FIFTY-SEVEN
On the Mediterranean Sea
The Russian general had just given the order: “The invasion of Israel and the destruction of the Jewish occupiers shall commence in twelve hours.”
Vice Admiral Sergei Trishnipov was enjoying the excellent vantage point from the bridge on the destroyer Kiev. He had a nearly three-hundred-degree view of the massive flotilla he was commanding. It had taken years for Russia to rebuild its sagging navy. Now, at last, he would show the world that Russia ruled the seas.
Most of the American press had readily accepted the explanation that this was nothing more than a “joint naval exercise,” so when NATO member states protested, Russia and its allies didn’t care. Without backing from the U.S., Europe was likely to do nothing, particularly because there was little love for the tiny nation that the Russian-Islamic coalition would be soon invading. Whatever sympathy existed for Israel had now disappeared after its preemptive strike against Iran, which was followed by the RTS-guided nuking of Bushehr.
The Russian-Islamic coalition was ready to make its defense to the world. After all, hadn’t an American-led coalition attacked Iraq over its invasion of Kuwait decades before? So why shouldn’t a Russian-led coalition of Middle Eastern nations invade Israel over its military aggression against Iran? Russia’s long-standing partnership with Syria and its use of the Syrian port of Tartus gave it an ideal launching platform for the naval phase of the invasion.
Trishnipov, who had helped shape the naval operation of the war, liked the plan. Four Russian aircraft carriers from his fleet would launch four hundred MiG fighter jets and bombers over Israeli airspace and pound Israeli defenses. Seven transport ships, carrying three hundred thousand soldiers from the Russian-Islamic alliance, would land simultaneously at Haifa and Tel Aviv. That was twice the size of Israel’s entire standing army. Then a dozen submarines and ten heavily armed patrol boats would seal off Israel’s coast.
At the same time, the coalition army would begin the land invasion from the north, advancing through Syria and pouring down into Israel. That force consisted of five hundred thousand troops from Russia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, as well as other Russian republics. From the south, another fifty thousand troops would blast their way into Israel, from the armies of Libya and the Sudan. Syria, Egypt, and Jordan would tell the world they had no choice but to permit the invading armies to cross their lands en route to Israel or else suffer annihilation themselves, but they would privately celebrate the anticipated decimation of the nation of Israel, that thorn in the side of Islam.
Trishnipov gazed through the window. It was a clear, mild day. He wished he was on the deck, catching the fresh air, instead of locked inside the glass-enclosed bridge. But this is where he needed to be. In full control of the naval invasion. As the vice admiral thought about the slaughter to come, he had to remind himself that he had no particular hatred for the Jews, although he remembered with a chuckle something his father, who had been a Soviet general, once said: “Now that we have run the Jews out of Russia, let them keep running …”
Within hours, though, there would be no more running. The Jews in Israel would have nowhere to escape. Invasion by sea, invasion from the north and south, overwhelming military power raining death down on the tiny nation.
Once, back at the Russian naval base at Murmansk, Trishnipov had been asked what the soldiers and sailors should expect once the war to obliterate Israel had begun. He had smiled and replied, “It will be like shooting fish in a barrel … a very small barrel.”