I Am Soldier of Fortune

by Brown, Robert, Spencer, Vann

  I recruited an old friend, a former Time journalist, Jay Mallin, who had made his bones in the Cuban Sierra Maestra by following Castro’s march to victory. Mallin was going to be the PR spokesman, would control all contact with the media, and shield my team’s involvement.

  But I was broke. In order to get funds to implement our coup, I first contacted an old acquaintance from my Cuba days, a Chicago attorney by the name of Constantine Kangles, who was well connected. By this, I mean I had seen him walk into Mayor Daley’s office right past the receptionist without any introduction. He was the one who was Castro’s legal counsel prior to the success of the revolution and had given me a letter of introduction to the Castro supporters in Cuba.

  I was politely trying to hit Kangles up for money for my brilliant plot. He arranged a meeting with a former Illinois state insurance commissioner who had been kicked out of office for some kind of skullduggery. We were to meet for lunch in the main restaurant of the prestigious Blackstone hotel. I showed up at the appointed time in my normal cowboy boots, levis, sheepskin jacket and cowboy hat. The maitre’d in black tuxedo looked me over with a haughty demeanor. “You must have a coat and tie.”

  I, with an equally affected accent, stuck my nose in the air and said, “How unfortunate. I am here to see Mr. X.”

  He paused a moment and muttered in disdain, “Walk this way sir.” There must have been 200 people in coat and tie. He led me to Mr. X. I explained to him what I had in mind and what the potential rewards were as I saw them—in exchange for funding he could have casino rights. He wanted to run the whole deal and control the whole island.

  Negotiations ceased and I thanked him for the meal. I went back to Kangles and explained what had happened so he set up another meeting. Keep in mind the time frame—the mafia still played a significant role in running Las Vegas. He set the meeting up with two guys in Caesar’s Palace named, believe it or not, Frankie and Johnnie.

  I recruited a man whom I will call a man whose name I would rather forget, not much more than five feet with as big a pair of balls as anyone I have ever known, and who constantly lived life on the edge, to go with me to meet the contacts. We approached the information booth.

  “We are here to see Frankie and Johnnie.”

  In come two guys with bouffant hairdos and polyester leisure suits with two heavily made up bimbos in mini-skirts. After a brief introduction they took us up to one of the two or three penthouse suites in Caesar’s Palace. In the cheesiest of nouveau riche fashion, the décor was mainly of Italian marble and the bedspreads were mink. There we met some other individuals right out of Cosa Nostra central casting. In the room was a gnomelike accountant with Coca Cola-thick glasses, stooped shoulders and comb-over, and a couple of swarthy, obviously hoodlum types with slicked black hair, pockmarked faces, sunglasses and appropriate bulges under their jackets. Once again we went through our pitch of what it would take to accomplish the operation.

  “We are looking for half a mil and your rewards will make the investment worthwhile. You can have all the casino rights in the island.” I gave them an offer they could not resist.

  Frankie and Johnnie and the accountant and a couple others exited the room for a private conversation, and after fifteen minutes came back in. The meeting terminated with one of the two guys saying, “If we wanted to take over this island, we could send our own ‘soldiers’ down to do it.”

  They were gracious enough to offer to put us up for the evening in Caesar’s Palace but we were not in the mood and took the next flight out.

  Later I ran the plan by an old friend of mine, Lee Jurras, who had achieved no small amount of fame in the gun industry in the ‘70s by developing a profitable new brand of high-powered pistol ammunition, which became quite popular. He, with a couple of his friends from Indiana, came up with $50,000. I wasn’t sure we could pull the operation off for that much but it was a start. At the same point in time our main contact in the Bahamas was Chuck Hall.

  “I don’t want you to have communication with Warbell,” I told him. “That loudmouth has no intention of going through with his boastful promises. He is doing this just for the publicity and his own ego. I am going to be able to pull this off with a dozen Vietnam Special Forces vets I recruited at summer camp and $50,000.”

