“No, I haven’t, or well… our team’s been up to Latakia many times. However, this part of Syria is all new to me. Our raid on the Deir az-Zawr nuke plant was several years before my time with the Unit but it’s the type of stuff I’d like to be involved in. When the team was up there scouting the place out, we didn’t have anyone on the team that knew anything about nuclear technology. All they could do was take samples and bring them home. Yeah, they had a Geiger counter but all that told them was if their sample was hot but that’s about it. But someone familiar with nuclear physics could have added a lot more to the team.”
“No doubt about it. I bet you enjoyed working in Iran.”
“That I did — it’s what I signed up for. It was both a mental ‘puzzle,’ so to speak, trying to figure out the depth of their nuclear program and at the same time very much a military operation.”
“And the danger, the risk doesn’t bother you any?”
“Don’t even think about it. How ‘bout you? I know you’ve seen a lot more than I have.”
“Like you said, I don’t even think about it. I do what I can to manage the situation the best I can before everything hits the fan. After that, it’s just training and muscle memory. If you’ve managed the situation appropriately, everything usually works out alright in the end. Unless the other guy just gets lucky, and that happens sometimes, too. You know any of the pilots we’re after?”
“No, I don’t, but I’ll do everything I can to bring them home. After what ISIS did to that poor Jordanian pilot… I don’t even want to think about the repercussions if they do the same to our guys. The sheer horror that would evoke… I can’t even fathom that — if they burn four Israeli pilots alive, the repercussions will be unimaginable.”
V
“Okay people, talk to me.” President Barre addressed his national security staff.
“Mr. President,” Jim Carmichael began, “as of this minute, we have over 12,000 confirmed fatalities with several thousand in hospitals scattered throughout the area. Obviously, we expect these numbers will rise as there is so much destruction and rescuers are still searching through the rubble.”
“We’ve seized each of the four ships involved, including the captains and crew: the MV Admiral Ushakov, the MV Tibor Szamueli, the Bomar Hermes, and the Falcon Trident. The first two are the Russian ships. The other two are Liberian-flagged, one of which, the Hermes, just recently swapped flags from Russian to Liberian and still has an essentially Russian crew. The Ushakov and the Szamueli left Latakia about four weeks ago. The Hermes and the Trident left Tartus about the same time. From what we’ve been able to determine, the captains of the Russian-flagged ships both lost family members to Ossetian separatists a few years ago. We’re still looking into the other two ships though both of these are Liberian-flagged vessels. One of the captains is Chechen, Ahmed Shishani, with reported ties to the Islamic insurgents in Chechnya and the other is Egyptian with supposed ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. In addition, each of the captains was able to select his entire crew. We’ve pulled the VDR’s”—Voyage Data Recorder—“from each ship and are working to see if we can restore the data that’s been overwritten. Much of the data is overwritten every twelve hours but we’re pretty confident we can restore most everything recorded for the past several weeks. We’ve already found pieces of some of the missiles and they bear a striking resemblance to the same ones Hezbollah fired at Israel about six weeks ago. We’re pretty sure these were all Tishreen — Scud — missiles, manufactured in Iran and used by both Syria and Hezbollah.”
“Wait a minute,” Secretary of State Andrea Johnson interrupted, “you’re saying Hezbollah did this?”
“That’s what we’re currently thinking, and our friends in Israel believe this as well.”
“That goes with what we’re learning, too,” FBI Director Steve Youngblood added. “Captain Valery Kanokov of the Ushakov is talking. He isn’t driven by any ideology, simply revenge. He’s from the Russian Black Sea region by Sochi and blames us for the death of his wife and kids, and grandkids, for supporting the Ossetian separatists several years ago. He doesn’t have any family left so he’s quite open about everything. This is all Hezbollah, according to him.”
“Well, if it is Hezbollah, the next question is who helped them?” National Security Adviser Pamela McDowell added. “They don’t have the ability to do something like this on their own.”
“No they don’t,” Jim Carmichael agreed. “I’ve spoken with Tamir Pardo, the Director of Mossad, and the impression I have is that he might know but is waiting for confirmation from his sources before he tells me anything.”
“What about this other captain, Shishani, you said?” McDowell followed up. “How does a Chechen end up in the Russian merchant marine?”
“Who knows how anyone gets where they do? Admiral Nimitz, the Navy’s commander in the Pacific in World War II grew up in central Texas — not a lot of water there, either,” Jim Carmichael replied. “Shishani’s a Chechen and appears to be more of a radical Islamist. He lost a nephew and sister-in-law at the Beslan school debacle when the Russians stormed that school several years ago. As a follower of radical Islam, he has no love for us.”
“Well, what about this other captain? Can he give us any details?” McDowell asked. “Where did these missiles come from? Who authorized this? Did anyone in the Russian government know what was going on? What about the old Iranian regime we just toppled? Didn’t the colonel we captured indicate something like this was coming?”
“Yes, he can, and he has,” replied Carmichael. “Once the Israelis began their campaign in Lebanon, Hezbollah did everything they could to salvage their remaining stockpile. They had to practically smuggle everything out of Lebanon due to the sheer volume of Israeli air activity. What they could get out went through northern Lebanon then into Syria, via Homs, and then these 200 were sent to the coast, one hundred each to Tarsus and Latakia. He indicated that his contact with Hezbollah will contact him from time to time about shipments of one sort or another to various ports around the world. This is far and away the most ambitious and dangerous task he’s had to do. It seems that Colonel Rafsanjani left one of his lieutenants in Lebanon and he laid the groundwork for this part of the operation, knowing full well that there would be a significant time lag in this part of the entire operation. This underling of his was killed in the initial Israeli onslaught. As to the Russians, he indicated the local commander at Latakia knew what was being loaded on to his ship, though he may not have known of the overall operation.”
“It sounds like Hezbollah practically has their own navy, if this captain was essentially on call for them. Plus, if the local Russian commander in Latakia knew, presumably, of both of these ships, and their cargo, I doubt that this stops there,” Secretary Axelsson added. “He’s not going to keep this information to himself. He’ll bump this up the chain of command.”
“Agreed,” added President Barre. “Jim, get back on the horn with Pardo. Let him know what we’ve found out from these Russian captains and see if this jives with what he’s working on. If anyone has picked up anything on this, I’m sure the Israelis have.”
“Already on it, sir.”
“Very good. And we’re going to keep the pressure on. At De’s urging,” a reference to Vice President Deirdre Donner, “I’ve advised Ambassador Chekhov we’ll be announcing this afternoon that I’ve authorized the construction of a second pipeline out of Canada, similar to Keystone, only this one will head to California instead of the gulf coast. We’re expecting that not only the mere announcement of this to have a significant impact on the price of oil, but the longstanding impact of this will significantly hurt the Russian economy.”