RW04 - Task Force Blue

by Richard Marcinko

  Wonder and I made our way along the perimeter rail, past the tank area, to the pump station. There, I attached an IED to the generator, and set the timer. The charge was large enough to disable, but small enough so that the damage would be confined. Next, we worked our way past the pipe-stowage area, and took one of the catwalk ramps that rose toward the main deck.

  Our preassigned goal was the control module—that’s where the offices, with their communications and security equipment, would be located. It was also where the bad guys would probably be waiting for us.

  Now, you are probably wondering why I just didn’t sneak aboard, set charges of C-4 that would drop the whole damn rig into the water, and haul my ass out of there. Well, first of all, PP-22 sat amidst a cluster of rigs, and even though they were deserted, I didn’t want to draw a lot of attention to what I was doing. If we were gonna blow things up, we had to do it with discretion. Well, okay, we could use C-4, too. Second, I wanted to preserve evidence. We knew they had lots of illegal goodies on board, and I needed to be able to show them off without having to dive 150 fathoms for ’em. And third, while dropping a platform might be fun, destroying the rig would only make my personal situation more … shall we say … complicated.

  It was awfully quiet out there. No sign of resistance so far—which only served to tell me that they were (1) all asleep, or (2) waiting in ambush positions to kick our asses. I wished we’d had radios with lip mikes and ear pieces, so I could stay in touch with my men. But we didn’t. So we’d each complete our assignments and tell one another about it over brewskis at Miller Time.

  I moved slowly. I forced myself to breathe evenly, keeping my rage in check. Cherry was the youngest SEAL I’d chosen for SEAL Team Six. He was a plank owner—one of the original seventy-two shooters I’d chosen to form a unit in my own image. I’d selected him because he was willing to learn; because he wanted to be the best; because he’d convinced me that he’d never, never quit. And he never had—right up until the end. Losing him was like losing one of my own children—and whoever was responsible for his death was going to pay for it.

  But my rage was not going to make me act precipitously. I have lost men in battle before, and (although it has taken me some effort) I have learned how to deal with it. Instead of reacting badly—basically going berserk—I now channel my anger. I let it take me to new heights of action and destruction. I allow its energy to make me a more proficient, deadlier warrior.

  Cherry’s soul—his Warrior’s spirit—was instilled within each of us on this oil rig platform tonight. Imbued with his energy, his talent, and his passion for war we would kill more of our enemies, and kill them better.

  I saw the first of them as I pulled myself up by my fingertips over the top of the wireline-logging unit, which sat atop an eight-foot steel platform that was braced on the seaward side. Wonder and I had eschewed the easy route and worked our way around the outside of the platform, inch by painful inch. I gritted my teeth and pulled my nose level with the logging unit. He was dressed like a Ninja. Wearing body armor. Carrying a suppressed MP5. Stretched prone atop a Conex box just off the left side of the unit I was dangling from. A second Ninja lay at a forty-five-degree angle to the first; his field of fire would pick up anything Ninja One missed.

  Cautiously, I lowered myself by my fingertips until my feet rested safely on metal grating. Using silent signals, I gave Wonder a sit-rep. I didn’t have to explain what we’d have to do. Then, resting my back against the steel plate wall of the logging unit, I ever so gently set my CAR-15 on the deck. We had no suppressors, and I wasn’t about to let them know we were in the neighborhood—yet.

  Wonder carefully laid his own CAR on the deck, tapped the Marine-issue Ka-Bar on his belt, gave me the finger, and began to work his way around to the left, so as to move up behind Ninja Two while staying out of Ninja One’s sight line.

  As Wonder skulked off, I fingertipped myself back up onto the logging unit until my nose poked over the top. I hauled myself up inch by inch. Talk about fucking fatigue. You try this sometime when you’re wearing wet BDUs, a heavy combat vest, and you’ve just pulled yourself up fifty-something feet of netting and wet steel pipe from a pounding sea.

  Finally, I worked my way on top of the logging unit. But I wasn’t in a position to rest. I had to slip my DSU-2 out of its sheath and, ever so s-l-o-w-l-y, begin to edge forward, toward Ninja One’s back.

