I Am Soldier of Fortune Read online

  Published in the United States of America and Great Britain in 2013 by

  CASEMATE PUBLISHERS

  908 Darby Road, Havertown, PA 19083

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  10 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford, OX1 2EW

  Copyright 2013 © Robert K. Brown

  ISBN 978-1-61200-193-7

  Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-194-4

  Cataloging-in-publication data is available from the Library of Congress and

  the British Library.

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  ePub: 9781612001944

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  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  INTRODUCTION by Vann Spencer

  1: I Scheme to Become a Top Gun Pilot, a Hard-Charging Marine, a Special Agent or . . . ?

  2: Cuba. . . The Beginning of the Road (to Perdition?)

  3: The Non-Invasion of Haiti

  4: Wandering Through the Army; Angling for Nam

  5: A-Team Adventures: Whacking Mr. Charles . . . and Almost Getting Whacked Myself

  6: Jumping Into Hell

  7: How I Was To Become Defense Minister of a New Nation

  8: Helping Out in the Bush War

  9: The Betrayal of “Gentleman Jim”

  10: Rhodesia: The Land of Mercs and Hired Guns

  11: Cons, Psychics and an Aborted Search for POWs

  12: SOF is Sucked into the Hunt

  13: Yellow Death in Laos

  14: POWs On Our Mind

  15: Detouring into a Laotian Revolution

  16: SOF Blasts the Balloon with the Royal Thai Air Force

  17: Say Goodbye, Comrade Jaws: SOF Breaks Bread with the KGB

  18: Afghanistan, Round One: Trumping the CIA

  19: SOF Goes to Pakistan

  20: Soldier of Fortune Jihad: We Attack a Russian Fort

  21: SOF Never Misses a War: Mission to Lebanon

  22: Grenada—One We Won!

  23: A Game of “Dominos” in El Salvador

  24 The SOFWild Bunch and the Contras

  25: SOF Tries Bribery; or How I Never Got Rich

  26: Hostage to Hollywood

  27: Surinam: Slow Boat to a Slow War

  28: Guns Behind the Great Wall

  29: Desert Storm Diary

  30: On the Sharp Edge with Bosnia’s Counter-snipers

  31: Hard Road to Sarajevo

  32: Hell on the Ho Chi Minh Trail: The Hunt for an Extinct Cow

  CONCLUSION: As Long As tyrants and Liberals Exist and I Am Still Kicking . . .

  APPENDIX A: My War in El Salvador by Peter G. Kokalis

  APPENDIX B: Correspondence

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  INDEX

  PROLOGUE

  Most of the artillery explosions and white-hot arcs of large-caliber tracer bullets were a few kilometers behind us on the Sarajevo skyline. We had been cramped in the truck bed for hours that seemed like days, stuck in the suburbs of the city. We were miserably bound in flak jackets, in a sandbagged truck bed and were numb to the much closer AK-47 fire.

  As long as no bullets pinged through the steel of our truck, no one in our party seemed too concerned about the random rounds. All i2 of us in the truck were exhausted and wet enough that we could give a damn about who got greased as long as it wasn’t us. then suddenly, a Serbian 12.7mm heavy machine gun opened up on us, coming at us in what seemed like football-sized orange tracers.

  the hot rounds came screaming toward our soft-skinned truck and softer-skinned bodies. Silently, and instinctively, we scrambled to shove ourselves deeper into the truck bed to protect our heads and arms from the killer rounds. Moments earlier, I’d been amusing myself by dictating a play by play of the action into a tape recorder. I have been told that I record everything and that my tapes could fill dump trucks. But now we had nothing to do but count the malevolent tracers swishing overhead as the heavy machine gun roared in the background. My tape recorder was a welcome distraction.

  “I figure that the gun position is about 500 meters out and the only reason we aren’t exposed is because we are hidden by that ridge of dirt,” John Jordan, a big, blustery, hot-headed Marine vet said.

