JOINT TASK FORCE PHOENIX: An American Odyssey

By Jeff Fuller

JOINT TASK FORCE PHOENIX
An American Odyssey
This is a story about the threats America faces from outside our borders and from within. It begins with the recon team’s military freefall infiltration into Syria and ends with in a fight for survival in our nation’s capital. We follow Harris Norton and his team through the complex and harrowing operation to thwart an evil plot to take down our country.
Feel the icy blast at 35,000 feet as the team exits a CIA aircraft to infiltrate into Syria. Feel the heat of battle in the desert and in our Capitol. Get to know the patriots who support the task force throughout its’ odyssey. Experience self-serving politicians who sell out their country for political and ideological advantage.
Experience the phases of special operations from planning, rehearsal, infiltration, reconnaissance, execution, adjustment to reality, and finally to post-operations exploitation.
See how military, intelligence and special operations personnel form bonds and values that carry through long after retirement. Get a sense of how the women of clandestine and military intelligence contribute to mission success.
Feel the betrayal of traitors and the exhilaration of mission accomplishment.
Recognize the nature of the special people we can count on when the going gets tough.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 23, 2024
• ISBN: 9798369419922

Jeff Fuller

Jeff Fuller LTC USA SF (Ret) Jeff Fuller was born and raised in Montana. He left college to join the Army as an airborne infantry soldier. He was selected to go to Officer Candidate School. The Army then accepted his request to go through Special Forces selection. His first Special Forces assignment was the 10th Special Forces Group in Germany. After duty on a Military Free Fall and SADM (backpack nuc) detachment, he was on the way to Viet Nam. There he commanded a recon platoon and a rifle company. He was then assigned to the 7th Special Forces Group. He continued in a series of special forces, staff, and education assignments. After retiring from USSOCOM, he worked as a consultant to USSOCOM, the Joint Staff, DHS, and USCG. He retired with the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, four Bronze Stars, three Purple Hearts, the Combat Infantry Badge, and Military Freefall Instructor Wings. He has a BS from FSU, is a graduate of the Army Command and General Staff College and the Armed Forces Staff College. He presently serves on a Doctoral Dissertation Committee for Terrorism Studies at Capitol Technology University. He is otherwise retired in Northern Virginia with his wife Carmen and two dogs. He has three children, and five grandchildren. He is an active tactical shooter at local ranges and enjoys hunting and fishing. He is active in local and Virginia politics.

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JOINT TASK

FORCE PHOENIX

An American Odyssey

Jeff Fuller

Copyright © 2024 by Jeff Fuller.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 06/21/2024

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

858382

JOINT TASK FORCE

PHOENIX

CONTENTS

Phoenix

Dedication

Prelude

Disclaimer

Infiltration

Reconnaissance

Isolation – Briefback – Decision

The Bad Guys Always Get a Vote

Plan B

Phoenix Rising

Laura Manning – Back from Hell

Shockwave

Eboloa²

The Hunt

Endgame

Aftershock

Epilogue

About the Author

Phoenix

Most beings spring from other individuals; but there is a certain kind which reproduces itself. The Assyrians call it the Phoenix.

Ovid

Dedication

To my parents, Barbara and Ed Fuller who are true representatives of the greatest generation and who passed on to their three children and many grand and great grandchildren the beautiful message that our country and values are worth fighting for and that a meaningful life can be gained from hard work, responsibility, and love of family.

Prelude

Our story picks up a world where Donald Trump did not run for President.

After the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) from a ‘Junior Varsity’ regional Terrorist group, according to President Obama in 2014, the U.S. and its weak-kneed regional Arab and NATO partners fiddled with marginal half-measures in an attempt to keep the ISIL from taking Baghdad and further embarrassing the President and NATO with more beheadings and the immolation of apostates. While many called for an aggressive strategy to destroy the Islamic State, including Democratic politicians who were desperate to survive the 2014 election, the President followed his habit of voting ‘not present’ on hard issues and kicked the can down the road. He offered harsh words that he would destroy the IS while he demanded the impossible first, a cohesive coalition of Muslin States and NATO Allies. Again, President Obama carefully led from behind. He promised to not employ ‘boots on the ground.’ After years of delay, he finally promised to support the optometrists and farmers of the Free Syrian Army who he had ridiculed earlier.

