Finally—and this is really a last resort—you can get inside a 727 by opening the baggage compartment and coming through the cabin decking. It is noisy, inefficient, and can lead to disaster, so I tend not to use it, except sometimes when I want to insert a fiber-optic cable and fisheye video camera into the cabin floor, using a silent drill. That way I can see where the tangos are.
Such ops, however, can only be accomplished if there’s people flow around the aircraft—mechanics, fuel-tanker jockeys, food handlers, and other miscellaneous types—to cause a diversion. Here, the aircraft sat in an isolated location because its tires had been shot out as it taxied prior to takeoff. After that incident, the tangos had allowed no one on board: no food deliveries, no water, not even an APU—that’s an auxiliary power unit—attachment, which would allow the plane such creature comforts as air-conditioning, toilet flushing, and the like. Eight hours ago, one passenger who suffered a heart attack—it proved fatal—had been released. They’d allowed an ambulance to approach, but two tangos carrying submachine guns and goddamn LAWs antitank rockets had watched the medics closely, so there’d been no chance for any hanky-panky by the authorities.
And, as I told you before, no one had even spoken directly with the tangos. There’d been no real negotiating. All communication had been over the pilot’s radio. So we hadn’t been able to use voice stress analyzers or any of the other tools commonly available to provide us with a psychological profile of the bad guys.
Here, in a nutshell, is everything we knew:
The tangos called themselves the ADAM Group, ADAM standing for Alpha Detachment, American Militia. They did not say where they were from, or what cause they were promoting.
The ADAMs had boarded the plane in San Juan, knowing that SECNAV was on board.
The pilot said that the ADAM gunmen had told him they had evidence SECNAV had concluded a secret agreement with the Colombian military—an agreement that the U.S. Navy would turn a blind eye to the thousands of tons of cocaine being exported to the United States. They had taken her hostage to protest her action. Their original goal—now stymied—had been to fly back to Colombia to make her renounce the treaty.
Since the plane had been prevented from leaving, the ADAMs now shifted their demands. They demanded to speak to LC Strawhouse, a California billionaire who has been making noises about running for president on every media outlet from Larry King and the Home Shopping Network to Rush Limbaugh, and G. Gordon Liddy’s radio call-in shows.
When I asked, nicely, thrice, about the situation, La Muchacha grudgingly told me that FBI Washington had made contact with Strawhouse’s people, but the Californian was unavailable.
When the hijackers were informed that LC Strawhouse couldn’t talk to them, they went batshit. Fiftyfive minutes after they’d been told about LC Strawhouse, they killed one of the NIS agents and tossed his body onto the tarmac. They promised to kill the other one just after it got light—all the better for the TV cameras, we surmised—followed by one civilian per hour, until LC himself came and met with them.
The airport manager, who was handling the negotiations until a professional arrived, raised the plane from the tower radio and asked if they’d be willing to talk to a high administration official—the secretary of defense, perhaps, or the attorney general. The answer was an unequivocal no. What about the vice president? The tangos said it was LC Strawhouse, or no one. If he didn’t show, the executions would start in three hours.
Those were the facts. Additional information? There was very little. Had anyone ever heard of the ADAM group? Sergeant Bob chewed, chawed, and shook his head nope. According to La Muchacha, the FBI had washed the name through its computer and come up dry. They had the Michigan Militia (who didn’t?) and half a dozen other groups from the region, but no word on ADAM. It wasn’t on any of my lists, either.
Still, the fact that they’d targeted SECNAV so accurately told me ADAM had obtained good tactical intelligence—better tac intel, in fact, than we had been given right now. SECNAV Crawford’s trip hadn’t been prominently covered in the press—and her schedule hadn’t been made public at all. Yet they’d managed to secure it, get aboard the right flight during its San Juan stopover, and commandeer the plane.
How had they gotten their weapons on board? The answer to that, friends, is depressingly simple. They got them on board because the goddamn airlines normally pay more to their baggage handlers than they do to their security guards. The folks who toss your suitcases around have union contracts, health plans, and pensions. The folks who check bags going through the X-ray machines generally make minimum wage. They’re not even airline employees, but temps, hired sans benefits, from a body broker.
