you get ahold of him. I’ll be in early in the morning, unless something else develops; keep me posted.”
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
Jackson had not been with the Agency long enough to have the clout to call up the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and since he had seriously exceeded his orders, he figured he’d be better off starting with his own superior – and friend – James Carmichael. He had known Jim Carmichael for more than fifteen years now, dating to September of 2001. Jim had lead a CIA team – the Northern Alliance Liaison Team – that entered Afghanistan very soon after the assassination of General Ahmad Shah Massoud, known in Afghanistan as the Lion of Panjshir. Massoud commanded the Northern Alliance and had been seeking the CIA’s assistance in fighting the Taliban for a number of years. The combination of his assassination on September 9th, 2001, and the attacks in New York and Washington D.C., two days later, ironically, cemented the deal for this assistance. Indeed, the afternoon of September 11th, the director of the CIA ordered the establishment of a team to support the Northern Alliance with all means necessary to defeat the Taliban and root out and kill Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda cohorts. The Clandestine Services Division jumped into high gear: Word quickly went out to the Army’s Special Operations Command looking for anyone from the Special Forces’ Fifth Group who would be willing to join the team – they’d still be active duty, just temporarily attached to the Agency. Thomas Jackson, then a bright, young and eager captain in the special operations community, had signed up as soon as word went out for volunteers. Two weeks after the World Trade Center collapsed, Carmichael, Jackson and the rest of the team was in Afghanistan and working in the Panjshir valley.
Stonewall knew his little trek into Tehran had stretched things more than a little but he also knew that Jim was not one to dwell on technicalities when one obtained the desired results – and Jackson knew he had just delivered. Now, he needed to get those results to those who could actually act upon them.
“Stonewall, where have you been? We’ve been trying to get ahold of you for the past several hours. Do you have any idea as to what is going on over there? It seems the Israelis have just assassinated Ali Bagheri, the deputy secretary of their Supreme National Security Council.”
“Jim, back up a bit. Ali Bagheri is out of the picture as far as Iran is concerned – because he just defected to the Israelis. I’ve been on the mission to pick him up in Tehran – I’ll tell you more about that later. The bombing you’ve seen was designed to make the Iranians think that Bagheri is dead; in fact, he’s sitting right here with me now.”
“Wait a minute; you were in Tehran?”
“I’ll explain later. The real issue is just how far along the Iranians are to achieving a nuclear bomb. Jim, they’ll have the bomb in the next couple of months. If I was a betting man, now that the Israelis have their source out of the country, they’ll be attacking any time; they may already have the strike force warmed up. They already have the EW planes forward deployed to Baku. Jim, the Israelis are attacking – it’s just a question of how soon.”
This was a lot of information all at once, even for someone as experienced as Jim Carmichael.
“Are you sure of this? This is way off of what we’ve predicted. And the Israelis; Tamir hasn’t even dropped a clue to me.”
“Sir, I’ve spent the last several hours talking with Bagheri. His information all checks out. There is no way any of this is disinformation; not from him. We grabbed his laptops, desk top computer and cell phone to verify everything but, sir, everything checks out. You’ll need to check with the Pentagon to see what assets we have in the region. As soon as we touch down in Tel Aviv the Israelis are going to be free to attack as they feel they have nothing left to lose.”
“Well, the extent of what we can or will do is beyond our call, but I’ll be getting this information up to the DNI, the national security advisor, the secdef, and the president as soon as we hang up. We have some resources in the area – we’ve kept a carrier in the gulf since ’03 and I know we have something in the Med, I’m just not sure what all we have there. Give me a call after you’ve landed and have had a chance to talk with Pardo. I know the Israelis have not been sitting on the sidelines diplomatically should they decide to attack on their own. No one in the region wants the mad mullahs of Iran to have the Bomb and all are content to let Israel do the heavy lifting. I know they have had some discussions with the Turks and it sounds like you know more than the rest of us about their relationship with the Azerbaijanis. Aside from that, I don’t know of anyone who would actually assist them with an attack but most in the region will certainly look the other way.”
“Okay, will do Jim. It’s about a two hour flight so I’ll give you a call later this afternoon or early evening my time; that should be right about noon on the east coast.”
“Okay, I’ll be expecting your call. Let me know what Pardo is thinking and just how soon the Israelis might go.”
“Sir, if I read this right, they’re already locked and loaded.”
“Yeah, that’s my thinking too. Let me know what you find out. I’ll set up the meetings with the White House, the national security counselor and the rest of the national security team for later this morning; if you can call back before, say five this afternoon your time, I’d have a little time to go over everything before I brief them.”
“Okay, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
* * *
“Ben, I know you probably don’t know the answer to this question, for obvious reasons, but just how soon do you really think the IDF will launch their attack?”
“Well, we should be landing in around two hours. They’ll want a little time to debrief Bagheri, say about three hours, and that puts it right around 6:00 p.m. our time. Given the complexity of the attack, I would assume that the Air Force would prefer to launch and refuel in daylight – that’s just a guess, not being an airedale myself. As such, I would expect them to launch about twelve hours later, or six in the morning… but that’s just a guess.”
“Okay, that’s kind of what I suspected; no reason to wait now.”
As soon as the team’s plane landed, Dani and Ben escorted Jackson in to see General Pardo. “So, Stonewall, what did you think of your little trip?” Pardo asked him.
“I have to thank you for the opportunity to join the party; it was quite the trip. I must say, it was not quite what I expected when you offered it to me.”
“Well, I couldn’t exactly fill you in on all of the details but I’m glad you were able to go. I realize you don’t know the disposition of your fleet, but could you relay a message for us? You see, now that we have Bagheri, all of our assets are safe; we can attack at will. We’ve already positioned several of our tankers and EW aircraft along the route; in fact, you may have seen some of them in Baku. We aren’t looking for any assistance from you with the strike; we believe we can handle that on our own. In retrospect, our strike on the Syrian nuclear site of Dayr az-Zawr actually served as a nice practice run. However, we would really like to know if we could at least count on US support in some manner. We know you have one carrier, the Roosevelt, I believe, in the Mediterranean and another in the Persian Gulf, the George Washington, with a third, the John C Stennis on the way to relieve the Washington. We are not sure what other ships might be accompanying
