Jerry Boykin & Lynn Vincent (25 page)
Engine malfunction. Catastrophic.
Just before impact, Dietrich was able to get enough lift to clear the prison wall by inches. First he set the wounded bird down in the street about a block from the inferno that had been the
Comandancia
. Then he tried to take off again, but couldn’t gain altitude and was forced to steer the helo through the street just a foot or two off the deck.
Overhead, the Little Bird guns blasted away at PDF positions, trying to keep the fire away from the Precious Cargo bird. From inside the helo, Suderth, Tom Caldwell, Sam Joseph, and the rest of the team also engaged. Dietrich maneuvered to the end of the
Comandancia
block and pivoted in the air. With his damaged engine, he needed a long, running start to get some altitude. He commenced his takeoff run and bullets clanged off the Little Bird as PDF soldiers emptied their magazines in a last bid to prevent Muse’s escape.
Dietrich gained speed, then lift. Ten feet, twenty feet in the air. Suderth told me that’s when he thought they were going to make it.
Then a Delta operator took a PDF bullet square in the chest. The round pierced his Kevlar and he fell out of the helo, twenty feet into the street below.
Moments later, a round slammed into the back of Jim’s knee. Then gunfire shattered the cowling over his head and the Little Bird fell out of the sky. The helo bounced once in the street, ejecting several men, including Suderth, who was secured to the helo by a tether. When the helo came down again, it landed on his left foot, crushing it, and trapping him in the open street.
Gunfire raged around him, but the Little Birds kept PDF troops away. Inside the helo, Kurt Muse was okay. Tom Caldwell was with him, and Muse asked Tom for a gun: “I was in the Army! I know how to shoot!”
Skeptical, but knowing they were down in enemy territory, Tom gave Muse a .45. Muse and Caldwell climbed out of the twisted Little Bird and—
bam!
—Tom’s head lurched sideways. He dropped like a flour sack, taking Muse with him. Lying beside Caldwell in the roaring street, Muse could see blood trickling down the operator’s face, inches away, and thought he was dead, hit by a sniper. Muse braced himself for more incoming.
Suddenly, Caldwell’s eyes snapped open, and he saw Muse, already mourning him.
“Moose! You okay?” Tom said.
Muse was shocked. “What happened to you! I thought you were dead!”
“Rotor blade hit me in the head.”
Little Bird guns roared overhead, but PDF bullets still zinged through the streets. They needed cover. But when Caldwell stood to walk, he couldn’t make his feet work. Muse, a big man, slung Tom’s arm over his shoulder and the two linked up with the pilot and the other operators, who had already established a defensive position, on a sidewalk with a brick wall behind them and some parallel-parked cars in front. They had found the operator who was shot in the chest, and carried him with them. He was alive, but barely hanging on. Minutes later, Suderth came limping in. He had managed to free his mangled foot from under a thousand pounds of helicopter, but his toes were ruined.
Overhead, the Spectres continued to pulverize the
Comandancia
. While the Little Bird guns held off the PDF, an operator used an infrared strobe to signal their position. Almost immediately, a Black Hawk flew overhead, rocking back and forth to acknowledge their position. And a few minutes after that, Howard Humble and his APCs rolled up to the rescue.
During the hot-wash, I also learned that the Little Bird gun
had
crashed in the
Comandancia
—crash-landed, actually. Shot down by PDF fire, the MH-6 slammed down in the compound grounds, skidded across the pavement, crashed
through
a wall, and into a building. Inside, the fire from their burning helo raged. Outside, the Spectres were chewing the
Comandancia
into dust. Finally, the Little Bird pilots had to make a choice.
“We decided we could either stay inside and burn up, or go outside and take our chances,” one pilot said at the hot-wash.
They chose the latter. The pilots bolted outside and rushed toward the
Comandancia
wall. Tangled barbed wire ran along the top of it; a street lay on the other side. If they made it out of the compound, it would still be a long trek through enemy territory to find safety. But both men were armed with .45s, and they had them ready.
One pilot took off his Kevlar vest and flung it upward, where it landed like a drape over the barbed wire.
Behind them, they heard footsteps and a voice:
“¡No disparen! Me rindo! No disparen! Me rindo!”
