Echo Platoon (13 page)

“Sarkesian? The guy I’m always reading about in the financial pages?”

“Biduk
—precisely.”

That added a new wrinkle. Steve Sarkesian was a rich s.o.b. who’d made his money who-knows-how. All I knew was what I read, and what I read was that the newspapers referred to him as a Washington power player of the liberal persuasion, although it was always pointed out that he had friends in high places in both political parties. He was always writing op-ed pieces in the
Wall Street Journal
and
New York Times
about economic affairs, usually slamming the free market. Well, that’s liberals for you. They support school busing but they send their own kids to private schools; they oppose investing any Social Security money in the stock market, but investments are how they fund their own retirement plans. They set up offshore corporations to escape the tax laws and other financial controls, then hire some ghostwriter to put together a series of op-ed pieces for them demanding market controls and higher taxes.

But Avi didn’t give a shit about Sarkesian’s politics. It was his friends that disturbed the Israeli. Unofficially, so far as Avi was concerned, Sirzhik was a money-laundering organization that had ties to organized crime all over the globe.

“Can you prove it?”

“No,” the diminutive Israeli answered matter of factly. “But that’s what my instincts tell me.”

Avi’s instincts were good. They’d kept him alive all these years, operating in hostile environments. And the thought of a nonprofit foundation serving as a conduit for laundering money was fascinating—and had real possibilities. But without proof . . .

The Israeli broke into my train of thought. Forget about Sirzhik right now, he was saying. We have more immediate things to deal with.

And we did. Like the fact that my arrival hadn’t gone unnoticed. I hadn’t been here for two full days yet and already Avi’s networks had picked up ripples. The Russkies and their surrogates were working overtime, gearing up for something. Mafiya goons were coming in from Tbilisi and points west. The Iranians were also on the move, although their progress was much harder to track than the Ivans.

Given the time factors and the inevitability that sooner or later (and sooner was obviously more distinct a possibility than later), some nasty miscreant would try his hardest to wax my ass, Avi wondered aloud how we should deal with this potentially dangerous situation. My answer was Keep It Simple Stupid. We would go proactive. We would take the initiative. We would kill them before they killed us. And by so doing, WE WOULD NOT FAIL.

Let me give you the Rogue’s First Rule of Engagement:
W
HEN
Y
OU
A
RE
A
TTACKED BY
E
IGHT
B
OGEYS, THE
O
NLY
Q
UESTION TO
A
SK
I
S
, “W
HICH
O
NE
D
O
I K
ILL
F
IRST
?”

The tangos who’d attacked the oil rig and ambushed the hostages had staged the raid from northern Iran. Even now, Pepperman was working on finding out where they’d come from. I suggested that once we discovered that location, we go and pay the bad guys a visit on their home turf. That would send the proper sort of message to Tehran—and the Iranians would back off for a while.

Then, we’d go after the Armenian separatists who’d been killing foreign targets—and send a similar cease-and-desist message to Moscow. We’d hit ’em both on their home turf. Hit ’em hard and mercilessly.

“You want to
hock
everybody’s
choiniks,”
Avi said, using the Yiddish phrase for rattling teacups.

“You got it. We hit ’em as a way of saying ‘Fuck you—strong message follows.’ Then we watch. We see who blinks. Who reacts. We watch how they play. And then we kick it up a couple of notches. We work our way up the chain of command, and when we get to the top, we cut the head off.”

From the look on Avi’s face, he liked the idea. “I can work on getting tactical intel through my channels,” Avi said. “But frankly, Dick, from what I’ve seen, your embassy would never allow what you’re suggesting.”

I wriggled my eyebrows in a more than passable imitation of Groucho Marx. “My embassy? Who said anything about telling anybody at my embassy?”

“D
ECEPTION,
”
THE GREAT
C
HINESE
W
ARRIOR GENERAL
Tai Li’ang once wrote, “is the key to all warfare.” And, since I always take General Tai’s lessons to heart, I wasted no time setting up a series of deceptive ruses that would mislead my enemies.

First, I used the hotel telephone to call the embassy’s RSO—that’s the Regional Security Officer—and asked for a one-on-one briefing the following morning at 1000 hours. That would give whoever was in charge of keeping track of me lots of time to set up a surveillance. Then, I dialed Araz Kurbanov. I explained that we’d begin his training the next morning at 0600, and that the course would run two weeks in length, seven days a week. I said that while I would be around to oversee the instruction, Master Chief Rotten Randy Michaels would be in actual charge of the day-to-day inculcation.

