Muse looked at me for a long moment. “I just wanted to thank them for saving my life.”
“I’ll pass that along,” I said. “It will mean a lot to them.”
When Muse spoke next, his voice was flushed with passion. “Words could never be enough, sir.”
We shook hands again, and I left him, crossing over to the hospital tent to pass along what he’d said. Inside the tent, four of my guys were stretched out on gurneys. I could see Tom Caldwell’s head injury, where the rotor blade whacked him. Jim Suderth gave me a smile, even though we both knew by then that he was going to lose the toes on his left foot. The operator shot in the chest lay there, his heavy bandages already tinged with blood. He was conscious, but a little bleary from pain meds. An operator with a bullet wound in his leg sat upright drinking water and wincing from the pain.
As I made my way among them, I told them how proud I was of what they’d done. And every man I talked to said the same thing: “Hey, how’s Moose?”
After about the third one asked me that, I realized that it was just as important for them to see the man they’d risked their lives to rescue—to see him safe and free, mission accomplished—as it was for Muse to see them, here, alive, and out of the line of fire.
“Would you all like me to bring him in here?” I asked the room.
The tent echoed with one big “Yes!”
Walking out, I saw Muse standing not far away. “Moose! Come with me. I’ve got something I think you’ll like.”
I showed him into the hospital tent and when he saw his rescuers lying there, he turned and shot me a look of surprise.
I grinned. “Turns out they wanted to see you, too.”
I walked him over to the first gurney and introduced him to the sergeant who had been shot in the chest. Muse reached down and took the sergeant’s hand in both of his big mitts. “There’s no way I can ever thank you for giving me my life back.” His voice was thick with emotion.
Around him, the other operators smiled. One by one, he circled the room, stopping and thanking each man personally, always taking one of their hands in both of his. Again and again, his message was the same: his gratitude was beyond anything he could put into words.
“You being here like this says it all,” Suderth told him. “Now go and have a good life.”
As I watched, Muse stepped back and looked at them all, lying there, wounded for him. I could see that he was about to break down. But he collected himself enough to force out one last message. “I love you guys. I’ll never forget you.”
And he hasn’t. Every year, on December 20, the anniversary of his 1989 rescue, my telephone rings. When I pick up the phone, Kurt Frederick Muse says, “Hey, Jerry, I just want to thank you again for saving my life.”
Then we chat awhile, but not for too long because Kurt has a bunch of other phone calls to make.
13
WITH MUSE SAFE, the remaining missions in Operation Just Cause were a go. The force arrayed against Manuel Noriega swept across Panama, seizing his every strategic and tactical asset. Delta alone launched forty-two raids over the next seventy-two hours, turning inside out every known or suspected safe house where Noriega could hide. The hangar at Howard AFB buzzed like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, with tips and intel on Noriega’s location pouring into the comm center in a constant stream. The instant we received any scrap of reliable information, Pete and I scrambled the element leaders. Clustering around our display of maps and reconnaissance photos, we lightning-planned an assault, hustled out to the flight-line, and launched. Thirty minutes from tip to takeoff.
Across the city, black-hooded Delta elements struck without warning, kicking down safe-house doors, pouring in through windows, and forcing Noriega’s cronies to the floor at gunpoint: “¡En el piso! En el piso!”
Prisoners were flex-cuffed and questioned. Those with intel value were arrested; those with none were released. Often, one raid led to another as captives suddenly became helpful: “¡El General no está aqui! Esta en la casa de la otra mujer!” (The General’s not here! He’s at his mistress’s house!)
Coordinating these operations from a Black Hawk, I could see Panama City and the surrounding countryside bristling with military activity as U.S. forces swept away Noriega’s defenses. As Operation Just Cause unfolded, the 82nd Airborne, the 75th Ranger Regiment, Army Special Forces, and other Joint Task Force sea, air, and land units seized Torrijos-Tocumen Airport and military airfield, as well as the Pacora River Bridge, the national television station, and a major PDF base near the village of Rio Hato. SEALs and their Special Boat assets destroyed PDF patrol boats, and seized Noriega’s yachts and beach house.
