“I know what a LAV is Wolf,” Dani interrupted, somewhat irritated. The LAV offers a superb light armored cavalry-type vehicle to units where mobility and speed present targets of opportunity. It offers armored protection for up to .50 caliber rounds and sports a 25 millimeter automatic cannon that is highly effective for urban combat situations.
“Wolf, Dani’s in the Unit — it’s not a token, either. She knows her stuff.”
“Oh, okay. Guess I didn’t realize that, sorry. Where was I? Oh yeah, and the Rangers’ll have all the air support you can imagine. We’ll have more than three times the number of JTACs assigned to them than normal. The air space over Raqqa’ll make that over Los Angeles look like a playground. Plus, if we launch late afternoon, which is what I’d prefer, they’ll obviously have the eventual cover of darkness as well, and as Rangers, we own the night.”
“How do we get them out?” Jackson asked.
“Highway 4, which is about two miles south of Raqqa and on the other side of the Euphrates, has a six mile straightaway that is suitable for landing a C-17. With the sixteen LAVs we’ll need at least six, maybe seven, C-17s for the evacuation.”
“If this is the diversionary force, what about the assault force?” Dani asked.
“Here, we’re going to take something out of your playbook from Entebbe. ISIS has built a rough landing strip to the northeast of the Al-Qadim mosque. We’ll be using this for the recovery of the bombs. Then just to the north of the mosque, and roughly the same distance away from it, Highway 6 runs southwest to northeast. This has a straight-away of something like three miles and is suitable for a runway as well. We’ll be landing C-130s on both stretches. Two will land on the northeast strip and four of them will land on Highway 6. Each one will be carrying a LAV and fifteen SEALs — the LAV needs a three man crew so essentially, we’ll have a LAV and a dozen SEALs per plane. The force landing on Highway 6 will assault the mosque. The mosque compound resembles a rectangular fortress: it’s surrounded by a twelve foot wall with four gates, one on each side. These gates are wide enough for the LAV to fit through. Once inside the compound, there is a huge open area, something like ninety yards by a hundred-twenty. After the hostages are rescued, you’ll make the call for the evac. The call sign is ‘Hunter’—we figure we can get two Chinooks in here and we’ll have a couple more on standby. Obviously, there isn’t a lot of cover once inside. The mosque itself occupies the south end of the compound, and it’s a rather large structure as well. All of the hostages are being held in the basement of this complex so we need to take the building to get to them. Count on at least a couple hundred men in here.”
“Okay folks, dinner’s ready. Go ahead and help yourself,” Jackson added.
“Dani said you like to cook,” Wolf said to Jackson. “This beats restaurant food anytime.”
“It’s obviously been decided, Stonewall’s the cook at our place,” Dani added. “Back to the operation: What about us?” Dani asked.
“We’ll be meeting up with a combined Delta Force-Kurdish team. They arrived on station last night and have been scouting the place out for the past twenty-four hours. The Delta contingent includes several members of the 24th Special Tactics Squadron — these guys will control the landing strips for the C-130s north of the mosque. The call sign for their controller is ‘Nightwatch.’ We’ll be working with them to continue to scout out everything and then we’ll be the pathfinders for the C-130s on ISIS’s own makeshift landing strip, if this ends up being a night mission — which I think is the most likely scenario. Stonewall, I wouldn’t be surprised if you know some of the Kurds we’ll be working with.”
“That could be, I worked with them for several years. They’re good troops. What about the two Israeli teams that are already on station?”
“They’ll join up with the assault force at the mosque. We’ll be about a mile away at the weapons warehouse.”
“What kind of coordination will we have between the Ranger force across the river and the assault force in Raqqa?”
“Obviously, this is key. The C-130s won’t land until we get word from the Rangers that they’re drawing ISIS’s forces out of the city. Once the C-130s land, we’ll need the air support to take out the two bridges across the Euphrates. We can’t have these ISIS forces returning to the city. We haven’t had a chance to do even one rehearsal, so this is going to be an entirely special operations mission, meaning Rangers, SEALs and Special Forces/Delta teams. The Army wanted the 82nd in bad with the Rangers but with no time to rehearse this thing we wanted the operators on this mission who already had the training and had worked with each other in the past. That ruled out the regular Army guys as well as Navy and Marine helicopter pilots — all of the helicopters are coming from the Night Stalkers.”
“You mentioned Entebbe — our guys didn’t get a single rehearsal in either. You don’t have any rookies at the command level in this so we should be good in that respect. However, this is an incredibly complicated operation.”
“No argument there,” Wolf agreed.
“What happens if one of the groups, the diversionary or the assault force, gets in trouble? Will either group be able to help the other out?”
“Good question. The Rangers are on their own. With the air support taking out the bridges, we won’t be able to help them out, and vice versa, they won’t be able to help us out either. The assault forces should be able to support each other, if needed. We’ll have six LAVs and the targets for each force are relatively close together. Again, close air support will be immediately available — and plenty of it, everything from AC-130s, A-10s, and Apaches to F-16s and B-1s. However, we really hope that none of the assaulting forces will need help from another team. Lieutenant Commander Johannes Edberg, call sign Viking, will command the SEAL teams coming in on the C-130s — you just worked with him in Latakia. The call sign for the C-130s will be Odin. Odin-Two and Odin-Four will be landing with us and flying the nukes out. Odin-One, three, five and six, will be with the 24th STS and will be flying in the assault team for the hostages. Major Roger Fairchild, call sign Cougar, will command the Ranger unit. You’ll be the ranking officer on scene. Admiral Jack Fischer, call sign Archangel, is at Centcom in Al Udeid. Admiral Jeff Ramsey, is in the Med with the 6th Fleet with both the Lincoln and the George H. W. Bush. That’s the big picture. We’ll go over everything in more detail with the Kurds when we get to Raqqa.”
“So, just curious, how do we get the bombs from the warehouse to the planes?” Dani asked.
“We’ve been monitoring the warehouse where they’re located. This place appears to be one of ISIS’s primary weapons depots and there is a constant supply of trucks in the yard. We’ll simply commandeer what we need.”
“What about our flight in tomorrow morning?” Dani asked. “Will the aircraft generate any suspicion flying over Raqqa so early in the morning?”
“It shouldn’t. We’ve had planes flying over Raqqa pretty much non-stop since yesterday afternoon. I think what would raise suspicion is if we all of a sudden stopped having planes overhead.”
XXXII
“General Shishani, we’ve been here for about forty-five minutes now and I’ve already configured the first F-16.”
“Excellent. It didn’t take you very long to do this, did it?” Shishani asked.
“No, it’s relatively easy. You see, all of the materials needed are all commercially available off-the-shelf electronics. A little imagination along with a trip to Best Buy and Home Depot and ‘I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I’m pretty much duplicating what the US Marine Corps has done. One of their training squadrons, they call it their ‘Aggressor’ squadron, actually uses I-pads attached to a pilot’s kneeboard that are then plugged into a port in the cockpit. They’ve done this as it’s incredibly cheaper than redoing the entire avionics on an older fighter. The pilots actually like it a lot more as the screen is much larger than those on their instrument panel — it’s a win-win for everyone — and for a few hundred bucks, you can really upgrade the capabilities of an already advanced fighter.”