RW11 - Violence of Action (4 page)

On Day Three I began killing from a distance. The Stoner’s harsh bark bounced up and down the ravines and gullies every time I spotted a racing rabbit or curious ground hog. Coyotes became my favorite and most difficult shot. Wary and sensing that a new predator was operating in their backyard, the wild dogs made every effort to outsmart me. They’d slowly crawl on their bellies through the sage and sand, trying to reach the rotting carcasses of my earlier victims. Naturally camouflaged and wonderfully cunning, they made the game that much more challenging.

On Day Four I started killing the winged carrion eaters that came to feast on the dead. Blowing the fuck outta them was a special joy to me. I’ve always hated vultures, human or otherwise. I’d let each one get his fill before sending a high velocity round crashing through its body. Payback is a motherfucker. Gun control means hitting the target.

I spent Day Five cleaning the rifle and its optic from stem to stern. If anyone had heard my shooting they never came out to investigate. The Stoner was zeroed to perfection and gave me no mechanical problems. Even better, my natural shooting ability with a long gun was again up to Rogue standards. I could hit anything that moved and was the size of a coyote or smaller. I’d hardened myself to the rigorous demands of a sniper and weathered the bleaching hot days and bitter cold nights of the Utah desert. By the time I’d repacked the Dodge and made my way back to the highway, I was feeling much, much better. Shooting to kill has always had that effect on me. And I’ve always hated cute little furry animals anyway.

I swung up into North Dakota where I attended a yearly SEAL reunion in Minot. For three days about sixty of us ate, drank, and swapped war stories. I met my teammates’ wives and kids, at least those who were lucky enough to still be married (though not necessarily to the same woman they’d started out with). I met a waitress named Roxanne at the local diner my first night in town and we ended up fucking each other silly for the rest of the weekend. She was a leggy, blonde former airline stew who’d burned out on flying the friendly skies and getting hit on by middle-aged pilots whose wives thought their husbands were cockpit commandos ever since September 11,2001. Rox had come to Minot to visit family the year before and ended up staying just for the fuck of it. It was easy to tell she’d been bored to death by the hometown cock monsters. Every night I gave her free play with the Rogue’s royal ten inches and happily let her work out her wildest fantasies. Every day we enjoyed the company of good friends and good booze.

By the time I left Minot, Rox was swearing like a SEAL and could fuck, suck, and drink nearly any stud in town under the diner’s tables. Me? I felt centered again after being among my own kind, and better yet, I didn’t feel the urge to jack off every time I saw a Brittany Spears music video on the Ram’s onboard television!

Four days later I was in Tacoma, Washington. I’d heard about a street-fighting motherfucker named Kelly Worden from some of the operators on SIX. They said the guy could hurt you just by smiling. After getting lost driving around the fucking city I finally stopped a cop and asked if he knew where the fuck it was I could find Worden. Turned out he did. All I had to do was sign an autograph. I linked up with Mr. Worden and spent the next two months living out of my truck on a small beach across the Narrows Bridge. For the next two months, five days a week, five hours a day, I trained with Worden at his home. It cost me $500 a week to learn Worden’s
Natural Spirit
method of close quarters combat. But what I’d heard was true—the bastard could hurt you just by looking at you. Then when he touched you, the pain
really
got intense! At first I tried to fight him with everything I’d learned on the streets as a young punk who’d brawl with anyone he met. Then I tried all the down and dirty shit we’d learned in the teams and that I’d introduced to both SIX and Red Cell.

The fucker just laughed and proceeded to beat the crap outta me with his fists, his feet, his fucking head, and anything else that came to hand.

Remember what I’ve been telling you about pain? I lived in a constant state of pain for those two months. My bruises had bruises. My joints felt like they’d been torqued with a jackhammer. My muscles were beaten, battered, and pulped. But in time I began to learn a new way of fighting. And I loved it. The pain was teaching me well.

