The hair on the back of my neck was standing up. That was natural. Senses get so keen at times like this that every sound becomes amplified inside your head. It seemed to me, for example, that the lorry brakes had screeched loud enough to wake the entire city, the dropping tailgates could be heard for miles, and the pounding of our boots on the glistening pavement was telegraphing our position to the enemy like jungle drums.
And just as all of that was playing in my head, the fucking CNN crew decided to turn on its lights so the correspondent could do a fucking stand-up.
I nodded to Stevie Wonder, who carries wire cutters the way some folks carry American Express cards. Ten seconds later the problem was solved—to my satisfaction, at least.
The main assault was going to consist of two Puma choppers with fourteen SBS shooters in each bird, and three fourteen-man platoons on the ground. I checked my watch: 0512. By now the helos had left Poole and were heading our way. The ground-assault units were in place. I moved my SEALs to our assigned position, a listening post about two hundred and fifty yards to the northwest of the main entrance—Major Geoff had assigned us bleacher seats—and listened to the radio earpiece in my right ear.
I could hear Geoff, Randy Rayman, and the rest of the command staff chattering in the C3I lorry half a mile down the road, heedless of operational security. How he could “command” from the inside of a windowless van I didn’t know. I’d always gone down the rope with my men. That way I knew what was really happening, what kind of support they needed, and, most important, I could cover up any operational flaws that might cause more administrative bullshit than was warranted when the Monday-morning quarterbacks showed up three days later with their twenty-twenty hindsight and three bags full of perfect scenarios.
I crawled ten yards past the corner of our position and peered through night-vision glasses at the warehouse facade. Now, the lack of on-site tactical intelligence became glaringly apparent. The SPOT pictures on the walls at Poole had indicated a long, rectangular building. Indeed, that’s what the imaging satellite had photographed, and that’s what Geoff’s plan had assumed. But thou shalt never assume because, as Ev Barrett used to say, “it makes an ass of u and me.”
So, here in real life, the target building was not as advertised. It wasn’t just another big rectangular warehouse, as Geoff had described it. Instead, there was a central structure flanked by two wings. The building’s dominant structure was a cube six stories high and perhaps 150 feet square. That part had a small, flat roof. Abutted to the cube were two two-story rectangular wings, giving the structure the look of a pregnant letter I. The ground level of the wings were windowless brick facade, so that the troopers hitting the sides of the warehouse would need assault ladders to take them up to the first-floor roof, where they could bust through the windows and enter the two wings.
That was going to complicate things immeasurably. It would mean coordinating three assault groups instead of just one. I listened as the SBS troopers queried Geoff about ladders. There was an embarrassing silence. It was obvious he hadn’t thought of bringing any. He ordered the troopers without ladders to assist assault team three.
Three was the force that had been tasked with massing around the front door, where it would set up a gauntlet into which the tangos could be swept. But the entrance was a clusterfuck waiting to happen. At the front, fifty feet of mirrored glass looked out upon a semicircular driveway. If I’d been inside, I’d have tamped C-4 explosive behind the glass, making the whole front of the building into a deadly fragmentation device. I said as much to Geoffrey and was told to keep radio silence.
I shut up and listened. The ground assault team leader radioed Geoffrey that he’d discovered trip wires and disarmed two explosive devices as he and his men moved into position. “They expect us, Major. We’ve lost surprise.”
Geoff was having none of it. “Carry on, Sergeant—move in and take the entry.”
Asshole. If you lose surprise, you’re gonna lose men. Better to pull back and go into a siege mode: cut all power to the target, insert listening devices, use thermal imaging. Shatter the windows inward with AT4 shoulder-fired rockets. Then, when you know where everyone is, assault using the cover of CS tear gas, flashbangs, and other devices to stun and overwhelm the enemy. Geoff was ordering his men on a suicide mission.
I heard the distant approach of choppers, their engine sounds muffled by the wet air. I trained my NVs on the warehouse roof. Two Pumas dropped out of the mist, their rotor blades creating vortexes of swirling air and rain. I could see the silhouettes of the Marines inside as they made ready to drop down the fifty feet of soft, reverse-woven cotton rope.
