Chasm Waxing: A Startup, Cyber-Thriller (21 page)

For his
part,
President
Goodson was facing a complex dilemma.

Syria was not a country.
Syria was an unmitigated disaster. It had been a disaster since the
Arab Spring demonstrations and subsequent government crackdown in
2011. Nine years later, Syria was still a disaster. The vacuum of
leadership in
Syria
led directly to the growth of ISIS, and
later
the
Caliphate.

Iran, Russia, and Iran’s
proxy—Hezbollah, assisted the Syrian government. Iran provided
forces from their Revolutionary Guards, money, weapons, and
intelligence. Russia provided intelligence, air support, and a
small group of soldiers. Hezbollah provided many fighters,
especially experienced soldiers from Lebanon. And all of these
forces augmented Syria’s National Defense Force composed of
Alawites, Shiites, and some Christians. These forces coordinated to
defend
essential
government assets.

In late 2015, Russia and
Iran stepped up support after the Syrian regime’s future became
dicey. The assistance helped. Over the past five
years,
the
Syrian government held onto the
important
eastern areas of
Syria—Aleppo, Homs, and Damascus.

The rest of the country,
including Dabiq, was a petri-dish for moderate Sunnis and extremist
Wahhabi-Salafi-Jihadists, including the Muslim Brotherhood, Al
Nusra, and the Caliphate. The only tie that bound these disparate
groups was their desire to see the Syrian government fall. Then,
Syria could be led by a Sunni government.
This was
also the goal of Saudi
Arabia, and to a lesser extent, Turkey.

Wahhabism was a strain of
puritanical Islam birthed in Saudi Arabia. The Salafi movement was
often used synonymously with Wahhabism, but Salafists felt being
called, “Wahhabi,” was derogatory. Irrespective of the terms, the
broad
idea
was the same. Both ideologies were a fundamentalist form of
Islam that called for a strict, literal interpretation of the
Koran.

While the US wanted a new
Syrian government, they did not want the Syrian government to fall
into the hands of the Caliphate or other Islamic extremists.
Also
, it was
nearly impossible, as evidenced by the beheading of Charlie
Shields, to determine who was a moderate and who was an extremist.
Weapons meant for the moderates often ended up in the hands of the
Caliphate.

There were numerous peace
talks over the last five years to discuss Syria. No-fly
zones
were
implemented
. Ceasefires would be announced
and then broken. Territory would be lost,
retaken
, and lost again. It was a
stalemate.

It would remain a
stalemate until new, more inclusive governments
were installed
in Syria and
Iraq—governments that protected Sunni and Shia alike. The only
other alternative was to divide Syria and Iraq into pieces,
administered by the various factions. Or, start a major ground war
in the region.

So the President punted for four
years.

Aside from the stepped up
bombing of Iraq, movement of special operations units from Syria to
Iraq, and the establishment of some hard-to-police safe zones; the
most meaningful action the President took was giving General
Shields his fifth
star. POTUS
bestowed this honor
when he approved
Shields for DIRNSA.

This hugely
symbolic act
was meant to signify that the
nation was on
war
-footing. The symbolism
was not matched
with concrete actions.
This
was
a very different war than WWII or
Korea.
This was
an asymmetric intelligence war. The bad guys
didn’t wear uniforms.

However, there was an
election in four months.
Punting
was now hurting the President.
POTUS’ opponent was lambasting the Administration’s Caliphate
strategy as weak and ineffective. He continually reminded the
American public of POTUS’ campaign promises. The most damaging
issue for
POTUS
was the 2019 rebuke of the US by Iraq. Iraq’s
replacement of US forces with Russians and Iranians embarrassed
America.

His challenger said there
had been no retribution for the humiliating deaths of the SEALs. He
argued that the Caliphate was strengthening, not getting
weaker.
Also,
Caliphate sympathizers continued to plan and carry out
an increasing number of attacks
in Europe and the US.

Additionally, while
General Shields had received
tremendous
accolades over the last
three years for minimizing terror attacks and keeping the NSA out
of the news; the DCIA had become a lightning rod. There was
a
significant public
outcry regarding collateral damage from drone
strikes.

The Caliphate
ingeniously posted p
ictures of civilian carnage from remotely controlled
attacks.
Whistleblowers
were also lambasting the drone program, claiming
that SIM cards were not sufficient evidence for state execution.
The IC referred to the lethal drone strikes as, ‘targeted killing.’
They
testified
that collateral damage from targeted killing was the lowest
in the history of warfare. Luckily for POTUS, terrorism wasn’t the
only issue of the 2020 election. In particular, voters were happy
with Goodson’s handling of the economy.

POTUS told the
teleconference, “While I see the risks of going into Dabiq with a
strike team to get Omar, I’m leaning towards Walt’s option. Bernie,
you of all people should support this decision. You’ve been on my
ass for four years to
step-up
attacks on the
Caliphate.”

The President detailed how the US
would achieve a significant victory against the Caliphate. He was
also sure that Omar would talk. The US would get needed
intelligence from the house, especially since Omar was the
financial brain for the Caliphate.

