RW03 - Green Team

by Richard Marcinko

  Each of these organizations ran networks of agents, informers, and lookouts. Each, I knew, would soon hear about the arrival of seven healthy, athletic American males. Cables would be sent, and cables received. The only thing that would keep us from becoming dead meat was the happy fact that intelligence agencies are lard-slow bureaucracies. By the time they’d learned of our arrival, we’d be long gone—or at least out of sight.

  I asked Iqbal about housing. That, he said, was the least worrisome of our problems. GTI had three vacant villas. We could use one of them, which would get us out of the Sheraton, where more than half the employees were police informers or worked for one of the competing intelligence nets.

  “Well,” I said, “then why the hell are we still sitting around here scorching our stomach linings when we could be working?”

  Iqbal installed us in a GlobalTec villa on the eastern outskirts of the city, in a neighborhood I remembered from my previous visit. The house was perfect. It had a dusty courtyard big enough to turn a semi around in—all the better to lay out our chutes and repack them. There were ten-foot walls and a huge, tracked gate. I remembered the place: it was one of the half dozen on which I’d done a security survey, and I was gratified to discover that the company had actually followed my suggestions. So, there were grilles and antigrenade screens on the windows, a stout front door, and a house within a house—a fortified wing that could be entered only through a two-inch thick steel door that would take a pound of C-4 to open. Nobody was going to surprise us here.

  The neighborhood was also ideal. It was quiet, secluded, and filled with nondiplomatic transients, Aussie, Brit, and Norwegian oil-drilling engineers, Canadian bankers, and a team of French computer dweebs. Speaking of computers, we even had access to the GTI mainframe, and to all of the company’s other resources as well.

  Using Iqbal’s contacts (and my English-pound notes), we began to develop intelligence. But first, we hired one of the best local “fixers.” Let me explain. In many Third and Fourth World countries, when you arrive at Cairo or Beirut International, it is a good idea—read mandatory—to have a man waiting for you. He takes your passport and immigration forms, slips the requisite bribe into the documents, and clears you through the officials in no time.

  You can, of course, enter without a fixer. Sometimes, you breeze right through. On occasion, however, it may take a few hours: you wait while the secret police go through your wallet, the customs officials finger everything in your suitcase, the immigration man examines your passport stamp by stamp and visa by visa. If someone doesn’t like what they see, they may decide to strip-search you—an altogether unique and colorful experience in countries where rubber gloves are not ever used. Six hours later you emerge sore as hell (both literally and figuratively) from the terminal having missed the bus to your hotel, leaving you at the mercy of a taxi driver who’ll charge you three times the normal fee.

  Iqbal sent our fixer, Nazim, off to the airport, to retrieve the list of private aircraft arriving over the past week. He was armed with $100 in Paki rupees, and we told him we wanted lots of change when he returned.

  Six hours later, we had copies of documents showing us Lord B had arrived seventy-two hours before we had. Further, Nazim was able to report that Lord B had been met at the airport by the Iraqi consul general and whisked off in a motorcade to the consulate. According to Nazim’s best sources in the Pak secret police, Brookfield hadn’t left the consulate since he’d arrived.

  Lord B’s destination made sense. The Paks had backed Iraq in the Gulf War and still had close relations with Baghdad. During the Gulf War, the Karachi consulate had been used as a transshipment point for weapons and explosives that were targeted against allied diplomats in Pakistan, Indonesia, and Hong Kong.

  My immediate reaction was to set up a surveillance. Iqbal shrugged. “It is not wise.”

  “Why not?”

  “The Iraqis are already under scrutiny.”

  “But not by me.”

  “Yes. But you see—”

  That was the problem. I didn’t see. I wanted to make my own evaluation. Take my own target assessment. Then I’d know what to do. My eyes narrowed. Was Iqbal trying to hide something from us? Was someone else paying him baksheesh? There was only one way to find out what was going on: see for myself. “I want to take a look.”

  Iqbal smiled ingratiatingly. “I implore you, Pasha Vermin—”

  “Don’t fuck with me, Iqbal.”

  His face went impassive. He shrugged. “As you wish, Pasha Vermin. It is your decision.”