Don’t shoot! I surrender!
The pilots whirled to see a PDF soldier running toward them. They raised their weapons to shoot him, but then held their fire.
The soldier had his hands up.
He was surrendering. To Americans. Who were trapped
inside
Noriega’s headquarters and trying to escape.
“Me rindo,”
the soldier said.
“¡Llévame contigo!”
I surrender. Take me with you
.
The pilots looked at each other, surprised, then at the PDF soldier.
“Okay,” they said.
The two American pilots and their brand new POW then hoisted themselves over the
Comandancia
wall and jumped into the street. And just at that moment, one of the 5th Mech APC’s rolled up and scooped them aboard.
AFTER THE HOT-WASH, I went to meet the Precious Cargo. I found Kurt Muse sitting on a bloody Kevlar vest inside an empty tent, one of several, including a hospital tent, set up near the hangar. He had on khaki pants and a golf shirt, both of which told the story of the battle he’d just been through. I also noticed he was much thinner than he appeared in his photographs. Panamanian prison will do that to a guy.
He started to rise. “No, no, don’t get up,” I said. “You’ve had a rough night.”
“It’s been an amazing night,” he said, then put out his hand. “Kurt Muse.”
“Jerry Boykin,” I said, smiling as we shook. “I wanted to be the first to say welcome back to freedom.”
“Thank you, sir,” Muse said.
“Is there anything else I can do for you right now?”
Muse didn’t miss a beat. “Yes, sir, I’d like to meet my rescuers.”
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” I said. “Security issues.”
Muse looked worried. “They were hurt. Badly. Some of them . . .”
I reassured him. “Doctor says they’re all going to make it. Nothing life-threatening.”
That wasn’t entirely true, but again, the operators’ condition presented a security issue.
Muse looked at me for a long moment. “I just wanted to thank them for saving my life.”
“I’ll pass that along,” I said. “It will mean a lot to them.”
When Muse spoke next, his voice was flushed with passion. “Words could never be enough, sir.”
We shook hands again, and I left him, crossing over to the hospital tent to pass along what he’d said. Inside the tent, four of my guys were stretched out on gurneys. I could see Tom Caldwell’s head injury, where the rotor blade whacked him. Jim Suderth gave me a smile, even though we both knew by then that he was going to lose the toes on his left foot. The operator shot in the chest lay there, his heavy bandages already tinged with blood. He was conscious, but a little bleary from pain meds. An operator with a bullet wound in his leg sat upright drinking water and wincing from the pain.
As I made my way among them, I told them how proud I was of what they’d done. And every man I talked to said the same thing: “Hey, how’s Moose?”
After about the third one asked me that, I realized that it was just as important for them to see the man they’d risked their lives to rescue—to see him safe and free, mission accomplished—as it was for Muse to see them, here, alive, and out of the line of fire.
“Would you all like me to bring him in here?” I asked the room.
The tent echoed with one big “Yes!”
Walking out, I saw Muse standing not far away. “Moose! Come with me. I’ve got something I think you’ll like.”
I showed him into the hospital tent and when he saw his rescuers lying there, he turned and shot me a look of surprise.
I grinned. “Turns out they wanted to see you, too.”
I walked him over to the first gurney and introduced him to the sergeant who had been shot in the chest. Muse reached down and took the sergeant’s hand in both of his big mitts. “There’s no way I can ever thank you for giving me my life back.” His voice was thick with emotion.
Around him, the other operators smiled. One by one, he circled the room, stopping and thanking each man personally, always taking one of their hands in both of his. Again and again, his message was the same: his gratitude was beyond anything he could put into words.
“You being here like this says it all,” Suderth told him. “Now go and have a good life.”
As I watched, Muse stepped back and looked at them all, lying there, wounded for him. I could see that he was about to break down. But he collected himself enough to force out one last message. “I love you guys. I’ll never forget you.”
And he hasn’t. Every year, on December 20, the anniversary of his 1989 rescue, my telephone rings. When I pick up the phone, Kurt Frederick Muse says, “Hey, Jerry, I just want to thank you again for saving my life.”
