"Purpose for your visit ma'am?" the port guard asked pleasantly enough although Dolan noted that the safety on the hip holstered pistol was off.
"vacation." She only had a small carry on, it paid to travel light Clark had told her. The better to be in and out of ports quickly instead of waiting around for luggage in long lines.
"So few clothes though?" the guard's smile never broke.
"I plan to shop." Dolan smiled back. So silly that the country didn't guard its borders as well as the United States or Israel. Maybe the Turks didn't feel that they were touchable by any of their threats, was it because of their secret involvement in PLI? Or was it because they didn't think Israeli hands could reach this far? Dolan didn't know, only that their ignorance would cost them.
"Welcome to Turkey." The guard stamped the fake Cretian passport and moved her along. Even though Dolan was technically in charge of the operation, she insisted that Clark be the one to lead field teams due to his previous experience. She'd learned a new way of spying here, where everything was hidden by the smallest gestures. Clark continued to walk forward and the other six of the team fell in behind him spreading out but keeping him in periphials. Clark tipped his hat politely to a woman, and the others taking the signal immediately dispersed. They would take their own taxis, each of them had enough money in Swiss bank accounts to live like princes (or princesses in Dolan's case) in this country, if only for a month or two. They agreed to check into a Hyatt owned hotel along the beach front. Clark liked being by the sea, the Aegean air was cool and soothing for him.
They met up in the lobby, quietely agreed to meet up in Clark's room (smoking, because he said it would discourage door eavesdroppers and cigarette smoke could even disrupt shotgun microphones a little) and went their separate ways for dinner. Clark was waiting outside his door for the rest of them to appear, pretending to fumble with the lock.
They filed in quietely while Chavez swept the room for electronic listeners. "All clear." He nodded.
"Homer, go take a look on the windows, someone down there could have a shotgun microphone."
The former Rainbow sniper nodded and took a leisurely stroll outside with a pair of binoculars and appeared to look at nothing in particular through them.
"Alright Gentlemen, and Lady." Clark nodded. "We have our base of operations here, the Hyatt is American owned and therefore not completely under Turkish government control. We'll set up shop here and see where the trail leads us." He paused for a moment and took a breath. "I'm going to say right now, that I can't accompany you on most of the missions. I'm just too old for that, I'll be here. I've brought the DKL monitoring systems so I can keep control of you guys without being in field."
"The encryption systems should hold." Peled said. "I tweaked them myself, its got a TAPDANCE random patterned encryption but its faster than TAPDANCE of course, also its not a true radio. It'll hook up on local cells so we'll get pretty much unlimited range on them. Drawbacks is that battery life is only about four hours so everyone needs to pack at least three whenever we go on field missions. Its rechargeable from standard sockets."
"If it uses a TAPDANCE encryption, how will we decrypt it without the right equipment here?" Chavez asked.
"The TAPDANCE encryption of course, uses a one time use randomized code that is stored in the millions in almost every professional intelligence operation center in the world. It wasn't hard to pull a few dozen of the codes out of the Mossad network, and upload them into the DKL systems and PDAs. I've also taken the liberty to upgrade our personal phones with the STU-9 Encryption code the FBI uses." Peled nodded toward Dolan who had provided the encryption, courtesy of Dan Murray the Director of the Bureau.
"Its still secure." Chavez shrugged "But lets not use cells too often, with the internet access all our phones have now, it wouldn't be too hard to detect even with the encryption. All they need to do is pick us up and the gig's over."
"Agreed." Peled nodded again.
"Good. We'll take callsigns here. I'll use my old one Variable." Clark said.
"Secant." Chavez shrugged. "Me, Oso, and Homer."
"It'd better switch during real operations though." Homer called from outside. "JC is needed more on the ground and you'll need me somewhere where I can see everyone. If we're talking trig here, I'll take Tangent."
"Okay so then us and you then." Chavez nodded toward Zilich.
"That leaves us with… Cosine" David Peled said after a moment of thought. It would be Peled Dolan and Stuart.
"We'll sort out numbers later." Clark nodded "But tomorrow morning, we start our operation."
"Left full rudder!" the Captain barked the CIC of INC Hamas was lit in the red glow of battlestations operations and gave everyone working there a sinister image. "Reverse port screw!"
"My rudder is left full!" the helmsman on the bridge shouted over the intercom. A pair of missiles splashed harmlessly into the water, unable to match the corvette's sharp turn. It wasn't skirmishing any longer, the Turkish Navy had decided to be smart and concentrate its forces against the much smaller Northern Flotilla of the INF. Commodore Simon on the destroyer INC Zealot had given a general scatter order against the much larger navy. The Israeli's were outgunned at least five to one, and the enemy numbers began proving their worth. A ship that had twenty missiles locked on couldn't escape them all. Five corvettes like INC Hamas had found that out the hard way.
Traditional Naval tactics dictated a concentration of forces as opposed to the ragged bands that the Turkish navy faced, however the Israeli's had practiced two ship formations and the tactic was beginning to show its advantages.
Each pair of ships (the flotilla now had ten such units) was capable of pursuing its own individual agenda to work for the greater good of the battle. They were no longer a single great sword, more like a dozen little daggers. INC Hamas and her partner corvette INC Rivka steamed at forty knots towards the Turkish fleet, closing to nearly ten miles: point blank range in naval terms. Working with them were IAF fighter plane and helicopter forces and with the Hamas/Rivka team (Yellow team) were a pair of IAF UH-60 Seahawks equipped with a pair of Harpoon American anti-ship missiles.