  I let my hair down, slipped into my sandals and market-place clothes, and we drove into town. Iqbal parked the Land Rover by an apartment block close to the racetrack, and we walked south along the Khaliq-uz-Zaman Road, then turned right. We proceeded down a narrow street, made a series of right-hand turns, and came up on the consulate from the south side. As we approached, I saw why Iqbal had not jumped at my surveillance idea.

  The place was crawling with spooks. There was literally a line of cars with pairs of “watchers” parked along the curb where the consulate wall ran parallel to the street. As we came up on the corner, I made another pack of vehicles, sitting with their motors running, outside the front gate. If we’d wanted to set up a surveillance, we’d have had to take a goddamn number.

  I realized I was now screwed, fucked, and gang-banged. If Iqbal and I stopped and reversed our course, we’d attract the attention of every fucking pair of eyes on the street. If we continued on our merry way, we’d come under the scrutiny of the Iraqi countersurveillance teams, which I knew would be watching the watchers.

  I looked over at Iqbal, who had “I told you so” written all over his face. “Okay, okay—you were right, and I’m an asshole,” I said through clenched teeth.

  There was nothing to do but brazen it out. We crossed over to the opposite side of the street and swung around the corner. The consulate building had its own surveillance system in play, too. I counted eight remote-controlled TV cameras. Two sat at each corner of the building, just under the eaves, sweeping in counterpoint to one another. Four others, on tall poles high above the razor-wire-topped wall, swept the street and roadway.

  One of them panned with Iqbal and me as we walked, following our movement.

  I cursed at myself. I was a worthless shit-for-brains pus-nuts pencil-dicked asshole geek. It had been a stupid fucking idea to come out here. Guess what. I was now a guest star on Candid Camera. My face was on videotape. Lord B would know goddamn well that I’d followed him. In a one-hundred-yard walk along a fucking Karachi street, we’d lost the element of surprise. Doom on me.

  When I gave it some second thought back at the villa, I decided that I wasn’t in as bad shape as I’d first believed. In fact, I decided that my blunder might actually work in our favor: if Brookfield knew I was lurking in the neighborhood, maybe it would spur him to come after me before he was ready.

  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that goading him to act before he was ready was the perfect strategy. The great Chinese warrior-philosopher Sun Tsu had said as much in his book The Art of War, more than two thousand years ago. “Use deception,” the Chinese general told his disciples. Like all the truly great soldiers, Sun Tsu was an unconventional warrior—a man after my own heart.

  He kept it simple, stupid: “When they are strong,” he wrote, “avoid them. When they are weak, destroy them. Make them think you intend one thing, then do the other. Provoke them to act precipitously.”

  For the past weeks, I’d been reacting to Lord B. That was no way to win. To win, you take the initiative. You instigate the action. You make the opponent react to you. I’d forgotten one of my own basic tenets—something Roy Boehm, the marvelous maverick mustang misfit godfather of all SEALs, had beaten into me so many years ago, in his own inimitable two-fisted style.

  “Don’t wait for them to come to fuck you,” he’d said. “You go out and fuck the fucking fuckers first.”

  His
words ringing in my head, I called a head shed. First priority: intelligence. To secure that, we’d need a prisoner. I assigned Wonder and Howie Kaluha that mission. I told them, “I don’t want to hear from you until you bring me back a good story. What you do with the evidence is up to you.”

  We needed to get our equipment ready to go. That would be Nasty and Rodent’s job. I told Iqbal we’d need 21 Glock magazines, plus five hundred rounds of the hottest jacketed 9mm hollowpoint ammo he could lay his hands on. We’d also have to send someone up to Darra ASAP to buy us seven AK-47s, 3,500 rounds of 7.62×39 ammunition, and seventy AK magazines. Iqbal had made inquiries, and he’d advised against showing our faces up there—there were too many spooks, tangos, and other unsavory characters out and about. I agreed—why complicate our lives right now. They were full enough.

  We used the villa’s courtyard to repack the chutes Luciano Angelotti had given us in La Spezia. You never jump a chute you haven’t packed yourself. Moreover, these were Incursari chutes, which means they’d been used in water jumps. That makes a difference: seawater decomposes parachute silk after ten or twelve immersions if the chutes aren’t thoroughly washed immediately after use. The salt water weakens the fabric, which can disintegrate on opening shock, sending the man wearing it to his death.

