The Tale of an Anonymous NATO SPECFOR Officer and the Crew of Yet Another Fucking Merchant Vessel Violating U.N. Sanctions
Disclaimer:This is a sea story. Take it as you will. If you are not in the United States Navy (or any other navy for that matter,) and not used to this sort of thing, I imagine you aren't going to get it. If this is the case and you come raving to me about being insensitive then or being a baby killer or some such horseshit I am going to tell you to suck it.
But I digress.
This tale comes related to me by my brother, one time Elite Toaster Operator. And yes, it is supposed to be funny.
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It is late 2000 when they come to the boat.
We are sitting in the Ops/Intel Brief when the skipper walks into the wardroom with this sort of odd expression on his face. This is usual, and we pop tall to attention only to be told to immediately sit down again. The CO eventually works his way to the front of the room and then takes his chair to wait for the current brief to finish. Something about the Iranians, I don’t remember.
The next thing the CO said was something to which I didn’t really know how to react. It is the NAG and the boat is rolling just a little bit as he waivers next to the podium a little bit and deadpans:
“Okay, everybody get it out of your system. We aren’t getting a SEAL team, instead we’re getting a contingent of Polish Special Forces.”
Nobody laughs.
As a matter of fact no one says a goddamn thing for a few seconds. Then there are a few chuckles around the room, the Auxiliaries Officer makes some dumb joke and we all again fall into silence.
“No shit,” says the CO.
It takes two weeks of solid action from rumor control to them to finally show up. In the mean time we hear all kinds of shit. That they’re coming, that they’re not coming, that we’re getting a SEAL team after all. You know how the boat is; those people could watch a guy taking a shit and then spin it into the second coming.
Anyway, these guys show up and they’re your typical Russian trained, Slavic thugs. They’ve got the greasy hair, the big mustaches, the dark complexions and perpetual 24-hour a day five o’ clock shadow. These guys are big fuckers to boot. And they’ve got guns, lots of guns.
It takes us about a week or so to figure out that they aren’t playing and that our newfound friends don’t quite speak English too well. As a matter of fact they seem to speak Polish and a little fucked up English, and that is about that. Christ, that night in Bahrain we taught them to say: "Show me the mad bitches, yo." Remember that? I think about doubled some of their vocabularies.
So anyway.
So we’re out there in the NAG and they start doing boardings with us. This is their first one and they’re like all kind of pumped up about it and we’re pretty excited as well. We insert them just fine, they take the ship fast and we stop the boat before they can make the black line. These guys have the crew all lined up on deck and we’re doing searches when all of a sudden one of the crewmembers up and bolts.
I mean this bitch is up and running like it’s the goddamn Olympics or something. One of the Polish guys takes off after him and everything starts happening real fast. I’m up in the bird watching all this and trying to get comms with the U.S. liaison officer (who’s I think the Aux O or something.) Anyway, he's down on the dhow with the boarding team when I see all this go down.
So the Polish operator gets this guy around the neck and throws him back about five feet toward where the other crewmembers are. They’re all getting pretty uppity at this point and all of a sudden the lead Polish officer pulls up his rifle and chambers a round.
The Aux O sees this shit happen and grabs the guy’s rifle barrel and points it toward the sky, the whole time yelling "no, no, no, no." So the Polish officer turns to the Aux O and he’s crushed. I mean he’s got this expression on his face like someone just ran over his brand new puppy. He looks at the Aux O and says this dead serious in his thick as hell accent:
"What, we don’t shoot them now?"
Some notes:
-This particular dhow was smuggling Iraqi dates. About 250,000 (USD) worth.
-They were impressed sailors from Thailand and Pakistan.
-They went home after being sternly told not to do it again.
-Them Polish fellas sure can drink.