Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL (45 page)

In the mid-1980s, America’s pissing contest with Nicaragua continued, and the United States was deeply into training, supplying, and motivating the Contras. These efforts were focused along the Coco River in Honduras and the emerging boomtown of Puerto Lempira. It was not long after we’d settled into Roosevelt Roads that I became a frequent flier—a commuter to the covert war in Central America.

M
Y CAREER AS
military adviser was served up in slices. I remember it now as sort of a slide show. I led a number of small detachments from Puerto Rico into Central America, mostly to Honduras but occasionally to other places. We’d parachute in, spend a few weeks in the bush, operating from jungle hammocks or some flyblown little pueblo, complete a training syllabus, and then be withdrawn. Our curriculum depended on the audience. For units of the Honduran army, it was frequently the basics: drill, infantry, and squad tactics. For Contra units with number designations and CIA paramilitary chaperones, our lessons were often highly technical: maritime sabotage, stalking and tracking, and the employment of spotters and snipers.

We rarely operated over a week before getting withdrawn or moved to a different location. Our perception was that we were on a very tight leash. The host nations were keenly aware of how many Americans were in country, where they went, and how long they stayed. Our hitches were usually followed by a debrief and a drunken weekend in Tegucigalpa, Panama City, or San Salvador. Then it was back to Puerto Rico, where we’d wait again for the phone to ring.

Anyone who served in Central America in the 1980s will probably agree with me that in the field, no matter how far “south” Americans were deployed, we generally felt safe. It was in the cities, during the periods we were supposed to rest and recoup, that we were in the most danger. In the field we could depend on camouflage and stealth. In the cities the more Anglo of our number stood out like circus freaks. To be obviously a
norteamericano
was to be a target.

Paranoia, we used to say, is total awareness. That was never more true than when we were at leisure in Tegucigalpa. Vigilance was our mantra, and it extended to the smallest things. Like eating. There is an art to selecting a seat in a Central American restaurant, especially if you are six-three, have red hair and freckles, and look like a gringo
consejero militar,
or military adviser. When selecting a restaurant in a country undergoing a civil war, one must consider architecture, location, and ballistics. Cuisine and atmosphere are also factors, but they are secondary. It’s best to patronize only establishments recommended by fellow military advisers or spooky types from the embassy. The object is to find joints where the owners are at least open-minded on the subject of Americans. As more operators rotate through a tour, each pushes the envelope of safety and cuisine, trying and surviving a greater number of eateries. By the time I returned to Central America, there were about two dozen of these places in each capital city.

We avoided any place with the word “American” in its name, a case in point being Bobby’s American Bar in Athens, which has been bombed at least three times in my lifetime. Also to be avoided were fancy restaurants in swank international hotels, as they are expensive and generally patronized by members of the indigenous plutocracy, who are targets too.

Sometimes the threat level was minuscule, sometimes it was considerable, and it varied in its source. There is always a background level of extremely violent crime in such places, and Americans are targets of opportunity. I did not take that personally. The criminals were mostly amateurs, and in their lack of sophistication there was a modicum of safety. There was also political violence to consider, which I took more seriously. The threat came primarily from the left but not infrequently from the right—acts of terrorism and provocation, respectively, but the result was the same. All of us made dining arrangements with great care.

The first issue was parking, and for that I always carried two open packs of Marlboro cigarettes. Immediately after parking the car, I’d give three cigarettes to the first kid I saw, then I’d promise him the rest of the pack for watching my car. I never had anyone say no. I’d walk half a block in the direction of dinner, select a kid at random from the throng, and make him the same deal, three cigarettes and the rest of the second pack. This kid’s job was to watch the first kid. I’m pretty sure this works, because I have never been car-bombed or ambushed as I returned to my vehicle.

Safe restaurants have a number of things in common. Almost invariably, these establishments are mom-and-pop operations, and Mom and Pop usually have at least one grown child living in the United States. This you’ll know because the owners will almost immediately mention it to you. There might also be American icons about: football posters featuring the Miami Dolphins, Elvis on velvet, or the occasional Budweiser clock. Skittish, surly, and hostile proprietors were to be avoided, as were locations openly associated with political parties. You might dine at a place that had a poster of Che Guevara on the wall, but it was usually a onetime deal. If you sat down and everyone else got up and left, it was time to pick another restaurant.

