“Arielle, you won’t believe what this guy did in Afghanistan. In the first few months after 9/11, the US only had a couple teams in Afghanistan; Jackson, here, commanded one of them. His team had joined the Northern Alliance up in the Panjshir region of northern Afghanistan. Remember, the US role was just getting started so the Taliban thoroughly outnumbered Stonewall’s team and his allies. At one point, they came across a Taliban force of, I think, around nine thousand men bivouacked in a relatively narrow valley; Jackson’s twelve man team and the Northern Alliance force amounted to something like 1,500 men. Stonewall, here, then a relatively junior captain, comes up with this incredibly bold and brilliant idea – I mean, it’s Gideon out of the Old Testament all over again: Sometime in the middle of the night, something like two in the morning, he takes three hundred of his men and marches them up and down the canyon trail – with torches fully lit so everyone in the Taliban encampment can see them. The other 1,200 were set up in a blocking position at the other end of the valley. The really cool thing about this is that the three hundred men with torches – each one only marched about a couple hundred feet along this trail. Stonewall, go ahead and tell her about this.”

“You see the whole trick here is about being a force multiplier. I had the men on the trail spaced out about every few hundred feet or so. I had the man at the very top of the canyon light his torches or lanterns. Each man carried two of them; he’d walk to the next one down the trail, who would then hand the lanterns to him; this man would then walk another hundred feet or so and hand the lanterns off to him, and so on. Once each exchange was made each one returned to his place on the trail. As the lit lanterns reached the bottom, these were turned off and exchanged at every hand-off of those coming down the hill so that these would go back up the hill and repeat the process. In this manner, mind you, it’s about 2:00 a.m., the impression of the number of men coming down the trail would never seem to end. The idea was to panic them into thinking that a very large force was assembling and force them to run up the other end of the valley, right into our blocking force.”

“How’d it go?” Dani asked.

“We destroyed the entire Taliban force.”

“There’s a little more to the story, though,” General Pardo added. “You see, this young captain, here, was the last one on the trail, right on the valley floor and some of the Taliban decided to stand and fight.”

“That they did. I had one of my weapons sergeants and my senior comms sergeant with me, along with several of the Northern Alliance guys. We set up a few claymores in the brief time we had and the few of us had every heavy weapon we could carry; we needed to give the impression that we were a much larger force than we really were. If they figured it out, it would have been a disaster. As it was, it got pretty intense and chaotic there for a while.”

“I’m impressed,” Dani said.

“Jim invited me to participate in the after-action debrief,” Pardo added. “Jackson, and his two sergeants each received the Silver Star. It was an incredibly bold and brilliant – not to mention very risky – operation.”

“I was wondering how you knew all of this,” Jackson added. “I know Jim said you were over there but I never knew in what capacity.”

“Well, that’s our little secret. I’ll have to make this brief as I can’t keep Bibi waiting too much longer, but I’m curious as to the general sense in Washington regarding Iran. From over here, it seems that the current administration has lost any appetite for showing any type of leadership or involvement on the world stage. Look at the failures in Benghazi, Syria, Ukraine and the rise of ISIS – you have a bunch of amateurs running the show in Washington. In spite of these failures, your secretary of state hasn’t learned anything – she still wants to negotiate with Iran and, in essence, give them an atomic bomb. Has she lost her mind?!?” Pardo asked, almost demanding an answer.

“General, there are those of us at the Agency and in the military that share your concerns. I can assure you, though, that if I can get something concrete that I can take back to Jim, he’ll be able to take it to Secretary Johnson and Pam McDowell,” referring to the secretary of state and the national security advisor, “to do more than simply rely on economic sanctions and negotiations.”

“You have a lot more confidence in those two than we do.” Tamir said, with more than a little degree of skepticism. “However, I think we can help you out there. Let Arielle, here, know of anything you want. She’s been advised to be at your disposal for absolutely anything you want – and I mean anything.”

Hearing this, Jackson stole a quick glance at Dani. For a brief moment, her eyes seemingly locked on his until she looked away rather awkwardly. General Pardo, seemingly oblivious to this, continued on.

“Also, and I believe you are aware, we’ve been practicing for a raid on Iran for some time now – we are prepared to ‘go it alone’ if need be.”

“I am aware of that, and I know Jim, the Agency and the Pentagon is as well. I just hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“We shall see, Colonel. We shall see. Now, I must apologize, but I can’t keep Bibi waiting any longer.”

“Nothing to apologize for, General. And thanks for your openness; I look forward to working with Arielle and her team.”

After the brief meeting with General Pardo, Dani took Stonewall to their operations center. Benjamin Givon and Yoni Cohen were in a small conference room in the middle of watching a live feed from a drone, currently flying over Iran’s Parchin military facility in Tehran. As Dani and Stonewall entered the room the feed switched over to more of an urban area which Jackson easily recognized as suburban Tehran. It took a few minutes but eventually the drone centered on a somewhat remote area in western Tehran. The area looked somewhat like a park of sorts. The picture on the screen eventually focused in on a residence and then centered in on the car in the driveway.

“Looks like someone’s home,” Yoni volunteered.

“Zoom in on the window in the southwest corner of the house. Can you see if there’s anything in the window? We told him to leave a couple plants in the window when he’s home; we didn’t want to simply rely on a car being in the driveway,” Ben somewhat rhetorically asked Yoni, his executive officer.

“Yeah, it looks like the good doctor’s home this afternoon,” Yoni replied.

“Looks that way. Okay, let’s get out of here. We don’t want to draw any undo suspicion here at this late stage,” Ben added.

“Gentlemen,” Dani interrupted, “our friend from the States has just arrived. Colonel Tom ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, this is Benjamin Givon, our Iranian field team leader, and Yoni Cohen, our executive officer.”

