by FX Holden
“And they can’t use their own nuclear weapons without dooming themselves…” Shrier nodded.
“Why? What does Iran want? Israel isn’t going to just roll over and surrender,” Allen exclaimed. “Iran doesn’t want nuclear war. So what is in it for them?”
The room was quiet until Secretary of State Shrier coughed gently. “Survival. I know this isn’t a popular view in this room, but the West and Israel have brought Iran to its knees with years of sanctions, covert operations to undermine the regime, overt assassinations. They see Israel and its nuclear weapons as an existential threat, but also as leverage. Victory for Iran would be getting Israel to the bargaining table – to strike some kind of nuclear disarmament agreement, pressure the West to lift its sanctions, resume trade and diplomatic relations…”
“And Syria gets the Golan Heights, with Russia hosting the peace negotiations no doubt. Win, Win, Win,” Carmine said, completing the thought.
Dupré nodded. “It’s no accident we found out about the Iranian nuclear weapons at the same time as Israel. Iran let us find their sub, just like they let us take a picture of the missile they were loading into it. They want us to know what they’ve got in play.”
“That’s one hell of a smoke signal,” Allen muttered. “They could have just detonated a nuke underground at Fordo and achieved the same thing.”
“And waste a precious warhead? They don’t have that many to spare,” Admiral Clarke observed.
Shrier steepled his fingers. “We have no Embassy in Tehran anymore. No trade mission. There is no hotline between us and the Ayatollah. They could reach out to us through the usual back channels – the French, the Swedes – but would we take them seriously? They’re presenting us with a fait accompli and they know we’ll take some time to work out what to do about it so they’re giving us a few days’ grace until their missiles are in place and we have to start negotiating. Maybe they’re even hoping we’ll open a channel now, start the negotiations before things spin out of control…”
“Well, that was their first mistake,” Admiral Clarke said. “We have more than enough assets in place to put a serious wrinkle in their plans.”
“What are you suggesting?” Henderson asked.
“We partner with Israel and move first. Take out the Iranian naval threat in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, while Israeli air force and armor sends the Syrians on the Israeli border back to the stone age.”
Carmine saw Dupré about to speak, then bite back her words and look down again. Maybe she’d been wrong to invite her. This was no place for shrinking violets. “Tonya? Your thoughts?” Carmine asked.
“A head-on confrontation is … unlikely to succeed. Those Iranian ships are protected by Russia: the Russian air force will fly close air support for Syrian tanks, Russian ground-to-air missile systems are protecting the Iranian and Syrian troops,” Dupré pointed out. “And even the USS Nimitz carrier strike group can’t protect Israel from a massive cyber takedown. I’m sorry, Admiral, but you can’t prevent the first phase of an All Domain Strike with tanks and airplanes.”
Clarke did not look happy to be contradicted by the newest kid on the block, and the glare he gave Dupré could have melted depleted uranium armor. But she didn’t quail, instead looking to Carmine for support.
“The Director is right. We need to hit pause and look at all our options here,” Carmine said to the room, but with her gaze fixed on Henderson.
The President shifted awkwardly in his seat.
“Options. Right. Harry, get your people working up a potential military response, everything short of pre-emptive nuclear strikes on Damascus and Tehran.”
McDonald nodded. Admiral Clarke spoke up, “Including troops, Mr. President?”
Henderson didn’t hesitate. “No. I watched too many flag-draped caskets come off that airplane at Reagan National Airport, after Turkey. We saved a NATO base but we lost near forty young men and women.”
“And six points in the polls,” Allen said, then ducked his head as a few people shot him withering looks. “Hey. I’m just saying.”
“Not material, Karl,” Henderson told him. “Admiral, we need cyber attack options, anything that can make life hard for Iranian and Syrian land and naval forces, the Syrian regime. I also want cyber warfare options for disruptive strikes on the Syrian and Iranian regimes and Tonya, get warning of this ‘chatter’ to the Israelis so they can harden their cyber defenses.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Dupré said. “I’d recommend including Russia in that targeting. As I said, the chatter we’ve been hearing has been among both Iranian and Russian black hats.”