The choppers hovered but didn’t come in. It became painfully obvious that both of them couldn’t flare above the warehouse at once—there wasn’t enough airspace. So the choppers circled while the pilots discussed the matter with Geoff. That was when someone on the roof fired a shoulder-held surface-to-air missile, and the Puma closest to the warehouse exploded in a flash of orange-blue light. Seconds later, the glass at the warehouse entrance burst outward, cutting the SBS assault teams into ribbons. The instant after that, the entire warehouse, which had been wired with high explosive, disappeared in a huge fireball and came down on itself.
I remember sitting in a bubble room known as a Special Classified Intelligence Facility, or SCIF, when the tragedy at Desert One took place. Over speakers carrying the secure satellite transmissions, I listened to the sounds of brave men burning up in one of the most colossally goatfucked SpecWar operations ever. Like many in that SCIF, I had tears in my eyes that night. I knew those who had died. I also vowed that never again, if I had the opportunity to command another SpecWar unit, would my warriors ever be sacrificed the way those brave Delta troopers had been.
Now, stunned at what I saw before me, I knew what had to be done. I turned on my heel and started back toward the C3I lorry that sat five hundred yards away. Tommy and Nasty followed, jogging behind as I double-timed a steady cadence, murder in my heart and mayhem on my mind.
I opened the door of the van without knocking. Geoff Lyondale was sitting at the console, a look of disbelief on his face. Randy Rayman sat next to him, his head in his hands.
Geoff stared at me. “I say—”
I held up my hand like a traffic cop. “No, Geoff, old cockbreath, there’s nothing to say.” I pulled the asshole out of his seat by the scruff of his neck. He started to object. I broke his nose with the side of my hand. He struggled. I slammed him against the steel wall of the lorry a few times to loosen him up, then opened the door and drop-kicked him down the stairs onto the wet pavement.
I stared down at him. “You fucking coward. You deserve to die.”
Terror in his eyes, he rolled away from me. In my peripheral vision I saw Randy Rayman start to come at me. Without looking, I backhanded him and he went down. “Stay the fuck out of this.”
I was seeing nothing but red right now. I wanted blood. Geoff fucking Lyondale’s blood. I dropped on top of his lordship and started beating his head into the pavement like a fucking soccer ball. A couple of his perfect teeth came out. Too bad. He started to bleed from his ears and nose. Pity. I kneed him in the balls and he threw up all over me. No matter. I went about my work, screaming obscenities. This sucker was going to die for his sins.
Nasty and Tommy tried to pull me off him. I was having none of it, and I flailed at them between punches at Geoff’s face. “Lemme the fuck alone.” If I had to kill them to kill him, that was okay by me, too.
By the time Half Pint, Carlosito, Rooster, Sergeant Snake, and the others gang-tackled me, punched me out, and dragged me down the street by my legs, I guess old Geoff wasn’t feeling much of anything. The last I saw of Geoff, Stevie Wonder was bending over him, with what looked like a Syrette of morphine in his hand. Then Tommy T must have either applied a helping of leather sap to the upside of my head or slipped me a choker hold, because suddenly everything went black.
Rank has its pr
ivileges. So, I wasn’t thrown in the brig after my unscheduled appearance (performing an unusual variation of the ballet Assault With Intent to Commit Murder) on CNN, although that’s where his royal highness Pinckney Prescott III, VADM, USN, wanted me. There is a six-by-eight holding cell in the basement at CINCUSNAVEUR, and Pinky cut orders to the Marine guards to put me there until my men and I could be shipped back to the States—with me in chains.
But, as I said, rank—in this case, a combination of Her Majesty the Queen, and His Majesty, Command Master Chief Hans Weber—has its privileges. Buckingham Palace, filled with Royals who had their own problems, was both outraged at Geoff Lyondale’s preposterous behavior and (more to the point) fearful that further unfavorable publicity surrounding “The Event,” as it was being described in the tabloids, would place them in a worse light than the one they were already in.
So, a depth charge rolled out of Buckingham Palace and dropped on the Ministry of Defense, where it was shunted to the Embassy of the United States of America, where it was nudged over to North Audley Street, where it—and a gallon of Maalox, no doubt—was left on Pinky Prescott’s desk. Hansie said they could hear his anguished screams two floors away.
