by Jack Strain
The men and women assigned to these operational billets were accustomed to the daily grind filled with hours of boredom that was only punctuated by sudden moments of intense activity when a threat appeared. Some of the younger soldiers were adrenaline junkies who thrived on those moments of managed chaos when a rocket was suddenly launched, or an armed border crossing was detected and relished the power at their fingertips to authorize the release of a counter-barrage or direct drone fire against whatever threat had materialized.
However, even to a group of dedicated professionals who were probably more experienced and skilled than any defense force in the world - trained to react instantly to any perceived threat, today was unlike any other day. This command center and smaller, similar ones throughout Israel were commonly referred to by the soldiers who manned them as the “Canopy of Fire.”
Due to the remarkable number of potential threats from poorly constructed, though numerous, Hamas-built Qassam rockets fired from Gaza; to Hezbollah Katyusha/Grad rockets from the Bekka valley; to lethal ballistic missiles from Iran, Israel developed and deployed a wide-array of multi-layered air-defense systems. The goal was to establish a protective canopy over the people of Israel and deter any enemy who would seek to harm this battle-tested people. Soldiers of the “Canopy of Fire” were tasked with defense, while others in the IDF stood ready to strike back to punish enemies of Israel at a moment’s notice.
Today, their task was not just to defend the people of Israel; instead, their duty was to defend the Jerusalem Accords itself, and all who dared to come to this dangerous part of the world in the name of peace. More than just the honor of the IDF was at stake, the lives of Israelis and Palestinians yet unborn needed to be defended on this day, and every man and woman manning their posts knew it.
A stern-faced twenty-three-year-old female soldier intently tracked the live feed from a surveillance drone flying along the Gaza border. She was about to shift the control path when she saw the plume of a rocket launch appear on her screen. Instantly she announced, “Rocket launch detected, Heron 021 has eyes on a single launch, sector 210 . . . hold, no we have two more plumes . . . wait . . . four more launches.”
A male soldier with a high-pitched voice nervously cut in, “Tracking radar confirms launch point and sector. Numbers climbing, we have eight more launches coming from sectors 215, 307, and 508. Repeat - we now have fifteen rockets confirmed . . . telemetry suggests Qassam rockets inbound. Target: Siderot.”
Colonel Yitzchak Levi was about to authorize the release of two Iron Dome anti-rocket batteries when another report was shouted out by an experienced junior officer in an unusually excitable voice, “Sir, we have thirty launches, no make that forty-five, no sixty-three and counting inbound northern sector…six different launch zones. Telemetry suggests a mix of Grad rockets and several long-range Zelzals . . . ten more launches . . . recommend full counter-measures.”
Col. Levi was an experienced line officer and a veteran of three major campaigns, including command of an infantry battalion during the last invasion of Gaza. It was there that he lost his left leg and three fingers from an RPG that took out his command vehicle. After a grueling eighteen-month recovery and little hope of a combat command again, he requested a transfer to the Air Defense command and accepted a posting to one of Israel’s most important command and control centers. He found the assignment more to his liking than he thought possible.
Reacting to the range of reports rapidly coming in from multiple alerts, he acted quickly and said in a loud commanding voice, “Flash order: all IDF air-defense batteries, weapons free . . . I repeat: weapons free. We are now on alert-one status. Inform the Defense Minister; we are under attack on multiple fronts. Recommend initiate counterstrikes immediately. Get me General Bar-Lev on the phone immediately.”
Thirty seconds later, a gruff voice said, “Bar-Lev here. Yitzchak what’s going on?”
“Sir, we have a major inbound attack coming in along both our northern and southern commands.” Holding his hand over the phone for a split second, he shouted out, “What’s the count up to?” His deputy shot back, “Tracking two hundred rockets in flight; dozens have already touched down . . . numbers climbing.”
“General, this is a full-blown coordinated attack from suspected Hamas and Hezbollah rocket batteries. No word on casualties yet, but all Iron Dome batteries are active and engaging enemy rockets. Awaiting your orders.”
