Seal Force Alpha - Couverture rigide

Marcinko, Richard; Weisman, John

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0671000675 ISBN 13 : 9780671000677

Editeur : Pocket Books, 1998

Synopsis

Book by Marcinko Richard

A propos du livre

Extrait :

Chapter One
The pilot, whose name was Arch Kielly, blinked the cargo bay lights twice, then twice again, to signal he was descending to thirty thousand. Once there, he'd crack a hatch, depressurize, then lower the C-130's ramp. That was so we could jump at twenty-nine thousand five hundred -- the minimum height we'd need to carry us to within striking distance of our target.
I was so preoccupied with checking the cargo straps on the assault craft (it was tied down astride the double-tracked rollers) that I got caught pants-down inattentive when Arch turned the interior lights off. He did that for a perfectly good tactical reason: so no one would be able to see anything untoward from the western shore of Borneo, five and a half miles below, just in case anybody happened to be looking in our direction, which was, of course, up.
So, I was blindsided (literally) by the sudden blackout. Then Arch the fucking pilot did something else I hadn't remembered he was going to do (although he'd told it to me in simple declarative sentences during the preflight briefing): he banked sharply to starboard as he brought the plane onto a due north heading. Surprise. Doom on Dickie. Which is a polite way of saying in Vietnamese that I was being fuckee-fuckeed. One second I was checking the quick release harness on the ICRRC, an acronym that stands for Improved Combat Rubber Raiding Craft for those of you who aren't familiar with SpecWarspeak. The next, I'd lost sight of everything and everybody else as the plane's interior went completely lightless. It was like, WTF?
Then he plunged the nose earthward, dropped the right wing about forty-five degrees, and knocked me completely off balance. I rolled around in the dark like a fucking pinball SEAL, caromed off a bulkhead, got turned around the wrong way (is there any right way in these situations?), tripped over the rollers, lost my balance, and went skidding face first into one of the hard-cast, H-shaped, reinforced aluminum mounting beams that support the plane's forward seating module. It was like, slip, s-l-i-d-e, SMACK -- whaap.
Oh, that smarted. Belay that. It fucking hurt. Instant agony. My oxygen mask was knocked askew. My goggles were spun halfway round my head. My helmet strap cut off my air. Now, those of you who know me at all, know that I have a unique relationship with pain. In actual point of fact, I have an existential relationship with pain. By this, I mean that I see pain not as a vague, generalized physiological concept to be explored; not as a cryptic, enigmatic problem to be analyzed; but as a real-time, essential, individual challenge; a subjective, personal confrontational experience.
Pain is an ordeal; a physical encounter to be lived through, relished, and explored, crack by smack by whaap. My pain exists so I can demonstrate to you, my constant and gentle readers out there, that I am inexorably...alive.
Which is probably why that precise, painful, and even Heideggerian instant was exactly the second the C-130's crew chief -- who was waiting for his cue -- received said signal from the pilot and cracked open the port side hatch. I heard a Perot-size giant sucking sound, and felt the accompanying tremor as the Hercules lost pressure and its interior temperature dropped about 106 degrees in four and a half seconds. Oh, fuck me very much one more time! Was I ever inexorably, existentially, alive.
I struggled to readjust my helmet, mask, and goggles, but the environment wasn't making things easy for me. One problem: it was dark, remember? Another problem: I was wearing a shitload of equipment, and it was difficult to move quickly since I kept catching my straps, loops, lashes, or laces on one of the 130's numerous interior hooks, hangers, pylons, or braces every time I tried to shift my body position.
You do not, after all, jump out of an aircraft at twenty-nine point five thousand feet to go kill bad guys wearing nothing but skivvies, sneakers, and a K-Bar knife. Everything you plan to use, you must carry with you. And when your operational plan calls for a thirty-mile parachute ride followed by a ten-to-fifteen-mile boat ride, followed by who-the-hell-knows-what, you have to carry enough for contingencies. Contingencies, hell -- there's the omnipresent Mr. Murphy to worry about, so you have to go out of the plane loaded down with more junk than you'll find in the Brigade fucking Quartermaster catalog. And things get even more knotty, intricate, complex, when you are operating, like I am, in the black. (No pun intended. What I'm talking about right now are black -- as in untraceable -- ops.)
Which is why I wore a wet suit (generic, French-made) covered by your basic black Nomex flight coveralls (German manufacture). Over those sat a UDT-style life vest (also in basic black), as well as a Brit Royal Marine CQC (that's Close Quarters Combat) vest equipped with class-III body armor and a flotation bladder, not to mention pockets that held twenty or so pounds of lethal goodies that ran the gamut from plastique (in this case an RDX-rich Czech Semtex) and Bulgarian pencil detonators to a point-and-shoot digital electronic camera, (it produces bits-and-bytes computer images on a three-and-a-half-inch disk ratherthan using conventional film), and half a dozen extra magazines for my pistol, each of which contained vintage East German-manufactured frangible Plus-P load ammo.
