“You got it,” she said as she began working with a SAM splint for Wolf’s leg.
Jackson took a quick location fix and then called out over the radio “Falcon, Cowboys, draw play, third and long, zero-three, twenty-one, seventy-seven, hike!” Two short clicks followed in quick response.
“What was that?” Wolf asked, quite surprised by the transmission.
“Falcon and I worked together quite a bit several years ago. I’m a huge Cowboys fan and I got him hooked on football — American football that is. Anyway, we put this code together that resembles a quarterback’s snap count. ‘Cowboys’ refers to me. The ‘draw play’ is a running play, as opposed to a pass play, which impacts the distance. ‘Third and long’ refers to the situation we’re in. ‘Zero-three’ refers to the three of us. ‘Twenty-one’ refers to a distance grid — two clicks north or south, one click east or west — plus, if it’s a pass play, you’d double the distance. A single ‘seven’ at the end indicates help is needed — doubling it, seventy-seven means it’s urgent. ‘Hike’ means please respond. A double click is an affirmative reply. A single click asks to repeat everything. Since he knows our general location, it shouldn’t take him long to find us. Based on Falcon’s response, he’ll be picking us up in that wide-spot in the road over there. Wolf, we’ll go whenever you’re ready.”
“Did you know Falcon was going to be a part of this?” Wolf asked, looking rather amazed at this development.
“Not until you told us back at our apartment a few hours ago. But, like I told you, I worked with the Peshmerga quite closely for a couple years. I got to know several of them so it’s not that surprising that I might know some of the one’s who’ll be helping us out with this. You ready to go?”
“Yeah, but I’m going to need some help,” Wolf replied as he grabbed a hand from both Arielle and Stonewall.
“Wolf, don’t be too surprised by this guy,” Dani indicated. “I’ve known him about two months now and I never cease to be amazed by him.”
“Yeah, well it’s mutual,” Jackson countered. “We ready to go? I think I see Falcon.”
“Chaos, my friend, good to see you once again,” Falcon said as they met at the site Jackson called in.
“You, too, man. Say, we’ve got a problem. One of the guys we jumped with broke his ankle, compound fracture. Any ideas on evacuating him?”
“We came in from Al Hasakah up north just the other day, but with everything going on, I don’t think I’d head back that way. There’s another bridge across the Euphrates about sixty kilometers southeast of here. We can cross there and then follow the highway straight south. It’s a vast no-man’s land as it’s nothing but dessert. We’d be about 80 kilometers straight west of Deir ez-Zawr. If you could call in one of your Pedros we’d have him at Al-Asad before noon.”
“I’ll call it in. Wolf can’t wait for what would be at least another twelve hours, and that’s provided we go tonight.”
“I’ll let my men know to be ready to go.”
“Archangel, Chaos.”
“Chaos, Archangel here.”
“Archangel, we had a problem with the insertion. We’ve got a man down with a compound leg fracture and requesting immediate evacuation. We can meet the Pedro at thirty-five degrees, fifteen minutes north, thirty-nine degrees, fifteen minutes east in an hour and a half.”
“Copy that, we’ll have a Pedro there for you.”
“Roger that, Chaos out. Wolf, not sure if you heard but we’re getting you out of here.”
“Yeah, I heard that. Sounds like I’m in for a bit of a ride. Hope they keep their highways in decent condition.”
“I hear ya. Let’s get you loaded up and out of here,” Dani added.
“Admiral Fischer, Admiral Ramsey, can you both hear me?” General Logan asked the commanding officer of Central Command and the 6th Fleet commanding officer.
“Loud and clear,” Fischer replied.
“The same here, General,” Ramsey replied aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.
“Excellent. Okay, I’ve received word from General Kaufman that kickoff is tomorrow, 6:00 PM local time. Since everything is in place, the President does not want to delay this.”
“Very good, General. All of our units are in place. We’ve got two teams in place in Raqqa right now and they’ve both teamed up with a local Peshmerga unit. One team is scouting out Baghdadi and his entourage and the other is targeting the nukes. We’re relying on the Israelis to keep track of the rest of the hostages,” Fischer replied. “We’ve also evacuated one of the men we inserted this morning. It seems he landed in a bit of a rock garden and suffered a compound leg fracture. Anyway, he’s already at Al-Asad.”
“Do we know where Baghdadi is?” Logan asked.
“We believe he left the mosque last night and spent the night at the Odessa hotel.”
“Jack, what do you mean ‘we believe’? I thought we had bead on him now that Secretary Johnson and Colonel Marshall are with him,” Admiral Ramsey asked his colleague.
“You know as well as I do, Jeff, that that man is as paranoid as they come — with good reason I might add. He usually has doubles stand-in for him but last night we noticed that he had two women with him when he left the mosque. We followed him to the Odessa hotel and never saw him leave.”
“So, are we ready to hit three places?” Ramsey asked.
“Yes, we are. It’s going to make things a bit more complicated but we can do it,” Logan admitted.
“Where’s the Odessa in relation to the mosque?”
“It’s a little out of the way but not too bad,” Logan replied. “However, it does mean splitting our forces, which admittedly, I do not like. It makes it all the more critical that the Rangers draw off as many men as possible. There’s no way we’ll be able to hit the nukes, the mosque and Baghdadi all at the same time so we need as many troops pulled out of the city as possible — it’s going to be hard enough as it is.”
“So, we’re going to raid three places at once in the middle of Raqqa?” Admiral Ramsey asked, somewhat in disbelief. His carrier air wing would be providing air support so he’d been out of most of the planning details.
“Like I said, those Rangers need to draw as many men out of town as they can. We don’t need them charging into town blowing everything up causing these guys to hunker down. We need them to act like they’re trying to get into the city but that they are up against too strong of a force, or a force that needs to be reinforced to stamp out the Rangers. Even ISIS understands that you don’t reinforce failure so the Rangers cannot push these guys back on their heels right away — that would be disastrous. No, it’s critical that we draw them into our trap. Once the C-130s land in Raqqa we’re going to need someone with the air support to blow the two bridges across the Euphrates — we cannot have these forces double back into the city. We need to keep them south of the river.
“You realize the one premise with this is that the Rangers can handle whatever ISIS throws at them, right?” Ramsey added.
“Yep, and we’re only using two Ranger companies,” Logan replied. “We expect that they’ll be out numbered, but they’ll have a ton of air support. A-10s and Apaches will lead the way for them with a couple AC-130s on call, along with your entire air wing, Jeff.”
“They didn’t exactly pick the easiest place to scout out, did they?” Arielle noted as they looked at the overhead picture of the building on her Toughbook laptop. “Have you even been able to get a closer look?” she added.