The crusty old armored officer felt a wave of anger wash over him upon hearing the report. Goddamn gutless politicians, I knew this was going to happen. Why even report threat assessments to these bastards if they won’t let us hit back?
“Report on the Central air defense zone, any threat activity at all?”
Col. Levi answered, “None sir.”
Relieved, General Bar-Lev didn’t have to add that a rocket attack aimed at disrupting the opening of the Jerusalem Accords kept nearly every major Israeli senior officer up at night ever since the announcement was made public two weeks ago. Air Defense Command had already stripped fifty percent of the batteries from both the Northern and Southern commands to protect Jerusalem.
Additionally, Bar-Lev deployed to the Central Air Defense Command Israel’s three only operational batteries of the revolutionary air defense system called Iron Beam. Building on the success of the rapid firing short-range Iron Dome anti-missile defense batteries that saved the lives of thousands of Israelis over the past five years. Now, Israel was deploying the first fully operational fiber-optic-directed energy laser - able to take out targets up to seven kilometers and capable of shooting down not just rockets, but also mortar and artillery rounds. This revolutionary weapon system was developed by the skilled engineers from Israel’s own Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.
“Yitzchak, keep sending me updates and make sure you have reloads for those batteries ready for a rapid resupply, I have a feeling this is the just the beginning. Bar-Lev out.”
General Bar-Lev placed the phone in its cradle, made a quick call to the Chief of Staff who immediately raised the entire Israeli Defenses Forces to a war footing and exited his office. Walking at a rapid pace, he headed to the command bunker where he expected to find his fellow chiefs.
Hamas and Hezbollah coordinating their attacks like this. I can feel it in my bones - the bastards are making a play against the ceremony.
Chapter Three
Jahalin, West Bank
His name is Bahadur Rahimi. The thirty-eight-year-old Iranian had spent most of the past fifteen years away from his beloved home on the outskirts of Tehran, dedicated to the vow he took at the age of twenty-five when he joined the Revolutionary Guards and became a proud soldier of the Revolution and servant of Allah. Three years later the handsome and dashing young man was accepted into the elite Quds Force, Iran’s special forces. For the past decade, he trained his Shia brothers to fight the infidels in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and lastly Syria. He not only taught the military arts but also bled with his Shia brothers on a dozen battlefields.
He had taken part in attacks on American soldiers in Iraq and on Israeli border troops (with his Hezbollah brothers in Lebanon) and fought against Saudi Arabia’s American-trained National Guardsmen in Yemen. He followed orders and willingly killed fellow Muslims whether they were Arabs, Kurds, or Turks. All of that changed nearly two years ago, the moment he watched as a detachment of Russian Spetnatz soldiers appeared at his forward-operating base on the outskirts of Damascus. His new orders required him to act as a liaison between the Russians and his fellow Iranian and Syrian soldiers to coordinate attacks against Syrian rebels.
Six months later, the torment Bahadur carried knowing his hands were covered in the blood of his brothers and sisters became too much, and when he decided to act, Bahadur Rahimi, soldier of the Revolution, turned his back on the ruling Mullahs in Tehran forever. He fervently believed they betrayed not only the Revolution but also Allah himself by allying themselves with the infidel Russians.
Bahadur
convinced ten of his brother Quds Force soldiers to join him. Later that night, they surprised a detachment of Russian soldiers, killed them, and left their mutilated bodies strewn throughout the barracks and fled into the Syrian countryside and began hunting Russians in the dark of night. Soon he became known as Bahadur the Brave.
He believed with all his heart that the Jews and the West were somehow behind the slaughter that gripped his Shia and Sunni brethren who fought and slaughtered one another while the West watched in amusement. The only time the infidels even noticed the carnage was when refugee bodies washed up on their pretty beaches. Bahadur believed to his very soul that for a Muslim to spill the blood of his fellow brothers and sisters, regardless if they were Shia or Sunni, was now a terrible sin.
