Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL (51 page)

As we closed in on Sigonella, we were updated constantly. We were told that aboard the 737 were all four of the suspects, along with Abu Abbas. He was to be captured as well. We were told that aboard the plane were approximately a dozen armed Egyptian “secret service” officers. There was a very brief discussion of the SEAL Six rules of engagement. They remained in effect. Once we were sent in to capture the terrorists, armed resisters, Egyptian or Palestinian, would be met with deadly force.

We were informed when the Tomcats made intercept, and fifteen minutes from touchdown, the lights in the troop compartment switched to red. The order was passed to lock and load. The clatter of dozens of charging weapons rattled in the ocher light. I threaded a magazine into my MP-5, drew back the charging handle, and knocked it loose with the heel of my hand. We sat adjusting to night vision, tense, jacked up, waiting.

When the 737 touched down on the runway, we landed seconds behind it. The Rastas were the first assault element off the airplane. As we piled onto the tarmac, I detailed two shooters to remain constantly with Captain Gormly. Not that he needed protection: The skipper was in assault gear. Bo’s group quickly deployed to the left rear of the 737, and the Rastas and the rest of our group were assembled directly off the tail. We knelt on the tarmac and waited.

The 737 sat just ahead, its nose wheel blocked by a truck. Captain Gormly headed forward to link up with Sean, who’d established a command post behind the aircraft. Sean’s group had surrounded the plane, and he had snipers deployed to observe and cover it.

The EgyptAir 737 blazed with light, and the noise from its ground power unit was a loud whine. Behind us, a second C-141 landed and came to a stop with its engines running. The several jet engines made hearing difficult. Although the runway was black around us, lights from hangars and taxiways quickly washed out our night vision. As we prepared to attack the 737, we were deaf and almost blind.

General Stiner alighted from the second C-141 and trotted forward to meet Captain Gormly. They contacted the 737 on the ground-control frequency and were told by the pilot that there was an Egyptian ambassador aboard who wished to speak to them. Thus would commence a terse and sometimes heated series of arguments. I did not see or hear much of the discussions. I had my hands full. As I looked out toward the hangar lights, I could see several trucks approaching at high speed. Behind the trucks came police cars, dozens of them, blue lights spinning on their roofs. We were being surrounded by a large number of Italian troops, police, and carabinieri.

I ordered the Rastas down flat on the runway, one set of boat crews facing the hangars and the other facing the taxiways. As the Italians trotted toward us, we sighted down on them, perfect silhouettes against the glare. I told my guys to hold their fire and not to shoot unless I initiated.

The situation was extremely tense, and I am certain that this is the closest NATO forces have ever come to firing on each other. We were deployed around the 737 and meant to defend it. The Italians streaming in were preparing to take the aircraft into custody. It turned out that when the 737 veered off the active runway, it had turned onto the Italian, not American, side of the base.

The hijackers were on sovereign Italian soil. So were we.

More Italian forces poured into the darkness. Bo reported on the radio that armored cars were being moved close to his position. I reported that there were at least a hundred Italians facing me on my portion of the runway, and more were on the way. If this thing went hot, it would be charming. The Italians were plainly illuminated. We would rip them to pieces. The runway was extremely dark, and I knew if they opened up, the Italians would probably make the routine mistake of shooting over our heads. This was small comfort. Both Bo’s assault group and mine were laid out on a flat stretch of runway, totally without cover.

The airfield at Sigonella was beginning to look like the last reel of
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
More and more Italians kept showing up, on foot, in the backs of trucks, and piled onto the hoods of cars. Italian command and control was always in question, and the Keystone Kops routine didn’t make me feel any better about what might happen.

I knew I could count on my guys to remain buttoned down. I knew they would not fire unless fired upon. I also thought that SEAL Team Six would make a mess of anyone who moved against the 737. What I feared most was an accident. I was afraid that the Italians might not be under firm control, or that some Italian conscript would screw up. One shot, accidental or otherwise, could set off a firefight that killed both Americans and Italians. I stood and walked the length of our position. I knew I was making myself a target, and that was my intent.

“Everybody take it easy,” I said, as much to any Italians in earshot who could speak English as to the Rastas. I said a little lower, “Keep your fields of fire, but everybody be cool.”