  I knew we’d be HAHOing these chutes—that’s High Altitude, High Opening in case you didn’t remember—and I wanted to make absolutely sure that we hadn’t been given seven rotting chutes. No need to find that out at twenty-thousand feet. So we unrolled them, examined them inch by inch, then packed ’em up again. They were old, and they’d been well used, but I believed they had at least one more jump in them. At least I hoped so. If not—well, inshallah.

  While we checked our equipment, Iqbal hired watchers at the airport so we’d know if Lord B was going to move. Simultaneously, I sent Tommy, Duck Foot, Nasty, and Rodent out to parade past the Iraqi embassy at irregular intervals. I knew their hard bodies and gringo features on the TV screens would stir the pot.

  While they marched past the cameras, Iqbal and I went to visit Dick Campbell, the Marine lieutenant colonel who’d retired, then married up. He had a big villa out between the stadium and the airport, in the Naval Staff Colony, a new development where, as Iqbal put it, “most of Karachi’s who’s and who’s lives, Pasha Vermin.”

  Said Jarhead was batching it these days, said Iqbal, who explained that Campbell’s wife was on one of her semiannual shopping trips to Paris. Iqbal had also said the Campbells lived in a unique house. As we pulled up, I realized it hadn’t been hyperbole.

  The compound was huge—more than two acres from the look of it. The house sat behind a twelve-foot wall. At each corner was a manned guardhouse built out of steel plate and bulletproof glass. The emplacements had gun ports and secure doors.

  The only way in and out of the villa was a thick steel gate that ran on tracks. Half a dozen uniformed guards were standing outside, and I saw shotgun-toting gatekeepers behind the wall as we pulled over the gate track. Clusters of halogen security lamps pointed (correctly) away from the house so as to create a lighted killing zone, and four TV cameras swept the dusty brick courtyard. The courtyard itself had concrete planters strategically placed so as to provide cover for the security force, and a barricade to prevent someone in a truck from driving through the front door of the villa. Obviously, Dick Campbell was a man who appreciated good security.

  He met us at the front door, a glass of something clear and on the rocks in his hand. He was obviously feeling no pain. He waved us through the ornately carved door with a friendly, “Come on in, you fungus-crotched dipshit geek no-load pencil-dicked pus-nutted asshole.”

  I looked at him strangely. Then I saw copies of Rogue Warrior and Rogue Warrior: Red Cell on the foyer table and realized what he was up to. My suspicions were confirmed when he asked, “Anybody want a Bombay on the rocks?”

  I knew instinctively I was going to like him. “Fuck you, too,” I said by way of friendly greeting. “Then eat shit and bark at the moon.”

  It turned out that even though he was older than I by some years, we’d served in Vietnam at roughly the same time. He’d flown F-4 Phantoms out of Da Nang, while I was prowling and growling in the Mekong on my first tour. Then he’d gone on to chop Charlie into bite-sized pieces during more than a thousand close air-support missions piloting Fart Carts—which is what Marines fondly called their A-4 Skyhawks.

  Now in his late fifties, Campbell was as trim as when he’d flown “Zoom and Dooms”—F-8 Crusaders—off carriers in the sixties and his beloved A-4s in the seventies. He was the size of a small wide receiver: five eleven, about 175 pounds. He had playful gray eyes, a firm, cool handshake, and a Marine-clean shaven face and head. Yeah—the guy was Telly Savalas bald. “What’s your radio handle?” I asked. “Eight Ball?”

  He grinned. “Not quite. It’s Rocky.”

  “Why, ’cause you look like a fucking raccoon? Or is it that you keep coming back for more punishment because you’re too stupid to quit?”

  Campbell gestured with the Bombay glass. “You’re being too kind. You probably want a favor that could get me killed. Nah—remember the scene in Rocky where Stallone’s training in the cooler, pounding away at a slab of beef?”

  “Yeah.”

  He laughed. “Well, I had my share of long cruises, and there used to be times when I’d beat my meat, too.”

