Six Minutes To Freedom (30 page)
Read Six Minutes To Freedom Online
Authors: John Gilstrap,Kurt Muse
PART 3
Acid Gambit
49
It was nearly midnight—twenty minutes till tomorrow—and Staff Sergeant Jim Nelson and his crew were finally airborne, ready to execute the mission they’d been planning since May and practicingsince July. This guy Muse—Parker Sturbridge called him Moose because of his size and because it was Parker’s job to carry him if he couldn’t or wouldn’t walk—was one hell of a guy. Jim and the rest of the Delta operators knew all about their precious cargo’s refusal to acceptan easy out through that letter from his wife, and anyone with balls that size deserved to be snatched back into the world.
Jim’s job was to be in on the explosive entry, unless that didn’t work for some reason, in which case his job was to rappel down the side of the prison and cut through the bars with a cutting torch. That explainedthe big bomb on his back. Nothing like having a few dozen pounds of oxygen and acetylene strapped to your spine when you’re planning to fly into a wall of tracer fire. Jim was sitting in the forward-mostspot on the portside outboard bench of the MH-6 Little Bird chopper, facing the direction of flight because the oxygen and acetylene tanks wouldn’t let him face out to the side like the other five members of his team. He kept his ankles crossed between the bottom of the bench and the top of the landing skid, keenly aware that a flimsy nylon strap was all that kept him from tumbling into the night. Yee-flippin’-ha.
They’d been waiting for weeks in Hangar Three at Howard Air Force Base for the balloon to go up at midnight. For the time being, they were slicing through the darkness, awaiting the arrival of H hour at midnight, when the peaceful night would be torn open like nothing the Panamanian people had ever seen. The targets were selected and clear, and the rules of engagement were even clearer. Operation Just Cause, which had been the nation’s greatest secret for weeks and was soon to be known as anything but, was a war against Noriega and the PDF. It was a war of liberation, not of conquest, and America’s elite special forces teams had been entrusted with the two highest-priority objectives. Delta was tasked with these priorities: Objective One, the capture of Manuel Noriega, and Objective One Prime, the liberation of Kurt Frederick Muse.
The stakes could not have been higher. Delta’s previous high-profile mission at Desert One in Iran had been such a royal disaster that anythingless than unbridled success here in Panama would be vilified as a failure. A lot of good men had died that night, and a lot of careers had been needlessly ruined because of politicians’ (and command officers’) unspeakable ineptitude. Not that they caught the blame, of course—unless you count Jimmy Carter, who arguably lost the White House because of it. Rear-echelon types with their paneled offices and stars on their collars reserved only credit for themselves. When it came time for blame, there were plenty of company officers and noncoms to pad the list.
They had discussed these things among themselves from time to time as D day and H hour approached, but none of these things were of any concern to Jim Nelson tonight. Starting in the next fifteen or twenty minutes, and carrying on through the night, and perhaps into the days to follow, all that would matter was the mission, and that was about all there was room for in his head right now.
This tiny piece of the overall operational plan for the invasion of Panama, this Objective One Prime, was listed on the chart as OperationAcid Gambit, named as most such covert ops are by two words randomly generated by a computer. Jim didn’t begin to think that he knew all the details, but what he did know impressed the hell out of him. When the balloon finally went up on this op, dozens of the most lethal warriors on the planet would swoop into action, backed up by some of the most lethal machinery ever devised by man.
Jim’s was one of four Little Birds from the 160th Special Operations Air Regiment with orders to set down on the roof of Modelo Prison, where twenty-three Delta operators would disembark to do their jobs. Meanwhile, somewhere out there in the night, two AC-130 Specter Gunships were circling in the darkness waiting for their signal to turn the Comandancia into pea gravel, while the whole operation was supported with God only knew how many helicopter gunships. Elsewhere in the country, madness was going to rain down from every direction once Just Cause got under way, but for the time being, all those other ops were simply someone else’s business.