That done, I summoned my most senior people, Boomerang, Randy, Pick, Half Pint, and Duck Foot, to give them their instructions. We communicated on paper, and with sign language, with both the TV and the radio going full-tilt boogie. By the end of our fifteen-minute conversation, my squad chiefs understood exactly what I needed them to do.

For two weeks, from 0600 until 2000 hours every day, the Azeris would be run through an exhausting, concentrated tactical team-building course that would give them the rudiments of SpecWar—everything from dynamic entry and CQC, to tracking, setting ambushes, and basic EOD work with improvised explosive devices. They’d learn maritime operations, airborne assault, and survival skills. And while they were learning, we’d be watching. That way, when we got back to Washington, Rotten Randy would be able to put together an operations manual about how the Azeri special forces worked. So that if we ever had to operate against ’em, we’d know how they waged war. That, friends, is what the JCET program is REALLY about.

And while the training was going on, Avi and I, with the help of Boomerang, Duck Foot, Gator, and Nod, would v-e-r-y quietly set up two separate covert strikes. One in Iran, and the other in Armenia.

How would we do that? By taking a lesson from my own experience. We would use the Azeri training as cover for our own very covert, and deadly, operations.

Now, the truth can finally be told about how I was able to run more than two dozen successful covert counterterrorist ops when I commanded the infamous Red Cell at the behest of legendary Admiral James “Ace” Lyons.

Red Cell’s mission, on paper at least, was to conduct FXs—field exercises—at naval installations worldwide. The exercises were designed to raise the Navy’s overall consciousness about terrorist infiltration and hostage-taking techniques. Red Cell operators, most of whom were in fact experienced shooters from SEAL Team Six, would surveil Navy installations. Then they would conduct mock terrorist attacks,
exploiting the weaknesses they’d discovered, and illustrating for the on-site security personnel how those weaknesses could be modified and the targets hardened, making life for any real tangos much more difficult and costly.

In truth, however, Admiral “Ace” Lyons had designed Red Cell as a cover op. Oh, we ran our FXs all right—my men terrorized dozens of one-, two-, three-, and four-star admirals with lots of scrambled eggs on their hat brims (not to mention lots of shit for their brains). And I’m proud to say that we taught an entire generation of sailors how to become sensitized to terrorism and guard against it.

But that wasn’t our
real
mission. Our
real
mission was to kill terrorists. And so, virtually every time we conducted an exercise, both here in the United States and abroad, I would disappear for a short time and lead a small nucleus of shooters in a well-coordinated and totally covert hit against real tangos. If we’d ever fucked up, it would have meant the end of Ace’s career (mine was already in the toilet). But Ace didn’t care. To him, ridding the world of a few dozen world-class bad guys was worth the risk of a court-martial.

You want examples. Okay. When we tested the security at the Groton, Connecticut, nuclear sub base, my real target was a certain sailor who was selling secrets about our sub cruise schedules to the Soviets. According to the New London, Connecticut, newspapers, he fell into the water, hit his head, and drowned, poor guy.
Sure
he did. I was delighted: we pulled off such a clean hit that the Sovs never realized I’d neutralized one of their best sources. I was less concerned about leaving a mess in the Philippines, where Red Cell spent three weeks at Subic Bay. In fact (and on
videotape!), we actually took an aircraft carrier out of action by proving that terrorists could ram its unguarded flank with a speedboat filled with high explosives, rendering it unseaworthy. Another of my Red Cell units took two hundred officers and men prisoners at the base’s O-Club. We kidnapped dependents at the McDonald’s. We “blew up” a radio tower and shut down all the base communications networks for eight hours.

And while all that confusion was taking place, much of it simultaneously and a lot of it covered by the local press, three of my best operators and I dropped out of sight for twelve hours and made our way into the slums of Manila. There, operating in mufti, and sans any backup, we tracked down the five leaders of the Alex Boncayao Brigade, the main assassination squad for the New People’s Army, which is the military wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Three months previously, a sparrow team
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from the ABB had murdered U.S. Army Colonel Jim Rowe. I’d known Jim since Christ was a mess cook. He was a real hero, a combat-seasoned Warrior; a man committed to the ideals of democracy and freedom. Jim was one of very few Americans who’d actually escaped from a VC prison camp during the Vietnam War. He could have retired. He didn’t. Instead, he volunteered for duty in the Philippines. His reward? Two hitmen from the ABB assassinated him as he left his job one day.

