RW04 - Task Force Blue

by Richard Marcinko

  Nor did I. Despite the fact that Wonder had given me a list of all the Pajar rigs, I didn’t want us so far behind the Helen G. Kelley that we couldn’t determine exactly which platform in a particular cluster the ship was going to “service.” Our top speed was just over eight knots—which would put us an hour from any rig if we were fifteen thousand yards behind the target ship. I knew that the trailer could be hoisted aboard a platform and camouflaged in about twenty-five minutes under calm sea conditions. If they accomplished that, we’d have to board and search every rig in the cluster.

  But, of course, they wouldn’t hide. Grose had predicted—and he was right, that they’d do everything right out in the open, so we could see where the Helen G. Kelley was going, and follow right into their trap. As if to prove his point, they cut south in a shallow arc, moving away from the oil-rig clusters and into the open Gulf, making it easier for us to shadow them.

  I could have been mistaken, but I almost thought I saw Grose actually wink at me. I responded by reaching into the fridge and grabbing two Coors Lights. I tossed one to Grose and popped the other myself. I inclined the can in his general direction. “Fuck you very much for everything you’re doing for us,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”

  Grose took a long pull on the Coors and flexed his left arm so that the topless blue hula dancer tattooed on his big bicep wriggled her hips and stuck out her boobs.

  It was truly rewarding to see him have so much fun.

  1420. The Helen G. Kelley turned due north and cut her speed from seven to five knots.

  1452. She turned west again, maintaining a steady 29.283 degrees latitude. Her speed dropped to under four knots.

  1535. North again. Now she veered toward a cluster of oil platforms at 88.125 West, 29.301 North.

  We went to eight knots and turned up the intensity of the radar. What had been a solid mass on the screen now separated into six separate islands, shaped in a rough crescent, running on a northwesterly axis.

  I called an all-hands. From here on, there would be no more than three people visible at any time—and we’d all dress as much alike as possible. The old stage manager’s rule applied here. That rule says, “If you can see the audience, the audience can see you.”

  1554. We closed to within four and a half miles. I pulled Grose’s twenty- to sixty-power spotting scope out of its locker, went on deck, trained it on the Helen G. Kelley like an old-fashioned pirate’s spyglass, and focused. I could make out the figures on her deck. “Let’s back off some,” I suggested to Grose.

  He nodded in agreement, and we veered away, finally settling in six miles from the rig cluster. Grose let out a sea anchor, dropped two fishing lines into the water for camouflage, set a tripod on the foredeck and attached the spotting scope.

  Have you ever used a sixty-power spotting scope? Well, it ain’t easy. The image field is very, very narrow when the damn thing is turned up all the way. It’s hard enough to keep things in sight when you’re on dry land. Here, with the Grand Banks sitting in three-foot swells and humping up and down, it was nigh on impossible. I unscrewed the damn thing from its mount and played Blackbeard, keepin’ me peeper on the nasty rascals whilst I thought of mischievous ways to make ’em all walk the plank, har, har, har.

  1602. The Helen G. Kelley edged up to the largest of the drilling platforms—the one at the very top of the crescent. It approached from the easternmost side, where a huge, skeletal crane cantilevered over the water.

  I dropped the power back to thirty and gave the platform a quick peek-peek. It was a drill rig, not a pumping station, and its huge main derrick had a wind wall over the middle third, right next to the monkey board, where the derrick man had his control-panel cubicle. On it, PP-22 was written in two-foot-high characters. Next to that was the same sheaf of wheat design the Helen G. Kelleyhad on her single stack—LC Strawhouse’s company logo.