  Hall went straight to Warbell and told him what we were up to. War-bell promised him half a mil and 450 mercenaries. Prior to this, we had flown in a load of guns in a friend’s two engine Cessna, including a .50-caliber machine gun and a bunch of AR-i 5s. It was a dirt strip on a little island without an overly long runway. We had set up a plan to meet a reception party from the Abaco underground who came to the island with a boat to pick up the guns and transport them and hide them in a cache. We offloaded the guns and turned them over to the Abaco underground. Just about this time the owner of the island tried to get us to stop, yelling at us, “What are you doing here?” as we taxied by him, waving vigorously. We had not followed a flight plan, as our landing strip was so close to Abaco. We barely lifted off as we outran the length of the runway.

  Chuck Hall, who really had no knowledge, much less experience, of any type of military operation, let alone Special Forces operations as far as we were concerned, had blown the project. He was bamboozled by War-bell’s BS. To him, 450 mercs and half a million dollars seemed a much more doable project then 12 ex-Special Forces and $50,000. I had taken $10,000 cash on my last trip to Abaco to demonstrate my sincerity. When he wouldn’t buy into my plan, I put the money back into my pocket and flew back to the States and gave the ten grand back to Jurris and his friends.

  So ended my dreams of becoming the Defense Minister of Abaco, and with it my aspiration of getting a couple hundred acres of prime beach property to develop as I saw fit.

  For all I know the guns are still buried in Abaco.

  8

  HELPING OUT IN THE BUSH WAR

  Independent Rhodesia, with its short and violent history, had captured international attention for years. In the early 1960s, Southern Rhodesia had been a self-governing British colony in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland that also included Zambia. Nyasaland broke off in 1964 and called itself Malawi. In 1965 the Rhodesian government got together with the British government to try to sort out a way to end the war that was smoldering and about to explode. But the 1965 decolonization talks between the United Kingdom and the de facto Rhodesia white government accomplished nothing. The Brits wanted one man, one vote. Ian Smith, the governor of Rhodesia and leader of the Rhodesia Front, would have none of that because, of course, that would mean blacks would get into power. It would devolve into a case of “one man, one vote, once.” How right he was! So the white Rhodesians unilaterally implemented the Universal Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965.

  By the late 1970s, Rhodesia was falling to the insurgent terrorists after a rocky 15-year existence. In 1978, in an effort to put an end to hostilities, an interim agreement was signed in Salisbury. A white vote referendum approved the establishment of an interim government. It consisted of an Executive Council made up of white Ian Smith, and blacks Bishop Mu-zorewa, Ndabaningi Sithole and Jeremiah Chirau.

  The “internal settlement,” proposed in a desperate attempt by the Ian Smith government to put an end to the civil war, resulted in a new constitution being drafted and an election scheduled. The country was renamed Zimbabwe Rhodesia.

  Elections were held and the Union African National Council (UANC) won. Josiah Gumede was elected president and Muzorewa prime minister. But the odd men and losers, the two main terrorist leaders, Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo, refused to accept the results of the election and ramped up their bloody terrorist insurgencies. In 1979, Ian Smith and Muzorewa were having Lancaster House talks with Margaret Thatcher.

  The Cold War was still hot and Russia and China had essentially taken over the two major terror organizations by providing abundant amounts of training, indoctrination, weapons and other war supplies. The communists had infiltrated the blacks,
and there was heavy fighting the entire year before the elections. Anti-Smith guerrillas launched a terror campaign against the white farmers. For the white government and its black citizen allies, it was nothing but anti-terrorist warfare.

  From the beginning, Ian Smith’s Rhodesia had only a handful of friends, including South Africa and Israel, which recognized it as a sovereign state and helped keep its economy alive. The United States and the United Kingdom banded together, refusing to recognize Ian Smith’s Rhodesia and forcing him to recruit foreign volunteers to help his undermanned army defend his country. In spite of the fact that the country once boasted one of the most vibrant economies in Africa and loads of resources, it was landlocked and choked out by the neighboring African states.

  The Bush War, or the War of Chimurenga, was the most exotic of the many prolonged and vicious African wars of decolonization that glamorized the 20th century merc. It was a civil war that relied on hired guns, a war of terror for both white and black Rhodesians. The non-conventional, racial war of independence was shattered by betrayals, whether blacks against whites or blacks against blacks or whites against both.