Now, at what motivation level do you think they operate? If you answered “slim to none,” pour yourself a Bombay and let me get back to work. Frankly, it’s wet and cold out here and I’d like to get this fucking thing over with so I can change clothes, then find some cold beer and hot pussy. This is Margaritaville, after all, ain’t it?
Now, the best scenario in cases like this one is to wait the bad guys out. It may be uncomfortable for the passengers that way, but the more time these things take, the more chance they’ll end peacefully. That best-case scenario went out the window thirty minutes ago when the NIS agent was murdered and the killing-of-one-hostage-per-hour threat was made. So, I called the secretary of defense’s command post—I actually got through this time—told the fourstriper on duty what had happened, and explained that in my not-so-humble opinion, the FBI’s team was a nonstarter.
She called SECDEF’s aide, who called the boss at home. Fifteen seconds later his voice came on-line and told me he was going to put me on hold while he called the White House. Two minutes later, SECDEF reported that the president had given a verbal “go,” and that written confirmation would follow.
That was good enough for me. I gathered my men and told them we were taking the goddamn aircraft down—now.
Well, “now” was relative. When I told La Muchacha I’d been given the go-ahead, and asked her for a little ayuda—that’s help in Espanol—said SAC forbade me from taking any—her words—“pro-active action” until she, too, had received a “green light positive confirmation” from the attorney general’s office back in Washington that I had indeed received permission to act.
Wait a minute. Full stop. Aren’t these chain-of-command problems supposed to be worked out at cabinet level? Or subcabinet level? Or sub-subcabinet level? All I know is that they’re way above my fucking pay grade. Frankly, I thought things were reasonably clear—SECDEF had said “green light.”
But I was willing to be diplomatic. Okay, I said, here’s my cellular—phone the AG. She did. And guess what? She was told by the AG’s duty officer that no one from DOD had called the Department of Justice to let it know that the National Command Authority had unleashed the SEALs of war. That being the case, said the SAC, there was no way she was going to allow me to assault the aircraft, or, for that matter, assault the aircraft with her team.
Allow? She? I had been given authority to kick ass and take names by the fucking president of the United States and the goddamn secretary of defense. I was getting impatient with the bureaucracy. I punched up the SECDEF’s command center again, explained my predicament, and handed the phone to La Muchacha.
She may have heard but didn’t listen. So far as she was concerned, unless the orders came from Justice, they didn’t exist. Obviously, the FBI didn’t recognize the Department of Defense as a duly constituted branch of government.
Now, gentle reader, if you were to postulate that my reaction to this sorry situation was to use the dreaded Fword in a few combinations La Muchacha had never, in her sheltered Latina life, ever heard before, you would be right on target. I told her I’d ream her a new bleeping orifice into which she could insert her bleeper-blanking ROEs, and that we were going to take preemptive bleeping action before another bleeper-blanking hostage lost his life—no matter what the DOJ, the FAA, or
any other blankety-blanking alphabet-soup agency might say.
La Muchacha put a manicured forefinger in my face. She said my conduct was out of control, my language was inexcusable, and that since she had explained the ground rules once, she would not communicate with me anymore except through a Department of Justice attorney. She extracted a hundred-dollar pen from her clutch purse, wrote my name down in a Gucci notebook, and told me she would file a formal harassment protest as soon as she returned to Miami. In the meanwhile, her team would monitor what I did and report any infractions.
So much for interagency cooperation. Well, okay—her attitude meant I’d fucking finally be fucking able to go and do my fucking job. (Are you appreciating this ironic repetitive use of the F-word? Yes? Good.) Anyway, with harmony down the tubes I pulled my men into the hangar we’d appropriated so we could make final plans for the assault.
Alone, we ran all the possible combinations. We factored in Mr. Murphy at every twist and turn. And we still knew that despite all the planning, all of our training, and all of our competence, what we were about to do was so fraught with difficulty that somewhere along the line somebody would screw up—and someone would die.
