Jerry Boykin & Lynn Vincent (19 page)
Satellite photos also showed a couple of ad hoc LFSS fighting positions that included two terrorists keeping watch from the roof of an adobe building at the missionary compound. In addition to imagery, Bragg supplied us with a detailed weather forecast. Meanwhile, Ron provided detailed information on the terrorists themselves.
“I counted at least fifteen of them, but I think there may be more,” he said. “They’re armed with AK-47s. They seemed high or drunk or something. I don’t think they would think twice about killing any or all of the hostages.”
Combined with the reports from Bragg, these details enabled the Sudanese to create an assault plan. Far from any significant body of water, Abu Bakr had only two options for insertion: overland or by air, and the land route was so risky it didn’t even count. The hostage rescue team would have to climb a six-thousand-foot plateau, and it would only take one terrorist sentry to spot them and, effectively, end the mission. Abu Bakr and his officers decided they would be more likely to preserve the element of surprise if they went in fast by air.
A small band of fighters would land a Buffalo plane at the wildlife project at the base of Boma, then take and hold that facility. Simultaneously, a force of about forty fighters armed with G-3 automatic rifles would land four Puma helicopters and a Huey at the ACROSS compound and launch a direct assault on the terrorists. It was a risky plan in terms of the hostages’ lives. But we calculated that the terrorists would choose to engage the assaulters and save their own skins rather than waste time shooting missionaries.
Weather was a problem. Winds atop the Boma Hills were notoriously treacherous. Using my sat radio, I contacted Bragg for another forecast and gave it to Abu Bakr. Looking it over, he chose the best weather window for the strike: twenty-four hours away, just after first light.
Delta was there strictly for support. But I wanted to go along to see how Abu Bakr’s men performed, and to help if they needed it. A Sudanese general whose name I don’t remember okayed it.
“You may go with us,” he said. Then he delivered some of the best news I’d ever heard in my life: “But there is no room on our helicopters.”
Thank God
.
After my trip down the Nile, I’d seen enough of Sudanese helos. I talked to Ron Pontier and he agreed to fly a small four-seat missionary bush plane to Boma with Don Feaney and me on board.
H-Hour came and the Sudanese launched. An hour later, Ron guided our tiny plane toward the ACROSS compound. As we approached the Boma Plateau, I could see the Sudanese helicopters flying around in irregular patterns. Then I saw our runway, just a dirt strip hacked into the jungle with machetes. Swallowing hard, I cinched my seatbelt a little tighter.
After a light touchdown and bumpy rollout, Ron brought the bush plane to a quick stop. Don and I jumped out, .45s drawn, and scrambled to find the missionaries. In the search, we saw a Sudanese soldier lying dead near the airstrip. We later learned he was the first rescuer to charge into battle and was killed as soon as he jumped off the aircraft. But he was the only Sudanese casualty and LFSS resistance crumbled fast. The Sudanese cut down at least twenty terrorists and the others escaped into the evergreens.
As we moved around the missionary station, Don and I heard from below a burst of rapid fire from an assault rifle followed by a grenade explosion. A Sudanese element was still chasing the rebels down the mountain.
Abu Bakr’s voice crackled over my radio. “The hostages are all alive.”
But we couldn’t find them. Don and I moved with caution, entering each
tugal
prepared to clear it.
Then Abu Bakr radioed us again. “The missionaries have been moved to the wildlife center airstrip. They are on their way to Juba.”
Later that day, back in Juba, I finally met John Haspels, who told me he and the other missionaries had tried to escape their captors on their own. The mission, it turned out, had a little dispensary stocked with medications, including narcotics used to treat pain. In something like a scene out of a movie, Haspels made tea for the terrorists and laced it with drugs. The terrorists drank it, promptly fell asleep, and the missionaries fled into the forest. But after waking from their nap, the kidnappers hunted them down, and beat them with rawhide whips.
The day after the rescue, the U.S. embassy sent a C-12, a small turboprop, down to collect Don and me. As we arrived at the airfield, John and the other missionaries drove up in an old Land Rover. The entire group got out and walked over to us as we stood on the tarmac in front of the plane, props already turning.
