19

SOF GOES TO PAKISTAN . . .

In 1980, the Russo-Afghan war was getting hot. So I selected a team to accompany me on an SOF mission both to aid the Afghans and obtain whatever Russian armament we could locate. Big John Donovan, with his shaved head, ham-like hands with knuckles heavily calloused from breaking bricks and board, was to be our demo man. Five foot nine and all muscle but with a brain, Big John was an explosives expert who had his own demolition company in Danvers, Illinois. I had first met him in 1973 at a Special Forces Reserve summer training camp at Ft. Chaffee, Arkansas. Donavan was the type that you would want with you if you wanted to get mouthy in a biker bar with no windows.

Dr. John Peters, an adventurer in his own right, who I had met while leading a 10-man team of paramedics after the devastating Peruvian earthquake in 1970, was hefty, grey-haired and the most unflappable of the team, as well as being an extremely competent general practitioner.

Peter Kokalis, SOF’s small arms editor, was slim, balding with a mustache and a mercurial temperament, but with a fine sense of humor. We didn’t consider him crazy although he had watched the “Wild Bunch” 247 times and could quote all of the dialog by heart.

Mike Pate, Army vet, was also a weapons and ordnance expert. We landed at the international airport in Kirachi, and “What are we doing here?” we all said almost simultaneously. As we packed our luggage into a beat-up taxi we were inundated by swarms of hustlers with hands out and their BO up. We chugged in two separate cabs to the Midnight Hotel where Geer had stayed earlier in the year because it was cheap. And I mean cheap! Pothole size fissures in the raggedy ass carpet foreshadowed unknown types of insects walking through the filth in our rooms. A blind man with no taste must have done the interior decorating.

We had become paranoid and decided we would check in as two separate groups and pretend to be strangers. Our paranoia level began to spike when Donovan got pulled into the Pakistani immigration office and was intensively questioned as to what he was up to. With his big frame and bad biker look, they had a hard time buying his “journalistic” cover. He had an “Omega News Service” press card, which came hot off the presses shortly before we left, but they blew it off. (We all had the same cards in our individual names. Good thing the same customs agent didn’t interrogate us all, or our “not knowing each other” ploy would have put the au-thorities on high alert or put us on a plane right back to where we came from.) They didn’t believe Donovan was a journalist any more than they would believe that I was Mother Teresa.

We straggled into the grimy, rundown hotel, dodging the potholes in the worn carpet. As we walked up to registration, I looked back at Donovan as if I had never met him before and exclaimed, “Hey, you look like an American!”

He played along, and replied in his gruff voice, “Well, by golly, I’m just a farmer from Danvers, Illinois.”

I don’t know how this played with the hotel staff, but I doubted if they gave a shit. We caused a minor ruckus when we insisted they open up the “dining room” so we could load up on soft drinks.

“Open the dining room or we’ll break the doors down,” Big John said after the staff ignored our requests. No wonder they hesitated. As we walked in to the food hall, a good portion of the hotel staff scurried off the dining room tables they had been sleeping on.

Our first battle was against a new variety of mutant cockroaches, as big as small rats, that fought us for our beds, and the air conditioners that failed to condition because of two-inch gaps between the window frames.

The next day we moved to the Holiday Inn, which had everything the Midnight Hotel did not have, although it boasted even bigger cockroaches. I taxied over to the U.S. Embassy and the DAO’s office where I met a young Army Lt. Colonel. Unfortunately, I do not remember his name as I would like to have been able to make him asshole-famous.

“The FSTC told me to check in with you,” I told him.

“I’ll have to contact the DIA first,” he said. And so the 40-second in-terview ended.

“Whatever,” I shrugged, and headed back to the Holiday Inn.

The next day the same Lieutenant Colonel Nincompoop showed up to officially tell me, in an authoritatively staccato voice, “We will not pay you in cash, and any payment we do make will be made in the United States. Furthermore, I have been instructed to tell you that you should not go into Afghanistan, as neither the American ambassador in Afghanistan nor the one in Pakistan will help you.”

I then asked him, “What’s the security like on the road between Islamabad and Peshawar?”

