Delta Force (19 page)

The snow fell more heavily and Buckshot stomped around trying to keep warm.

Walter Shumate received his instructions for the next leg. He pulled out his compass, checked the map, and began walking, I realized, in the wrong direction. I moved down to the ice-coated figure.

“You know where you're going, Sergeant?”

“Oh, yes, sir. I've got my head down and my ass up.”

“If I were you, Sergeant, I'd double-check it?”

He dug out his map and compass again. “Oh, Lord,” he said. “I just had a dumb attack,” and he shuffled off, this time in the proper direction. I finally lost sight of him in the blowing snow.

I first met Walt when he ran recon for Project DELTA in Vietnam in 1965–1966. I'd put him over on that island across from Nha Trang, where I asked him to design some immediate action drills for the unit. Walt had done a good job on this. I'd lost touch with him in the intervening years, until that day at Bragg, in early 1978, when he looked me up and asked how he could join Delta.

When Walt got through selection and had come on into Delta, I made him the senior NCO in charge of selection. He was a great fan of Gen. Douglas MacArthur. During the psychological
boards, Walter would always ask the recruits what they thought of Harry Truman's decision to sack the General. For Walter there was only one right answer. Most important. Walt was good for me. Because we'd been together in the mud in Vietnam, I felt I could confide in him and could trust his judgment.

He was from West Virginia; and it wasn't unusual, after he'd gone home to the hills on leave, for him to come back and give me a fruit jar of good corn whiskey, the kind they call “White Lightning.” Not a big man, probably 5'11” and 175 pounds, he wore a magnificent waxed handlebar mustache.

Walter Shumate was a scuba expert. He had taken all of the courses, was fully trained, and very good at it. When Walt came over to volunteer for Delta, before he got to Uwharrie, he had to take the PT test. When he took the swim test, 100 meters with clothes on, he failed it. No one could believe it. He'd been swimming so long with masks, oxygen tanks, and flippers he'd forgotten how to do the dog paddle. We gave him a couple of days and he finally did very well in it. It was a long time, however, before he lived it down.

When people leave Special Forces and retire from the Army, they normally join the Special Forces Decade Club or the Special Operations Club, in which there's always a lot of gossip. I'd always send Walt to these conventions to find out what was being said about us. As I've said, Walter's very good with people.

Anybody who had been in Special Forces in the past fifteen years and had died, Walter Shumate would know about it. Periodically he'd come into the office and say, “Sir, remember that little Chicano sergeant who was in Project SIGMA back in '66?” I'd try to remember, “Yeah, I think so.” Walt would say, “Well, day before yesterday he passed away.” He liked to know who was coming and who was going.

TWENTY-FIVE

IN THE ARMY
you learn to accept change. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's bad, but change is something you learn to live with.

General Snippens left his slot in DCSOPS and was replaced by Maj. Gen. Jack Faith. A brigadier's post, which had temporarily remained open under Snippens, was filled with Gen. Roderick D. Renick, Jr. But one other change probably affected Delta the most. Tom Owens, our chief liaison contact with the Pentagon, was supplanted by Lieutenant Colonel Whitman (pseudonym). We learned quickly that Whitman was flexible, unselfish, and supportive. He would work long hours on Delta's behalf, and was secure enough in his own skills to admit when he didn't know something.

A new team began working under General Meyer and looking out in the Pentagon for Delta's best interests. We started to live with each other. As someone pointed out, not one of our three new superiors in the chain of command to the top had Special Forces experience. Only Whitman had Ranger and airborne training. In two of the cases it would make no difference, but in the case of Rod Renick it would.

The Stockade in early summer: the initial individual training phase had successfully concluded and the first stages of unit training had begun. Delta's A Squadron, comprising two troops, was commanded by the enthusiastic Major Buckshot. The machinery was in place and working smoothly. A lot of
hard work and sweat was generated that summer. Fort Bragg in July is a hot place to be.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, Delta was asked to ante up.

“You've spent some big dollars. Because of your situation reports, we know where you are and what you've been doing.” This was Lieutenant Colonel Whitman calling from the Pentagon. “General Meyer believes it's time we evaluated Delta.”

“Well, you know, my two years aren't up yet. Delta has only been in business about eight months. I think we ought to wait.”

