RIK HAMBRIGHT PAST

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

ACTUAL DETAILED AFTER ACTION REVIEW REPORT (taken from blogsite of the mercenary company: Hambright Protection Services)

I received this very detailed, well-written, lessoned learned article from my COO a few months ago, which he received from one of our operations directors. He couldn’t stop laughing about it and told me that it was a must-read. It definitely is. Below is the original version of the article. The version that has been entered into the company’s archives is an edited version that offers a more succinct message to our newer operators. However, the humor that is embedded in the original version is simply too good to let go missed. Although it was drafted in a sarcastic, long story response to an order issued for an in-depth report, we all at Hambright Protection Services enjoyed it immensely. At the time, the author found little humor in everything that happened to him on that particular operation (I remember listening him and his team members being debriefed), but now he can laugh about it all. Therefore, as I have received exponential demand to release it, and as I share a close, personal relationship with the operator who authored the original version, and have gained his permission to share it with all who may be interested, I have decided to post it on the HPS blogsite, minus of course, any secure/classified information the original article contained.

Enjoy gentlemen.   

Rik Hambright

CEO, Hambright Protection Services

Lessons Learned Article

Working for a private military firm has its benefits, and of course, it’s negative sides as well. Working for Hambright Protection Services (HPS) allows me to travel the world over and work with other people, all of whom are at the top of their professional game. Even though we at the Tier – 4 Operator level at HPS, are highly seasoned and proven operators, we are still prone to make mistakes from time to time. I guess the cliché: “To be human is to err,” has its merits.  So, from time to time, when a mistake is made, that error is highlighted in the lessons learned section of the operation after action review briefing so that everyone can learn from the mishaps and hopefully, not assimilate the same misfortune. This article encompasses a situation in which several mistakes were made while performing a geographical threat sweep and survey on a client’s remote commercial property in central Panama near the town of Aguas Claras. I was given a direct order to draft an in-depth report of the accounts surrounding this situation for the company recording of lessons learned for future operators who join the ranks of Hambright Protection Services. Personally, I’m no idiot. Even though this in-depth article is going to be archived for said future training purposes, I know damn well and good that for twisted comedic purposes, everyone at HPS will receive a copy of this (even the receptionist and admin staff). And, ultimately, to actually live this down it will take either a lifetime of monk-like repentance, or an act of such great deed, like saving a flame-engulfed bus full of orphaned, syphilis-riddled leper children from falling off an overpass, or perhaps just acquiescing and getting all the guys hookers and putting the cost of their services on my damned AMEX card. Either way, as directed, the following is the “in-depth,” actual account, first hand, of what happened during the 2011 Op near Aguas Claras.

*Note: As HPS protocol stipulates the names of the operators, the client, and the actual operation name will be omitted for the purpose of maintaining operational security.

During the planning phase of the Op, we could depict from the satellite imagery we were given, that over half of the property wasn’t developed and consisted of thick rainforest with triple canopy coverage. We were briefed that the other part of the property had been developed two or three years before our client purchased the property, and since the development, large swaths of razor grass had taken over. The previous owner had evidently run out of money to develop the entire property for commercial use, and in a jungle environment, if the development of a property is not perpetually maintained, the jungle reclaims the land at an astonishing rate. As well, with the flora, naturally comes the fauna, and being as remote as this tract of land was, the local wildlife population was booming, everywhere. Some of the local wildlife inhabiting this property happened to be half the crux of the situation of lessons learned. The other half embarrassingly, was borne of both my own, and my teammates,’ bone-headed stupidity.

My three man team arrived in Panama City on June 13th, 2011 and it was pouring. The rainy season was in full swing with a vengeance. Within the three minutes that it took for us to exit the air conditioned airport and catch a waiting cab so that we can go meet up with our Panamanian agent-contact, all our clothes were soaked through with perspiration due to the insanely high humidity. It seriously looked like I had pissed my damn pants. The humidity was at 100% making the air thick; it was like breathing soup, and it was raining big-ass, hairy balls of rain, non-stop. I also knew that after a 25 minute train ride to Gamboa, we had a two-plus day hump to get to our Op location, half of it through and around the thick rainforest of the Soberania National Park. This was quickly summing up to be one of the Ops that represent the negative side of working for a private military firm. Yet, I had no clue as to exactly how much more miserable it was going to get for me. This Op played out for me perfectly as a dark comedy of errors, one right after the other.

After meeting with our local contact in Panama City, receiving our “tactical security equipment” with ammunition and magazines, issued cell phone with water-tight case, train tickets, and handing over our personal identity documents and the city clothes we arrived in to be cached in his office, we boarded the railway and headed in an easterly fashion. The breeze through the few half cracked windows in our rail car helped a little with the humidity, but as the rain was still a torrential downpour, most people kept their windows closed creating an Indian sweat lodge-like environment. In no time at all, the inside of the rail car, with the commingling of profuse sweating, and deodorant-free passengers, smelled like a hygienically neglected petting zoo. Never-the-less, I needed to stock up on energy reserves for the long hump ahead, so regardless how aromatically-offensive the rail car ambiance was, for 50 cents U.S., I bought a sealed, quart-sized bag of cold water being vended out of a cooler that was toted from rail car to rail car by a few local kids, and I used that to wash down a few Granola Bars (Mistake #1).

Like clock-work, after 25 minutes the train came to a stop in the town of Gamboa and the three of us disembarked from the train. We waited in the covered portion of the outside station however, for a few minutes for the rain to let up before carrying on with our journey. We followed the train tracks for about two kilometers and the headed south-east on land. Once we passed most of the farming community, and potential prying eyeballs, we recovered our rucksacks, broken-down weapons, and other gear from the civilian bags we carried everything in and stored those bags in the bottom of our rucks. In about 20 minutes of walking the landscape drastically changed from sporadic farm land and patches of jungle to hardcore, dense jungle. We opted to follow the northern side of the offshoot of the Gatun canal river, paying close attention to the swelling banks and any signs of hungry caiman and South American crocodiles resting on them as well. To all our pleasant surprise, neither was ever seen.  After following the river and witnessing huge cliff faces and elevated embankments cave in and disappear into the ever-quickening river’s currents, we decided to deviate from our current course and cross into the Soberania National Park and approach our objective from the west south west instead of the original plan of from the direct south. This normally is no problem, however, in our current situation two obstacles will now be evermore present in comparison to the risks associated with our original plan of approach.

Foremost, the hectare after hectare of surreally dense jungle comprising the Soberania National Park, that is principally the forthright land of the Embera Indians, is a protected land: obstacle #1. Nice enough people if you are in the non-sacred areas allowed to be travelled by the non-Embera. If you are found with your boots to be on other grounds, without the express permission of the Embera and the Panamanian government, a shit-storm could ensue. This is especially so, for armed foreigners moving tactically across this land. When it rains in Central and South America, sometimes large pools of water form in the depressions, valleys, and recesses of the land’s topography. This in turn is what constitutes obstacle #2. You see, while trying not to drown or become prey themselves, all of the jungle wildlife that doesn’t thrive in the overhead canopy of the forest escapes the rising waters via the same peaks and elevations of higher ground that we are using to travel. Losing over 40% of jungle floor to rising water helps one to rapidly understand just how much wildlife exists in a remote rain forest. To be fair to myself, at this point in this article I do want to demonstrate that although I have over 18 combined years of special operations experience from both the U.S. Army, and private military employment, the very vast majority of my experience has been achieved in the Middle East, West and Northern Africa, and in the Philippines (a VERY different kind of jungle). I did go to the U.S. Army Jungle School in Ft. Sherman, Panama in 1997 before it closed soon thereafter, but that was jungle experience was under very different conditions; more controlled if you will. Okay, enough said.