I’d learned how to properly fight and kill with a knife. The Emerson CQC-7 tactical folder I’d picked up at a local knife show now complemented my new skills. Along with slicing and dicing with cold steel I could also beat a man to death with a rolled up
Newsweek
magazine; strangle someone to death with triple-reinforced dental floss; and break nearly every bone in an opponent’s body as easily as wiping my ass. My speed and power, blow for blow, had been magnified tenfold. I’d mastered the art of deception and could strike like a cobra without giving my intention away with an inadvertent glance or twitch. By the beginning of the second month I was Worden’s
uke
, or silent training partner. He’d gotten a contract to teach his unique brand of combatives to the First Special Forces Group’s Green Berets at Fort Lewis and I was rolling with Kelly’s punches well enough that I could help him instruct.

With my martial arts training came additional studies in the healing arts. Worden introduced me to a couple of true masters who’d come from China and the Philippines to settle in the Pacific Northwest. In turn, they shared with me how to use herbs and the natural properties of the body to cure injury and illness. Worden, a master healer himself, worked on the wreckage of my battered body using his inner
Chi
. Old pains faded and new ones quickly disappeared. Soon I could treat myself. I was now not only a Master Destroyer but a capable healer. The balance suited me more than I’d have ever expected.

When I left Mr. Worden’s school for modern day warriors I was physically, mentally, and emotionally fit. Better yet, my close quarters fighting skills had been taken to a level well beyond formidable. I was no longer a brutish brawler with a thick skull and quick fists. I had attained a master’s ability to destroy my enemies with perfect timing and effective technique.

For the next several months I went wherever the road or my mood took me. To San Diego and the Silver Strand to visit and learn from my brothers at SEAL Teams 1 and 5 at Coronado. To Mexico where I spent a month training Mexican naval commandos in ship-to-ship boarding operations to help stop waterborne drug smugglers working the Pacific Coast between Mexico and the states. From Mexico back to the U.S. where I made the rounds of America’s finest shooting schools beginning with Clint Smith at Thunder Ranch in Texas. Along the way I met up with my old friend and fellow Tango hunter Danny O’ Coulson, the founder and first commander of the FBI’s famous Hostage Rescue Team. Coulson brought me up to speed on what was happening real time in our war on both foreign and domestic terrorism. Danny is the only motherfucker who could get me to wear a cowboy hat to a bar and enjoy doing so.

Fuck you very much, Danny!

It was in the middle of all this, while doing a little job down in El Salvador, that I happened to meet up with a couple of fire-breathing, whip-smart military punks named Trace Dahlgren and Paul Kossens. After what we went through down there, I recognized them as the foundation of my new team and they were just crazy enough to join me.

A few phone calls to my attorney revealed the heat was off in Washington. Dead terrorists were now good terrorists. And how they died didn’t matter. My detractors had been muzzled and my absence had helped take the edge off their self-serving need to see me sidelined during the current fray. I was fit, fucked, and ready to go to war again. From the ashes of the old Rogue Warrior had been born a new and more deadly version of my Self. It was time to return home, time for me to go operational once again. Meaning? New Demo Dick, new team, and new bad dog attitude for anyone stupid enough to get in my way.

My blue cell phone began ringing its ass off as I toweled dry my hair. The gut-busting workout had left me feeling refreshed. “Marcinko here,” I barked into the cell. Five minutes later I punched off the line with my brain in overdrive. It hadn’t been the Avon Lady calling.

Our presence in Washington was requested. Make that
required
. Karen Fairfield at the Office of Internal Security Affairs, or OISA, was sweating right through her pretty panties over reports coming in from the D.C. cops about a murdered attorney, a terrorist threat, and—oh, yeah—a missing nuclear weapon. All Hell was breaking loose in the Oval Office and Karen wanted us on the road
yesterday
.

Did I forget to tell you? After my return to the Manor I’d been invited—
invited
, mind you—to attend a meeting at the State Department proper. It seemed there was a renewed need for the Rogue Warrior and his special brand of counterterrorism. We cut a nice financial deal as security consultants under purposefully vague contractual terms through State. Our credentials and badges (yes,
badges
) were issued through the U.S. Department of State’s own Bureau of Diplomatic Security by the authority of its chief in charge of the Coordination Center and Special Projects / Office of Overseas Operations, or CCSP/OOO. Then we were seconded to the new outfit called OISA that reports directly to the president of the United States.

