OPERATION: DESERT FANG

We’re wheels-up in less than an hour, so grab a seat and listen. Twenty-four hours ago, British SIGINT channels at Akrotiri lit up like a Christmas tree. Radio traffic out of Syria went through the roof. Chemical weapons shipments. Three of them. All converging on Tartus Naval Facility within the next 24 hours. We ran it down, did some homework. Turns out Moscow’s been playing Santa Claus: precursor chemicals, production equipment, the whole damn assembly line. Assad’s about to go from backyard chemistry project to industrial-scale nerve agent production. Washington gave us the green light. Stop those shipments. Any means necessary. Two cargo ships in international waters. One land convoy on a coastal highway. Syrian MiGs are scrambling. Soviet warships are rolling in hot and will intercept us at around 0300. We’ve got one shot to get this right before those materials cross into Syrian territory and disappear forever. This is the kind of op that ends career or starts wars. But letting a dictator get his hands on chemical weapons? That’s worse. Your mission: Intercept those ships. Destroy that convoy. And don’t let a single ounce of that cargo reach Tartus. Questions? No? Good. Time to earn your pay. Get to your birds. Dismissed.