The Islamic State adapted to the limited air attacks and rules of engagement (ROE) that Code Pink could have drafted. The ROE, with targeting controlled by young National Security staffers and progressive lawyers, eliminated the effective use of air power. Most aircraft returned to base with their bombs unused. The enemy embedded their forces in towns and villages by forcing Christian and other apostates on its captured tanks and anti-aircraft guns to give the embedded lawyers and NSC staffers the rationale to order "No-go.’

Mary Jefferson, a Northeast liberal, College Professor, and bombastic populist claimed to extend the Obama Administration’s ‘tough’ policy overseas while promising social justice at home to win the 2016 election over the Republican who had promised marijuana legalization and no boots on the ground anywhere. The media loved her. She spewed populist themes along with tough words for her opponents. Her most effective weapon was collaboration with the Obama Justice Department to bring charges on each potential viable Republican candidate. Except for the one she wanted to run against. This made it possible for Senator Mary Jefferson to squeak by with the prize. However, Congress remained tenuously in the hands of Republicans.

Jihadis had conducted six successful attacks in the homeland since late 2014. Numerous attacks had been disrupted, often by citizens reporting to their local cops. The country was divided between isolationists who asserted that – by withdrawing from overseas adventures – Americans would finally be safe, and hawks who wanted to defeat jihadis before they wrecked more havoc at home and abroad.

In 2020, while President Jefferson fought to keep her job, LTC Harris Norton and his team of Delta warriors and a CIA operative were preparing to capture the leadership of ISIL to obtain actionable intelligence to allow them to defeat what they knew to be a potentially devastating planned biological attack on America to coincide with the nineteenth 9/11/2001 attack anniversary.

The Islamic State in August 2020, the Recon Infiltration Route (solid) and the Task Force Raid route (dotted)

LTC Norton planned a High-Altitude High-Opening (HAHO) infiltration of a recon team into Northern Syria, followed by an air assault raid by LTC Norton’s Squadron on the ISIL leaders’ meeting place. Operational security was vital as the lives of LTC Norton’s team was at risk.

This is a story of the triumph of the American warrior spirit over a jihadist group, political cowardice, and betrayal. Regrettably, the impulses that animate some of our political and senior military leaders often run counter to U.S. national interests. This story celebrates the quiet professionals of the military and the intelligence operators who risk all for their country every day while we enjoy the fruits of their sacrifices, often taking for granted the freedoms and opportunities we enjoy. It also recognizes the men and women who move from the shadowy world of combatting terrorism to civilian life, applying their patriotism and dedication to their country the rest of their lives.

On a personal note, I have served with men and women who make up the composite characters in this story. I salute them and ask you, the reader, to join me in a moment of thanks for them, their predecessors, and their successors and especially their families who sacrificed along with them. Thank goodness for their willingness to continue to fight the enemy and manage to overcome those ‘leaders’ who claim patriotism, but display disdain for warriors, and who are driven by insufferable, naked, self-interest as displayed in every waking moment of their meaningless lives.

You will follow this story from the perspective of the Joint Task force and Supporting Forces (Blue), the Jihadi enemy (Red), the Political aspects (Political) and the press (4th Estate).

Disclaimer

No person or situation described in poor (or any) light here is based on an actual person, living or dead, except for cases coincident with published open-source news reports.

I have also been careful not to communicate to our enemies any technology or tactics that would put our operators or their missions in jeopardy.

Infiltration

Infiltration of US special operations personnel into enemy territory marks the phase of the operation where political and military leaders are (almost) as committed to the mission as the operators. Since President Jimmy Carter and the inept military’s disastrous failure to rescue American hostages held in Iran, known as Desert One, military leaders reluctantly formed a dedicated joint special operations counterterrorism organization with highly trained army, navy, and air force units, as well as the needed support structure.

The Desert One failure and the subsequent loss of President Carter’s second term to Ronald Reagan have together served as a highly visible warning to politicians of the political consequences for a failed military raid.