“We don’t know how to thank you . . . ,” John began, shouting over the prop noise. I glanced around at the group and saw tears. “We have nothing to give you in return.”
“You don’t have to give us anything—” I started to say, but John went on.
“The only thing we have to give you is this,” and he handed me a Good News Bible. All the missionaries had signed it.
Now I had tears of my own. “I want you to know that I’m a believer, and I prayed for your rescue,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Thank
you
,” John Haspels said. “Thank you both.”
I STILL HAVE THAT BIBLE, and count it as a treasured possession—not only in a spiritual sense but also from a professional perspective. The Sudan mission was Delta Force’s first successful hostage rescue—and the first that followed Charlie Beckwith’s blueprint for providing low-key assistance to other nations.
When we got back to the States, I flew up to D.C. with Digger O’Dell, a Marine Corps major who was the joint task force J-3, or operations officer. Digger was a Vietnam veteran who’d left the service, joined the CIA, gone back into Laos with that agency, got tired of being a spook, and rejoined the Marines. Now, he spent nearly every weekend at an airfield indulging his great passion: freefalling.
We were summoned to the State Department to brief the ambassador-at-large for combating terrorism. At State, Digger and I were ushered up to a secure conference room, where we met the ambassador, a wiry, gray-haired little man with a sharply boned face. Next to him, at a conference table, sat a crisply tailored National Security Council staffer whose name I didn’t catch. A CIA agent who had been with us in Juba was also present.
“Major Boykin, please show us how the Sudanese actually executed the rescue operation,” the ambassador began.
On the conference table, I laid out an aerial photo of the Boma summit that depicted the missionary compound. I explained the Sudanese aerial assault, the brief firefight, and the outcome. When I finished, the CIA guy piped up. Thinking he was doing us a favor, he launched into chapter and verse about how much assistance Delta provided the Sudanese. The training, the planning, the intel, the weather.
Then in full praise mode, he said. “These guys’ willingness to go up to Boma was really encouraging to the Sudanese. That made them realize how serious we were about helping them.”
At that point, the ambassador’s face flushed an amazing shade of scarlet, and he proceeded to screw himself into the ceiling.
“This is
totally
unacceptable!” he barked. “We were asked by the media if there was any U.S. participation, or any U.S. personnel involved in this, and we gave them an emphatic
no
. And the one thing we don’t do is lie to the American public!”
Then he zeroed in on me. “Major,” he said, drilling me with his eyes, “you have created a very bad situation here!”
He paused as if contemplating his next move, which I suspected involved snatching up the nearest telephone to inform the Pentagon about what this knucklehead major had done. I kept a poker face but fumed a little inside. We followed our orders and the Sudanese got every single hostage back—alive. I couldn’t believe it: Delta had just completed its first successful rescue and here I sat waiting for the guillotine to fall.
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. Neither did Digger or the helpful CIA guy. In fact, for a long moment, nobody said a word.
Then, unexpectedly, the National Security Council staffer in the dapper suit spoke coolly into the tense silence.
“Well, we at the White House are very pleased with the outcome of this operation,” he said. “We don’t believe there is any problem with what Delta has done.”
His manner was offhand and slightly superior, as if his was obviously the final word on the subject. I thought I even heard a slight edge of arrogance that said, without using the words, “I’m speaking for the President.”
The effect was like ice water thrown in the diplomat’s face. Instantly, the scarlet color drained away. With visible effort, he untwisted his snarl and forced himself to arrange his features in a more collegial expression. I tried not to gape.
When he was finally able to speak, he said to me, “So . . . will we be getting a written report on the operation?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’m already working on it.”
The ambassador stood, indicating the meeting was over. “All right. Thank you for coming in.”
As Digger and I made a rapid exit, I imagined I could feel the diplomat’s eyes boring into my back. We made our way downstairs, and outside where I think I took my first full breath. As Digger and I got into the dark sedan that would take us back to the airport, I said, “By the way, who was that guy back there that just saved my butt?”
“Him? He’s a Marine Corps major detailed to NSC,” Digger said. “His name is Oliver North.”
