The Gambit

XVI

“Ah, sir, we have another call for you, Colonel Jackson.”

“Okay, patch it through.”

“Stonewall, here,” Jackson said into the phone, this time on speaker.

“Tom… we’ve got a problem,” Jim told him.

Jackson knew this was serious; he’d known Jim Carmichael for years. He never used his first name unless something was seriously wrong. “What’s up? This sounds serious.”

“It is. A couple hours after the refineries were hit we began to receive reports of power outages throughout the West. Mind you, it’s still four thirty in the morning out there so it’s still dark on the west coast. However, we’re hearing of outages from Seattle, to Denver, clear down to Phoenix and Los Angeles. We’re not exactly sure what is happening out there but clearly, we are under attack and we have no idea what else to expect. How many men did you say were thought to be smuggled across the border?”

“We never received a firm number. Our contact in Israel mentioned something on the order of five hundred; we initially thought that to be an exaggeration, and it still might be, but it sounds like the Iranians managed to get in at least two companies of their Quds Force, possibly an understrength battalion. I’ll have Dani give Ben a call as soon as we hang up to see if we can’t nail down a few more details.”

“That’s a lot of men. You were in the Special Forces, how much damage could you do with an understrength battalion?”

“Dani and I were just talking about that. At five hundred men, that’d be more than forty Special Forces A teams… and we could do a lot of damage,” Jackson replied. “Do we know of the extent of the damage to these refineries?”

“We don’t have a complete accounting of the damage — it’s still very early in the morning on the west coast — but it sounds like eleven large refineries in California and two more in Washington were hit.”

“Okay, so if they hit thirteen of the refineries out west, I’d want at least two men per truck — and I doubt these were suicide missions so they’d need someone to pick them up, say half again as many or maybe a few more,… say forty people or so involved in the attack plus there’d be a few more back where they came from, so I’d plan on at least fifty men involved in just the refinery attacks. As for the attacks on the electrical grid, I’d really need more information as to what all was hit but I’m sure they used twice that amount in the second attack. I’d still have men left over for another series of attacks — that is if I was planning this.”

“That’s kind of what I thought,” replied Carmichael.

“Well, sir, given the amount of men supposedly smuggled in, and if properly trained, they could do a lot of damage. Have we been able to pick up any one of these guys?”

“No, we haven’t. We know some died in the attacks on the refineries. There’s been a report of a small firefight up at Grand Coulee: two guards were seriously wounded and three attackers were killed. I believe we have their truck but it’s still too early out there to confirm anything at this point. Other than that, my guess is that everyone else in the second series of attacks got clean away. At this point, we believe they’ve all returned to where they came from but as far as we are concerned, they might as well have evaporated into thin air.”

“Well, sir, we are still a few hours out of Andrews. We can stop and then compare notes or we can just simply continue on to Texas; this ‘six-fifty’ can fly practically halfway around the world without refueling. Once there, we’ll begin snooping around.”

“No, go straight through to Fort Bliss. Once you get there, head straight to the local FBI office. By the time you get there, I’ll have met with the president and the rest of the national security staff in addition to the director of the FBI, Homeland Security, and the attorney general. The director will have briefed the local SAC about your arrival. Right now, you and Dani know more about who, and what, we are up against than anyone. Also, if Dani doesn’t have any side arms on that plane, make sure you both pick up a couple from the FBI. Let me know if they give you any grief about this; you and Dani are better trained than any of the FBI agents you’ll meet. Let me know if you encounter any resistance of any kind. Don’t worry about being subtle; there is no higher priority to this administration right now. The same goes for you, too, Dani. You can offer a unique perspective to this.”

“Yes, sir; thank you, but we have a closet full on board. We’ll be fine.”

“Don’t mention it; just get these guys.”

“Ah, Jim, are you really thinking that this is a criminal matter?”

“Of course not, we’re under attack; that’s why I mentioned that if the FBI gives Dani any grief about carrying a side-arm, let me know. It’s just that the FBI’s the greatest investigative organization in the world — they should be able to give us a good start on this.”

“Okay, Dani, let’s get Ben on the horn; we need to see where he is at regarding our friend from Beirut. We need a ton of solid information and right now, everything we have is pretty slim. We need the location of that tunnel and any other details he might have for us. Put him on speaker once you have him.”

“Ben; Arielle & Stonewall. Have you heard of what’s going on in the US?”

“No, we’ve been a little busy here; we have some more information for you. What’s going on in the States?”

“We don’t have a lot of details on this but it sounds like Rafsanjani took out several large oil refineries in California; we’re not sure of all the damage but it doesn’t sound good. Then, a couple hours or so later, several cities out west began reporting widespread power outages. We haven’t heard any details on this but it would seem the US is under attack.”

