by Don Bendell
He stood and everybody jumped. The president shook a couple of hands on his way out of the room, careful to clasp each person’s shoulder as he did, and smiled while listening to them. He then quickly went through the door into the Oval Office and dashed into his bathroom. He had a horrible case of diarrhea with cramping all through the first part of the meeting. Sitting on his commode, he looked at a beige towel on a rack in front of him with the presidential seal, and he chuckled, saying out loud, “They never realize the president gets the runs, too. Glad my opponents can’t see me now. Ooh! Ow!”
Eight minutes later, the meeting began again.
The president said, “I appreciate you all leaving your families to join me for this important meeting tonight.” He glanced at Bo and Bobby and added, “Or in one case, bringing your family here with you.”
Everybody chuckled, and he went on, “We know that Senator Weatherford has considerable financial interests in the SRV and offshore as well. We also know there is some kind of al Qaeda plot to attack our west coast, a big attack. It is the job of this task force to find out what the plot is and stop it and to start dismantling the growing al Qaeda threat.”
Bobby raised his hand, and the president smiled at him. “Yes, Colonel.”
Bobby thought that sure sounded good.
He said, “Mr. President, what about Senator Weatherford?”
The president got a cold, steely look in his eyes and said, “That son of a bitch is mine. I have been playing this politics game for some time, and I personally will see to it that he is most definitely paid back for his contributions to this great nation.”
He seemed to fume for a minute and then added, “Rest assured, ladies and gentlemen, that James Weatherford is going to rue the day that he betrayed the citizenry of the United States. Such an unscrupulous action shall not go unpunished.” Borrowing from the Bible, the chief executive went on, “He will learn he would have been better off to tie a millstone around his neck and toss himself into a lake, when I get done with him. You all have my word on that.”
To everybody’s surprise, he stood suddenly and said, “Let’s take another break. I have to deal with a world leader and we have some great coffee and pastries for everybody. Meet me back here in five minutes or so.”
The president was always very prompt, so saying “five minutes or so” surprised everybody.
He went into the Oval Office restroom, quickly pulled down his pants, and said out loud, “Mr. President of Iran. I have a present for you from all the grateful citizens of the United States of America.”
His diarrhea hit again full force. Afterward, he walked over to his desk and buzzed his personal secretary. Seconds later, she walked in the door carrying antidiarrhea medicine and immediately gave him the maximum dose.
The president said, “How in the world did you know I needed this? No wonder you are the president’s secretary!”
She walked to a cabinet in the corner and produced a bottle of spring water, handing it to the commander in chief.
She said, “Mr. President, all I had to do was come in here after your last break. Now, sir, diarrhea dehydrates you, so you drink this bottle of water, and I will bring you more, as you need it.”
Everybody in the room wondered if there might be a world crisis when it took a full ten minutes before the president returned. Two of the president’s cabinet members, in fact, discussed it and started speculating on what might be happening and who he might be speaking to.
They finished the meeting after another half hour, and then the president had the White House official photographer come in to take posed photos of Bobby and Bo getting their promotions, silver bowl, and Legions of Merit.
When they left, they went out between the two buildings and back to the parking lot.
General Perry said, “You two must be hungry,” and looking at the FBI agents escorting them, he added, “and you two have to be hungry, too. Come on. Let’s go to Old Ebbitt Grill and get some oysters. Dinner is on me tonight. I know my amigos here are starved.” He looked at his aide and entourage.
At the restaurant, they discussed what they could safely, making more plans.
Bobby said, “Will we have new offices, sir?”
“Yes,” the old man replied, “a few doors down the hall from mine.”
The next morning, Bobby and Bo were shown their new office and introduced to the new staff they had, two E5s and a staff sergeant E6. Bobby and Bo had their own little conference room, which had extensive communications gear set up in it. They could frequently hold meetings with other members of the task force, and the J-2 (intelligence) section had it swept for bugs (electronic) daily.
