Rogue Warrior: Dictator's Ransom

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

One of the most controversial veterans of the U.S. Navy's amphibious commando unit, whose troops are known as SEALs, Marcinko describes his combat adventures in Southeast Asia and his counterterrorist activities. A 10-week PW bestseller in cloth. Photos. (Mar.)

Newgate Callendar

So much action that the reader scarcely has time to breathe...bloody...innocent fun.

C. A. Mobley

January 1999

Rogue Warrior Invasion!

Is it true or is it fiction? You're never entirely sure with retired Navy Commander Richard Marcinko, the renegade SEAL who founded the Red Cell counterterrorism team before turning to pen these bestselling tales of rogue warriors in action. Marcinko and cowriter Weisman take you inside the workings of the toughest fighting team in the world. The weapons, ships, submarines, and even the acronyms (you'll appreciate the glossary!) are all real. The story itself? Close enough that they'll have you wondering whether it's taken from some secret black operation with the details disguised to protect the innocent and guilty.

In Option Delta, Marcinko and his band of merry Rogue Warriors start off doing what they do best: covert insertion in order to wreak violence on a royal Arab who's dealing in tactical nuclear weapons, the kind that fit inside a suitcase (well, almost). They go in the SEAL way, locked out of a submarine and swimming. Picket ships armed with sonar, a band of grungy tangos ("terrorists" in SEAL-speak) onboard the target ship, Marcinko's bad air tank -- all small obstacles for the eight-man squad. Despite the continual intervention of Murphy and his ability to make things go wrong, the SEALs get onboard the boat, subdue the tangos, and capture the weapon. Only one problem: It's not a stolen Russian weapon -- it's an American one.

The ensuing brouhaha over the nuclear weapon brings up an even more frightening problem. During the cold war, the United States hid weapon caches around Europe, intended for emergency use to repel invading Soviet troops. Through downsizing and administrative screw-ups, the Department of Defense has sorta-kinda-maybe lost track of some of the weapons. Not that it's willing to admit it, particularly not since the lost site includes eight stashes of tactical nuclear weapons.

Marcinko hooks up with Army Colonel John Sutter, a kindred spirit who has also been tasked quietly with this mission impossible. Together they locate the missing weapons, track down the chain of tangos intent on finding and selling the weapons first, derail a mad German hunchback industrialist's plan to forge the next Teutonic empire, and generally make things safer for the free world. The plot circles the globe a couple of times as Marcinko unravels the sinister interests of the TIQ (tangos in question) and metes out justice SEAL-style.

Along the way to the action-packed conclusion, Marcinko shares with you his warrior philosophy and insights into military-political decision making. You'll find yourself nodding your head when he talks about the need for teams like his -- and also when the rogue warriors bypass the entrenched political and military rice bowls in order to arrive at the right answer, the one that keeps America safe. There's a need for men like this in the world, and Marcinko knows the gritty reality of fighting it out in the trenches while watching your back. You will, too, after reading Option Delta.

--C. A. Mobley

C. A. Mobley is a graduate of the Naval War College and author of the national bestsellers Rites of War andRules of Command. Other Mobley titles, published under the name C. W. Morton, include Pilots Die Faster and Rage Sleep.

New York Times Book Review

Marcinko...makes Arnold Schwarzenegger look like Little Lord Fauntleroy.

Washington Times

In a field of wanna-bes, Marcinko is the real thing: combat veteran, killer SEAL, specialist in unconventional warfare. --Sean Piccoli

Kirkus Reviews

The stormy career of a top Navy SEAL hotspur. Commander Marcinko, USN Ret., recently served time at Petersburg Federal Prison for conspiracy to defraud the Navy by overcharging for specialized equipment—the result, he says, of telling off too many admirals. It seems that his ornery and joyous aggression, nurtured by a Czech grandfather in a flinty Pennsylvania mining town, has brought him to grief in peace and to brilliance in war. Serving his first tour in Vietnam in 1966 as an enlisted SEAL expert in underwater demolition, Marcinko returned for a second tour as an officer leading a commando squad he had trained. Here, his accounts of riverine warfare—creeping underwater to Vietcong boats and slipping over their gunwales; raiding VC island strongholds in the South China Sea; steaming up to the Cambodian border to tempt the VC across and being overrun—are galvanic, detailed, and told with a true craftsman's love. What did he think of the Vietcong? "The bastards—they were good." His battle philosophy? "...kill my enemy before he has a chance to kill me....Never did I give Charlie an even break." After the aborted desert rescue of US hostages in the Tehran embassy, Marcinko was ordered to create SEAL Team Six—a counterterrorist unit with worldwide maritime responsibilities. In 1983, the unit was deployed to Beirut to test the security of the US embassy there. Easily evading the embassy security detail, sleeping Lebanese guards, and the Marines, the SEALs planted enough fake bombs to level the building. When Marcinko spoke to "a senior American official" about the problem, the SEAL's blunt security advice was rejected, particularly in respect to car-bomb attacks.Ninety days later, 63 people in the embassy compound were killed by a suicide bomber driving a TNT-filled truck. Profane and asking no quarter: the real nitty-gritty, bloody and authentic. (Eight-page photo insert—not seen.)