Authors: Nick Mariano
Following his meeting with the Joint Chiefs, General Sutherland traveled to Fort Detrick to talk with its Director. Fort Detrick knew everything there was to know about chemical and biological warfare. It had developed weapons of death since World War II and continued during the Cold War era. Fortunately for mankind none of these weapons were ever unleashed on any country and most were kept secret over the years. The general public didn’t know what was taking place at Fort Detrick or that the fort produced such weapons, although in later years various news agencies reported that such things had taken place there. Following a worldwide ban on these types of weapons, all the countries of the world were directed to destroy any arsenals they had on hand. The United States complied; however, some weapons were hidden away just in case the Soviets or some other countries decided to fudge a little on the treaty. Most of these weapons of mass destruction remained hidden at underground safe havens, hopefully never to be used, but there, just in case. Even after the treaty ban the Army Medical Command continued to do research on medicines and vaccines to counter viruses that appeared yearly, such as the flu bug, and for diseases that had appeared over the history of mankind.
Today’s meeting centered on the recent retrieval of the virus canisters from the German U-boat, U-532. Sutherland had previously ordered the Director to analyze and evaluate the condition of the recovered cargo and submit a report to him. The findings of that report concluded that the canisters had remained safe from contamination even though their outer container had been submerged in the Atlantic for over fifty years. The Director and his staff concluded that the virus itself was still active and potent based on the recent events in North Carolina and after researching numerous Nazi records from Mengele and his experiments at Auschwitz. The staff also concluded that based on recent events in North Carolina, the dispersal devices were still operational and could be remotely activated with minor modifications. These modifications had already been completed and the canisters were believed to be fully operational.
The General instructed the Director to make the canisters ready for immediate travel. The engineers at the fort had already constructed new outer containment systems for the canisters, based on the Nazi design of the recovered container. The General said that a Special Operations Team would pick up the Secret package in two days time and departed the fort, en route to the Pentagon, to complete final preparations.
The following day the General met with Colonel McMaster, the Team Leader of a Special Operations Group who would be instrumental in carrying out “Operation Five Star.” General Sutherland informed the Colonel that his cargo would be ready in a day’s time and that a special C-17 aircraft had already been positioned at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. The General also informed the Colonel that the intended drop off point for the cargo would be Adana, Turkey. Although the Colonel was fully aware of the nature of his cargo, the rest of his team had not been briefed on this aspect of the mission. The C-17 had also been modified before going to Andrews and a sterile containment system had been installed in the plane. The Ops Team would pick up the cargo from Fort Detrick and do a short helicopter hop to Andrews.
“Operation Five Star” was underway. Following his meeting with Colonel McMaster, General Sutherland met with Colonel Howard, Team Leader for Special Operations in Africa. A full Special Operations Group had been put together and as the C-17 departed for Turkey the following day, two additional planes would depart for multiple locations in Africa. These operations teams would be joined by members of a Multi-National Joint Task Force comprised of members of the Central African States and African Union. Their objective would be to neutralize elements of the Boko Haram terrorist organization.
The General’s last meeting was with the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, who would provide clandestine operatives at a number of locations on the ground. ISIS targets had already been identified in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. Operatives had conducted surveillance in remote areas of these three countries and identified large ISIS training centers in areas of the surrounding deserts. These coordinates had already been passed back to Washington and surveillance satellites had confirmed that heavy activity was taking place at all three locations. Additional intelligence had been obtained in Africa by joint intelligence gathering teams. Two high profile Boko Haram targets were identified there. One a large training camp and the other a key headquarters element.
December 28
th
, 2015-“Operation Five Star” gets underway. The gas canisters were picked up at Fort Detrick by a team of five heavily armed Special Operations members and as they exited the main labs at the fort, a Kazakh Mi-8 Helicopter equipped with a missile system and two Gatling guns, landed at a helicopter pad next to the building. The team moved quickly with its cargo of one stainless steel box and boarded the copter for a thirty-minute ride to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Forty minutes later the team was aboard a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III Tactical Transport Aircraft and was airborne and headed to Adana, Turkey, for the next phase of their operation.
At another airbase on the East Coast two Special Operations Teams had boarded C-17s and were headed to two separate locations in Africa. The planes carried a wide array of military equipment including heavily armored personnel carriers that would be deployed when the planes finally landed.
Fourteen hours later the Operations Team was landing in Adana, Turkey, after a quick refueling stop at Rammstein AB in Germany. The planes heading to Africa refueled at Charles de Gaulle AP in France before heading to their final destinations. The planes had also taken on additional Special Operations personnel from the French Army’s Special Forces Brigade (Brigade des Forces Specials Terre) based in Pryunnes-Atlantiques. It was decided that the United States would include the French in this operation as everyone felt they deserved to exact some payback on ISIS for the recent Paris attacks. Eight hours later these planes were at their final destination in Africa and final briefings were underway to finalize the operation. Operations would commence in just a little over 24 hours.
Back in Washington, General Sutherland, members of the Joint Chiefs, the Directors of the CIA and Homeland Security and the President of the United States, met to go over the final preparations for “Operation Five Star.” All operational elements were on the ground and the President gave the final go ahead to all operational elements. New Year’s Day would signal the beginning of a joint security effort to cripple and eliminate ISIS once and for all.