They were summoned to the chief of staff’s office, and the general asked what their immediate plans were.
Afterward, the general’s aide told them he heard General Perry bellow, “You want to do what?” all the way in the outer office.
It was a dark, dark night in Laos, and the B-1B stealth bomber, as expected, had soared over the countryside undetected. The bomb-bay doors opened and the stealth slowed to as close to stall speed as possible, and six black figures dropped below the craft in full flail for a few seconds, as they plummeted head down at 180 miles per hour. The six, breathing oxygen, were wearing high-altitude suits to prevent them from freezing to death.
Military skydiving or HALO (high altitude, low opening) rigs are known as HAPPS (high altitude precision parachute system), or “stealth parachutes” because they cannot easily be seen from the ground. All the handles are in the same places as you would find on sports skydiving rigs, but there are a number of attachment points for additional equipment and a harness for the O2 equipment. The typical canopy size is 360 square feet on both the main and reserve. These six were also equipped with SSE, Inc Altimaster II and each included a nightlight (powered with two AA cells).
The space-age suits they wore were also scuba “dry suits,” and they had fins strapped to their thighs and masks attached to spec ops rebreather apparatuses, which would extract the oxygen from blown breaths and incorporate a gill-like system that would take oxygen from the water passing through and convert it into breathable air. In this regard, they would be able to breathe underwater without wearing cumbersome aqua-type lungs.
The two leaders of the handpicked group, Lt. Col. Bobby Samuels and his beautiful wife, Bo Devore, were now stabilizing in a crab position and the others soon stabilized as well, slowing their descent to 120 miles per hour. The other four were volunteers who had served with or were trained in engineer demolitions by Command Sgt. Maj. Boom Kittenger. Bobby had called CAG (Combat Applications Group) headquarters at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to seek the four volunteers to accompany him and Bo to destroy the al Qaeda training camp in Laos, and its inhabitants, where Boom lost his life. CAG was the correct military term for the unit better known by most everybody as Delta Force. The military description generally used to best describe the unit was First Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (SFOD-D) Combat Applications Group (CAG), Delta Force.
The U.S. Army’s First Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta is one of two of the U.S. government’s principle units tasked with counterterrorist operations outside the United States (the other being Naval Special Warfare Development Group). Delta Force was created by U.S. Army Col. Charles Beckwith in 1977 in direct response to numerous, well-publicized terrorist incidents that occurred in the 1970s. From its beginnings, Delta was heavily influenced by the British SAS, a philosophical result of Colonel Beckwith’s yearlong (1962-1963) exchange tour with that unit. Accordingly, it is today organized into three operating squadrons, all of which (A, B, and C) are subdivided into small groups known as troops. It is rumored that each troop, as the case with the SAS, specializes in HALO, scuba, or other skill groups. These troops can each be further divided into smaller units as needed to fit mission requirements. Delta also maintains support units that handle selection and training, logistics, finance, and the unit’s medical require
ments. Within this grouping is a little-known but vital technical unit that is responsible for covert eavesdropping equipment for use in hostage rescues and similar situations.
The unit is headquartered in a remote section of the U.S. Army’s sprawling Fort Bragg, North Carolina. As units such as Delta do not get to choose when and where they will be needed, they must train for any eventuality. These skills are enhanced by the unit’s participation in an ongoing exchange and training program with foreign counterterrorist units, such as Britain’s 22 SAS, France’s GIGN, Germany’s GSG-9, Israel’s Sayeret Matkal/Unit 269, and Australia’s own Special Air Service Regiment. Such close cooperation with other groups provides innumerable benefits, including exchanges of new tactics and equipment as well as enhancing relations that might prove useful in later real-world operations.
Delta troopers are also equipped with the most advanced weaponry and equipment available in the U.S. special operations arsenal. A significant portion of their gear is highly customized and cannot be found anywhere but in Delta’s lockers. An early example of this was a specially constructed HAHO parachute rig that was adapted to permit jumpers to keep their hands at their sides during the descent rather than above their heads. This alteration prevents the loss of functioning that can occur as a result of prolonged flight time in such an unnatural position.
