Clancy, Tom - Op Center 04 - Acts Of War

by Acts Of War [lit]

  Halfeti, Turkey

  As they swept along the Euphrates, Ibrahim had peered through the waves of heat rising from Mahmoud's busy 20mm cannon. The ripples had distorted the reservoir and its mighty dam as their attack ravaged it.

  The Syrian's hands had been resting on the stock and trigger of the side-mounted machine gun. It hadn't been time for him to act, so he'd watched chunks of stone explode inward along the center of the dam, chewed up by the barrage. Though Walid kept the chopper steady, Ibrahim kept his legs braced firmly on either side of the backpack, which lay between them.

  As the helicopter flew over the dam, Ibrahim had seen one large piece of stone strike the dam engineer as he tried to surface. The blow probably hadn't been enough to kill him, though that wouldn't matter. In just a few moments the engineer would be dead.

  The helicopter had come in low over the dam, and Walid swung it around sharply for another pass. As they'd flown toward the control house, Ibrahim had peppered the structure with fire from his machine gun. Though one Turk died in the doorway, Ibrahim's task had not been to kill the occupants. It had been to keep them crouched under tables or chairs, away from the windows and from the radio. Walid hadn't wanted anyone to see is which direction they were headed when they left. If they couldn't get back to Syria, they wanted to get as close as possible before they were pursued.

  In the back seat, Hasan was tossing out strips of aluminum to jam signals from the control house. At the same time he was monitoring military communications on a radio headset. If someone in the control house did manage to get a message out, perhaps by telephone, and they were pursued, the plan was to land the helicopter and scatter. Then they would make their way individually to one of two safe houses. The huts were located in southern Anatolia on the Syrian border, run by Kurdish sympathizers.

  The helicopter had swung around for another pass. Once again Mahmoud's powerful 20mm shells had slammed against the center of the dam. Shards of stone flew in all directions as the cannon fire pounded down. The attack wasn't designed to weaken the dam. It was being used to create a foothold for the package between Ibrahim's legs.

  Now that the moment was nearly upon them, Ibrahim unzipped the backpack to make sure that everything was in order. He looked down at the four sticks of dynamite bound neatly in a pack with electrical tape. There was a timer hooked to an ignition cap on top. He ran his finger along each of the wires and fuses to check the connections. They were secure. The nails were also fast, the heads taped to the inside of the bag. The entire package would sit firmly in place when lodged amid the bullet-shattered stones.

  Walid lowered the helicopter to just a foot above the dam. Ibrahim hopped out, placed the bag in the largest crevice, and set the timer for one minute. Then he climbed back into the chopper and it soared off.

  The young Syrian pulled off his sunglasses and looked back. He saw the sun rippling along the top of the water. Birds pecked at the fish, and the sky behind them was unusually clear. Then, in an instant, the tranquility was rudely destroyed.

  Ibrahim winced as a yellow-red burst of flame grew quickly from the top of the dam. The sound reached them a moment later and caused the helicopter to shudder. Hasan and Mahmoud also looked back as the long stone expanse folded outward at the center. As it did, it pulled the sides of the sweeping structure with it. The reservoir came cascading over the crumbling top of the dam, swallowing the fireball and turning it to steam. The giant wave disgorged the stones it had swallowed, spilling them over the shattered top of the wall. The flood pushed down the center of the dam in a giant V shape that reached almost to the base. Water poured through the breach, easily brushing aside the ends of the earthen dam and crashing onto the trees below. The steam quickly dissipated as churning white breakers slapped away the control house and carried its shattered remains into the valley beyond.

  The sound of the deluge filled the cabin, dwarfing the roar of the rotor. Ibrahim couldn't even hear his own shout of triumph. He saw but did not hear Mahmoud praise Allah.

  As the helicopter raced south over the thundering waters, Hasan suddenly tapped Walid on the shoulder. The pilot half turned. Has an held his hand out, palm down, and swooped it forward. Then he held up two fingers. Two jets were on their way.

