The teams entered Command Ops. Eric, Rick and Mark were standing to the side of the room not far from the coms screen. The coms screen was on, but there was nothing visible.
Suddenly the screen came to life and the entire Command Ops in VA Beach was visible. The room was busy and most of the soldiers were either active at their stations or moving from different sides of the room to the other, like a bunch of ants. Emily walked closer to the camera with a grave look on her face.
Sonny felt his heart flutter upon seeing her. It was the first he was doing so since they'd been here.
"Good afternoon teams," she said. Even if it was 4 o'clock in the morning for her, it was 1 o'clock in the afternoon for them.
"We have a crisis situation that is unfolding. Our drone that has been flying over the region at regular intervals is showing that a convoy of 15 vehicles is heading your way."
The men all looked at each other. It was a big convoy.
"The vehicles, that are not covered, show heavy artillery, RPGs, mortars and machine guns. And that is only what we can see. As there is nothing within a 75-km radius, it is evident that they are looking at engaging and breaching the base. From this moment, on you are siege protocol. You need to be prepared for WMD and close combat. This is what you have spent all these years as a Seal, training for. The actual TOE for TIC is one hour. Godspeed."
Her eyes that had scanned the entire room as she had spoken the entire time, finished in the direction where Sonny was seated, and he knew the intense look was for him.
"Alright, you all heard Captain Blackburn, we've got 40 minutes to prepare for this siege. Let's go!" said Eric.
The men stood and scrambled out of the room.
"Eric, you need to prepare AO for breach and be offline. We'll be your eyes in the sky and I will stay with you for as long as we can."
He nodded. "They are going to encircle us and hit from all sides."
It was her turn to now. "That's how we would do it, I don't see why they would do it differently. It's a classic divide and conquer strategy. But we have one element of surprise."
He tilted his head to the side. "What?"
She smiled. "They don't know how many men we have on base. They don't know that we have 200 soldiers and 3 Seal Teams. You have enough men to station at the different corners of the base and all with varied skills."
He nodded. It was true that it gave them the upper hand, but if they had heavy artillery, it was going to be difficult.
"Captain?"
Emily turned to Joey and saw that he was handing her a piece of paper. She took and opened it then returned her attention to Eric.
"Air support from Tabqa airbase ETA is one hour. They are sending two Blackhawks."
"Copy that."
Eric, Mark, and Rick put their gear on and headed outside to see how the preparations were going.
They then regrouped the teams, the soldiers and the militants and put in place their strategy, making sure that each group had the necessary skilled men and weapons.