“The road is secure. There are no checkpoints, no roadblocks, no problems.” I flew to Peshawar where the SOF team was training Afghans and looking for items on FSTC’s “want” list in their spare time. As I mentioned, Van Ausdall had offered to pay a dollar a round for 10,000 rounds of ammo. Days turned into weeks and we were finding zip.

Then two days before our tour in masochism was up our luck changed. We split up. Pate and Donovan hired a taxi and drove for the third time up to the “there are no rules and even less law” town of Darra, which was under tribal control and where you could buy any type of weapon short of a nuclear device, as well as hashish and French pastries. Doc and I headed up to a refugee camp that was off limits. We were going on the presumption that if it was “off limits” it must have something that would interest us.

Unfortunately, the Pakistani military didn’t see it that way, nor did the province governor who graciously gave us an impromptu tour of the local jail. Doc and I decided they were right; that there probably wasn’t anything of interest there.

So we headed back to our ½-star hotel, the Peshawar Intercontinental, where every day you could find something new on the menu that you would never order again. John Donovan, who had been instructing the Mujahideen how to fuse and emplace anti-tank mines, and Mike Pate, our other ordnance expert, once again roamed the gun stores in Darra looking for a large quantity of AR-74 ammo. They finally were able to buy 5,000 rounds at 70 cents a round. An outrageous price, but it was a seller’s market.

Donovan also made his bones, or shall we say additional bones, when while instructing the Mujahideen in the use of mines and explosives, he had an exchange with one of their commanders: “Ah, Sahib Donovan. We have problem with anti-tank mines. We put in front of tank. Tank goes over. No Boom. Bad. Bad!” Donovan raised his eyebrows and said, “Show me precisely what you do.”

When the Mujahideen showed him, Donovan, rolling his eyes back in his head, said, “Well, you need to put the fuses in the anti-tank mines or they no go boom!” How many Russian tanks were subsequently destroyed because of SOF will never be known.

Donovan and Pate smuggled the ammo from Dara past half-a-dozen Pakistani Army checkpoints between Darra and our hotel risking serious jail time and then took off for the States. When Doc Peters and I returned to the hotel, we found the 5,000 rounds stuffed in two backpacks lying on our beds.

The two of us were scheduled to leave shortly, so instead of driving the three-and-a-half hours to Islamabad, we decided to unload our contraband on the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar, even though our orders had been to have no contact with the State Department. I kicked this around with Doc Peters and said, “Let’s dump it at the consulate. FSTC told us not to have anything to do with State, but I mean, we’re all supposed to be on the same team, right?” He chuckled and agreed.

I called the consulate where, again posing as journalists, we had been given the standard dog and pony show briefing upon our arrival in Peshawar and told the consul, a Mr. Archard: “We have some items we think you would be interested in. Can we drop them off tonight?”

“No problem,” he replied.

But there was a problem. Now it was “James Bond” time as while the ammo may have been worth $5,000 to the U.S. government, it would be worth five to ten in a medieval Paki jail to us if we were caught with it. Like in a bad spy movie, we switched taxis several times, constantly checking our tail.

My anxiety roller-coasted as the driver with the only two English phrases he knew, “No problem” and “I understand,” took us past what seemed to be every military post and police station he could find on our way to the consulate. (I later found out that in Pakistan, where English is the second language, that in fact “No problem” and “I understand,” translated to “There is a problem but I do not understand.”)

After finally turning the rounds over to the head of the consulate, Mr. Archard, I breathed a sigh of relief and we returned to our hotel. We figured it was a case of “Mission Accomplished.” Or so we thought.

At 0730 hours the next morning, the phone rang:

“Mr. Brown?”

“Yes.”

“This is Mr. Archard. I am calling from the consulate. My superior in Islamabad has informed me that we cannot accept the goods you delivered last night. You will have to come back and pick them up.”

I was shocked; shocked, I say, and then started to morph into a state of white-hot rage. How could these State Department wusses totally disregard material that had a direct bearing on our national defense? Had they gotten their sniveling noses out of joint over the hassle they had with who got credit for the NBC filter that Geer had brought out of Afghanistan? I was sorely tempted to tell the gutless State Department puke to take the 5,000 rounds of ammo and insert them into the body orifice of his choosing. But if I did that, I’d be kissing off the $3,500 that SOF had paid for the ammo and would deny the U.S. Army the opportunity to use it for further testing.