  Remember when I told you about ambush techniques? Well, it appeared as if we’d come upon a rear-security position. Problem—for them—was, they’d expected us to emerge from a narrow channel between modular steel boxes. And instead, Wonder and I had instinctively come through the back door—slipped over the rail and worked our way hand-over-hand around the edge of the perimeter, dangling by fingertips from the nasty sharp grate decking. Sure I was sore. Sure my hands hurt like hell—especially because I wasn’t wearing gloves—but the good news was that we had bypassed all the obvious chokepoints where the nasties had set their ambush and were now approaching the control module from the back door.

  When you move against a position like this one you do it in increments of less than an inch at a time. Your muscles burn. Everything you do is amplified by a factor of ten. It felt as if it took me half an hour to creep the seven or so feet from my initial sighting, to striking distance, even though in real time it was less than a minute. You can’t take longer, because at the sort of proximity I was operating, you give off vibes, and the son of a bitch is gonna feel ’em, turn around, and wax your ass dead.

  I was lucky this time—I caught him unaware from behind and managed to cover his nose and mouth with my left hand. There are a number of what are known in the killing trade as high-payoff targets when you are attacking with a knife from the rear. First are the occipital and cervical nerves, which can be found where the occipital bone of the skull joins the atlas bone and meets the first of seven cervical vertebrae. In words of one syllable or less, I’m talking about the base of da skull. Also effective are the subclavian arteries—huge blood vessels originating at the top of the heart that carry the main supply of blood to the arms. They come out of the heart, loop over the lungs, and can be reached by striking downward through that soft, triangular area between neck and shoulder bones. There are the internal and external carotid arteries, which are also found in the neck area. (Those can be attacked by using the old carotid and stick technique.)

  Now, those of you who are squeamish may want to skip the next three or four paragraphs. For those of you who are not, let’s talk a little bit about death by blade, starting with what’s known in Hollywood as throat slitting.

  My first guideline on the subject has always been that it is better to cut the carotid and jugular from the side—sticking the knife blade edge-to-front—that is, facing forward, and cutting away from you—than it is to cut across the neck, blade facing the rear, as you often seen done in the movies.

  Let me explain why. By plunging your blade into the side of your opponent’s neck, you will not only sever your target’s jugular, but the blood will immediately drain into the dying man’s windpipe, making it harder for him to scream and raise an alarm. Moreover, if you cut backward through the front of his throat, you are going to get a lot of blood spraying in all directions.

  Unlike those Hollywood movies, cutting a human throat in real life is not a quick, clean act. The front of the throat is tough—there are lots of sinews there, not to mention the sternocleidomastoid and trapezius muscles, which are harder to cut than pronounce. We’re talking tough tissue here, folks. So, if you do not have a serrated blade—Roy Boehm actually used to take his USG-issue Ka-Bar and cut saw teeth into it before he went out and committed death by blade on his enemies—your knife will probably not slit deep enough and nasty enough to do the job.

  Believe me, I have been there, and I can tell you from firsthand experience that it takes a real effort to sever a man’s throat cutting front to back. And if you merely slash him without carving the jugular a
nd carotid clean through, you will simply make your opponent mad. Another thing to think about is the fact that blood stinks when you come upon it in great quantities, and if you get it on you, you will stink, and thus your enemies will know you’re in the ’hood. Doom on you.

  Blood is also slippery—if it sprays, you may lose your grip on your knife, as well as your hold on the victim, who then staggers off raising what Shakespeare liked to call “stern alarums.” Doom on you again. It only makes sense, therefore, to want to keep as much of the blood inside the bad guy’s body as you possibly can.

  That’s why the subclavian assault works so well. You shut off the bad guy’s air supply with one hand, then ram the knife down into the subclavian area, working it around nicely, so that you cut both artery and vein. Then you penetrate down, past the lungs, cutting as you go, penetrating toward the heart area. If your blade is long enough (and mine certainly was) it will puncture the aorta and cause terminal injury, while a majority of the blood stays in the body.