  Hasan was clearly annoyed. The helicopter had been flying too low to be spotted by radar, and he'd apparently heard no transmisison from the control house radio. Yet somehow the Air Force knew what had happened here.

  "I am sorry, my akhooya, my brother!" Hasan shouted.

  Walid held up his hand. "We put our trust in the word of God!" he shouted back. "It is written, 'He that flees his homeland for the cause of God shall find numerous places of refuge.' "

  Hasan did not appear consoled, though the other members of the team seemed exultant. The mission had been a success and their place in Paradise was secured.

  Still, no one was quite ready to give up. As Walid guided the helicopter over the vast, swelling Euphrates, Mahmoud began loading another belt into his cannon. Ibrahim turned to his left to help him. Paradise notwithstanding, they would fight for their lives and for the privilege of continuing to do the work of Allah in this world.

  Suddenly, Walid shook his head. "Saa-Hib!" he shouted. "Friend! You will not need that."

  Mahmoud leaned toward him. "Not need?" he yelled back. "Who will do battle for us?"

  Walid replied, "He who is the Sovereign of the Day of Judgment."

  Ibrahim looked at Mahmoud. Both men believed in Allah and they had faith in Walid. But neither of them believed that the strong hand of the Lord would reach down and protect them from the Turks.

  "But Walid---" Mahmoud said.

  "Trust in me!" Walid said. "From safety you will see the sun set."

  As Walid flew on with some purpose in mind, Ibrahim contemplated their chances of surviving. The nearest Turkish Air Force base was two hundred miles to the west. Traveling at maximum cruising speed, the fighter planes---deadly American-made Phantoms, most likely---would be here in about twenty minutes. The helicopter would still be far from the Syrian border. From his Air Force days he knew that each of those jets probably carried eight heat-seeking Sidewinder missiles under each wing. Any one of those rockets would be enough to destroy the chopper long before the jets could be seen or heard. And the Turks would shoot them from the sky rather than let them leave the country.

  Still, Ibrahim thought, let the Phantoms come. He looked away from his brother. The Ataturk Dam, the pride of Turkish arrogance, was in ruins. The Euphrates would flow as it did in ancient times, and the Syrians would have more water for their needs. Towns for dozens of miles downriver would be flooded. Villages upriver, which depended upon the reservoir, would be without water for their homes and crops. Government resources in the region would be sorely burdened.

  As Ibrahim turned and looked back at the maelstrom, he was reminded of a passage from the Koran:

  "Pharaoh and his warriors conducted themselves with arrogance and injustice in the land, thinking they would never be recalled to Us. But We took him and his warriors, and We cast them into the sea. Consider the fate of the evildoers."

  Like the taskmasters of Egypt and the sinners drowned in Noah's flood, the Turks had been punished with water. Ibrahim was briefly moved to tears by the glory of what had just transpired. Whatever suffering might await him, it could only enhance the sense of holy purpose that filled him now.

  TWELVE

  Monday, 9:59 a.m.,

  Washington, D. C.

  Bob Herbert rolled his wheelchair into Paul Hood's office. "Mike was right as usual," the intelligence chief said. "The NRO confirms that the Ataturk Dam's been heavily damaged."

  Hood exhaled tensely. He turned to his computer and typed in a single word: "Affirmative." He appended this to his emergency Code Red E-mail of 9:47 a.m. which contained Mike Rodgers's initial evaluation. Then he sent the confirmation to General Ken Vanzandt, the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He also copied it to Secretary of Sta
te Av Lincoln, Secretary of Defense Ernesto Colon, Central Intelligence Agency Director Larry Rachlin, and super-hawk National Security Advisor Steve Burkow.

  "How close is the ROC to the affected region?" Hood asked.

  "They're about fifty miles to the southeast," Herbert said. "Well out of the danger zone."

