The Gambit

XXIV

Dani and Jackson arrived at Fort Stockton just as the Air Force G650 touched down at the municipal airport. Both of them had long since lost track of their duffle bags so as soon as their plane came to a stop, they boarded the craft, secured the cabin door, and prepared for takeoff. The US Air Force version of this craft had many of the same amenities as the Israeli version had, though the configuration of this one anticipated several more passengers. This one had to accommodate another twelve people they’d be picking up at Fort Campbell so the main cabin had a row of leather covered seats on each side of the craft with four berths in the rear with a double bunk in each. The galley in this craft, similarly stocked as the prior Israeli craft, was situated between the berths and the cabin seats. A small shower and rest room occupied the very tail end of the cabin.

“We’ve got about a three hour flight to Fort Campbell so choose the berth you want and I’ll take another one. We’re going to need some sleep,” Jackson said to Dani.

“That’s for sure, I’m exhausted. Do you have any idea as to who we’ll be picking up in Kentucky? For that matter, any idea as to what we’ll be doing?”

“No, you know as much as I do. I still know quite a few guys in the group but no idea as to what team we’ll be picking up. The Special Forces are a pretty small fraternity so I’m sure I’ll know someone on the team but aside from that, no ideas. Since we’re going to Campbell, though, I’m sure we’ll be picking up an A team and not a Delta detachment; they’re usually located at Bragg in North Carolina. Not that that matters all that much — an A team is still a very versatile — and very capable — unit. My guess is, we’ll be the first of many, if indeed we don’t have any other teams already over there.”

“We’ve heard of a lot of dissension within the Iranian military; I’m sure you’ve heard the same thing. Think they’re tasking us to link up with some of the dissidents?”

“That’s the mission we train for, though there is usually some chatter with the brass about an operation like that. I haven’t heard a thing. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

“Is there a shower on board this thing? We have them in ours; I forgot how hot and muggy Texas can be. Oh… wait, we left our bags at Fort Bliss! Great!! Well, I’m going to hit the rack. Give me a half hour notice before we land at Fort Campbell. I’ll wash up then.”

“Will do.”

Two hours later, Jackson heard a knock on the cabin door.

“We’re about half an hour out of Campbell, Colonel,” the copilot added as he knocked on the door.

“Gotcha,” replied Jackson.

Pulling his cargo pants back on he got up, knocked on Dani’s cabin door and said “C’mon sunshine, we’re about half an hour outside of Campbell.”

“Sunshine?!? Stonewall, can’t you read a clock?” Dani hollered through the door. “It’s still the middle of the night. The sun’s not due up for hours!”

“It has nothing to do with the sun; it’s about your attitude,” Jackson said, standing in the door way as she opened the door.

“Ah!!!” Dani shrieked as she took one look at Jackson.

“Stonewall!! What’s with your eye?”

“Like it? I’ve got a spare eyeball; this one’s all black and I’ve had the Special Forces insignia engraved in gold on it — pretty cool, huh?”

“Stonewall, you are so maddening!” Dani exclaimed as she charged at him hitting him in the shoulder and arm as he fended off her little attack.

"You still wearing that filthy sports bra?” He asked her, noticing she wore the same sports bra as on the flight over. “You know, you could take that thing off.”

"Yeah, you’d like that wouldn’t you? Sorry, Cowboy, but that’s not gonna happen; not yet anyway," she added.

Special Agent Tom Norris had kept his team working through the night in an effort to crack the encryption on each of the laptops they had recovered. By noon, they had managed to get into each of the computers but each one appeared to have a multilayered encryption setup: they had gotten into the computer and had found several files of interest but each one had its own security features. He had heard from Fort Meade and they were about as far along on the cellphones as his team was on the laptops. His lead techie had told him that the hard part had been done. Now that they were in, he was advised it was only a matter of time before they cracked the encryption for each file. What Norris obviously did not know, was just how much time he had — or didn’t have.

Captain Rouhani had let his men rest about as long as he thought he dared. His men had now rested for about eighteen hours and he anxiously wanted to get on with their mission. They only had about a five hour drive ahead of them and then the final act of this operation would really begin. Rouhani told his men that they would be leaving one of the trucks behind; three vehicles would be enough for them and their equipment. At this point, all they really needed were their arms and ammunition. Each one carried an M-4 carbine and a Glock 19 9mm pistol, plus spare magazines for each weapon. They weren’t planning, much less hoping, to get into any kind of a firefight, but again, Rouhani wanted to be prepared should they have to fight their way in to their target. A little after two that afternoon, then, Rouhani and his men gathered up all of their gear, loaded up and headed out on I-84 towards Boston.