By day 2 and 4 hours we approached the outskirts of our objective. As far as we knew we were uncompromised and still maintained the element of surprise should we encounter any hostile threat on the property. We geared up, covered and cached our rucks at the designated rally point, completed our com checks, and quietly advanced on the areas during our planning phases that we agreed would present the best opportunities for elements of threat to thrive. Although I had a loose stool or two in the two days past, little did I know, but mistake #1 was about to bite me square in the ass. The ½ hour of clandestine patrol toward threat point Alpha was unbearable. I had a pressure building in my intestines and bowels that was surreal. At one point I declared a 10 minute security halt for listening Ops while I expunged what must have been 10 times the amount of water than what I originally drank from that damned bag on the train. Always, within 15 to 20 minutes of evacuating my bowels of the most, rank smelling fluid imaginable, I would have the ever demanding urge to do it again. This shed light on Mistake #2. Although I double ziplock-baggied the toilet paper, I presume that some of the tussling of my gear from train to ground, and shifting within my rucksack over land transit, caused a tear to form on the outer zip lock baggie, and the seam in the inner baggie to ever so slightly open in one corner. Never-the-less, the roll of toilet paper did its job and acted like a parched sponge that had been resting in the arid, open Sahara desert for years. When I reached into the top of my ruck, under the flap cover, to grab the zip lock package so that I could hygienically clean my ass, I pulled out a bag of cream of wheat-like mush. In utter humiliation I had to resort to tearing small strips from my undershirt, from the bottom up, and off of the sleeves. A very important point must be made for the audience reading this; those who are not private, professional soldiers themselves. If you are a professional soldier, at this point in your professional military career, you have been tested and proven many times. You should have a fluent understanding of the kit you personally require to perform an Op and therefore, you acquire it, carry it, and employ it as per your professional discretion. You are a mercenary. You no longer have the superb logistical might of the U.S. Government to simply resupply you with basic necessities (like toiletries) should yours become fouled. And another thing, due to this lack of bottomless logistical support, your teammates, although they would risk their own lives to protect you, are not about to loose a pound of their own shit paper and parts of their undershirts because you screwed the pooch and didn’t better prepare the waterproofing of your Charmin. On the flip side of this situation, your teammates will seize the silver lining in the proverbial clouds, and at great expense to your pride, will openly enjoy the great comedic site of watching you have to wipe your ass with your rapidly disappearing undershirt.

There were four points of determined threat and we had already cleared three of them. The only signs of people thus far had been several worn trails of traffic either used by indigenous people transecting the property on foot while travelling, or by larger game (probably by both). However, with the intermittent heavy rains, the employment of tracking skills to define exactly what or who used these trails proved futile. It wouldn’t be until the day after tomorrow, in the most embarrassing way that I would find out what the trails appeared to be used by. By the time we were moving onto threat point Delta I felt like I had regained control of my bowels, even if it was by the power of my sheer will. I was on point and I motioned for another security halt 100 yards from the heart of the GPS X and Y of the objective. Just when things seemed like they were starting to turn around for the better, I heard the breaking of cover and heavy movement at about 50 yards to my 12:00. I gave the signal for absolute quiet and motioned for my other two team members to come up. When they were by my side I pointed in the general direction of the potential threat, and pulled out my small set of 10X game binoculars. Trying to spot movement on an uneven floor of a jungle is a bitch to state the least. Small hills and other elevations obstruct your field of view. Trying to rise and gain a visual vantage point though the dense vegetation at the waist or chest high level proves to be even more impossible. However, I actually found a break in the vegetation, gained a vantage point, and within a minute or two of quiet observation I saw something move. What appeared to be a natural-looking thatch cover of decomposing palm leaves and other various types of dead vegetation covering what appeared to be a small depression or hole in the ground, rustled aggressively. Something was definitely underneath that covering. I didn’t know if it was the entrance to a small subterranean drug lab, or a lookout’s spider hole waiting for someone to come along to ambush as its location was about 10 feet off of the path of what appeared to be a well used game trail. Either way, I couldn’t confirm the type of threat, but I knew what I saw. So, I remained on point with my teammates covering my flanks from my both sides of my 06:00, and with my M-4 at the ready, I openly aggressed upon the covered depression. I heard or saw no more movement from the coverage but I simply now sensed two unfortunate things: both a definitive threat from beneath the foliage cover, and the overwhelming urge to explosively blow more fluid from my ass. However, I am now committed to the threat, so when I got about 10 feet from the coverage I maintained a bead in the center mass of the patch of coverage and yelled: “¡Conio, afuera de agujero! Manos arribas, apurate!!” (Translation: Get the fuck out of the hole and put your hand up, fast!) This is where everything in my world went into slow motion.

At first nothing happened. I figured whoever was in there was stalling and I was going to have to fire a warning shot, or neutralize one of them (if there was more than one) to establish dominate tactical control over the threat. Then before I could act,… oh shit then,.. what looked like a rabid fucking hippo shot out from under that dead foliage, hit me like a pro linebacker putting me flat on my ass, and kept on running through the thick underbrush like a raped ape on fire. If you have never seen a tapir before, they resemble a cross between a long snouted feral hog and a small land hippopotamus. This particular one was 600 pounds in weight if it was an ounce, and it was ¼ ton of scared shitless, fast-moving mass. As I lay on my back and realized that I wasn’t injured anywhere other than to my pride, and that there were no bad guys posing any threat to me or my team, staring up at the light rain falling through the jungle canopy, I took the next few seconds to replay in my mind what had just happened in slow motion. Giggling a little to myself on the inside, as to how scared shitless that poor, monstrosity of a tapir was, I came to the stark and humiliating realization that I couldn’t state the same about myself. When the tapir broke the cover of the foliage, I instinctively tensed my muscles for impact, let out a yell causing a furthering of inter-thoracic pressure, and inadvertently, I shat myself. When I finally stood up, the tell tale signs of earthy hues and tones that covered the seat of my light-colored blue jeans, and the upper part of the back of my right hamstring, only further fueled the comic relief session of my peanut gallery teammates. The hyena-like giggling that was being emitted from them in response to me being bowled over by the tapir from Hell erupted into a full blown hee-haw fest when they saw the soiled ass of my jeans. Because I was operating in the 100% humidity of the rainforest, and because of the bacterial Petri dish the jungle humidity can be, I don’t wear any underwear and go “commando” so that my nether region can breathe. Most operators I know do this. When you chaff in the jungle it can lead to very serious infections. Therefore, I had no “safety net” in place to capture the contents of the “mishaps.” Adding insult to injury, as I was operating in a jungle environment, and as is the law to keep the creepy crawlies out of one’s pant legs, my jeans were bloused into my jungle boots. As the seething, liquid humiliation adhered to the laws of gravity and travelled the length of my legs, the more constitute matter within it had nowhere to escape and simply pooled up around my right calve and shin. (Lesson Learned #1: ALWAYS supply and manage your own water sources on third world ops.) *Side Note: Mr. Montezuma sir,…. Fuck you…

With both my oh-so professional teammates holding onto each other and laughing hysterically behind me, I declared all of the threat objectives clear so that we can begin the survey portion of the Op, believing wholeheartedly, that if I sink my entire energy and attention into the remaining work I will be putting this situation as far behind me as possible. The very first thing I needed to do was to get cleaned, get changed, and wash my soiled clothes as best possible, in one of the smaller pools of collecting rain water. Minus my city clothes cached with our agent back in civilization, for clothing, in my ruck were the 2 additional pairs of jeans, 2 BDU bottoms, 3 t-shirts, 2 additional BDU blouses, 1 long sleeve black work shirt, 6 pairs of socks, and the extra pair of jungle boots I had brought. We had two more days on site and another 2 days and 4 hours of hump time to get back to civilization, so I had to make what I had work for me. After finding a suitable pool of water, I stripped, washed myself and my soiled jeans and socks, dried myself, and got redressed. I stored my wet clothes in one of the waterproof bags I brought and had stored in my ruck, until a more suitable time arose where I could hang and dry them.

I took the top 1/3 of the property and began my survey. About 2 hours into the topographical mapping it started pouring again. I made a lean-to out of fallen palm branches and some huge elephant ear leaves I found. While hunkering and waiting the squall out under my ad-hoc shelter, no longer my friend my bowels started having demands of me again. I had genuine concern for dehydration as I only brought 7 - 5quart canteens of water for me. In the jungle I will go through just about a gallon of water per day. I had a disposable water purifier pen and tube good for another 100 gallons of water, but still, I felt like I was expelling more fluids than I was taking in or carried with me to support the rate of expulsion. Either way, every time I expelled water I would drink some to off set any risk of loss of electrolytes and cramping. So far I was fine. I found a suitable hollow between the raised roots of a huge jungle tree to squat in and expelled the fluids demanding their way out. Luckily, in the same crevasse between raised tree roots that I was in was a 4 foot tall plant with large, oval-like shaped leaves that I could use to clean myself and keep from having to destroy this t-shirt as well (Mistake #3). It appeared at the time that my luck might be turning back on track. FYI: it wasn’t.