POTUS noted that firing a Hellfire
missile into a neighborhood would probably kill some innocent
civilians. Most likely, they wouldn’t be sure that Omar was dead.
Finally, if something happened to the team, there was sufficient
deniability.

The DCIA’s strike
team
consisted
of mercenaries—hired contractors with signed NDAs. They were
all heavily decorated, ex-members of the US special operations
community. They were paid to look like Kurdish fighters. All of
their families had also signed NDAs.

General Shields’ blood was
near the boiling
point
. He thought,
How wantonly
does
the DCIA and POTUS risk
American lives
? Where are the
DCIAs that broke the back of the Russians with HUMINT? And the
President chooses to look
tough
now, just in time for the
debates?

General Shields made one
final attempt to dissuade POTUS from the nighttime raid. “Mr.
President, what if this is a trap? No one from the Caliphate has
ever used A-Mail. Omar has dozens of SIM cards. We haven’t
associated this SIM card with him in over
10
months?”

It was no
use. POTUS
had
selected his option.

“
Bernie, if Omar steps
foot out of that house before the strike, we’ll take him out with a
Hellfire—irrespective of the consequences. We’ve got eyes on.
Otherwise, there’s too much upside for this mission. God forbid, if
our team suffers losses, our stance will be that these were Kurdish
fighters with American air support. We’ll only need to say that if
the story gets out. There’s no CNN in Dabiq.”

*

The raid was to commence
at
7:00
p.m. EDT—2:00 a.m. Dabiq time. After the General’s
conversation with POTUS, the Marauder did chronicle video of
a woman
exiting
the house and later returning. The women looked like Nafisa,
although facial recognition was inconclusive.

General Shields and his
senior leadership
gathered
in the NSA Director’s Conference Room, near the
General’s office suite, in Ops 2B. It’s
gargantuan, circular conference
table looked like Stanley Kubrick forwarded it from the set
of his movie,
Dr.
Strangelove
.
Top
leaders present included;
Deputy DIRNSA, Director-SIGINT Directorate, and
Director-NSOC.

Oversized,
flat-screen
monitors
surrounded the room.
The real-time Marauder feed directly
faced the General.
The drone was switching
between its
night-vision
and thermal cameras. The Marauder was flying in a
surveillance pattern over Omar’s Dabiq house.

The General thought the situation was
surreal.

A pilot, working for the
CIA on an Air Force base 20 minutes from the Las Vegas strip, was
using a joystick
to remotely fly
the Marauder
. The joystick sent flight
control information for the plane from Nevada, over a fiber optic
line buried underneath the Atlantic Ocean to Ramstein Air
Force
base. Ramstein was
located
in Germany.

From Ramstein, the control
information was radioed into space. Finally,
a satellite relayed the data to the circling
Marauder
. Without the fiber optic cable,
there would be too much delay
to
fly the drone adequately
.

Soon the
Marauder
picked
up the Black Hawk helicopter flown by two US Army pilots. The Black
Hawk contained the 12 CIA contractors in Kurdish separatist
garb.
This was
war in the
twenty-first
century.

Distributed. Deniable. Secret.
Undeclared.

The Black Hawk appeared on
the
flat-screen
monitor from the left. It slowed and hovered near
Omar’s house. Soldiers emerged from both sides of the
helicopter. They
began to fast rope to the ground.

Then all hell broke loose.

Two
rocket-propelled
grenades
struck the Black Hawk. It
was
an ambush. The Black Hawk began to
swivel and dip. The pilots lost control. The rotors
cut into
the
ground and snapped, as the helicopter rolled and flipped
numerous
times
before it came to a mangled rest.

Heavily armed Caliphate
forces
exited the
residences near Omar’s house, to the north and
south. They rushed toward the Black Hawk wreckage.

When it was over,
two
Army pilots
and eight of the contractors were dead. The Caliphate apprehended
four
contractors
. General Shields was beside
himself with rage. He drowned his fury with a bottle of
scotch.

*

The next day, the
Caliphate paraded the four mercenaries before TV cameras and posted
videos to A-Tube. A White House spokesman claimed that, while the
pilots were American, the captured and killed
soldiers
were Kurdish
rebels.

A few days later, the
Caliphate exposed the lie when it posted a video that graphically
illustrated the match between the soldier’s
fingerprints,
and
prints
they
accessed from the OPM database hack. At some point in their
careers,
to
obtain a clearance, the ex-US Special Operations warriors had
trusted their government with extremely private
information—including
their
fingerprints
. Now those fingerprints
betrayed them.

The Caliphate proved to
the world that the
soldiers
were Americans. It was a debacle for President
Goodman. The press referred to the ensuing scandal as ‘Dabiq-gate.’
Every night, a new beheading video was posted
to
the web.

With each execution,
General
Shields
and Lisa were forced to relive Charlie’s
death.

Unbeknownst to the world,
Omar was never in the targeted house. The Caliphate filled the home
with human
slaves and
placed the SIM card in the
dwelling
. They found a
Yazidi slave girl of the same height and build of
Nafisa,
and made
her wear a wig. The email was a trap to either lure the Americans
into an ambush or a drone strike. In the event of a US drone
strike, the Caliphate would rush to film the
attack
. Then they’d post
videos of the dead women and children as collateral damage
carnage.