The Gambit

XIV

“Colonel Jackson, Colonel Jackson?”

Stonewall wasn’t sure what he heard first, the knocking on the door or the co-pilot calling out his name. They’d been on the go for a few days and this had been his first real chance to get any kind of rest.

“Yeah, what is it?” he replied.

“Sir, we have an incoming call for you,” the co-pilot advised Jackson.

“Okay, do you have a phone somewhere in the cabin up there?” Jackson asked.

“There’s a phone by the table, mid-cabin, sir. Just pick up the phone and the connection will be made. It’s on a secure line so no need to worry about that.”

Putting on a pair of cargo pants and leaving his shirt and eye patch on the bed, Jackson walked out of his berth and out into the cabin interior and found the phone as described. “Jackson, here,” he said.

“Stonewall, Jim here. We found out at least part of what Colonel Rafsanjani is up to. It appears that several of his troops pulled a Timothy McVeigh on us and bombed several of the larger oil refineries on the West Coast. It is still very early in the morning over there, something like two forty-five or so, so we aren’t sure of the exact damage, or even the extent of it, but if the reports coming in are in any way accurate, this is going to be a disaster rivaling September 11th. Obviously, it is still too soon to account for casualties, and there are some, but the more significant impact is to the refineries. I’m not discounting the casualties in any way, but the impact this will have on the country is going to be huge; we’ve never seen anything like this in our history.”

“Damn!” Jackson elicited in frustration. “I’m not sure where we’re at right now — probably somewhere over the North Atlantic. Do you want us to continue on to El Paso or should we plan on taking a detour to Andrews first?”

“When are you expecting to land at Biggs?”

“It sounds like right around eleven this morning; maybe earlier if the pilot steps on it.”

“No, go ahead with the original plan and head straight to Fort Bliss. You know as much about this guy as anyone and we know precious little as to how they did this. We know some of the perpetrators were killed in the explosions but we have not captured any of them. We need to pin down how they got into the country, how many of them are here, is there anything else planned, etc. We’ve got a lot of work to do yet. The sooner you can get there, the better off we’ll be. Don’t worry about any jurisdictional issues. I’ll get that ironed out on my end. The ATF is really going to want the lead on this given the nature of the attack and, for that matter, every Federal and State agency will want in on this but the FBI’s going to have the lead — they simply have the most horsepower to deal with a case like this. The ATF is going to cry foul over that but that’s just too bad. However, you have one advantage over all of them: we know who did this and you know him better than anyone.”

“Okay, we’ll continue straight on to Biggs. Let us know if anything else arises.”

“I’ll do that. In the meantime, I’m sure I’ll have a meeting at the White House sometime this morning, probably first thing. We still don’t have a lot of intelligence on just what happened, or how, but we’ll need to give the president some options on how to proceed, even though we’ll be working on really limited intel. If you and Dani learn anything — anything at all — let me know right away.”

“Will do, sir. I’m sure we’ll be talking to you later.”

“That was Jim?” Dani asked as soon as Stonewall hung up the phone.

“That was Jim, and it sounds like we’ve learned what at least part of Rafsanjani’s plan was — it appears he just bombed several of the larger refineries on the west coast, Timothy McVeigh-style. It’s too soon to even speculate on the extent of the damage but this could be bad, real bad.”

“Are we still headed to El Paso?”

“Yeah, we know Rafsanjani better than anyone and Jim thinks we’ll be more useful there helping the FBI than anywhere else.”

“Good, that was the original plan, anyway,” Dani added, echoing Jim’s comment to Jackson.

“Well, I think I’ve had about seven hours of sleep — you look like you’ve had a lot more than that”—Jackson began, good naturedly, changing the subject. Dani had emerged from her cabin wearing a stylish Under Armour sports bra, revealing a generous hint of cleavage, and a pair of loose fitting sweats with her long black hair mostly pulled back into a pony tail — she clearly felt very comfortable around Jackson. She looked sexy as hell and he suspected this would get a rise out of her, and he wasn’t disappointed.

“Thanks a lot! You sure know how to make points!” Dani commented as she threw one of the couch pillows at him and then proceeded to charge him and pummel him with a few well-placed slugs to the shoulder. It was at this point that she noticed several scars he had on his left chest, shoulder and arm.

“Say, what happened here?” she asked him regarding the scars on his left shoulder and chest.

“Ah, just a reminder of a bad day we had in Iraq a few years back.”

“Seriously, what happened? Is this related to your eye injury?” she asked, genuinely interested while also noticing a nasty scar on his left temple leading to his eye socket.

“It’s a long story but suffice it to say that we — my team — got placed in a location that Intel thought would be relatively safe — famous last words, right? We were assigned to occupy a major intersection in northern Iraq. Three or four different main roads converged on this one spot and we were tasked with occupying this junction. A battalion from the Eighty-second was on call if we needed immediate support but they were quite a ways away. You’ve heard of Bastogne, from World War II and the Battle of the Bulge? This would be its equivalent in our endeavor in Iraq — don’t get me wrong, we weren’t surrounded like those guys were but we were heavily outnumbered and had to hold a key highway junction. Every one of us on the team got shot up, some more than others, though we held the cross roads until the Eighty-second arrived to reinforce us and I could get my men out. I took a mortar blast pretty close in; took several shrapnel shards in the left shoulder and arm and one little piece cut across my left temple and eye socket. I obviously couldn’t see at the time — I thought it was because of so much blood — head wounds bleed like crazy — but it was actually a combination of blood and the fluid in the eyeball.… We’ve had better days.… Well I can’t sleep now and we still have several hours to go before we land. What’s there to eat on this plane?”

