RW04 - Task Force Blue

by Richard Marcinko

  “Affirmative—” Grose’s voice came back at me loud and clear. He might have said something else, but I couldn’t hear him because I lost my balance and went butt over coffeepot backward into the drink.

  I sputtered to the surface, still clutching the damn Cyalume stick and dog-paddled, talking trash to myself while Half Pint circled to pick me up.

  Wonder and Doc hauled my butt over the gunwale, rubbing my face raw on the rough net that lay on the wooden deck-plate. “Don’t be so anxious, Dickhead,” Wonder said sweetly as I lay there, sweating. “You’ll get plenty of opportunity to swim later.”

  “Fuck you.” I ran my hands over my vest to make sure I hadn’t dropped anything, then stood up c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y and waved the Cyalume above my head again. Grose reconfirmed our position. That meant he could guide us right where we needed to go. Talk us in like an airliner in one of those melodramatic movies like Airport.

  Even so, the transit took half an hour longer than I’d planned. It was 2120 by the time we dropped into the warm Gulf water and sidestroked our way through five hundred yards of three-foot chop, swimming south now not west because of the wind change.

  It was not an easy swim. First of all, we had no SEAL combat vests—only cheap, surplus store mesh-and-nylon imitations. SEAL vests are inflatable. They help support you in the water when you are carrying fifty or sixty pounds of equipment.

  That much? You bet. Let’s check out my load tonight. I had a Beretta 92 and three 15-round magazines of 9mm ammo secured around my waist and strapped to my right thigh. I had a CAR-15 strapped to my back and five 30-round magazines of .223 in vest compartments. Two grenades sat in vest-pocket pouches. I carried a radio. There was twelve feet of nylon climbing rope wrapped around my waist. My mask. My fins. My vest. An electrician’s screwdriver, a pair of wirecutters, and a steel pry bar were all tied to me. A Mad Dog DSU-2 knife in its molded Kydex sheath was taped to my left leg. I had my leather-and-lead shot sap safely secured in a rear pocket. And I was dressed in black cotton ripstop BDUs, which, when wet, are goddamn heavy.

  Hey, I’m fucking tired, I’m fucking cold, my fucking face fucking hurts, and we haven’t even fucking begun our fucking mission yet—we’re still in the second fucking stage, fucking insertion. (And trust me—if I don’t get a chance to fucking insert my DSU-2 in somebody’s neck soon, I’m gonna bust.)

  2200. THE PLATFORM LOOMED ABOVE US AS WE TROD WATER. IT looked like something out of a science fiction movie. From the water, they’re immense structures—skeletal, modernistic skyscrapers that towered over us. The arc lights played tricks on the water’s surface. Oil rig platforms are lit up at night. The natural gas flares can be seen for miles if the weather is clear. Halogen and sodium work lights also abound, bathing the structure in a mix of cold white and warm yellow-orange light. The catwalks have perimeter lights. The rails are strung with safety bulbs. The tall derrick has red warning lights and white flashers to make approaching chopper pilots aware of its existence. Even tonight, with clouds, occasional surface fog, and driving rain, we’d been able to pick up the platform cluster from half a mile away.

  I threw a line around one of the horizontal tubular members, looped it around my waist, and tossed the other end to Wonder. He attached himself and gave me a thumbs-up. I gave hand signals, and we removed our fins. Each man banded his swim buddy’s fins together and attached them to the back of his neighbor’s combat vest. Then we checked one another’s equipment, fore and aft.

  The water slapped my face with considerable force, and I wrapped an arm around the steel support. The seas were getting rougher now—the wind gusts were way above twenty now. I didn’t want anybody washing away. I wasn’t being sentimental—I’d need every goddamn body I had to go over the rail and get the job done.

  Doc and Gator had swum in dragging the netting, which probably weighed a fucking ton. Now, they clung exhausted to a support beam, washing up and down with the current. The netting, slung over a steel support, lay next to them. Eight feet away, Gator ran his own safety line around the steel. He tied a loop around himself with a bowline, threw the end to Doc, who looped it around his torso just under his armpits and tied off too.