I gave hand signals. Stevie Wonder came abreast of me and took point, while I relieved him and took the front end of his ladder. Since he was the ex-Recon Marine (and he liked this kind of stuff anyway), it would be his job to eliminate the tango at the bottom of the aft stairway. Normally, he’d accomplish the task by putting said bad boy out of his misery permanently. But since we wanted at least one bad boy alive—the better to ask him questions— Wonder carried a leather sap filled with lead shot that would serve the purpose as efficiently but not as terminally as the seven-inch Ka-Bar he habitually carried inverted on his assault vest.
We waited until Boy Wonder disappeared into the darkness, then began moving again. We hadn’t gone twenty feet when Mr. Murphy showed up.
“Shit.” Wonder’s voice in my earpiece.
“What’s up?” I whispered back.
“Hold up—he’s gone topside—raised the stairs.”
Had he seen us? Had we been compromised? I asked Wonder for a sit-rep.
There was no answer. I tried again. Nothing. The fucking radio was dead—or Wonder was.
What the hell do you do at times like this? The answer—so far as I’m concerned—is simple. You keep going.
Moving on hands and knees, we pressed forward, keeping ourselves in the blind spot directly just to the starboard side of the plane’s tail. It wasn’t until we got within thirty yards that I could make out details on the fuselage—that’s how bad the rain was.
The aircraft was now almost totally dark—the interior overhead lights had been turned off. That was unhappy news, too. Either the tangos had seen us coming, or they were being very careful—looking out for potential threats. I don’t like careful tangos because they’re SUCs—smart, unpredictable, and cunning suckers. I’d much rather they’d had the lights on full—interior lights would have prevented them from being able to see us coming.
We scrambled the last ten yards as fast as we could without making any noise and moved to relative safety under the belly of the plane, where we hunkered for a head shed. The stairway had indeed been raised—it was in a halfup position.
Under it, I discovered Wonder, trying to strangle his radio.
“Goddamn thing’s broken,” he stage-whispered. “Probably wet.”
SEAL radios are supposed to be waterproof. And they used to be. But these days, instead of the top-grade Motorolas I’d always specified for my units, the Navy buys bottom-bid Japanese or Taiwanese goods. Sayonara, good communications. Herro, crusterfuck.
I pointed my thumb at the stairs and mouthed, “Sit-rep?”
Wonder shrugged. “He sauntered up like the goddamn mayor of New York, closed the door, and raised the stairs,” he whispered, his lips barely moving. “I don’t think he saw me or anything—maybe just went to drain the lizard. But we can’t be sure….”
As if on cue, I heard the whine of hydraulics, and the stairway dropped. It thumped as it touched the taxiway. My squad dropped flat—almost invisible under the plane. Their weapons and the ladders were ready to go. If we were caught, at least we’d be able to give it a good shot.
God bless Wonder—his radio was already on the ground, his sap was in his hand. I snapped the thumb break on my holster and drew the USP.
There was a four- or five-second pause. Then I heard a door open somewhere above me—a faint puddle of ambient light from the stairwell exit light cut through the darkness, and I closed one eye to save my night vision.
Now I heard careful footfalls on the rough, antiskid stairwell treads.
I watched the stairs buckle ever so slightly from the weight on them. The hair on the back of my neck stood up just the way it had ever since my first combat op with Bravo Squad, Second Platoon, SEAL Team Two, when I was a wetbehind-the-balls ensign.
I went starboard. Wonder went port. No one even breathed.
He came down carefully—moving heel-toe, heel-toe, the way good point men move so as not to disturb anything or make unnecessary noise. Four feet or so above the bottom of the stairway, he stopped. I could sense him there. He was like an animal on the prowl—allowing his intuition, his instincts, to take over and protect him in this hostile environment.
He waited. I counted thirty seconds. Then he moved again, descending another three steps—just enough to allow us to draw a silent breath.
I was sure the son of a bitch heard my heart beat, because that sucker was pumping at least 140. I could hear the pounding in my ears; feel it throbbing and pulsing through my neck and wrists like a Peterbuilt semi going eighty-five through a mile-long tunnel.