  I began to look at things carefully—and realized that my work was not going to be easy. If you were a Navy or Coast Guard vessel sailing past PP-22, and you ran your glasses over it quickly, you’d probably notice nothing peculiar or unusual. It had all the bells and whistles common to these platforms. Two twelve-man motor-driven lifeboats hung in davits on the northeast side. The platform’s explosives locker was isolated—suspended on the southeastern hull column and protected by a blast wall that would channel any explosion straight up. There were two-three-four cranes, and a long gas-flare arm that sat high above the water at the side of the platform farthest away from the chopper pad. I had to squint to see the blue-white flame burning hot in the afternoon sky. At night, it could probably be seen for miles. There was a basketball backboard and hoop attached to a bulkhead by the chopper pad. There was a dive locker—its door marked by the white square bisected by diagonal red stripe universal DIVER BELOW flag. Kilroy was even there, too—his face had been graffiti spray-painted on one of the steel oil-processing modules.

  But there were things that made my neck hair stand on end—things I have trained myself to look for even when I am being my most cursory. Most rigs, for example, have one radio mast. This one had three. It also had a VHF antenna, and a small dish that could either be a direct-broadcast satellite receiver, or a SATCOM antenna, capable of secure communications. There were also two radar domes, as well as one rotating antenna.

  I also noted that the modular units were built securely, and there was lots of defendable space. See, most oil rigs have lots of nooks and crannies. That makes it hard to take ’em down. But it also affords the assault force good cover. This rig had been designed for defense. There were only a few ladders from level to level, and the bottoms of those ladders were open—no available cover—while at the tops, there was ample defendable space.

  The control module was also fortified. I saw that when the hatch was opened. The inside of the door had more handles than the outside—so it could be barred. I cranked the power to forty and looked carefully at the glass ports—windows, to you landlubbers. A quick glance would have told me nothing. But a close examination of the way they reflected light—they had an unnatural, green patina—gave away the fact that they were extra thick. Bulletproof. Class-III. They’d take an RPG at ten yards without shattering.

  1614. The Helen G. Kelley edged to its berthing station on the platform’s most protected side. A series of bumpers were thrown over the ship’s low rails to preserve the rig’s tubular members and hull columns. Then, mooring lines were tossed from the bottommost platform grate down to the ship.

  1633. I switched to binoculars and watched as a huge crane swung around, and lines were dropped and attached to the container.

  1638. The semi-trailer was hoisted aboard the main deck level of the rig. I went back to the spotting scope and watched as the huge steel box was gently set down between the chopper pad and the derrick, port of the oil-processing area and starboard of the crew modules. I passed the glasses and spotting scope to Nasty and Duck Foot, with instructions to keep a watch log of everything—and everyone—they saw. Then I called Gator and Wonder to the conn. It was time to start making sketches.

  1822. The Helen G. Kelley departed, slipping away from the platform, turning north, then west, and disappearing into the low, red sun. We’d kept a constant watch on her, and knew she hadn’t taken on any cargo. Nor, so far as we could tell, had anyone from the rig sneaked aboard. There was no way they could have without our seeing it happen.

  1900. We gathered in the Grand Banks’s main cabin and sit-repped. Our surveillance had indicated that the rig the Helen G. Kelley had berthed at was the only rig in the cluster that was inhabited. That made sense if you were using your oil rigs to camouflage other activities. Besides, every platform in this particular cluster bore the Pajar logo.

  We discussed tactics. Some of my Leprechauns wanted to hit the platform as soon as it got dark. But I vetoed that. They’d be waiting for us tonight—and I wanted the enemy tired and on edge, not keen and alert. Besides, I wanted to probe the cluster—make sure the ot
her rigs were indeed empty. And I wanted to send a boarding party to the closest rig—use it as an observation post during the night.

  Gator and Duck Foot volunteered to sneak and peek. They took my night-vision glasses, the cargo net-cum-caving ladder and a climbing rope, adequate weapons, a radio, and drinking water, dropped into the Zodiac, and chugged off as soon as it got dark.

  We watched them go from the wheelhouse. Grose pulled on his Coors and agreed that tactically, it would be better to wait. “Wear the assholes down,” he said. “Good idea.” He crushed the empty beer can in his hand and flipped it swish into a wastebasket across the cabin. “But there’s another consideration.”

  I looked at him quizzically. “Yeah?”

  “Weather. I checked the radio, and took a look at my Doppler radar. So far as I’m concerned, there’s a good chance of a front coming through tomorrow. It’s calm now—great shoot-and-loot weather. But tomorrow? No guarantees.”