Orbiting in the night as they were, Jim turned all the details of Acid Gambit over in his mind. They’d rehearsed this thing dozens of times since the summer, even going so far as to construct an exact three-quarter-scalereplica of the prison in the wilds of Hurlburt Field, Florida. The level of detail was both amazing and frustrating, drawn largely from interviews of former prisoners, most of whom had never seen the prison in its entirety, but only their little sections of it. The path from the roof to the cellblocks was the biggest question. They’d been able to get their hands on some architectural drawings, and they’d been gathering intel data since the week after Kurt had been arrested,but significant holes still remained in their knowledge base, and those holes had been filled with educated best guesses, which in Jim Nelson’s mind was the same damn thing as a wild-ass guess.
But what the hell? With as much firepower as they were bringing along, even the most outrageously wrong guess could be turned right again. If doors turned out not to be where they’d thought, they could always make a new one on their own.
Early on, Acid Gambit had just been one more planning mission, so similar to the countless dozens of similar planning missions that Delta took on. The vast majority never came to fruition for any number of reasons: in some cases Uncle Sam lost his nerve, and in a few others, the bad guys just got lucky; but mostly, when 0300 missions got scrubbed it had something to do with unreliable intel. For a while, it had been looking as if the precious cargo for Acid Gambit was going to get whacked in his cell, rendering the whole plan moot. Jim Nelson had really come to respect the guy. He showed a lot of guts. Jim was happy as hell that his Aztec Cycle rotation allowed his team—G Team—to be on the op now that the trigger had been pulled.
They’d thought they were close twice before, first pretty early on, and then again immediately after the coup, but on both of those occasions,the hammer was released gently, and they were forced to stand down. Jim didn’t know how he’d respond if that happened again tonight. He was ready to go, dammit.
Of course, all the planning, and all the rehearsal—they’d been mounting weekly midnight raids on the roof of the Department of Defense’s elementary school (ironically, a school that Annie Muse had visited often before being evacuated to exile) ever since they’d arrived in-country all those weeks before—would mean nothing once the shootingstarted. Wild-ass guesses could quickly become death sentences when the operation went hot. It was the part of Jim Nelson’s job that he found most enthralling and most frightening. You can plan and rehearsedown to the smallest detail, but at the end of the day, every plan assumes a certain reaction on the part of the bad guys, and if that reactiondoesn’t materialize, then everything flowing downstream from it will be entirely different than any scenario they’d thought of. After two or three iterations, the plan might as well never have existed.
Of all the variables, the one that weighed heaviest on the rescue mission was the one solitary soldier outside Moose’s cell. Apparently, some Treaty Affairs officer had made a pretty good speech that was supposed to build hesitation into the guard’s trigger finger, but you never knew how seriously some people took their sense of duty. One way or another, Kurt Muse was going home tonight, but it would be a hell of a lot better for all if he could cross the threshold alive.
On the second Little Bird, Staff Sergeant Peter Jacobs had the assignmentto rappel from the roof of Modelo Prison, dangle in midair outside Muse’s cell window, and take out the executioner before he had a chance to react. It was the one segment of this op that Jim was happiest he hadn’t drawn. There was something unsettling about the thought of dangling without cover as the entire world tried to kill you, and yet staying composed enough to hit your target with one shot. Of course, the others on the roof planned to rain enough lead down on any potential sharpshooter that the bad guys would be too busy burrowingthrough the concrete to take decent aim.
Once the hallway executioner was neutralized, the rest should be easy—a standard shoot and swoop. As of eleven o’clock this morning, they knew exactly which cell the precious cargo was in—verified by an airborne eyewitness—and thanks to information leaked by an Army lawyer-doctor team, they knew virtually every detail of the cellblock level where Muse was being held. They even knew what kind of lock was on the door to Muse’s cell. All the prisoner had to do was stay alive long enough to be rescued, and they’d be able to bring a happy ending to his story.
All of it, the whole dance, would begin straight up at midnight when a Delta sniper team on Quarry Heights would open up from a quarter mile away with M-60 machine guns to take out the ZPU-4 antiaircraftbattery Noriega had recently installed in the Comandancia compound. Simultaneously, the snipers would take out the main power supply and the backup generators, plus any other targets of opportunitythey could find.