I wouldn’t find out until the team regrouped at our clandestine patrol base for the evening, but that the plant with the big leaves I used to wipe my ass with was actually a juvenile version of something called Gympie Gympie tree. Under normal conditions this wouldn’t mean a damned thing and I wouldn’t give a shit. However as it relates to this situation, the Gympie Gympie tree’s leaves have very fine nettles that if come into contact with bare skin, they embed themselves in the flesh and create an intense burning sensation. Normally, one can place a piece of tape over the affected area, and while pulling the tape back off of the skin, remove all nettles and rectify the problem once and for all. In my current SNAFU, I am soaking wet so even if I had brought any Gympie Gympie nettle mitigating tape, it wouldn’t adhere to my skin anyways. And, I actually placed a fistful of those leaves against, and aggressively stroked them again and again, across against my naked turd cutter.

It took about 10 minutes to get the full effect, but once the time had passed I now gave that shit I earlier mentioned not giving had I been under other circumstances,. My butthole, inner butt checks, and even my damned gooch were on freakin’ fire. I can liken the sensation to closely straddling the sun while naked. It was like I had been putting out cigars with my asshole. It was unbearable. I sucked it up and took breaks sitting in pools of water every so often. When the team met back up I told them what had happened (while sitting in another shallow pool of water). One of the guys had spent a few years in 7th Group and had spent a lot of time in training and on Ops in Central and South America. He asked me to show him the actual plant I used. I took the both of them over to the location and this is where I learned (between fits of hysterical laughter from him) about the infamous Gympie Gympie tree. (Lessons #2 and #3 Learned: ALWAYS triple bag your TP and bring a back-up supply also triple bagged. Don’t count on the local flora to be a viable source of your personal items of toiletry.)

After bringing each other up to speed on the surveys performed in each our sections of the property, we safely ascertained that no threats existed on the property, other than that of 600 pound rogue tapirs. Evidently, as it stipulates in my teammates’ corroborated testimony drafted in written report, and to their continuing delight in my humiliation, such a threat “can be simply mitigated by screaming at the hostile tapir in Spanish and then immediately, defecating on yourself. It appears that when you follow those steps in exact succession the most dreaded tapir will make a hasty retreat in abject disgust.”

Assholes…

We put up our tented hammocks encased with mosquito netting, built a fire and set in for the evening. I hung some of my wet clothes inside my hammock to dry over night, in an attempt to offset the risk of running out of dry clothing. As our clandestine patrol base was situated on some of the higher ground in the area of property with the triple canopy coverage, when we lost sunlight everything became pitch black without the light of the fire. From 22:00Hrs until 07:00Hrs we each took a 3 hour watch. The “unnamed teammate” from 7th Group gave explicit warning to tie EVERYTHING loose down due to the lack of light. I did not catch the direction where he was going with this advice. Never-the-less, I dummy-corded my M-4, my tac-vest, and my boots to my body and the rope supporting the roof of my tented hammock, and my ruck to the tree supporting the head of my hammock. I did have Vaseline in my ruck. (As a combat diver I have always relied upon it to create a superb seal on my mask whenever I had to grow facial hair, or to gap any seal leaks in my open circuit dive gear (non-O2 lines) o-rings, so in habit, I always carry some with me in my kit. In fact, I had some light sub-surface ravine topography mapping to do the next day and would need it.) As my asshole still resembled a space shuttle after burner, I smeared it down with the Vaseline and it helped immensely. One of the guys found some fresh mangoes in a massive tree a few yards away and I ate two with some citrus trail mix and a little beef jerky before bed (Mistake #4).

My watch started at 04:00Hrs. However, I got up at 03:30Hrs to once again, relieve myself of another massive amount of fluid. This is where Mistake #4 came to light. The acids from the fresh mangoes and the dehydrated pieces of citrus fruit in my trail mix commingled with the pepper in my beef jerky, in essence, rendered the once watery fluids erupting from my lower orifice, into some kind of unholy ghost pepper/habanero pepper mix hot sauce, that when it touched the already raw flesh of my butthole, inner-ass checks and grundle, caused outbursts of Turrets syndrome-metal scream-singing, muscular contortions, and grunt-speaking fluently in tongues I’ve never heard of. In turn, the combination of the nettles still in my flesh and the acids that continued to scorch my anus and surrounding undercarriage flesh caused the reaction of severe swelling. To which extent I wouldn’t learn about until later. In the meantime, I began stripping pieces of this new t-shirt now to wipe my ass because I sure as Hell wasn’t going to use so much as even the vein of a leaf to ever wipe my ass again. (Lesson Learned #4: NEVER EVER consume highly-acidic and/or peppery foods when you have diarrhea. It melds with stomach acids and further burns and irritates the already sensitive flesh at the exit-orifice opening.)

By the time I found my way back to my hammock for my watch shift (and to lather more Vaseline on) another downpour started. A small flow of water entered the fire pit and we lost the fire. It was only about two hours until day light anyways. I finished applying the Vaseline (most generously) and getting my clothes situated when the downpour ended as quickly as it had started. Besides the sound of millions of droplets of water hitting the wet, dead foliage covering the rainforest floor, it appeared as if nothing else existed with us in this part of the jungle. Everything was dead quiet. This was very weird because all through the night, rain or no rain, there were constant sounds of jungle night birds, insects, and small mammals. I didn’t understand this until about 20 minutes later when King fucking Kong showed up to the party.

There was no light and I couldn’t see a damned thing as we didn’t have a tactical reason to procure any NODs. I did have a white lens torch but, as the beam it puts out is so bright and will compromise our location to anyone who just might be out there, tactical regulation stipulates to never to turn it on except for absolute emergencies, or signaling ops. So sit in the dark I had. I was sitting there listening to everything around our base trying to pick up on any movement or sound out of place and trying not to think about having to take another flame thrower of a shit. That’s when it happened. Branches in the far canopy above and to the east of us started moving loudly and aggressively. It was about 04:30Hrs and still pitch dark. The branch movements stopped and then it started as a very low, unearthly howl/yell that could only emit from the vocal chords of a 1000 pound flesh eating jungle yeti, and ended up as an even louder scream a few octaves higher than the initiating low howl. Satan was absolutely real and that bitch lived in the Panamanian jungle canopy right over our heads. I turned my white lens torch in less than a nano-second, made sure that the round chambered in my M-4 for yesterday’s great tapir assault was still good to go, switched off my safety, and got my tac-vest on. Shit was about to hit the fan. All I could do was mentally picture that damned alien from the movie Predator in that El Salvadorian rain forest, forcing Arnold Schwarzenegger to cover his self in swamp mud; and then chasing him all over the place. Regardless of its bad-ass infrared and cloaking technologies, I was going to give it one Hell of a fight. Then, probably because of the beam of bright white light from my torch, more of these infernal things started that low howl turning into an unbelievably high screams right above our heads now. I didn’t have to wake anyone as they too heard these unholy beasts and saw the light from my torch. The teammate from 7th Group said he hoped everything was still tied down, not to worry and to turn off the flashlight, (which I did), that it’s cool, and that he was going back to bed. I was astonished, here we were the three of us, like the 300 Spartans against the million-man Persian hordes, and he was going back to bed. WTF? He must have known what I was thinking as he said kind of laughingly from under the cover of his tented hammock, “Dude, those are howler monkeys. Don’t stress.” In the pitch dark again, I thought Monkeys? …… MONKEYS?!? Those Sasquatch yells and screams never came from any monkey on the end of an organ grinder’s leash I’ve ever seen. He was right about the Gympie Gympie tree, and this was one of his old stomping grounds so I calmed down and waited, of course, with my selector switch still on semi-auto. It sounded like they were right over us for a while as small sticks and braches would periodically hit the tent covers to our hammocks. Then it dawned on me that they were here for the mango tree. This was a large troop of monkeys, big monkeys at that, and we had situated our patrol base smack-dab in the middle of their foraging territory. I watch the damned Discovery channel. All I could do was to wait for the relief of daylight to give me a different perspective on this situation, and an insight into the actual size of these monkeys because at the moment, they sounded like a bunch of silverback lowland gorillas up there. So I sat, listened, and waited, with of course, my selector switch still on semi-auto.