  He had left his Springfield Armory Super Match MIA behind in Sarajevo or we might have gone into the night looking for the Russian machine gun. Jordan let out one of his booming laughs of nervous relief that shattered our silence, “the SOB knows we are here but he can’t quite get low enough to get us. His gun is mounted in a concrete bunker and unless he takes it off the mount and moves out of the bunker, he can’t get to us.”

  I glanced at the pack of trucks in the rain. Who knows what the Serb was thinking as he glared at our white United Nations truck. We seriously doubted that he knew that the 12 men in the truck were Americans and Canadians who had just smuggled in some critical items right under his very nose, or worse yet, that John Jordan, who had killed some Serbs, was in our group. At that moment, Jordan was no more popular with us than he was with the Serbs. He was the one who had gotten us into this deadly mess that had reduced us to sitting ducks at the base of Mount Igman, some 10 klicks from Sarajevo.

  What the hell was I doing here, anyhow? I had long lost count of the times I had asked my self that question when caught in some hotspot with no escape hatch in sight, vowing that I was done with jumping into the heat of hostilities between some vindictive ethnic groups or hashish crazed warring tribes. Again as the tracers screamed overhead, I tried to convince myself that it was all for the sake of the readers of my adventure magazine, Soldier of Fortune, but who was I kidding? Mama Brown’s boy hadn’t changed much since those wild college days when Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution came calling.

  INTRODUCTION BY VANN SPENCER

  FLAMING LIBERAL TOWN HOSTS A SHADY “HOTEL”

  I have long been planning to write a book on what went on behind the I scenes of Soldier of Fortune magazine, which would, without a doubt, I be a bestseller. this thriller would provide any adventurer, scam artist, drama queen, scandal addict or madman the read of their lives, and I could retire in comfort. But first, the long awaited story of the magazine’s daring, maverick publisher himself must be told.

  Before we jump into the action that takes place in many of the most treacherous battlefields in the world, I will expose the most tempestuous and threatening fight that Soldier of Fortune and its notorious publisher faced. A nightmare with Orwellian twists, the battle dealt a near death knell to SOF and dragged me against my will and better judgment into that bizarre world.

  I was in my first year of law school. In my serene neighborhood set in the spectacular Rocky Mountain foothills, I could hear—far more often than any civilized neighbor or student seeking refuge should ever have to bear—earsplitting “music,” boisterous thundering voices engaged in a contest to out-bellow each other, drunken howls, hilarity and madness that went on for hours, shattering the night air and any existing peace.

  I soon learned that the publisher of Soldier of Fortune magazine, Lieutenant Colonel Robert K
. Brown USAR (Ret.), aka “Uncle Bob,” “RKB,” or “the Colonel,” had established the “Brown Hotel” which the neighborhood dubbed the “House of Madness,” two houses down from mine. Without a doubt in violation of all zoning laws and noise ordnances, the “Brown Hotel” hosted an unending stream of action-seeking famous and infamous mercenaries and former Special Operations Forces-types. Scores of Viking or pirate-looking men, bearded or closely shaven, buzzed or with ponytails and tattoos, dressed in camouflage or black leather biker gear, met there to conspire not so stealthily for their next missions to Africa, Asia or Latin America. Myriad guests who roared in and out of the quarters on deafeningly loud motorcycles, chauffeured cars, macho trucks or revved-up autos often joined them. All came to visit the notorious Brown Hotel set in the unlikely locale of the flamingly liberal People’s Republic of Boulder, Colorado.

  One of the countless rumors that made the rounds of the neighborhood had it that on one occasion an entire busload of Special Forces operators dressed in camouflage and berets drove into the driveway of the “Brown Hotel” and stormed in. the raucousness that night was beyond description, as the story goes. I found the outrageous tale far-fetched, as the neighbors warned that the squad was preparing to overthrow some dictator or even take over the Flaming Liberal Republic of Boulder. I found out that the incident was indeed true, except for the juicy part about overthrowing some dictator, but only for That busload. A U.S. Army Master Sergeant had called the Colonel and told him he was bringing 30 of his Green Berets out for mountain climbing training in the rugged Rockies. The Colonel flew into action, even providing rock-climbing instructors. That night SOF threw a Fourth of July-ish bash, the likes of which the neighborhood had never seen nor heard. It was not July, let alone the 4th.