“Ah, what the hell,” I told Doc, “let’s throw the dice. We will hire a taxi and take it to Islamabad and the American embassy. That Lieutenant Colonel said the Peshawar-Islamabad road was clear.” Doc slid into one of his enigmatic smiles, chuckling, “Why not? We haven’t had a hell of a lot of adventure so far.”

I hired some local guy with a run-down, clunky, dirt-stained black Mercedes and headed south after throwing the ammo-laden back packs in his trunk. My anxiety level started creeping up again as our driver had to stop to get some type of dismal food; then had to fill up his gas tank (at our expense, of course); then had to stop and pick up a soft drink (which we paid for) and then had to stop and check his oil.

To add more acid to my rumbling stomach, I remembered that Geer had told me that all Pakistani taxi drivers were police informants. So what would I do if I saw this bad-breathed dude in his soiled, droopy drawers mosey over to a pay phone and start babbling? And to whom might he be talking? How would I tell? Should I cold-cock him on a gut feeling or go quietly to jail? Well, fortunately for him and me I did not have to make that decision as he made no phone call.

After all his ass scratching and dicking around we were finally on the road to Islamabad. A beautiful sunny day was made even better by the fact that we were soon to leave the land of no booze, droopy drawers, gut-wrenching food and customs that I had little tolerance for then and now. I relaxed in the cracked leather seats until I saw another checkpoint. Leaning forward, I said, “Driver, what’s that up ahead there about 200 meters?”

“Ah, sahib, no problem, is only army roadblock checking for guns and drugs going to Islamabad.” I came out of my seat like a shot. Guns and drugs to Islamabad my ass! It’s Brown and Peters to a cold, dark dungeon in a Pakistani slammer.

Of course, our faithful driver might have been a lot less faithful if he knew what he was transporting in the trunk of his wretched Mercedes. I muttered, “Doc, we’re sure as hell going down.”

Doc, who I had never seen ruffled, didn’t break character. He just smiled and said, “RK, relax. We either make it or we don’t. Heck with these Bozos.”

“Yeah, well,” I grumbled, “If I find that son-of-a-bitch, soft-bellied Lt. Colonel Nincompoop who told us there are no roadblocks to the embassy, there’s going to be blood on the Persian carpets—his.

Over the next three and a half hours, there were five more checkpoints like the first one.

“Abdul, what is . . . “ I’d start to ask, only to hear,

“Oh no problem, is only checking for . . . “

I was now in a continual state of white-hot rage. I determined that I was not going to torture Lieutenant ColonelNincompoop. I was going to fire all 5,000 rounds of 5.45 up his greasy ass in one big glorious burst.

What turned out to be the last roadblock came into view.

“And THIS one Abdul?” I asked, smoke slowly curling from my ears.

“Ah, checking driver’s license and car papers. I have neither. No problem.” Perhaps if we were lucky we could rat out the driver and get him sent to jail with us where I could pound his scrawny ass twice a day.

Strangely, we weren’t stopped at any of the checkpoints. Why? I don’t know. Maybe the guards just thought that gringos in a Mercedes, even if it was built in 1907, shouldn’t be screwed with. At any rate, to add insult to injury, old Abdul got lost in Islamabad, giving us an unwanted, impromptu tour of the city.

Finally, we made it to the embassy. Fortunately for all concerned, Lieutenant Colonel Nincompoop was not there so the expensive, delicately vegetable-dyed Persian rugs would not have to be cleaned of blood stains and I would not end up in jail.

Colonel Harold Mauger, Defense and Air Attaché, greeted us, calmed me down, counted the ammo, gave me a receipt and promised to forward a letter of appreciation. Old Doc Peters, ever the cool one, just looked on and smiled. He hadn’t blurted a single expletive the entire trip. A cooler dude than he, I know not. Whether he medicated himself into a stupor I will never know.

We delivered the ammo. SOF was paid $ 5,000 in the States for a gross profit of $1,500. As you might imagine, the $1,500 didn’t go very far in covering the expenses of the team’s trip. Was it worth it? You bet!

ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL AFGHAN TREASURE HUNT

Staffer Jim Coyne came up with an SOF scoop in 1981 with the discovery of Soviet “butterfly mines.” These small, unobtrusive, antipersonnel mines that looked like toys had maimed countless Afghan children as well as rebels. Indiscriminately air-dropped by Russian helicopters, such mines littered the countryside, preventing night movement and blocking supply routes.

