“Okay, so kickoff for this operation is tomorrow night at 0300 local time for the SEALs, right? If this is a true joint operation, I’d like the overall commander to be one of our guys.”
“That’s correct,” Kaufman replied. “And, yes sir, I believe Colonel Tom Jackson will be in overall command.”
“Very well, then, that’ll be 8:00 PM our time. Tom, alert the networks that I want half an hour of air time tomorrow night starting at 9:00 PM. This will give the SEALs a full hour to accomplish their mission. Will this be enough time for them, General?”
“It should be. If it isn’t, it’s not going to matter as, by that point, they’ll be in the biggest fire-fight of their lives and going on the air won’t be a surprise to anyone at that point.”
“You ready for this Cowboy?” Dani practically yelled at Stonewall over the drone of the C-130 engines.
“Just a walk in the park.”
“We’re just entering the flight path for planes taking off out of Larnaca so we’ll be jumping in a few minutes.”
“Just how often have you done this?” Jackson asked. “Not skydiving, I mean, but inserting like this into Syria?”
“We don’t always insert like this, though we have done this several times. Most of the time, we’ll fly to either Athens or Rome first and then catch a flight to Adana and then drive down along the coast line. It’s a pretty drive but we don’t have the time for that tonight. Okay, the lights just came on. Let’s get ready.”
“There’s the green light. Time to go,” Jackson indicated as they both dropped their night vision goggles. A quick look below and the infrared strobe light from the sub below revealed their target as they both walked out of the rear of the C-130 into the midnight darkness.
“There they are,” shouted the seaman on the Tanin, one of Israel’s newest submarines.
“Got ‘em,” Commander Ram Halperin, Tanin’s commanding officer said. “Okay, they’re drifting a little off. Helm, bring us to new course one-three-three.”
“Aye, sir setting course at one-three-three.”
“Okay… first jumper’s in the water… there’s the second one. Let’s get them on board,” Halperin said to his deck watch crew.
“Already on it, sir,” came the immediate response.
“You must be ‘Chaos’,” Halperin said as Jackson came aboard. He had splashed in closest to the sub so was the first to board. “I’m Commander Ram Halperin. Welcome aboard the Tanin.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Jackson replied. “Thank you.”
“So much for ladies first, I see,” Arielle announced as she came aboard right behind Jackson.
“What, no points for hitting closest to the target?” Jackson replied.
“Only because that sudden gust of wind blew me off course. Otherwise, I’d have landed right next to these guys.”
“Excuses, excuses….”
“Arielle, nice to see you again,” Commander Halperin interrupted. “Wasn’t sure who we were picking up initially when they told us about a package named ‘Chaos’ but when they told us to expect Chaos and Arielle, I knew you were a part of the mix.”
“You, too, Commander. ‘Chaos’… Stonewall, is a friend of mine. He helped us out a couple months ago with Iran. He’s back helping us out with this little mess we have in Syria this time.”
“You two obviously know each other,” Jackson noted.
“Commander Halperin has picked me up several times, both in training and in these little insertions, both in Syria and Lebanon, and a few other places as well.”
“I’ve picked her team up enough times I’m beginning to feel like a regular bus driver. Speaking of which, your team is already in place.”
“Yeah, Tamir told us they were but wasn’t sure you helped out with that or not. What about the rest? We have what, two or three other teams there?”
“Three other teams. I’ve dropped off your team and one other. The Rahav has dropped off the other two.”
“Arielle, Tamir mentioned we’d be putting a serious hurt on these guys. Three teams from the Unit? That’s what, close to fifty commandos?”
“That’s about right, and I’d anticipate about an equal number of your SEALs. When we’ve planned this out over the past several months — remember, I’m the operations officer for the team — the optimum force we’ve used consisted of one hundred commandos — anything less and the amount of fire power we bring drops off pretty quickly and anything much larger than this gets a little too cumbersome from a logistical standpoint.”
“I would think that even a hundred would tax your logistics, though being so close to the sea has its advantages.”
“That it does. Yoni will brief us in the morning, and Tamir’s right: This raid shouldn’t be nearly as complex as what we did in Tehran.”
“No, I wouldn’t expect that it will be, so long as we maintain the element of surprise.”
XI
“Mohammed, where are we at with everything?” al-Baghdadi asked his chief of operations.
“Imam, we’re looking good. Our attack on Turkey’s air force leadership coincided nicely with the Turkish air campaign in Iraq against the Kurds. From all appearances, the Kurds had good reason to retaliate against them so this attack of ours has worked out perfectly. As you suspected, the Turks have not only increased the pace of their attacks in northern Iraq but they are now targeting the political leadership of the Kurds, something which only benefits us.”
“Excellent, I’m hearing much the same thing from our commander in Mosul, as well. What about the political leadership of Turkey? And, how soon will you be ready to make your move?”
“We have been staging demonstrations and protests in many cities throughout eastern and central Turkey and we’ve gone to great lengths to hide our involvement in these. So far it appears to be working. We staged our most recent demonstration in Adana just last week. This caught everyone by surprise. We had several thousand people marching through the heart of the city. We started and ended at the Grand Mosque and went past all of the major international hotels. We had thousands demonstrating and protesting and completely shut down that part of the city. I don’t think President Demirel picked up on the significance of this but Ataturk, his chief of staff, sure did. Taking him out in the bombing has really hurt his administration. Demirel is no patsy, but Ataturk ran a tight ship and was very astute politically. Fortunately for us, there is no obvious replacement for him so the administration is in a bit of chaos at present and I expect it will remain that way for at least the next week. If we make our move in the next two or three days, we’ll be able to take advantage of some of this turmoil in Turkey. Right now, Demirel is practically holding a daily meeting with his senior advisors — sometimes multiple times a day — something which Ataturk handled before but now Demirel is doing this himself. Our plan is to strike during one of these meetings when the majority of the leadership of the government is present. There’s one meeting with the parliamentary leadership scheduled for the day after tomorrow and then a follow up meeting the next day. The plan is to hit one or the other of these meetings.”
“What about the Army? I know most of the air force leadership is now sympathetic towards us but what of the army? This is critical.”