“Stonewall!” Sergeant Nick Rossi announced, “Good to see you.”

“Hey Rossi, didn’t know you’d be here,” Jackson announced as he saw his former weapons sergeant board the plane with two large duffle bags. “Good to see you, too. Dani, this is Sergeant Nick Rossi, who I believe, is now… the operations sergeant for the team? Rossi was the senior weapons sergeant on my last team.”

“Nice to meet you Sergeant Rossi,” Dani responded.

“Likewise. Hey Ferro, c’mon up and look who’s here,” Rossi yelled back to Sergeant Marcus Taliaferro.

Jogging up the boarding stairs of the plane to meet them, Ferro yelled out “Hey, Colonel, good to see you again. Heard you’ve been a little busy lately.”

“Yeah, you could say that. Ferro, this is Dani. Dani, this is Sergeant Marcus Taliaferro. Ferro was the senior medic on my last team with Rossi.”

“Nice to meet you, Ferro,” Dani said.

“You, too, Dani. If you’ll excuse me, I still have a few things to pack up. I’ll be right back, Colonel.”

“Ah, Colonel,” Rossi called out, “when I heard we’d be picking you up, I made some discreet phone calls. It sounded like you’ve been on the go for a little while and probably didn’t have your bags. I took the liberty of grabbing a couple uniforms for both of you. Danielle, your CO-”

“Sergeant Rossi, its Dani,” she cut him off. “A friend of Stonewall’s is a friend of mine. Please, call me Dani.”

“Very well, call me Rossi. Dani, your CO made it sound like you two were an item, so I put everything in one bag.… Ah… hope I didn’t overstep anything.” Rossi added, noting that Dani had immediately blushed and stole a rather quick and surprised glance at Jackson.

“Thanks, Rossi, really appreciate that. I think we’ve both lost track of where we ditched our bags, probably back at Fort Bliss somewhere,” Jackson added.

“Ah, Dani, from the way your CO described you, it sounded like you were about the same size as my wife; she stopped at the PX and grabbed some undergarments, couple sports bras, stuff like that. I didn’t get your rank but I understand you’re third on your team, so made you a major. The Captain didn’t appreciate that but that’s too bad. Hope you don't mind the American uniform.”

“Sergeant Rossi, thank you very much,” Dani replied, clearly more than a little embarrassed. “You’re very thoughtful; the American uniform is fine; so is the rank, though I’m going have to have a little talk with Ben, my CO.”

“Thanks again, Rossi,” Jackson added with a huge grin on his face, “really appreciate this. Let’s get the rest of the team on board and get the rest of the introductions out of the way.”

“You bet, sir. Captain,” Rossi yelled out the cabin door, “let’s get everyone on board. We’ve got a schedule to keep.”

“Roger that, sergeant. Okay, boys, you heard the man,” Captain Robert Sanchez, the commanding officer of ODA 5114, announced.

One by one, the introductions were made with the men of ODA 5114 as each one boarded. Once everyone found a seat, Jackson finished up the introductions by letting the team know the little he knew of their mission. “I’m not sure what all Captain Sanchez has relayed to you but our first stop will be Tel Aviv where we will be picking up Dani’s team. From there, our next stop will be Baku where we’ll infiltrate into Iran. By this time tomorrow, we should be in Tehran. Just an FYI, don’t let Dani’s charm deceive you; she is a full member of the Israeli Special Forces, Sayeret Matkal, she has a PhD in Nuclear Engineering and she’s a concert pianist.”

Hearing Dani’s resume, more than a couple of the team members let out a long slow whistle. “I think I’d rather meet up with a battalion of Taliban than face a girl like that,” exclaimed one of the guys.

“I didn’t think women served in the Sayeret Matkal” interrupted another one of the sergeants.

“There’s actually two of us. You’ll meet Zivah later today; she’s also on the team,” Dani replied. “And Stonewall exaggerated a little bit, I’m not really a concert pianist — that’s my sister.”