Delta pressed forward, taking down Noriega friendly townhomes, village huts, and even his mountain retreat. In many hideouts, operators confiscated money, passports, weapons, maps, and intel. But the most interesting find occurred at Altos del Golfo, one of Noriega’s Panama City homes.
I was circling overhead in the Black Hawk when Lieutenant Colonel John Noe’s squadron reported they had uncovered stacks of hardcore pornography, $8 million in American cash, and two religious altars, one at each end of the house. One was a Christian altar. The other was an altar to Satan, decorated with jars containing human internal organs.
I knew from intelligence reports that Noriega met regularly with a spiritualist and dabbled in some form of dark religion. I’d even heard he wore red underwear because the spiritualist told him it would protect him from his enemies. Now it looked like he was playing both spiritual ends against the middle.
While none of our forty-two raids bagged the Pineapple, the speed and frequency of our door-busting drove the dictator like a hunted animal. By the fourth day after the American invasion, Noriega had no place left to hide. He also knew none of the foreign embassies located in the capital would side with him against the Panamanian people and grant him asylum. Ironically, as a last resort, he threw himself on the mercy of the church.
14
ON CHRISTMAS EVE 1989, we got intel that Noriega was headed to the nunciatura, or Vatican embassy, to seek asylum. Again, we scrambled the helos, six Black Hawks, plus the command-and-control bird, this time hunting the blue all-terrain vehicle we’d heard was Noriega’s ride.
While we were airborne, Pete called me from the JOC. “Noriega’s already in the nunciatura. See if you can land there. I’m sending John Noe’s squadron there now by vehicle. Get the place secured, and give me a report as soon as you can.”
“Roger that. We’re on it.”
Our helos were already in the immediate area of the nunciatura, a large white stucco building, two stories with a red tile roof. Cars and pedestrians scattered as we landed two birds on Avenida Balboa, the main street in front of the nunciatura, sending up tornadoes of dust and litter. A dozen Delta operators armed with .45s and M-4 carbines poured into the street and surrounded the nunciatura.
Facing north and surrounded by a high stone wall, the Vatican embassy occupied its own small block. I jumped down into the street and walked quickly up to the wrought iron gate. To my right, across a side street from the nunciatura, sat a large apartment building with an attached parking garage. To my left, lay the Pacific Ocean, the beach and wide mud flats separated from the embassy by a narrow street that dead-ended in front of a Holiday Inn.
In the time it took to observe this, a nun appeared on the other side of the wrought iron.
“Quiero hablar a nuncio papal,” I said.
I wanted to speak to the papal nuncio, the priest supervising the diplomatic mission.
She nodded, then turned and disappeared into the building. A couple of minutes passed before a priest appeared. He was not the papal nuncio.
“Habla Ingles?” I said.
“Yes.” He smiled. Friendly enough, but all business.
“We are looking for Manuel Noriega. Is he inside?”
“Yes, señor, he has taken asylum here in the nunciatura.”
“Father, Manuel Nori
ega is wanted by the United States government and the people of Panama. We’d like for you to turn him over to us.”
“I will have to speak to the papal nuncio.”
“That’s fine. We’re going to keep you surrounded here until we get Noriega.”
Smiling officially, the priest excused himself and went back inside.
While we waited for the papal nuncio, Monsignor Jose Sebastian Laboa, to make an appearance, more firepower rolled up. John Noe and his squadron had borrowed M-113s and a pair of two-and-a-half-ton trucks from the 5th Mech. I deployed the APCs around the nunciatura, their .50 cal guns aimed outward to guard against a rescue attempt by Noriega loyalists. Then I called the 82nd Airborne at Fort Clayton and asked for some engineers to come out and erect a barrier of concertina wire around the embassy. Within the hour, that was done.