The Rastas were cool and didn’t need me to remind them. I walked back toward the nose of our C-141. Archie was there with the rest of the assault group. He may have liked to watch, but he was a badass. Two Italian officers demanded to be let aboard our plane. Archie told them to eat a meatball.

An hour passed, then half of another. Tensions on the runway lessened. What we thought would be an imminent assault had petered out into a game of sitzkrieg. The troops stared at each other across cement and grass. We didn’t blink, and the Italians didn’t go away.

By the stairs of the 737, I could see the several Italian officers standing with Captain Gormly and General Stiner. There was still some gesticulating, but the tone had lightened. When I saw General Stiner and the ranking Italian drive off, I knew there would be a parley, and I knew it would mean more waiting. The disposition of the hijackers would be determined by diplomats, not the assault groups surrounding the 737. The real battle was being fought on Moose’s end, in Rome.

I walked out on the runway, about a dozen yards closer to the Italian lines. I pulled up my body armor, slung my MP-5 behind my back, and unzipped the bottom of my flight suit. I took a long piss on the cement. Laughter snickered out of the Italian position and then from behind me, where the Rastas were laid out. I zipped up and walked back toward my men. I’d made my own political statement.

The Rastas, along with Bo’s and Sean’s assault groups, were soon back aboard the C-141s, part of a phased withdrawal of American and Italian forces that had been negotiated by General Stiner. The deal also placed the hijackers in Italian custody.

We all thought it was bullshit but were too pissed off and tired to say much. We’d had two near misses in two days: We missed the ship, and we missed Abbas and his hijackers. All sorts of praise would be heaped on this operation, and I may be the only person involved who thinks it was less than glorious, politically or militarily.

As we flew back to Virginia Beach, I found the sleeping pill half melted in the pocket of my flight suit. I scooped up the powdery mess and popped it in my mouth. It was bitter, and as I dropped into a twitchy, dreamless sleep, I was beginning to think that I’d had enough of being a SEAL.

BENNITO CRAXI HAD DONE
his best to keep Italy out of the counterterrorism business, but when EgyptAir 2843 touched down in Sicily, the entire mess was back in his lap. With the release of the terrorists by Hosni Mubarak, Italy had almost been let off the hook. If the hijackers had made it safely to Tunisia, the Craxi government would not have to prosecute the murder of Leon Klinghoffer or face the knotty consequences of holding four Palestinian terrorists in jail. But Washington was determined to see al-Molqi and his accomplices brought to justice. We wanted Abbas as well. All Craxi wanted was to have the whole goddamn mess go away.

Eventually, Washington and Rome would split the difference.

The hijackers were led off the plane in handcuffs and delivered into Italian custody. That left Abbas and one other high-ranking PLO terrorist, an aide to Arafat who had helpd plan the attack. They claimed diplomatic status, and the Egyptians chimed in that they considered the airplane to have been on a diplomatic mission, and therefore, inviolable Egyptian territory. Abbas presented an Iraqi diplomatic passport while simultaneously identifying himself as a member of the PLO executive. For what it mattered to Craxi, the terrorists might as well have shown season tickets to EuroDisney. The Italian government had been forced to take the murderers into custody; it wanted nothing at all to do with a big fish like Abu Abbas.

The next day Abbas and the PLO officer put on Italian air force uniforms and were smuggled aboard a Yugoslavian airliner. An extradition request was forwarded to Belgrade, with predictable results. The Yugoslavians honored Abbas’s “diplomatic” status, and he was allowed to depart for Yemen. Within two days Abu Abbas was safely in Baghdad.

AN ITALIAN COURT
eventually sentenced al-Molqi to thirty years for the murder of Leon Klinghoffer. Ibrahim Abdel Atif, the second in command of the operation, got twenty-four years, and Ahmed al-Hassani, fifteen. Bassam al-Asker would be granted parole in 1991. Abu Abbas was convicted in absentia, and Italian and Egyptian courts both issued warrants for the arrest of General Stiner. Go figure.