“Dani is a full member of the team; she’s actually third on her team,” Stonewall added. “We don’t really know what our mission is at this point so we’ll need to be ready for anything, which I know is pretty much par for the course for you guys. I anticipate we’ll be laying up at the team’s safe house in Tehran — where you’ll be suitably impressed. If there aren’t any questions, let’s get on with it.” And with that, the team buckled up and the plane headed out to the runway.

Though Stonewall and Dani had only had a couple hours’ sleep in about the past twenty four hours, they both spent the next few hours mingling with the men of ODA 5114. Jackson had some catching up to do with both Rossi and Ferro while Dani simply listened in to their conversation. Half an hour into the flight, Rossi decided to check out the galley. Dani immediately followed him.

“So, Rossi,” Dani began rather quietly as they reached the galley, “just how long have you known Stonewall?”

“Well, like he said, I was one of his weapons sergeants. We’ve served together for several years and I was the senior weapons sergeant on his last team and that would have been back in, what, 2006.”

“Did you serve with him on his first team in Afghanistan?”

“He didn’t tell you about that, did he?”

“No, Tamir told me about it a few days ago.”

“Take a seat; I’ll fill in a few of the gaps for you about him while Ferro has him occupied up front.”

“Thanks, I’d appreciate anything you can tell me about him. He’s always asking about me and I’ve never talked so much about myself with anyone but he’s pretty quiet about himself.”

“I’ve been with the Special Forces for seventeen years now — and that is still the boldest, craziest thing, I’ve ever done. He told you about the idea of marching down to the valley floor with the lanterns, right? Bet he didn’t tell you that’s where we gave him his call sign, did he?”

“Ah, no; what’s that about?”

“Stonewall picked out about the narrowest place on the valley floor for us to set up our position. If the Taliban chose to make a serious attack, we didn’t want them to have too much room to maneuver or to use their numbers to full effect. So there we were, Stonewall, myself, our comms sergeant, and nine of the Afghanis. We set up as many claymores as we could in the short time we had and then we each had a SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon) with at least five 100-round belts. Of course, we had a ton of grenades as well, anything that was loud and disorienting. Well, we had this parade coming down the hill and it looked impressive as hell but then, the Taliban figure they better attack right away before too many guys come over the hill. Mind you, it’s still pitch dark but we can see extremely well with our gear; we were so outnumbered I didn’t think we had a chance. Stonewall walks up to each of us and lets us know to let all hell break loose on his command. He waits until the second tier of Taliban get to the claymores before he trips these — their first element are all within twenty feet of us or so when we unload on them. I don’t think he realized how many he actually let pass in that first element as some of them got to knife fighting range. Anyway, we had eleven guys hammering away with the SAWs and Stonewall’s all over the place, running up and down the line, letting go with grenades, his M-4, his own SAW, even his pistol — all designed to make them think there were far more of us than a mere dozen guys. It was so chaotic that when we had finally routed them, I looked at Stonewall and said ‘you know, I hear there’s a Marine Corps general with the call sign “Chaos”; if it’s good enough for him, it’s certainly good enough for you, sir.’ He took one look at me, and simply said, ‘I like it!’ Ever since then, that’s been his call sign. I’ve never seen anyone like him; he literally thrives on chaos — the more chaotic the situation, the better he is.”

“So, just how did the name ‘Stonewall’ come about? I get the notion that it follows the Civil War general of the same name but just what happened?”