After weeks of preparation “Operation Five Star” got underway early on New Year’s Day. The clock in Washington, D.C. had just struck twelve midnight and people in Washington and around the world were celebrating the start of a New Year. Fireworks lit up the skies over the Tidal Basin in D.C. and the famous crystal globe was beginning its descent in the heart of New York City at Times Square. People welcomed in the New Year and prayed that 2016 would be a better year than 2015. They prayed that the super virus was finally eradicated from the world. They prayed that the nations of the world would hunt out ISIS and finally destroy it. They hoped for peace and calm throughout the world. They wished each other a very Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year. People toasted each other and the celebrations around the world were in full swing. Meanwhile, a heavy police and military presence was noticeable in Washington, New York, Paris, London, Rome, Rio and almost every city of the world. People knew that groups like ISIS could materialize at any moment and cause death and destruction or that a Lone Wolf could pull out a gun or bomb and begin killing people as had recently happened in San Bernardino. What the people of the world didn’t know, however, was that at twelve o’clock midnight, January 1
st
, 2016, one of the biggest Special Warfare Operations in modern times was about to begin and that “Operation Five Star” was a “GO”. In the days that followed world news agencies would report about the massive campaign underway to dismantle one of the major terrorist groups in the world.
As of January 2014 the United States maintained one of the largest squadrons of unmanned aerial drones in the world. Its inventory consisted of 7,362 RQ-11 Ravens; 990 AeroVironment Wasp IIIs; 1,137 AeroVironment RQ-20 Pumas; 306 RQ-16-T-Hawk small UAS systems; 246 Predators and MQ-1C Grey Eagles; 126 MQ-9 Reapers; 491 RQ-7 Shadows and 33 RQ-45 Global Hawk large systems. The killing power of these air squadrons was beyond imagination and the United States, in conjunction with its allies, was about to unleash about 50% of these systems on suspected ISIS strongholds around the world.
Midnight 2016-Washington, D.C.; 0800 hrs. January 1st- Yemen and Iraq; 0900 hrs.- Syria and 0800 hrs.- Kenya and the Sudan. Everything was a GO! At two remote locations in Africa soldiers from the Special Operations elements of the United States and the Central African States and African Union prepared to move in on two key Boko Haram facilities. In the Middle East three targets had been identified and a covert operation was about to get underway. Just prior to the African operations getting underway, several RQ-11 Raven drones were launched and cruised through the African skies on a surveillance mission to determine what activity was taking place at the two key targets. The training camp in a remote section of Kenya was already in full swing and recruits could be seen exercising or carrying out mock terrorist attacks on training buildings. The other target, in the Sudan, was a large military complex used as a staging ground for ISIS in Africa and that housed many of its senior leaders. Once the two targets were identified and the Special Operations groups were in position for their attacks, the command was given to launch 20 MQ-9 Reaper drones equipped with AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles. The drones approached their targets, silently and undetected, as drone operators flew the aircraft from remote locations. The first phase of the attack began as the aerial drones launched their deadly cargoes on structures and terrorists at both locations. Each drone carried a payload of over 1500 pounds of armaments along with jamming equipment to avoid detection by anyone on the ground. The terrorists were caught completely off guard and both men and structures were blown apart as the missiles impacted their targets. As soon as the fireworks were over, Special Operations elements descended on the two locations in a mop up operation; killing or capturing any surviving ISIS terrorists and gathering intelligence information that remained after the attacks. In a little over one hour more than 600 terrorists had been killed or captured and a wealth of information was gathered about ISIS operations and possible future attacks that had been planned.
Meanwhile similar attacks were taking place in Afghanistan and Iraq. Drones flew undetected through the morning skies and Hellfire and Sidewinder missiles were launched against a wide array of targets in the two countries.
At a command and control bunker complex in Adana, Turkey, three airmen and three CIA operatives sat at an array of controls used to guide a squadron of MQ-1 Predator UAWs. These drones were, however, not like the rest of the squadron that was carrying out attacks elsewhere in the world. They carried a very special cargo that was meant to help destroy ISIS once and for all in this region. Operatives had identified three high profile targets that were the backbone of ISIS’s operations in the Middle East and where the majority of their new cadres were trained.
The early morning sky was clear and a few stars were still visible on the horizon. Sentries guarded the avenues to an ISIS training camp in the Ramlatal-Sab’atayn region of Yemen. The camp trained ISIS recruits and volunteers. Presently there were over 350 people at the site. In Syria, between the Syrian Desert in the east and the Jabal al-Druze Range in the south, was one of the largest ISIS training facilities in the Middle East. The encampment was heavily guarded and housed over 800 recruits and several senior trainers at any given time. In an isolated area of the Arabian Desert in Iraq was a similar camp with over 500 recruits in training, many of whom would eventually carry out attacks around the world; similar to the recent Paris attacks.
Just before 0800 hrs., Turkish time, three MQ-1 Predator UAVs armed with Hellfire missiles glided down a remote runway in Turkey and ascended into the air toward their targets at three selected locations. The estimated flight times varied between 45 minutes and one hour before they would make their initial approach on their targets. The drone operators sat silently at their consoles and occasionally talked about this very special mission. Gradually the targets began to appear on their console screens and the operators began the drone’s decent after making an initial surveillance run over the target. The drones were silent and almost invisible to the naked eye. Sentries on the ground had no idea that their encampment was being watched by foreign eyes at this very moment. On the second pass over their targets the controllers began pressing a series of buttons that activated a special weapons system on each drone. As the drones circled their targets a misty vapor descended toward their targets on the ground. Several of the people at the three camps detected a peculiar odor and a slight mist, which lasted for only a second before it was gone. No one thought anything more about it. It was the start of a new day in the Middle East and trainers and recruits were anxious to get their training underway.
Three Predator drones cruised at 300 miles per hour heading back to their staging area in Adana, Turkey. Three days later several of the recruits and trainers began to experience sore throats and a slight stillness in their bodies.