  “I always wondered what gave you carrier pilots such hairy palms.” That brought a big smile to his face.

  You had to like the guy. He had the right priorities, even though he’d gone native. Yeah—like me, he wore Paki clothes. Only his were white, clean, and ironed. That’s what money will do.

  While Iqbal took himself out to the kitchen, we settled down on overstuffed leather furniture that sat atop the antique rugs that covered the marble floor. I toasted him with my Bombay. It was the first I’d had in more than a week.

  “No prob.” He sipped his own martini. “Iqbal mentioned you may need transportation.”

  I outlined a probable scenario.

  He shook his head. “No prob with that at all. As a matter of fact, it sounds like more fun than I’ve had in years.”

  We settled on a fee. It was, I thought, ridiculously low. But Campbell shook his head. “Frankly, I’d do this for free, except the fuel’s so goddamn expensive these days.”

  I added that I also needed someone to make a milk run to Darra ASAP. That brought a smile to his face, too. “I’ve been looking for an excuse to get up there. There’s an incredible HK-93 system knockoff I saw the last time I was there—and I’ve been kicking myself for not buying it. All I needed was an excuse. I’ll fly up tomorrow morning.”

  “Great.” I handed Rocky a small roll of English pounds and a handwritten shopping list.

  He took a pair of wire-rim half-frames from his pocket and glanced at it. “No plastic? No M60 detonators? No RPGs?” A look of mock disappointment came over his face. “I thought you SEALs were serious about your business.”

  “We’re already carrying the good stuff,” I told him.

  Wonder brought me my information at 0720 the next morning. Lord B would move on to Afghanistan in thirty-six hours. He had meetings at a camp near Asadabad, the capital of Kunar Province in northeastern Afghanistan. Wonder obtained this nugget from an embassy driver—an Iraqi—who doubled as a member of the consulate security staff. The man was in a position to know Lord B’s plans because he’d been assigned to help facilitate them. I asked which of the camps in the area Brookfield was going to. Wonder and Howie told me that was a fact the driver hadn’t known. And they were convinced they’d squeezed the truth out of him. “He talked, boss,” is what Howie said. “And he told us what he knew. Everything he knew.”

  And after they’d finished with him? Well, this particular DIQ—Driver In Question—would go into Iraq’s MIA books. He’d left the consulate sixteen hours ago. He would never return.

  You think that’s heavy-hande
d, don’t you? Snatch a guy, make him talk, then wax him. The fact is, it happens all the time in war. We did it to the VC in Vietnam—and they did it to us, too. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of MIAs buried in unmarked graves in Vietnam. They were snatched from their foxholes or hooches or tents by Mr. Victor Charlie. They were tortured. They were interrogated. Then they were killed.

  That is how war is fought. Oh, we didn’t talk about it a lot—still don’t. It wouldn’t be fashionable or nice or polite. And we Americans have habitually been led by people who for some reason want to wage fashionable, nice, polite wars.

  You want an example? Okay—how about Warren Christopher, who was deputy secretary of state when he asked Delta Force’s CO, Charlie Beckwith, to shoot the Iranian terrorists holding American hostages in Tehran in the shoulder, so they wouldn’t get hurt during our 1980 rescue mission.

  This is the same Warren Christopher who ran the State Department in 1993, when our boys got chewed up in Somalia because the rules of engagement drawn up by Christopher’s staff and the White House Whiz Kidz didn’t allow any kicking of ass or taking of names because “innocent” Somalis might get hurt.

  Hmmmm. Do you see a pattern here?

  Well, folks, it don’t work like that. Despite what the striped suits of the world like Warren Christopher may think, war—as General William Tecumseh Sherman once said—is hell.

  You don’t believe it? Remember, if you will, the photographs of Marines at the Chosin Reservoir. Or the thousand-yard stares of grunts in Vietnam. Or the look of pure, absolute terror on the face of Mike Durant, the chief warrant officer whose Blackhawk chopper was shot down in Mogadishu. Well, Durant was well trained. He’d been told what would happen to him if he got captured, and I believe he was ready to die. But that didn’t change the expression on his face. And—because he was caught on TV—the whole world got to see the hell he was in. His face was the real face of war. The face of terror and pain.