“The galley usually is stocked pretty well,” Dani answered, recognizing Stonewall wanted to change the subject. “Let’s go take a look,” she continued as she walked past him. “Let’s see, we’ve got quite a variety of fresh fruit, eggs, a few veggies, an assortment of meats and cheeses,… kind of looks like mostly fresh items so we can throw something together rather than any processed stuff.”

“Okay, this looks pretty good; what would you like?” Jackson asked turning to Dani.

“What, you’re going to cook?” she asked, looking at him somewhat surprised.

“Yeah, I can hold my own in the kitchen,” he commented as he looked over the galley to see what they had for pots and pans, a coffee pot and possibly a blender. “It’s about breakfast time, right? You up for an omelette and some fresh fruit?”

“Sure, I'll try one; go ahead and surprise me with what you put in it."

"Okay, just remember, you asked for it."

Twenty minutes later, Jackson had four, three egg omelettes prepared — one each for the pilot and co-pilot — of which Dani quietly took notice of his consideration for the flight crew. As for the breakfast, he completely surprised her as to the flavors he had managed to pack into a relatively simple, and often overlooked, breakfast staple.

“This is really good!” Dani exclaimed. “Where’d you learn to cook like this?”

“It’s largely been trial and error. After spending so many years in the Army and eating simply for the caloric intake, I decided that when I had the chance, whatever I cooked would be packed with as much flavor as I could cram into it. It’s been a lot of fun, and I’ve gotten to be a pretty good cook.”

“I guess you have. Sure glad you didn’t let me do the cooking; that would have been a huge disappointment!”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I’m sure you can handle yourself in the kitchen. But, aside from the culinary arts, what else do you do in your free time?” Jackson asked.

“I try to catch up with my sister every weekend that I can. She travels quite a bit; it seems she’s on tour either in Europe or the States for weeks at a time. We both live in Tel Aviv, though she’s married now.”

“Sounds like you two are pretty close. Does she know what you actually do? I mean, given your family connection to General Pardo.”

“We’re real close but no, she has no idea what I do. She knows I’m in the Unit and that I’m a nuclear scientist for Mossad, but aside from that, she really doesn’t know anything. I’m sure she suspects a lot more but that’s about it. How about yourself?”

“I’m in the Special Forces as I really enjoy the lifestyle, and the challenge. I love the outdoors. One of our training missions paired our team up with one from Fort Lewis. They took us on a seventy-five mile trek through the North Cascades in northern Washington — that was a great trip. I actually took a couple weeks off to ride out there and back from Fort Campbell.”

“Oh, wow; that’d be an awesome trip! I’d love to do something like that! What do you have for a bike?”

“I’ve got a Harley, Touring edition. Do you ride, too?”

“Not really; I mean, I’ve got a bike but it’s just not the same here as it is in the States. When I was in Texas, I kind of got spoiled; there’s just so much open space. Here in Israel, we’re so small, you can cover the entire country in a single day.”

“Yeah, that’s what I like about back home, there’s so much to see. I’m also a big sports fan and a huge Dallas Cowboys fan. I do some reading — history, the classics, and some thriller-type of novels, stuff like that.”

“No family to speak of?” Dani asked.

“Two brothers and a twin sister; my folks are still in San Angelo.”

“You have a twin sister? That’s awesome!”

“Yeah, it was kind of neat growing up. It was pretty cool when she got accepted at the Air Force Academy and I went to West Point — two kids from the same family going to one of our Academies in the same year — that doesn’t happen every day!”

“Wait a minute; backup a bit. I thought you went to Texas?”

“The academy first; did my graduate work at Texas. UT is a bit of a tradition in our family. My sister and I kind of broke that but I came back and did my graduate work there. My sister went to Johns Hopkins SAIS for her graduate work. We’re pretty scattered now: I still have a home outside of Fort Campbell, even though I’m temporarily attached to the CIA; one brother’s in Boston and the other’s back in Texas with the folks; my sister’s in the Air Force, currently stationed at Ellsworth in South Dakota — she’s a B-1 pilot.”

“Your sister’s a B-1 pilot?!? How cool is that!?!”

“Yeah, but she’s only a lieutenant colonel — I kind of remind her of that whenever I see her.”

“I’m sure you do — just like any loving brother would do!”

“I’m sure she’s flown over me a few times on some of our missions — don’t know that for sure but we have both been deployed to the Middle East at the same time and the B-1’s been key to a lot the air support we’ve had. I actually stopped by and saw her on the trip out to Fort Lewis.”

“Oh, that’s nice.”

“It’s always fun to catch up with her. Since we’re so scattered, we don’t get to see each other that much.”

“So, what’s your read on Rafsanjani’s attacks out west?” Stonewall continued.

“I don’t think he’s done. Our source indicated that around ‘five hundred’ men were smuggled across the border. It wouldn’t take that many to do what he’s just done. There’s more to follow, and I’d be willing to bet we’ll find out pretty soon. I don’t think he’s one to stretch this out over weeks or months. I think he’ll hit, and hit hard, over the next forty-eight hours — and if he has that many men, I would guess he has a host of targets. Think about it — you’re SF, what could your team alone do in the States, and that’s just twelve men. Now, imagine forty teams! They could wreak havoc from one coast to the other. He’s not done yet, not by a long shot.”

“Have to agree with you there. Problem is, there’s no real way to anticipate what’s next.”