The vast majority of the unit operatives come from the United States’ elite Ranger battalions and Special Forces groups; however, candidates are drawn from all branches of the army, including the Army Reserve and National Guard. Real-world examples of some missions with which Delta is tasked are represented below:
1979—Worked with the FBI at the Pan American Games in Puerto Rico as part of an antiterrorist team set up to anticipate possible terrorist activity at the event.
1983—Participated in Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada, including the air assault of Richmond Hill prison to free as well as assist in the seizure of a key airfield.
1984—Deployed to the Middle East in response to the hijacking of a Kuwaiti Airlines airliner, during which two Americans were killed.
1985—Again deployed in response to a hijacking, this time to Cyprus in anticipation of an assault on a seized TWA airliner.
1987—Sent to Greece to secure U.S. Army Col. James “Nick” Rowe in response to reports that Vietnamese communist agents were planning an action against him.
1989—Successfully rescued an imprisoned U.S. citizen during the opening minutes of Operation Just Cause in Panama and participated in the widespread search for Gen. Manuel Noriega and his advisors.
1991—Deployed to the Gulf in 1991, both to serve as bodyguards for senior U.S. officers and, later, as part of a massive effort to locate and destroy mobile SCUD launchers in Iraq’s northern deserts.
1993—As part of Task Force Ranger, took part in numerous operations to apprehend warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid in Mogadishu, Somalia.
1997—Small advance team sent to Lima, Peru, immediately following the takeover of the Japanese Ambassador’s residence in January along with six members of the British SAS.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, some of the missions carried out by SFOD-D were some of the very most important of the global War on Terrorism.
The six, wearing night vision devices, were dropping through the night skies over Laos with a muddy drop zone below called the Mekong River. The waterway, which started miles north of there, ran all the way down into the delta region of Vietnam where its thousands of tributaries spread out like the roots of a grapevine gone wild, slicing and dicing wet furrows through the flatlands there, turning it into a giant brown sponge.
This type of parachuting technique, HALO, can be very dangerous. At higher altitudes, above 22,000 feet, the oxygen required for human respiration become thin, and a definite lack of oxygen at high altitudes can cause hypoxia, also called anoxia.
The six jumpers, before the stealth arrived, performed a pre-breathing period forty-five minutes prior to jump, where they each breathed 100 percent oxygen in order to flush all the nitrogen from their bloodstream. During the jump they all breathed from an O2 bottle. One of the real dangers in HALO comes from medical circumstances affecting the jumper. For example, cigarette smoking, alcohol or drug use, anemia, carbon monoxide, or even fatigue might all lead to a HALO jumper being more susceptible to hypoxia. In addition, problems with the oxygen bottle and during the changeover from the pre-breather to the oxygen bottle can result in the return of nitrogen to the parachuter’s bloodstream and, therefore, an increased likelihood of being affected by hypoxia. Even one breath of regular air will bring the jumper’s blood nitrogen levels close to normal. The real danger is that a HALO jumper with hypoxia may lose consciousness and therefore be unable to open their parachute.
Another risk is from the low ambient temperatures prevalent at higher altitudes. The jumper can face subzero temperatures and can also experience frostbite. However, these six HALO jumpers were wearing scuba dry suits, and underneath they each wore polypropylene knit undergarments and other warm clothing to prevent this. Their dry suits were worth a lot of money in themselves, in that they are made to keep a diver dry in water temperatures between twenty-eight to sixty degrees, but were even warmer with them also wearing the polypropylene suits underneath. The ones they wore were a high-end neoprene hybrid and featured a telescoping torso with crotch strap and suspenders, warm neck collar, rock boot system and Kevlar kneepads, elbow pads, and butt pads, swivel inlet and adjustable, automatic exhaust valves, latex neck and wrist seals, and a number of utility pockets.
