Echo Platoon (5 page)

Now that we were aboard, all that remained was to stay out of sight until we’d made it to our assault position, while praying that the rest of the bad guys—the ones we hadn’t seen yet—didn’t have night-vision equipment, infrared sights on their weapons, or thermal-imaging range finders like their two buddies.

The unfortunate and nasty truth, friends, is that these days tangos can obtain just about every techno-goodie that is used by Delta Force, DEV Group,
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or any
other cutting-edge special-operations unit. Maybe not the absolute latest generation, but still better than most of the world’s armed forces carry on a day-to-day basis.

The good news was that given the heat—it was still in the high nineties—all the metal on the rig was just about as hot as our bodies. And that would help mask us as we moved into position if the bad guys had some techno-backup.

0313. Time to move out. We were real bunched up on the eight-by-twelve-foot platform, and crowds make me nervous under conditions like this.

I rubbed the soles of my booties against the non-skid flooring of the platform until I was satisfied that I’d removed all the oil residue. Then I silent-signaled to disperse.

Boomerang and I, accompanied by Nod and Duck Foot, would balance atop the four-foot rail of the flare platform and pull ourselves up onto the rig’s main deck, sheltered from discovery by a red-and-white-striped crane housing. From there, we’d scamper across thirty feet of unprotected ground, up a steel ladderway, around a corner, and along a narrow length of decking that led to the back side of the modular housing unit.

As we did that, the rest of the platoon would make its way along the jib. When they reached the end, Timex, Gator, Randy, and Nigel would move to port. They’d crawl under the oil storage tanks, slip behind the explosives locker, then secure the front end of the modular housing unit and wait for my signal to hit the main force of tangos and free the hostages. As they did that, Half Pint, the Pick, Rodent, and Digger would head to starboard, where they’d thread the
needle between the outermost storage tanks and the modular drilling equipment sheds, then separate into two-man hunter-killer groups to neutralize any tangos in the commo shack and stowage areas. We had eight bad guys to deal with. We had pinpointed two—the lookouts. I knew from experience most of the rest would be in close proximity to the hostages.

Boomerang scampered around the vertical flare nozzle to the corner of the rail. He looked up at the platform bed, which was about ten feet above his head and perhaps two feet distant. He vaulted up onto the rail, and with the athletic balance of a ballet dancer, then jumped vertically, about eighteen inches, straight up.

His fingertips caught the steel edge of the deck, and he began to haul himself up, as if he were doing the last pull-up of a very long string. Then his left hand slipped. His gloved fingers lost traction on the platform surface and slipped off. He tried to regain his grip, but it was impossible. And he was wearing too much equipment to pull himself up one-handed.

I watched as he dropped back into space and fell. Yes, the vertical distance between the bottom of the deck and the top of the rail was only about eighteen inches. But there were two feet of horizontal space to consider as well. If Boomerang didn’t thrust himself backward at the same time he dropped onto the flare platform rail, he was going to fall about eighty feet into the water. And with all the weight he was carrying, falling eighty feet into the water was going to be like hitting fucking concrete from the same height.

I watched transfixed. This was one of those moves in which time seemed to stand still. Boomerang was suspended in space. But he didn’t descend. Instead,
he turned his whole body 180 degrees. Then, like one of those goddamn circus trapeze geniuses, his body, facing the flare platform, kinetically impelled itself forward. Only then did he actually drop. He landed on the balls of his feet, right atop the two-inch rail. The only sign of exertion I could see was the tension on his face.

His lips moved. No sound came out, but I could read his lips as he mouthed, “Sorry, Boss Dude.”

He reversed his position, gauged the distance one more time, removed his Nomex gloves and stowed them in his belt, then leapt. The second jump was a lot higher than the first. Boomerang’s long hands wrapped around the edge of the decking. He drew himself up, up, up, and finally one-handed the support railing at the edge of the deck. Then he swung to his right, which allowed his knee to catch the edge.

He pulled himself up and over the rail, dropped to his knees, crawled under the bottom rung of the railing, and held his arms out wide. His expression said, “C’mon, Boss Dude—I’ll catch you.”