By 07:00Hrs. We had good daylight, no matter how filtered by the jungle’s triple canopy, and we were up and breaking the base. He was right. There were a lot of monkeys moving around in the canopy and they weren’t in the least happy with us being in their territory. A couple of sticks were thrown along with a half eaten mango or two and that was the thick of it, so we didn’t pay any attention to them in hopes of them following suit. During the Op planning phase it was agreed that I would map out the seafloor of the small ravine that transected the upper northwestern corner of the property in case there was an expected commercial use of the waterway. Soundings and a topography map would have to be made. I would also take X and Y fixes on the highest two peaks in the razor grass field in case the principal wanted to use the area for helo-logistics and resupply. I would employ my pathfinder skills and pre-designate flight paths and establish a multi-bird LZ on the map as well, just in case. I grabbed my M-4, .40Cal., ruck and kit and headed off for the ravine, but before we each departed our own way we re-established com checks and agreed for a 12:00 rendezvous at the patrol base site for chow. Before we left I was having exceptional discomfort with what felt like exponential swelling in my ass. My other teammate opposite the guy from 7th Group was an ex-18D from 3rd Group. As embarrassing as it was, the swelling was so bad that I had lost a little feeling and I didn’t know if I had lost continence because I was already very damp from the jungle’s constant humidity. I asked if he would look at it and give me a prognosis. Of course there was a joke or two, as expected from these two yahoos, but still, I dropped my pants, bent over, opened the cargo door to put the door bundle on display, and waited for the verdict. I heard the sharp intake of breath between teeth and I knew that it wasn’t good news. He said I needed to be scrubbed to remove the remaining nettles, and I need a really good topical antibacterial with an anti-swelling agent. At lunch chow he said that he would dig the antibacterial and ant-swelling agents out of his medical bag, but that I was scrubbing my own ass. Okay, I said, but because it feels seriously weird, how bad does it look? His response couldn’t have been more medically professional. He actually replied with, “It looks like and angry crabapple. Or maybe the swollen, winking eye of a prize-fighting pig.”  WTF??... Where in the Hell do you learn what one of those looks like? Both he and my other teammate laughed at the joke but to this day I am still clueless as to how my painfully swollen orifice could be likened to a winking pig’s eye….. WTF?.....

[I know that you two are reading this so, now that some time has passed and the joke is over, I seriously wish you two would bring me up to speed on what that means… WTF?]

As I redressed and departed, the rain started again with a vengeance. I wasn’t so much worried about threats to me from the wildlife in the ravine. It wasn’t that large a body of water, perhaps 20 meters across at the widest point, with a max depth of 3 meters. My concern was the increasing current due to commingling rain runoff, and how it will eventually change the topography of the bottom over the course of the next few months of rainy season, rendering any map I create today, antiquated. It would suck major ass for some small barge captain to travel down stream from the main channel ferrying in commercial supplies, based upon my intelligence given, only to run aground where there is supposed to be substantial depth for marine vessel operability. Either way, that is an inherited risk of using small channel ways in a rainforest and I am confident that the barge captains in the area are more than adept at dealing with those risks. So, I pulled my fins from their webbing storage on the outer rear of my ruck, and got my mask out of the inside, my tac-board, my white chart board with grease pencil, grabbed my rapidly diminishing Vaseline and greased my face where the mask needed to make a seal, and I started my ravine survey. 3 hours later and I had finished. I was really lucky. Although the water was cloudy due to the mud from rain water run-off, the bottom was most rock and old coral deposit. At one time, this ravine was a small river, and salty, brackish water ran through it. However, today there were no signs of the mangroves that must have thrived on the ravine banks here, only, encroaching jungle. Although my report doesn’t state it, this ravine in the next 50 to 100 years will become extinct and unless constantly mitigated, the jungle will have bridged completely over. I am glad I was finished because my in my bowels again, were those ever-present high-pressure fluids that were knocking at the back door like Vikings of yore batter-ramming a castle’s drawbridge gate.

So, I found a suitable place to handle my business. However, things have changed a bit since I last evacuated. My asshole and surrounding flesh had evidently swollen unevenly, and it hurt. I felt that if I pressed down with all the pressure I could muster, perhaps everything will just shoot out and be over with quickly. So, I dropped my pants and held them behind my knees, squatted, and when I was ready I pressed like I was giving birth to a 12 pounder. The good news was that as planned, the fluids shot right out like thickened, muddy river water with little pain. The bad news was that because of the unevenness of the swelling around my anus, everything shot 100 miles per hour out at an angle like I was firing a 10 pound shot chocolate pudding canon. I had just shit all over the back of, and the on instep of my right boot. All I could do was to sit there shaking my head, staring at my befouled boot in disgusted astonishment. The warm fluid sensation seeping into the canvass material of my jungle boot was simply just the newest assault on my dignity. At that moment, I came to the odd realization that for the first time in my life since I was 1 ½ years old, I have shat upon myself twice in a 24hour period. With an hour left until the rendezvous, and my asshole once again feeling like the business end of a burnt matchstick, I went and stood in the cool current of the ravine for a few minutes, and then when satisfied with the cleanliness of my once befouled boot and foot, I headed out to the razor grass field.

I found the two high points again with no problem. Each was about 2 meters in height and about 30 meters in layered circumference. Luckily they were over 400 meters apart and posed no threat to the establishment of a viable, multi-bird LZ. I climbed up to the center of the peak of the first land mass and captured the true X and Y on my GPS. With that out of the way, based upon the closest wood line, the estimated tree height of that wood line, in reference to the location of the other land mass, I designated the LZ and directions of approach and take off of the lead birds. Then I headed over to the other land mass, which was significantly wider and easier to climb upon, and it had a wider peak as well. At its summit, I noticed that there were a lot of large, flat stones resting all over the place. I remember that striking me as being very odd because they were out of place with the rest of the geological geography there, and I couldn’t figure out how they had all gotten there. Either way, I quickly rolled myself up onto the peak to acquire its X and Y coordinates (Mistake #5). As I prompted the GPS unit to capture the coordinates, I heard a very loud and getting increasingly louder, hissing sound. It resembled the loud rush of escaping of air from the initial cracking open of an open circuit tank’s first stage while under pressure. It was really loud. That’s when I took a closer look onto those flat rocks to my right. The biggest bushmaster snake I have ever seen was coiled and rapidly rising onto its tail. It was as thick as one of my calves and shins, and I noticed that it had pinkish hues to its brown and black diamond patterning, and as it got louder and raised higher all I could think was, “Aw shit….”

Everything went into slow motion again. My M-4 was on a wolf sling and was easily accessible. I also had a tactical right thigh rig with my S&W .40Cal. I could try and secure, raise, aim and fire one my weapons, but this thing was pissed and was moving fast. Then it started coming at me, and really fast. I am 5’9” tall. This damned snake was a good 5 foot off the ground and moving like a pistol shot. I turned and went total Forrest Gump: “If I was going somewhere, I was running.” I ran like the wind but I could still hear it hissing and breaking through the razor grass and it sounded like it was gaining on me. I just turned up the heat and kept going. Now, it wasn’t far to the patrol base from where this whole chase started; maybe 150 yards. As I enter the wood line sprinting I still heard that hissing bastard behind me and I could also see my teammates 20 yards in front of me, one sitting and one standing at our rendezvous point. As I rushed at full speed into the jungle’s tree line, they looked up at me. It’s funny the minute details one can remember when something life-threatening happens. I can clearly remember the looks on their faces when they saw me sprint into the rainforest and head toward the patrol base at nearly a breakneck speed. They were looking at me with perplexed and confused looks on their faces like what in the Hell is he doing now? Then to shift around a large plant I side stepped to the left, and they got a full view of what was happening. Then I can clearly remember the looks on their faces changing when they saw that big bitch of a snake, five feet upright in height, coming just as fast, transitioning from the expressions of perplexity, to wide-eyed OH MOTHER OF GOD expressions. The 18D was now standing wide-eyed, waiving his hands and arms, and yelling Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! But I don’t think that had the desired effect on the snake he was hoping for as in the next second we three were side by side, thrashing through the rainforest vegetation like our friend the 600 pound tapir from the day before, at breakneck speeds of sprinting. We continued our path until the guy from 7th Group found his way up a tree and informed us of the bushmaster’s end of pursuit. We three sauntered back to the patrol base and didn’t say much of anything to each other, keeping one eye trained to our direction of travel and the other to our flanks. That was one really big and pissed off poisonous snake. (Lesson Learned #5: And I already knew this one but became careless – ALWAYS look on before you step over, step on before you step over, and when in a rainforest, especially near water, flat rocks are a haven for reptiles like snakes to sun themselves. Note: These rocks as well, are a good source of potential food for you if the risk doesn’t outweigh the gains.)

