Undeclared War
Authors: Dennis Chalker
Command Master Chief
with
Kevin Dockery
I dedicate this book to a legend in the Teams, Timmy “Ho Ho” Prusak. He has brought so much value, knowledge, and camaraderie to the Teams, especially to the men that worked under him. I know, because I was one. I also dedicate this to his lovely, supportive wife Ingra and the rest of his family. Some day we will meet again at the Pearly Gates. He will be waiting with a hot dog or two, a six-pack, and of course his small telephone pad. He is one of the best. To you, Ho Ho!!
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fellâ¦
A subdued Humvee full of SEALs returned to the “train,”â¦
Months after the JSSF incident in Bosnia, a blue Pontiacâ¦
In the years following the massacre of Muslim civilians atâ¦
A loud buzzing roar filled the small room as theâ¦
The ride wasn't a long one, and the spring airâ¦
Turning to the counter to his right, Arzee casually setâ¦
Closest to the house door of the garage was Keithâ¦
Reaper watched the Vette start to accelerate. Whatever was underâ¦
Arzee was spun about in the crash. Dizzy and disoriented,â¦
Physically, Arzee had not suffered anything more serious than someâ¦
In northern Lake Michigan, almost twenty miles from the closestâ¦
The situation for Reaper was quickly becoming the worst heâ¦
The situation had changed for Reaper. Now he had somethingâ¦
Reaper and Bear were conducting their mission as if theyâ¦
Now that both men were finally on the target roofâ¦
By 3 P.M., 1500 hours in Reaper's log, the trafficâ¦
The ride back to the shop was a somber oneâ¦
Having made the decision to go ahead with the operation,â¦
There was a hard time limit on how long Reaperâ¦
Preparations for the operation moved forward rapidly and smoothlyâaâ¦
Heavy traffic still filled the main highways around Detroit asâ¦
With a quiet sigh, Reaper turned back to the taskâ¦
The four horsemen didn't hold a celebration or homecoming atâ¦
Dawn had been over hours earlier on Saturday morning, theâ¦
The vehicles were packed and on their way within anâ¦
With the arrival of the boat at the island, Reaperâ¦
“Downstairs now,” Reaper said as he left the room whereâ¦
Once the decision to move had been made, the teamâ¦
It was a long four days later that Reaper onceâ¦
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrentsâexcept at occasional intervalsâ¦.”
“Just what in the hell are you talking about?” Edward Ward said from his place in the driver's seat of the M998 series High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV), commonly called a Humvee. The heavy military vehicle was moving slowly through the rain, hardly an unexpected weather situation in northeast Bosnia-Herzegovina. The wide military vehicle bumped and jostled the passengers as it passed over a rough and rutted road that was little more than a cart path.
There were some better roads on the northeastern slopes of the Majevica mountain range, but these men were intentionally avoiding them. The vehicle rolled along quietly, hidden in the dark on a path few other people would choose to travel even in full daylight.
The passengers in the wide, boxy vehicle stood out as much as their ride did. The men had an un
earthly, alien look about them as most of them wore AN/PVS-14 night-vision devices on their faces. The single large extended eye tube of the PVS-14, along with the frame that strapped to their faces, gave them a bulging cyclops look.
The only one inside the vehicle who was wearing a different style of night-vision device was Ed Ward, the driver. He had a set of AN/TVS-7 night-vision goggles on his faceâthe goggles giving him excellent depth perception. Ward had no trouble driving the Humvee in almost complete darkness, even with the vehicle's headlights turned off.
“Just thinking about the beginning of a book I heard about,” Chief Ted “Grim” Reaper said from the front passenger seat. From the backseat of the vehicle, Titus “Bear” Parnell spoke up.
“You know, when I first got to Team Two, Mike Boynton was the master chief,” Bear said. “He always said that back in Vietnam, rainy nights like this one were great to operate in.”
“That's because no one in their right mind would be going out in this shit,” Mike Martell, the fourth SEAL of the group, said from where he sat in the back, listening carefully to the radio over the headset he had clamped over his left ear.
“So, that must be why we're out here,” Ward said.
“Ho, ho, ho,” Bear chuckled. His teammates were used to the fact that the big SEAL actually laughed like Santa Claus. That laugh usually drew a second look from anyone else who happened to be around when his deep voice boomed out. One look at Bear would tell you where his nickname came from, and evaporate any thoughts of Saint Nick. None of the
SEALs were small, but Bear looked like a beer keg with legs and armsâthick, muscular legs and arms.