There was a certain irony, Jim thought, to an entire invasion beginningwith a single burst of 7.62mm bullets.
50
It was 23:50 hours, ten minutes before H hour, when a regular Army machine gun team mounted in an M113 armored personnelcarrier in Fort Amador saw the school bus approaching. It was running hot and fast, and it was full of PDF soldiers who’d been rousted from their barracks.
If there was one point that was made perfectly clear during the finalbriefing on this mission, it was that no civilian vehicle was to be fired on without specific orders, and certainly not before kickoff at midnight.
But this was war, and in war, no standing order stands for long. Command had notified the team of this bus two minutes ago, and now here it was, racing straight for them.
It only took about twenty rounds of .50 caliber ammunition to reducethe bus to scrap metal.
Thirty seconds into the war, they were already ten minutes ahead of schedule.
51
Kurt had been sleeping only fitfully. The events of the morning and afternoon had left him feeling intellectually dizzy. Haunted by dozens of questions and possessing no answers, his mind whirled a million miles per hour. When he wasn’t dozing, he found himself thinkingabout the trauma of his family’s first Christmas without him, and his first without them. When he pictured the holidays, his mind conjuredimages all focused on his old house, the house of his kids’ childhood.It occurred to him now that those images were all wrong. The faces were the same, he thought, but then he had to cancel that in his mind, as well. The Christmastime faces of the past were happy ones; he had no idea what they looked like anymore. He had no idea what terrible impact he might have had on the happiness of his children. Come to think of it, he knew virtually nothing anymore about what was important to him.
His family’s lives were moving on, just as they were supposed to, in as normal or awkward a manner as circumstances would allow, and he was no longer a part of it. All the day-to-day activities, all the things that defined the very essence of family life no longer reflected his touch. It was a terrible thing to consider. It was a terrible thing to live—
What was that?
In the distance, he thought he’d heard the brissant thudding of a heavy machine gun. There was a rhythm and timbre to a .50 caliber machine gun that was unique to itself; once you heard it, you’d never mistake it for anything else. But in this case, it was far enough away that Kurt wondered if maybe it hadn’t been something more benign—say, the beat of rotor blades, filtered through a dream he hadn’t realizedhe’d been having.
He lifted his head from the pillow to glance out in the hallway, and when he saw the curious expression on the corporal’s face, he knew that it had been real.
The next burst of gunfire was extended, and from much closer.
Still bathed in total darkness, Jim Nelson felt his Little Bird bank hard to the right and swoop into a steep, deep dive. His first thought was, these guys are going in too early! What the hell are they thinking? Then he realized that the pilots from the 160th were way too good to move without orders, so H hour had clearly been moved up.
They came in fast, and as they moved through the center of the city and beyond, Jim could see Modelo Prison clearly among the assorted tenements. Its flat cement roof was the clearest giveaway, and next to it sat the Comandancia with its antiaircraft emplacement, which frankly looked to be up and running just fine, even if its crew didn’t yet know that the sky was full of targets for them to shoot at. Jim was watching, in fact, when the tracers streamed in from the high ground and killed both the gun and its crew.
This was it. They were on their way.
For a very brief instant, Kurt and the corporal just stared at each other, mouths agape, knowing that something earth-shattering was underway,but neither of them knowing exactly what to do about it. The close-in machine gun fire spurred Kurt into action. He rolled out of his cot and crawled into the bathroom for cover while his executioner was still weighing his options.
Kurt reasoned his way through the problem in an instant. Clearly, this was no repeat of the coup attempt. First of all, the rebels didn’t have access to the kind of firepower he’d heard on the outside; second, most of the rebels of influence or importance were already dead or in prison. No, this was an American military action, and if the American military was involved, that meant that Noriega was finally going down.
It was time to get dressed. He quickly, frantically, changed from his orange surfer shorts into some underwear, and from there quick-stepped into a pair of blue Docker slacks, a green Polo shirt, and his running shoes. What the hell. If you’re going to get shot at, you might as well look as good as you can.