We all had favorite places, but it was best not to be predictable. The joints were usually small, sometimes Indian or Chinese, but mostly local. A suitable restaurant contained a dozen tables at most and had to be somewhat shielded from the street. A few thick pillars or an archway or two was sufficient front cover. The place also had to have at least two rear exits, and the exits, like the front doors, had to be visible at all times from one’s seat. There were a few other things to look for—thick tables, few windows, and a number of other diners between you and the front door. Heavy tables were better than light tables for absorbing shrapnel, and other diners made it difficult to throw or roll a grenade across a restaurant. As in Lebanon, we took the presence of children to be an indication of safety.

If dining alone, I sat with my back to a corner; if I was dining with a companion, one of us was responsible for watching the front while the other watched the back. It was unwise to eat with a person you would not trust with your life. As you sat down and looked at the silverware, you applied the left-hand rule, closing your eyes briefly and gripping the seat of the chair with your left hand, then imagining yourself with your pistol held out in front of you, backing toward the rear exit, left hand extended behind. This path was loaded in memory, as were various what-ifs for drive-by shootings, grenade attacks, and car bombings.

Now on to the menu. The food in Latin America is good, often terrific, but tends to reassemble a quartet of ingredients: tortillas, chicken, rice, and beans. I ate anywhere deemed tactically sound, including from street stalls and pushcarts, but I have a few ironclad rules. I am not one of those people who goes to Bogotá and complains about the hamburgers; I am, by and large, omnivorous. My rules have allowed me to feed in some of the most down-market and ungodly places on earth with little damage to my digestive tract. The only food trouble I’ve ever had abroad was from a bad salad served by the U.S. Marines in Lebanon.

When I am out on the economy, I drink only liquids with bubbles: beer, soda from a bottle, and
agua con gas,
or sparkling water. Rarely fruit juice, and never fresh-squeezed juice. Rum, Mescal, or liquor neat, and never with ice. I eat my vegetables when I’m back in the States and avoid lettuce, greens, and raw onions anywhere south of Key West, as they can often be shigella vectors. I will generally eat any domestic animal and several others, including cayman, nutria, peccary, and goat, if it is barbecued and well done. As far as cheeses go, hard ones yes, soft ones no. Crispy
pupusas,
the Salvadoran cousin of an empanada, can be had throughout Central America, and they are usually nontoxic if eaten at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

I avoid seafood, especially clams, crabs, oysters, and mussels, but have never been burned by conch. A favorite is
sopa de caracol,
conch and coconut soup, and
ticucos,
a killer Honduran tamale with beans. Hot sauce and chili peppers always, as I have this dearly held theory that no human pathogen could possibly survive in a bottle of Tabasco sauce. As you might suspect, Central America has neither the cuisine nor locale for fine wine. To wash it all down there are a number of primo beers, Nacional, Imperial, Port Royal, Salva Vida, and the ubiquitous Panama. Although I infrequently eat dessert, I am a sucker for flan, especially the Panamanian sort, cool and creamy inside and slightly caramelized on top.

I’ll lay no claim to being a Latin American food expert, as most of the time I spent in country I was in the field, eating MREs, rice, bananas, plantains, conch, or other things we could scrounge or barter for. I made regular trips into the urban areas, most often to give reports or to be debriefed, and I seldom stayed more than two or three nights.

Once, when Greg, Mike Darby, and I were on an overnight to Tegucigalpa, we checked in to our rooms and agreed to meet in the lobby for dinner. An hour later, we all appeared, shaved, showered, and dressed in identical black aloha shirts. The shirts had been issued to us by a three-letter government agency and were supposed to allow us to “blend.” They were cut wider under the left arm to accommodate a pistol. The wooden buttons were backed with Velcro, allowing them to be torn open rapidly to access the shoulder holster. There is something inherently preposterous about a Hawaiian shirt tailored to conceal a handgun. We stood around like idiots, each in identical togs with Bianchi side-draw shoulder holsters, packing Beretta 92 SBF automatic pistols.