During my initial meeting at the gates of the nunciatura, I noticed a rather large group of people observing our activities from the end of the street. I looked up at the Holiday Inn, and saw that the third-floor balcony was packed with reporters. Nearly every one of them had these long boom mikes pointed directly at us, trying to listen in on my discussion with the priest. They were less than a hundred yards away, and I thought they probably stood a pretty good chance of picking up our conversations.
I knew we had a loudspeaker team from the 5th Psychological Operations Group at Fort Bragg. I sent someone to find them. In only a few minutes, two young soldiers approached me.
“Hey, can you guys point your speakers up to those boom mikes and block their reception with some kind of broadcast?” I asked.
“Sure,” one young soldier said. “What do you want us to play?”
“I don’t care what you play, just as long as those mikes can’t pick us up.”
Ten minutes later, being twenty-year-olds, the psy-ops guys started playing loud rock music. Really loud.
Be careful what you ask for, I thought.
Not long after I noticed the reporters, I posted Delta snipers around the nunciatura: one team down by the water, another in the parking garage, and another on the sixth floor of the apartment building adjacent to the nunciatura.
An hour passed and I spoke again with the priest, who told me the Pineapple was resting. He had no other news.
Later that night as I patrolled the perimeter with Eldon, festive lights and decorations reminded me that it was Christmas Eve. Panamanians came out of their homes to greet us.
“Thank you so much for giving us our country back,” people said to us in English. They asked us earnestly to come in, eat Christmas dinner with them, or at least use their telephones to call our families. That was against policy, of course, and we couldn’t accept their generosity. But it was a wonderful Christmas present to know that the Panamanians were behind us.
15
ON THE SECOND DAY, Monsignor Laboa came out of the embassy, crossing the avenue to the Catholic School where we had set up our command center. By then, a fairly large group of officers had gathered there, including Wayne Downing and U.S. Army South Commander General Mark Cisneros.
A small, older gentleman with white hair and spectacles, Laboa wore black trousers and a black shirt with a clerical collar. With regard to Noriega, he said, his hands were tied: “I am obligated to discuss this situation with the Vatican. I’m not in a position to make a decision on my own.”
That sent us into a holding pattern, with the Pineapple holed up in the wire-wrapped, sniper-scoped nunciatura and several hundred American soldiers waiting for him outside. Several times a day, one of us would cross the street to chat with either the priest or the papal nuncio. They shared very little information, and showed no signs of wanting to give Noriega up.
In taking the dictator in, Laboa was upholding the Vatican tradition of offering sanctuary to anyone fleeing persecution. I wasn’t sure how Noriega, Panama’s chief persecutor, fit that definition. It wasn’t until later I learned Laboa was all the while gently pressuring Noriega to surrender. No country would give him refuge, the priest told the dictator. The Americans had him surrounded. A peaceful, formal surrender would be the most dignified option.
Also, I learned Laboa did not mean for the Pineapple to get too comfortable: The nuncio housed Noriega in a room barely larger than a closet, decorated only with a crucifix. The dictator’s amenities included a television that didn’t work, a window that didn’t open, and zero air-conditioning. Apparently, he didn’t have access to a washer and dryer, either: Every now and then, one of the snipers would report that they could see a pair of red briefs hanging outside on a clothes line.
One night, I was sitting around at the school with Major Darrell Poor, a task force doctor, shooting the breeze. “You know what, Doc?” I said. “There’s only one thing I want out of this whole operation.”
“What’s that?”
“Noriega’s red drawers.”
Poor burst out laughing.
16
THE PSY-OPS GUYS kept the rock music blasting day and night, keeping their speakers pointed directly at the Holiday Inn and, gradually, stirring up a political firestorm. Newscasters all over the world reported that we were trying to mess with Noriega’s mind, reduce him to a mass of quivering jelly with an overdose of Guns N’ Roses. On about day three of the operation, a directive sped down all the way from the Bush White House: turn the music off.
I’m not sure whether the constant noise bothered Noriega, but I’m pretty sure it was driving the papal nuncio crazy.
