“That’s great news, Colonel. Thank you,” Arielle replied.
“Not a problem. I don’t mind delivering good news like that, especially when you’re the one who’s been providing the entertainment all morning. You rival what the USO folks did for us. Thank you!”
“Well, speaking of Jim, I kind of need to check in with him,” Stonewall said, as he dialed his satellite phone.
“Stonewall, how’s everyone doing?” Jim asked his friend.
“It sounds like they’re both going to make it, thanks to you. One of the guys was seriously hurt and they took him straight to Al Asad to get him into emergency surgery. We just heard they think he’s going to pull through.”
“Excellent. You can tell Tamir I’ll be sending him a bill for this one.”
“Will do. What else’s going on? You made it sound pretty important. Tamir told me about the attacks on Boston and New York.”
“I’m sure he didn’t give you the latest — it’s been a fast developing issue. I don’t want to take a lot of time with this, especially when Tamir has all of the intel so ask him for the latest update. As for right now, the Israelis are looking to put together a combined operation similar to one you developed with the Kurds a couple years ago, if you catch my drift. The president specifically asked that you lead this operation. He was pretty impressed with your last one.”
“We’re putting together a combined operation with the Israelis?” Jackson asked, casting a surprised look towards Arielle. “This has gotta be big. Yeah, I worked with the Kurds on a few things around northern Iraq and Syria awhile back and those were all combined operations. Of course, we planned a lot of operations we never launched as well.”
“I think we’re on the same page. Tamir will fill you in on all of the details on this as well when you land. For that matter, Dani might have a good idea as to what’s in the works. She might be able to answer some questions for you.”
“Tamir hasn’t really filled me in on anything, Jim,” Dani added, “but I think I can connect a few dots here and let Stonewall in on a few things.”
“Hi, Dani,” Jim replied. “Good, I don’t want to risk someone eaves dropping on this conversation but I at least wanted to give you a head’s up as your team looks to be pretty heavily involved.”
“Okay, thanks, Jim,” Dani replied, as Stonewall ended the call.
“So, what’s this little operation all about?”
“Tamir hasn’t told me anything about what’s going on but remember, he mentioned that he’d be sending us up to Latakia once we returned from this mission. If he’s putting together a combined operation, and my team’s that involved, we’re going after the S-400 missile system the Russians installed at their Kheimim Air Base outside of Latakia. Nothing else makes sense. We’ve looked at taking this thing out on our own but it’d be more than a little brazen on our part to attack this singlehandedly. If this was a Syrian system, it’d be no big deal. However, this is a Russian system, on a Russian base with Russian troops. For that, we’ll need your help, and of course, the cover your country can give us.”
“If we’re putting together an operation against the Russians, this is big, really big. They must have been the ones behind Hezbollah. Nothing else makes sense.”
“No doubt, but did you actually look at taking this thing out with the Kurds?”
“Nah, that’s what I meant when I said that we planned out a few things but never launched them. I had some Rangers on my staff and those Rangers can plan out anything — and taking out an airfield is their specialty — but we never really expected we’d do something like that so no one really took it seriously.”
“Well, we have. We actually have a couple safe houses on each side of the base that are continually occupied watching the base. I’m sure this is where Zivah’s at right now. I’ve been to each one a few times. We tend to go there at regular intervals to give the locals the idea that we’re seasonal tourists. With your help, it should be a lot easier than doing it on our own.”
“If I remember correctly, this base is pretty close to the coast. I imagine we’re talking something like a sizeable SEAL force joining you guys, right?”
“That’s what I’d expect. With the capabilities of your navy and the SEALs, I would think they’d come in very early in the morning, take out the missile sites, and then return to the sea still under the cover of darkness. We’ll be able to help with a lot of the logistics and probably split the base in half with the Unit taking half the base and the SEALs the other half.”
“A ‘hit and run’ raid, huh? Shouldn’t be too difficult, right?”
IX
“Where do we stand with the Americans and the Israelis?” Russian President Sergei Gromyko asked his defense minister.
“We’ve just recently intercepted a phone call from the Assistant Director of the CIA to one of his subordinates about a combined American-Israeli operation,” the defense minister replied. “We don’t know what, or when, this will take place but the intercept made it sound like something is definitely in the works.”
“What’s our best guess as to possible targets?” the Russian president followed up.
“The only obvious targets are in Syria, maybe northern Lebanon. There are a few Quds Force holdouts in the Damascus area and then Hezbollah has several newly established areas in Syria as well since they’ve had to vacate Lebanon. The call we intercepted was with Colonel Thomas Jackson. He’s the same colonel who led the raid in Tehran a couple months ago, so we are pretty sure this will be some type of commando raid and will most likely not include the Kurds — that eliminates a few targets.”
“What about some of our bases? Is there any possibility they could target us?”
“We don’t think so,” the minister replied. “Based on what Ambassador Chekhov indicated, the Americans know that two of the ships that attacked them are from our merchant marine. How much more than that, we don’t know, but they didn’t give Chekhov any indication otherwise. Since these originated from Latakia, I’m sure they’ve guessed we had a hand in this, though again, we don’t know how much they have learned. If Mossad has learned of our role, you can bet they’ll have told the Americans. However, I haven’t heard anything about this, and if the Americans knew, you can be sure they’d be letting us know. Either way, the limited role we had in this that the Americans know we had wouldn’t warrant a military operation, let alone a combined one. As far as we know, they still believe this to be a strictly Hezbollah-Iranian operation — and there are plenty of Hezbollah targets in the region. Who knows, the Israelis might simply be looking for political cover for a large-scale operation against Hezbollah — something they’d definitely need. I’m sure they remember the fallout from their attack in Lebanon under Ariel Sharon back in the ‘80s. I wouldn’t want to relive that if I were them. Nevertheless, I’ll be placing our forces on alert throughout the region but I don’t see the need to send in any reinforcements at this point.”
“Okay then, how can we handle this oil issue? If they succeed in driving the price of oil below sixty dollars a barrel, it’s really going to hurt.”
“Mr. President,” the foreign minister replied, “I’ll be starting with the Saudis and seeing if we can’t get them to seriously cut back on production. They’ve been after the same missile system we have in Syria and I’d like to think that if we gave them a sweet heart deal on this system, they’d be willing to curtail their production to keep the price closer to where it’s at right now. I’ll be doing the same thing with Venezuela. Even though they are in America’s back yard, if we could introduce the same system to them that would be a huge coup for us — both in keeping the price of oil high but also give us another customer for the defense industry.”