There were, therefore, no manacles and chains, no six-by-eight holding cell, no keelhauling. But the old MACPOC made it clear I was about to be confined to quarters until things quieted down. But it would be Hans’s choice of quarters, not Pinky’s. He also scattered my men to the four winds—the better to keep them out of sight and mind—then he checked my luggage at the Marriott, handed me an overnight bag, and said he’d found me a room sans bath at the Special Forces Club, an out-of-the-way refuge for SpecWar operators visiting London. The club is in Knightsbridge, in an unassuming, unmarked town house located on Hans Crescent between Harrods and Sloane Street. Hansie ordered me to bunk there until he sounded the all clear—he figured he could handle things in the next two to three days.
He may have saved my behind, but he also reamed me a new asshole in the best Ev Barrett style, reminding me in demure master chief’s fashion that one does not blankety-blanking cold-bleeping-cock the blanker-blanking commanding officer of a bleeping Royal Marine CT unit, on his turf, after twenty-three of his men have just been turned into hamburger.
He probably had a point, although in my own mind what I’d done was completely justified. In the United States Navy, when you assume command of a ship or a unit, you personally assume total responsibility, authority, and accountability for every element of your men’s lives. This happens nowhere else in the military. I take the responsibilities of command seriously. I believe that my men come first. I believe that no matter what the consequences to me, my men must be protected. But I also believe in shared responsibilities. I believe that my men must look after one another—that we must always function as a collective unit, not a collection of individuals.
Shortly after I’d assumed command of SEAL Team Six, I told the men what I expected of them. I told them I’d promised CNO that I would not fail, and therefore they would not fail, either. I told them that henceforth their loyalties would be—in ascending order—to their partners, to their squads, to their platoons, and to the Team. “We will take care of each other,” I insisted. “If you screw up and waste your swim buddy, I will waste you. You will be history.”
Well, Geoff had screwed up. He had not assumed total control. He had operated without properly assessing his situation. He had not taken ultimate responsibility for his actions. He had also failed as a SpecWar leader by blindly accepting incomplete, flawed intelligence, then using it without questioning its reliability, despite a high probability of dire consequences to his men.
Worst of all, he had used the mission as something to further his career. Does that shock you? It shouldn’t—after all, it’s been done before. An example? You want an example? Okay—what about the asshole supervisors at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms who had ordered their men to raid the Branch Davidian compound in Waco even though the raid had been compromised. According to my pals at ATF, some of those supervisors had grandiose ideas about the raid’s ending up on Top Cops or some other TV infotainment show, and their careers skyrocketing. Geoff Lyondale had gone ahead with his harebrained plan because he wanted to look like a hero on CNN.
And what had happened? Answer: his self-aggrandizing behavior had caused good troops to die. So far as I was concerned, that justified whatever I’d done to him—and more. I wish I’d killed the son of a bitch.
I grabbed the overnight bag, took the underground—that’s subway in Brit—to Knightsbridge station, then walked down Hans Crescent just past Basil Street, where I knocked at the unmarked door of the SF Club. Hazel, who’s been behind the reception desk for the last couple of centuries, answered my knock. As always, she remembered my pseudonym. How she does it, I don’t know—but if you’ve stayed at the Club even once, she knows you by sight evermore.
“Captain Snerd. Nice to see you again, sir.” She adjusted her size-16 dress and primped the bun in her gray, English hair. She looked like Mrs. Miniver’s great-aunt. “Sign in, please. We have Number Six waiting for you. Second floor.”
She knew better than to ask why I was in town. She followed me to the guest book and handed me an old-fashioned fountain pen. As I signed in—Capt. Herman Snerd, USMC (Ret.)—I perused the guest list.
Two majors with Arabic surnames, nationality Pakistani, were registered. They’d arrived two days ago. That was not unusual. While Saudis or other Gulf Arabs seldom stayed at the SF Club, preferring lush accommodations at the Ritz or the Intercontinental, many Pak officers, who liked to think of themselves as seasoned warriors, preferred the spartan rooms with shared bath down the hall.
