Dick Couch - Out of the Ashes

“Good idea, Roger. In the meantime, get ahold of Brian and the JSOC team. You’re right. Our mission has changed — or maybe just gotten bigger.”

Jawad Makhdoom looked through his binoculars, alternately looking at the helo, waiting for heavily armed Americans to emerge, and looking at the two figures who had taken cover behind the small sand dune. His men sat with him, armed and ready, but ready to do what, they didn’t know yet. Besides, they were technicians, not infantrymen.

He turned toward his number two and handed him the binoculars.

“Here, have a look, and tell me if those two pilots aren’t women.”

The man grabbed the binoculars and stared at the two huddled figures.

“By Allah’s will, they are. And one of them looks wounded.”

“Let’s move toward them. We can find out everything we need to know before the prince arrives.”

Brian Dawson huddled with Hector Rodriquez, Mike Volner, and Charles Moore. He had briefed them right after talking with Chase Williams and Roger McCord.

“And we still don’t know what that Navy helo was doing there?” Volner asked.

“No clue at all,” Dawson replied. “However, in a way, they did our job for us. About ten minutes after the mayday call, the Navy pilot on the ground there made an emergency radio call asking for help. As part of that transmission she said she was certain they had found the missile site that was supposedly in Syria there in Saudi Arabia.”

“Did you say ‘she’?” Hector Rodriquez asked.

“Evidently two ‘shes,’” Dawson replied. “The other person in the aircraft was a female CNA analyst from Normandy . At least that’s how they IDed themselves.”

“This is stranger than fiction,” Moore added.

“Tell me about it, Master Guns,” Dawson replied. “Now, I’ve talked with Op-Center. There are a lot of moving parts to what’s going on around us, but for right now, our mission is to go extract these two ladies ASAP and confirm the missile site. Here’s what I’m thinking.”

The men formed a small circle around Dawson as he brought up a display on his iPad and began to lay out their plan.

Jawad Makhdoom finally came to the conclusion he was not dealing with a squad of SEALs, but only two Americans, and two women to boot. He cautiously led his team toward the enemy. He knew how long it would take the prince to make the trip from Riyadh in his Sikorsky S-92. He wanted to take control of these two unwanted visitors before Ali al-Wandi arrived. He wanted to be in charge.

“Laurie, it looks like they’re coming to get us and they’re all armed.”

“I know; I can see them.”

“I don’t have the kind of combat experience you have. Plus I can’t do shit with my arm the way it is. What do you want to do?”

“You made the distress call on your emergency radio, right? I gotta think help is on the way. If we can just hold them off a little bit, I think we can get ourselves pulled out of here somehow.”

“I agree, but I don’t have any extra ammo on me; it’s all in the helo. What you have in that clip is all we’ve got.”

“Then that will have to do. If this is all the ammo I’ve got, I have to wait till they get closer to start firing. Maybe I can hold them off.”

Major Mike Volner and Master Guns Moore led their small squad up the ramp of the CH-130H Combat Talon II aircraft. Volner was proud of the fact it had only been fifteen minutes since Dawson had initially huddled them together to tell them their mission had changed. Most of what a Tier One JSOC element did was tied up in their well-practiced tactics, techniques, and procedures. They knew what to do. A change in mission was no more difficult than an orchestra conductor passing around a new set of sheet music. With American lives at risk, the mission might be more dangerous and possibly more complex than a pure special reconnaissance mission, but that meant little in the calculus of these men. They were ready. Once buckled into their troop seats, Volner turned to Moore.

“Master Guns, the good news is all the planning we did for our original mission translates pretty well to this one. The only exception is the fact now we can’t wait for nightfall.”

“Got that, sir; the boys are ready.”

“Good. We still don’t have comms with the Americans on the ground so we don’t know if they’re injured or if they’re in enemy hands. We’re going to do a low altitude jump about six miles from the site. Our planners think that with the blowing sand this time of year that will get us on the ground undetected. Then we hump it over to the site, and while we’re doing that, we’ll send the Raven over it to collect as much intel as we can.”

“Got it, sir. Op-Center gonna mess with the Saudi air traffic control before we cross the border?”

“Negative. They want to save that for the helo extraction. They figure if we go in low enough and follow the route the Combat Talon pilots have laid out we can sneak in pretty much undetected.”

“How much time are they giving us on the deck before the extract birds arrive?”

“That’s our call. Once we get eyes on the site we can call for extract. With refueling and all they’ll be about an hour and a half out.”

“That’s a lot of time waiting on the deck, sir. It could create problems.”

Volner grinned at his team chief. “And that, Master Guns, is why they pay us the big bucks.”

The dhows were loaded with a total of about eighty mines and then pushed out of port and headed toward the Strait of Hormuz. The nondescript vessels blended in with the hundreds of others like them in the Gulf as they made their way south.

The grand ayatollah had spoken with his naval commander, Rear Admiral Sayyari, and ordered him to have his naval vessels escort the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy dhows toward the strait. Sayyari had bristled at the order. “Grand Ayatollah, our navy is mighty and we can certainly complete this mission, but should we?”

“Why do you question this, Sayyari?”

“Grand Ayatollah, the West, and especially the Americans, know our Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces often operate independently from the rest of our military.”

“Yes, but what is that to us, and to this mission?”

“Just this: If the Revolutionary Guard vessels go alone and the Americans or others decide to retaliate, we will have deniability that our nation was involved at all. However, if our navy escorts them, then it is an act with national intent. Imam, it is an act that only you yourself could order,” the admiral had replied.

The grand ayatollah had paused, but only for a moment. “I understand your concerns, Sayyari, and it is not the way of a righteous, sovereign nation. I do not intend to cower behind some false front and say we don’t have control of our Revolutionary Guard Corps naval vessels. The world must know, just as it knew in early 2013 when you took your 24th Flotilla to the Pacific and visited China, we are a powerful nation. We are not to be bullied. We gave the world a reason why we are mining the Strait. It is the Islamic Republic of Iran, not just the Revolutionary Guard, that stands by our Syrian allies. We will not make believe someone else, who we don’t control, is taking that action.” Ali Hosseini Khamenei paused. “Will there be anything else, Admiral?”

“No, Grand Ayatollah, nothing else. It will be done.”

It didn’t take the president long to assimilate the information from his advisors and to issue orders to his national security team. He now sat in the Oval Office with Trevor Harward.