The ISIS Gambit

XVI

“Ah, Colonel, are we expecting any visitors today?” Sergeant Gomez hollered to his boss, and base commander, Colonel Nathan Cadonau, as he charged into his office.

“Not that I know of, Gomez. What’s going on?” Colonel Cadonau replied, somewhat alarmed at his sergeant’s sudden outburst.

“Sir, we just received word of a SAM flight,” a Special Air Mission operated by the Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, “SAM Two-One-Four will be landing in about 20 minutes.”

“What?!? Where’d that come from?” Cadonau barked. “Do the Turks know about this?”

“They received the message the same time we did, sir. I’ve alerted Colonel Todd. She’s getting her security personnel spun up as we speak.”

“Does she know if General Van”—the Turkish Base Commander—“received word at the same time we did? If not, let her know just in case. She’s going to love this.”

“Yes, sir. She’s aware of that. And sir, it’s supposedly the SecDef and the Secretary of State! What the hell, sir? What’s going on?”

“No idea sergeant, but I would guess it might have something to do with this morning’s activity in Syria — we just kicked the hell out of the Russians. I just love surprise visits!” Cadonau added sarcastically.

“Rahmi, have you heard? The American Secretary of Defense and their Secretary of State are coming! Now’s our chance!” Sergeant Aydin exclaimed.

“Yes, it is. Get Omer, grab your gear, and meet me at Supply in five minutes. If we’re going to act on this, we need to hurry. Once we meet up we’ll need to coordinate our own moves to make sure at least one of us gets a shot.”

“Todd, you ready for this?” Colonel Cadonau bluntly asked Lieutenant Colonel Gretchen Todd.

“As ready as can be on ten minutes’ notice,” Todd replied. “We’ve locked the base down and conferred with General Van’s staff — the General’s at Batman Air Force Base for an Air Force staff meeting — they’ve locked their folks down so anybody out and about that isn’t where they’re supposed to be is subject to arrest. We don’t anticipate any problems, obviously, but there’s a growing Islamic fundamentalist sect in the area so you can’t be too careful.”

“Understood, Colonel.”

“Aydin, Omer, here’s how I want to play this: We need to get them in the open — as soon as they either get in a vehicle or a building, we’ve lost our chance. So, Aydin, I want you up on the edge of Hodja Village — that’ll give you a clear line of sight of everyone that gets off of the plane. Hold off on firing until both Secretaries are about midway between the plane and the Base Operations building — I really don’t expect them to deplane anywhere else; it just doesn’t make sense. The only problem here, though, is that you’re going to be right next to the base security building — if they find you, there’s no escaping. There isn’t going to be much for cover so you’ll have to improvise — find a vehicle to hide under, a truck where you can open the back end and lie down, something like this but you’ll need to be quick about it. Omer, I want you to find a spot in the small storage buildings just off of the terminal, the ones between the terminal and the Base Operations building. If you can get in here, you’ll be firing pretty much at point-blank range so I want you firing on full auto. I’ll be on the opposite end of the tarmac from you, Aydin. I’ll be right off of the tarmac — if we wait until they are in the middle of the gap between the plane and the buildings, we’ll shoot right past each other. I think we all know that there’s no turning back from this — after the first shot is taken, the Americans will not be looking to make any arrests.”

“Not to worry, Rahmi, Aydin & I both know what we are doing — and Allah has certainly blessed us with this opportunity!”

“Excellent! Let’s go then, we don’t have much time.”

“Mr. Secretary, Madam Secretary, I’m pleased to meet both of you. I’m Colonel Nathan Cadonau,” the base commander said to the secretaries as they disembarked from the C-32A executive transport plane, which is in essence, a modified Boeing 757–200. “This is my XO, Colonel Jason Harris, and Lieutenant Colonel Gretchen Todd, in charge of base security.”

“Nice to meet all of you,” both secretaries replied in near unison.

“To what do owe the pleasure, Mr. Secretary?” Colonel Cadonau asked.

“Colonel, call me Axe,” Secretary Axelsson began. “Well, to begin with Colonel, you can relax. This isn’t an inspection or anything of the sort. You’re obviously aware of our actions in Syria earlier this morning. The president asked Secretary Johnson and myself to make a trip to Saudi Arabia to really spread the word on the Russian involvement in the attacks on Boston and New York. They’re going to try and spread the word about how innocent they are but we’re putting on a full court press over here. Since Incirlik is practically on the way, I told Andrea that I wanted to stop here and have a brief meeting with you and our Turkish friends….”

“Allahu Akbar!!!” Omer yelled out as he charged the small reception, firing his M4 on full automatic. Colonel Todd immediately saw the Turkish airman running towards them as he began to fire. Before Omer could get within 30 yards, she had put two rounds into him from her new M18 Sig Sauer pistol, but not before he had almost emptied the magazine in his rifle. Colonel Harris, one of Axelsson’s aides, and one of Secretary Johnson’s aides fell to the tarmac almost immediately.

“Madam Secretary,” Colonel Todd yelled out while grabbing the secretary, “RUN! Get to the Ops building!” Secretary Johnson didn’t know where the Operations building was — and didn’t really care with a sniper shooting at them. She instinctively shed her dress shoes and ran barefoot towards the large building on her right. Several more, louder, reports punctuated the air around them. Axelsson actually heard the crack of one round that whizzed past his head as he ran towards the terminal building. Another round struck Colonel Todd in the arm as she ran trying to shield Secretary Johnson.