Coyne was with a patrol of 14 Afghan National Liberation Front guerrillas. They had been walking toward an ambush area in bright daylight, through a broad, barren valley—observed by every Russian FAC and LRRP team within 40 miles.

“After steadily stepping up and over rocks for five miles, my legs had turned to jelly,” Coyne said. “We were going over an immense ridge. There was a road on top, which a Russian mechanized infantry unit had been using for three days. ‘Watch your feet,’ my guide said, as we continued to move up. We would stop at the faintest whisper of a foreign sound. In my mind I heard that ever-present rotor chop of helicopters that had permeated the air in Vietnam. It seemed odd that there were none here now. It made me uneasy.

“We had reached the crest of the ridge, and something of a road, when we stopped again. The man beside me said, ‘You’re in luck,’ and pointed off the road. Everywhere fragments of green plastic were strewn about.”

Russian choppers had dropped thousands of the small antipersonnel mines along the crest. In daylight they were not too hard to spot. At night they were deadly. Filled with an as-yet-unspecified liquid explosive, and armed with a cock spring impact trigger, they took their toll along the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Russians were ruthless. In a place like Afghanistan, where medical treatment was virtually non-existent, blowing somebody’s foot off was better than killing them—it required at least two or three people to carry a casualty and, within a week, the wounded would probably die from gangrene anyway.

Coyne brought one of these mines back with him to the United States to undergo analysis.

Looking back, it is evident that today there are few, if any other publications that have been able to match SOF’s record of intelligence firsts. Having outfoxed the KGB and several times scooped the CIA, SOF has consistently beat other defense journals on both sides of the Atlantic in obtaining additional Russian military equipment. However, in all fairness, other defense publications did not task their reporters to actually go and look, find, retrieve and deliver this “go-to-jail” equipment to the U.S. government.

Some of the additional technical intelligence coups SOF notched up over the subsequent years included the first two 30mm grenade rounds for the Russian automatic grenade launcher, dubbed the AGS-17, and the launch tube for the Russian counterpart of our LAW. An SOFteam member smuggled them into the United States. Smuggling small arms ammo was one thing, but 30mm grenade rounds were of a different caliber and probably meant a much stiffer jail sentence. When he delivered these to me in my hotel in Washington, D.C., I said, “You’re crazy! Jail time! Jail time! How did you get these through customs?”

Jack, an affable former college football player, who I had met when he was a Special Forces medic in Vietnam and who had been on more than one adventure with me, grinned, “Hell, there just was a long line so I got bullshitting with the customs guy about football and he just waved me through.” The gods were generous once again.

I immediately called my international arms dealer contact. “Tom, I’ve got some more goodies fresh in from Afghanistan. Anybody want to see them?” He replied, “I’ll make a couple of phone calls.” A couple of hours later Tom showed up with two suits from the Defense Intelligence Agency. I showed them the goods. I don’t know what they were thinking or maybe they weren’t thinking, but they couldn’t do anything about the ordnance, so arms dealer “Tom” called a Dutch dealer he was friendly with who happened to be in town and who bought the lot for $3,000. The U.S. government had to wait six months for the Dutch to forward a report on the ordnance because of those monkeys which must have been embarrasing.

Western intelligence was as curious about this automatic grenade launcher as they were about the AK-74 assault rifle. An SOF team helped them learn more. After a year of negotiations and the crossing of many palms with greenbacks, Jim Coyne and our small arms editor, Peter Kokalis, got ahold of an AGS-17 in the outlaw town of Darra in Pakistan’s Northern Frontier District. Kokalis test-fired it, disassembled it and came up with an evaluation of the weapon on video, which was given to the U.S. government and was eventually offered for sale through SOF for $39.95 a copy. That came only after a complete report had been clandestinely passed off to the defense attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. Also emerging from the exercise was the first report together with photos of Russia’s RPG-18, a direct copy of the U.S. Army’s light anti-tank weapon, or LAW. According to SOF’s Soviet specialist, David Isby, then on the masthead, the RPG-18 had been built by Russian scientists who had, as usual, resorted to reverse engineering to steal our state-of-the-art military equipment.