Greg grinned. “You can’t lose,” he said, “when you dress like I do.”

It was a line from ZZ Top, and from that moment on we were the Sharp-Dressed Men. The shirts were ridiculous, helmeted kahunas riding surfboards, but we always wore them on liberty and carried our pistols like a posse of sunburned gangsters. We were certain that chicks dug us.

I got to put my shirt to the test one night in the bar of the Days Inn in Tegucigalpa. The physical plant of the hotel differed little from the cigarette-burned joints scattered on the side of the interstate, but at this time in Honduras, it was probably the nicest hotel in the country. It was one of the safest, located a bit out of town, with multiple approaches and escape routes; the compound was surrounded by a six-foot cinder-block wall topped with broken glass and barbed wire. It was a safe place to meet, and we were sometimes sent there to recoup. The bar was air-conditioned to 65 degrees, and there was MTV on the satellite dish. The beer was always subzero.

I had attended a briefing at the embassy that afternoon, filling the military attaché in on the nonevents of my most recent deployment to Puerto Lempira. I was to return to Puerto Limpera in the morning, and a week later, I was due to rotate back to Puerto Rico. I was hot and tired, and the charm was rapidly going out of my tropical vacation. It was a weeknight, and the hotel was nearly empty. I ate a
plato tipico
at the bar and was proceeding to drink myself good-looking while the bartender wiped glasses and wondered why the hell I didn’t go back to my room.

About ten o’clock, two women entered the bar. They were in their twenties, attractive, and I guessed from their clothing that they were either Canadian or American. They were both tanned; one had shoulder-length dark hair, and the other was blond with her hair cut short like an athlete’s. I nodded as they sat down across the bar, since it was rude, as well as silly, to ignore them in an empty bar. After a few moments we’d tried to send each other a drink, and I walked over and introduced myself.

Lucky for me, they were both named Vicky. They were Peace Corps volunteers who had just finished a tour in a place called Copan, near the Guatemala border. They were outprocessing in Tegucigalpa the next day and heading back to the U.S. the day after that. They were both from New England. Blond Vicky had rowed crew back in school, and I did my best to be a charming ex-oarsman. We drank pretty steadily for about an hour, and I was able to fend off any inquiries about who I really was and what I really did by being extremely interested in the elementary school where they’d taught in Copan.

About midnight dark-haired Vicky said she was going to bed. Blond Vicky tried briefly to talk her out of it but couldn’t, so she kissed her friend on the cheek. I shook dark-haired Vicky’s hand when she left.

We had a shot of tequila. Blond Vicky looked at me hard. “So, what brings you to Tegucigalpa?” she asked.

The yacht-delivery line wasn’t going to work. We were a hundred miles from the ocean. I answered with a question: “What are
you
doing here?”

It was a great opportunity for her to improv, but she didn’t take the bait. “We’re in the Peace Corps,” she said.

“In school, did you row port or starboard?” I asked.

“You never said what you did for a living.”

“I work for the government,” I said. It was true enough, and part of what’s called a “layer.” When asked, I would reveal that I worked for the government; when pressed, I would say I worked for the Executive Department of the government; if pinned by an inquisitive person at an embassy party, I would say that I worked for the Department of Defense. The mundane fib of “defense contractor” was safe enough.

“What kind of government contractor are you?” she asked.

“A well-behaved one,” I said.

She smiled. “What are you, some kind of spy?” Making a show of patting me down, she moved her hand to the side of my shirt. She patted down my right side and under my left arm. Then her hand fell on the Walther PPK tucked into my shoulder holster. I can tell you with only a small amount of vanity that she was instantly smitten.

Twenty minutes later, we were sprawled on the bed in my room. As we kissed, I was sober enough to remember that I had a wife at home. The pang of conscience made me flinch. “I’m married,” I finally said.