From the starboard side of the padded pistol belt around my waist was suspended the ever-fashionable ballistic nylon tactical thigh holster containing a Portuguese knockoff of a Heckler & Koch USP 9mm semiauto pistol. The compartment usually reserved for a spare magazine held a suppressor for the pistol. Suspended from my waist's port side and cinched around my left thigh sat a ballistic nylon mag-holder for six thirty-round magazines (filled with the same Kraut ammo that was inside my pistol mags), so I could reload the suppressed HK MP5-PDW I would be carrying. My belt also held a canteen of water, a pouch holding a pair of small but powerful bolt cutters (British), my first-aid kit (also French), and a K-Bar assault knife in a Kydex sheath. I've already told you about the oxygen mask (Japanese) and helmet (Israeli). I don't think I mentioned the O2 bottle, navigational chest-pack, and radio.
My normal weight is in the 220-pound area. If there'd been a scale on this flight, I'd have weighed somewhere in the 270 range. And I wasn't even three-quarters loaded up yet. The point of all this inventory description is to illustrate that there were a lot of possibilities when it came to the "materials that catch on protuberances" category.
I noticed that my fingers were going numb under the Nomex gloves. Now, I don't care whether you've jumped from thirty thousand feet once, or whether you've done it a couple of hundred times like I have: when they depressurize the fucking plane, it gets real goddamn cold, real goddamn fast. Even with the coveralls and the quarter-inch-thick neoprene foam wet suits below 'em, we were suddenly in a d-d-d-deep freeze.
I could sense my guaranteed fog-proof Bolle combat goggles frosting over on the outside, which would have made it hard to see the O2 connector in front of my nose -- if I could have seen anything in the blackness. I stumbled through the plane until I found an oxygen outlet. I identified it by Braille, fondled the nozzle, shoved it sans foreplay into the female connector, and (unlike the president) inhaled as deeply as I could.
Nothing happened. I sucked again. Nada. I tried a third time. Bupkis. This particular oxygen outlet wasn't working. But no O2 at thirty thousand feet is a course of action frowned upon in every one of the military's field manuals and instructional course materials -- not to mention the long list of personal do's and don'ts I carry in my Slovak brain.
So I fought my way aft in the darkness, found a second nozzle, and rapid-switched. Of course, that one was screwed up too. It was right then I realized that my old and constantly consistent nemesis, Mr. Murphy of Murphy's Law fame, had stowed away for the ride.
I yanked the tube connector out of the plane's oxygen supply and shoved it into the O2 bottle strapped to my chest along with the altimeter, compass, large digital readout watch, Magellan GPS module, and secure radio. I inhaled, and was rewarded with a lungful of oxygen. At least I'd be breathing when we went off the ramp. Of course, after that, things might get sticky. There were twenty minutes' worth of air in the bottle strapped to my chest. We were jumping at twenty-nine-thou five hundred. The estimated descent rate given the air temperature, crosswinds, humidity, and load, was eighteen feet per second. You need oxygen until you pass below ten thousand feet. Well -- this was combat, and in combat we might get away with a twelve thou ceiling.
Okay, you do the math. Twenty-nine five thou minus twelve thou, divided by eighteen feet per second, gives us approx 972 seconds (I'm talking fast because I'm using up oxygen) which, divided by sixty, comes to just over sixteen minutes of air. So if we jumped in the next three minutes, I'd be hunky-dory. If not? Sayonara, Dickie -- it would be hypoxia city.
You say you don't know about hypoxia? Well, lemme explain. The condition is a manifestation of pulmonary insufficiency. That's a twenty-dollar way of saying that your blood ain't gettin' enough oxygen. The manifestations include cerebral vasodilation, and changes in sensorum ranging from confusion to narcosis. In the kind of two-bit plain English I understand, this polysyllabic soufflé means that if I jump from too high an altitude I don't get enough oxygen in my brain (that's the cerebral vasodilation stuff), and I can also experience (here come the sensorum goodies): confusion, drowsiness, sluggish reaction time, loss of muscle control, blurred vision and a confused, almost drunken thought process. Bottom line -- if something goes wrong, I can kill myself because my reaction time and sensory perception mechanisms will be off-kilter. Not a favorable condition for the old Rogue Warrior to be in.
