“Will the ROC mount a rescue attempt?” asked National Security Advisor Burkow.
Hood sat down. “We’re empowered to evacuate our personnel from unstable situations,” he said carefully. “However, we have no idea whether that’s feasible at this point.”
“Anything’s feasible if you want to pay the price,” Burkow remarked. “Your people are authorized to use deadly force to rescue hostages. We’ve got thirty-seven hundred troops at the Incirlik Air-Base, which is right around the corner.”
“There are two Strikers onboard,” Hood replied. “But as I said, I have no idea what’s feasible at this point.”
“I want to be notified personally of any developments,” the President said, “wherever you are.”
“Of course, sir,” Hood said. He wondered what the President meant by that last comment.
“Av,” the President went on, “would you please continue your briefing?”
“Yes, sir,” said Secretary of State Av Lincoln.
The powerfully built former major league baseball star looked at his notepad. He had made a successful transition into politics, and had been one of the earliest supporters of the candidacy of Michael Lawrence. He was one of the few insiders Paul Hood trusted completely.
“Paul,” said Lincoln, “I was just telling the others about the Turkish mobilization. My office has been in constant contact with Ambassador Robert Macaluso at our embassy in Ankara, as well as with the U.S. Consulates General in Istanbul and Izmir and the consulate in Adana. We’ve also been talking with Ambassador Kande at the Turkish Chancery in Washington. All of them have confirmed the following information.
“At 12:30 p.m. our time, Turkey mobilized over a half-million men in their Land Forces and Air Force and put one hundred thousand men on high alert in the Naval Forces, which includes the Naval Air and Naval Infantry. That’s nearly all of their total military power.”
“Including reserves?” the President asked.
“No, sir,” said Defense Secretary Colon. “They can dig up another twenty thousand troops if they have to, then dip into the nineteen-to-forty-nine-year-old work force for another fifty thousand trainees if necessary.”
“We’ve been told that the land and air forces are going to take up positions down the Euphrates. and along the Syrian border,” Lincoln went on. “The sea forces are being concentrated on the Aegean and the Mediterranean. We’ve been assured by Ankara that the naval troops in the Mediterranean will go no further south than the southern tip of the Gulf of Alexandretta.”
Hood looked at the map on his computer screen. The gulf ended about twenty-five miles north of Syria.
“The Turkish forces in the Aegean are to make sure the Greeks stay out of this,” Lincoln said. “We haven’t heard anything definitive yet from Damascus, though the President, his three Vice Presidents, and the Council of Ministers are meeting right now. Ambassador Moualem at the chancery here in Washington says there will be an appropriate response from Syria.”
“Meaning?” asked the President.
“Some kind of mobilization,” said General Ken Vanzandt, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Syria’s got its highest concentration of soldiers in bases along the Orontes in the west, along the Euphrates in central Syria, and in the east near the Iraqi and Turkish borders. The Syrian President will probably send half of those troops north, maybe one hundred thousand troops.”
“How far north will they go?” the. President asked.
“All the way,” said Vanzandt. “To within slingshot distance of Turkey. Since losing the Golan Heights to Israel in 1967, the Syrians have been pretty aggressive about defending their territory.”
“‘It’s interesting that Turkey mobilized nearly six hundred thousand men,” said Secretary of Defense Ernie Colon. “That’s almost three times the total manpower available to the Syrian Army, the Syrian Navy, the Syrian Air Force, and the Syrian Air Defense Forces combined. Turkey’s obviously saying, ‘We’ll take you on one-to-one. And if any other nations join in, we’ve got something left over for them too.’ ”
“That sounds good on the surface,” said General Vanzandt. “But the Turks are facing a big problem. They have to fight this kind of terrorism, that’s a given. But even if the Syrian military weren’t a factor, a Turkish attack against the Kurds is a dangerous proposition. We know that the Kurds have been trying to smooth out their differences. Whether they caused the dam attack or not, it’s certain to encourage and solidify the different Kurdish elements. A counterattack by Turkey will inspire even greater unity. There are fourteen to fifteen million Kurds among Turkey’s fifty-nine million people, and they’re ready to blow.”
