The ISIS Gambit

by Brad Carlson

“Last night, we received confirmation that the Secretaries’ plane was forced down late yesterday afternoon at Batman air base in extreme southeastern Turkey.”

  “What do you mean, ‘forced down?’”

  “As we currently understand it, they were jumped by four F-16s based out of Batman. You have all heard of the unrest in Turkey that started yesterday afternoon. We called the Secretaries home right away but we had no expectation at all that much of Turkey’s air force would join with ISIS.”

  “Didn’t they have any type of escort in the region?” another correspondent asked out.

  “Yes they did—a pair of Eagles and a pair Raptors were in the region but, like I said, ISIS’s fighters got the jump on them.”

  “Chris, that doesn’t make any sense. How do four Vipers get a jump on a pair of Raptors? The Vipers can’t even see the Raptors on radar?” another reporter asked.

  “The Raptors were in the region but were not expecting any problems. The Secretaries’ plane flew directly over Batman so they flew directly into the Vipers’ path. Once intercepted, a single Raptor shot down all four of the Vipers, too late for the Secretaries, unfortunately.”

  “Chris, if I can follow up, you haven’t answered my question: what do you mean when you said they were ‘forced down’?”

  “At least one of the F-16s fired their cannon at the Secretaries’ plane, taking out one of the engines and then shooting the cabin full of holes.”

  “Oh, my God!” several correspondents cried out.

  “What about casualties?”

  “We don’t have a full accounting but I can confirm that Colonel Bob McKenzie, the pilot of the aircraft, was killed. We have already contacted his family so they are aware of this. There were several other fatalities and injured, but again, we do not have a full accounting. We only know of Colonel McKenzie’s death as Secretary Axelsson helped Colonel Susan Marshall fly the crippled plane.”

  “Have their families been notified? I’d hate to think of them waking up on a Saturday morning to see their wives and mothers in this video.”

  “Yes, we have notified the families of each of them. That was among the first things President Donner ordered this morning.”

  “What about the bombs they showed in the video? Are these really our nuclear bombs?” another correspondent asked.

  “I cannot comment on that.”

  “What do you mean? Those bombs in the cargo hold of the plane are definitely American—the labeling on each one is pretty clear.”

  “As I said, I simply cannot comment.”

  “In other words, it’s another mission for the SEALs,” simply a statement from another reporter.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Thompson replied. “You know as well as I do that ISIS is nothing more than a propaganda machine. Plus, ISIS has more than demonstrated their penchant for video editing.”

  “I understand that,” the reporter replied, “it’s just that the pictures of the bombs in this instance looked incredibly authentic, right down to some of the serial numbers on them.”

  “Like I said, I can’t comment on this.”

  CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

  8:45 AM Local Time

  “Stan, Jim Carmichael. Say, I’m following up on something we found out earlier this morning about ISIS. Do you know what type of PAL the B-61s at Incirlik had?”

  “Yes, we do, they were predominantly CAT Cs. They’re an older device that we were in a bit of a rush to get upgraded. They disable the device but do not actually destroy the weapon,” Kaufman replied somewhat hesitantly.

  “So, I take it that we can’t remotely access these devices, then either, can we?”

  “No, we can’t. Why?” Kaufman asked with noticeable growing trepidation. “What’s up?”

  “I just heard from Colonel Tom Jackson . . . .”

  “This the same guy you had in Iran a couple months ago, right?” Kaufman asked.

  “Yes, it is. He’s currently in Aviano with Mossad’s agent getting the once over of the B-61. It sounds like they’ve identified an engineer by the name of Mohammed Kayani that’s currently up in Raqqa. Apparently, he worked under AQ Kahn in Pakistan.”

  “What? You’re sure about this, right?”

  “As sure as we can possibly be. The photos were taken just this morning.”

  “We got a problem. I need to let General Logan know right away. Meet me at the White House in an hour.”

  Raqqa, Syria

  4:50 PM Local Time

  “General, I’ve just finished the eighth bomb,” Dr. Kayani advised General Shishani. “I need to get started on the planes as soon as possible if we are to meet our deadline.”