  I watched as Cherry adjusted the hundred feet of lightweight climbing rope he’d swum with. He had the toughest job tonight. He had to monkey his way up the wet, slippery steel, secure a position, lower the rope, pull the netting up, and tie it down so we could all make the climb.

  I gave him a raised thumb. He saluted me with his middle finger, pointed skyward, and mouthed, “Piece of cake.”

  I knew he was a liar. I told him so and he tossed me the bird again. Then he went to work. Cherry edged his way along the support beam to Doc’s position, moving in the lull between waves so he wouldn’t wash off the steel. He removed his combat vest, which Doc attached to his own gear. Climbing was going to be hard enough. With the combat vest, it would have been nigh on impossible. Cherry kept only his knife and pistol belt. He threw the coil of rope diagonally over his shoulder, swam to a soaring, four-inch-diameter steeply inclined steel member three yards away, and pushed himself up and out of the water onto it.

  Climbing is not an easy task. The steel is wet and hence slippery. It has very little adherent surface, so you are forced to support yourself by using your arms and thighs—pushing yourself up in tiny, painful, muscle-burning increments.

  Remember when you were a kid and you tried climbing the slide pole at your neighborhood firehouse? The first five or six feet were easy. Then fatigue always set in, and you’d slide inexorably groundward. The same elements applied here. Except here, Cherry was also contending with rain, with wind, with the fact that he was wet and tired, and the knowledge that there were people above him who wanted him dead.

  He’d already plotted his course over the past day. He’d spent hours looking at the platform through the scope, making notes. So he knew exactly where he was going to go, and how he’d get there. Route was not a problem. But there were other obstacles—intangibles—tonight. Maybe it would be the weather. Maybe it would be the stress of actual combat conditions. The pucker factor is something that can never be discounted, even by those of us who have been there many times before.

  He worked his way up, six, eight, ten, fifteen, twenty feet above the surface. Each foot cost him—you could see it in his face. But he was determined not to let the fucking platform win this one. He was going to make it.

  And he did—by sheer force of will and muscle he made it—finally eased himself onto the last of the diagonals. It was a cylindrical pipe perhaps four inches in diameter, roughly thirty-five feet above the water. Cherry’s pace was deliberate, now that he was almost within reach of his goal—a small ledge six feet below the first-level grate, where he could shelter, catch his breath, and then lower the rope to the rest of us.

  He was directly above Doc and Gator when the fucking wind shifted—from the look of how it hit him it must have been a goddamn horizontal wind shear, forty miles an hour at least. The blast caught Cherry in full extension, and knocked him off balance. He swung precariously, caught the pipe with his fingertips and feet, fought until he’d almost regained his grip and footing, then slipped again, rolled topsy-turvy, lost his hold and came crashing down.

  Wide-eyed and flailing, he glanced off the beam six feet from Doc, hitting shoulder first. He would have cracked in two—except his fall was broken by the roll of climbing rope he’d coiled over his shoulder, and the wad of fishnet that lay atop the steel. Nonetheless, he hit with a sickening, dull thud. Then both the net and Cherry disappeared into the churning water.

  Doc and Gator both reacted at the same time. They immediately dove after their shipmate—and were nearly strangled by their safety rope. I already had my DSU-2 knife in my hand. I sliced through the nylon line, sheathed the blade, and launched myself toward the spot where Cherry had vanished. Wonder followed in my wake, trailing safety line.

  Going down was not going to be a problem—I was weighted by my equi
pment. But swimming? I had no fins—just the mask—and getting the twenty yards to where I’d seen Cherry go down was going to be a struggle. Instinctively, I knew that it would be better to make my way underwater. I kicked below the surface and breaststroked toward where I thought he’d be.

  The water was black and I had no light—Mr. Murphy again—I simply hadn’t thought to bring one. I descended by scissors-kicking with my legs while I probed the water in front of me with my hands. At about three fathoms I grasped something. Cloth. Combat vest. Body. I pulled it close as its hands grappled frenzied touchie-feelie with mine. We came mask to mask. It was Doc. We released, pushed off, and kept moving.

  I ran out of breath, surfaced, inhaled a lungful of air and dove again. I was fucking frantic. I went down three, four fathoms, trying to pattern search as I kicked. Nothing. I fought my way back up. The ambient light from the oil-rig platform made the surface look like an antique silver mirror from below—and as I broke it and spat water I hoped I wasn’t going to have seven years of bad luck starting now.