I am once again sanctioned to kill my enemies wherever I find them.

After briefing Paul and Trace, I began packing my overnight bag. It was the bit about the missing nuke that made the hair on the backs of my hands stand up on end. If a Tango, or Tangos, had gotten their nasty mitts on such a thing, there wasn’t a city or citizen in the United States that was safe. OISA was sending an NSA chopper to pick us up and move the new Rogue Warrior and his team most ric-tic to the murder scene where the cassette had been recovered.

This was Big Dog time. Tactical nuclear weapons. Who the fuck knew how to get their hands on this kind of heavy shit other than me and a handful of my operators from Red Cell? I guessed that was why they were bringing us in. It was a dirty damned job and dirty deeds done cheap have always been my specialty. I zipped the black bag shut and slammed a fresh magazine into my Glock. Trace was downstairs yelling for us to move our asses. The chopper was coming in.

A hundred miles outside Los Alamos, New Mexico, the glare from the early morning desert sun was already intense enough to turn the infrequently traveled stretch of highway into a shimmering river of black and silver. The black-clad figure in the middle of the highway completed his task quickly and then gave a quick thumbs-up to the unseen shooter he knew was covering his back. He trotted away from the spike strip he’d positioned across the two-lane blacktop highway and scrambled back up to the firing position where he’d left his RPG and its two olive drab–colored high explosive grenades. Glancing toward a nearby shallow rise in the road, he slid the first rocket-propelled grenade into the launcher’s tube. Within just a few moments he heard the sound he’d been anticipating—the hum of the engines of an approaching convoy. Lowering himself into the gritty sand of his makeshift shooting platform he flicked the launcher’s safety to the
OFF
position but kept his right index finger well away from the weapon’s trigger. An accidental discharge was not part of today’s game plan.

Three hundred meters to his south and one hundred feet higher on the crest of a small hill, the team’s hard-target interdiction specialist could also hear the telltale rumble of the approaching target. Snugged comfortably into his right shoulder was a .50-caliber Barrett M82A1 rifle. Its 10X Leupold & Stevens Mark IV M-1 scope easily allowed him to track the progress of the two U.S. government vans as they traveled at a steady fifty-five miles per hour through the wide open New Mexican desert. The lead van topped the gentle rise and began picking up speed as it headed down toward the nearly invisible spike strip, but it was the fate of the second van that was his personal responsibility this morning. Taking into consideration both the environmental and meteorological factors for the morning’s shoot, he’d chosen his firing position with enormous care. Shooting platform and body position were critical when it came to employing a heavy gun like the Barrett successfully against enemy personnel or vehicles. Having frequently made use of the big .50 during covert operations in Afghanistan and deep inside Iraq during the early months of the so-called war on terrorism, the well-concealed sniper was supremely confident of his ability to take out his target—and anyone in it—rapidly and with a minimum of expended rounds. To terminate the chase van he’d selected the Raufoss .50 BMG M903 sabot round and its spin-stabilized Penetrator slug. The Raufoss’ slug could easily penetrate the van’s reinforced windshield, leaving the driver vulnerable.

The sniper’s secondary mission was to provide real time information to his colleagues positioned farther down the highway about the progress of the lead van, whose tires would be severely damaged after running over the spike strip at fifty-five miles per hour. The specially designed spikes would have no trouble ripping through the safety tires’ Kevlar belted layers. Simulated practice runs by the team indicated the van would lose at least two of its tires, and possibly all four, once they rolled over the razor sharp prongs of the spike strip. The van’s driver could probably nurse the vehicle at least another half mile down the highway regardless of how many tires went down, but the vehicle’s speed would be dramatically reduced, allowing the two intercept vehicles positioned a mile down the road to meet it head on and set up a secure blocking force across the highway.

Rocket Man watched with growing anticipation as the first van crested the hill and began to pick up speed on its descent. He adjusted his position so he could bring the launcher up to his shoulder in a single, easy motion.

