He touched the space bar on a computer on the lectern and a large chart of the Mediterranean came up on the screen behind him. “Let me get right to the point. We will be planning a series of strikes that I hope we can launch within the next twenty-four hours. As I said, I hope we can. As you know, the United States has declared war for the first time since December 8, 1941. Some people think that this act is out of proportion, like hitting a fly with a sledgehammer.” There was some snickering from the audience. “Why that is bad if your objective is a dead fly escapes me. I, for one, believe that some flies deserve to be hit with sledgehammers. So let’s not worry about that. Our job is to be the sledgehammer, and make sure it hits the right spot.
“As you can see, I have a chart of the Med here. Our current location is at 33° 51’ N, 86° 45’ E. Right about” — he turned to look at the screen and touched a spot with the pointer — “here.” He placed the pointer on the table next to him. “The real issue though, is where are we going to strike?
“What is our target? We’re not attacking Syria, or Lebanon, or Jordan, or Iran, or Iraq, as countries, but our targets may be in any one of those countries. It makes our mission doubly sensitive with far-reaching political implications. Especially if our target decides to hide out in a city. We can’t control all the political impact, but we can do some things. We must do everything that we can to minimize damage to any person or property other than that belonging to Sheikh al-Jabal.”
“Here we go,” Woods whispered to Tear. “Right after they tell us what a tough, butch sledgehammer we are, they start telling us not to hit anything too hard. Typical.”
The Air Wing Commander touched the space bar on his computer again and a chart of the Middle East came up. “Most of you are familiar with the countries in the Middle East. Many of you have been ashore in Israel, but I doubt if many of you have been ashore in Syria or Lebanon. I know I haven’t. We will be having extensive briefs on each country from our intelligence people this afternoon. We will be discussing their orders of battle, their political responses to our declaration of war, and the best guess of their responses if we in fact strike a target on their territory. But at the end of the day, it will be a crapshoot. We’ll be told either to go, or not. And if we are told to go, we will go, regardless of whether it will make someone mad or not. They should have thought about how good an idea it was to allow the Sheikh to operate out of their territory before now. In any case, before we get into the countries, I’ve asked Commander Glenn Healy to give you an overall intel update.” He looked to his side and Commander Healy took the cue and came forward.
He was the Air Wing Seven Intelligence Officer. “Good morning.” His audience replied in kind.
“I wish I could stand up here and give you the latitude and longitude for every place where Sheikh al-Jabal is likely to be. We could just strike them all simultaneously and be assured of success. But this is a war unlike any war before it. We are after one man and his organization. That, by definition, is not a geographic war. It means that we’re not after SAM sites, ships, ports, cities, military bases, or roads — the usual targets of wars. In some ways, that makes it almost impossible. In other ways, it makes it somewhat easier. We do not have to destroy an entire country to accomplish our objective. We must simply find our target and destroy it. Or him, I should say.
“I want to show you the most recent intelligence that we have, and one additional point of interest. According to the CIA, as of one hour ago, these are the three targets that they believe to be the most likely.” He hit the space bar on the same computer Red Man had used and a closeup map of eastern Syria and northern Lebanon came up.
Woods and Tear sat up, suddenly aware that there might actually be content to this brief. “Shit hot,” Tear said as he watched the screen in the front of the wardroom intently.
“Two of them are on this map, the third is east of here, in Iran,” Healy continued.
Woods and Tear glanced at each other. Iran? Too far. No fun.
“The way that these sites have been determined is admitted by the CIA to be extremely speculative at this time. In fact, they didn’t want to give me this information at all until I insisted. They said it was preliminary, uncertain, and as likely to be wrong as right at this stage. It is based on a historical analysis of the group of Assassins back over several hundred years and the fortress from which they were known to operate. The CIA apparently has some hot young analyst who thinks he understands how these Assassins operate. He believes they are duplicating the historical model — to perpetuate the mystique — and may be operating not only out of the same areas but the exact same fortresses. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but until we get more imagery or other confirmation, we can use these at least as a starting point.
“Let me show you the first one. It’s in northwestern Iran, and is called Alamut. I don’t know whether we in fact will go into Iran. I have my doubts, but until we know for sure, we have to at least list it as a target. It may be a target for a B-2 — it’s a long way from the Mediterranean for us…”
“Why should Iran get a free pass?” Tear asked Woods in an angry whisper. “Seems to me like they may deserve it more than anybody else on that map. They’ve been jabbing us in the eye since I was born… Pisses me off…”
“This is an old picture, but you can see the castle of Alamut, which was built in the eleventh century and is still there. We’re obtaining imagery on this castle today and should receive the photo within the hour.
“The other two sites are more intriguing, although less historic. One is in Lebanon, southeast of the Bekáa Valley.” He brought up another slide in his PowerPoint presentation, which showed the location on the chart very specifically. It was surrounded by rings of various sizes. They represented the effective ranges of the SAM sites in the area, most of them overlapping. “As you can see, if this were to be a target, it is under the SAM umbrella that protects the Bekáa Valley. That could be a very nasty place to go, if those who control the SAMs decide to shoot them at U.S. planes and I think we should assume that they will. This one is called Teru’im. What I find particularly intriguing is that it is near Dar al Ahmar, which both the United States and Israel identified as where the Sheikh was supposed to have been on the day that the Israeli attack took place. That attack, as everyone knows, is the one by Israel — and someone from the F-14 squadron from the Washington actually participated in!” Healy smiled at Woods and Big, who wore their Jolly Rogers patches on their shoulders. Every eye in the wardroom was on them. Woods couldn’t believe he had been confronted in such a public way. Fear and a conspicuous bafflement froze him. All he could think of was the photograph in Big’s pocket. The Commander probably had a copy too. “Isn’t that right Lieutenant?” he asked Woods.
Woods finally realized that the Intelligence Officer was smiling and got himself under control. His reply was loud enough for everyone in the wardroom to hear. “It was a great flight. There we were inverted, supersonic—”