His small band of brothers soon grew and in the wake of the collapse of ISIS now number in the many thousands. The official name of their group is called Allah’s Soldiers for Unity and Vengeance, but Bahadur’s fighters proudly refer to themselves as Allah’s Avengers. Every soldier vowed to strip away centuries of hatred between Shia and Sunni and swore a blood oath to dedicate their lives to killing infidels and forswearing violence against brother Muslims. The only exception is to kill any Muslim who betrays Allah by cooperating with the Western infidels.
Dressed as a medical orderly, Bahadur led six of his brothers to an annex just under the roof of the Jahalin Hospital. Two sweating, strongly-built men struggled to open heavy reinforced doors, while four of his brothers carefully carried the packages to the rooftop. Unlike the first two men who wore typical green scrubs found in hospitals throughout the world, the other two men wore rubber suits and respirators that covered their entire head.
Trying not to betray any hint of fear before his fellow fighters, Bahadur took a deep breath, quickly looked at the live feed from the ceremony, nodded to the bespectacled young man who was now gathering his tools and said, “Sayid are we all set? Can I signal our brothers?”
The former Damascus University biochemistry major looked up and said, “Yes my brother, the systems have all been checked, and I loaded all three units myself. It is time.”
Bahadur the Brave had taken part in too many missions to count over the years, but this was unlike any mission that he or perhaps any other soldier of Allah ever contemplated. This mission, if successful, would not only strike a blow against the infidels that will send a shiver throughout the Western world, but would motivate his Muslim brothers - both Shia and Sunni - to unite and launch a jihad against the West that would be remembered in the annals of Muslim history until the end of days.
Bahadur took out his tablet and read his latest messages. Allah be praised, our brothers in Gaza and Lebanon have started to bring vengeance down upon our great tormentors.
He ignored the grunts coming from those tasked with moving the heavy units up the stairs to the rooftop and instead watched intently at the live feed on his tablet of the ceremony taking place barely three miles away.
What a grave insult, standing there on holy ground dressed in a flowing white gown - that innaha alshshaytan (she-devil), blood of that Great Satan. It is time for him to suffer, to know what loss feels like. Let it begin. Allah Akbar!
With that final prayer, Bahadur hit the enter button and sent the final text message to launch the operation, and now it was in the hands of the one true God, Allah.
Wolfe Villa Hotel, NY
No one was talking any longer as everyone in the room watched with rapt attention as Liliana Wolfe, with all her grace and beauty, practically floated across the stage as if she had been born for this very moment. More than a billion people across the globe were watching this live event as the American “first daughter” pulled a lever, releasing a dozen white doves who flew in a circle above the dais and then began to circle above the crowd and rise to the heavens.
Completely ignoring the dramatic footage, a uniformed Army officer, moved towards the president and whispered into his ear, “Sorry Mr. President, but Secretary Mahler ordered me to inform you that the Israeli High Command is reporting major rocket attacks coming from Gaza and Lebanon.”
Irritated to be disturbed from this remarkable moment, Wolfe just nodded his head and then quickly shook his head from side-to-side almost to shush away an annoying insect. Dutch Schultz was within earshot and motioned to the officer to move to the other side of the room and then quietly followed him and asked, “Any threats detected in and around Jerusalem?”
“None at this time, Sir.”
Relieved to hear that response, the White House Chief of Staff responded, “That will be all Colonel, but please keep us informed of any changes.”
President Wolfe could not take his eyes away from the close-up shot of his daughter as the doves flew in the air and then the frame slowly shifted to a wide angle just as hundreds of white doves were released from all four corners of the square. No viewer needed to know that the birds being released were specially bred and trained pure white homing pigeons who now flew in an amazingly intricate pattern in circles above the crowd. All heads were drawn to the sky as the radiance from the sun, and clear blue skies were the backdrop to this most momentous of events. The Gods of three different ancient religion seemed to be bestowing their blessings on this remarkable event.
“My Liliana has never looked more beautiful, just look at her.”