General Meyer disagreed. Whitman was understanding but firm. The message was clear: “You're going to hear more about this, Colonel, in a few weeks. I've been told General Warner will do the evaluation for the Army.”

Oh, shit! I thought. Pentagon politics are unfathomable. Could General Warner have bypassed General Meyer and gone directly to General Rogers? I knew they were good friends, but I didn't know how close. The emotional pendulum began to swing again.

General Meyer told me, “I walk the halls of the Pentagon daily and people say to me. ‘How is Delta doing?' I respond by saying. ‘They're doing good.' Then I begin to think, ‘How good is good?'”

Carefully considered, the reasons for the validation made sense and there were quite a few of them:

I understood the above rationale, but did not understand why FORSCOM was tasked to conduct the validation. My fears were well founded. I expected the worst when the news arrived that FORSCOM had selected the commander of XVIII Airborne Corps, Lieutenant General Warner, to conduct the validation. Warner's deputy for the validation was going to be my “old friend” Brig. Gen. “Sandy” Meloy.

The trouble was Warner and, of course, Meloy—who had crossed swords with General Kingston over the philosophy—appeared to me to be totally unsupportive of Delta. I believed that both officers felt Delta's mission should be entrusted to the two Army Ranger battalions. Furthermore, because neither Generals Warner nor Meloy had ever observed Delta's training activities, they remained ignorant of the unit's unique strengths and skills.

There being no alternative, however, to having the validation supervised by FORSCOM, it was imperative for Delta to be evaluated against the standard the unit had trained to. No sense testing a violinist on a trombone. It became important, therefore, for the unit to frame a paper that would clearly reflect its various training activities (shooting, physical fitness, explosive, hand-to-hand combat, as well as intelligence and operations skills as they applied to combating terrorism). A letter detailing all this information was provided to Lieutenant Colonel Whitman in Washington and to Major General Mackmull at the JFK Center.

The letters notwithstanding, I saw the validation as a sandbag job. The pressure was really on. If Delta failed this test, there was a chance the unit would be deactivated, and either Blue Light or the Rangers would pick up its counterterrorist assignment. And the foxes were going to protect the hen house.

A validation group, consisting of Generals Warner and Meloy, Colonels Thomas and Spinks, Lieutenant Colonel Redman, two or three field-grade officers from XVIII Airborne Corps and the Ranger battalions, and ten to twelve noncommissioned officers from within the Special Forces Groups at Bragg, framed a test by which Delta would be graded. The
validation would be broken into two parts—individual skills and team skills.

It surprised no one. Delta didn't do well in the shooting stations. Warner's evaluators had us shooting at distances and targets that were unrealistic. They were too long and too small. We'd been doing room clearing, very close quarters shooting; dash into a room and take people out very, very quickly. We hadn't been, as the expression goes in the Army, punching paper. In other words, Delta didn't worry about the black in a bull's-eye. We'd been shooting at silhouettes. The techniques Delta had adopted were patterned after the British 22 SAS and not along U.S. military or police lines.

The sniping station was unrealistic. It was done at night and because of the optics involved very few snipers after dark are fail-safe. The scenario was just Buck Rogers–ized. With scopes, a shooter cannot tell at night whether a target is wearing a red shirt or a blue shirt. All he sees is gray. Obviously, the wrong person can easily be shot. It became apparent to everyone on the Delta side that the validation group had little, if any, knowledge or experience with terrorist tactics and techniques. And yet, one handgun station using multiple targets gave the shooters ideas on how they could improve their combat shooting techniques. It was well designed and very stimulating.

Everyone knew Delta operators could land navigate very well. It was no surprise to see a rigorous land navigation course put in over in Uwharrie. The lanes were put through some typically rough terrain. The three guys tested made it easily. They said, “Sir, it was a waste of time. It didn't measure the skills that we measure.” It was just a flog, a march from one point to another.

Delta was evaluated on hand-to-hand combat. We'd spent very little time on throwing people around. An instructor in the martial arts from the Special Forces was brought over, he was Sgt. Willie Chong. I was asked to cough up a couple of people who would go in with him. Delta had one inexperienced man and he was put in second. After a few minutes on the mats, Chong was taken to the base hospital. We were told
later he suffered a brain concussion. No other evaluators had been lined up, so Delta received 100 percent on hand-to-hand combat.