The goddamn wait was interminable. I wished that he’d do something—anything.
But he didn’t. The mother just stood there—out of our sight—quietly taking it all in.
The stairway creaked. The T moved. He started around Wonder’s side. But not fast—first he planted his feet on terra firma. Then he turned. I could make out the muzzle of his SMG. It was in what we call the low ready position. This guy was good—he’d been trained.
Now he started his patrol. He began to “cut the pie”—move so as to shave the corner of the stairway, circling in a wide arc so as to gain every advantage if anyone had moved behind the stairway.
Wonder had dropped back into the shadows. He was well hidden. I slid counterclockwise, moving around the stairway to flank the tango.
I tried to move only when the bad guy did—I’d lift a foot, pause, wait, listen, and then drop my foot as I heard him do the same. The two of us were performing a deadly pas de deux.
The T stepped to the side of the stairway and stopped cold—catching me with a foot in the air. I could hear his intake of breath. He’d seen something—of course he had: Wonder’s radio.
Shit. We’d had it. Surprise was lost. Then, like a fucking moray coming out of its hole, Wonder struck before the tango could react. I heard the sap’s thwock on bone. I came around quick and caught the T as he slid onto the ground—he was so big it was like catching a damn maple tree. Wonder had hold of the SMG, so it wouldn’t make any noise. And as if that weren’t enough, the guy had a damn LAW—a Light Anti-tank Weapon—looped across his chest like a goddamn quiver. No time to waste—I cut through the strap with my CQC6 and handed the rocket pod to Nasty, who laid it carefully on the ground. We’d come back to visit that little chunk of ordnance later. Oh yeah—I wanted to know where the hell tangos were coming up with these weapons.
But I wasn’t about to ask the question now. Wonder’s eyes questioned, and I nodded. He tapped the tango again—just to be safe. I slid surgical tape out of my vest. We gagged the T, rolled him over and bound his hands, feet, and eyes. He was one bad guy who wasn’t going to go anywhere tonight.
I ran a quick pat-down. Mr. Bad-Ass was carrying two regulation U.S. Army fragmentation grenades and two extra magazines in his safari
jacket for the SMG. His wallet contained seven condoms—the guy was an obvious optimist—as well as $200 in small bills, a Michigan driver’s license in the name of Thomas Daniel Capel and bearing an Inkster, Michigan, address, a Visa credit card, a registration for a 1991 Toyota 4-Runner, a photocopy of an ad from a La Quinta, California, company called Pajar, soliciting a few good men to go into the personal protection business that had an 800 number on it, and most significantly, a military ID that told me said Capel the maple was an E-6—that’s a staff sergeant—in a military police National Guard unit based in Romulus, Michigan.
No wonder he knew how to move. No wonder he’d had access to frag grenades and automatic weapons. If the other tangos up there were similarly trained and equipped, we were in for a challenging morning, to say the very least.
0414. Time to move. I whispered into my lip mike and the team began its prelim.
Doc Tremblay and I would, appropriately enough, enter through the back door: up the aft stairway. Wonder and Grundle would take the forward hatch. They’d be responsible for securing SECNAV, because, according to the seating plan we’d gotten from the airline, SECNAV had been upgraded into first class. She had seat 2A. One of her NIS companions—the one who’d been shot—had been in 2C. The other was riding steerage—15C.
Half Pint and Pick had drawn the big galley door. And my lean, mean quickfooted shooters, Duck Foot and Cherry, and Gator and Rodent, would make their way onto the wings and through the windows.
I went first. Slowly, slowly (so as not to jar the plane at all) I crept up the aft stairway. When I reached the halfway point, still well below the top sight line, I rested my knees on the stair tread, eased a flashbang out of its pouch, and straightened the cotter pin that held the spoon in place. Yeah, I know. In the movies you always see Sly, or Jean-Claude, or Steven, or whomever pulling the pin with his teeth. Well, bub, try it sometime if you want to send your dentist’s kid to Yale—because the only thing you’re gonna get if you pull a goddamn grenade pin with your teeth, is broken teeth.
RW04 - Task Force Blue Page 3