Our Sacred Honor (A Luke Stone Thriller—Book 6)

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER FIVE

6:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

The Situation Room

The White House, Washington, DC

“Amy,” Kurt said, “please give us Lebanon and Israel. Focus on the Blue Line.”

On the oversized screen behind him, a map appeared. A second later, it popped up on the smaller screens embedded in the walls. The map showed two territories, bisected by a thick, undulating blue line. To the left of the land area was a pale blue area, denoting the Mediterranean Sea.

Susan knew the area well enough that she could easily skip this geography lesson. Further, she was frustrated—she had already been back at the White House for an hour. It had taken this long to pull this meeting together.

“I’m going to race through the preliminaries, if no one minds,” Kurt said. “I imagine everyone in this room is up on current events enough to know that there was a skirmish on the border between Lebanon and Israel nearly two hours ago.

“The Blue Line, which you see here, is the negotiated border, behind which Israel agreed to pull back her troops after the 1982 war and occupation. An unknown number of Hezbollah commandos made an incursion and attacked an Israeli patrol on the road that follows the Blue Line for much of its length. There were eight soldiers from the Israeli Defense Forces on the patrol, all of whom we know were killed, except one.”

A formal photograph of a dark-haired young woman appeared on the screens. It looked like a photo taken for a high school yearbook, or before some kind of awards ceremony. The girl was smiling brightly. More than smiling—she was positively beaming.

“Daria Shalit,” Kurt said. “Nineteen years old, and just beginning the second year of her compulsory two-year service in the IDF.”

“Pretty,” someone in the room said.

Kurt didn’t respond. A long exhale escaped from him.

“Believe me, there is a lot of table-pounding and soul-searching in Israeli decision-making circles. Women have participated in the Israeli border patrols for the past several months. It seems clear now that this was a preplanned kidnapping with Shalit, or any young woman on the patrol, as the intended target. An assault force pursued the kidnappers across the border, but met with furious resistance within two kilometers. Another four Israelis were killed, along with an estimated twenty Hezbollah militants.”

“Helen of Troy,” a man in military dress greens said.

Kurt nodded. “Exactly. The effect on Israeli society has been visceral. It has been a punch to the gut, and this was probably the intent. Our intelligence suggests that Hezbollah is deliberately trying to spark a war, similar to the one that took place in 2006. Unfortunately, we suspect they are leading Israel into a trap.”

“Hezbollah is tough,” the military man said. “They are hard to root out.”

“Amy,” Kurt said. “Give me Hezbollah, please.”

On the screen, an image appeared of a group of men marching with banners, fists in the air. Kurt gestured at the men with a laser pointer.

“Hezbollah—the Party of God, or Army of God, depending on which translation you prefer—is probably the world’s largest and most militarily capable terror organization. They were created, and are trained, funded, and deployed, as a proxy of the Iranian government, with operations spanning Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

“As terrorists go, Hezbollah is vastly formidable. They enjoy worldwide legitimacy among Shiite Muslims, sophistication of operations, and an organizational ability that ISIS can only dream of having among Sunnis. In the areas of Lebanon where Hezbollah are based, they often act as the de facto local government, with the full cooperation of the population. They run schools, food, recreation and job programs, and they send a handful of elected representatives to the Lebanese parliament. Their military wing is far more effective and powerful than the Lebanese military. Because of the religious differences between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, Hezbollah and ISIS are enemies, sworn to destroy each other.”

“What’s so bad about that?” Susan said, only half-joking. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, isn’t she?”

Kurt almost smiled. “Careful. Hezbollah’s policy toward our close ally Israel is one of open-ended holy war. According to Hezbollah, Israel is an existential threat, oppresses Lebanese society, oppresses the Palestinians, and must be destroyed at all costs.”

“Do they have a chance of doing that?” Susan said.

Kurt shrugged.