It was time to test the unit skills. This second leg of the validation was designed to test all of Delta's intelligence, operations, and command and control procedures, as well as the squadron's tactical proficiency. A large-scale field exercise was prepared, which required that Delta take down, simultaneously, two targets—a hijacked airplane and a terrorist-held building. Obviously, this scenario was the linchpin of the evaluation.

No question that it was a difficult assignment. Buckshot would need to divide his squadron. He decided that First Troop would take down the aircraft and that Second Troop would take down the building. The exercise was going to be evaluated in both planning and execution.

Planning required accurate information. Delta was prepared with an excellent crisis checklist. The SAS had helped us design a detailed list of tasks to be accomplished at the site of the crisis, and Ishimoto and the other personnel in the intelligence shop had improved on it.

The first thing Delta's operations and intelligence staff did, therefore, was ask the evaluators the questions that appeared on the checklist. “How many people are on board the aircraft and in the building?” They didn't know. They'd have to go and find out. “What type and model aircraft is being held? When did it last refuel? How much fuel remains? How much baggage is on board? How much of it is carryon luggage?” The questions were real-world and would be asked in any straightforward crisis situation. The evaluators were caught at a distinct disadvantage. They hadn't been prepared for this type of response and didn't know what to do. Delta was relentless. Curt Hurst, Wade Ishimoto, and Forrest Foreman of the ops and intel staff had the evaluators by the tail. “What are the physical characteristics of the pilot? Of the crew? Who are the passengers? Where are they coming from and going to? What group is holding the targets? Find us a similar plane we can rehearse on.”

General Mackmull came over to me. He was grinning, “Where did you get that checklist? You've got the evaluators confused and it's great.” As the Delta staff continued down the checklist, his smile went from ear to ear.

“What kind of building is being held? How many stories does it have? Is it attached to anything? Is anyone inside sick? Do any of the hostages have unique characteristics? How are the terrorists armed?” The answers Hurst, Ishimoto, and Foreman received were often, “We don't know” and “No, you can't do that.” That was the easiest way. The questioning went on for some time.

“Who's handling the negotiations?”

“We don't know.”

“Please find out. When can Delta coordinate with the negotiating team?”

“We don't know.”

“Find out.”

“Can we survey the targets?”

“We'll get back to you.”

Eventually we were able to look over the targets, and I went out to see what I could. An umpire prevented me from getting too close to the occupied building.

Thirty-two miles west of Fort Bragg, out by Big Muddy Lake, the validation group had chosen a recreational building at Camp Mackall. Used during World War II as a training site for the 82nd and other airborne units, the area was generally controlled by the Special Forces School. Many of us knew it well and that was a break. I was more worried about the aircraft. This was an old National Guard AC-121 parked on an improved strip about 1,000 meters west of the barricaded building. Delta had been training on modern jet passenger aircraft procured through the generosity of various U.S airlines and the good offices of the FAA. Evidently, the evaluation group hadn't known how to obtain a 727, or an L-1011, which in the real world stood a better chance of being hijacked than an antique AC-121.

When Delta knew everything there was to know about both
targets, Major Buckshot moved A Squadron to a nearby assembly area, and at dusk divided the unit into its two elements. General Warner accompanied First Troop and General Meloy followed Second Troop.

On the aircraft side Delta had a Sergeant Franklin, whom the men called “No Lips.” He was a very fit senior noncommissioned officer. In the darkness, his movement toward the plane was a model. He simply became part of the environment. Unless you watched him closely you wouldn't know he was moving at all. Because there were no windows in the aircraft's tail, the remaining operators of First Troop stealthily approached it from that direction. Padded ladders were softly laid on the fuselage. Two hatches had been selected. In the time it takes to suck in your breath, both doors were blown and the plane was taken. Even I was impressed.

Second Troop, over near the building, contained a very hard man. He was, as they say, as tough as woodpecker lips. His name was Jacks (pseudonym). He'd studied the target, particularly the wooden window frames. Delta had trained on taking out windows by violently running a steel pipe around their inside rims. When the order was given, Sergeant Jacks and his pipe, along with several other operators, very professionally, very decisively, and very violently dismounted all the building's windows. The assault force leaped through them. Within seven seconds the terrorists had been taken out and the hostages freed.