Chapter Four
Old City, Jerusalem
Within a twelve-block radius surrounding the ceremony, the rooftops, alleys, and balconies came alive with the sounds of motorized rotors that were being launched into the sky. At first, only a few sounds of whirling engines could be heard, then the numbers grew to a dozen, then two dozen, then more seemed to fill the air until over a hundred or so miniature quadcopters of all sizes and designs were crisscrossing the skies of the Old City.
More ominously, they were all heading towards a single GPS coordinate from a hundred different launch points . . . the sound resembled that of a giant swarm of angry insects all converging on its prey. Most survivors would later say the first thing they remembered was that awful buzzing sound from above.
More than a dozen Iron Dome and Iron Beam launchers ringed the Jerusalem Air Defense sector along with dozens of mobile air-defense cannons, heavy machine guns, man-portable surface-to-air Stinger missiles, and hundreds of soldiers on rooftops. Multiple aerial and ground-based platforms fed reams of data, six terabytes per second, streaming into the advanced array of Air Defense computer systems. Two dozen men and women of Jerusalem’s local “Canopy of Fire” command center struggled to keep track of the mounting number of contacts as their radar screens came alive with the nearly thousand white pigeons swirling around the airspace immediately above the ceremony.
An alert Israeli soldier on a rooftop heard the sound before he could identify the source, he was about to key in his mike to report when he eyeballed two mini-drones zipping by his rooftop observation post. “What the hell!”
Quickly recovering, he followed procedure and called it in; “Eagle One, Eagle One . . . This is Sentry 215, repeat 215 . . . Flash sighting, two unknown aerial targets moving east towards Temple One. Repeat: two targets moving at high speed towards Temple One. Cannot, repeat cannot positively identify. Over.”
“Sentry 215, we read you loud and clear. Maintain post and report further sightings . . . Eagle One out.” The nineteen-year-old radar operator was about to call out to her section commander when four more operators announced similar sightings. What the hell is happening out there?
A booming, commanding voice was suddenly heard over a hundred increasingly animated voices below. Standing in a raised position over the three stacked tiers of console operators, Major General David Gonen bellowed, “All of you, keep your damn heads together and tell me what the hell is going on.”
The main hi-def display screen was centered above the ceremony site, the swirling birds were colored in green, but more ominously, more than seventy or more unknown contacts were moving in a seemingly random patte
rn towards the ceremony site, some barely a thousand yards away. No rocket or missile symbols were being tracked, but the veteran commander could feel an attack coming and ordered, “All batteries are to go to threat level Yellow and place fire control systems on standby mode. Someone get me an image of these damn things. Prepare all security teams for a Level-One emergency evacuation. Get me the IDF Chief of Staff on the phone.”
As the swarm of quadcopters was making their way towards their target, three large UAV’s, or unmanned aerial vehicles manufactured by the Chinese company DJI, lifted off from the rooftop and began flying towards three different points surrounding Jerusalem’s Old City. Unlike the smaller nimble drones already in the air, these AGRAS MG-1 UAVs were specially designed and built to serve as agricultural drones for the express purpose of delivering liquid pesticides, fertilizers, etc. from a precision nozzle system and could saturate an area of up to 4,000 meters by 6,000 meters in a matter of ten minutes.
This particular model, with its eight powerful rotors, was capable of carrying a liquid load of twenty kilograms - or more than forty pounds - and fly at just under forty kilometers per hour. It was capable of three modes of flight, Smart mode, Manual Plus, or strictly Manual. Today, its operators chose the Manual Plus. and so, the three MG-1s followed a pre-programmed approach but could instantly switch to full manual mode with but a flip of a switch.
Today this remarkable piece of technology would not be used to deliver nurturing fertilizer to a growing field below nor to eliminate the growth of aggressive weed infestation. No. Today each of the liquid tanks on these flying UAVs was filled with the deadly chemical weapon, sarin. Their express purpose was to kill every man, woman, and child attending the opening of the Jerusalem Accords.