Despite the lead van driver’s high-tech, custom-made sunglasses, the dazzling morning sun prevented him from noticing the slender strip of razor sharp spikes spanning the highway until his van was nearly on top of it. Swearing loudly, he’d hardly even begun to brake when he felt the vehicle’s two front tires exploding. Punching the accelerator, he grimaced as the rear tires were similarly damaged. Holding onto the steering wheel for dear life, the driver tried to maintain as much speed as he could as the van rumbled clumsily down the road. It took all his strength to control the vehicle given its additional weight and gutted steering.

Three van lengths back, the driver of the chase vehicle had an extra half-second of reaction time. Shouting a warning to the heavily armed operators riding with him, he slammed on his brakes to avoid the spike strip’s gleaming steel teeth. An experienced emergency vehicle driving specialist, he was able to bring the van nearly to a complete stop, though not before the front tires ran over the strip. The armed point man for the rapid response team in the rear instantly reached for the door of the van so he could investigate the cause of the damage. The driver gave a small sigh, relieved that he hadn’t smashed into the lead van.

That feeling of relief was cut short when a .50-caliber sabot round’s stabilized slug exploded through the driver’s side of the windshield and blew a gaping hole through his Level III soft body armor and his chest. He was already dead when a second slug slammed into his body an inch below the first. The sniper’s precision marksmanship was aided by the fact that the driver’s body remained anchored firmly in place, thanks to a specially designed safety harness he wore, similar to those used by professional race car drivers.

Almost simultaneously, two more gaping holes appeared in the passenger side of the windshield and the team leader riding shotgun on this morning’s run to California met the same fate as his driver. Behind him, six uniformed men desperately struggled to disengage themselves from their safety belts, secure their weapons, and exit the besieged vehicle.

The sniper had done his job perfectly, now it was up to his colleague, Rocket Man, to take over. The shouts of the men in the rear of the van could be heard by Rocket Man as he knelt into a good firing position, the RPG firmly grasped in his hands, its dull gunmetal black launch tube resting atop his right shoulder. The rocket-propelled, armor-piercing grenade would arm itself in flight. He’d carefully computed the necessary standoff distance between where he estimated the van would come to a stop and his firing position, but he knew it would be a tough shot given the physical constraints of the ambush site. Still, he was considered the best man with an RPG on the team and he was intent on maintaining that hard-won reputation.

Pressing the launcher’s thick trigger he felt his body jerk back as the fin-stabilized grenade swooshed toward the van’s open side door. A great belch of smoke and flame erupted from the rear end of the tube as the grenade was released. Not waiting to judge the effect of his marksmanship, Rocket Man snatched up his second grenade and deftly inserted it into the empty maw of the launcher. He felt a wall of scorching hot air hit his masked face a millisecond before the sound of the grenade exploding inside the van hammered his ears. Looking up he watched as one of the van’s team fell to the ground, rolling around on the highway in flames. Even as the man was trying to beat out the flames consuming his head and shoulders, the dull
craaack
—
THUD
sound of a firing Barrett .50 rolled over the desert. With grim appreciation Rocket Man watched as the steel penetrator round brought an immediate, if rather messy, end to the burning man’s agony.

Raising the launcher up a second time, Rocket Man took an extra moment to carefully fix his sight on the burning van. Nothing appeared to be moving inside the gutted vehicle. Anyone who might have managed to escape through the far windows, rear door, or driver’s side door would have been taken care of by the Barrett. The crackling of the flames and the sickly sweet smell of frying flesh filled the air as the vehicle began to burn more fiercely across from him. Satisfied that his target was aligned, Rocket Man released the second grenade. It slammed into the passenger side door of the van, ripping the entire front end off the vehicle and scattering body parts from the two corpses up front out into the desert.

Setting down the launcher, Rocket Man swung his black Colt M4 carbine up from where it was hanging across his chest on a three-point black nylon tactical sling. He moved the lightweight assault rifle’s barrel up and down the kill zone searching for anyone unfortunate enough to have survived the twin blasts of the grenades and the Big Fifty’s heavy-ass high velocity slugs courtesy of his partner. Nothing moved. With a light wave he signaled the “All Clear” to his teammate.