  In addition to Vietnam vets, Dogs of War from all over the globe, from Europe to Australia to South America to Canada and Africa, itching for a good old fight against a bunch of savages terrorizing farmers and Bushmen, signed up. All sorts of adventurers, ne’er do wells and fugitives from all over the world headed for the land of hired guns, some intent on fighting the communist-backed terrorists and others just to kick some butt. Rhodesian Army recruiting posters splashed in the pages of SOF magazine and on the walls of merc recruiting offices lured those of all ages hankering for a risky adventure. Foreign volunteers, seeing the invites, trotted off to Rhodesia to fight the commies who were supporting the terrorists or just for a good firefight.

  The counterinsurgency regiments, the famed all-white Rhodesian Light Infantry and the Rhodesian Special Air Service (SAS), fighting the commies had built up formidable reputations. The daunting Selous Scouts, the covert elite special force regiment of 1,000 that consisted of black and white, with a majority of blacks, were credited with gathering spot-on in-telligence for the regular army. They would pose as terrorists and develop intelligence. They would infiltrate the guerrillas; find out where the terrorists were, and radio in their coordinates to the Rhodesian Army. They took out nearly two-thirds of the main terrorists during the Bush War. For a foreign volunteer to join up with them would be a mercenary’s reverie.

  THE BUSH WAR

  Upon returning from Vietnam, I entered into a partnership with Peder Lund, the Vietnam vet you will recall I first met in Florida while soldier-of-fortuning with a group of anti-communist adventurers. I bought out my partner, William Jones, a close friend and hunting buddy who had put up the initial seed money to publish a thousand paperback copies of Panther Publications’ first book, “150 Questions for a Guerrilla,” by General Alberto Bayo, the trainer of Castro’s invasion party in 1956. Jones and I started selling other books on unconventional guerilla warfare as well as publishing a few original titles. But the business sputtered for lack of capital. Lund, who put $10,000 into the new partnership, got 50 percent of the action and I changed my publishing firm, Panther Publications, to Paladin Press. We did not want to be affiliated with the Black Panthers.

  After four years, I got itchy feet. I gave Lund a “buy-sell” offer for Paladin and he decided to buy. And I got $ 15,000. It was time to see more of the world and some adventure . . . of which there was damn little in Boulder, Colorado.

  I contacted Mike Acoca, a superb journalist who produced major feature articles for Life magazine from their Miami office. We had crossed paths numerous times as the Miami soldiers of fortune and I tried to flog stories to him about the daring, ambitious, but for the most part foolhardy schemes to mess with the Castro regime. In fact, Acoca hired me as a “stringer” for Life when they were running an intriguing but unsuccessful investigation of Jim Garrison’s 1966 investigation of the Kennedy assassination.

  “Mike,” I said, “I have completely run into a writer’s block regarding my manuscript on CIA operations in Miami. How about co-authoring my book?”

  Acoca left Life after they closed down the Miami bureau, and had gone on to be a contract stringer for Newsweek stationed in Madrid. “Sure, you can come to Madrid and bunk in my apartment while we develop the book,” he offered.

  All this journalism sounded good to me but there still wasn’t much action. “Why not go to the dark continent after Madrid?” I asked myself. There’s plenty of action there. Why not, indeed? Choosing a country to visit on my first trip to Africa was a no-brainer. I had been corresponding for some time with a young American, Bruce McNair, who had up and gone to Rhodesia which was now fighting for its life in the vicious, no-holds-barred, communist-supported and inspired guerrilla war with black terrorists.

  In one of his letters, McNair described his experiences chasing terrorists on the Rhodesian-Zambian-Mozambique border. He joined the Rhodesian police and offered to play host and show me around if I could get there. Of course, no way I was going into that kind of situation without being armed. I selected a Springfield Armory Mi-A, a civilian rendition of the Pentagon’s select-fire M-14, with a Leatherwood Adjustable Ranging Scope, a system that had made its bones with the Army sniper teams in Nam. Since I was always looking to pick up a few bucks freelancing gun articles, I took over a .44 caliber Auto-Mag that had just come on the market. No one had tested it in Africa, and an article describing its use on four- or two-legged critters would pick me up a few hundred bucks.