  “Excellent. We need to let the Imam know right away. He is most anxious. How long do you think it will take to fix the planes?”

  “That should not take too long. It might actually take longer to drive up to Batman than it will to update the aircraft.”

  “That is very good news. Will the work on the bombs slow down due to your absence up north?”

  “Not really, my staff knows how to disassemble the weapons. This has to be done anyway so while I’m away this evening and tomorrow, they’ll continue their work. Once I return, I’ll be able to work on their reassembly right away.”

  “Imam, Dr. Kayani here informs me that he is ready to head up to Batman with the first of the bombs.”

  “Wonderful. So, we could essentially launch the Mahdi operation Sunday evening? Is that correct?”

  “Yes, I believe it is. I still hope to get up there tonight and that will give me all day to work on wiring each of the planes to accommodate the B-61s. I don’t anticipate any problems with the wiring so I would think tomorrow night we’d be ready to go. I’ll keep General Shishani apprised of the status of the work on the planes.”

  “You’ll never get away with this,” Secretary of State Johnson piped in.

  “Madam Secretary, glad to know you’re still with us,” Shishani said, giving her a lecherous look. “However, at this point, I don’t believe there’s anyone to stop us. You see, Dr. Kayani has disabled the GPS devices so you will not be able to track them but he has not done anything to actually destroy the GPS chips—if that is what you are referring to.”

  “You see, Madam Secretary,” Kayani continued, “your American friends can still locate the GPS devices. We have simply removed these devices from the bombs themselves. Once we have all of these devices removed, we’ll simply move them to a warehouse on the other side of the city.”

  “As to the actual mission . . . well, that is something you really don’t need to concern yourself with."

  The White House Situation Room

  10:00 AM Local Time

  “Jeff, good to see you,” General Kaufman said to President Donner’s chief of staff, Jeff Taylor. “How’s the new president doing so far?”

  “She’s doing just fine, General. Thanks for asking,” President Donner replied as she walked into the Situation Room.

  “Glad to hear that, Madam President,” Jim Carmichael added as he entered the room with his boss, DNI Felix Jones. “Hope you don’t mind a bit of chaos on your first day as president.”

  “I thrive on it, Jim. But before we get too far along, what do we know about Colonel Marshall?”

  “Madam President, she’s something else,” Kaufman replied. “She graduated in the top five percent of her class at the Academy. She’s the consummate athlete playing tennis and swimming at the academy and currently runs about five miles every morning and holds a fourth degree black belt in Jiu Jitsu. She’s a bomber pilot, both Bones and B-2s, and served a couple tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq before transferring to her current assignment. Her husband was killed in Iraq by a suicide bomber about three years back. She has a son who’s a senior at Columbia and a daughter following in her footsteps, she’s a sophomore at the Air Force Academy. Consistent over-achiever, I’d expect her to be putting on her Eagles sometime next year.”


  “I assume we’ve notified both of the kids?”

  “Yes, we have, though it is a bit early out in Colorado for a Saturday morning.”

  “Good, not what anyone wants to wake up to but I’m glad we got to both of them first. Okay, what’s next?”

  “Madam President, this morning, Colonel Tom Jackson called me from Aviano Air Base. He’s there with a Mossad contact of his who’s—

  “Right, we just discussed this yesterday afternoon, though it does seem like last week,” President Donner cut him off.

  “Well, Lieutenant Colonel Yaniv reviewed some photos their advance team took in Raqqa this morning and she identified a Pakistani nuclear engineer named Mohammed Kayani. This guy apparently worked under AQ Kahn.”

  “Wonderful. General, what does this do to our timetable?” President Donner asked Kaufman.

  “It accelerates it dramatically,” the general replied.

  “Madam President,” Carmichael interrupted, “when I spoke with Colonel Jackson, he raised the possibility of him and Yaniv HALO-ing into Raqqa sometime early in the morning and meeting up with either one of the Mossad teams or a team of ours that we’ve managed to insert. Lieutenant Colonel Yaniv worked on Mossad’s Iranian team for a few years trying to snuff out Iran’s nuclear program—this would be a pretty similar operation.”