The teams were trained to concentrate fire on one individual target at the time, enabling the original flotilla of 26 to engage and destroy 13 enemy ships every ten minutes. Yellow team under Captain Gregorich's direction, had already picked off two, a corvette and a destroyer. The drone patrol craft that were under INC Rivka's control maneuvered frantically in covering positions and could not only act as extra firepower from the Mk 48 ADCAP torpedoes that were loaded on, but could also serve as shields to block incoming torpedoes and missiles. Even now, the sonar operator shouted "Torpedo in the water!" and a few minutes later one of the drones moved to intercept it, interposing itself in the torpedoes path where it detonated under the hull and exploded, snapping the small ship in half.
"Battery firing solution sir!" the PWO shouted from his station.
"Shoot on generated bearings-"
The PWO signaled for the three sailors under his command to begin firing the starboard 40mm. "Wind two at zero eight zero, gun ready!" the sailor tracking the windspeed shouted, the wind could drastically change the direction of even 40mm rounds at ranges of five miles.
"elevate ten degrees and fire for effect!" The PWO snapped and his men complied quickly, the cannon popping off a quick three rounds which struck the aft end of a Turkish corvette. The PWO ordered slight direction changes and rounds began to stitch all the way across the hull where they finally found good marks on the glass bridge. The destroyer's brain exploded in a shower of sparks and smoke as four rounds found targets.
"Rivka signals: good kill!" the electronics officer shouted.
"Move to target Tango six, give them a three tone. Helm come about to zero nine zero, right full rudder."
"Aye sir, make my course zero nine zero, rudder is right full."
"Aye sir, three tone jamming is now in effect- woah! That's a hit!" the Electronics warfare officer shouted.
"Captain, Tango six is dead in the water." The radar officer shouted over the noise of the counterbattery officer firing off a missile.
"Short circuited his firing and navigation sir!" the EWO looked away from his screen and grinned. "broke through the radio firewalls and hammered 'em!"
"Good work, tell Rivka to finish it."
Bronco was bringing in the second flight of A-20s, Reaper 3 was down for repairs after discovering he was having problems with his thrust vectoring system, a Queer instead slotted in formation. Four lightnings escorted in 6 Razorback ground attack fighters. The battle for the heights was raging, with an Israeli counter attack already underway. Two of the bases had fallen already, the last bastion on the heights was held by the 7th mechanized infantry and was holding fast. If the Syrians and Lebanese were able to hold the heights, they could rain down fire on the Sea of Galilee and reinforce at will. Israeli artillery, both tube and rocket, was lashing out on enemy positions on the heights to cover the tanks and infantry beginning their climb up the roads.
"Reaper flight, Gemini," the on station AWACS snapped. "four plus enemy helos bearing zero one five, cleared to engage."
The fourteen stealth fighters were coming in low at super cruise (over mach 1) speed, they were screaming over the leading echelon of Israeli reinforcements now. Israel had never historically had much Artillery although numbers had increased exponentially after the Yom Kippur War. The commander in charge of the artillery was wise though, his artillery was all already deployed locked in and raining fire down on the Syrian positions, directing specific attention to Syrian artillery units preparing to set up as well. They were directed by Hegemon and its look down radar.
The artillery paused for a moment to let the Air groups in, Bronco spotted a massive wave of helicopters, Russian built Ka-65s with Israeli markings, flash under him. Four enemy helos versus that many? They wouldn't even need Bronco to clear the way for them, but it was a nice gesture to make him feel involved. He kicked the fighter into a sharp climb to bring up over the heights and pop up-
"Good tone, Fox two!" Bronco had opened his doors and fired off a sidewinder just as a second alarm went off-
"Devils, I've got locks!" Bronco began a tight roll and punched chaff and flares, ground based mobile SAMs had acquired his cross section as his missile doors opened, but locked onto his infrared signature after they had closed. He nosed over toward the ground, he was so close he clipped off a burst from his cannon seeing it shred an armored vehicle on the ground just as he pulled out of his sharp dive.
"Good kill Lead." The Queer pilot, Reaper 9, noted. "Jamming pods are going loud, Rodeo flight, cleared hot, attack direction south."
"Copy guns hot." The razorback flight leader responded. Bronco looped around to form up behind the leading pair of Razorbacks picked out a target for themselves, a tank column that had to be dozens of tracks long. The first pass was done with clusterbombs, Razorbacks had four bomb bay doors each loaded with smart cluster munitions which decimated the columns. On the return pass, infrared trackers locked onto the small fuzzy heat sources and fired, but F-16I fighters from Israel already dove low and began their Wild Weasel operations, flashing in and out of the columns to drop flares and decoy chaff to deflect locks. None of the SAMs hit and the Razorbacks set their sites on individual columns now, lightly armored vehicles and infantry carriers began scattering-
"Guns guns guns!" the calls went out over the channel in a flurry of noise as the Razorbacks opened up with their 40 mm cannon. The fighter was basically built on the same principle as the old A-10 Warthog (which was still in service in the US Army, against all odds to decommission the pig) in that the entire air frame was built around a massive Vulcan gun that went from nose to afterburners. The weapon was shorter than the old Vulcan but was just as accurate and fired the same sized 40mm depleted uranium Sabot projectile, a single one could kill a tank and these were being used with devastating effect.
The Razorbacks on gun attack runs were required to slow their speeds to track targets, and the built in elevator fan helped greatly for this, the pilots opening the doors to their fans to push air in the jetstream out the top of the fighter to retard it almost to speeds of 100 knots, which was the limit of the fighters ability to stay aloft. Six Razorbacks shredded the Syrian reinforcement columns. Bronco made his long covering pass around and saw the Israeli KA-65s pop up over the ledge to strike a hammer blow at the lead echelon with just as devastating an effect as the Razorbacks on the tail columns.
This was what happened when an enemy allowed total air superiority over a battlefield, Winters observed, and made a long pass back to rearm and refuel so they would continue to have total superiority.