“The general said you’d be coming by later today. Nice to finally meet you. We’ve heard a lot about you, though you didn’t need to go and emulate General Dayan on us,” Ben added with a sly grin, referring to the black eye patch Jackson wore and which had been a trademark of the legendary one-eyed Israeli General Moshe Dayan.

“That was Jim’s idea; he thought it’d be easier for you to pick me up at the airport. I’ve got the glass eye as well and I’m comfortable with either one. As for what you may have heard, I wouldn’t believe everything you hear. I’m sure Jim embellished a few areas,” Jackson said, referencing his boss at the CIA. “I have heard a little about what you all do here, though. I know that over the past few years several Iranian scientists have met with, shall we say, an ‘unfortunate demise.’ We also know you managed to slow the Iranians down with that Stuxnet virus. That was nice work.”

“The brain drain caused by the loss of their scientists didn’t slow them as much as we had hoped. Stuxnet really set them back, though,” Ben admitted. “We followed that up with a Stuxnet variant which slowed them down even more than the original virus, but it didn’t stop them. We knew it wouldn’t; that wasn’t our intent. We simply wanted to buy some time, and in that, we really succeeded.”

“That’s what we heard. So, tell me, just how close are they to getting a bomb?” Jackson asked the small group.

Somewhat nonchalantly, Ben simply said “farther along than you’d believe. Tell you what, where do they have you staying?”

“I guess I really don’t know. I think it’s a place called the Daniel Hotel, or something like that. I’ve never been here so I’m really not sure.”

“Okay, Yoni and I have a couple things left to finish up. Let’s have Arielle take you over there so you can get checked in and all, then the three of us can grab a bite to eat. Sound okay?”

“Okay by me.”

“Arielle, why don’t we plan on meeting you at the Accad right there at the hotel? Give us, oh…, about half an hour to finish up and we’ll see you there.”

“Yeah, that sounds good; it’s new and I haven’t had a chance to get there yet. We’ll give him a proper introduction to Israel. You ready, Colonel?” Dani asked Stonewall.

“All set; my bag’s still in your rig, so I’m ready whenever you are.”

“Okay, we’ll see you guys there,” Dani said over her shoulder as Jackson accompanied her out the door.

“Dani, you can drop the formality; call me Stonewall, everyone else does. These days, no one’s using my rank.”

“Sorry, since Tamir mentioned you’re still active duty I thought I’d respect the rank,” Dani said as she walked to the car.

“No need to worry about that. Oh, and what’s with the ‘proper introduction’ idea? Anything I should know about?”

“They’ve got you at the Daniel?” Dani asked, ignoring Jackson’s question as he got into the car.

“Yeah, that’s the one; I haven’t even had a chance to look at it online.”

“Well, I don’t see a ring on that finger. Does that mean there’s no ‘Mrs. Jackson’ or someone else in your life?” Dani had that out there before she realized it probably sounded better in her head than spoken. “Ah… I mean, the Daniel is one of the nicest hotels in Israel, let alone Tel Aviv. If you wanted to spoil someone, this is the place,” Dani continued, noticeably blushing.

“Ah, no, there’s no one else,” Jackson replied. “But back to this ‘proper introduction.’”

“Oh yeah; it’s just the usual initiation we do for all new members of the Unit.”

“Excuse me?” Jackson replied, whipping his head around to look at Dani, caught more than a little off guard on a couple different levels. As he did so, he noticed that, as she had been driving with her left arm, the left sleeve of her blouse had slipped up towards her shoulder, revealing a long scar across her arm just above the elbow.

“Relax, it’s nothing to worry about, at least not too much. I mean, I’ve heard of the initiation some of your SEALs go through. We like to have fun, too, but that’s just crazy; we won’t embarrass you too much,” Dani said, with a bit of a mischievous grin. “I mean, it’s not like you have to drive somewhere tonight, right?”

* * *

Jackson didn’t realize that the elevator opened right at the Accad restaurant. He looked around to find Dani and finally noticed her back in a corner booth. As he walked up to the booth, he realized that both Ben and Yoni had already arrived. The “initiation” to which Dani had alluded simply revolved around each of them getting to know Stonewall, and he getting to know them – in essence, more of a job interview. Dani wanted to get to know this Special Forces, turned CIA, officer who had never been to Israel before but had come highly recommended for what she knew to be a very important mission for both of their countries. Ben and Yoni wanted to size up this intelligence officer to get an idea if he might be up for this mission. So, over a very casual dinner, their “interview” began.

“So, ‘Stonewall’, just where did that moniker come from?” Dani began, with somewhat of an edge.

Ignoring the tenor of Dani’s question, Jackson started, “It was back in “05 or “06 in northern Iraq. I commanded an A team that parachuted into northern Iraq. At one point, an entire Iraqi tank company confronted our team – mind you, the heaviest thing we had was a Humvee with a.50 caliber machine gun mounted on it – against several tanks and armored personnel carriers. We were outnumbered by about five to one. We had several of the new Javelin anti-tank missiles as well and we were facing some extreme ranges. We used them, and completely destroyed the tank company. With my name: Thomas Jackson, and the situation we faced, the colonel who relieved us tagged me with the moniker “Stonewall’, and it seemed to fit, reminiscent of the Civil War general.”

“Ah, I hadn’t thought of him; I can see that, now that you mention it. Tamir told me you’ve had quite the career with the Special Forces,” Dani replied. Her use of the Mossad director’s first name – again – did not escape Jackson; actually, somewhat surprised him as her tone implied more than a customary familiarity with her very powerful boss.

“As for the rest of my career with the Special Forces,