It didn’t even occur to him that he would not survive the night. In that moment, his thoughts were consumed by the image of the Pineapplescurrying for safety and begging for his life. If Kurt’s own life could somehow be spared in the process, well, that would be pretty damned good, too.
Outside, the gunfire grew louder and closer. He saw tracers speedingpast his window with an upward trajectory, only to see it returned like some kind of fiery summer deluge. Jesus, it was really happening.
Outside his door, out in the cellblock, he heard the sound of runningfeet and raised voices. Someone pounded on the door to the officers’quarters across the hall and yelled, “Sir! Sir! Something is happening!”
“No shit,” Kurt mumbled.
The ground fire surprised Jim. He couldn’t imagine what would inspire some PDF grunt to such a clearly suicidal act. But their wish was Delta’s command.
The Little Birds swooped in low and fast, nose to tail on their approachto the roof of Modelo Prison, laying a blanket of suppressing fire toward the guard towers and the prison yard, yet still some overzealousassholes on the ground felt compelled not to dive for cover. It was a bad night to be carrying a weapon on the streets of the Chorrillo neighborhood. The war hadn’t officially started yet, but the grounds of the prison yard and the Comandancia across the street swarmed with targets. As the guy with the big-ass bomb on his back, Sergeant Jim Nelson felt particularly inspired to quench the tracer fire. The receptiondesks in Heaven and Hell were going to be a little overwhelmed this evening.
The flat, concrete roof of the prison raced up to meet them, and as they closed to within a few feet, Jim unfastened his safety strap and lifted his legs straight out to avoid getting crushed by the skids as they slid to a remarkably smooth halt. The overture was complete, and it was time for the first act to begin.
Before the bird had even stopped, Jim lurched off of his bench and ran to his assigned position next to the access door in the cupola that led to the prison’s central stairway. There he shrugged out of the torch tanks and crouched in a defensive position to cover Paul Jones and Parker Sturbridge, the explosives entry team. Within seconds, the entireDelta team was on the roof, swarming like ants to their planned posts, preparing to bring a little piece of Armageddon to this squalid, ugly place.
The entry charge was custom designed for tonight’s mission. Carriedin four separate pieces and assembled in place on the surface of the metal door to the cupola, the charge resembled a large picture frame when it was finally put together. Paul inserted the initiator and signaled to Parker that it was time to go.
Staff Sergeant Peter Jacobs drove his piton into the roof decking with five hard blows of a hammer. He securely attached the exposed end of his climbing rope to the eyelet, then slung the nylon bag with the rest of the rope over the parapet and into the darkness, where it arced toward the ground. His was the key element of the first moments—one among so many key moments that lay waiting their turn. With his rappellingharness in place, and the figure-eight descender clipped to the caribiner, he was ready to slip over the side to fire the single shot that was his and his alone, to take out Kurt Muse’s designated assassin. His job was to be in place with his shot fired before they blew the door to the cupola.
Balancing carefully on the top of the parapet, he leaned backward hesitantly, testing the integrity of his lifeline before committing himself fully to his task. Silhouetted against the gray adobe of the prison wall, he made a perfect target, and he hadn’t descended three feet before the first enemy rounds sent shards of shattered concrete into his face. From the air, the prison looked like an asymmetrical L, with the kitchen area serving as the letter’s squatty, thick base.
Jacobs pressed the vest-mounted transmit button for his portable radio and spoke rapidly into his throat mike. “Bravo Three taking fire from the kitchen. It’s close.”
Two seconds later, the roof line erupted with outgoing gunfire as the rest of his troop opened up on the kitchen’s windows and red-tiled roof, shredding them in seconds. The suppressive fire calmed things down for Jacobs, but it couldn’t extinguish the return fire entirely. That job fell to a Little Bird gunship, which all but removed the kitchen’s roof in a single pass.
Jacobs had practiced this so many times in his head and on the side of the elementary school at Howard Air Force Base that his hands and feet seemed to know on their own what to do. He zipped down to the exact spot, dangling in midair, and brought his CAR-15 to his shoulder,ready to kill a killer. “Bravo Three in position.”
