“That’s right, Turkey isn’t a part of Centcom is it? You never got up in this part did you? Yeah, I can break away from here. I’ll probably get up there around the noon hour, would that work?”
“That’d be perfect, see you then.”
“That was a British friend of mine that I got to know when we were both in Afghanistan back in 2001. He’s quite the guy. He likes to go by ‘Coeur de Liŏn’—I call him Lion, for short. It may sound like he’s a bit eccentric but he’s actually quite down to earth. I’ll introduce him to you this afternoon.”
“Coeur de Liŏn, huh? The ‘Lionhearted.’ I like him already. There’s got to be a story behind that name. He must be something,” Dani added with a grin.
“Oh, he is. Remember, my team was one of the first couple teams in Afghanistan immediately after 9/11. Shortly after we arrived, the Brits managed to get an SAS team into Afghanistan as well. Lion was one of their signals’ specialists and he’s morphed into an exceptional intel source over the years. Anyway, this was literally just a month or two after 9/11 and we’re working way up in northern Afghanistan. We helicoptered in and after we secured the LZ, a British SAS unit parachuted in to help us out. Remember at this point, the Taliban are still firmly in control and we’ve got less than 300 men in country all told. The one Afghan general who held everything together up there with the Northern Alliance, Shah Ahmad Massoud, had been assassinated by Al-Qaeda on September ninth — two days prior to the attack on the Twin Towers. The remaining war lords didn’t trust each other at all. When they found out we had multiple A-teams helping out different — and competing — war lords, several of these guys threatened to back out of the fight. My team ran into this up in the Kunduz area, way up in northern Afghanistan. We were tasked with clearing the main highway up there all the way to Mazar-e-Sharif at the western end of this route. We took care of the eastern end of this highway relatively easily. Then, just as we begin the assault on Kunduz, General Dostum — one of the prime Afghan warlords up there — learned we had a couple other teams working with a competing warlord in the Bagram area — and he immediately pulled his support for the assault. Now, mind you, I have my team, including a few of the SAS guys, already engaged with the Taliban in a couple blocking positions along the highway in an attempt to cutoff their retreat. I had Rossi with me at the time as well as Lion when a Taliban force completely outflanked us. Since Lion was the signal’s expert, I had him on the radio acting as our JTAC,” referring to a Joint Terminal Attack Controller who directs close air support. “In between calling in air strikes from A-10s, F-15s, and even a few Bones, he fought like a Viking ‘berserker.’ We were completely surrounded and since he was calling in the air strikes, he was probably the most exposed of the three of us. After Dostum realized we were in the fight of our lives regardless of his assistance, he finally came to our aid. When everything was over, Dostum came up to Lion and told him that he had fought like the Lion of Panjshir himself, Shah Ahmad Massoud, and from that moment on, he took the name Lionhearted. Since his first name is Richard, ‘Coeur de Liŏn’ seemed like a natural. I don’t know how much English history Dostum knows but that tag couldn’t have been more appropriate.”
“Wow, that’s quite a complement, coming from Dostum himself.”
“Yeah, it was, and Lion fully recognized it. Anyway, he’s been stationed with the SAS throughout the region, including Turkey and Greece for the last several years. I’ve never been to either one and Lion’s picked up the intel side of this business exceptionally well. I’m really curious what all he might know of what’s going on in Turkey.”
“Arielle, Stonewall, please come in,” Tamir Pardo called out to both of them as he saw them through the open door to his office. “Sorry to hear of what happened up at Incirlik yesterday. Please extend my condolences to the families of those who were killed, as well as to Secretaries Johnson and Axelsson. I wish we could have been more help for you. We have heard a few things out of Turkey but we knew nothing of this ahead of time. I’m terribly sorry about what happened. However, I understand that you and Arielle need a flight up to Incirlik right away. Jim called me probably shortly after he spoke with you, sometime around 2:30 this morning, wasn’t it?”
“It was something like that, General.”
“We’ll get you up there right away. I’ve told the flight crew to be ready to take off as soon as you can get to the base.”
“Thank you, General, I will pass on your condolences. I’m assuming you have some contacts that Dani and I can meet up with up there. I have a friend at Akrotiri that will be flying in this noon but the more intel we can get the better. We had suspected that ISIS was making inroads into Turkey but never anything like this.”
“Yes, I have someone in Adana that should be able to help you out, a couple, actually: Yosef Dagan and Noa Katz. I’m not sure if you know them, Arielle.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Stonewall, I think you probably know that up until the past few years, Turkey has been a very good friend of Israel’s. When we took out Syria’s nuclear reactor at Deir az-Zawr, we actually flew over Turkish air space for close to two hundred miles, all with their permission as we flew very close to both Incirlik and Batman air bases. Turkey has continued to share a fair amount of intel with us, as well — especially when it concerns Al Qaeda, the Khorasan group and now ISIS.”
“Yosef and Noa have been in Adana for several years monitoring the situation in southern Turkey,” Tamir continued. “Adana is the fourth largest city in Turkey and boasts one of the largest mosques in the world so we try to keep an eye open for anything that might be developing up there. They’ll meet you both for lunch at a local café, Ozsut Café on Ziyapasa Boulevard. Sorry, but I didn’t know of your arrangements with your friend. It’s right next to a Starbucks if you’re homesick. However, the café is right on the corner with outside seating. They haven’t told me of anything urgent that might be in the works, but they aren’t exactly members of the mosque, either.”
“Tamir, this is excellent. Can you get word to Yosef and Noa that we might be a little late?”
“Not a problem my friend. The flight time is less than an hour so you’ll be there mid-morning. I’ve told the crew to stick around for no more than a couple days so if your little recon mission takes longer than that, Arielle, let me know.”
“Will do, Tamir, thanks so much for this. Operations as per usual, I assume.”
“That is correct.”
“General, this is awesome. I can’t thank you enough.”
“So if the flight time to Incirlik is just under an hour, that’ll put us there around 10:30,” Jackson said to Dani as they boarded the Gulfstream G IV.
“And Lion said he’d fly in around the noon hour, right?” Dani continued with Jackson’s line of thinking. “That’ll give us a chance to meet up with both Cadonau and Todd and get an idea from them as to what their sense of the area is. Do you want to simply meet up with Lion on base or take him to meet up with Yosef & Noa? Personally, I’d like to keep him separate from them. I don’t know what security is like but I don’t want to take any unnecessary chances with them.”