“Dammit, alright.” Henderson sighed. “We reconvene in six hours. I need to know how a naval blockade might work or alternative ideas for how to take those Iranian nukes out of the equation and stop this situation in its tracks, before we lose control.”
As he finished speaking the door to the situation room opened and an aide stepped inside, then looked around the room, his eyes landing on Carmine. He walked over and handed her a message, then beat a hasty retreat, ten pairs of eyes following him out.
Carmine unfolded the message in silence. “Things may already be accelerating out of control,” she said, looking up. “There have been coordinated assassination attempts on Israeli military leaders at brigade and battalion level across the IDF. Several blue on blue incidents, at least four senior officers dead, including the commander of the Israeli Golani Brigade. And one third of the personnel in their 7th Armored brigade just mutinied.”
“Mutiny? In the Israeli armed forces?” Sianni asked. “How is that even possible?”
“Apparently a populist right-wing rabbi told them to refuse to serve, in protest at women soldiers being allowed to sing.”
“Women … to sing … are you kidding?”
“No. The whole men and women serving in the IDF together thing has been a heated issue for the last couple of years.” Carmine read down the intelligence summary. “They’re worried the protest will spread to other units. This rabbi apparently has a lot of clout.”
“And he chose today to call on people to lay down their arms?” Sianni shook his head. “That’s no coincidence.”
“None of this is,” Carmine said. “I briefed this group on it back in February. It’s called Operation Butterfly and it’s probably been in planning since 1974.”
Mount Hermonit, Golan Heights, May 16
“Telephone, Zeidan,” said the young female Lieutenant standing beside Zeidan Amar’s Storm all-wheel-drive vehicle. She held a handset out to him. He went to sit down on the passenger seat, and then remembered his trousers were still wet with blood. “I’ll get you some new gear,” the Lieutenant said, running quickly back into the bunker he’d just left. The compound outside the bunker was full of soldiers milling around, in panic, fear and confusion, looking to him for guidance. He could be ordering them out to comb the countryside for the shooter, but he had been told to try to delay the search for at least thirty minutes. He left them to mill about.
He looked at the telephone. The number had a Tel Aviv military prefix but wasn’t one he recognized. “Amar,” he said.
“Parpar,” the voice at the other end said.
“Understood.”
The line went dead.
Butterfly.
So, his time had come.
Reaching for the radio inside the vehicle, he dialed the frequency for Camp Rabin, then picked up the code book from the dashboard under the windscreen.
“This is Lieutenant Colonel Amar, Golani Brigade. Authentication code … alpha golf romeo one three nine.”
“Go ahead.”
“Put me onto General Weinberg.”
“He’s in conference.”
Pulling the Commander of the IDF Army out of a meeting was not something the poor corporal at the other end of the radio would do lightly, Amar knew that. “Get him out. I’ll take the blame.”
“Colonel Amar, you said?”
“Z
eidan Amar.”
“Wait please.”
Amar wondered if news of the shooting had made it to Tel Aviv yet. As he watched, the ambulance carrying Tamir pulled slowly out of the compound atop Mount Hermonit, weaving between soldiers suddenly silent.
“Weinberg.”
“Zeidan Amar, Golani Brigade.” He’d only met the General twice before, but the People’s Army didn’t stand on formalities.
“What is it, Zeidan?”
“Colonel Tamir is dead. Drone attack. I have dispatched patrols to search for the launch site but it could be anywhere in a range of twenty miles.”
“Yes. I got the report. Peace be upon Gassan Tamir.”
“Your orders?”
There was a long pause at the other end. “You just got promoted a year earlier than I planned, Zeidan.”
“Very well.”
