Show-Me Deep State [Special Video Edition]
Soccer—football, rather—was the great leveler in Suriname, just as it was across South America. Kids of all nationalities and socioeconomic backgrounds played together, sometimes barefoot, on abandoned lots and proper pitches around Paramaribo. If no ball was available, a dried coconut would make do in a pinch.
We inherited our love of the game from my father, who had played a little in college. He once even drove a stick shift home to Danville, IN, operating all three pedals while in a full leg cast—you do the math. The summer before our arrival in Suriname, my older brother, who had shown the most promise, left for Panama on a traveling missions team.
A few years later, he would join another mission to Eastern Europe. They traveled to Germany and visited Franz Beckenbauer's old soccer club, playing games in pouring rain on a cinder track. After that, they journeyed to Czechoslovakia before visiting Russia for a friendly match against inmates in a maximum-security prison. They were led through a series of checkpoints and taken to a pitch in the center of the courtyard (cue visions of Jim Hopper's incarceration in Stranger Things). There, 200 of the "well-behaved" inmates were allowed to sit courtside and get up close and personal, while 2,000 hardened convicts cheered, pressed up against gates and barbed wire. After this Russian version of The Longest Yard, my brother and his teammates would stand and share their testimonies with the inmates.
The summer of '86, the World Cup arrived in Mexico for the first time. Having never qualified in the country's history, Suriname's eyes were fixed on two South American powerhouses—Brazil and Argentina. Both arrived as overwhelming favorites, carrying immense expectations on their shoulders.
For Brazil, led by the young phenomenon Sócrates and veteran Zico, it was a chance to re-establish their global dominance after their failure four years prior. Their free-flowing, beautiful game captivated the world in the early rounds as they attacked relentlessly. However, their dream came crashing down in a stunning quarter-final defeat to France after a mistake by their goalkeeper.
If Brazil's exit was shocking, what befell Argentina was nothing short of theatrical. This was Diego Maradona's crowning achievement as he willed his team through the rounds with performances for the ages. In the quarter-final against England, he etched his name into folklore with two goals six minutes apart—first, the infamous "Hand of God," where Maradona's illegal sleight of handball evaded the referee's whistle, followed by a breathtaking solo run where he danced through half the English team.
What stands out most from that summer, however, is the moment at my good friend Matt's house when Argentina clinched their second World Cup title, beating West Germany. Matt's family were missionaries living on a long island deep in the Amazon. His dad, a Vietnam vet with PTSD, was someone you approached gently, especially when waking him up, else you might suffer a knock out blow by a rabbit punch.
I was lounging in a handwoven hammock on an elevated porch, looking out over the neighborhood, when a tremendous roar swept through the capital city. It was a sound unlike any I had ever heard. Corrugated tin roofs, like the one I had climbed on to peek into Bouterse's backyard, dotted the cityscape, sending shockwaves of amplification as a nation united with a continent in shared triumph.
It was beautiful and strange. I had experienced similar feelings when our national anthem was played at the Olympics. We did not own a TV in Indiana, but my uncle brought a portable black-and-white during his visit in '84, and I would sit behind the recliner and watch Carl Lewis compete. But to realize it was possible to get the same feeling of unity for people in another country, who looked, smelled, and believed differently than you, made me wonder. The feeling wouldn’t last long, as 22 days later, Tommy Lynn Denley and Black Robin Hood would launch a Civil War.
Fred Rich’s business partner, Homer, bore the marks of a life roughened by more than just time. Scars lined his scalp, wrists, and knuckles, while his once-brown hair showed the first glimpses of gray—unusual for a man of 31. His military friends called him "Animal," and at 5'4", weighing 180 pounds, that animal might as well have been a bulldog. The oldest of seven children, Homer had spent most of his recent years living at home with his parents, working odd jobs as a day laborer, cabbie, and fender repairman. When he clocked off, he’d start drinking until he passed out. Despite his doctor's warnings against mixing alcohol with the Dilantin and Phenobarbital prescribed for his seizures, the demons often got the best of him. Driven by desperation and a mountain of bills, he was pulled into the orbit of Fred’s survival camp.
Fred wasn’t your typical E-2 “Joe” like Homer; he was an officer, carrying himself with a distinct air of authority. Always talking Homer into something new, Fred looped him in on everything from his security business to launching a bounty hunting and escort service, and then to establishing the survival camp. The next big score, Fred promised, was just over the horizon. So, when Fred said he had a CIA mission that could net them a million dollars each, Homer told his parents they were heading to Louisiana for a job connected with the federal government, packed up his gear, and headed south.
A black phone rang under the bar at the Red Lion Lounge, located at 176 South Main, Marion, OH. Jamie Bright set down the shot glass he was polishing and threw a towel over his shoulder. Beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his fatigue jacket, the muscles that earned him the title "Most Brawn" in high school still bulged noticeably. He had lettered in baseball, wrestling, and football at Pleasant High—even scoring a touchdown that led the Spartans to the 1972 Class A State Championship. These days, his forearms sported matching souvenirs from his Navy days: a tattoo of Christ's face on the right and a sailor girl on the left.
