Echo Platoon by Richard Marcinko, John Weisman Page B
Authors: Richard Marcinko, John Weisman
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blouse starched as stiff as an English upper lip, raised her palm in my direction schoolmarmlike and started to call out to us in language that was incomprehensible yet needed no translation. Quoth she: “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
But Araz paid no attention to her clerkish protests. He pulled up, dead center of the lobby, and indicated that everyone should drop his gear. Then, with Ashley and me following in his wake, he marched straight as a ramrod into the manager’s office, dropped his AK on the man’s desk, and started shouting orders.
According to Ashley, who speaks the local lingo, Araz and the manager were on a first name basis, which is to say he called the manager “Fazil,” and themanager called him, “Colonel sir your excellency.” Whatever Araz was telling the poor little guy, it brought an amused expression to Ashley’s face. And about three minutes later, a horde of bellmen descended like Azeri locusts, and we were all whisked (relatively speaking; this is Baku after all) to the ninth floor and ushered into eight adjoining rooms.
Ashley headed back to her place to clean up. Araz went downstairs to the bar. And moi, I shed my piss-stained sweat-through ragged-ass wet suit and headed for the big stall shower in the big marble bathroom before Boomerang, who was sharing the room with me, had a chance to beat me to the hot water. Yeah, I always feed my men before I eat. And I always make sure they have something to drink before I get anything to slake my own thirst. But when it comes to hot showers, rank has its privileges—and it was my privilege to be a whole shitload more rank than Boomerang was.
While Boomerang scrubbed down, I threw on a pair of UDT swim trunks and went to work. I turned the radio on, loud, then called my old pal Tony Mercaldi at DIA on the secure CipherTac 2000 cellular and pulled him out of a meeting. I passed on the lot numbers from the explosives we’d found at the airfield ambush, asked for a sit-rep on the Sirzhik Foundation, whatever that was, then plugged the secure fax into the CipherTac’s second line, sent him the six pages of Cyrillic notes I’d taken off the dead Ivan, and requested a translation ASAP.
Then I dialed up another asshole I’ve known for years, an old No Such Agency intel squirrel who’s put his job on the line for me dozens of times. He’s a formerMarine O-4, and I call him Pepperman, because he grows hundred-thou Scoville-unit Thai peppers in the front yard of his huge Crofton, Maryland, estate.
“Yo, Pepperman, fuck you, you half load round-eyes.”
There was a slight pause on the line. Then: “Oh, shit—I knew life was too good.” Another pause. “How’s it going, Dick?”
“Well, since you asked . . .” I gave him a thumbnail. I could just see him shaking his head as I spoke.
“Well,” he finally said, “you didn’t fuckin’ call just to pass the time of day. You gotta want something. So you might as well tell me straight off.”
What I wanted was a full court press. I wanted Pepperman to check NSA’s computer tapes and tell me who the dead Ivan had been transmitting to, and what they’d said. I wanted blanket coverage of every fucking phone call going into, and coming out of, this part of the world from the day before yesterday, until further notice. And I wanted all that information, neatly sorted, categorized, ordered, and arranged, and then I wanted it delivered to me RIGHT NOW . I wanted the satellite routes changed. The tangos, I said, had come by boat—from the old CIA listening post at Astara, Iran. I wanted to know everything about their base. I wanted the fucking blueprints. I wanted so much laser-enhanced imagery that I could do a fucking pecker check on each and every one of ’em if I wanted to. And then, with up-to-date intel and computer-generated maps, I’d pay these cock-breaths a Roguish social call at zero dark hundred.
“Y’know what I like about you, Dick? It’s that you’re
But Araz paid no attention to her clerkish protests. He pulled up, dead center of the lobby, and indicated that everyone should drop his gear. Then, with Ashley and me following in his wake, he marched straight as a ramrod into the manager’s office, dropped his AK on the man’s desk, and started shouting orders.
According to Ashley, who speaks the local lingo, Araz and the manager were on a first name basis, which is to say he called the manager “Fazil,” and themanager called him, “Colonel sir your excellency.” Whatever Araz was telling the poor little guy, it brought an amused expression to Ashley’s face. And about three minutes later, a horde of bellmen descended like Azeri locusts, and we were all whisked (relatively speaking; this is Baku after all) to the ninth floor and ushered into eight adjoining rooms.
Ashley headed back to her place to clean up. Araz went downstairs to the bar. And moi, I shed my piss-stained sweat-through ragged-ass wet suit and headed for the big stall shower in the big marble bathroom before Boomerang, who was sharing the room with me, had a chance to beat me to the hot water. Yeah, I always feed my men before I eat. And I always make sure they have something to drink before I get anything to slake my own thirst. But when it comes to hot showers, rank has its privileges—and it was my privilege to be a whole shitload more rank than Boomerang was.
While Boomerang scrubbed down, I threw on a pair of UDT swim trunks and went to work. I turned the radio on, loud, then called my old pal Tony Mercaldi at DIA on the secure CipherTac 2000 cellular and pulled him out of a meeting. I passed on the lot numbers from the explosives we’d found at the airfield ambush, asked for a sit-rep on the Sirzhik Foundation, whatever that was, then plugged the secure fax into the CipherTac’s second line, sent him the six pages of Cyrillic notes I’d taken off the dead Ivan, and requested a translation ASAP.
Then I dialed up another asshole I’ve known for years, an old No Such Agency intel squirrel who’s put his job on the line for me dozens of times. He’s a formerMarine O-4, and I call him Pepperman, because he grows hundred-thou Scoville-unit Thai peppers in the front yard of his huge Crofton, Maryland, estate.
“Yo, Pepperman, fuck you, you half load round-eyes.”
There was a slight pause on the line. Then: “Oh, shit—I knew life was too good.” Another pause. “How’s it going, Dick?”
“Well, since you asked . . .” I gave him a thumbnail. I could just see him shaking his head as I spoke.
“Well,” he finally said, “you didn’t fuckin’ call just to pass the time of day. You gotta want something. So you might as well tell me straight off.”
What I wanted was a full court press. I wanted Pepperman to check NSA’s computer tapes and tell me who the dead Ivan had been transmitting to, and what they’d said. I wanted blanket coverage of every fucking phone call going into, and coming out of, this part of the world from the day before yesterday, until further notice. And I wanted all that information, neatly sorted, categorized, ordered, and arranged, and then I wanted it delivered to me RIGHT NOW . I wanted the satellite routes changed. The tangos, I said, had come by boat—from the old CIA listening post at Astara, Iran. I wanted to know everything about their base. I wanted the fucking blueprints. I wanted so much laser-enhanced imagery that I could do a fucking pecker check on each and every one of ’em if I wanted to. And then, with up-to-date intel and computer-generated maps, I’d pay these cock-breaths a Roguish social call at zero dark hundred.
“Y’know what I like about you, Dick? It’s that you’re
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