  Wonder surfaced two yards away, wild-eyed. He coughed up a half-pint of seawater and shouted, “Anything?”

  I shook my head, took a deep breath, and went under again.

  I caught a glimmer, perhaps ten or fifteen yards below me—no way of computing distance in the dark—and swam toward it. As I got closer I saw light. Then I made out shape—shapes. It was Gator, and he was wrestling with something. I moved fast—kicking toward him with every ounce of energy I could summon. I came down to his position. God bless Gator. He had his shipmate. Cherry was unconscious—there was no movement. None at all. He was tangled in the netting and the rope.

  Then I saw Gator’s face—it had turned blue behind the mask. He’d run out of air and he knew he didn’t have the strength to bring Cherry to the surface. But he wasn’t going to let his buddy go until the cavalry arrived.

  I grabbed Cherry’s inert form and wrestled the light out of Gator’s hand. I nodded vigorously to let him know I was okay and then pointed toward the surface—get your ass the hell out of here. Even then, Gator hesitated before kicking off—that’s the bond between shipmates. I shone the light in Cherry’s face. No sign of life. I waved it in circles, trying to attract attention, while I scissors-kicked to move us up, up, up.

  God, he was heavy. The weight of the net and rope was pulling me down even though I was using all the strength in my legs to force us toward the surface. Then a second diver appeared out of the darkness—it was Wonder. He grabbed the net and began to work Cherry free of it. That allowed me to get the DSU-2 out of its sheath and slice the tangle from Cherry’s body.

  Wonder took the net and rope and kicked off. Now I began to make progress. Doc found me—he got Cherry around the waist and the two of us fought our way up, toward the shimmery brightness above.

  I thought my lungs were going to burst by the time we broke surface, but there was no time to worry about me. Doc and I made our way through four-foot chop and forty-mile-an-hour surface winds to the platform corner—where the horizontal members joined the huge vertical shafts. I began to lift Cherry out of the water, but Doc waved me off.

  He threw his own arm over the beam to steady himself in the turbulent water. “Dick—hold him steady, now—real steady.”

  I propped an arm under Cherry’s upper back to help keep him afloat.

  “Don’t get near his neck, goddammit.” Doc fumbled one-handed in his vest pocket and retrieved one of his Ziploc bags. He looked inside, cursed, slid it back into the vest, and retrieved another. He opened the seal of this one with his teeth, and with one hand extracted a white, horse-collar-shaped piece of plastic about five inches wide.

  There was a small tube and screw valve attached to one corner of the collar. Very painstakingly, he eased the collar around Cherry’s neck, then gently blew into the tube. The plastic doughnut inflated, immobilizing Cherry’s neck.

  Doc closed his vest pockets, hoisted himself out of the water, and straddled the steel support. “Okay, okay—now we move him onto the beam.”

  Wonder and Gator had arrived, although I hadn’t noticed them until now. The three of us floated Cherry next to the support, trying to keep him level in the choppy water.

  Doc wasn’t happy with the way we were doing our jobs. “Easy, dammit!” He reached down, took Cherry under the shoulders, eased him up onto the ten-inch-wide beam, and lay him flat.

  Doc felt alongside Cherry’s neck. His eyes told me we were in trouble. “No pulse,” he said to himself. From another pocket he withdrew a second waterproof envelope. He unsealed it, and extracted a small penlight. Gently, he raised Cherry’s eyelids and shone the light downward. He turned it off and pocketed it. “Fuck.”

  He rolled off the beam into the water. “Dick—get up there, hold his shoulders down. But don’t screw with his neck.”

  I did as I was ordered.

  Doc hand-over-handed down the beam, pulled himself aboard two feet below Cherry’s body, then worked his way back. He spread Cherry’s legs, threw open his BDU blouse, and began cardio-pulmonary resuscitation. “One, two, three, four, five—” He did the chest compressions, counting cadence as he rocked back and forth. “Dick—c’mon. What the fuck are you waiting for?” He nodded toward Cherry’s face.