  Now, since the asshole in front of me was lying prone, I had to make sure that I could wrap him up neatly before I stuck his subclavian. I came at him from his eight o’clock. The rain and water noise helped shield my approach. In fact, the first notice he took of me was when I looped my left arm around his neck, caught his nose and mouth, and stuck the blade—which is a full quarter of an inch thick and six and five-eighths inches long—up into his kidney area.

  That sure got his attention. He sucked air—except there was nothing to suck because I had him by the mouth and nose. But he did exactly what I wanted him to do—he rolled away from me. That allowed me to get some leverage on him and work myself up to where I could pull the knife out of his back and get it nestled in the shoulder area.

  Slight prob, people. The subclavian stroke requires a downward thrust. That means you gotta change your grip from the kidney thrust.

  See, when I hit him in the kidneys, I was holding the knife blade forward—thumb and forefinger wrapped around the grip next to the blade guard. Now, I had to flip it so that I could hold it in a stabbing grip—blade downward.

  Have I said that I wasn’t wearing gloves? Have I told you that my fingers were sore and stiff?

  I’m not making excuses here, except that in rotating the blade in my right hand while my left hand was busy snuffing the breath out of Mr. Ninja One, the DSU-2 came out of my grip and landed on the Conex box, whereupon Mr. Ninja—now struggling for some absurd reason as if his life depended on it—kicked the fucking thing off the edge.

  The good news was that losing my knife freed my right hand. Which I immediately applied to his throat, trying like hell to crush his Adam’s apple, thorax, and anything else I could get my sore Slovak fingers around.

  We lay there thrashing for a few seconds. But I am a big motherfucker, and I was madder than he was, and I managed to hit him in the face with my forearm half a dozen times—which was enough to put him down. I broke his neck to make sure he wouldn’t bother us again, rolled onto my back, and tried to stop hyperventilating.

  Wonder tapped me on the knee. I looked down. He had hold of my knife by the blade, and handed it to me without a word but with a look so disapproving that it reminded me of the first time the priests caught me doing the dirty deed they’d guaranteed would give me the hairy palms I’ve got today.

  I shrugged. Wonder, who has precious little tolerance for the dropping of any weapon, gave me the one-fingered salute, followed by the silent signal for, I’ve done my job neatly, and you’ve done yours messily as usual, so let’s get the hell out of here, asshole.

  Who was I to contradict such wisdom? I checked my corpse for intel (Wonder’d obviously already finished searching his because he was watching me impatiently), and finding none, I picked up my CAR and moved on.

  0017. SHF—Shit Hit Fan—time. First, three big explosions. That would be Pick—our EOD specialist. His first job tonight was to take out the rig’s antennas—radio, VHF, telephones, and anything else he found. We didn’t want the bad guys telling anybody what was happening out here.

  Right on the first explosions’ concussion, came a second series of blasts—these somewhat more muffled. That would be Gator, disabling the rig’s electrical generators. Almost immediately, I heard automatic weapons fire from the doghouse area—controlled bursts of staccato .223, and the slightly more resonant choppa-choppa of 9mm.

  Well, with surprise lost, there was no reason to be stealthy anymore. Wonder and I formed up and moved quickly down between modules, our weapons covering opposing fields of fire. If the Ninja I’d killed was rear security, then the main ambush force would be spread out ahead of us.

  I pulled one of my two grenades out of its pouch, pulled the pin, and held the spoon down with my hand. We moved quickly and made noise to draw attention to ourselves. Why? Because I wanted somebody to panic and fire before we’d entered the point-of-no-return killing ground. We’d see them before they saw us and we could counter—return force with force.

  We came to a chokepoint—Conex box to our right, rectangular steel module to the left. Ramp ahead, leading to the crew quarters and control area access. I popped the spoon, counted two, then rolled the grenade down the grating as Wonder and I secured ourselves behind the Conex box.