But fortunately (if there can be a fortunate aspect of
this incident), his murder took place when George Bush was president. George Herbert Walker Bush may have looked like a WASP banker. But believe me, the man had balls of U-235. The day he was told that Jim had been murdered, he personally called Ace Lyons and told him, “Ace, this cannot stand. You deal with it.”

So, Ace ordered me to set up an FX at Subic Bay. My prep time was ninety days—barely enough to develop the kind of tactical intel necessary to pull off a hit in absolute stealth.
34
We carried all our equipment in specially built Red Cell Conex boxes, which had secret compartments that allowed us to carry sanitized weapons, ordnance, and other specialized killing equipment.

My intel—and great intel it was, too—was developed by my old shipmate Tony Mercaldi, who was one of maybe three people in the world who knew what Red Cell was really about. And Tony always came through.

He certainly did in Manila. It took him sixty-eight
days of working without creating a single ripple to do it, but he was finally able to identify the safe house where the ABB leadership met once a month. We hit it. And yeah, we killed them all. Messily. With what the Hollywood writer-assholes call “extreme prejudice.” Then we decapitated the corpses and left the tangos propped up against the wall, holding their own heads in their lifeless hands as a sign to their comrades that we Yankees were serious fuckin’ dudes. Then we hauled our butts back to Subic, in plenty of time for me to get a new asshole reamed by the pussy-ass can’t-cunt sit-down-to-make-wee-wee four-star who thought my Red Cell “tangos” had played too rough with his poor sailors. If he’d only known.

Here and now, I would run a similar game in Azerbaijan. Since my stealth arrival had been blown, I’d use the JCET mission to provide cover for us. And Araz’s troops would be our unwitting camouflage. We’d schedule our JCET exercises in the border areas we would be using to stage our real-world hits. The Azeris would proposition equipment for their training—and we’d use much of it ourselves. Sure, it would be complicated. And if Araz was as smart as I believed him to be, he might get a little suspicious. But he wouldn’t be able to prove anything and neither would anyone else.

Of course, the schedule I was designing meant precious little sleep for me and my band of shoot-and-looters. But then, you don’t become a SEAL for the light schedule and the ease of operations.

Bright and early, I detailed Boomerang, Randy Michaels, Nod, Half Pint, Pick, Mustang, and Goober to meet with Araz and begin preliminary work with
his troops. While they did that, I sent Rodent, Gator, Butch, Nigel, Digger, Timex, Duck Foot, and Hammer to recce the city. I wanted to see who was following whom. My boys were good street operators. And because I allow ’em to look like your everyday dirt-bag, they looked no different from the thousands of expatriate Brits and Americans, Frenchies, Italians, Norwegians, and Turks who’d come here to work the oil fields and make a bundle of tax-free cash. And me? I used my first twenty-four hours to gather intel in the Iranian/Russkie alliance.

I didn’t have to worry about the Armenian angle. Avi already had the goods on everything going on in that AO.
35

How come? It’s because the Israelis are tight with the Turks as well as the Azeris. Turkish pilots train in Israel. So do elite Turkish troops. And as you probably know (if you don’t, you should pay more attention in your geography classes), Yerevan, the Armenian capital city, is no more than twenty kliks from the Turkish border and just about sixty miles due north of the place the Turks call Büyükagri Dagi, and we call Mount Ararat, where Noah’s Ark is supposed to have landed after the Flood. That area, close both to Armenia and Iran, is where the Israelis have established half a dozen listening posts, where they suck TECHINT, SIGINT, and ELINT
36
out of the air. Moreover, using small, virtually undetectable sixth-generation Kevlar-skinned UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) outfitted with FLIR (Forward-
Looking InfraRed) and high-resolution television lenses, they regularly reconnoiter a two-hundred-mile radial arc that stretches from the Armenian enclave of Mountainous Karabakh, to the Iranian city of Khoy.