Arch turned the emergency lights in the cargo bay on, and everything was all of a sudden bathed in dim red. Now I could see again. There were eight of us making the jump tonight, a HAHO -- that's High Altitude, High Opening -- insertion, which would take us on that aforementioned thirty-mile airborne parasail, followed by the ten-mile boat ride. And all that -- that was going to be the easy part. Because after our half-the-fun-is-getting-there fun, we'd have the second part of the good time. To wit: assaulting a ship whose crew was augmented by zhongdui -- Chinese naval commando reconnaissance units -- who were, the intelligence reports surmised, probably almost as well trained as we were. Zhongdui notwithstanding, we'd take the ship down and send it to the bottom before they could get any message to the outside world that they'd been attacked.
Not that executing any of the above would be a problem. Not with the merry band of hop-and-pop shoot-and-looters I had with me tonight. Tonight, I was traveling with Warriors. Over there, Duck Foot Dewey ran a second swipe of Russian duct tape around his magazine pouch so it wouldn't come open midair and leave him sans ammo for the suppressed HK submachine gun secured to his chest. Just to his left, Gator Shepard checked the tape that wound around the tops of his Adidas GSG-9 tactical boots. The shock of jumping out of a plane can rip your boots right off. That's not a good idea when the outside temperature's about fifty below zero, Fahrenheit. Lose your bootie like that and you get to play "This Little Piggy Froze Solid."
Next to Gator, Half Pint Harris fondled his swim buddy Piccolo Mead's rucksack, pulling on it hard to make sure it wouldn't separate when the chute opened. Hunkered down just across the aisle from Half Pint was Chief Gunner's Mate Eddie DiCarlo -- I call him Nod, as in Wynken and Blynken -- taking a long and loving last look at his suppressed Heckler & Koch MP5-PDW before he stowed it in the padded scabbard that would ride on his right thigh. Leaning against the bulkhead just aft of Nod was Master Chief Nasty Nicky Grundle, whom I'd rescued not three weeks ago from a drab training assignment in Hawaii. Nasty's web gear was being checked over carefully by his new swim buddy, a former UCLA linebacker named Boomerang, the only West Coast surfer-puke in my current group of shooters.
Boomerang (he pronounces it "Boom-rang") had earned his nickname during BUD/S. Had he ever. The first time he went through training, he broke his ankle the fifth week. So they held him back until the next cycle. The second time around, he broke his collarbone at the end of the sixth week. This time they tried to wash him out. But the sonofabitch refused to go. He kept coming back for more. And the third time through, he graduated at the top of his BUD/S class -- with two broken toes and a cracked rib.
I'd tell you more about Boomerang, but I see that Arch the pilot just blinked the red lights three times. And that whining noise you hear? That's the sound of hydraulics. The sonofabitch is lowering the ramp. And over there, the crewmen are unfolding the tracks so the ICRRC package -- specifically the Kevlar-reinforeed rubber assault craft, engine, fuel bladder, communications package, and assault gear, all lashed together in one ingenious, parachutable bundle -- can roll right off the end of the ramp.
Arch blinked the lights thrice again. That was the get-ready sign. The next signal -- the green jump indicator -- would be roughly five minutes from now.
Shit -- I wasn't ready to go-go-go yet. That was on the one hand. On the other hand, there was that old Rogue Commandment that had to be observed. You know the one. It goes, "Thou hast not to like it -- thou hast just to do it."
And, there was much "it" to do. So, I scampered up to the cockpit, gave Arch a thump on the shoulder, a hearty "fuck you, cockbreath," and an upraised middle finger to show how much I cared.
Arch handed the controls to his copilot and swiveled in his chair. "Fuck you, too, asshole," he said through his mask. I could see the smile in his cobra's eyes. "Just stay in one piece, huh?"
I nodded. "I'll try."
He extended his big, gloved hand. "If there's ever anything else I can do -- just call. I'm in the book at Kadena -- there are lots of Kellys, but only one, spelled my way, with an ie."
"How come?"
"We come from the Cuban Kiellys. Grandpa was a Rough Rider who stayed behind. Over the years, the spelling got changed."
I grinned behind my mask, took his hand and clasped it. "Well, Kelly with an i and an e, don't make any fucking offers you don't mean."
His eyes grew serious. "I never do." Arch swiveled, settled back behind the wheel, made sure he had his feet firmly on the pedals, then nodded to his copilot that he was assuming control.
I plugged my Magellan into the navigator's satellite data display. His radar had our target ship on the screen. It was some 125-odd miles from our current position, traveling due north at a steady six knots an hour.
What was our current position? Well, we were over water now -- the South China Sea to be precise -- west-northwest of Belitung Island, about 200 miles south of the equator, and 110 degrees east longitude. FYI, we'd flown out of Guam eleven-plus hours ago on this here MC-130E Combat Talon aircraft, which had been custom painted for us in a dull, black radar-defeating stealth paint. The craft itself bore no identifying markings whatsoever. Neither did anyone in crew. Even so, I can tell you (don't breathe a word of this, okay?) th...