Back at the rendezvous point we summed up what we had accomplished and what tasks remained to complete the Op. (I can’t possible express the elation I felt when I checked through one nervously squinting eye, whether or not my GPS unit captured the elevation location of Snakezilla’s lair, and found out that in fact it had!) Luckily my end of the Op was complete and I would help both of them with whatever needed to be performed in each their sectors. The 18D gave me the ointments and a small, plastic medical brush and the instructions I needed to begin the cleaning and healing process of my ass. As we ate our meals the troop of monkeys came back to where our patrol base was situated, moving around in the canopy about 60 to 100 feet above our heads. Everything was going well until things started dropping out of the canopy onto us. It started with the average assortment of half eaten fruit and pieces of branches. Then it graduated to larger branches, unto finally, monkey feces. To this point in the Op, I have had my fill with feces issues. As the monkeys were becoming increasingly agitated and bolder in their actions, I simply ended my meal, performed a com check with both my teammates, then took my chances with Snakezilla and strolled back through the razor grass field to the ravine to wash and follow the 18D’s medical instructions on how to fix my inflamed ass. I followed every direction to the proverbial “T.” The small, plastic medical brush that I was given to scrub my swollen under-area ended up feeling like I was scrubbing my ass with a sea urchin right off the BBQ grill.

I was putting everything back in my ruck when I received word on the horn to get back to the patrol base A.S.A.P.  Evidently, while I was gone the monkeys became increasingly bold and one descended one of the trees and grabbed a waterproof note bag with the 7th Group guy’s notes from his end of the Op. This is bad because we need those notes to generate both field and final reports both in Panama City, and back in Houston for the principal. Well, when he saw the monkey hit the ground, head for his gear, and reach for the note bag he reacted by yelling and waving his arms sending the monkey in flight syndrome up the damned tree with the note bag in tow. Inside that note bag is a day and a half worth of work, that if we can’t recover it, we will have to re-perform his end of the Op on Hambright Protection Service’s dime. These types of Ops are normally quoted lump sum. With the monkey rapidly ascending the tree my teammate had to make an executive decision and fast. He readied his M-4, leading the monkey’s movement he aimed and fired once (Mistake #6). Both the howler monkey and the note bag hit the ground at the same time. Now we did get the note bag back. However, the monkeys in the tree canopy started flipping shit; howling, yelling, and carrying on. I wasn’t too worried because we were the ones who were armed with something other than rancid monkey poo. At least I wasn’t worried until the howls and yelling of the monkeys overhead of us started to be answered by the howls and yells in response by an ass-load of other monkeys, and those responses sounded like they were getting closer by the minute. (Lesson #6 Learned: Treat troops of monkeys and packs of other larger rainforest animals with the same respect you would the large families of the Mexican culture. Because as the cliché goes: “You fuck with one of them, you fuckin’ with them all.” Diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy. We should have enticed the monkey for a trade with food or anything else. We still need to be here another night and ½ day as pain-free as possible.)

We picked our gear up and headed back toward the razor grass field, very fucking carefully might I add because Snakezilla undoubtedly dwells there. From the vantage point of the open field we could see one Hell of a lot of tree canopy in the distance moving and shaking and literally heading our way. We looked at one another and agreed to head to the ravine. It was as if all the monkey tribes were united by some unseen monkey king who wants a piece of our asses. I had a feeling that it was going to be a long night. That’s when another torrential downpour started again. At least the rain kept the monkeys calm, for the time being at least. With no sight of Snakezilla around we walked quickly, yet cautiously toward the ravine. At the ravine we figured out a way to get to the different areas of each their sections of the property still requiring inspections of topographical elevations and relief. It was decided that I would help my teammate from 7th Group who had more acreage to inspect. We performed another com check and moved out.

 Between my 7th Group alumni and me, we each took our partitions of his section of property to inspect, established a rally point, and went on about our tasks. Finishing my last elevation point, I noticed a significant increase in rainfall. Under the rainforest’s triple canopy, the density of rainfall is indicative of the amount of rain bypassing all of the leaves and branches overhead, and by the additional small streams of rain run-off feeding into the rising pools of collecting rain water. The small streams of water commingled with one another to become larger, more forceful, faster moving streams of water, cutting and carving new dimensions into the elevations of the rainforest floor. The reshaping of the topography of the forest floor happened quickly as faces of minor cliffs crumbled while giving way to the pressure of the force of the new moving bodies of water. My teammate and I watched as small elevations disappeared into a muddy-colored, fast-running, churning stream of water that seconds before, didn’t exist at all. When these flash flood bodies of water struck there was no preemptive warning. They were the result of the combining of smaller streams of water a few hundred yards to the north of where we were, and the sheer force of their power when the hit could very easily knock you off your feet and take you for a wet and muddy ride until the land topography leveled out offering your foothold, some kind of purchase on the rainforest floor.

I was standing on the precipice of such a small cliff, thinking about where I was going to go to next relive the pressure building in my bowels, when behind me came a rush of water and before I could react, I was falling down the 5 feet of the cliff face with the racing water that had seconds before, magically appeared. I slid down a newly formed stream, its bottom slick with mud carried for miles, and waterlogged, sulfurous-smelling, decomposing vegetation. The slope of the decline was perhaps 20 degrees, but the length, until leveling-out, was nearly 600 yards. I was in for a ride. I was wearing my rucksack on my back which made me even clumsier in my attempts to gain a foothold as the water was forcing its weight with that of my own down the decline of the hillside. Thrashing in the torrent of water currents, I aimlessly grabbed at roots, vines, and the trunks of plants and juvenile trees, with no luck. Within another 60 seconds the ride was over, I was covered in mud and dead leaves, as was everything inside my rucksack. The waterproof bag that contained all of my clothes, poncho liner, extra-large civilian travel bag for all of my gear, and other essentials had torn along with the rucksack cover when it came in contact with an end of one of the broken logs resting on the ground, at over 20 miles per hour during my jungle white water body surfing experience. I would have to hand-wash everything, create a roofed shelter, and dry everything over night. I had no choice. I would need at the very least, dry socks and boots for the hump back into civilization. At least I still had my M-4, my .40 Cal., and all my extra magazines of ammunition in my tac-vest, even if they were all filthy. While my clothes dried, I would assuredly be stripping, cleaning, and oiling my weapons.

 My teammate was laughing hysterically again at the site of my water slide, when he too was struck by a similar wall of water and enjoyed an even longer ride down the hillside. Even though I didn’t laugh too hard, I enjoyed the show. Karma is a bitch. He, however, did not experience the damage to his rucksack. As our other teammate didn’t experience the same fate of water sports in his sector, so we later found out, I would be the only one doing laundry this evening. Knowing what was ahead, when we returned to the clandestine patrol base for the evening I constructed a 2 foot tall, 4 foot wide, by 6 foot long, pyramid frame out of juvenile sapling sticks and 550 cord gut, covered by a thatch roof made from palm tree fronds, elephant ear plant leaves, and other wide-ear plant leaves. I hung it from a low branch of a tree at the tail-end of the fire pit we designed the day before. The thatch roof was as well, hung with 550 cord at a 30 degree angle, the lowest end nearest the fire with the opposite end of the roof elevating the 30 degrees higher than the other end. The principal of engineering was to using the rising heat from the fire, and at an incline of 30 degrees, draw the heat across all of the wet clothes hanging on cross branches beneath the thatch roof, drying them all equally. At the highest end of the thatch roof the heat (and any smoke) could escape without impedance. The plan was simple. All I needed to do now was to strip down, and clean absolutely everything.

My teammate from 7th Group took the dead monkey and buried him. We thought about barbequing the thing but we didn’t want any more trouble from King Louie and his minions. Tonight I’d settle for a can of raviolis and some trail mix, - no dehydrated citrus fruit, and definitely no peppered jerky. It was still early so both my teammates wanted to try their luck with ad-hoc fishing in the ravine with 550 cord gut and some survival hooks. After they gathered the wood for a fire, they left. There were plenty of pools of water to wash myself, my rucksack, and gear, and my clothes in. so, I got to it. Within about three hours the light was fading fast, and I was wrapping up getting all my clothes situated underneath the thatch roof to dry. With no luck at the ravine, the 18D was back at base and was starting the fire for both the heat needed to dry my stuff and so that we could have hot canned chow for diner.

The engineering design of the thatch roof seemed to work. The only problem was trying to make a fire with small, wet firewood. Once the fire was going though, everything started coming together. Thus far, I was extremely lucky as the rain had been nearly non-existent. Only the sporadic drip here and there of the collecting rain water remaining in the canopy’s leaves served as reminder of the day’s earlier heavy rains. If I could see through the canopy I would have bet I would be looking at stars. Keeping one partial t-shirts remaining for toiletry use handy, from the light of the fire I rested nude in the shelter of my netted and roofed hammock cleaning and oiling my M-4 carbine and .40Cal. sidearm. Once one of the now half t-shirts in the front of the thatch roof being dried first, was finally dried, I put it on for some body cover as the combination of the wet earth three feet beneath me, and the cool air of the rainforest at night was beginning to chill me. I would have to wait another few hours for everything else to become dry enough to wear comfortably. As long as the fire kept up, by early morning all of my clothes and poncho liner should be as warm and dry as dessert sand.

