under six feet — dark, brooding, and had a nasty temper- All the men in the family — and virtually every male in Lansford as well — were miners. They were bom, they worked the mines, they died. Life was simple and life was hard, and I guess some of them might have wanted to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, but most were too poor to buy boots.
We lived on top of the hill, just around the corner from Kanuch’s, where we got our groceries and Old Man Kanuch would lick the thick pencil stub before he wrote down what we’d taken in his ledger book. He’d keep a tab and collect from us on payday. It would probably have been cheaper to shop at the A & P six blocks away, but hardly anybody did.
You went where you were known.
If I’m ornery, and there are those who think I am, I probably got it from my maternal grandfather. Joe Pavlik was a cantankerous, short, barrel-chested, shot-and-a-beer, harddrinking son of a bitch with a square face, and Leonid Brezhnev eyebrows, who worked the mines all his life and never, complained about it once. I don’t remember him ever corn-… plaining about anything. He was a real hell-raiser — one of those archetypal tough guys you see in working-class bars, with big, wide, labor-toughened hands that look as if they H were designed to go around old-fashioned beer glasses.“
I was always independent. I had my own paper route by fi the age of five. At seven, I was taking off for a day at a time, g, running through the mile-long Lehigh Railroad tunnel to swim in the Hauto reservoir. You could get there by going through the old Lansford water tunnel, too, but there were huge rats living in the water tunnel, and besides, it was farther up the mountain. So I took the shortcut — and my chances — with the H trains. I got nailed a few times. The first time the steam locomotive bore down on me I thought I’d die. I held my breath and squeezed my eyes tightly, hugging the wet stone tunnel wall as car after car after car went by ka-chang-ka- JI“ chang about a foot from my nose. My dad, George, beat the crap out of me after I told him what I’d done. Thereafter, whenever I used the railroad tunnel, I kept my mouth shut.
Neither of my parents was big on education. My dad prob- | ably dropped out of school around eighth grade; my mother may have gotten as far as ninth or tenth. Neither of them ever put any emphasis on book learning, so school was something I never took very seriously. I was much more interested in having fun — or making money.
Fun, before I discovered women, consisted of swimming at Hauto and summer vacations in the Catskill Mountains — the Jewish Alps — where my uncle Frank and aunt Helen had a boardinghouse. Money was always a problem. The mines closed down when I was in the seventh grade. and after several months of just scraping by, my father finally found work as a welder in New Brunswick, New Jersey. We moved to New Brunswick in 1952. I went through real culture shock. Lans-ford was a town of maybe four thousand, mostly Czech. In New Brunswick, there were Poles, Hungarians, Irish, Jews, blacks, and Hispanics. That took some getting used to, with the result that I both gave and received more than my fair share of welts and bruises on the walk between school and the small basement apartment we could afford.
Life around the house was not pleasant. My mother’s brother moved in with us — three adults and two kids (by then I had a brother) crammed in a three-room apartment. W
hen my parents fought, which was often, my mother’s brother would take her side. The result was that my father spent less and less time at home. My younger brother, Joey, who was nine or ten at the time, was close to my mother, so he stayed around the house with her. Me, I couldn’t stand the place.
So I went off on my own, returning only to sleep or do what little homework I did.
I escaped by working as a pin-setter in a bowling alley, doing whatever odd Jobs I could find — even by serving seven A.M. Sunday mass as an altar boy. On the days I decided to show up, I went to St. Ladislaus Hungarian Catholic School, where like generations of students before me, I had my knuckles rapped by nuns netting wicked rulers. But I never liked classes very much. I cruised through school on autodrive, much more concerned with earning-pocket money than A’s or B’s.
During my sophomore year, for example, I worked sixty hours a week at a luncheonette called Gussy’s, just off the Rutgers campus. During the summer vacation I worked there a hundred and twenty hours a week — from five A.M. until ten at night, seven days a week. The hours were long but the money was great: a dollar an hour, off the books. That was a real windfall for a 15-year-old in 1955.
Besides, Gussy — his full name was Salvatore Puleio Augustino, but I can’t remember anyone ever using it — treated me like his own family. He took me upstairs, where his father, Old Man Sal, lived, and filled me with pasta and sauce, and sausages and chicken and huge platters of vegetables sauteed in olive oil and garlic, instead of my having to eat meat loaf or Salisbury steak off the luncheonette steam table. Old Man Sal let me watch as he made wine in the basement, and I developed a real taste for Chianti. I even picked up enough Italian to get by at the dinner table, which Sal’s old man just loved. Gussy made a real Czech guinea out of me.
Because I had a lot of money in my jeans for a teenager, I even bought a car, a chrome-yellow 1954 Mercury convertible, as soon as I was old enough to get my driver’s license — the day after my seventeenth birthday.
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