Then we chat awhile, but not for too long because Kurt has a bunch of other phone calls to make.
WITH MUSE SAFE, the remaining missions in Operation Just Cause were a go. The force arrayed against Manuel Noriega swept across Panama, seizing his every strategic and tactical asset. Delta alone launched forty-two raids over the next seventy-two hours, turning inside out every known or suspected safe house where Noriega could hide. The hangar at Howard AFB buzzed like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, with tips and intel on Noriega’s location pouring into the comm center in a constant stream. The instant we received any scrap of reliable information, Pete and I scrambled the element leaders. Clustering around our display of maps and reconnaissance photos, we lightning-planned an assault, hustled out to the flight-line, and launched. Thirty minutes from tip to takeoff.
Across the city, black-hooded Delta elements struck without warning, kicking down safe-house doors, pouring in through windows, and forcing Noriega’s cronies to the floor at gunpoint: “
¡En el piso! En el piso!
”
Prisoners were flex-cuffed and questioned. Those with intel value were arrested; those with none were released. Often, one raid led to another as captives suddenly became helpful: “
¡El General no está aqui! Esta en la casa de la otra mujer!
” (The General’s not here! He’s at his mistress’s house!)
Coordinating these operations from a Black Hawk, I could see Panama City and the surrounding countryside bristling with military activity as U.S. forces swept away Noriega’s defenses. As Operation Just Cause unfolded, the 82nd Airborne, the 75th Ranger Regiment, Army Special Forces, and other Joint Task Force sea, air, and land units seized Torrijos-Tocumen Airport and military airfield, as well as the Pacora River Bridge, the national television station, and a major PDF base near the village of Rio Hato. SEALs and their Special Boat assets destroyed PDF patrol boats, and seized Noriega’s yachts and beach house.
Delta pressed forward, taking down Noriega friendly townhomes, village huts, and even his mountain retreat. In many hideouts, operators confiscated money, passports, weapons, maps, and intel. But the most interesting find occurred at Altos del Golfo, one of Noriega’s Panama City homes.
I was circling overhead in the Black Hawk when Lieutenant Colonel John Noe’s squadron reported they had uncovered stacks of hardcore pornography, $8 million in American cash, and two religious altars, one at each end of the house. One was a Christian altar. The other was an altar to Satan, decorated with jars containing human internal organs.
I knew from intelligence reports that Noriega met regularly with a spiritualist and dabbled in some form of dark religion. I’d even heard he wore red underwear because the spiritualist told him it would protect him from his enemies. Now it looked like he was playing both spiritual ends against the middle.
While none of our forty-two raids bagged the Pineapple, the speed and frequency of our door-busting drove the dictator like a hunted animal. By the fourth day after the American invasion, Noriega had no place left to hide. He also knew none of the foreign embassies located in the capital would side with him against the Panamanian people and grant him asylum. Ironically, as a last resort, he threw himself on the mercy of the church.
ON CHRISTMAS EVE 1989, we got intel that Noriega was headed to the
nunciatura
, or Vatican embassy, to seek asylum. Again, we scrambled the helos, six Black Hawks, plus the command-and-control bird, this time hunting the blue all-terrain vehicle we’d heard was Noriega’s ride.
While we were airborne, Pete called me from the JOC. “Noriega’s already in the
nunciatura
. See if you can land there. I’m sending John Noe’s squadron there now by vehicle. Get the place secured, and give me a report as soon as you can.”
“Roger that. We’re on it.”
Our helos were already in the immediate area of the
nunciatura
, a large white stucco building, two stories with a red tile roof. Cars and pedestrians scattered as we landed two birds on Avenida Balboa, the main street in front of the
nunciatura
, sending up tornadoes of dust and litter. A dozen Delta operators armed with .45s and M-4 carbines poured into the street and surrounded the
nunciatura
.
Facing north and surrounded by a high stone wall, the Vatican embassy occupied its own small block. I jumped down into the street and walked quickly up to the wrought iron gate. To my right, across a side street from the
nunciatura
, sat a large apartment building with an attached parking garage. To my left, lay the Pacific Ocean, the beach and wide mud flats separated from the embassy by a narrow street that dead-ended in front of a Holiday Inn.