Infiltration/Blue: The Dark Sandy Yonder—Finally

Thirty-five thousand feet over Turkey

Lieutenant Colonel Harris Norton checked his watch. About forty minutes to a green light. This was the closest they had gotten to the point of no return. He hated the doubt that sprang up in his gut. Not from doubt in his team or the mission. But after three eleventh-hour mission cancellations over the last four months, where the president had gotten cold feet each time, he could forgive his gut, especially when recalling the misery of each call from JSOC with the no-go code word. Norton looked across the oxygen console at MSG Mark Flowers and hoped it would be a go. He was afraid Flowers would lose it if the president cancelled this one. The idea that they could be prevented from stopping a major bio attack because of political calculations was an ugly thought to bear.

MSG Mark Sky Flowers was the recon team leader and the HAHO jumpmaster. He had over four thousand jumps. He’d had a tour with the army’s Golden Knights and had tested many of the techniques and equipment they were using on this high-altitude, high-opening (HAHO) infiltration. Flowers uncoiled his six-foot two-inch, 220-pound running back frame, stood, and gave the signal to connect to the oxygen console. They would prebreathe 100 percent oxygen for thirty minutes before switching to their personal O2 canisters. Flowers checked the 500-pound bundle that contained the gear and water that they could not carry in their rucksacks.

They had reliable intelligence from a CIA asset that the leadership of the Islamic State was meeting with their spiritual guru again. This would be the fourth time in six months that intel had given them this high-value target. MSG Sky Flowers was all in for this mission, as he was for every mission. He looked at his commander and saw that his light blue eyes looked weirdly demonic in the reflected red lights of the passenger compartment. Norton and Flowers went back to the Fifth Special Forces Group, when then Captain Harris Norton had been his Special Forces operational detachment A detachment commander, and he himself had been the ODA Special Forces operations and intelligence sergeant. They’d spent two tours together in Iraq before the army had insisted Norton leave for the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. They could communicate with a glance and an expression, and now they were back together in the army’s elite Delta Force on their fifteenth high-risk op.

MSG Sky Flowers glanced over at his leader and friend, Harris Norton. He closed his eyes and thought about the man and what they meant to each other. They had both pulled each other out of firefights over the last few years. His mind took him back to Camp Marmal in Mazar-e Sharif District in northern Afghanistan.

*        *        *

He was the SF ODA 522 team sergeant. Captain Harris Norton was the team leader, and their team was en route to execute a recon-and-capture mission on a high-value Taliban leader who had just used his satellite phone from a village near the Pakistan border. The MH-60 helicopter put them down ten kilometers to the south of the village. After, they established a hide site near the village and confirmed their target was there with a ten-man security detail. Captain Harris laid on air support from an AC-130 to back them up during their raid that they planned for 2300 hours. In the early afternoon, a caravan of about twelve gun trucks pulled into the village, and eighty Taliban jihadis dismounted and began milling around. At about the same time, they received a call from the JSOTF HQ that they had picked up radio traffic indicating that a Taliban unit was deploying to find an American unit near the village. Harris asked for the AC-130 and exfil ASAP. The best he could get was in two hours. Flowers was in the forward hide site with another team member, watching the village from three hundred yards. The rest of the team was in an overwatch position six hundred yards from the village.

He watching the Taliban form up in three elements, and one of them moved directly toward his hide site. Captain Harris called him on team comms and told him, Sky, we have your back.

Within a minute, the Taliban unit was nearly on them, and he and his teammate lit them up. As Sky engaged the enemy from fifty meters, Harris left his two-man sniper team to cover them and maneuvered his four-man element to flank the Taliban element. The rest of the jihadis responded, and they had a full-blown firefight going. Sky’s teammate was hit with an AK-47 round through his shoulder but continued to shoot with his left hand. Sky was hit with a RPG fragmentation grenade that peppered his right side with shrapnel. He thought it was all over for them when Captain Norton rolled into his position. He was followed by the rest of the team.

Harris looked at him and said, Hey, Sky, I thought you could use a hand.

They continued to kill Taliban who had retreated to the village under effective fire from the team. They held their position through a hail of less effective RPG and rifle fire. Then the AC-130 showed up, and they brought down the only kind of hell that an AC-130 gunship can. Within thirty minutes, they swept the village and found their Taliban leader dead from a 105 mm round that had destroyed his hut. They took DNA swabs and policed up the jihadi leader’s SAT phone and three cell phones as well as a laptop and headed to the pickup zone.