  “Except that in Iran, the Israelis had an established safe house, operated in a much more civilized society and didn’t have the pressure of dealing with live nuclear weapons,” Pam McDowell added.

  “Jim, what would you have Jackson and Yaniv do? What would their orders be?” President Donner asked.

  “It’d be multifaceted: First, they’d be looking for the bombs. Each one has a GPS chip but, as General Kaufman told me about an hour ago, these could simply be removed and the bomb reassembled—and then moved and we’d have no idea where they’re at. Second, they’d be on the lookout for this Dr. Kayani and, if the opportunity presented itself, take him out. Third-”

  “You mean assassinate him?” McDowell interrupted.

  “Yes, I mean assassinate him,” Carmichael replied, glaring at the national security adviser. “Taking this guy out would definitely slow things down for them and give us more time. And third, since they’d be part of the advance recon team, anything they could relay back to us for the follow up raid that everyone knows is coming would only help matters.”

  “Okay, General,” President Donner began, looking at Kaufman, “ISIS stole these things on Friday afternoon—their time. Just how long would it take this Kayani guy to remove or bypass the PAL and turn this into a functioning nuclear weapon?”

  “No more than a few days and he’d have several of them done. To get all of them done, probably about a week.”

  “So, ‘a few days’ puts us at Tuesday? Monday at the earliest? Can we react that fast?”

  “Yes, ma’am. From a logistical standpoint, we’ll be ready to roll in about eight hours. I’d prefer to give Logan’s troops a few hours to get ready and finalize their planning. Plus, this will give them an opportunity to review the latest intel from the teams on the ground. I’d say kickoff around four AM local time, Monday morning.”

  “How sure are we of the locations? Baghdadi is known for not spending the night in the same place for more than a couple nights.”

  “Madam President, we’re aware of that,” Carmichael added. “We’re pretty confident that since he has Andrea and Colonel Marshall with him, pretty much round the clock, he’ll be a little more confident in his security and, possibly, let down his guard just a bit. We fully believe that he’ll be in the Al-Qadim mosque along with the rest of the hostages. Plus, I’ve been in contact with Tamir Pardo in Tel Aviv, and they remain confident that their pilots are still in the same mosque.”

  “Okay, get Colonel Jackson and his Israeli partner on the ground in Raqqa. They’ll need the frequency to locate the nukes so make sure they have that as well. Let them know that kickoff is scheduled for Monday morning. Anything else?”

  “Not at the moment, Madam President.”

  “Okay, what I’m hearing then, is that we could go in roughly twenty-four hours from now—approximately tomorrow at dusk in Raqqa or thirty-six hours from now which would be early Monday morning. General, how much lead time would you need if we launch tomorrow evening?”

  “Probably a couple hours, Madam President.”

  “That would be, what, about nine-thirty our time tomorrow morning. Okay, let’s reconvene later this afternoon, call it six o’clock—that’s the eight hours you indicated General—and see where we’re at with everything.”

  “Oh, and General,” President Donner said, looking directly at General Kaufman with a fire in her eyes he hadn’t seen before, “if we get the chance, we need to put Baghdadi down like the rabid dog he is—and if Colonel Marshall is the one who does it, I am perfectly fine with that. Do you understand?”

  “Perfectly, Madam President.”

  XXX

  Fort Meade, Virginia

  11:30 AM Local Time

  “Colonel, we’ve been monitoring a warehouse in Raqqa, Syria, as requested. We’re seeing some activity outside the building. Actually, it’s from what might be the loading docks for this warehouse.”

  “Lieutenant, just what are you saying?” Brigadier General Rod Manchester, the deputy director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), asked his satellite imaging lead.