“Ho-ly…”

“Yeah,” replied Dani. “We need as much information from this guy as you can get to us. You said you’ve learned a few things — what do you have?”

“Well, it sounds like the entrance to the tunnel they’ve been using is across the street from a large parking lot on the UTEP campus,” that is the University of Texas, El Paso. “I don’t have a street address but the tunnel supposedly exits in the basement of a house very close to the parking lot located between W. Shuster Avenue & Heisig Avenue. These guys supposedly leave a car or pickup in the UTEP parking lot on a routine basis. If you’re looking for someone coming out of the tunnel, I’d check out the parking lot as well and see if there’s been a vehicle sitting there for a while.”

“Ben, Stonewall here; just how reliable is this information?”

“Our guy is somehow connected to the Sinaloa cartel over there — we’re still trying to exactly pin down his connection to them but it seems that someone from Iranian Intelligence has been working with both the Sinaloa and the Medellin Cartels — to what end, our guy doesn’t know. He also doesn’t know exactly how many men were smuggled into the US via this tunnel system, but he’s guessing at least 250. Based on what Arielle is saying, if they’ve been as busy as it sounds, and if I were running this operation, I’d want at least fifty guys for the refinery portion of this operation alone. Who knows what else they’ve been up to but it sounds like they’ve been busy.”

“Okay; that information on the tunnel helps a lot. We’ll get the Feds to stake out that neighborhood right away; it’s not all that big of an area so if they are still using it, we should be able to find it. Give either Dani or me a call should you come up with anything else. Really appreciate this, Ben. Thanks a lot!”

“Dani, let’s get Jim back on the line one more time.”

“Sure; just a second. Mr. Carmichael, this is Dani. Stonewall’s here with me. We appear to have some pretty solid information on where these guys entered the States.”

“Jim, we just spoke to Dani’s CO. It seems that a tunnel from Juarez exits in the basement of a house in an El Paso neighborhood relatively close to the UTEP campus. A vehicle is often left in a large parking lot on the UTEP campus relatively close to W. Shuster and Heisig Avenues for anyone coming through. We don’t have an address but given the reported proximity of the house to this parking lot, it shouldn’t be that difficult to find if anyone else comes through here. Since they’ve already started their operations, we kind of have to figure that they felt they had enough men already over here. However, given the complexities of traveling half way around the world, there had to be some challenges. Maybe we can get lucky and pick up on someone who had some complications with their itinerary. They’re not going to want to raise any suspicions anywhere so I would guess they made travel arrangements all over the globe. We need to get some people over there stake out that neighborhood and then I’d alert the UTEP security guys and see if they have any cameras on their parking lot. If so, this could really help us.”

“Okay, good job guys. Dani, thanks for getting back to me right away. I’ll let Homeland Security know as well as the FBI office in El Paso and relay this to them. I’ll let them know you’ll be there in a few hours as well. I’m actually heading to the White House as we speak. I should be there in just a few minutes. Oh, and that pickup truck we recovered up at Grand Coulee, my sources are telling me it’s registered to a ranch in Eastern Oregon; don’t think Bob Harmon wants that out yet but that’s the word I’m getting. Do you have anything else I can relay to the NSC staff?”

“Not at this point. If we hear of anything, who should we contact? I assume Felix will be in the same meeting.”

“Yeah, Felix will be in this meeting as well. Send anything you have to my assistant — she’s cleared for anything you might find and if it’s urgent, she knows how to get ahold of either of us.”

“Okay, people, talk to me. What’s going on?” President Barre demanded.

“One thousand towers are down?!? How in the hell did they do this?”

“Well, sir,” interrupted Carmichael, “since we met yesterday noon, we’ve learned that the Iranian’s attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz was more or less a diversion from their real retaliation plans. We suspected as much at the time, but didn’t have anything at all to go on; it was just a hunch. After our meeting yesterday, Colonel Jackson and his Mossad teammates had a chance to debrief Dr. Bagheri to see if he could offer any insight into how the Iranians might retaliate. All he could offer was that something very secret was in the works and at one point, he overheard a conversation between Said Jalili and a Colonel Ashkan Rafsanjani, who is an ambitious — and very capable — Quds Force officer and, from what I understand, the operations officer for their Supreme National Security Council, about using a series of tunnels to gain access somewhere for a very secret operation. Our — that is the Agency’s as well as Mossad’s — initial belief was that this referred to the complex series of tunnels the Israelis found in Gaza from their latest incursion there. Then, early last evening, we learned from Colonel Jackson’s teammates that one of Mossad’s operatives in Beirut heard that a couple ‘Arab-types’ had contacted both the Medellin and the Sinaloa cartels about smuggling some five hundred troops into the United States via a tunnel system from Juarez to El Paso. I let Bob know about this right away but at that point all we really knew we had was an entrance location and a rough estimate as to the number of soldiers who might have infiltrated across the border.”