  I bent over, careful not to disturb the neck collar, opened Cherry’s mouth, held his nose shut, and blew air into his lungs.

  “One, two, three, four, five …” Doc counted the cadence. Five chest compressions. One blow. Five compressions. One blow. Five compressions. One blow.

  We kept it up for half an hour with no result. Doc shook his head. “He’s gone, Dick.”

  I wasn’t willing to give up. “Come on—”

  Doc put his penlight beam into Cherry’s blank eyes. “C’mon, Dick—take a good look. He’s had it.”

  I ran a hand over my sweating face and rolled into the water to cool myself off from the rage that boiled within. Then I took the safety rope from Wonder. Carefully, we lashed Cherry to the beam. I looked at the faces of my shooters as we gently tied him down. Their intensity was ineffable. Their resolution to win was palpable. They would take no prisoners tonight—their expressions told me that. Wonder placed his right hand on Cherry’s chest in farewell. Gator and Doc did the same. So did I. We didn’t say anything. We didn’t have to. We knew what we had to do.

  2254. Gator made the climb to set the net ladder. He didn’t like it, but he did it. I was getting nervous and wasn’t about to wait for the second Zodiac crew to arrive—I wanted to get up and ready to go. So I volunteered his ass to do the job. We watched from the water as he worked his way up the beam, shinnied across the diagonal support, and climbed the vertical. Sweating and nervous, he reached the shelf Cherry’d been going for, tied off, lowered the rope, and hauled the netting up.

  It was a tough climb. Wonder went first, then Doc, then me. I’d slashed at the net to clear it off Cherry’s body, and the DSU-2 had weakened it considerably. So instead of climbing, they had to pull themselves up, arm over arm, legs finding what toeholds they could. But their rage carried them up it, inch by painful inch.

  I stayed in the water. I wanted to use the radio and I wasn’t about to do it where I could be overheard by anybody on the rig. I gave Grose a sit-rep—he wasn’t happy with my news, either—and asked him for one, too. He told me the Zodiac was on its way, and that he’d be standing by.

  Then it was my turn to climb. I hate climbing. I am a big, dense motherfucker, and it takes a certain effort to get my weight up a rope ladder. By the time I arrived on the catwalk fifty feet above the water, I was physically exhausted, emotionally wrung out, mentally drained, and sore in every goddamn extremity. Even my fucking cuticles hurt.

  2342. Nasty, Duck Foot, Pick, Rodent, and Half Pint made their way up the improvised caving ladder. They’d seen Cherry’s body, and from the grim expressions on their faces I could see they wanted revenge. We would extract it, too. That is the Warrior’s way.

 
Let me take just a minute here to explain about the Way of the Warrior. From the Old Testament warriors of Canaan, to the Spartans, to the Roman Centurions, to the Japanese Samurai, right down to my current generation of SEALs, all true Warriors have always had a few basic qualities in common.

  Yes, Warriors have a deep-seated need to win. Yes, they must be proficient in the ways of death. And, yes, they must also be ready to die—at one with themselves, and with their world. Those qualities are perhaps the most obvious ones.

  But Warriordom is more than skin deep—or “win” deep, for that matter. It is a code, a philosophy, by which you live your life. It is the unique way you inhabit and relate to the world around you, which separates the Warrior from everyone else.

  All Warriors have a quiet, understated, yet profound sense of integrity. All Warriors are true to themselves, and to their sense of absolute honor, no matter what the personal or professional consequences. Warriors never rest: they are constantly looking for ways in which to improve their abilities and expand their minds. Warriors always trust in themselves to survive and to persevere, no matter what the odds.

  There is more, too. A Warrior also never lets a comrade’s death go unanswered. We follow the tradition transmitted by the Unnameable Name to Moses in the twenty-first chapter of the book of Exodus: “Thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”

  0010. I led the way. We went over the rail just port of the bulk-storage tanks, and split up into two-man hunter-killer groups, moving quickly across the metal grating of the deserted deck. Gator, who’d been swim-buddied with Cherry, insisted on working alone. I gave him Cherry’s .223 magazines and turned him loose. You may disagree with that decision, but you’re not here—and I am. See, there are times when rage becomes so great that a man has to be allowed to do certain things. This was one of them.