The Gambit

XXIII

Vice Admiral Jeff Ramsey would have preferred having a fourth carrier. He had had three carriers operating on continuous air ops since the initial Iranian attack and he knew needed to give his crews a rest. He started with the Washington as she remained in the gulf and had already had to dodge the initial onslaught of Sunburn missiles. The Stennis and the Roosevelt, both in the Arabian Sea, would continue for several hours, especially the Roosevelt as she had been the last on scene. Oh, but for a fourth carrier. He could only imagine having the six carriers at his disposal that both General Norman Schwarzkopf and General Tommy Franks had in their respective operations in their wars in this region. He knew that with the advances made in munitions since Tommy Franks, and especially “Stormin’ Norman”, that his three carriers more than equaled the might of their six carriers but just the same, to have the might and power at his disposal of a fourth carrier, he could have two carriers conducting round the clock air ops indefinitely! Having commanded the Lincoln several years ago, he knew the powerful capabilities of a single carrier, let alone the three that he currently had but with a fourth, Admiral Fischer at Centcom wouldn’t even need the Air Force working out of Al Udeid — the Navy could handle this little operation all by themselves. In fact, by the time the Air Force got their act together, their vaunted B-1 Lancers or F-15E Strike Eagles wouldn’t have much to do but bore holes in the sky. That is, unless the Pentagon had more in mind than simply an aerial assault on these mad mullahs. He hadn’t heard of any special missions coming down for the SEALS or the Army’s Special Forces but even if plans for this type of action were in the works, his carriers could work with them as well as the Air Force. In the initial stages of the Afghan war, the Navy’s carriers played a huge role for the Special Forces on the ground. If the Navy could work there, they surely could work here where the distances were far closer than having to get into Afghanistan. He wondered if Fischer didn’t have this in mind. Sure, the US could invade Iran, but what would be the point; after Afghanistan and Iraq, a third invasion seemed counterproductive. A Special Forces mission on the other hand seemed the perfect situation here. Discontent with the Mullahs in Iran seemed to be growing and an outright invasion by the Great Satan would only play into the hands of the Mullahs. However, inserting a few ODA’ s into the country could wreak havoc for the mullahs, which, is what we really wanted, wasn’t it?

“Jeff,” as Admiral Fischer welcomed him on the video conference, “how’s the operation going over there?”

“Well, sir, we’ve pretty much eliminated all of the primary targets we had. Every one of the Quds bases has been leveled — there isn’t a building standing on any of their bases. We’ve eliminated the threat from their navy and every base where they could possibly have stored their Sunburn missiles has been hammered. We’ve taken out the last of their air force, their Air Defense Network has been neutralized and anything resembling a Command and Control network has been eliminated. I’m guessing that they still have a few of the old HAWK air defense systems remaining but we’ve taken out the ones that they activated. Aside from a few man-pads we know they have, we have complete aerial supremacy over the entire country. At this point, I have the Washington standing down while the Stennis and the Roosevelt are just finishing up. What’s next on the agenda? We’ve hit them really hard.”

“The Republican Guards are next. We want the Quds and the IRGC completely eliminated. Essentially we are trying to take out the radical element of the Iranian defense forces. We are deliberately leaving their army bases alone to the extent that they do not pose a threat to us. In addition, we will be inserting at least one combined Special Forces ODA and Sayeret Matkal team; they should be on the ground in Tehran by tomorrow.”

“Tehran? Are we going for ‘regime change’ here?” Ramsey asked.

“That hasn’t been decided yet. However, at the very least, we want to do what we can to eliminate the radical element within the country, and the Republican Guards command is based in Tehran, which is where General Qassim Suleimani, their commanding officer, is located. Remember, in addition to the havoc they’ve wreaked across California and the Pacific Northwest, these guys have continued to use Terrorism as an instrument of their foreign policy. We want to take this opportunity to shut that down once and for all. By inserting an ODA team, with more probably following, we’ll at least be prepared for a wide range of options the president may want to pursue.”

“I’ll get the Washington turned around then. They headed for the small ‘bay’ in the gulf between Qatar and Abu Dhabi when the Iranians launched their first attacks in an effort to close the strait.”

“Sounds like a good idea. In the meantime, you’ll be getting some help out there. The Air Force is moving a couple squadrons of Eagles and a tanker squadron to Al Udeid. They’re also putting some B-1’s out of Diego Garcia. The Brits will be getting a couple squadrons of Tornados over to Al Udeid as well. Most of these should be arriving either today or tomorrow. In addition, with NATO getting involved, the Turks have agreed to let us use Incirlik for strike operations as well. Both the Brits and the Germans will have a squadron of Tornados there.”

“Well, let the Air Force, Brits and anyone else know that we’ve done the heavy lifting for them. We have a few of our Tomahawks left so we’ll use the rest of these on the Republican Guards bases. By the time everyone else gets in the game, virtually all of the ‘hard’ targets will have been eliminated but a lot of the soft targets, armor, etc., will remain.”