“Wait a minute,” demanded Fleming, “you knew we had a situation like this and you didn’t tell us?!?”

“Tom, I told Bob; he is the secretary for homeland security. I suggested we alert the Customs Border Patrol and the DEA to see if they might have any information on this but I let Bob run with this from here. Realize, we only learned of this about twelve hours ago.”

“What all did we tell the Border Patrol and the DEA?” Fleming demanded. “Did we let them know that we might have as many as five hundred Iranians that might be running around this country?”

“Tom,” Harmon replied, “I told both the Border Patrol and the DEA that we had just learned of a tunnel that the Sinaloa cartel might be using to smuggle illegal immigrants into the country from Juarez to El Paso. I didn’t tell them anything about any Iranians or even how many might have been smuggled in here. I thought you might want to keep a tight lid on this.”

“Damn right, we do,” Fleming added. “The minute this gets out, this administration is over. The Republicans have been screaming for increased border security and the minute they learn that five hundred Iranian soldiers came over the border, there’ll be hell to pay.”

“Excuse me,” interrupted Felix Jones, “but this country just received a blow more serious than what hit us on September 11th, and you’re more worried about reelection? I realize we don’t have near the fatalities we had then, but this will be a far more serious situation. If you haven’t realized it yet, the entire state of California — which boasts the eighth largest economy in the world! — is out of gas and in the dark you imbecile! Moreover, the five hundred or so that obviously got through are from their Quds Force, not their Army — these guys are fanatics.”

“You don’t need to lecture me, Dr. Jones,” Fleming said acidly. “I know of California’s importance, but they’ll get through this. We have other refineries and we can ship gasoline to them.”

“Tom,” Felix continued, “California’s refining capacity has been cut by more than seventy-five percent and there are only three pipelines bringing gasoline into the entire state of California — three!! Like I just said, this attack is going to have repercussions far beyond the initial attacks. There will be a ripple effect throughout the economy: there’ll be a spike in unemployment, food prices are going to soar immediately and we’ll have general inflation for at least a couple of years, not to mention that energy prices are going to sky rocket! We’ll be lucky if we only have a serious recession. We’ve been hit, and hit hard. The question is not how do we seek to preserve this administration — that’s over and done with. The questions are: where are these guys, are they going to hit us again, and how are we going to respond to this?”

After a very uncomfortable, pregnant pause, President Barre began, “Okay, now that Felix has ignominiously written the epitaph for my administration, do we know anything else?”

“Mr. President, we managed to stop one of the attackers,” Secretary Harmon added. “Up at Grand Coulee, it seems one of the attackers got separated from the rest of his team. By the time this one got to its target, we already had a well-armed contingent guarding the electrical switchyard, presumably the intended target. A short, but intense, firefight erupted leaving two of the guards seriously wounded and killing all three of the attackers — but we have their pickup. I haven’t learned if we’ve been able to find out where — and to who — this vehicle is registered. It is still relatively early out there — not to mention, early in the investigation — but as soon as we know something, I’ll pass it along.”

“We haven’t learned anything yet from this incident?” the President demanded.

“Sir, this happened a little after four this morning. There were three men in this truck and it was loaded with three ANFO barrel/bombs. Two men got out of the truck and immediately fired upon the guards. They returned fire; with more favorable results. It seems the guards were fortunate enough to kill the driver before he could detonate the bomb; had it detonated, it would have destroyed the entire switchyard and killed all of the guards up there. We’ve called in a bomb squad from Spokane to defuse this.”

“Were we able to find or capture any of these attackers anywhere else?”

“No, sir. They have pretty much evaporated into thin air. As soon as we can track down the registration of this pickup, we’ll know a lot more provided it’s not stolen or something along those lines.”

“Mr. President, Colonel Jackson is on his way to El Paso, along with his Mossad teammate, Danielle Yaniv,” Carmichael interjected. “As I said, we believe we know the man responsible for this is Colonel Ashkan Rafsanjani. We believe he is working at the express direction of Said Jalili, the secretary of their Supreme National Security Council. As I mentioned earlier, Dr. Bagheri stated that he overheard Jalili and Colonel Rafsanjani discussing a plan involving a tunnel operation. Colonel Rafsanjani has been a frequent visitor to Beirut and the Beqaa Valley and we believe he was one of the two ‘Arab-types’ who met with the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico. Since Jackson knows Rafsanjani the best, I told both him and Miss Yaniv to get to El Paso as fast as they could. I presume the FBI, initially, will be in charge of this so I told them to hook up with the FBI’s SAC as soon as they arrive.”

“Okay, very good, since the way it sounds, Colonel Jackson is the only one who seems to have any kind of an idea as to what is really going on,” replied President Barre.