He knelt, pulled a canteen from its pouch on his combat harness and took a long, deep swig of cool water. In the distance he could now hear the strident rattle of automatic weapons fire and he knew the rest of his mates were taking down the lead van. It was now his and the sniper’s job to engage any vehicles coming down the highway from the north. Cradling the M4 he checked the M203 40-mm grenade launcher attached beneath the carbine’s barrel. A single high explosive round was resting in the tube, its rounded copper-colored nose capable of easily stopping anything made by Dodge, Honda, or Jeep. Any civilians who had the bad timing to come along now would be considered collateral damage. Unfortunate casualties of war. He knew his God would overlook such trivial matters. Small sacrifices made in the preparation of the ultimate sacrifice yet to come.

Inside the first van pandemonium reigned. As the driver attempted to maintain speed and control, the security team in the back were shouting instructions at each other and readying their gear. The sharp
RACCCCK!
of German-made MP-5 10-mm submachine gun bolts echoed in the air as the men jacked the high velocity rounds into their weapons’ hungry chambers. The radio operator responsible for maintaining communication with the chase van and the command center at Los Alamos gave up entirely on the chase van and began calling for an airborne response team to launch out of Los Alamos immediately. Glancing out the heavily tinted back windows of the van he saw a plume of dirty white-gray smoke rising up from the base of the hill. So much for those poor bastards, he thought to himself. Who the FUCK is crazy enough to hit
us
?

The driver saw two civilian SUVs hurtling towards them side by side down the highway and shouted a warning to those in the back. By now his vehicle’s ruptured tires were flat, the van’s speed was a pathetic twenty-five miles per hour and it couldn’t maneuver worth a shit. Powerless except to keep the vehicle crawling forward, he watched as the SUVs spun sideways on the highway about 200 meters in front of him, blocking the highway. The side doors of the SUVs slid open and four men, all clad in black BDU uniforms, jumped out in unison.

The operator could guess from his antiterrorism training what was coming next. Slamming both his feet hard against the brake, he fought to bring the van to a stop and shouted the order to evacuate. Before anyone could heed his command, four modified M60 light machine guns firing 7.62 NATO ball ammunition sans tracer rounds began chewing the van apart. Inside, the security team and their driver were flailed alive by hundreds of incoming copper-jacketed steel core rounds.

On their leader’s order, the assault team began walking forward in a line, sending a continuous rhythm of alternating, well-aimed heavy fire into the van as they approached it. When they reached the van they ceased firing and listened carefully for the slightest movement or moan, any hint of life coming from inside. Nothing.

One of the attackers grasped the mangled handle of the passenger side door and yanked it hard. As he wrenched the door open, a blood-soaked form sprang out at him in a blur of arms and legs, landing almost directly on top of him.

“Fuck me!” he cried out and fired a round directly into his assailant. Only then did he realize his attacker was a corpse that must have been leaning against the door. The mutilated body now lay on the highway at his feet.

“Easy boys,” muttered the team leader. “No use wasting good fire on dead meat.”

Then he called, “
Positions!
”

The men quickly arranged themselves in a tight half-circle around the front part of the van.

“
Breacher up!
”

At this command, a fifth operator who was pulling rear security at the SUVs came sprinting forward. Simultaneously, one of the M60 gunners turned and ran back to man the roadblock. There, he rested his hot-to-the-touch and freshly reloaded machine gun atop one of the SUV’s hoods, pointing its smoking barrel south. With the .50 available to cover both ends of the ambush as well as anything that might try to fly overhead, the kill zone was now effectively sealed.

The breacher ran to the van and under the attentive guard of his security team clambered into the gutted vehicle. He climbed over the freshly butchered and bleeding bodies to where the secure storage compartment was located on the port side of the rear cargo area. There he placed and armed the explosive charge specially designed to open the compartment. Satisfied, the breacher slid back into the driver’s compartment and called, “
Fire in the hole!
” The trio outside the van kneeled and turned their faces to one side as the breacher squeezed shut the clacker of a Claymore antipersonnel firing device. With a soft
WHOOMPH!
the compartment’s titanium door was blown free.