“Who can blame them?” asked Lincoln. “They’ve been shot at, gassed in their homes, and executed without trials.”
“Hold it right there, Av,” said Burkow. “Many of those Kurds are terrorists.”
“And many are not,” Lincoln ‘replied.
Burkow ignored him. “Larry, what was that business in the Syrian Navy last month?”
CIA director Larry Rachlin folded his hands on the table. “The Syrians did an A-one job keeping this out of the press,” he said, “but a Kurdish mole assassinated a general and two aides. When the mole was captured, another Kurdish mole took the general’s wife and two daughters hostage and demanded his release. Instead, they sent him his colleague’s head. Literally. There was a rescue attempt. By the time it was finished, the general’s wife, daughters, and the second Kurd were dead along with two Syrian rescuers.”
“If it’s the Turks who are terrorizing the Kurds,” said the President, “why did this mole turn on the Syrians?”
“Because,” said Rachlin, “the Syrian President has come to the conclusion, correctly, that his armed forces are full of Kurdish moles. Some of them in very high places. He’s vowed to flush them all out.”
Lincoln sat back with disgust. “Steve, Larry, what’s the point of all this?”
“The point is that we can’t start bleeding all over for the Kurds,” Burkow said. “We’ve been good to them in the past. But they’re becoming increasingly militant, they’re ruthless, and they’ve got God-knows-how-many moles in the Turkish military as well. If we get mixed up in this those Turkish moles may start turning on NATO assets.”
“Actually, things could be a whole lot worse than that,” Vanzandt said. “The Kurds have a lot of sympathizers among the Islamic fundamentalist parties in Turkey. Individually or together, those Kurds and their sympathizers could very well take advantage of the confusion of war to try and throw out the secular rulers in both governments.”
“Out of chaos comes more chaos,” Lincoln said.
“You got it,” said Vanzandt. “Out with flawed democracy, in with religious oppression.”
“Out with the U.S.,” Defense Secretary Colon said.
“Out isn’t the word for it,” CIA Director Rachlin added. “Steve’s right on the money. They’ll start hunting us down not only in Turkey but in Greece. Remember all those Afghan freedom fighters we helped to arm and train to fight the Soviets? A lot of those people have thrown in with the Islamic fundamentalists. Many of them are being directed by Sheik Safar al-Awdah, a Syrian who is one of the most radical clerics in the region.”
“God, I’d like to see someone drop-kick that son of a bitch,” Steve Burkow said. “His radio speeches have sent a lot of people on one-way bus trips into Israel with bombs tied to their legs.”
“His following in Turkey and Saudi Arabia in particular are very strong,” Rachlin went on, “and it’s gotten stronger in Turkey since Islamic Party Leader Necmettin Erbakan became Prime Minister of Turkey in the summer of 1996. Ironically, not all of the radicalism has to do with religion. Some of it has to do with the economy. In the 1980s, when Turkey went from being a relatively closed market to being a global one, only a handful of people got rich. The rest stayed poor or got poorer. Those kinds of people are easy converts to anything new.”
“The fundamentalists and the big urban underclass are natural allies,” said Av Lincoln. “Both are minorities and both want things the wealthy, secular leaders have.”
“Larry,” the President said, “you mentioned Saudi Arabia. What will the rest of the region do if things escalate between Turkey and Syria?”
“Israel is the big question,” said Rachlin. “They take their military cooperation agreement with Turkey very, very seriously. Israel’s been flying training missions out of Akinci Air Base west of Ankara for two years now. They’ve also been slowly upgrading Turkey’s 164 Phantom F-4s to the more sophisticated Phantom 2000s.”
“Mind you,” Colon pointed out, “Israel didn’t just do that out of the goodness of their hearts. They were paid six hundred million dollars to do that.”
“That’s right,” Rachlin agreed. “But in the event of war, Israel will still continue to provide spare parts, possibly ammunition, and certainly intelligence to Turkey. It’s the same kind of arrangement Israel signed with Jordan back in 1994. There will probably be no direct military intervention unless Israel is attacked. However, if Israel permits Turkey to fly from its territory for a two-sided slam at Syria, you can be pretty sure that Damascus will attack Israel.”