  Sometimes you forget that Mr. Murphy is always in attendance. When that happens, you can count on him to remind you. Thing was, we’d have to chance it. No way was I going to go up against that platform tonight.

  Every SEAL mission is divided into six separate phases: premission, insertion, infiltration, action, extraction and exfiltration, and postmission. Each of these steps is then further broken down into a separate sequence. Sure, SpecWar is often performed seat-of-the-pants. It is, after all, unconventional warfare. But whenever possible, you plan ahead. Remember Everett Emerson Barrett’s Law of the Seven Ps—Proper Previous Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. In other words, planning is crucial to success because it allows you to see what could go wrong, and fix it before it’s too late.

  An example? Okay—take our Zodiac. We were ten men. The boat’s capacity was six. That meant two trips from Grose’s Grand Banks to the platform. First, what would our transit time to the target be? Second, how much gas would that call for? And what would happen if we had five-foot seas, not two-foot seas to contend with? Five-foot seas require more energy, hence more gasoline. Third, how long would the first group be exposed, treading water under the platform while they waited for the second contingent to arrive—and what condition would they be in because we didn’t have wet suits to help keep us warm. Would we, in fact, be better off on the platform, or in the water? It is a nasty fact that you get colder faster from wind chill than you do from water temperature.

  Get the picture? These are the sorts of things that kept me up all night, making lists, designing flow charts, and asking myself questions I couldn’t necessarily answer.

  I made a list of all the EEIs—those are Essential Elements of Information—we’d need to complete this mission successfully. I folded in Gator and Duck Foot’s report on the adjoining platforms—they were, in fact, deserted and had been for some time. I checked the position and phase of the moon, and its rise and set times. I checked Grose’s charts for sunrise/sunset as well. No need to silhouette ourselves needlessly against the horizon.

  At about 0410, Grose padded into the main cabin and reached into the reefer for a Coors. It was cool out—low sixties in the six-knot breeze, water temperature about seventy-four—but he was bare-chested, wearing only cutoffs, flip-flops, tattoos, and a fifty-year-old UDT Team watch—one of those old-fashioned, wind-up Mark II Mod 1 models with gray nylon bands they used to call “Big Watch Little Pecker” watches. He’d been out on deck, peering through the night-vision glasses, which he’d jury-rigged to his spotting scope. He dropped a small spiral pad on the table in front of me, rubbed his eyes with those big fists of his, yawned, and stretched. “Shit, Dickie, you got your work cut out for you. There are a lot of fucking people on that goddamn platform.”

  I looked at the pad he’d given me. Grose had toted up more than two dozen separate tangos. Eighteen carried descriptions. The others were noted by time and location.

  Grose finished off his Coors as he brewed a huge pot of Cafe Bustello. Damn—it smelled good. I poured myself a mug and sipped while I worked his findings into my calculations. I scratched my cheek. The list showed thirty or so bad guys, but there could have been double that number. How the hell could I know? I didn’t have any sensors. I had no parabolic mikes. No long-lens video cameras. I was goatfucked.

  Weapons? They had a shitload from which to choose. I was limited in mine. I was goatfucked.

  Defenses? I knew they’d have a bunch of things I didn’t know about. I was goatfucked.

  The longer my list got, the more I saw how much we lacked, and how much the bad guys had. The longer that list grew, the worse our chances became.

  But, my friends, there is a point at which lists such as this, no matter how well thought out, become meaningless. And at 0540, sitting at the long table in the main cabin, hunched over the legal pad, I reached said point of no return.

  You see, there are some mission elements that cannot be codified, listed, flow-charted, or annotated. They include all those wonderful, ineffable qualities my beautiful band of merry, murdering marauders had—their extraordinary combination of stamina, unstoppable will to succeed, and heart, all of which, when taken together and shaken, not stirred, combine to make truly great SpecWarriors.