  The stay in Madrid proved less productive than I had hoped. Acoca had difficulty in sitting down at a typewriter for any prolonged period of time, at least to work on a book. He had to take the poodle for a walk, buy cigarettes, get the car washed, yada, yada, yada. We did complete one chapter, a fascinating expose of the CIA’s involvement with the mafia. It included Henry Luce of Time-Life, the CIA, and William Pawley, a wealthy Floridian who helped form the Flying Tigers in World War II. We wrote about the mystery of the Cuban exiles who allegedly tried to bring out Russian missile experts who would testify that offensive missiles still remained in Cuba. The team of Cuban exiles who were going to retrieve the Russian defectors were launched from Pawley’s yacht, the Flying Tiger, on a wildly turbulent night, and were never seen or heard from again.

  Mike was a professional journalist and had good contacts in Madrid. One day, knowing my interest in unconventional warfare, he asked me, “Brown, how would you like to meet Skorzeny?”

  I was a bit taken aback and replied, “Do you mean the Otto Skorzeny, the famous Nazi commando? But of course!” Mike set up the meeting in Skorzeny’s Madrid office where he was operating under the guise of some phoney-baloney kind of construction company. I had no reason to believe he was an “ex” Nazi. Many strongly believed that he was still playing a key role in the infamous Odessa network that was responsible for smuggling hundreds, if not thousands, of Nazis out of Germany to South America.

  Skorzeny was an imposing figure. Six foot plus, with a linebacker build and a jagged dueling scar running across his left temple, he exuded power. The conversation drifted to Vietnam and I told him about the success of our snipers, whacking bad guys at 8—900 yards with accuracized M-14’s topped off with Leatherwood ART scopes. He took exception and grunted, “Vell, I had vun sniper on the Eastern front that killed 275 Russians . . . never more than 300 yards!”

  It was just an interesting conversation worth a short antidote over a couple of beers with friends but not much more. I regretted not getting a photo with him so I could give the Boulder fruits and nuts something else to snivel over.

  COMMIES REVOLT IN PORTUGAL

  However, on 24 April 1974, an event would occur which sounded the beginning of the end of white control of southern Africa. A communist revolution in Portugal! It was time to head to Lisbon.

  The revolutionaries, bless their rotten communist souls, were quite cl
ever. The leaders of the coup decided for whatever reason that it would be advantageous to get all the foreign journalists out of Lisbon. How to do this? A “freebie” of course! A free all-expense round trip to the guerrilla war in Mozambique. The foreign press corps, such as it was, bit hook, line and sinker, especially since until that time no journalists of any persuasion had been granted visas to that guerrilla-infested country.

  All major media were desperate to get reporters on the scene. News-week’s office in London called Acoca and told him to get his ass to Lisbon ASAP. So within the hour, he and I were ripping through the Spanish countryside in his red, 1967 Matra sports car. So much for finishing my manuscript on the CIA’s anti-Castro ops in Florida.

  In Lisbon, I quickly became bored with the rabble marching through the streets. No action here. So on to Africa. I returned to Madrid to pick up my guns, which were in bond with Spanish Customs. I had one anxious moment as I was boarding for Johannesburg, when two Spanish cops came racing down to the boarding gate. I just remembered I had not declared that I was carrying my Auto Mag in my carry-on baggage. But fortunately they were after some other miscreant.

  I MEET A MERC WHO WOULD CHANGE MY LIFE

  I caught an Air Rhodesia flight with all my baggage, guns and ammo from Jan Smuts to Salisbury, Rhodesia. Rhodesian Customs welcomed me, as they were always happy to see foreigners bringing in small arms. There was a dearth of rifles and pistols for Rhodesian civilians because of the embargo implemented by the U.N. for the Rhodesians having the audacity to de-clare “Unilateral Independence” when it decolonized from the Brits. The Brit government, caught up in a frenzy of guilt for having ruled over the Third World, or more accurately 24th-world Africans, insisted on the Rhodesians holding a “one man, one vote” election. The Rhodesians said “Bugger off” and declared independence, knowing full well what a one-man vote would mean. And of course, when Rhodesia finally caved and held elections, they ended up with one of the most brutal dictators of the 20th and 21st centuries. But that story comes later.