  “Sir, we’ve had the Keyhole”—a KH-12 spy satellite—“parked pretty much directly over Raqqa and we’re getting real-time data. We recently saw a couple army trucks back up to what we believe to be the loading docks of this warehouse. The trucks are covered and they were able to get under an overhang from the loading dock so we couldn’t see what was loaded onto the trucks. However, we’re thinking that something was definitely loaded as the truck seems to be sitting a little lower, as if something pretty heavy was loaded on the truck.”

  “Are you saying they’re moving those bombs?”

  “That’s what it looks like. From what we could tell, they had a couple Humvees escorting them, too, so I’m thinking at the very least, they’ve started to move them. Where to, is anyone’s guess as we didn’t have the capability to follow the trucks all that far. We lost them at the north edge of town.”

  “Good work. Hang on a second,” Manchester told his analyst as he dialed his phone. “Jim, Rod Manchester over at the NRO. One of my analysts just noticed that it looks like ISIS’s starting to move the bombs.”

  “Are you sure about this? We’ve got GPS chips on them and everything looks as though they’re staying put.”

  “We’ve got a Keyhole parked directly over Raqqa and we witnessed two deuce and a half trucks and a few Humvees escorting them away from the building heading north of town. If these are the same trucks our boys use, I’d guess they could probably hold about four bombs per truck. If that’s the case, we’ve lost track of at least eight of them.”

  “You realize what’s north of Raqqa, don’t you Colonel?” Carmichael asked rhetorically.

  “Yeah, I do,” came the fatalistic reply.

  29,000’ over the Adriatic

  7:00 PM Local Time

  “How does the B-61 compare to your nukes?” Stonewall asked Dani. “I’m assuming you’re familiar with your own bombs.”

  “Stonewall, you can be so infuriating at times,” Dani replied.

  “What? You make it sound like that’s a state secret or something,” he replied with a grin as a lounge pillow came flying right at him.

  “Yes, I am familiar with ours,” Dani replied, knowing she was clearly acknowledging the obvious. Yours is a little more sophisticated as the B-61 has a ‘dial-a-yield’ mechanism that can be set for a specific mission. We’ve never been concerned with adjusting the size of the yield—if we’re going to detonate one, there’s no reason for us to scale it back—we’re going to want the maximum effect.”

  “Certainly understand that, if things have gotten that bad that y
ou’re going to use a nuke, no sense in limiting its effect.”

  “Does Rivka know how involved you are with everything that’s going on?” Jackson continued, changing the subject. “Now that you’re going to have either a niece or a nephew, is she going to be a little more concerned with what all you do for Tamir? I know this week’s a little more involved than most but the next few days could be pretty crazy.”

  “I think in a way she does. I mean, I couldn’t really hide my injuries from Tehran. Plus, she’s seen the scars I’ve picked up—I mean, anytime I wear a short sleeve top the scar across my left arm sticks out like a sore thumb, and with a bikini at the beach, there’s no hiding the scar across the side of my chest. Of course, getting shot a couple months ago really got her attention. I think that shook her up a bit.”

  “How much longer do you plan on staying with the Unit?”

  “I don’t know. I love what I do, in spite of the danger. At the same time, both my dad and Tamir are pretty banged up physically. I mean, you can’t tell looking at them but . . . well you know, this lifestyle really takes its toll on the body. I don’t want to be an arthritic cripple when I’m forty—and that’s not too far off—so I’ll probably stay on for a few more years and then call it quits—unless something better comes along,” she added with an impish grin.

  “’Something better’ huh?” Jackson replied. “And I’m sure you don’t have anything in mind, either, right?” he added, knowing full well what she meant.

  “Oh . . . I might. How ‘bout you? You’ve been at this a lot longer than I have and that black patch over your eye tells a clear story of where you’ve been.”

  “I’ve already moved beyond being one of the ‘door-kickers’ and I’m pretty much a ‘violence-manager’ when it comes to the actual action. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m not in the thick of it at times, as you well know. But, yeah, it’s definitely taken its toll on me. I’d like to stay in the business but move on to more of the strategy side of things at some point—especially if they give me a star. If that happens, pretty sure I’ll be kicked upstairs—but for right now, I really enjoy what I do.”