Marcinko, Richard by Rogue Warrior

Author:Rogue Warrior [Warrior, Rogue]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

I NEVER SET OUT TO MAKE ENEMIES. BUT I HAVE ALWAYS been both an aggressive and a mission-oriented creature, so I will do whatever it takes to get the job done—and damn the consequences. That attitude never won me a lot of friends among the ranks of conventional Navy officers, many of whom I intimidated, coerced, strong-armed, threatened, and occasionally pummeled into the concrete. Still, I prospered within the system. One reason was that my adversaries habitually underrated me. They saw only the harddrinking, bar-brawling, madman-under-fire Marcinko. They never knew that my fitreps as a staff aide and attache were Just as proficient as those from Vietnam. They thought because my shirtsleeve is 35 while my inseam is only 32 and I said “fuck” to admirals I was nothing but a coarse, knuckle-dragging snake-eater.

Sure I said “fuck” to admirals, but not all admirals—just those who said “fuck” to me first. I’ve been known to use words with more than one syllable; I’ve been known to write coherent documents in simple, declarative sentences.

It has always served my purpose to keep people off-balance—

1 kept Charlie off-balance in Vietnam by hitting him hard where he least expected to be hit. I kept my officers and men at SEAL Two off-balance by continually challenging them to do 100 percent more than they thought they could do. And I kept staff assholes like Scott Sullivan off-balance through a combination of unpredictability, bureaucratic harassment, profanity, and the underlying threat of crude, rude physical intimidation. Much of the time it was an act—an act intended to bring political results—but Scott and those like him didn’t realize it.

Indeed, my enemies traditionally overlook the fact that I have always been a political animal. I discovered early in my career, for example, that it was easier to drop something on people from a great height than it was to push it up through the chain of command. I broached the idea of going to college with Admiral Peel, rather than saying “May I?” to some commander; as an attache, I briefed admirals who could help the Khmer Navy instead of wasting my rime oo junior officers who couldn’t-And when I wanted to take SEAL Team Two on a full command deployment to Puerto Rico, for example, I didn’t write a memo to Scott Sullivan and ask him, “Piease, sir, pass it on.”

I finagled a meeting with a vice admiral I knew and sold him the idea of moving SEAL Team Two to Roosy Roads, lock, stock, and barrel, for ten weeks of full-tilt exercises. My logic was irresistible: in a U.S./Soviet war scenario, we wouldn’t deploy Two squad by squad“. Instead, the entire command would be shifted to a forward position.

But the whole command had never been moved at once before, and didn’t the admiral think it was about time we tried to see if it was feasible?

Absolutely, the admiral said. I’ll see that this gets approved, the admiral said.

So I watched like an innocent bystander as he dropped

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.