Grenada 1983
AS THE UH-60 BLACK HAWK roared toward the nutmeg capital of the world, my jump boots dangled over the dark Caribbean. The steaming heat of Barbados, our departure point, gave way to a balmy warmth that poured in through the cargo door where I sat, squeezed in among other Delta operators, all of us held in by a thick canvas strap, fatigue pants flapping in the breeze. The scent of sea salt hung in the air as I watched the star-spangled horizon skimming past.
It was October 1983. President Ronald Reagan had ordered a joint-forces strike to liberate the island of Grenada from the Marxist New Jewel Movement. In 1979, while the U.S. was busy with Iran, a charismatic Marxist named Maurice Bishop had overthrown Grenada’s elected leader, Sir Eric Gairy, in a mostly bloodless coup. Bishop quickly built alliances with Cuba and the Soviet Union. Soon the regime’s military, Cuban-trained and Soviet-equipped, became the largest force in the region. At Delta, we received periodic reports as U.S. intelligence kept a quiet eye on these developments. When Bishop commissioned construction of a ten-thousand-foot runway—a runway of military length in a nation without an air force—Reagan began issuing public warnings.
As usual, Reagan’s critics painted him paranoid. Why should we care if Nicaragua and other countries set up communist governments? And Grenada? Why should we care about a country whose only useful contribution to the world was nutmeg?
In a March 1983 speech, Reagan explained why: “Grenada, that tiny little island . . . is building now, or having built for it, on its soil and shores, a naval base, a superior air base, storage bases and facilities for the storage of munitions, barracks, and training grounds for the military,” he said, adding wryly: “I’m sure all of that is simply to encourage the export of nutmeg.”
Reagan knew a foothold in Grenada would give the Soviets two bases within striking distance of the U.S. Already communism had a death-grip on China and Eastern Europe, and was surging in Indonesia as well as Central and South America. A significant infiltration in the Caribbean could begin turning the U.S. and Western Europe into democratic islands in a global sea of totalitarianism.
When Reagan made his nutmeg speech, I was serving as operations officer for the newly created joint special operations task force. The following August, I transferred back to Delta and became Ops O there. U.S. intel continued to monitor developments in Grenada until, in October, the situation came to a head. It turned out that poor old Maurice Bishop wasn’t far-left enough to suit either his old friends or his newly trained military. Backed by that military, Bishop’s former deputy prime minister and friend Bernard Coard overthrew Bishop and had him, along with his top advisors, executed.
Six hundred American medical students and a few hundred American tourists were trapped on Grenada. That put Delta and the joint task force on alert. We received orders to begin planning both to rescue the medical students, and to overthrow Coard’s illegitimate government.
There wasn’t much time. We started planning on a Friday night and worked through the weekend, almost without sleep. Delta would work in concert with two Ranger battalions. The Rangers were to seize and hold Point Salinas airport, while Delta’s target was Richmond Hill Prison, where a number of political prisoners were being held, along with several lesser targets including the radio and telephone switching stations in the Grenadian capital of St. Georges. The operation would be Delta’s first major test since Eagle Claw and many of us who had been there that night felt the weight of history.
On October 24, Delta began clustering outside the Stockade, preparing to board buses for Pope AFB to catch our C-5 to Barbados. Twilight had just passed into evening. I was standing with Delta CO Sherm Williford in the bus loading area, going over some notes on the operation, when Glen Nickle walked up.
“Sir, before we launch, are we going to get everybody together and pray? You know, those prayers really worked last time and we’re going to need God on this one.”
Before I could answer, Sherm piped up. “Yeah, let’s get em all together and do it right now.”
Both Nickle’s question and Sherm’s response surprised me. I hadn’t known our prayer at Wadi Kena had meant as much to other folks in Delta as it had to me. The command sergeant major rounded everyone up, about a hundred men, and they gathered at the foot of the stockade loading dock, their faces detailed by the building’s ambient light. As I climbed up on the loading dock, an impromptu dais, guys put their hands on their buddies’ shoulders and bowed their heads. Then I led the men of Delta in our second prayer for God’s guidance and protection. And just as he had in Wadi Kena, Bucky stepped up and led us in singing “God Bless America.”