Captain Harris sat with him in the camp clinic as a doc removed shrapnel chunks, sand, and small stones that decorated his body. He told his captain that he owed him one. Over the next two tours, they managed to pay each other back several times.

*        *        *

The former air force special operator, now CIA contractor crew chief of this DEA-confiscated Boeing 737, Chief Holloway, broke into their thoughts. Pilot is updating his HARP calculator to determine our high-altitude release point. Make sure your flight altimeters are synced with the latest from the Puzzle Palace. He’s giving me fifteen minutes to green light.

Sky Flowers looked up at Holloway. Hey, dick breath, don’t forget the two hundred twenty dollars you owe me from poker last night!

Holloway retorted, Look, Flowers, I will make sure your ex gets it. Meanwhile, I cannot wait to get your whining ass out of my bird!

It’s my two hundred twenty dollars; I’d rather you buy rounds at the club. And I will be so glad to get out of your drug lord’s gaudy bird!

No worries. Given her track record, POTITS will probably call this one too, and you will owe me five hundred dollars by the weekend!

CIA Senior Agent Dahteste Lips O’Neil opened her eyes and pinned Flowers with a glare. "Master Sergeant Flowers, if I hear you call the president of the US POTITS again, I am going to file an official bitch with her girlfriend, the national security advisor."

OK, Lips, and throw in a sexual harassment charge while you’re at it!

Sky Flowers and every man on this mission not only respected O’Neil for her guts and skill but also admired her beauty and take-no-prisoners personality. But there was not much to admire under the cabin’s red lights, with the oxygen mask, the special Kevlar helmet, the war paint, the desert camo jumpsuit, the Heckler & Koch MP7 submachine gun strapped to the side of her harness, the gear vest loaded with magazines, and the silenced .40-caliber Smith & Wesson semiauto pistol on her hip. They called her Lips—short for Woodpecker Lips.

They had all heard of her reputation, but the Joint Special Operations Task Force (JSOTF) commander, Colonel Dave West (Eighty-Second Airborne, SF, Delta, CIA), gave her the nickname when he introduced her to the team in the operation center at JSOC at Fort Bragg with a classic Colonel Westism.

Gentlemen, I want to introduce you to the senior CIA agent who will help us bring down the Islamic State. She developed the asset that has gotten us inside our jihadist ragheads’ inner circle. And just to save you the time and pain, in addition to being good-looking, she is harder than woodpecker lips. She just completed the Coeur d’Alene Ironman in less than eleven hours. She is also a fifth-degree black belt in combat jujitsu. Enough said!

Since that typical Colonel West introduction, she had been affectionately known as Lips to her teammates. This stuck, in large part, because of her Angelia Jolie–like lips.

The other six Delta Force operators watched this banter with knowing smiles. They had all worked together for so long that they were like family. They were eight brothers and a sister on their way to drive a stake into the heart of the Islamic State and get the intelligence to allow the US to disrupt a deadly attack.

They had been in isolation for five months, since early April when they’d gotten the first mission brief. No trips home. No kids’ birthday parties. No anniversary celebrations. All OP Phoenix every day and night since the first assembly alert on April 4, 2020. Wives, girlfriends, and family knew they were on a serious mission, as they had not rotated off their normal Delta Alert cycle. And personal communications since isolation had been extremely tight. The team knew their loved ones were worried, but their families tried to live their lives normally, as they understood that blown OPSEC could bring their soldiers home under flag-draped coffins.

Harris Norton reflected over this President’s term. ISIL had successfully conducted six conventional terrorist attacks in the U.S. over the past five years. They had survived a torrent of strongly worded speeches by U.S., NATO, and UN politicians. ISIL had adjusted their operations and goals in the face of feckless, half-assed, one arm tied behind their back intelligence and military operations that were tightly controlled by the political whiz kids in the Jefferson Whitehouse.