We did shut the music off, but substituted instead Spanish language news reports that carried the accurate story that Noriega’s troops had stopped fighting after he abandoned them. In fact, PDF soldiers began presenting themselves at Howard AFB daily to surrender. The loudspeaker newscasts also told Noriega that American officials were moving to freeze funds he had deposited in overseas accounts.
We wanted the Pineapple to realize that his situation was hopeless. Though Laboa was trying to talk Noriega into giving up, the Vatican continued to shield him, justifying its actions by arguing that the dictator was a political refugee. On December 26, Secretary of State James Baker sent a letter to the Vatican saying Noriega was not fleeing persecution, but prosecution. He was a common criminal, wanted by the U.S. for drug trafficking. Baker later assured the Vatican that if Noriega gave himself up, we wouldn’t shoot him—just arrest him.
The waiting game continued. Then on January 3, fifteen thousand Panamanians rallied on Avenida Balboa. Crowding around the nunciatura just outside the concertina barrier, thousands waved white handkerchiefs and chanted anti-Noriega slogans like “Kill the Hitler!” Some people skewered pineapples with long sticks and they pumped them up and down in the air, sneering, “Pineapple face! Pineapple face!”
To keep the situation under control, we posted soldiers between the crowd and the wire barrier. We didn’t want the crowd to storm the nunciatura and attempt to capture Noriega.
That evening, after the crowd dispersed, I was sitting at the school with Wayne Downing when I saw Monsignor Laboa walking across the street. When he reached us, he drew himself up very formally and said, “Noriega has decided to surrender.”
Elation surged through me. We had won. A complete victory.
“He wants to be able to surrender in uniform and only to a general officer,” Laboa said.
Clearly, Noriega was trying to set himself up as a prisoner of war who would be afforded Geneva Conventions rights. In that way, he hoped to keep himself out of the U.S. courts. I knew it wouldn’t work.
“That’s acceptable,” Downing said. “What time does he want to surrender?”
“At about 8 p.m.”
“That will be fine.”
Immediately, we began preparations. I posted guards at the gates of the nunciatura, and put out the order that there were to be no photographs. I walked a couple of Delta guys through the procedure, showing them the path along which they were to escort Noriega from the nunciatura gate across Avenida Balboa, and out to a
school soccer field, which would be a helicopter landing zone. The school had an awning that ran from the entrance out to the sidewalk. I rustled up an American flag and hung it from the awning poles nearest the street. When Noriega walked out of the nunciatura, I wanted him to see it.
All right, I admit it—I was twisting the knife.
At 8:50 p.m., I saw Laboa and Noriega emerge from the front door of the nunciatura. Wearing his tan general’s uniform with his four stars, Noriega came alone through the gate. Four Delta Operators wearing camouflage stepped up, one man in front of Noriega, one behind, and one on each side. As our men escorted him across the dark avenue, Noriega tried to hold his head high, but he stumbled twice.
The surrender was simple, yet formal.
General Cisneros had every reason to hate Noriega. Prior to Just Cause, the dictator ordered his thugs to threaten and harass the Army general and his family for months. Still, Cisneros accepted the surrender without any extra dialogue.
Noriega: “Yo soy el General Noriega. Me rindo a las fuerza de los Estados Unidos.” I am General Noriega and I am surrendering to U.S. forces.
Cisneros: “Su rendición es aceptada.” Your surrender is accepted.
The Delta team then escorted Noriega to the soccer field where a Black Hawk waited, rotors already turning. The helo whisked him away to Howard AFB, where a C-130 was waiting to fly him to America, and his date with the U.S. justice system.
Ten days later, I was back in my office at Bragg when Darrell Poor walked in.
“Hey, Jerry, I’ve got something for you,” he said.
“Oh yeah? What you got?”
“Remember what you said you wanted out of the operation down in Panama?”
I shook my head, a slow smile spreading across my face. “You didn’t.”
“I did.” Darrell grinned, and held up a plastic bag with a pair of red briefs inside. “I got them when we strip searched Noriega at Howard. I had you in mind.”
Jerry Boykin & Lynn Vincent Page 20