“He hasn’t told, you, huh? Yeah, that figures. He doesn’t talk too much about some of the things he’s done. Yeah, that’s Stonewall. Well, suffice it to say that we had been dropped into Northern Iraq back in ‘06. We had several Humvees dropped along with us and that was as heavy of anything we had. Our initial assignment had us holding a major intersection of two major highways and a couple other minor roads. We had the place occupied and established some good defensive positions. A short time later, we noticed this Iraqi company coming up the highway a few miles away as they emerged from a bend in the road behind a small little ridge that obscured their column. We were seriously outnumbered, I don’t know seven or eight to one, or something like that; remember, we’re just a single “reinforced” A team — Stonewall picked up an additional weapons sergeant and another medic. The infantry trucks came first and we were pretty confident that we could hold against them even though we were that outnumbered. Then came the tanks — five of them, along with several armored personnel carriers. Remember, the heaviest thing we had was a Humvee with a .50 mounted on it. We had a pretty good supply of the new Javelin anti-tank missiles, but its effective range is something like 2,500 yards — and at this point, we were still more than 1,500 yards beyond that! By this time, heavy machine gun fire is ripping the ground up all around us and their mortars have us bracketed. Anyway, Stonewall grabs a Humvee by himself with six of these Javelins and proceeds down the crossroad at this intersection towards the Iraqis. He immediately draws some fire but the rest of us are holding the highway junction so we continue to receive most of their fire — by this time, their mortars have found the range and most of us have an injury of one sort or another. About five hundred yards in front of us, Jackson stops, pulls out one of the Javelins and fires at the closest tank, now getting a pretty good bead on us with their main guns. Anyway, from about three thousand yards, his first shot hits the lead tank. At this, all the Iraqis turn their full attention on him. In the next two, two and a half minutes, he took out the other four tanks and one of the APC’ s. Of course by then, we figure they might even be within range of us and, sure enough, we took out the rest of the APC’s and all their trucks. However, for that two minute span or so, Stonewall bore the brunt of every gun and mortar in that Iraqi company; it’s amazing he survived, though he got shot up pretty good. Ferro saw the mortar round that hit him and grabbed a Humvee and charged right up to him. There was blood all over the place by the time Ferro got there: his left shoulder and part of his arm had just been shredded; the left side of his face was covered in blood and his eye was gone. Ferro got him bandaged up and brought him back to the junction just as the Eighty-second arrived. In spite of his injuries, he was up and around making sure the rest of us received the aid we needed — he had to be running on pure adrenalin at that point. He literally saved the entire team — and that’s no exaggeration. Neither Ferro nor I would be here if it wasn’t for Stonewall. Those tanks had us bracketed with their main guns and the mortars were really raining down on us. Their next few rounds would have taken us out. Personally, I think he deserves the Medal of Honor. He was put in for the DSC but that got down-graded to a Silver Star — gotta love Army politics. The Theater Commander was a ‘Big Army’ guy and thought those of us in the Special Forces were nothing more than a bunch of renegades. Anyway, the colonel in command of the regiment from the Eighty-second that relieved us saw what he did and commented that that was just like the Stonewall Jackson of old. The name obviously stuck.”

“I was wondering; I asked him about the scars on his chest and shoulder and he played it pretty low key, though he quickly changed the subject.”

“That sounds like him. He’s really a pretty humble guy. He’s been in more hairy situations than most of us, and that’s saying something. There’s something else you need to know about him.”

“What’s that?” Dani asked somewhat concerned.

“His iron will — and he’s demonstrated that time and time again. By the time of our little battle in Iraq, Stonewall knew he’d made major but wouldn’t be pinning on the oak leaves for a few months, so he knew he had commanded his last A team. Nevertheless, he wanted to stay in the Special Forces, and he really wanted to lead a CIF (Commander’s In-extremis Force) team. To do this, though, he needed to go before the Medical Review Board to re-qualify and demonstrate that he was still among the best of the best. As a major, he qualified to lead the team but he had a monumental battle ahead of him given the extent of his injuries. It took him a few months but he cleared the Review Board and he got his team, though it went all the up the Special Operations chain of command. There’s never been anyone like him, even in this rarified community. I know I can speak for everyone that’s ever served with him — we’d follow him anywhere. There isn’t a single one of us who wouldn’t do anything for him. He’s pretty special that way. Now that he’s a colonel, I’m sure his serious combat days are behind him, but he still has that unbelievably fierce determination that is just incredible.”

“I haven’t seen that part of him yet, but I’m sure I will at some point.”

“Look, I didn’t mean to embarrass you earlier. It was kind of obvious when I mentioned what your CO told me.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I think we both got a laugh out of that. And the change of clothes is really appreciated!”

“Yeah, well, knowing Stonewall the way I do, and from what you’re telling me, he really digs you. I’ve never seen anyone more determined and absolutely driven at anything than he is — and everyone in the Special Forces has a pretty gritty determination, but Stonewall’s in a class by himself. If he wants something, he’s going to get it. If you’re in his sights, you might as well give up as you’ll be his. On the other hand, if that’s what you want, he’ll also be yours.”

Dani had to admit, she liked the sound of that. Seeing her eyes immediately light up and her broad smile told Rossi that he had instantly hit home with her.

“Thanks, Rossi. I’m going to hit the shower!” and with that, Dani turned and walked away with a noticeable glow about her.