The horror had started on September 11, 2015, with a simultaneous attack on three malls by two-man cells armed with IEDs and semi-automatic weapons; 265 killed in hours, and left America in a panic. Then in 2016, an attack on three chlorine rail storage tank cars in Tampa – 456 killed and thousands hospitalized with chlorine inhalation poisoning. The U.S. chemical industry had been brought to a near stop in the aftermath. In 2016, the American electorate chose isolation and appeasement over resolute policy, and elected President Mary Jefferson, a Senator and former Professor of Economics at Harvard … and a lifetime social justice advocate and committed dove. With the new President withdrawing from the threat, ISIL launched three devastating attacks. In 2017, during the inauguration of the President, ISIL shut down the Capitol area with three sniper teams – 64 were killed, and many more wounded. It took ten days of terror before the last sniper was killed in a shootout with an armed veteran in a Home Depot parking lot.

In 2018, ten Somali ISIL terrorists used IEDs, small arms, and grenades to kill 418 people and nearly destroy the Mall of America. In 2018, a six-man terrorist cell attacked three Las Vegas casinos with three large truck bombs. In two cases, the truck penetrated into its targeted building and brought down the structure – 2,520 killed, thousands more wounded. The last attack was on July 1st 2000, when terrorists drove a 15,000 lb. TNT truck bomb into the lobby of the Board of Trade building in Chicago – 4,110 killed and the loss of a U.S. economic power icon in an instant of horror. These attacks fueled the isolationist crowd’s call to retreat.

Now, with credible intelligence pointing to a biological attack coming around September 11, 2020, the Jefferson Administration was being forced to act.

The specially configured 737 continued on a flight corridor traveled by commercial aviation, from the former Soviet Union country of Georgia to Cypress in the Mediterranean Sea. The aircraft was registered to a commercial air freight company, a CIA front, and was following a route the crew had flown before, carrying electronics and other equipment from legitimate Georgian companies along select routes into the Mediterranean to maintain operational flight profiles for this mission. This subterfuge added complexity and time, but was necessary to deceive aviation controllers, especially in Turkey and Syria.

As the 737 crew flew the route along the leg that took them near the border with Syria, the operators in the back dozed; they thought about their families, the mission, their roles, and the fact that on this fourth attempt, they were closing in on the point when the President could not get cold feet.

Harris allowed himself a brief thought of Chief Warrant Officer Cindy Clark, former covert Intel unit operator and the JSOTF Intel Officer back at JSOC HQ. She was in the Operation Center at JSOC providing all-source intelligence support to the JSOTF Commander on the amphibious ship with his 2nd Squadron and the JSOTF HQs. She was also a gorgeous, bright, headstrong woman who was married to her profession and had lost a foot in Iraq to an IED. She was the only woman that had inspired a romantic interest in him since he had lost his wife to a car accident four years ago. He knew she was pinned to the radios and satellite images and watching their backs. They were lucky to have her. He was lucky as hell to have her.

Harris flashed back to the first time he had seen Cindy Clark. He was a Delta Troop Commander leading an operation with the mission of capturing an Al-Qaida planner who was leading AQ operations in Libya. Chief Cindy Clark and one of her team members had been tracking the satellite phone and provided the intelligence that pinpointed his location and pattern of activity. On the night of the planned attack, the raid commander received a frantic call from Cindy’s partner that the tribe that was providing security for the Al-Qaida leader had captured her in a random security operation. Major Horton’s raid team was airborne – two hours out when he was forced to shift the plan to a rescue mission. When they fast-roped into the compound, hell broke loose. He had an AC-130 providing cover and it destroyed the outer perimeter security positions, as planned.

Harris found Cindy Clark in a room with the AQ leader. He was hiding behind Clark with a 9 mm semi-auto to her head. Harris shot the terrorist’s handgun in the receiver and placed his second shot in his left eye. Clark had been beaten, but was undaunted. She threw the dead terrorist off her, shook her long black hair from her face, and as Harris pulled her to her feet, said: Thanks, but now we don’t have a terrorist leader to interrogate!

He got to know and respect her as a serious, hardcore operator. Now, six years later, she was the love of his life, even if it was hard to grasp.

Chief Holloway: 10 Minutes, Ladies, and Lips!

Jumpmaster Flowers turned to look at each operator. He held up all ten fingers. 10 minutes! OK, arm your ARRs. Make sure your IR lights and NVGs are working – give me an OK on your equipment check on the team radio. We don’t have alibies on this op. Each operator checked the gear and parachutes of the operators to their left and right. Straps were tightened. NVGs were dropped in place and IR lights were turned on and checked with the NVGs. These men and the