Because of all of the cleaning I needed to do of my ancillary gear, I took the first watch to capitalize on my time awake. Because I had to keep rotating my drying clothes under the thatch roof to get the optimization of even-drying I was not able to actually tie everything under that thatch roof down (Mistake #7). My esteemed colleague from 7th Group was very clear about this security measure. However, he had the shift following mine, and the 18D following him, and they were both aware of the inability to follow this security protocol. They both stated that they each would devote additional attention to these items in the case that the infernal horde of crazed howler monkeys returned. With borrowed towels from my teammates, I finished the cleaning and drying of all of my ancillary support gear. Completed, I placed it all back into the dried waterproof bag that was my rucksack liner. Luckily, the tear in the bag was near the top of it, so I simply rectified the situation by levelly cutting off the affected area with my knife, and goose-neck tied the new top of the bag once it carried the contents requiring waterproofing. Although the bag didn’t have its original capacity, not everything I originally had stored in it needed waterproofing. So, encompassing what was pertinently in need of dry storage, received it, and everything else went into the rucksack shell. With my shift at an end, having emptying my bowels for the umpteenth time today, the waterproof rucksack liner finally full of clean gear and back in its place inside my rucksack (which was tied down to the tree supporting my hammock), and with my drying boots and a pair of already dried socks, my cleaned weapons (.40Cal in its holster), and tac-vest with ammo and magazines in the hammock with me, and my utter exhaustion from today’s events at an absolute zenith, I used one of the borrowed, damp towels as a makeshift blanket and promptly passed out. My sleep was both deep and peaceful.

 Five hours later I abruptly awoke from a cacophony of aggressively loud sounds, each of which was part of a different story unfolding all around me. In between the 18D’s yelling commands for everyone to get the Hell up, the ever recognizable guttural yells and screams of the horde of monkeys, the violent slapping and scraping of their fur and flesh against tree wood and bark, the intermittent crashing of something recognizably heavy, crunchy, and leafy sounding, and in between these sounds, the pitter patter of fresh rain droplets falling on my hammock tent from the tree canopy above, all began to paint a mental image of what was happening outside my hammock. Heeding to the stress tones conveyed his in orders, I grabbed my M-4, ever-quickly making sure that my boots, .40Cal and holster were all secured to the rope comprising the top inside of my hammock’s canopy, I rolled out of my hammock in nothing but a half t-shirt to take on whatever fight was brewing. Even though my luck had taken a recent dive into Shitville, the one thing I still know how to do and do well, is fight. Bare-naked and within a split-second, I will aggressively turn on and up the heat on any and all threats, and within an extreme prejudice.

All over the place were 2 ½ to 3 ½ foot tall (with equally as long tails) black monkeys, jumping to the ground, running back up in trees, yelling, screaming, and carrying items yet to be identified as the fire had burned down to a point where the light emitted from it was minimal and not brilliant enough to penetrate the shadows of the trees 15 foot above our heads. I had a clear view of 20 foot in radius around our hammocks and the fire pit. Before I reached into my hammock for the towel to wrap around my waist, I did notice that the thatch roof was on the ground, and positioned in three pieces about 10 foot to the right of the fire pit. The borrowed towel was a medium sized towel and barely wrapped around my waist. I had to really pull the ends to gain enough material to tie a square knot and secure the towel over my lower torso. As the towel only covered about 8 inches of my upper thighs, the only purpose it really stood for was in protection of whatever little dignity I had remaining in my poor soul. With the towel secured over my waist, I reached back into my hammock and grabbed my boots, socks, and .40Cal.

Although the monkeys were all over the place, they were staying only at the edges of the light from the diminishing fire. With both my other teammates yelling at the monkeys   to drop things they had picked up and to get away, I took the opportunity to quickly put my socks and boots on. When I took a closer look at the thatch hut resting in a twisted three pieces, in abject horror, I finally realized what my teammates were yelling about. The howler monkeys had torn apart the ad-hoc thatch roof and snatched everything they could carry from beneath it and took to the trees with it all. All I was left with to wear was what I had on. My boots and sock (luckily), a t-shirt with the lower half of the midsection gone, my tac-vest, .40Cal with thigh rig, and a medium sized, O.D. green towel that barely wrapped around my waist, and that as well, only barely covered my groin and top 5 to 6 inches of my thighs when I walked. This towel wardrobe thing simply wasn’t working.

With the fire beginning to subside in minutes from the onset of this fiasco, luckily, light began to filter through branches and leaves f the canopy overhead. This obviously illuminated my current situation. My clothes from beneath the thatch roof were strewn amongst the branches of the trees above us. Some items were 60 feet overhead, and the most were far above that. It was apparent that the monkeys had tried to take other things as well, but they were tied down and as quickly as the monkeys descended and tried to steal them, they gave up when the items proved immobile in the hands of the monkeys.

I could see one of my extra jungle boots, two pairs of my BDU pants, several socks strewn were and there, a BDU blouse, my poncho liner (Dammit, I loved that poncho liner), and a half t-shirt roughly tugged through branches and snagged in tight canopy vegetation. The good news was that the engineering of the thatch roof looked like it had worked and everything from down there looked relatively dry. There was absolutely no way any of us could risk shimmying that high up a tree for these items as the risks of falling due to slippery bark or a monkey attack were too great.

Over breakfast consisting of Ramen noodles, the guys expressed how terrible the situation was and how they were empathetic for me. The 18D especially, and as he tried to explain that this surgically precise monkey raid was so instantaneous and unpredictable, there was little time to react to anything. They were relentless, that they had to be trained in guerrilla/counter-guerrilla warfare Ops. In fact, he was sure that they were probably at that very moment, caching my other jungle boot and BDU bottoms in a secretive location to later recover and use against us in warfare. He further stipulated that this situation was nothing less than the employment of psychological operations by these monkeys, in an attempt to break our morale. I sat there on my rucksack listening to this ridiculousness, in my half t-shirt that two days before was whole, my damp towel haphazardly wrapped around my waist, offering no concealment of my junk as I perched atop my ruck, and my jungle boots. I was miserable and didn’t give one single shit. I just wanted to finish the Op. Feral fucking monkeys stole both my pride and dignity, and my asshole was so unbearably swollen; it felt like I was sitting on top of a tangerine. He looked at me and recognized my expression in response to his statement, and immediately said that he would loan me an extra pair of his pants when he returned from video recording and taking still shots of some of the higher elevation points for our principal’s construction engineers to review. The teammate from 7th Group said that he’d help him and that in light of my current disposition, suggested that I might as well stay and break down everyone’s hammocks and clear the patrol base until their return. No matter how bad I wanted to just accept the situation for what it was, I simply just wasn’t going to traipse around the jungle dressed like a third world country street hooker. (Lesson #7 Learned: When in rainforest triple canopy, regardless the conditions, TIE EVERYTHING DOWN before night fall. Period.)

I broke-down all of the hammocks, extinguished what was left of the fire and covered the pit with mud and wet vegetation, and removed any trace of us being there from the grounds of the patrol base. I couldn’t do shit about the trees. I was packing my 7th Group alumni teammate’s hammock into his ruck when I heard the mumbling of human voices. I was about 15 yards from the nearest game trail but the vegetation was so thick it was difficult to get both an audio and visual fix on where the voice were exactly coming from. I just knew two things, they weren’t coming from the direction of where my teammates were, and they weren’t speaking English. Then as quickly as I had heard them, the people emitting the voices appeared. They were a group of older indigenous people; three men and two women, none of them less than 55 years of age. The women were wearing colorful skirts and sandals, and were using sarong-type pieces of clothe draped across their foreheads, over their shoulders, and onto their backs to carry multiple plastic bags full of what must have been supplies. The men were wearing worn slacks, t-shirts and button-down traditional shirts worn un-tucked, and sandals as well. Two of them hand carried sacks full of supplies, and one had a back pack kind of frame made from manila rope he was using to carry sticks of firewood on his back. None of the saw me when I first saw them, but they were right upon me and there was no time to grab my M-4 resting on my rucksack, or my .40Cal inside of it, without causing a huge disturbance. There was no threat here so even though I could have gotten to my weapons, there was no need.