At his place in front, Chief Ted Reaper continued to look out of the window of the Humvee at the driving rain of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the early spring. The snows were gone, but that just made the poorly kept, muddy country roads a quagmire. He and his fellow SEALs made up the Navy contingent of their detachment from the Joint Special Strike Force (JSSF). They had been attached to the U.N.-mandated Stabilization Force, the SFOR, that was trying to maintain stability in the war-torn area of the Balkans. The JSSF was put in place to react quickly to any situation. They could rapidly evaluate a problem and either decide to deal with it themselves or call in a greater strength force from the SFOR assets scattered around the country.
The men of JSSF also conducted classic special operations missions: special reconnaissance operations to locate potential rogue groups or war criminals, direct actions in the form of strikes against designated sites or personnel, and civil affairs, where they tried to develop good relations among the civilian population of an area.
To secure maximum flexibility in conducting these operations, the Joint Special Strike Force had been put together from the Navy, Army, and Air Force special operations forces. The Air Force contingent of this JSSF detachment were two combat controllers, who were the best field air controllers in any of the services. The Army contingent of six Special Forces troopers made up the bulk of the JSSF detachment. In overall command were two professional Intelligence officers who had a great
deal of experience running covert paramilitary operations for the CIA.
Chief Reaper was the senior noncommissioned officer (NCO) of the detachment, which didn't always sit well with the Army guys but didn't cause any real friction. The SEALs bumped heads and cracked jokes with the Army troopers on occasion, and both groups of men made fun of the Air Force contingent. The jokes came from years of traditional rivalry between the services.
Underlying the gags was an unspoken respect the men had for each other. The operators were all professional warriors and knew the skills and capabilities each man brought from his branch of the service. The only real unknown factor was their commanding officer.
There were two officers in the detachment, Lieutenant Mark Franklin, who was the executive officer and Captain Cary Paxtun the commanding officer. Both men had been in the Army Special Forces before changing their career paths and going into intelligence work. Franklin had remained in Army Intelligence while Paxtun had gone on to operate directly with the CIA.
Both men had spent years working in Afghanistan and other parts of the world, Paxtun as part of the paramilitary forces of the CIA and Franklin with the Army. Between them, they spoke seven languages including Arabic, Serbo-Croat, Pushtun, Afghan, Persian, and Russian. They had both come back to Special Operations because that was where the action was now, and Reaper was of the opinion they should have stayed where they were.
Neither man's skills were in question as far as Reaper was concerned, but their attitude very much was. In the SEAL chief's opinion, both of the officers had forgotten what it meant to work as part of a team, something that the SEALs take very seriously. Paxtun acted as if he just considered the men under his command to be tools for his own advancement. Franklin wasn't much better but at least tended to stay with the Army members of the unit and left the SEALs alone.
Besides directing the JSSF detachment, the two officers had been working hard at setting up an intelligence network among the many different groups in the area. They were often away from the headquarters the group had established in a house in the small town of Argulak. As far as Reaper was concerned, both officers could be out chasing goats in the mountains, that would be fine with him. All he wanted was for the officers to do their jobs and allow him the leeway he wanted to make sure his men were protected and that the mission was accomplished.
Neither Paxtun or Franklin told the men of the JSSF who they had talked to, what had been discussed, or even why they would be talking to a particular person in the first place. The specifics of who the agents were and how the intelligence was developed wasn't a question that Reaper or the rest of the men felt that they had to know. The information that the two men did learn, they held very close to their chests. That was something Reaper was concerned about. If there was information regarding a target, a location, or forces in an area that could affect his men or his mission, Reaper wanted to know about it.
Informationâgood, reliable intelligence on an
area or enemyâcould be more important than ammunition on an op. Since he felt that his leaders couldn't be completely trusted to tell him everything they knew, Reaper fell back on an old SEAL tradition. As the Teams had done in Vietnam, Reaper and the SEALs developed their own intelligence sources among the locals.
The SEALs' mission that night was intended to help increase the good relations that had been developing with some of the displaced localsâat least that's what Lieutenant Franklin had said. When Yugoslavia had broken up years earlier a whole bunch of old tensions and hatreds, nursed for years among parts of the population, had lifted up like a bunch of serpents tasting the air.
Ethnic cleansing was a new term for an old idea, hate people for their religion/race/background/whatever. One of the missions of the JSSF was to prevent any further atrocities from being committed against anyone. Presently, they were helping a group of Muslim refugees who had moved into an abandoned village in a resettlement area at North Sapna.
The people had been badly mauled by the Serb forces over the last several years but were finally coming to trust the men of the SFOR, and especially the SEALs of the JSSF detachment, and listening to what they had to say. The lives of the Muslim refugees had been as hard as could be imagined. Almost no families were left intact by the ravages of ethnic cleansing. Few husbands were around, and the haunted eyes of many of the younger women answered questions that the SEALs never asked.