  Lest the reader believe that I exaggerate, here is how one partygoer in the “Brown Hotel” recalled one rowdy night:

  It was sometime back in the early 80s after some gun show, a bunch of us would show up at your place to do some serious “partying.” I was there with my dog “Smokey” and my wife at the time, Lorraine. The only other name that I can remember was Chuck Taylor, who had been teaching at Cooper’s “Gunsite Training Academy.” The reason I remember Taylor is that when I woke up from sleeping (passed out) on the floor and took my dog out for his morning walk, I found a .45 caliber grease gun with a 30-round loaded magazine on the hood of his car out in front—covered with dew, as it had been out all night! Yes, sir! Those were some wild times . . .

  Soldier of Fortune and its master-of-intrigue founder captured worldwide attention. Every fall, TV screens, air waves and journals would become filled with highly entertaining tales, not to mention rumors and flat out lies, about the scandalous Soldier of Fortune conventions held in Missouri and later in Las Vegas, where the mayor declared a “Soldier of Fortune Day’’

  One far-fetched account of the first SOF “Congress” appeared in the Russian wire service, TASS, in September 1980:

  In shirts with inscriptions like “Worship War” and “Happiness is in Murder,” with hands clutching at guns and rifles—this is how the U.S. press depicts today the professional gangsters and mercenaries ready at a moment’s notice to rush to far-flung areas in order to kill and hang people, and overthrow legitimate governments. These people have converged on the town of Columbia, Missouri to take part in the first “Congress” organized by the magazine called Soldier of Fortune, which specializes in providing publicity for mercenaries. Henceforward, such gatherings are to be held on an annual basis.

  For three days in a row, hundreds of professional assassins competed in shooting and in the art of using knives and daggers. In the breaks between shooting competitions they boasted of their feats during their foreign trips, and unblushingly named the number of “communists” killed by them. Discussions in the conference halls centered on plans to give assistance to gangs that are now responsible for bloody atrocities committed in Afghanistan, Zimbabwe and other countries. . . . The magazine Soldier of Fortune has published a large-circulation booklet specifically for the gathering of the assassins. The booklet has a characteristic title, “The Technique of Intimidation.”

  Yet no one, certainly not the local or other law enforcement or CIA personnel who religiously picked up the magazine (whether they admitted it or not, mainly not), dared disturb the goings-on at the “Brown Hotel.” Many showed up at the SOF conventions, not wanting to miss out on the action.

  Newsweek magazine’s Periscope section in September 1981 outed the CIA’s obsession with its nemesis, Soldier of Fortune, after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S. response to the war:

  They don’t like to admit it, but intelligence analysts at the CIA and the Pentagon rely on an adventure magazine published in Boulder, Colorado for some of their best information on Soviet military operations in Afghanistan. Every month the analysts comb through grenade launchers and other Soviet weapons that the magazine’s correspondents in Afghanistan have somehow acquired. Soldier of Fortune even offers to sell captured Soviet weaponry to the highest bidder, preferably, “U.S. or NATO intelligence agencies.” One Pentagon official says that the ease with which Soldier of Fortune obtains Soviet arms is a “real sore point” at the CIA.

  After the Cold War wound down, the rabble-rousing warrior was continuing to rev up, concocting one scheme or another to keep his trigger finger on the pulse of the head-spinning action that the postwar chaos was creating around the globe.

  I MEET THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE OF INTRIGUE

  I opened the local paper one morning and read on the front page that the publisher of Soldier of Fortune magazine had been shot. Period! No details! Within no time, the international media had gone wild with the news of the “assassination” of the Colonel.