“This is not a coincidence. I’ve ordered the callup of the national reserve. As to the Golani Brigade, I want every drone in the air, every set of eyeballs on that border trained to the east, I want observation reports flowing like the Jordan in spring…”
“Yes, Moshe.”
“Get your military police out on the roads, I want civilians evacuated, civilian traffic into the Golan turned around. Keep people on their toes. While we mobilize our reserves, I’m moving 460th Brigade over from Central Command. I want you ready to roll your APCs out of those outposts and into Syria the moment I give you the call.”
“We’re going with Plan Typhoon?”
“If I have anything to do with it. I don’t want us to get caught with our pants down again. You get your boys and girls ready. And try to contain the news about Tamir. The last thing we need right now is for word of this assassination to get out. Dammit to hell.”
Amar nodded. “Yes, Moshe. Amar out.”
He swallowed hard. Typhoon. A pre-emptive strike into Syria intended to disrupt Syrian preparations for war. His special forces reconnaissance battalion would be at the spearhead of the IDF strike, their armored personnel carriers rolling at high speed deep into Syrian territory to hit Syrian outposts, while Israeli Air Force jets hammered surface-to-air missile defenses, tank parks, arms dumps and artillery positions. If Israel’s politicians gave the green light.
Well, he knew what was expected of him, and it wasn’t what General Moshe Weinberg had just ordered him to do.
His aide came running back to him, carrying clean trousers and a shirt. He stripped his bloodied shirt from his torso and pulled the clean shirt on.
“Was that Camp Rabin?” she asked, taking the soiled shirt and holding out the trousers for him.
“Yes.”
“What is happening, Zeidan?” she asked. “Is this it?” She looked and sounded scared. “I thought … it was supposed to happen at Shavuot. June 6 … all the reports said June 6.”
“This isn’t it, Nadia,” he said, unlacing his boots and taking them off. “Syria would not dare take on Israel, even with Iran and Russia at its back. This is something else. A provocation of some sort.”
He couldn’t watch as the hope spread from her eyes to the rest of her face. “Oh, thank God. What are our orders?”
“I’ve been appointed acting brigade commander,” he told her as he pulled on the new trousers and slipped into his boots again. “I was just on the line with Moshe Weinberg. He told me to start evacuating civilians and prepare the brigade to pull back to Camp Shraga.” Shraga was the headquarters of the Golani Brigade.
Thirty miles to the west.
“Pull back?!”
“Yes, 460th Brigade is taking over. Pass the word down the line to all Golani battalion commanders, will you?” He looked at the Israeli flag flying above the central bunker. “And have the flag taken to half-mast. Let them all know about the assassination of Gassan Tamir too. They are to take their orders from me.”
He watched her go, then pulled out his phone, opening the dating app. The person at the other end was a member of the Druze resistance in the biggest Druze town in Israeli-occupied Golan, Buq’ata.
My darling it is time to light the candles
- I have only been waiting for your message beloved
I will arrive soon
- I wait with joy in my heart
Hanging up, he dropped the phone, pulled out its sim card and crushed it beneath his boot before flinging it into nearby grass. He didn’t want anyone in his brigade calling him, or tracking him, from here on in. Climbing into the Storm, he spent a moment enjoying the burn of the hot seat on his back before he started the engine and pulled out of the compound. Camp Shraga was thirty miles west. Zeidan wound down the hill from the outpost, paused at the crossroad at the base of the hill, then turned north, toward the Druze stronghold of Buq’ata.
West Wing, the White House, Washington, May 16
If ExComm was a subset of the National Security Council, then the group meeting that morning in the Oval Office was a subset of a subset. Defense Secretary Harry McDonald and Director of National Intelligence Carmine Lewis sat drinking lukewarm coffee and poring over briefs from their agencies on tablets as they waited for President Henderson to return from his breakfast appointment. With the ExComm meetings being recorded for posterity, Henderson apparently wanted a ‘safe space’ where he could talk with his closest confidants, and decide himself what was recorded and what not.