Once all six hit terminal in crab positions or a belly-down fall, they fell for well over three minutes before opening their chutes. The parachutes they used would sink after they hit the deep, wide river and the six would switch to their regulators and rebreathers, putting their fins on underwater. Their waterproof packs would hang below them on fifteen-foot tethers and hit the water first. The six would wait until they were close to the water and would then reach up across their chest with one hand, grabbing the riser on one side, then with the other hand, they would pull the safety clamp and turn the quick release. Shortly before hitting the water, they would smack the quick-release plate with the heel of their hand and grab the other riser while the harness would break free. Just before entry, they would then raise their arms over their heads and would slide into the water.
They all prepared for entry, and Bobby’s IR LED indicator in front of him did not indicate any people along the river bank on either side, so they should be entering without detection, he hoped. They went into the water, quickly got away from their parachutes, and put their fins and rebreathers on. They swam downriver for two and a half miles and went out of the river on the eastern bank. Here, they switched to their tactical boots and shed the neoprene dry suits. They took the dry suits, fins, rebreathers, and placed them all together in nylon mesh bags and put several rocks in each bag, then tossed them far out into the river.
After getting their gear together, checking weapons and ammunition, the sergeant in charge looked up their location on his computer screen, and they headed off south paralleling the river. A UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) high overhead flew and scouted their route for them with FLIR (forward-looking infrared), so they were able to move fast and cover a good distance. The UAV was being controlled by someone halfway around the world in Virginia sitting at a computer screen.
After forty minutes, they sat down in a circle for a rest break. The one common thread running through this six-person group was that each had experiences with Boom Kittenger and all loved the man.
M. Sgt. Dave Collingsworth took demolition classes from Boom and worked out with him in Tae Kwon Do after classes several times. He talked about how funny Boom could be, but how he also always had words to grow on.
He mentioned how much Boom loved Colorado and its mountains and wondered if anybody ever heard Boom’s story about so many Californians and Texans moving to Colorado, and nobody had so he told it.
&
nbsp; In fact, Dave loved to tell the story himself now.
He said, “There was in Colorado a rowdy drinking establishment and a man in a white Stetson was drinking a long-necked Lone Star beer. When he was halfway done, he suddenly tossed the beer up into the air, drew a walnut-handled Colt .45 Peacemaker, and fired, shattering the bottle and covering the screaming crowd with pieces of bottle and amber liquid.
“Laughing, the Texan declared, ‘I’m from Dallas! And that’s how we drink in Texas!’
“Miffed and his ego slightly bruised, a gentleman from Marin County, California, finished a half a stem of Silver Oak Cellars’ Cabernet Sauvignon and tossed the crystal goblet into the air, pulling a nickel-plated .380 from his pocket, and firing a couple rounds, he nicked the stem and angered the crowd with another shower of sticky liquid.
“ ‘Ya know, Buffy and I are from California,” he declared, “upper Marin County actually, and in California, we enjoy fine liqueurs and drink in this manner.’
“There was a man there from Boulder, Colorado, who witnessed the two incidents, so he chained and padlocked his mountain bike to a beam in the corner, tightened his ponytail, adjusted his Birkenstockings. Then he drank half his Mad Dog beer, tossed the bottle high into the air, and drew from a hidden shoulder holster a Glock model 19 9 millimeter. He took careful aim and shot both the Texan and the Californian between the eyes, then expertly caught the falling bottle of beer.
“He then loudly stated, ‘You know in Colorado, we have way too many Texans, and now we are being overrun by Californians.’ Then, holding up the bottle, he continued, ‘But in Colorado, we always recycle.’ ”
Everybody laughed in a whisper, but very heartily.
Bobby said, “Well, that is definitely a Boom Kittenger story, and a great one. I appreciate you men volunteering for this and risking your lives, but my wife tells me she will walk all of you into the ground tonight, because you are SF-wannabe sissy boys. We better get going.”