“Very good, Jeff. I’ll keep you in the loop regarding the Special Forces teams as things develop.”

Major Eric “Thor” Esbjornson’s Air Force career had been fairly distinguished — his Scandinavian heritage and his chiseled 6’4” frame made his call sign pretty obvious. In the past five years he had served a tour in Afghanistan and three tours in Iraq in his relatively short career. The truth of the matter was that he’d been young and single for each of these tours and just loved flying the F-15—it really was a remarkable fighter that, in one instance of a mid-air collision, an F-15 had lost an entire wing yet the pilot managed to bring the plane back to base with a relatively perfect landing! However, Thor had recently married and he assured his young bride that at the first chance, he’d transition to the Air National Guard. He had requested duty at one of NORAD’s alert duty stations on the east coast if possible as both he and his wife were Vermont natives. When an opening at the Barnes Air National Guard Base in Westfield, Massachusetts arose, he jumped at it. His wife couldn’t believe the news — they’d essentially be stationed less than a couple hours from both of their home towns — quite the contrast from Mountain Home, Idaho!

Thor’s first day on the job as an alert pilot started out as expected — he met with his new crew chief and the rest of the maintenance personnel and then met up with Captain Jason “Blackjack” Brady, the SOF, or Supervisor of Flying. The Alert shack, itself, was just that — a shack, Thor thought to himself. This thing had to be a relic left over from WW II — it had all of the requirements of an alert shack but that was it. There was a bunk room for each of the pilots, an office for the SOF, and a lounge/kitchen area for them — and that was it. He couldn’t believe the Spartan nature of the place; he made a mental note to bring in much of the accouterments he had when he’d been stationed at Kandahar — if he could liven that place up, he could certainly do the same here.”

“Thor, good to see you again, man!” Snowman bellowed out as he entered the alert shack. The F-15 community is rather small and Thor had flown with Captain Chris “Snowman” Whiting in Afghanistan when he’d had been on a TDY tour.

“Hey, Snowman! Good to see you, too. Heard a rumor you were an Alert pilot up here; glad there was more to that rumor than most,” Thor added. “But, ahh…, what have you done to this place. I mean, this shack rivals Kandahar — and that’s sayin’ something!”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t been here on Alert status all that long myself; we’ll get this place fixed up!”

“Damn right, we will,” Thor agreed as they walked past the lounge where the maintenance crew had Fox News on — quite loudly — as a Fox News Alert interrupted the morning scheduling. Martha MacCallum broke into the Fox and Friends program with the startling news that several of the refineries in the Los Angeles area had reported a series of explosions and that fires had been raging out of control for a couple hours, compounded by a loss of water pressure at some of the fire locations. They were also getting word of widespread power outages throughout the Pacific Northwest. Details on both were sparse — it was still dark on the west coast — and attempts to connect to an on-scene reporter failed each time the attempt was made, leaving Mac-Callum to ad lib for much of the News Alert. Finally, after repeated failures, Elizabeth Hasselbeck asked Martha if she could get back to them once they established communications with their LA branch, to which she readily agreed.

“What do you think of that?” Snowman asked Thor.

“That’s going to hurt! The west coast, and California in particular, is unique to themselves when it comes to their gasoline supply; I remember a time while I was out at Mountain Home, BP, Shell or some other gas company had one of their refineries down for routine maintenance up at Bellingham, WA, and then a fire erupted at one of the large refineries in California — gas prices spiked to more than $4.25 a gallon out west. Early news reports are always spotty and short on accuracy but if there is even a hint of truth to this, the West — at the very least — is in for a world of hurt!”

Like most days at the Alert shack, nothing much happened, but on this day, the crews pretty much stayed glued to the round-the-clock news coverage on Fox. By late afternoon, a pretty clear picture had developed of what had happened out west, and horrific did not even begin to describe the situation. Live footage from Los Angeles to San Francisco echoed much the same on every news station. The fires were out but the damage remained incalculable. Around nine thirty that evening, Captain “Blackjack” Brady came barging into the lounge.

“Hey Snowman, I just heard from ‘Huntress’!” referring to the Eastern Air Defense Sector (EADS), “they’re putting up a Combat Air Patrol up over Washington, D.C., and New York City!”

“What?!?” Snowman & Thor cried out in unison.

“What the hell’s going on?” Snowman added.

“They’ve never done that before,” Thor continued. “Back on September 11th, Huntress put up a CAP later in the morning but by then, everything was over and it was too late to do anything about what had happened. Do we have any idea as to what this is all about?”

“Huntress didn’t say, other than that they are using the Alert planes from both Langley and Atlantic City, NJ. Has there been anything on the news regarding anything here on the east coast? Huntress was very short on details, probably because we weren’t scrambled.”

“Nothing’s been said, much less even speculated, and you know how news channels really excel at that!” replied Snowman.

“Well, we’re already on an alert status,” added Thor. “If they call our number, we’ll be ready.”

“Roger that!” replied Blackjack.