“Yes, it does. Likely spots? Likely targets?”
“It’s hard to tell, Madam President,” Jim Carmichael replied. “However, we’re assuming they are fully functional at this point. Colonel Jackson and his Israeli nuclear engineer discovered that they — ISIS — figured out how to arm these things and that they were working on the pre-flight arming controls. Since the last information we had is that the small ISIS convoy was headed north out of Raqqa, Diyarbakir and Batman air force bases are the two most likely launching spots. However, if they simply plan to put them in a truck and say, drive one to the Israeli border, they could certainly do that but then why head north out of Raqqa? That doesn’t make a lot of sense. However, if they are ultimately heading for the Israeli border, I can’t see them getting through but they could certainly get to it. Other easy truck-borne targets would include Damascus, Ankara, and Istanbul as they wouldn’t need to cross an international border for these cities. Airborne attacks could be a little trickier: Turkey’s F-16s are not nuclear capable as we delivered them. However, since they were working on the pre-flight arming controls, it would seem they’ve figured this out. If that’s what we are looking at, we need to get word out to all of our allies to shoot down any Turkish F-16s seeking asylum with them. If we’re looking at something like this, an F-16 with drop tanks could reach much of Europe.”
“Okay, Jim, let General Pardo know that they might want to check every truck coming out of Lebanon and Syria for a potential nuke.”
“Stan, get the word out as Jim suggested,” President Donner ordered. “But, we also need to notify the Turkish government that any of their fighters cannot leave their own airspace without the possibility of being shot down. Are we ready to go with everything else?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Logan replied. “All we need is your authorization. All crews and teams are making their final preparations as we speak.”
“General Logan, the word is given.”
“Very well, ma’am. Kickoff is set for approximately four hours from now.”
“How do you want to play this, Chaos?” Falcon asked. “This is a little more complicated than what we’ve done in the past. It’s confirmed — we have three targets. Baghdadi is at the Odessa with both women.”
“Okay, at least we know where everyone’s at,” Stonewall replied. “But you’re right, everything we’ve done before has been simply a single target, even though we’ve rescued dozens of ISIS prisoners, they were always held in the same location.”
“So, just what have you two done before?” Arielle asked the two of them.
“We’ve led a few prison breaks, especially in Erbil and Mosul, but ISIS never knew we were coming. Generally, they wouldn’t know we were there until we essentially ‘knocked on their front door,’ so to speak,” Falcon added with a grin.
“Nothing quite like the element of surprise, is there?” Arielle added.
“No there isn’t,” Falcon agreed. “We had this one incident that Chaos helped us with in Erbil. My team and I infiltrated Daesh’s lines and actually got into the compound where they were holding twenty of our soldiers. We had intel that indicated all twenty of them were to be executed the following day. Anyway, Chaos agreed to assault this compound with his CIF team”—Commander’s In-extremis Force—“after my team infiltrated into it. I think he had four heavily modified Blackhawks as we couldn’t hear them — and we knew they were coming. At precisely 0230, I knocked on the commanding officer’s door and got him out of bed. He was thoroughly pissed that anyone would even try to wake him up. You should have seen the look on his face when he realized who I was — and what we were doing there! Talk about the element of surprise. Of course, between my team and Chaos’ team, we dispatched every Daesh soldier there and freed, get this, eighty prisoners. We didn’t know they were holding sixty others.”
“I had to call in a couple reserve Blackhawks I had standing by,” Chaos added. “It was quite the raid. I think we were in and out with all eighty prisoners in less than half an hour.”
“Is this when you developed your own secret code?” Arielle asked.
“Kind of,” Falcon replied. “You see, Daesh had a lot of American equipment. When the Iraqi army folded, Daesh simply walked in and took everything — everything from rifles and mortars to Humvees and even a couple tanks. However, all of the bigger pieces had the same radios we use so we knew there was always the possibility that Daesh would try to listen in on us. That’s when Chaos suggested we develop our code. I’m sure he’s told you that he’s a big football fan — American football that is.”
“Oh yeah, I’m aware of that,” Arielle replied.
“Well, the Cowboys are his favorite team, though I’m not sure if he’s a bigger fan of the team or of the Cowboys cheerleaders.”
“Falcon, Chaos is a hot-blooded American male. I think we both know the answer to that,” Arielle added, looking at Stonewall with a mischievous grin.
“I can explain,” Chaos began. “A couple girls I met at UT when I was doing my graduate work there were part of the Cowboys’ cheerleader squad. When I deployed over here, I contacted them through the USO and several of them managed to make a USO trip over here. Needless to say, they were pretty well received.”
“Well, from what I recall, they were more than simply ‘a couple girls you met.’ It looked like you knew them pretty well.”
“Falcon, who’s side are you on?”
“I see,” Arielle said, looking at Stonewall feigning irritation. “Well, Falcon, you’ll have to excuse him. You see, he went to the University of Texas where academics aren’t always the main focus and, well, let’s face it, he simply couldn’t get into a real school like Texas A & M,” Arielle added as she flaunted her Aggie ring in front of both men.
“Anyway, back to the code Chaos developed. It came in real handy when we attacked the Mosul Dam,” Falcon continued.
“Is this where you lost your eye?”
“Yes, it is. And thanks to Chaos here, that’s all I lost. You see, I’m sure you’re familiar with the issues that dam has.”
“Yes, I am. It’s pretty unstable,” Arielle replied.
“Well, we wanted to secure it before Daesh could really cause a problem. I led an advance team to scout out the premises on the west side of the river. Mind you, the rest of our forces are all on the east side of the river. There were only four of us and I’m glad we had the cover of the night, otherwise, none of us would have made it out. We were patrolling near the generating plants when my communications sergeant stepped on a mine. He survived but the explosion took his leg off at the knee. I was right behind him and took part of the explosion in the side of my chest and face, losing the eye in the process. I told one of my soldiers to broadcast our code in the clear to Chaos to arrange a medical evac. When he read the message, he looked at me like I was some sort of alien. I told him again to simply send it in the clear. I forget what it was but something like ‘Eagles, fourth and long, Hail Mary, zero four, seventy seven, hike.’ I forget the actual location fix I used. The next thing we hear is the double squelch from Chaos.”
“Yep. I squelched two times and we were there in just a couple minutes,” Chaos added. “The ‘Hail Mary,’ in addition to the football play, was our code for an emergency medevac.”