McDonald paused his reading and looked across at Lewis. Silver-haired, in her late fifties, he figured she still hit the gym several times a week and was probably wearing the same size uniform today as she had five years ago when she was Lt. Gen. Carmine Lewis, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and cyber effects operations in the US Air Force. If she had one weakness, it was an over-reliance on signals and cyber intelligence, which she’d shown in her insistence on muscling the new Director of Cyber Security into the ExComm group. McDonald was old school and proud of it, he’d back a report from a human source over a signals intercept any day.
But Lewis was pretty much bullet proof in all other respects, including her relationship with President Henderson. There was a lot of beltway blarney about the two of them being in a tryst, but McDonald had spent enough time around both of them to see that was nonsense. If anything, they were more like brother and sister. More than once, watching them joke or bicker, McDonald had been reminded of books he’d read about the relationship between the Kennedy brothers, John and Bobby. Henderson was good at canvassing for opinions, but there was only one person who could speak truth to him without fear or favor, and that was Carmine Lewis.
“We can’t let that Iranian sub roam around the Red Sea unhindered,” Lewis said, looking up. She caught him staring at her and he looked quickly down at his tablet.
“USS Canberra has reacquired it, headed for the Gulf of Aqaba, possibly Israel’s southern coast. If they patrol just outside Israeli waters that would give a missile 30 seconds flying time to the Israeli port of Eilat, four minutes to Tel Aviv. You got confirmation on that nuke?”
“All but. Our North Korean friends were sighted at the dock when that missile was being loaded. They weren’t there because they needed some sea air. There’s no reason for them to be there unless it’s a nuke.”
“It’s still not proof. Not a smoking gun.”
“We may never get a smoking gun, Harry,” she said, sounding exasperated. “And while I’m sure the crew on the Canberra are on top of their game, like I said, losing and then finding that sub again feels to me like a deliberate attempt to keep our attention.”
“We should get their attention. Sink the damn thing.”
“Sink what where?” President Henderson said, walking in. He looked tired, which McDonald reflected was not a good sign. They were only at the start of what could be a long and trying crisis.
“I was telling Harry, we have even stronger indications the missile on that Iranian sub in the Red Sea is a nuke. North Korean ‘seismologists’ were present for the loading.”
Henderson
looked at McDonald. “And you want to sink it?!”
“Not if we don’t have to. But we don’t want to have to run operations in the Red Sea and the Med. The USS Canberra carries EMP torpedoes. One of those would disable it without destroying it, and…”
“They hear a Mark 48 torpedo coming at them, they just might launch their damn nuke,” Henderson said, focusing on McDonald. “I don’t like it. Harry, I assume your people have given you multiple options. Find me one that won’t immediately kick off World War Three.”
McDonald consulted his tablet. “There is a stealth vector,” he replied. “Swarmdiver…”
“Swarmdiver mines would sink it,” Carmine pointed out. “That’s pretty much a declaration of open warfare. We want to go that far?”
“No. I’m thinking of fouling the screw. Just put it out of commission.”
The newly deployed Swarmdiver underwater swarming drones on the USS Canberra were fired from its anti-submarine rocket launchers in swarms of twenty. Each drone weighed only four pounds, was 30 inches long, and could dive to depths of about 500 feet. In its standard configuration it was intended to scatter a cloud of mines in the path of an enemy warship or submarine. But it could be fitted with warheads of various kinds, including a propeller fouling net that was particularly effective at stopping single-screw ships or submarines dead in the water.
“Could work,” Lewis admitted. “They won’t see it coming at least.”
“Divers can’t cut the screw free while it’s at sea, they’d have no option but to tow the thing back to port and put it in dry dock.”
“And if you knock out its screw and accidentally send it to the bottom of the Red Sea?” Henderson asked.
“Then we offer our help with a rescue,” McDonald said. “But the more likely scenario is they surface so they can be towed, rather than risk drifting.”
“Blowback?” Henderson asked.
