The 64 SEALs traveled in the rear of the gigantic aircraft as it inched its way across the Pacific. They were coming in to land now at Barbers Point, the U.S. Navy air base just along the southern coast from Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu. The Galaxy came in from the northeast, the pilot facing toward the long rolling swells of the ocean, through which, just 23 days earlier,
They were staying for only an hour, just to deliver an engine part and to take on sufficient fuel to last the Galaxy all the way to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The next stop at Okinawa would be even more brief.
During the outward flight to Hawaii, three more officers were introduced, both lieutenants stationed with Team Three in Coronado. Bobby Allensworth, an unarmed combat instructor, had abandoned a life of petty street crime in the South Central district of Los Angeles and joined the Marines at the age of 18. He was a black kid who never knew his father, never had a chance. But the Marines gave him one, and he took it with both hands. Five years later he won a commission, and at the age of 29 they made him a lieutenant and gave him their blessing to join the SEALs.
Bobby, was a supremely good athlete, a perfectly balanced amateur boxer with a right hook like a sledgehammer that had seen him into the finals of the Golden Gloves championships. He fought on the Marines team as a welterweight, but never considered turning pro. In his mind he was both a Marine and a Navy SEAL, and always would be. Bobby stood only five feet ten inches tall, but when he pinned on that golden Trident, he grew to be about ten feet. If he had a weakness it was a helpless sense of humor. He was always the first man to laugh, and Lt. Commander Hunter, who knew him well, said he should have been a comedian.
Bobby’s cohort on the trip was another comedian, a sharp, wisecracking New Yorker from Little Italy, Lt. Paul Merloni, whose momma had never forgiven him for changing his name from Paolo.
Paul went straight from Manhattan public school to the Naval Academy, where he finished third in his class. He was a lieutenant on the guided missile cruiser
For this particular mission, Paul had one valuable asset — he had taught himself Cantonese while working with his judo instructors in Manhattan. He had practiced for years, and was almost fluent. Certainly he knew enough to lay up close to the prison compound when it was located and understand most, if not all, of what the guards were saying.
The third SEAL officer from Coronado was 34-year-old newly promoted Lt. Commander Olaf Davidson, who had been a team leader in Kosovo. Olaf, a huge six-foot-four-inch descendant of Norwegian fishermen in Newfoundland, had been a SEAL officer for 10 years, with no active command since the war in Yugoslavia. His specialty was boats, landing craft and the docking and operation of an SDV — swimmer delivery vehicle. Admiral Bergstrom considered him the best he had, and since it was almost certain the recon team would have to go in underwater, through the coastal shallows, wherever the jail turned out to be, the massive Olaf would hit the beach right behind Lt. Commander Rusty Bennett on the initial landing.
Two veteran petty officers were also among the final 20 SEALs who joined the flight from San Diego. One was Chief Steve Whipple from Chicago, a career naval engineer who had become a SEAL after earning a tryout as a running back with the Bears, but not making the grade. Chief Whipple, a six-foot-tall, tattooed hard man, had gone in with the SEAL team that took out Saddam’s biggest oil rig in the Gulf War. He was only 21 then, and now he was 36. An instructor in jungle warfare, he had trained men for combat all over the world. Bobby Allensworth considered Steve to be the arm-wrestling champion of the inner universe.
His colleague Chief John McCarthy was another veteran, originally from Washington State. He was a quiet, shy, whip-thin mountaineering instructor who had been clambering all over the highest peaks of the Cascade Range since he was 10 years old. He was also king of the grappling irons, a czar among rope climbers, and the resident assassin among marauding SEALs. If they had to scale wails to enter the jail, Chief McCarthy would lead the way, his big SEAL fighting knife inches from his right hand at all times.
There were also three British SAS men, seconded to the SEALs for this particular mission at the express request of Colonel Mike Andrews. There was Sergeant Fred Jones from Dorset and his corporal, Syd Thomas, a 36- year-old Londoner from the East End. These two had worked deep behind enemy lines in Iraq in 1991, singlehandedly taken out two SCUD missile mobile launchers, and blown up two entire trucks full of Saddam’s elite commandos on the way out. Syd currently had a half-dozen SEALs falling about laughing at stories of his antics in the desert, particularly his daredevil exploit in “cutting a goat out of some towelhead’s herd, specially for our roast Sunday lunch, and Freddie went and set it on fire in the embers of the fucking blown-up truck…it was like eating old fireworks.”
The third SAS man was one of the youngest sergeants in the regiment, Charlie Murphy, an ex-paratrooper from Northern Ireland. Charlie had been a group leader in Kosovo, operating deep in the hills, trying to drive the Serbs out. He and three troopers cleared them out of one village, destroying three jeeps, a tank and two trucks. They then stayed on and helped the wounded Kosovar civilians, holding off a determined attack by 50 more Serbs. The operation was “black,” Special Forces, otherwise Charlie Murphy would have been awarded a Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest battle honor. As it was, Charlie’s war simply never happened.
The men in the Galaxy were not average people. And they rode together, slipping down through the cloudless sky into Hawaii with much on their minds, saying very little, each man trying to imagine what the jail would look like when it was finally located.
In the hold of the Galaxy was stowed an astounding volume of gear, big crates containing all the combat equipment they would use on this mission to split wide apart the military jail that held the
Only 12 men would make the landing underwater, and each of them had packed their own custom-made, highly flexible neoprene wet suits. In fact, there were four extra suits in case of emergency. If these four men were not required, they would go in with the main team. Thus there were 16 pairs of extra-large SEAL flippers, all custom-made, all oversized for extra speed through the water, all bearing the student number awarded to each man as he passed the BUD/S course. The 16 had also packed at least two pairs of modern commercial scuba divers’ masks each, their bright Day-Glo colors carefully obscured with black water-resistant tape.
None of the swimmers would wear watches because of the possibility of a glint shining off the metal through the water alerting a sentry. Instead, the SEALs would swim in holding a specially designed “attack board” in front of them. This is a small, two-handled platform that displays a compass, a depth gauge and an unobtrusive watch. Thus the swimmer can kick through the water with both hands on his attack board with the details of time, depth and direction laid out right in front of his eyes.
Because the target was as yet unknown, it was possible that the SEALs might have to go in underwater, perhaps through a harbor. This meant a heavy supply of Draegers, the special underwater breathing apparatus that leaves no telltale trail of bubbles like regular scuba equipment. The Draegers contain about 13 cubic feet of oxygen at 2,000 pounds per square inch, enough to last a SEAL for maybe four hours. The genius of the device is a recycling system for the oxygen as it is exhaled, mostly unused. This eliminates the bubbles. On land the Draeger is heavy, 35 pounds. In the water it is weightless.
The principal weapon selected for the attack was the elite German Heckler & Koch MP-5, a small, deadly accurate submachine gun, priceless at close quarters, flawless at 25 yards, the SEALs’ most comforting friend. There were 60 of them crated in the hold of the Galaxy. In addition, all the SEALs would go in with their regular Sig Sauer 9mm pistol, in its strapped-down holster containing two extra 15-round magazines right above the flap.
The main assault team was scheduled to take in four machine guns, the “light” M-60 E3, which weighs more than 30 pounds with two belts of 100 linked rounds, ready to fire. But that’s only 20 seconds of sustained fire for the lone SEAL machine gunners, and extra assistance would be required to carry in 12 belts per gun, providing two minutes of sustained fire incase of total emergency.
There were eight carefully knotted black nylon climbing ropes with steel grappling hooks stored in one separate crate, along with a dozen pairs of powerful night-sight binoculars. Eight light aluminum ladders, between