  I knew that, no matter how outnumbered and outgunned they might be, they would never be outmanned or outclassed. They would persevere. Keep on. Never quit. They would never leave a swim buddy behind. They would do what it took—whatever it took—until they’d won.

  So, while the debit side of my legal pad had more annotations than the credit side, and while I was justifiably apprehensive about our chances, I knew deep in my washboard gut that we would overcome, and ultimately we would prevail. It was our destiny to do so.

  The simple yet intriguing challenge we faced was to accomplish our goal before we were all dead.

  At 1020, the wind shifted from westerly to southerly, gaining in intensity. By 1300, we had a twenty-five-mile-per-hour blast blowing the waves into a nasty four-foot chop. Much to my relief it died down by 1645, just as we began our serious preparations. Sunset was at listed 1952, and the moon was slated to rise at 2015—a workable window, although the three-quarter moon was somewhat worrisome to me. The moonlight situation was improved by the high clouds that blew in during the early part of the afternoon. It was unimproved by the winds that picked up again just after 1900—an hour and a half before we began our insertion transit.

  The plan I’d come up with was KISS-simple. We’d launch from our four-mile anchorage—a twenty-minute shot over open water to the platform cluster. The first Zodiac crew would include me, Wonder, Doc, Cherry, and Gator. Half Pint would serve as coxswain. He would drop us off six hundred yards east of the platform—the most “blind” side they had—and we would swim in, aided by the current. Once we’d swum under the target, we would lash ourselves to the pylons while Cherry climbed up and attached our improvised caving ladder. Then we would scramble up, hide in the rafters, and wait for the second boatload of shooters. We’d all stay in touch by radio. Grose would play night watchman with the spotting scope and night-vision device. He wouldn’t be able to spot for us the way a sniper might, but it was better than nothing. When all ten of us had formed up, we would make our way topside, go over the rail, and take the rig down.

  Obviously, no one had bothered to tell Mr. Murphy about this great plan, because he showed up with one of his own and imposed it on the rest of us. Oh, the launch went great. But we hadn’t gone more than a mile and a half from the Grand Banks when the wind shifted on us, moving from south to west, and bringing an unexpected rain squall. That meant swimming into the current, which is a no-no. A swimmer cannot fight more than about one knot of current. We were also facing twenty-mile-per-hour gusts here, which were blowing us off course.

  Was that a problem? You bet it was. See, we were in a small—read t-i-n-y—boat. We had no reference points by which to judge our position relative to the well-lit oil platform, which was now obscured by the rain squall. The SATCOM position finder wa
s safely aboard the Grand Banks—now two miles astern of us in the dark. Now, we had our compasses, and we had the NIS passive beacon. Using them, Half Pint steered a course by dead reckoning while the rest of us bailed water, which was by now washing over the gunwales of our overloaded Zodiac.

  Dead reckoning, you ask? Dead reckoning, friends, is the means by which you steer when you have no other way to judge your route. It is called dead reckoning, because if you reckon wrong, you will be dead.

  We knew what our compass heading had been when we left the Grand Banks. Now, Half Pint tried to keep us straight on that course while adjusting for wind and waves. The problem, of course, was that we really had no idea where we were going. The rain picked up. We were all soaked through—it was probably colder out in the air than it was in the water. But I wasn’t about to find out—yet.

  We Zodiac’d through the chop for another sixteen minutes when Grose broke radio silence. “You assholes are way off course,” he growled. “You’re about two miles east of where you want to be.”

  I was cold and I was wet. Now I was two miles off course, too. How did he know?

  “Because I’m watching you numb-nuts in the goddamn night-vision glasses, you shit-for-brains pencil-dicks. I can see you every five minutes or so, bobbing around like a fucking cork out there. I thought you were making a tactical sweep until just now when it occurred to me that you’d fucked up. Didn’t any of you dipshits ever learn to navigate?”

  A huge lightbulb went off right above my head. I grabbed an infrared Cyalume light stick out of my vest, bent it to activate it, then stood up, holding the plastic tube high above my head while I fought for balance in the heaving, pitching inflatable. “Grose—can you see this?”