My expression told him, “Yeah—right.” When I was but a tadpole, the nastiest feature of the obstacle course at the Little Creek Amphibious Naval Base was a series of telephone pole sections, cut into different heights, and stuck in the sand dunes. We called it The Dirty Name. You had to jump from one pole section to another without falling onto the sand. But that was easier said than done. Because if you could make the vertical jump, the horizontal distance seemed too far to achieve. If you could make the horizontal leap okay, the vertical seemed too high.

Now, the grizzled, war-tempered UDT chiefs who first built the fucking thing long before I ever made it
into training had done their jobs well when they put The Dirty Name together. They designed it, you see, with the high goal of making us stinking trainees realize that nothing is impossible. They wanted to construct the physical embodiment of a philosophical tenet basic to SEALdom. That concept is: if you set your mind on a goal and your spirit is the spirit of a Warrior, the word
impossible
DOES NOT EXIST.

And so, we assaulted The Dirty Name until we overcame it. Conquered it. Vanquished it. And, just as the chiefs wanted, we tadpoles finally came to realize by our victory that when we came up against an obstacle, whether that obstacle was in WAR or in life, we could make ourselves triumph over it by sheer will, pure tenacity, and absolute determination.

You don’t have to like it, they told us—you just have to do it. So these days, whenever I come up against an impediment, whether it is a physical challenge, a bureaucratic roadblock, or a tactical obstacle, I hearken back to The Dirty Name, and I know deep in my Warrior’s bowels that I
CAN
win the battle, and therefore I WILL NOT FAIL. NOT EVER.

And so, although I can honestly say that I do not like balancing on slippery metal railings, I Just Did It. I clambered up, balanced on the balls of my feet as best I could given my throbbing right nut, bent my knees, raised my arms high over my head, and launched myself into the void. My eyes were locked onto Boomerang’s; my concentration was total. I fucking felt myself approach the deck; sensed its bulk and physical mass. And then Boomerang’s hands clasped my wrists, like a trapeze catcher traps the flyer, and he swung me, a big Slovak pendulum, upward, toward my right.

I used my bulk to help, adding to my speed and angle of trajectory. I shouldn’t have. I should have let Boomerang do what he was doing, because he was doing it very well. But I couldn’t leave well enough alone. And so, as I propelled myself up, the point of my right knee—the tender ball joint known as the patella—caught the metal edge of the steel deck.

How hard did I hit my patella?
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Hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. Hard enough so that I couldn’t feel my toes. Hard enough so that I forgot how much my right nut hurt.

I started to fall back. I kicked and twisted involuntarily as I did so. Bad move, because Boomerang lost his grip on my left wrist.

Oh, fuck, oh, shit, oh, doom on Dickie. He was one-handing me, now. And even that was fucking tenuous. It was a very, very long way down. I didn’t want to hit that water. Remember: you drop eighty feet, and hitting water isn’t much different from hitting concrete. More serious so far as I was concerned:
I really didn’t want to make the fucking climb a second time.
I gritted my teeth, swung my left arm up, and grabbed his left wrist—which was still clamped viselike onto my right wrist—with both hands.

“Gotcha,” Boomerang said through clenched teeth. The fingers of his free hand wrapped around my wrists, and, straining, he swung me, the selfsame big Slovak pendulum, up toward the deck once again.

This time I let
him
do the work, and allowed my body to go where he wanted to put it. My knee caught
the lip of the deck correctly. I put my weight on the leg, extricated my right hand from Boomerang’s grasp, reached out and up to the support rail, hauled myself up, and pulled myself under the dark tubular metal.

I rolled over onto my back unable to breathe, bathed in sweat, my vision clouded by phosphorescent blue and orange spots. Oh, fuck. Not only was I hyperventilating, I was in the goddam HoJo Zone. I fought against it; made myself breathe steadily. Concentrated on overcoming the pain. Slowly, I regained control over my body and my mind.

By the time I sat up and began to massage my sore knee, Boomerang, Nod, and Duck Foot were all staring down at me. I gave them the kind of dirty look battle-weary veterans reserve for smart-assed youngsters who’ve kicked ass all day, and want to chase pussy all night. I groaned audibly, and grimaced up at them through my pain.

Nod pointedly ignored me. “Now that the Skipper’s had his nap,” he stage-whispered to Boomerang and Duck Foot, “maybe he’ll be ready to come out and play.”