Abu Abbas continued as a senior member of the PLO and lived freely in Palestine authority territory. When asked in 1996 about the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, Abbas claimed in a
Boston Globe
interview that the sixty-nine-year-old stroke victim had it coming: “He was handicapped but he was inciting and provoking other passengers. So the decision was made to kill him.”

Abbas subsequently called the
Achille Lauro
operation a mistake. It is a mistake he may now have occasion to regret. On the evening of April 15, 2003, U.S. Special Operations Forces raided a villa on the outskirts of Baghdad. As Saddam’s regime crumbled under Operation Iraqi Freedom, Abu Abbas was snatched from his bed by members of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command and taken into custody. The mastermind of the
Achille Lauro
fiasco is presently undergoing questioning at a U.S. military facility.

WHILE IN ITALIAN PRISON
, al-Molqi and al-Hassani would both be granted twelve-day “vacations” for good behavior. Al-Hassani was the first of the hijackers to walk free and is still at large. Al-Molqi dropped out of sight during his summer parole in 1996 but was recaptured at a Spanish resort and eventually remanded to Italian custody. I am certain he looks forward to his next vacation.

SIX WEEKS AFTER
it was forced down by American F-14s, the EgyptAir 737, tail number 2843, was hijacked by members of the Abu Nidal Organization and flown to Malta. During a botched rescue attempt by members of Egypt’s Force 777, the hijackers and sixty passengers were killed in a fire started by a smoke grenade. The wreckage of the aircraft was eventually purchased by a rich collector.

FOLLOWING THE HIJACKING
,
Achille Lauro
labored on in some disrepute. In December 1994, on a cruise from Genoa to the Seychelles, the ship caught fire off the coast of Somalia. It was evacuated without the loss of a single life. The ship sank, a burned-out hulk, on the afternoon of December 2—Margot’s birthday.

T
HE MORNING WAS STILL
and hot, and a slender wind came down from the brown hills, tripped over the jumbled-together houses, and exhausted itself just short of our position, on a narrow strip of beach facing the Arabian Sea. Wind from the village carried with it the smells of the small town: diesel fumes, cooking oil, and goat shit. Out in the harbor was a U.S. Navy amphibious ship unloading crates of ammunition into a number of landing craft and a larger boat, a 134-foot LCU.

I was in command of a ten-man SEAL detachment assigned to provide security for the Americans ashore and the ship at anchor. In the operation order, our mission was called Alpha Tango, or antiterrorism. These sorts of operations came under the rubric of force protection, and this was the sort of op we called Rent-a-SEAL. The cross-beach operation was part of a routine military-assistance package, and the exercise was carried out sullenly by all involved.

The several landing craft ferried supplies onto the beach and dropped their ramps. Four-wheel-drive forklifts operated by Navy Seabees would then unload the cargo, pallet by pallet, and place it in Volvo trucks parked along the highway. The trucks were driven by grinning Arab men in
dishdashas
and Ray Ban sunglasses.

The ship’s call sign was Texas Pete, and occasionally she would radio one of the boats, chastising the tardy or inquiring of the beachmasters as to the progress of the load-out.

On the beach, the sun beat upon a pile of sandbags, three radio antennas, and a ten-man detachment of U.S. Navy beachmasters. As the sun climbed, the beachmasters strung a camouflage net over the top of their bunker. The net hid nothing; the pile of sandbags was in the wide-fucking-open and easily visible from the coast road, one hundred yards away. In plain fact, there was really nobody to hide from.

The sandbags had been filled and assembled by soldiers of the host nation, a moderate Arab state whose military was trained, equipped, and mollycoddled by the United States. Not much thought or effort had been expended on the construction. The sandbags formed a U, the open portion of which faced the village, the only direction from which harm could possibly come. This morning none of that mattered; the sandbags were a place to set the radios, and the cammo net was simply to cut the sun.

Beside the beachmasters, maybe a dozen soldiers from the home guard stood around in khaki and green uniforms. Their officers wore elaborate racks of ribbons, row upon row, remarkable for a country whose primary weapon was crude-oil prices.

The local troops were on the beach to provide security, I guessed, but they mostly sat staring at the Americans, or by turns went to lie in the back of their truck or doze beside it in the small patch of shade. What rifles they had were in a pile on the seat.