  "How well is well?' " Hood asked. "Mike's idea of a buffer zone isn't the same as other people's."

  "I didn't ask Mike," Herbert said. "I asked Phil Katzen. He had experience with the great Midwest flood of 1993 and he did some quick computations. He says that within the fifty miles there's a good fifteen-to-twenty-mile cushion. Phil figures the Euphrates will rise about twenty feet straight down through Syria to Lake Assad.That won't hurt the Syrians much, since a lot of that area is seasonally dry as toast and deserted. But it's going to flood out a lot of Turks who live in villages around the river."

  Darrell McCaskey arrived as Herbert was speaking. The slim, forty-eight-year-old former FBI agent, now interagency liaison, shut the door behind him and leaned quietly against it.

  "What do we have on the perpetrators?" Hood asked.

  "Satellite reconnaissance showed a Turkish 500D leaving the site," Herbert said. "Apparently, it was the same helicopter stolen from the border patrol earlier in the day."

  "Where's it headed?" Hood asked.

  "We don't know," Herbert said. "There're a pair of F-4s looking for the chopper now."

  "Looking for it?" Hood said. "I thought we had it on satellite."

  "We did," Herbert said. "But sometime between one picture and the next it disappeared."

  "Shot down?"

  "Nope," Herbert said. "The Turks would've told us."

  "Maybe," Hood said.

  "All right," Herbert agreed. "Even if they didn't, we'd have spotted the wreckage. There's no sign of the helicopter for a radius of fifty miles from the last place it was seen."

  "What do you make of that?" Hood asked.

  "I honestly don't know," Herbert said. "If there were any caves in the area which were large enough, I'd say they flew right in and parked it. We're still looking, though."

  Hood was annoyed. He wasn't like Mike Rodgers, who enjoyed putting clues together and solving mysteries. The banker in him liked information orderly, complete, and now.

  "We'll find the chopper," Herbert added. "I'm having the last satellite photograph analyzed to get the exact speed and direction of the 500D. We're also running a complete study of the area's geography. We'll try to find a place like a cave or canyon where a helicopter could hide."

  "All right," Hood said. "In the meantime, what do we do about the ROC? Just leave it?"

  "Why not?" Herbert asked. "It was designed for on-site reconnaissance. You can't get any more on-site than this."

  "That's true," Hood agreed, "but I'm more concerned about security. If this attack is a taste of things to come, the ROC is relatively vulnerable. They've only got two Strikers covering four open sides."

  "There's also a Turkish security officer," McCaskey added.

  "He seems like a good man," Herbert said. "I checked him out. I'm sure Mike did too."

  "That's three people," Hood said. "Just three."

  "Plus General Michael Rodgers," Herbert said respectfully, "who is a platoon unto himself. Anyway, I don't think Mike would let himself be evacuated now. This is the kind of thing he lives for."

  Hood sat back. Rodgers's career as a soldier included two tours of Vietnam, command of a mechanized brigade in the Persian Gulf, and leading a covert Striker operation into North Korea. Rodgers wasn't going to run from a terrorist attack on a dam.

  "You're right about that," Hood admitted. "Mike will want to stay. But Mike isn't the one who has make that decision. We've also got Mary Rose, Phil, and Lowell in the saddle and they're all civilians. I just wish we knew whether the attack was an isolated event or the first salvo of something larger."

  "Obviously, we'll know more when we find out who's responsible," McCaskey said.

  "Well give me something to chew on," Hood said. "Who do you think was behind this?"

  "I've spoken with the CIA and with the Turkish Special Forces, and also with the Mossad in Israel," McCaskey said. "They're all saying it's either Syrians or Muslim fundamentalists within Turkey. There's a strong argument for both. The Muslim Fundamentalists desperately want to weaken Turkey's ties with Israel and the West. By attacking the infrastructure, they place a burden on the populace and turn them against the government."

  "If that's the case," Hood said, "we can expect more attacks."