“They could do some damage, the extent of which we don’t know. Current assessments suggest that Hezbollah has between twenty-five thousand and thirty thousand fighters. Perhaps ten thousand to fifteen thousand of those fighters have combat experience, either during the 2006 war, or more recently fighting directly against ISIS in the Syrian Civil War. We believe as many as twenty thousand troops have received training from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards—five thousand or more have gone to Iran and received extensive training.

“Hezbollah has a network of deep tunnels and fortifications in the hilly region just north of the Blue Line, which during the 2006 war with Israel proved impossible to completely take out from the air. Israeli intelligence assessments suggest that these forts have only become deeper, more hardened, and more sophisticated since 2006. Our own intelligence suggests that Hezbollah has more than sixty-five thousand rockets and missiles, plus millions of rounds of small arms ammunition. Their arsenal is probably five times as large as it was in 2006. Throughout Hezbollah’s history, Iran has been reluctant to provide them with anything more than slow-moving, short-range missiles and rockets, and we suspect that this is still the case.”

“What is Israel doing?” the man in dress greens said.

Kurt nodded. Behind him on the screen, the Blue Line reappeared. All along the south side of it, small icons of soldiers appeared.

“Now we get to the meat of it. The Israelis have amassed a large incursion force at the border, with more units joining all the time. The Secretary of State has been on the phone with Yonatan Stern, the Israeli Prime Minister. Yonatan is a hardliner, popular with the right wing of Israeli society. To maintain his popularity with his base, he’s going to have to deliver here. He needs a decisive victory, a return of the missing soldier—something. We understand he plans to send the Israeli incursion force across the border within the next few hours, essentially invading Lebanon.”

“In a sense, you could say that Israel was already invaded by Lebanon,” the military man said.

Kurt nodded. “You could say that. Combined with the invasion, Stern plans to conduct a bombing campaign. We have requested that the bombing campaign be limited to twelve hours in duration, be designed to avoid civilian casualties, and only target known Hezbollah military assets.”

“What did Yonatan say to that?” Susan said. Yonatan Stern was not her favorite person in the world. You might even say that they did not get along.

“He said he would take it under advisement.”

Susan shook her head. “Yonatan’s another one of you men. He never met a war, or a weapon system, he didn’t like.”

She paused. This seemed like another low-grade Israel-Hezbollah skirmish, just like all the Israel-Hamas skirmishes, and the Israel-PLO skirmishes before those. Ugly, bloody, brutish, and in the end, inconclusive. Just another practice round for the next practice round.

“So what is our end game here, Kurt? What are the dangers, and what do you suggest that we do?”

Kurt sighed. His perfectly bald head reflected the lights recessed in the ceiling. “As always, the danger is that the fighting spills out of control and becomes linked to, or causes, other regional fighting. Hezbollah and the Palestinians are allies. Often, Hamas uses these wars with Hezbollah as cover to launch their own guerrilla attacks inside Israel. Syria is in chaos, with numerous small, but heavily armed groups looking to exploit instability.

“Meanwhile, large majorities in Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia identify as anti-Israel. And there is always Iran, the biggest, meanest kid on that block, hovering in the background with arms folded, with the big Russian bear hovering behind them. Everyone involved is armed to the teeth.”

“And our next steps?”

Kurt shook his head and shrugged his big shoulders. “Our next steps are to walk a fine line. The whole region is a minefield, and we need to be careful where we put our feet. Israel is one of our closest allies and an important strategic partner. They are really the only functioning democracy in the whole region. At the same time, Lebanon has been an ally and a partner of ours for a long time. Jordan and Turkey are allies of ours. We buy the bulk of our foreign energy supplies from Saudi Arabia. We also have a commitment to brokering peace between the Palestinians and Israel, and engineering the creation of a sovereign state in Palestine.”

He nodded, as if to himself. “I’d say our job is to not inflame tensions any further, and hope this little flare-up turns out to be a nine-day wonder—or better yet, a nine-hour wonder.”

Susan almost laughed. “In other words, we sit on our hands.”

Now Kurt smiled. “I’d say we should sit on our hands. But right now our hands are tied behind our backs.”