When Jamie answered the phone, he immediately recognized the voice—it was his old business partner, Fred Rich.1 He hadn't heard much from Fred since leaving the Missouri survival camp they’d started to return home and buy the Red Lion bar (now renamed Someplace Else Bar).
Loneliness had clung to Jamie like a thick, suffocating film ever since that fateful day when he was just seven years old. The gunshots that took both his parents' lives in a tragic murder-suicide left him and his seven siblings orphaned, their worlds shattered.2 From that moment on, life became a series of bounces, ricocheting from one turbulent situation to the next.
The group home at Waddell Village provided shelter, but little in the way of warmth or belonging. After high school, Jamie sought purpose by enlisting in the Navy, only to find himself adrift again when he was kicked off the police force following a stint as a deputy sheriff. A childhood dream demolished. A brief stretch working in a correctional center couldn't fill the void either.
Deep down, a rage simmered - the white-hot anger of a boy denied the loving family every child deserves. Football provided an outlet, a controlled chaos where he could channel that fury. And friendships like the bond with Fred, who had lost his own father in WWII, offered Jamie a taste of the brotherhood he'd been denied for so long.
This wasn't the first risky venture Fred had dangled in front of Jamie and their other partner, Tank. You don't start a survival school without rubbing shoulders with some colorful characters and fielding tempting offers along the way. Ever since '84, Jamie had boasted of being a mercenary to anyone who would listen.
But this proposal from Fred felt different - almost too good to be true. It was supposedly backed by the U.S. government itself, with a guaranteed weekly paycheck for three months and a million-dollar bonus if everything went according to plan. Jamie could practically taste the financial freedom those figures represented.
He hung up the phone, mind already racing to crunch the numbers. The bar he co-owned still carried $22,000 in debt, with those $1,500 monthly payments weighing him down. Lately, he could barely scrape together $250 each month to keep it afloat. But Fred's offer of up to $1,000 per week? That kind of cash could cover the bar payments for almost a year - and wipe out the debt entirely if the big payoff at the end materialized.
That night, after his bartending shift, Jamie dialed up Ron Smith, his former partner in the business. "I need you to watch the bar. I got a job offer to make some real money," he stated simply. No further explanation needed. Jamie packed his guns, ammo clips, and his one decent suit into a rucksack and tossed it into the trunk of his beat-up 1977 Olds. As he merged onto Highway 4 heading south, the loneliness that had trailed him for years momentarily receded. When the stakes were high and everything hung in the balance alongside his mercenary friends, Jamie could almost forget the aching void.
Fred's next call was to the Freedom Fighters down in Sugar Tree, Tennessee. You might remember them from our previous dive into Project Democracy, where they teamed up with Fred as instructors at Billy Logan Powell's Midwest Survival Training Center, just south of Evansville, Indiana.
One of the trio, Steven Larry Green, was fresh back home to Evansville around the same time Kevin J. Harris, the diplomat from the Surinamese embassy, had swung back through town on his way to Amsterdam by way of Washington. The parolee and the politician, alumni of the same high school just six years apart, couldn't have trotted down more divergent career paths. Green was gnawing through a ten-year probation for kidnapping a cop at knifepoint, while Harris climbed the political ranks. Whether this Evansville connection was a coincidence or something more is unknown.
Times were lean for Steve. He'd just traded a paycheck at an electronic research firm for the seat of a bulldozer with Ray Stradtner Excavating, a half-step down in pay. So when Fred hit him up with a gig guarding international bankers—paying four times his current scrap—Steve jumped at the shot. Then, Fred prodded about the other Freedom Fighters.
"As far as I know," Steve said, "'Doc' Livingston's still shacked up with his wife near his mom's place in Decatur County. He's part-timing it, driving a junk van around Parsons. Might still be moonlighting on the riverboats too—that's where we first linked up."
"How's he holding up?" Fred pressed, concern edging his voice. "He's gotta be, what, pushing fifty? You think he's still up for this kind of thing?"
"Fifty-six, to be exact. Believe it or not, he did a stint in Korea. But yeah, the old-timer's still got some juice left. Bit of fluid in the lungs, but if you need a wheelman, he's your guy."
"That just leaves Don," Fred mused. “What’s his deal?”
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"He's working construction in some podunk town out in western Kansas. Did he ever tell you about the time he spent locked up in a Haitian jail?"
"Don't recall that one," Fred said, intrigued.
"Soldier of Fortune gig. He got busted trying to rob the island's branch of the First National Bank of Boston to fund a coup against Duvalier. One of his crew got killed in the attempt. His wife and kids didn't see him for 16 months after that."3
"We all know the risks involved," Fred stated matter-of-factly. "You still have Don's number?"
"Yeah, I can get it for you," Steve replied. He and Fred finalized the details, with Fred providing a hotel address near the New Orleans airport to meet in a few weeks, and a contact number there in case anything came up along the way.