  Even the radio talk show king at the time, Paul Harvey, jumped on board with the “rest of the story.” He claimed that Sheldon Kelly, a close friend and Reader’s Digest reporter who had linked up with SOF in El Salvador, and who was allegedly in some nefarious scheme with Brown to smuggle weapons out of the country, had assassinated his co-conspirator and made a run for it. Kelly allegedly was apprehended at the Los Angeles Airport on the pretext of gun smuggling.

  I raced over to the “Brown Hotel.” I had always made it a point to avoid the notorious Lord of the Den of Who Knows What. But now overcome by a morbid sense of curiosity, I needed to know whether the House of Intrigue had lost its master in some wild jungle or in a combat zone or whether some hit man had really bumped him off.

  I knocked, expecting a caretaker or a priest or a bunch of camouflage-veiled mourners. Instead, a very grumpy, unshaven RKB, with his strong aquiline face, his angry piercing blue eyes staring out beneath a baseball cap, cautiously cracked open the door. His thick moustache belied his thinning hair. I hid my shock. He ordered me in. He hobbled back to the mas-sive chair that was his throne, leaning on a sword or a cane, which one I could not tell. He was wearing a short-sleeve khaki safari shirt that exposed his strapping arms, with the top few buttons open to show off his muscular, hairy chest in his macho style, pain or no pain. His safari shorts were hiked up on one side above the bandaged muscled leg of an avid jogger. I was rudely and unabashedly introduced to the first (of what would become many) of his Tourette Syndrome-type outbursts loudly barked out in his deep gravelly voice, a wad of snuff bulging in one cheek. (He bragged he had used some of the finest china in the best restaurants in the world for a spittoon.) His outbursts, to put it mildly, can be mighty shocking even to the most hardened. His seething anger masked the pain in his fair, pale face. He had been shot in the calf with a .22 round and was going to miss his next big adventure.

  The “accident,” he told me, happened during a moment of one of the “Brown Hotel’s” chaotic, drunken fiascos they called a “party.” The culprit was Galen Geer, Vietnam vet, who had long joked about being the only mere auto mechanic in Vietnam while all the other vets were Rangers, SEALs, or Special Forces who saved entire villages and fought ferocio
us firefights on a daily basis. Geer had been mucking around with his Jennings .22 after countless drinks, and while showing the piece off to RKB, accidentally fired. The bullet flew through Geer’s hand and penetrated almost all the way through RKB’s right calf already scarred from mortar round fragments in Vietnam. The grumpy Colonel found one bright spot in the whacky incident. “The .22 bullet is coated in some kind of wax. Since the bullet went through Galen’s hand first, it removed all the wax so when it lodged in my calf, the wound did not have to be debrided. A quick incision with a scalpel removed it, and it dropped into a pan with a loud cling just like one you would hear on Gunsmoke,” he said.

  “Right,” I thought. “You could come up with a better story than this lame one.” I found out later that it was true.

  PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE OF A MERC—

  A “SOMEDAY I’M GOING TO . . .”

  The Colonel was tied in with a global network of professional soldiers and coordinated contacts where I was to study international law, whether it was in Asia, South Africa, London—the land of many mercs—or Paris, the land of many more mercs.

  I went on to spend months with the fascinating “dogs of war” of many nationalities, many of which are players in this book. I found the worldly warriors unlike the stereotypes of trigger-happy, unkempt burly brutes that ate raw meat, human or otherwise. I met many soldiers of fortune during those years, including Brits, French, South Africans, Australians and a number of Americans. The least memorable were those wannabes who were legends in their own minds, boasting endlessly of their kills, conquests or trophies, real or imagined. Some who had served from Rhodesia to South Africa, to Lebanon to Oman and beyond spoke matter-of-factly of their adventures. The most fascinating of all verbalized with their wary, piercing eyes, not saying much. They didn’t have to— they had fought ruthlessly in vicious battles and survived. Many of their opponents had not.