I was the foreigner here and I didn’t want to spook anyone so I tried to look nonchalant and calm. I rested my right elbow on the tree trunk next to me, my right cheekbone against my right fist and bending my right knee, I crossed my right leg over my left leg supporting me, resting my right foot on the tip of its toes. When they got within 20 feet of me they slowed down, stopped talking and the man in the front of the column looked wide-eyed at first, and then looked at me if I was an extra-terrestrial from Mars and picked up the pace while whispering something to the people behind him. I looked at him, and trying to express my cool and laid-back demeanor, in a low and relaxed voice, I said; “¿Que paso?” As the second guy in the column passed me after the person before him had, he too looked at me as if I was the most out of place thing in the universe, and then followed suit with his predecessor by picking up the pace, intermittently looking over his shoulder at me with expressions of astonishment as if he were witnessing a train wreck happen. I just kept my position and looked at him, nodded my head upward in the universal gesture of acceptance, and in the same easy, cool, low voice, I said; “¿Como estas?” The women identically did the same as the men before them while whispering things I couldn’t quite make out. I just kept it cool, rested against the tree, nodded my head upward, and in the same cool and calm voice, I said; “Hola.” After passing me and looking over their shoulders a few times with weird expressions of disapproval and disbelief, the man bringing up the rear was wide-eyed the whole time muttering something in what became clear as being the indigenous tongue of the Embera Indians. He didn’t pick up speed to meet up with his companions until after he passed me, never changing the wide-eyed expression on his wrinkled, weathered face. I just looked at him as if the world had slowed down to island time. I slowly nodded my head upward to him as well, smiling, and said ever so calmly; “¿Que paso?” As soon as he passed me and disappeared into the jungle vegetation like those before him in his column, I heard both my teammates behind me totally loose it with hyena-like laughter. They were standing back there watching me the whole time. I didn’t understand why they didn’t say anything congenial to the passer-bys. (Hearts and Minds gentlemen…..get on the ball!!)

These two were laughing so hard the 18D, who was leaning against a tree to steady him self, literally blew a totally noticeable snot bubble from one of his nostrils. I couldn’t figure out what the fuck was so damned funny. I was simply trying to diffuse a situation before it could start up, while being pleasantly congenial to our indigenous hosts. Maybe I over did it a bit, but the point was still evident. My colleague from 7th Group, who had tears running down his face, took advantage of my completely bewildered state, and quickly shot a picture of me standing there with our still photography camera and brought it over so that I could see the data image of myself. Without the ridiculously exaggerated pose on the tree, I still totally looked like a retarded man-prostitute. I had no underwear on, I was in a Daisy Duke half t-shirt, a pair of boots, and was barely covered up with a too-small towel. With the damned pose, well,…. Aw shit……. I was humiliated. How did I not see this coming???? What the Hell was I thinking? I was the one in the towel for Christ sakes…. Unreal. My teammates were having one Hell of a hoot. In reflection of my own sheer stupidity, I just repetitively asked myself; “How did this Op happen to me??” I must have done such terrible things in a past life. I don’t know. You know, karma is a bitch…

After passing the camera back and forth and laughing their asses off for a while, the 18D gave me his extra, BDU bottoms. He was saving them for the next day and they were his last clean pair. The problem is that he is 5 foot 6 inches tall and a whole 150 pounds soaking wet. I am 5 foot 9 inches tall, very muscular, and I weigh 195 pounds. His BDU bottoms must have been a 29 inch waist with a 4 inch inseam. Squeezing my flesh into those things was sheer torture. I needed these pants to get back to civilization as at the very least, I couldn’t take a train back to Panama City in a flippin’ towel wearing no underwear! Shit!! It was like pressing knockwurst sausage getting my legs and lower torso into those pants. These pants were like some sadomasochistic contraption. I literally hand-pressed flesh into each pant leg, and I had to painfully manhandle my package into the crotch. The crotch in those pants was so damned small. (Poor bastard… J). Now I know for a fact they make these clothes in men’s sizes, but where the Hell did he get these pants??? Baby Gap? I got everything in though, and then it came time to button up the fly. I got the first two buttons, but the others were just too far apart. I wiggled and twisted, I tried to shift parts of mass from here to there, but all to no avail. Besides, the seam line of the pant’s crotch was playing havoc with my swollen bunghole. It was like straddling hot concertina wire. Not only that, but the constant pressure of the seam line against my swollen orifice kept making me feel as if I had to shit again. I didn’t know what to do. My teammate from 7th Group was a tall bastard coming in at 6 foot and 4 inches, and he easily weighed 230 pounds. (Like me he is a lot of solid muscle.) I didn’t want to have to ask him for pants as they sure as Hell wouldn’t fit. The shirt however, I would.

We are not supposed to draw any attention to ourselves, what-so-ever, for many, many reasons. Now how in the Hell am I supposed to not draw attention to myself wearing a pair of pants that look like they have been painted on. Even the cargo pockets on my thighs were stretched tight. I probably couldn’t have crammed a quarter into either of them. Making matters worse, the pants in the front were unbuttoned down to the final two buttons and I had my privacy patch on a framed display. The obscenely detailed, giant moose knuckle outlined in the front part of the crotch in the pants was simply another giant neon arrow of a sign pointing and screaming; “ATTENTION!!!! ATTENTION!!!!” I looked as if I was ready to initiate a one-man Pride Parade. It was totally fucked. As I knew that I had to, (although I really didn’t want to), I bit the bullet, walked over, and showed the peanut gallery what exactly we were working with.

I mean seriously, what did I do to get this Op?

When both Hee-Hee and Ho-Ho actually stopped laughing, I informed my colleague from 7th Group that I needed to borrow a shirt and a pair of his jeans. There was no way that we were going to get past La Guardia troops on the train unnoticed, with me looking like I had stepped right out of one of RuPaul’s nightmares. After a few minutes of physically wrestling the damn camera away from him so that he didn’t take a picture of this ensemble as well, he conceded and retrieved for me an extra pair of his pants and a black t-shirt. The shirt was clean but the jeans were filthy to the Nth degree, and smelled like worn buffalo ass. He stated that he simply wasn’t giving up his last clean pair of pants. He wasn’t on watch when I got robbed by the Jane Goodall Gang. He was right. I don’t blame him, as I would have felt the same. I guess that I was headed back to the ravine for a quick wash of pants. Wet or not, I would wear them for the next two days hump back to Gamboa. Fuck it. I headed to the ravine for the umpteenth time, to clean the several pounds of funk out of these Jeans.

After washing the jeans in the ravine I beat them against some rocks near the embankment, wrung them with my hands, and even twisted them around a small tree trunk until every drop of water I could muster out of the fabric of those jeans was out. I then put them on. My waist is 31” and the waist size of these jeans was 36”. The inseam probably had to be measured in yards as there were all kinds of extra length at the bottoms of the jean’s legs. Speaking of the legs, must have been an exceptionally relaxed fit of jeans and it felt as if I could have fit my entire body into one of the legs. I literally bounced around in them like a clapper in a bell. These things were 5 sizes too big. It was as if MC Hammer had designed his owl line of jeans and I was wearing the prototype. It looked like I was wearing clown suit pants. I had to take 550 cord to tie the waist down as I had no belt, and I had to roll the cuffs up about 6 or 7 times. I looked like a fucking idiot in these pants. It was if I was off to attend a Shriner’s Circus minus my ridiculously too small of a car. Weighing the levels of idiocy between the pants and the towel, I of course chose to continue with the pants; I had no choice. With the borrowed shirt perfectly covering up the makeshift 550 cord belt and obvious over size of the pants, and with no other incidents to report during the Op, two days later, with all of our gear broken down and placed in the civilian bags that were stored in our rucksaks, we boarded the train for Panama City. Arriving in the city I was amazed that I didn’t attract any noticeable attention from the authorities policing the trains. Either way, we were back in civilization and on our way to a hotel where our clothes would be waiting for us, with hot water, good food, a soft bed for the night, and accessible anti-swelling-anti-bacterial ointments.