I climbed two flights of squeaky stairs (in case you’re wondering why my second-floor room was three stories up, in Europe, the ground floor is called the ground floor, what we in the U.S. call the second floor is called the first floor, and so on), hung my bag in the Victorian armoire of a small, slightly shabby room furnished with single bed, sink, ladder-back chair, and side table, and then descended to the first floor, where the bar is located.
Unlike most bars in London, they keep Bombay at the Special Forces Club. I ordered a quadruple Bombay on the rocks and received four one-sixth gill measures and two ice cubes. A gill is a quarter of a pint—four ounces. A sixth of a gill—the normal amount of liquor you get in a Brit shot measure—is two-thirds of an ounce, an anemic quantity of alcohol, if you ask me. Of course, nobody asked me.
I drank in solitary splendor for about a half hour. Then I heard voices on the stairs. Two brown, mustached faces poked into the barroom. I saluted them with the remains of my Bombay.
They turned out to be the Pak majors. I introduced myself as Captain Snerd—no need to let anyone know more than that. They said their names were Yusef and Haji. We were all probably lying. It didn’t matter. We sat over Famous Grouse and Bombay and chatted about the best curry restaurants in Karachi, the sorry increase in opium traffic coming out of Afghanistan, and the wonderful time I’d had when I visited their country a couple of years back on a corporate assignment. They excused themselves after half an hour of Scotch, quail eggs, and potato crisps. I finished my Bombay, then decided to go upstairs and grab a combat nap.
Two hours later, refreshed, I padded down the hall and dropped myself into a huge, claw-footed bathtub where I soaked and steamed myself clean then toweled myself dry. Back in my room I slipped into a comfortable pair of slacks, a short-sleeve polo shirt sporting a SEAL Team Eight logo, an ancient pair of running shoes and an old tweed jacket, wandered out, and grabbed a snack and a couple of pints at a pub just off Knightsbridge.
On my way back, I window-shopped outside Harrods. The Christmas lights and decorations had recently gone up, and I—along with hundreds of other equally mesmerized passersby—peered through the thick glass at scenes from Charles Dickens’s Christmas Carol. As I turned the corner onto Hans Crescent, a trio of men came up the opposite sid
e of the street, walking past the Harvey Nichols store toward the underground stop.
I stopped short and watched from behind a knot of tourists because I recognized them all. There was Major Yusef, all spiffed up, and Major Haji, in a suit, too. The third man sported jeans, cowboy boots, and a short, waxed cotton Barbour jacket. It was Todd Stewart, the huge, nasty-looking ex-SBS asshole who worked for my least favorite Eurotrash, Call Me Ishmael Lord Brookfield. There was a ruthless, hard edge to Todd the sod that made me want to have a word or two with him. Perhaps in a quiet, dark alley.
Well, maybe I’d get the opportunity someday. In the meanwhile, curiosity got the better of me. I crossed the street as they descended into the tube stop, watched as they bought tickets, went down the escalator, and grabbed an eastbound train. I followed, one coach behind, sneaking peeks through the glass door between the two. The trio changed at Leicester Square, transferring onto a Northern Line train, which they rode to Hampstead.
The huge black Scotsman in the lead, they walked up the exitway toward two big elevator doors. No way could I follow unnoticed. An arrow to my left pointed toward the stairway. A tourist sign told me that Hampstead Station was the deepest in London—192 feet below ground. Great—I hadn’t done PT in a while. I galloped up the stairs two at a time. As I rounded the top, my lungs were bursting.
I waited, gasping for breath, until they’d handed their tickets to the tube man. I followed as they walked down a short hill—the street sign said Hampstead High Street—lined with upscale boutiques and trendy restaurants, and rounded a corner at Downshire Hill, just past a small French bistro.
It had started to rain. It had also gotten damn cold. They had coats. Me? I’d been out for a bite and a brew. My short-sleeve polo shirt was wet clear through because my tweed jacket soaked up water like a sponge. They marched in shoes—in Todd Stewart’s case, ornate, ostrich cowboy boots. As usual, I wasn’t even wearing socks, only my ancient sneakers, which currently resembled squeegees.
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