  There was an explosion and screams. We charged toward the sound. I went first, with left-hand field of fire. Something moved and I squeezed off a three-round burst, cutting it down. Muzzle flash at my ten o’clock. I answered it—and hit something. A ricochet caught me in the cheek and I felt blood on my face. Something else tagged me in the leg. I’d forgotten just how nasty oil-rig platforms are to fight on. Everyfuckingthing is made of metal, and rounds—especially ball ammo with its solid, copper-coated bullet—carom like goddamn billiard balls.

  At SEAL Team Six we’d developed special, frangible rounds for assaults like this one. But that was then, and this was now, and we had to do with what we had to do, if you catch my drift. So I took my dings and kept going, firing at everything that moved.

  Down the ramp and onto the control module access platform. A body to my left—inert. I put a round into its head anyway. Two more at eleven o’clock—heads and torsos and sub-guns coming up in my direction. I didn’t think. I just reacted—my CAR spitting controlled bursts of three. Sight-acquire-fire, sight-acquire-fire, just like I’d trained my men to do, shooting at six-inch steel knockdown plates from five, seven, ten, and fifteen yards. And these assholes went down just like the goddamn steel plates did at the range.

  “Cover—” I knelt and exchanged mags while Wonder gave me protection, then did the same for him. We moved another six yards and were within striking distance of the control module hatch when we were blindsided by a long burst of fire from above. I tucked and rolled to my left, sucking steel wall and flattening myself against the grating.

  “Fuck me—” Wonder tried to make himself invisible, too, as well-aimed rounds from above clanged off the steel plates three inches above our heads.

  I pointed skyward. “Derrick?”

  “Prob’ly. Maybe the—fuuuck—monkey board.” He winced as he caught a tiny fragment of ricochet above his ear and commenced bleeding. The monkey board was the protected cage where the derrick man worked. It sat attached to the derrick, about fifty feet above the deck, and directly to our left. It was a high-ground position that gave whoever was shooting from it a commanding location, from which they could fire almost directly down onto the deck. It had to be neutralized—and quick.

  I pulled my radio from its pouch. “Anybody on the monkey board? Fire coming from there—we’re pinned down just south of the control module and it’s fuckin’ time to move.”

  “Working the prob, Skipper—” Nasty’s voice came back at me. “Duck Foot’s on his way.”

  “Roger that.” I was glad to hear the problem was being addressed, but I wished he’d get there already. We were way behind the schedule I was keeping in my head.

  That schedule, incidentally, already had u
s opening the single hatch of the control module, which lay straight ahead of us. It was a watertight affair, with two handles. Now, if I’d been a Limey—that’s British SAS—or a Frog—that’s French GIGN—shooter, I would have simply cracked the door and tossed a concussion grenade inside, then followed up with full-fire automatic, raking the room side-to-side, and up-and-down. I think of it as O-K Corral technique—effective but very, very messy.

  But, as you all have probably realized by now, I am a scrupulously neat and habitually tidy person. Besides, I wanted what was inside the control module to remain more or less intact—it’s easier to gather intelligence that way, and we were suffering from a distinct lack of intel. Therefore, Wonder and I would do things the old-fashioned way. Instead of O-K Corral, we’d do Iwo Jima: we’d take the fucking room down inch by damn inch.

  I looked at Wonder. A long rivulet of blood ran down behind his right ear, smudging and disappearing into the collar of his wet BDU shirt. He’d taken another fragment of something on his cheek, which now looked as if he’d cut himself badly while shaving. His eyes were red from all the saltwater, and his skin was puckered white from the cold.

  He caught me staring. “Whatcha looking at?”

  Well, he was beautiful and I was admiring him. So I said, “You’re not only fucking ugly, you’re a fucking mess.”

  He takes compliments well, Wonder does. Especially when we’re being shot at. “What’s your point? You look about half-past shit yourself right now.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s because I left my tux at home.” I ducked and scrunched my neck, so as to escape a new burst of fire from above. “We can’t sit here all day.”

  Wonder nodded in agreement. “So?”

  I pointed. “Six yards and we’re home.” And, in fact, there was a chest-high wind wall just to the right of the control module hatchway, which would shield us from fire. If we could make that six yards unscathed.