That night, with my ass-swelling beginning to decrease, and my intestinal tract near normalcy, we all went out for a good meal, a few drinks, and to experience the night life in beautiful Panama City, Panama. It was a lot of fun. The flight back to the States was miserable. Expectedly so, as trying to either sitting on top of a golf ball wedged in your ass, or shifting from cheek to cheek for five hours sucked. Intermittently shooting the rod at my two teammates who were sitting together two rows ahead and to the left of me, who kept turning around to watch me uncomfortably shift from cheek to cheek, and then giggle, smile, whisper and point, didn’t make me feel that much better, but it did help some. When I thought about it during the flight the sequence of events over the course of the past four days had been a combination of stupidity, lack of attention to detain, and exceptionally poor luck. In succession these things happened to me:  

       Ø      I first poisoned myself with bad water, giving myself a severe case of a viral gastrointestinal  

             infection (Montezuma’s Revenge), dehydration, and,

Ø      I poisoned myself again via the assault to my rectum with the Gympie Gympie tree leaves, in turn, causing my asshole to surreally swell three times its natural size,

Ø      I have shat upon myself within multiplicity,

Ø      Via a stinky wall of water assault, I have fallen down the side of a jungle cliff covering myself, and everything I own in a sulfurous, noxious mud paste,

Ø      I have been struck by rancid monkey poo several times (trust me, mangoes do them no favors),

Ø      I have been chased across a field and through the jungle by a bushmaster snake clearly abusing anabolic steroids,

Ø      I lost nearly all of the clothes I brought on the Op to a thieving horde of despicable, relentlessly miserable monkeys, resulting in:

Ø      My self-humiliation in front of indigenous persons by dressing and appearing before them like a foreigner man-whore of the jungle,

Ø      I was further humiliated by wearing in public what could only be described as blue denim clown pants.

With all that has befallen me during this Op, I earnestly hope that at the very least, one new operator will take away from this article, a lesson or two that will keep him and his teammates alive. I don’t know of anyone who died from humiliation due to monkey poo assault violations and encrustation, or from excess humility yielded from embarrassment, but I have heard of many accounts where a person died from a poisonous snake bite that happened days away from proper medical attention. I have also heard of persons dying from dysentery and dehydration due to the consumption of tainted water. Therefore, it is my earnest intention, that through the safety message in this article, I might reach some of the younger, newer HPS operators, before they themselves, make similar mistakes in the field. You simply just can not live this stuff down, no matter long you may exist on this earth, nor how many awesome jobs you perform. So, as your job is tough enough as it already is, take the lessons in this article and learn from them at no cost to your physical or emotional being. This one is on me. Anyways, like I earlier said, working for a private military firm has its benefits, and of course, it’s negative sides as well.

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An American Side to the War on Drugs inside Mexico

By Karl J. Nøstvik

Freelance Journalist and Photographer

Recently, while in Juarez, Mexico, covering the recent increasing trend of cartel upon cartel violence, I stumbled upon an opportunity to see first hand, another side of that country’s war against drugs. The highly lucrative kidnappings, extortion, and in some occurrences, murder of innocent citizens and immigrants from Central and South America by these warring cartels has gut-wrenchingly become commonplace for cities like Juarez. The omnipresent threat of abduction by these cartels has created big business in private security and risk management firms. And for the foreseeable future, this dangerous business in Mexico will unfortunately only continue to increase in its demand.

I was eating a late diner at the restaurant in my hotel while going over my notes from an interview with a local police captain held earlier that morning when I noticed two very serious looking, American gentlemen take their seats at a table adjacent to mine, and it was clear to me that they were not part of the press corps. As a freelance journalist and photographer covering conflicts in many countries such as Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Liberia, and Mexico, I have gleaned the ability to be able to depict the personal presence of U.S. military special operations soldiers in a room of people in many ways. Not because of the obvious differences in uniform, kit, or special gear, but as there is a notable difference in how they each carry themselves while amongst most other soldiers or sailors. With my curiosity piqued as to what these two guys were doing down here in Juarez, I struck up a conversation about the sultry good looks of our mutual waitress, and eventually, several beers and a few jokes later, I joined them at their table.

It came to light that these two men (one ex-SEAL and the other, a former elite Army commando – they introduced themselves by first names only) were part of a four-man team that just several hours earlier, had completed a hostage rescue operation of a recently abducted Chinese business man. Evidently, theirs was only a three day operation because luckily, the business man had worn a watch with an internal GPS transponder that was somehow, not taken by the kidnappers. These men stated that they were able to locate the watch via GPS within minutes, but two days of surveillance and planning were required to pull off the operation with the least risk to the principal.

Over the course of a two hour diner, the men stated that they were “Tier 4” operators for the Houston, Texas-based, private military firm Hambright Protection Services, and that they perform a multitude of operations in Latin America all the time. The types of operations they claimed to perform range from executive body guarding services, asset and personnel recovery, military support services, unto property risk assessment, planning, and mitigation. The latter of the four services intrigued me the most. An example given to me of that service was another story of a recent operation performed in Honduras by these two men and one other.

Evidently, their firm was hired by an un-named, private, Houston-based investment firm to inspect for one of their clients, multiple hectares of land that was to be used for the cultivation and harvesting of teak trees. The team covertly entered the jungle enveloped property via sky diving operations, and while performing a preliminary reconnaissance of the property, came across marijuana cultivators, illegally squatting on their client’s land. The story went on to describe how they mitigated the threats of the illegal drug cultivators, and then performed a real-time analysis of the property, to include the manufacturing of hand-drawn, topographical maps, and ravine sounding and bottom topographical maps (in case the client wanted to use barges to take to market their lumber), and as well, an analysis of potential pools of labor from surrounding communities.

I was amazed that jobs like this actually exist. I had never thought of these kinds of special trade demands, or that such a market for them existed. I was still in shock to see two white American faces in Juarez that didn’t have press cards clipped to a pocket or dangling from a neck lanyard. Then the former Army commando offered some more depth to the overall picture encompassing how it has become that these men do what job it is that they perform, and how so many others will come to do the same in the near future. He asked me a question. He asked if for 10 years I was in the special operations community in the military, and then after that 10 years had passed, I immediately retired from the military service to work the next 10 years for various private military firms (like Hambright Protection Services), performing for these firms and their clientele all of the skills gained and mastered over the course of the past 20 years, like so many, many other soldiers and sailors alike have done, when all of the wars come to an end, what skill sets do I believe I possess can be even remotely applicable in the civilian world?

He also reminded me, that when Blackwater was still known as Blackwater, private military operators in Iraq and Afghanistan were bringing home anywhere from $500.00 per day in wages up to $1,200.00 per day. The lifestyles these operator’s families stateside obviously increased due to the large sums of remuneration earned, and now that Iraq and Afghanistan are both rapidly winding down, and the demand for professional soldiers is decreasing too, however, the costs associated with the lifestyles their families are continuing to maintain are not changing. Therefore, as rates for professional soldiers have dropped in some cases to $450.00 per day due to a lessening of conflict, these professional soldiers will migrate to where ever the demand for their skills presents itself; hence, the fact that I was sharing diner with two former U.S. special operations operators in Juarez, Mexico. I was told to expect to start seeing an influx of guys just like the two men enjoying their meal right before me, both of whom, just hours before were rescuing a man from kidnap and torture. Whatever happened to the kidnappers I did not bother to ask, nor do I think I even needed to.

With our meal completed, the bill equally paid, and the exchange of handshakes and pleasantries of farewell and wishing them good luck on their next potential operation in some undetermined location in Africa, now hours past, I sat in my room and thought. I rummaged through my thoughts about the stories of the types of operations these mercenaries perform, and how global circumstances have created great oppression, in turn driving the exponential demands for the special skills these men and women bring to the table. It was, and still is, a daunting thought to me that with nearly no applicable commercial skill sets to enter the U.S. civilian employment market in any other level than that of a minimum wage entry position, some of these operators will remain highly trained soldiers for hire to the highest bidders out there. I am keenly aware that not all of these high bidders are our friends. In fact, only a mere fraction may be.

Taking everything in stride, I had to remind myself that I had just met these two men and that basically, I was taking in everything I was being told by them in good faith. I did like these guys and their larger than life individual presences and forthright demeanors while talking to me, and their intentional withholding of specific information from each operation they discussed with me for the protection of their clients, while maintaining discretion, also impressed me very much. They never bragged and only painted enough of a picture so that I could see and understand their story. I believe them. And just for the record, two days later before leaving Mexico myself, I spoke to a Chinese embassy contact in Mexico City via the telephone, and it was confirmed that a few days prior to my phone call, a Chinese citizen living and working in the city of Juarez was recovered by forces other than Mexican State police or Federal troops, and has since, safely returned to his country. In the only article I could find about the situation at hand, the local Juarez newspaper El Diario, simply reported that 8 heavily armed, suspected cartel members died in an early morning firefight when the house they were staying in was raided by unknown assailants, presumed to be opposing cartel members. There were no other casualties, or any mention of a hostage or the Chinese business man rescued at the mutually confirmed location of the operation. One more notch for the good guys.