There was a meeting that night in the local vil
lage schoolhouse, the biggest building in the area that still had walls and a roof. That was where the remaining elders of the refugees would make their final decision about staying. Paxtun wanted the SEALs to be in attendance to observe the meeting and give a show of support.
“Things have been pretty calm among the Serbs for the last couple of months,” Bear said from the back of the Humvee.
“Yeah,” Reaper agreed, “but something is in the wind over this relocation of the Muslims. There haven't been any reports of recent Serb movement in the area, but some of the locals are nervous as hell. Can't blame them given the way they've all been treated in the past.
“Those fundamentalist Muslims who claim to be in from Pakistan have been preaching around, trying to stir things up. Personally, I think they all are ex-mujahideen fighters from Afghanistan, not just the few Paxtun says are part of the group. At any rate, none of the villagers want to have anything to do with them. They've all had enough war to last them the rest of their lives.
“But it's going to be a few years yet before there's any kind of really stable government over here. Even with the fighting having at least died down, things are more political than ever. Everybody wants to be in charge. And those Muslim fundamentalists are the worst of the bunch. They're offering protection to the villagers from the Serbs claiming we can't do our jobs. It looks like just another old-fashioned shakedown racket.
“The last thing we need around here is a Serb at
tack in a protected area. With all the different factions in the area, this whole region is like a pot just barely simmering. It could boil over at any time. We've worked too hard to take care of these people to let them down now. I want to keep a close eye on things.”
“I still think Paxtun's going to be mightily pissed when he sees you took his Humvee,” Bear said.
“Well,” Reaper said, “his idea to conduct a lightly armed, low-provocation, high-presence recon is a bunch of crap. Just because things have been quiet does not mean they're going to stay that way, no matter how much we'd like them to. If anything happens, I want the firepower to sayâgo the fuck awayâloud and clear.”
The firepower Reaper was referring to was in the form of the Mark 19 40mm grenade launcher attached to a ring mount on the roof of the Humvee. The big weapon was the size of a box that would hold a large pair of cowboy boots. On the back of the this “box” were two vertical handles for aiming, and a piece of wrist-thick pipe sticking out of the front.
The barrel of the grenade launcher could spit out half-pound 40mm high-explosive grenades at a rate of around 350 a minute to a distance of over 2,000 meters. The Mark 19 was a formidable piece of hardware by anyone's measure.
“Paxtun wanted us to stick to the main roads,” Ward said as he guided the heavy vehicle through another deep set of muddy ruts in the roads. “If he isn't pissed about our taking his vehicle, he will be if we bring it back with a busted axle.”
“Then you just pay attention to your driving,”
Reaper said. “If we're going to do a recon, we'll stick to the same roads that any Serb forces would use. It's not like you guys don't know the ruleâ¦.”
“Never take the easy way in,” Ward, Bear, and Martell said in rough unison.
“I don't think even the Serbs would try this goat path in the dark,” Ward said. “There aren't even any goats on it. It is a hell of a lot shorter than that paved road around the mountain, though. We're going to get to the village a couple of hours earlier than planned by the looks of things.”
“The goats heard Bear was in the area and made a run for it,” Martell said from the back.
“Speaking of making some odd friends,” Ward said, “Captain Paxtun has been pretty friendly with the Russians up in Uglyville. Maybe he knows nothing is going to happen.”
“Or he knows something is coming down and just doesn't feel like telling us,” Bear said.
“Belay that talk,” Reaper growled, “Paxtun's our CO and knows our mission. He talks to a hell of a lot more people than the Russian SFOR contingent up in Ugljevik. I don't like those Afghan mujahideen he meets with, but he built a rapport with them while they were fighting the Russians in their own country. And they hate the Russians. If the Serbs were planning something in the Russian sector, we'd know.”
“Oh, yeah, he's buddies with the mujahideen all right. He's about the only source of human intelligence we have on those people, it's not like Lieutenant Franklin knows a bunch of those mujahideen by their first names. But the only information we really have on Paxtun is based on rumor. And rumint
has it that he became a hardcore Muslim himself in Afghanistan,” Bear said. “He may have been hot shit against the Russians over there, but I still don't like him.”
“Rumor intelligence is worth what you pay for it,” Reaper said. “It's nothing more than military gossip. You don't have to like him. You only have to follow his orders. Basing your opinion on nothing better than rumint doesn't make you look any better. I don't care what he has to do, or did, as long as he can keep a lid on those Afghans.”
“Besides,” Martell said. “Isn't he from your home state, Bear? You guys should be asshole buddies by now.”
“Shit,” Bear said. “He's from Dearborn. That city has the largest Arab population outside of the Middle East. I didn't exactly spend a whole lot of my life there. You even told me that he made you itch, Reaper when⦔