Présentation de l'éditeur :

AS A U.S. NAVY SEAL, RICHARD MARCINKO KNEW NO LIMITS -- AS THE ROGUE WARRIOR, HE OBEYS NO RULES!
SpecWar master Richard Marcinko has revealed classified, kill-or-be-killed operations in a series of New York Times bestsellers: Rogue Warrior, his #1 blockbuster autobiography, and four scorching Rogue Warrior novels. Now in an electrifying new adventure, the Rogue Warrior battles an ultra-secret, ultra-lethal military plot.
The Rogue Warrior's taking a flying leap -- a high-altitude jump over the South China Sea. His mission: scuttle a Chinese freighter's cargo of nuclear hardware and its crack crew of naval commandos. It's a leave-no-tracks, take-no-prisoners operation -- in short, business as usual. But on board Marcinko makes a chilling discovery: a cache of state-of-the-art command and control equipment, all made in the U.S.A. -- and primed for America's destruction!
Marcinko takes his findings back to Washington, where he runs into a wall of doublespeak and double deals. But not everyone wants to see America go down the drain. General Tom Crocker, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, unleashes the SEALs of war -- Marcinko and a Pentagon-based unit, SEAL Force Alpha -- to neutralize a global maze of political deceit that begins all too close to home.
The Chinese sense victory. They have a mole in the White House, and five thousand years of military strategy on their side. But neither the traitor nor all the wisdom of Sun Tzu are prepared for Marcinko and his men. They, after all, live by the Rogue Warrior's Tenth Commandment of SpecWar: "There Are No Rules -- Thou Shalt Win At All Cost."

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Pocket Books
• Date d'édition: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0671000675
• ISBN 13: 9780671000677
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 339