“Is everyone okay?” Todd asked as they entered the Operations building. “Ma’am, are you okay?” she asked Secretary Johnson as she noticed her bare feet.

“I’m fine, I practically live barefoot when I’m not at the office.”

“Okay stay here!” Todd ordered.

“Wait! You’re hit. You can’t go back out there!” Secretary Johnson shouted back.

“Stay here,” Todd ordered again. “I’ll be back to check on you in a few minutes” Todd curtly replied.

“Look, at least let me bandage that arm — you’re bleeding. I know basic first aid.”

“Fair enough, but make it quick. I need to contain this and see what’s going on out there.” Todd replied.

“It won’t take more than a minute, two at the most,” Secretary Johnson replied as she tore off the sleeve of Todd’s uniform and examined the bullet wound.

“Looks like you’ve done this before.”

“My son’s a paramedic. Being an active, single mom, he wanted to make sure I knew how to take care of myself should something ever happen when I’m out and about. I jog and bike quite a bit so he made sure I can handle sprained ankles and other minor injuries — bullet wounds are a first… all done. I think you got lucky with this one but it’s going to hurt. Go get ‘em, Colonel.”

“Captain!” Colonel Todd hollered at her executive officer, “Sitrep!”

“Colonel, you’ve been hit.”

“So I’ve noticed. What do we know?”

“We have three shooters down: the one you took out and then one on either end of the tarmac here. It looks as though the shooter you took out jumped the gun on everything. The two snipers on each end had us in a cross-fire and could have taken out each of the secretaries had they been a little more coordinated. Once they were taken out, the shooter here in the middle would have had all of us at point blank range. As it is, it looks like the middle guy jumped the gun on everything. We were lucky, really lucky.”

“Are you sure everything is secure?”

“We’ve secured the area, ma’am. We’ve established a perimeter and are expanding it as we speak. Everyone in the perimeter here is accounted for. We’re good.”

“Is General Van here yet? See if he can identify the shooters.”

“The general’s been notified and he’s on his way here. I guess he left Batman just as we received word of the SAM flight’s pending arrival. He obviously didn’t know of the secretaries’ itineraries, either. Word is he grabbed an F-16 out of there and should be here relatively soon. It’s a short flight and normally takes about an hour. My guess is that with what just happened, he’s on full AB at this point and will be landing any minute. Initial thinking is that this is all an inside, and impromptu, job. One of my guys knows the shooter you took out.”

“What about casualties?”

“We have three killed, six wounded, well seven, counting yourself. It looks as though an aide to each secretary has been killed, as has Colonel Harris. Two of the wounded are from Defense, three from State and one from the base. We’ll need to evacuate four of them to Landstuhl as soon as we have them stabilized. They should all make it but we have some serious injuries.”

“Very well, thanks, Captain. Where’s the Colonel?”

“He’s in the terminal with the SecDef — in the excitement, they split off and went there.”

“Okay, I’m going to head over there to check on everyone,” Todd advised her XO as she headed off to the terminal.

“Colonel, Mr. Secretary, how is everyone?”

“You know of my aide, I assume. We have a few others wounded but other than that, we’re fine, Colonel,” Secretary Axelsson replied. “However, this little incident reinforces the original reason I decided to make this short stop. Ever since the last failed coup here in Turkey a couple years ago, we’ve been planning on moving the remaining B-61 nukes we have here. I had planned on doing this over the next month, but now… we need to get them out of here right away. Andrea and I’ll be leaving as soon as we can be sure the plane didn’t take a stray round and then I’ll be advising the Chief,” as Axelsson referred to General Stan Kaufman, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “to whistle up either a C-17 or a couple C-130s and get them transferred to another base in Europe, probably Aviano as we already have several there, or maybe either Lakenheath or Ramstein if the Brits or the Germans have the security for these, but that’ll be up to him given the short notice.”

“Then, and I don’t want to go off half-cocked, but do we need to look at evacuating non-essential personnel? I know there’ve been some recent demonstrations in some of the bigger cities over here, but to be honest, I haven’t paid all that much attention.”

“I’ll be looking into that, Mr. Secretary, though we no longer have any dependents here — it’s all strictly Air Force, sir, but we might be able to pare the personnel down some,” Colonel Cadonau replied.

“Ah, sir,” Colonel Todd added, addressing the secretary, “earlier this morning, the Director General of the Turkish National Police let me know that they believed ISIS had something that might be in the works. He didn’t have any specifics, and supposedly nothing actionable, but we received word of this shortly before you arrived. I don’t think this attack is what he had in mind. This was too impromptu and too unorganized for what he mentioned. I think there’s something else in the wind.”

“Colonel, is the Director General sure this is ISIS and not more Kurdish protests?" Secretary Johnson asked having now rejoined the group in the terminal. “We’ve heard of a number of protests throughout Turkey of late but thought most of these were from the Kurds.”

“Ma’am, he didn’t indicate what they had for proof but he specifically mentioned ISIS.”

“Well, whatever the case, Colonel, that would seem to reinforce the decision to move the B-61s out of here. We hadn’t planned on spending the night here anyway. As soon as the flight crew can make sure our plane didn’t take any fire, we’ll be out of here.”

“Very good. I’ll make sure the crew has whatever they need to check out your plane,” Cadonau replied.