Fred had just one more call to make before his team was set.
Danny Marchand's July in his modest sunflower-yellow house in Tennyson was anything but calm. While his daughter walked to vacation Bible school at the nearby General Baptist Church, Danny revved up his motorcycle and waved goodbye to the neighbors as he headed west to Boonville. The summer heat was intense, and the ongoing strike at the ALCOA smelter in Newburgh was hitting his wallet hard. Even with a little strike pay, it wasn't nearly enough to cover his bills, while the funds from his niche hobby of running paintball war games through his shop, Marchand’s Guns and Supplies, barely made a dent. 45678
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Two months earlier, Danny had been honing survival skills at Fred Rich's camp in Missouri, staying connected with Fred, or "Bacsi" as Danny called him, since their days as instructors at the Midwest Training Center in Western Kentucky. Newspaper snippets occasionally mentioned that Fred had previously enlisted Danny's expertise for various security and bodyguard duties. Thus, when he penned a letter to Fred about the strike and queried about any available work, Fred saw it as the perfect chance to fill the final spot on his team.91011
The exact details of their ensuing conversation remain a matter of conjecture. However, from what Danny's wife would later reveal to interviewers, the job offer came swiftly. Bacsi called, seeking a bodyguard position tied to a government project in Suriname—coincidentally, where Danny’s employer, ALCOA, had significant operations. The secrecy surrounding the job was tight, with Danny learning in piecemeal through calls with Bacsi’s contact in New Orleans named Tommy that their mission involved masquerading as bankers and cartographers, ostensibly to expand Suriname's commercial waterways and private banking systems.12
Despite his reservations about the legality of the operation, Danny was reassured by Tommy's insistence that they had full U.S. government support.13 Convinced, Danny shared these plans with Kae Campbell, a new employee at the gun shop who understood her boss to be initially headed to New Orleans and on to somewhere else to be a bodyguard for a banker. “He told me we were working for the government,” she recounted, “but it seemed he wasn’t sure which one.”14
A similar story was told to his uncle, Cecil Frizzel, just before Danny packed his bags. With five handguns in tow, including a prized semiautomatic, he boarded a plane from Evansville to Memphis, then onto New Orleans, propelled not just by the promise of a hefty paycheck but by the thrill of what felt like a real-life war game—only this time, the stakes were real.
[Special Video Bonus!] On a recent business trip, I found myself staying at a hotel only miles from the mercenary camps I’ve been researching. I decided to attempt to track down the location of Tank and Fred's old survival center training grounds outside of Columbia, MO. Here’s how that went. Enjoy!
Daily American Republic. “Suspects Reportedly Visit Missouri Self-Reliance Camp.” July 31, 1986. https://www.newspapers.com/article/daily-american-republic-suspects-reporte/127094667/
The Marion Star. “Walter and Edna Bright Obituaries and Funeral Notice.” May 22, 1963. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-marion-star-walter-and-edna-bright-o/13694900/
The Kansas City Star. “Adventure.” July 31, 1986. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-kansas-city-star-adventure/127099544/
Evansville Press. “Area Men Linked to Overthrow Plot.” July 29, 1986. https://www.newspapers.com/article/evansville-press-area-men-linked-to-over/127075517/
“Marionite Tied to Plot Was ‘volatile’ at Times - Newspapers.Com.” Accessed June 25, 2023. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-marion-star-marionite-tied-to-plot-w/127073612/.
Wilmington News-Journal. “Accused Marion Man Had Tough Life.” July 30, 1986. https://www.newspapers.com/article/wilmington-news-journal-accused-marion-m/127088395/
Victoria Advocate. “Officer Kidnapped, Safe.” December 12, 1981. https://www.newspapers.com/article/victoria-advocate-officer-kidnapped-saf/139679644/
News Herald. “Accused Ohioan Was Former Deputy Sheriff.” August 2, 1986. https://www.newspapers.com/article/news-herald-accused-ohioan-was-former-de/127085571/
News Herald. “Accused Ohioan Was Former Deputy Sheriff.” August 2, 1986. https://www.newspapers.com/article/news-herald-accused-ohioan-was-former-de/127085571/
Bob Proske. “Area Man Calls Plot Charges a Frame-Up.” The Evansville Courier, November 7, 1986. Genealogy Bank. https://www.genealogybank.com/nbshare/AC01201119024234081701715230340
Evansville Press. “Warrick Man Denies Any Knowledge of Plot against Suriname.” July 30, 1986.
Evansville Press. “Warrick Man Denies Any Knowledge of Plot against Suriname.” July 30, 1986. https://www.newspapers.com/article/evansville-press-warrick-man-denies-any/127078330/
“Area Man Calls Plot Charges a Frame-Up.”
Evansville Courier and Press. “Tennyson Takes Arrest of Mercenary in Stride; Some Say He Was Conneed.” August 4, 1986. https://www.newspapers.com/article/evansville-courier-and-press-tennyson-ta/127346227/