“Negatory,” Boomerang shook his head. “He probably wants milk and cookies first.”

I struggled to my feet feeling each and every year, month, and day of my event-filled life. “Fuck you all very, very much.”

0317. I
TOOK POINT, MY
MP5
IN LOW READY POSITION
, scanning and breathing as I heel-toed deliberately along the red-and-white-striped derrick housing. Behind me, Boomerang’s MP5 covered my left flank. Behind him, Duck Foot followed, the snout of his weapon covering my right side. Nod, a fourteen-inch Benelli breaching shotgun in the low ready position, worked the rear-guard slot, the muzzle of his weapon moving slowly right/left, left/right.

It was six yards to the corner of the derrick housing, and we covered the distance without incident. I stopped at the corner, dropped to the deck, slipped my adjustable night-vision goggles out of their pouch, and slid up to the edge of the red-and-white housing. You do not want to present your enemy with a silhouette to shoot at, so moving at ground level’s a lot more effective than sticking my big Rogue nose around the corner at a height of six-foot-plus.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, I crept forward until I was able to get enough of my head around the corner. I knew I couldn’t see the doghouse roof from where I was, but I should be able to look toward the monkey board.

The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.
There he was, the sonofabitch.
I could see him. He had an automatic weapon—an AK-74 from the look of it—with a night-vision sight slung around his shoulder. And he wore what looked to be a current issue, Kirasa-manufactured, Russkie Army Model-5, mil-spec bulletproof vest, with the extra-extra-high neck and the thick, ceramic strike plates fore and aft. It would take every molecule of the big, 750-grain hand-loaded bullet to take that s.o.b. down.

The tango was hunkered chest-high behind the monkey board windscreen, a pair of big Russkie or East German surplus first-generation night-vision glasses scanning the area from the starboard storage tanks to the port-side chopper pad. There was something clutched in his left hand. I zoomed my night vision in to take a closer look. Yeah—it was a fucking detonator. Soviet Army issue from what I could see.

My group would be moving in his blind spot, because he’d have to look through the huge drilling derrick superstructure to see us. But we were going to have to take him out before he spotted the four SEALs moving around the modular drilling equipment sheds toward the commo shack.

I eased back around the corner, flicked the transmit switch on my radio, and told Hammer what I wanted.

“Got a prob, Skipper,” his voice said evenly in my ear.

I do not like to hear about problems. Especially under conditions like the ones under which I was currently operating.

Hammer’s voice continued playing in my ear. “Goober’s drawing a blank,” he said.

Since we were all broadcasting on the same frequency,
I knew that everyone whose radio was working had heard what Hammer’d just told me. But as you know, I have learned never to assume anything. And so, I said, “Hold-hold-hold, acknowledge,” into my lip mike.

The situation was beginning to concern me. Was Goober’s TIQ
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off somewhere prowling and growling? Had he seen something and gone to investigate? Or was he just off draining his lizard? I wanted to know. But I wasn’t about to ask. I don’t like to use the radios too much on ops like this one. You can be overheard, no matter what the folks at Motorola say about secure transmissions. If you get too close to a TV set, your transmissions can cause ghosting and static on the screen—and the bad guys will know you’re in the neighborhood. So I speak very little. And when I do speak, I do it in ambiguous terms. I never say, “Shoot the tango in the red shirt on the left side of the balcony.” Because if said tango is monitoring my comms, he will duck out of the way and live to fight another day. I will simply say, “Go,” which tells the bad guy nothing, or leads him to believe that we are staging a frontal assault. Sometimes, I will use the old SAS Colour Clock Code, which assigns a set pattern of colours (or colors, if we’re in the USA) and numbers to a target. But I will not ever broadcast specific directions that can be understood by the enemy. Thus endeth the lesson.

Back to real time. I heard six
tsk-tsks
in my ear. The problem was, I couldn’t remember how many of the radios were working.

You disbelieve me? Listen, there were hundreds of thoughts and thought fragments running through my mind simultaneously. I was playing out every fucking scenario possible—and most of ’em ended badly. Only in Hollywood or in the books written by wannabe assholes does everything work out every time sans problems, sans fuckups, and sans Mister Murphy showing his ugly puss.