  "Right," McCaskey replied.

  "Yeah, but I'm not going for that one," Herbert said. "The fundamentalists are already pretty damn strong in Turkey. Why would they try to take by force what they can conceivably win on the next ballot?"

  "Because they're impatient," McCaskey pointed out. "Iran is paying a lot of their bills and Tehran wants to see results."

  "Iran has already put Turkey in the 'win' column," Herbert replied. "It's just a matter of time. Their big playground now is Bosnia. They were outfitting the Bosnians with arms and advisors during the Balkan war. Not only are those advisors still there, they're multiplying like guppies. That's how the fundamentalists plan on getting into the heartland of Europe. As far as Turkey goes, Iran's going to let the political situation move at its own pace."

  "Not if Turkey continues to rely more and more on Israeli military assets and on financial aid and intelligence from the United States," McCaskey said. "Iran doesn't want another U.S. stronghold in their backyard."

  "What about the Syrians?" Hood interjected. McCaskey and Herbert always went at each other like this, passionately but respectfully. Darrell Consensus and Bob Gut Instinct, psychologist Liz Gordon had once called them. That was why Hood had asked McCaskey to pop in when Herbert phoned that he had news about the attack. Between the two of them, Hood always ended up with a concise but comprehensive overview of a situation---though it was necessary to keep them from turning it into a political science debate.

  "With the Syrians we have two possibilities," McCaskey said. "The terrorists could be Syrian extremists who are sold on the idea of the Middle East becoming Greater Syria---"

  "Adding it to their collection, like Lebanon," Herbert said bitterly.

  Hood nodded. It was the terrorist bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983 that had cost the intelligence officer his wife and the use of his legs.

  "Correct," said McCaskey. "Or what seems more likely is that the dam-busters are Syrian Kurds."

  "They're Kurds, all right," Herbert said confidently. "Syrian extremists don't do anything without the approval of the military, and the military takes its marching orders from the Syrian President himself. If the Syrian government wanted to spark hostilities with Turkey, they wouldn't do it this way."

  "What would they do?" Hood asked.

  "They'd do what aggressor nations always do," Herbert said. "They'd hold war games on the border, massing troops there and provoking an incident to draw the Turks over. The Syrians would never set foot in Turkey. As we used to say in the military, they like receiving. It goes back to 1967 when Israeli tanks rolled in on the third day of the Six-Day War. Defending their homeland makes Syrians look and feel like freedom fighters instead of like aggressors. That helps to rally other Arab nations around them."

  "In addition to which," McCaskey added, "except for 1967, the Syrians generally like to fight proxy wars. They gave arms to Iran to fight Iraq in 1982, let the Lebanese kill each other during fifteen years of civil war, then went in and set up a puppet regime---that sort of thing."

  Herbert looked at McCaskey. "Then you agree with me?"

  "No." McCaskey grinned. "You agree with me."

  "So assuming Bob is right," Hood said, "why would Syrian Kurds attack Turkey? How do we know they weren't acting as agents for Damascus? They may have been sent to Turkey to pick a fight."

  "The Syrian Kurds would sooner attack Damascus than Turkey," Herbert sai
d. "They hate the current regime."

  "The Kurds have also become increasingly empowered by the Palestinian example," McCaskey said. "They want their own state."

  "Though even getting that won't bring them peace," Herbert said. "They're Sunni Muslims and they don't want to be mixed with the Shiite Muslims and the rest of the population. That's the big war they've been fighting in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. But put the Sunnis together in a new Kurdistan and their four branches---the Hanafites, Malikites, the Shafites, and the Hanbalites---will start tearing each other apart."

  "Maybe not," McCaskey said. "The Jews have strong differences of opinion in Israel, but they coexist."

  "That's because the Israelis believe more or less the same thing in terms of religion," Herbert said. "It's politics where they differ. With the Sunnis, there are some very basic, very serious religious differences."