But the cell was empty. No killer, no prisoner, no anyone. In the green light of his night vision goggles, Jacobs peered intensely into the darkness, looking for some kind of movement, but there was nothing.
“Shit.”
Jim Nelson heard the magic words at the same instant as everyone else. “Bravo Three in position.”
An instant later, Paul’s voice crackled, “Fire in the hole.”
The entry charge blew the cupola door into next month.
On the floor of the bathroom, Kurt tried to make himself as small as possible amid the strobes of muzzle flashes and the rain of hot concrete that blasted in through his window and ricocheted around the walls like BBs in a can.
He couldn’t help but wonder whether the brave young corporal had fled his post, or if he was crouching outside the cell door, waiting for Kurt to show his face. Either way, Kurt felt reasonably safe in the bathroom,pretty sure that the guard was in no hurry to bring himself closer to the firing.
The noise of the battle outside was unlike anything Kurt had ever heard. Complete bedlam.
Then came the explosion. It was a horrendous thing, like a direct hit from a bomb, he thought, literally bouncing him off the concrete floor and seemingly moving Carcel Modelo off its foundation.
Seconds later, night turned to day outside as the volume and rhythm of the shooting increased tenfold. This was hell on earth. Explosion afterexplosion rippled the air, and Gatling guns from God knew how many aircraft created a cacophony of noise that sounded like the fabricof the air itself was being ripped apart by the hands of God.
He had to see for himself. Rising cautiously, first to his knees, and then to his feet, he dared a peek out of the bathroom window. One afteranother, enormous detonations blasted the Comandancia into nonexistence. Blinding flashes preceded the concussion by a fraction of an instant, before tons of dirt and concrete were launched high into the air.
We’ve finally done it
, Kurt thought.
We’ve finally grown a set of balls
.
, Kurt thought.
We’ve finally grown a set of balls
.
He never did see the camouflaged soldier dangling just a few feet away on the other side of the window.
The detonation of the entry charge was the signal to the two orbiting AC-130 Specter gunships that it was time to unload on the Comandancia.As Jim Nelson led the way into the breached opening, the concussionof the first 105mm Howitzer shell felt like a shove from behind.
Once inside the ruined cupola archway, the world was completely dark, lit only by the lights on the muzzles of their CAR-15s, dancing circles of white light cast on a flat black canvas. Two steps down the first flight of stairs, Jim noticed with a wry chuckle that the concrete walls in the stairway of their mock-up prison were in fact wide open. The narrow field of fire they’d anticipated and practiced for was in fact a wide open kill zone.
They moved down the first flight of stairs like water over rocks, over a dozen men in all, pursuing a mission whose stakes were pure and clear. They were here for one man and one man only. Anyone who stood in their way—anyone, in fact, with a weapon in his hand—would die instantly, but all others were to remain unmolested. That meant a surgical strike in the prison, even as the Comandancia next door was razed to the ground.
Descending to and through the fourth floor, security teams dispersedto hold the stairway and to dispatch any guards or soldiers who might try to engage them.
The rest continued on, led by Jim Nelson, whose job it was to securethe third floor—Muse’s floor—and make sure that their precious cargo got home to his family. At the next landing, a second security team was deployed, and as Jim button-hooked around to the left, he found himself face to face with a terrified soldier who would have floated out of his shoes if he raised his hands any higher.
Jim felt his finger tighten on the trigger, but pulled himself back. This one was sane, doing the right thing. “On the floor!” Jim commanded.“
En el piso! En el piso!
Damn it, I almost shot the son of a bitch!”
En el piso! En el piso!
Damn it, I almost shot the son of a bitch!”
The soldier dropped as if his legs dissolved and instantly splayed himself on the concrete floor, in the process saving his own life. The securityteam would cuff him and hold him. Jim Nelson and his four-manassault team had a more important task to perform. Paul Jones and Parker Sturbridge would secure Moose while Jim and Chris Simonemade sure no one shot them in the process.
A dozen steps later, they were there.
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