“Allahu Akbar!!!” Omer yelled out as he charged the small reception, firing his M4 on full automatic. Colonel Todd immediately saw the Turkish airman running towards them as he began to fire. Before Omer could get within 30 yards, she had put two rounds into him from her new M18 Sig Sauer pistol, but not before he had almost emptied the magazine in his rifle. Colonel Harris, one of Axelsson’s aides, and one of Secretary Johnson’s aides fell to the tarmac almost immediately.
“Madam Secretary,” Colonel Todd yelled out while grabbing the secretary, “RUN! Get to the Ops building!” Secretary Johnson didn’t know where the Operations building was — and didn’t really care with a sniper shooting at them. She instinctively shed her dress shoes and ran barefoot towards the large building on her right. Several more, louder, reports punctuated the air around them. Axelsson actually heard the crack of one round that whizzed past his head as he ran towards the terminal building. Another round struck Colonel Todd in the arm as she ran trying to shield Secretary Johnson.
“Is everyone okay?” Todd asked as they entered the Operations building. “Ma’am, are you okay?” she asked Secretary Johnson as she noticed her bare feet.
“I’m fine, I practically live barefoot when I’m not at the office.”
“Okay stay here!” Todd ordered.
“Wait! You’re hit. You can’t go back out there!” Secretary Johnson shouted back.
“Stay here,” Todd ordered again. “I’ll be back to check on you in a few minutes” Todd curtly replied.
“Look, at least let me bandage that arm — you’re bleeding. I know basic first aid.”
“Fair enough, but make it quick. I need to contain this and see what’s going on out there.” Todd replied.
“It won’t take more than a minute, two at the most,” Secretary Johnson replied as she tore off the sleeve of Todd’s uniform and examined the bullet wound.
“Looks like you’ve done this before.”
“My son’s a paramedic. Being an active, single mom, he wanted to make sure I knew how to take care of myself should something ever happen when I’m out and about. I jog and bike quite a bit so he made sure I can handle sprained ankles and other minor injuries — bullet wounds are a first… all done. I think you got lucky with this one but it’s going to hurt. Go get ‘em, Colonel.”
“Captain!” Colonel Todd hollered at her executive officer, “Sitrep!”
“Colonel, you’ve been hit.”
“So I’ve noticed. What do we know?”
“We have three shooters down: the one you took out and then one on either end of the tarmac here. It looks as though the shooter you took out jumped the gun on everything. The two snipers on each end had us in a cross-fire and could have taken out each of the secretaries had they been a little more coordinated. Once they were taken out, the shooter here in the middle would have had all of us at point blank range. As it is, it looks like the middle guy jumped the gun on everything. We were lucky, really lucky.”
“Are you sure everything is secure?”
“We’ve secured the area, ma’am. We’ve established a perimeter and are expanding it as we speak. Everyone in the perimeter here is accounted for. We’re good.”
“Is General Van here yet? See if he can identify the shooters.”
“The general’s been notified and he’s on his way here. I guess he left Batman just as we received word of the SAM flight’s pending arrival. He obviously didn’t know of the secretaries’ itineraries, either. Word is he grabbed an F-16 out of there and should be here relatively soon. It’s a short flight and normally takes about an hour. My guess is that with what just happened, he’s on full AB at this point and will be landing any minute. Initial thinking is that this is all an inside, and impromptu, job. One of my guys knows the shooter you took out.”
“What about casualties?”
“We have three killed, six wounded, well seven, counting yourself. It looks as though an aide to each secretary has been killed, as has Colonel Harris. Two of the wounded are from Defense, three from State and one from the base. We’ll need to evacuate four of them to Landstuhl as soon as we have them stabilized. They should all make it but we have some serious injuries.”
“Very well, thanks, Captain. Where’s the Colonel?”
“He’s in the terminal with the SecDef — in the excitement, they split off and went there.”
“Okay, I’m going to head over there to check on everyone,” Todd advised her XO as she headed off to the terminal.
“Colonel, Mr. Secretary, how is everyone?”
“You know of my aide, I assume. We have a few others wounded but other than that, we’re fine, Colonel,” Secretary Axelsson replied. “However, this little incident reinforces the original reason I decided to make this short stop. Ever since the last failed coup here in Turkey a couple years ago, we’ve been planning on moving the remaining B-61 nukes we have here. I had planned on doing this over the next month, but now… we need to get them out of here right away. Andrea and I’ll be leaving as soon as we can be sure the plane didn’t take a stray round and then I’ll be advising the Chief,” as Axelsson referred to General Stan Kaufman, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “to whistle up either a C-17 or a couple C-130s and get them transferred to another base in Europe, probably Aviano as we already have several there, or maybe either Lakenheath or Ramstein if the Brits or the Germans have the security for these, but that’ll be up to him given the short notice.”
“Then, and I don’t want to go off half-cocked, but do we need to look at evacuating non-essential personnel? I know there’ve been some recent demonstrations in some of the bigger cities over here, but to be honest, I haven’t paid all that much attention.”
“I’ll be looking into that, Mr. Secretary, though we no longer have any dependents here — it’s all strictly Air Force, sir, but we might be able to pare the personnel down some,” Colonel Cadonau replied.
“Ah, sir,” Colonel Todd added, addressing the secretary, “earlier this morning, the Director General of the Turkish National Police let me know that they believed ISIS had something that might be in the works. He didn’t have any specifics, and supposedly nothing actionable, but we received word of this shortly before you arrived. I don’t think this attack is what he had in mind. This was too impromptu and too unorganized for what he mentioned. I think there’s something else in the wind.”
“Colonel, is the Director General sure this is ISIS and not more Kurdish protests?" Secretary Johnson asked having now rejoined the group in the terminal. “We’ve heard of a number of protests throughout Turkey of late but thought most of these were from the Kurds.”
“Ma’am, he didn’t indicate what they had for proof but he specifically mentioned ISIS.”
“Well, whatever the case, Colonel, that would seem to reinforce the decision to move the B-61s out of here. We hadn’t planned on spending the night here anyway. As soon as the flight crew can make sure our plane didn’t take any fire, we’ll be out of here.”
“Very good. I’ll make sure the crew has whatever they need to check out your plane,” Cadonau replied.
XVII
“Glad to see you both made it through okay,” Tamir Pardo said as he met Dani and Jackson at Tel Nof Air Force base outside of Tel Aviv. “Understand things weren’t the cake walk we expected.”
“I don’t think they knew we were coming but they certainly had more guards on duty than we expected,” Jackson replied.