Esther's Sling (40 page)

The radar watch officer had not noticed either man come in. He was wearing headphones that picked up Air Traffic Control communications from the regional center in Ahvaz. On his console, he could select the feed from any of the major ATC centers in Iran. He was reaching forward with his left hand to select another feed when he felt his hips move involuntarily underneath him. The sudden acceleration away from his console left him confused. His chair spun around as it travelled across the floor and the man fell out of his seat. Both Iranians started to curse the IRGC guards who they thought wer
e responsible for this outrage.

“Quiet,” shouted Ben Zeev. “Hands up.” Hearing the commands, the two Israeli
commandos still outside the trailer came through the open door and trained their M-4s on the two Iranians, who slowly started to realize that this was no practical joke by their IRGC guards. The two men were placed in plastic cuffs and left in a seated position on the floor, their backs against the trailer wall opposite the control and communication consoles.

The captain keyed his PTT. “Secure. Secure. Everyone come home.” At the spot where the flat panel receiver stood on its tripod, Manu
Moresadegh
lifted the tripod and headed out as Isaac Mofaz gathered his tablet and his backpack and followed behind. At the sniper position, all three men were quickly on their feet and moving across the tiny dell – more a depression – between the knob and the ridgeline of the radar complex. No longer having to worry about stealth, they only needed to cover 250 meters to reach the operations trailer.

About twenty minutes after securing the Dehloran Radar Complex, all four of the Iranian radar technicians were handcuffed and seated on their own rear ends just outside of the first radar operations trailer. Two Israeli commandos kept watch. One sniper and the laser range finding man were standing watch over the access road at the same position used by the IRGC. The two corpses were dragged about a dozen meters downhill and out of sight. Benny Stern found a place to set up where he could cover the men watching the access road and all of the structures. Isaac Mofaz set up the flat panel receiver at a random spot close to the trailers. He altered the orbit of the Boomerang so that it now orbited the junction of the access road and the Derrah Shahr-Abdanan road. He had handed off the video reception tablet to the two men who were now guarding the access road.

Another Israeli commando was busy planting C-4 plastic explosive around the base of the radar dome structure. Still another had sent a message to Mount Olympus by burst transmission. The Olympus team now knew the complex was securely under t
he control of Task Force Camel.

But the real reason for this mission was taking place inside the radar operations trailer. Isaac sat in front of the communications console while Manu stood behind him looking over his shoulder. Captain Ben Zeev stood in the middle of the trailer with another man who had the satellite burst communication device out and awaiting further orders. Yosef stood in the doorway, his pistol holstered and his M-4 draped across his front. He kept an eye on the four Iranians sitting outside and the four Israelis sitting and standing inside. He had been calm through the entire process but was now nervous – the
fact that he could no longer control events making him fidgety and anxious.

Isaac spent the next four minutes playing with the keyboard and the settings on the console. He seemed to be frustrated. The captain watched and listened to their conversation as best he could, but it had become quite technical and the military officer was no longer following the two computer geeks. Manu stepped over to his backpack and searched for something. He removed a small notepad and returned to his prior position. He began to flip through the pages and state word an
d number combinations to Isaac.

Finally Isaac stood up and Manu sat down. The Persian Jew began tapping on the keyboard as Isaac Mofaz made occasional suggestions, sometimes pointing at the computer s
creen both men were focused on.

After another six minutes, Ben Zeev stepped over. “What’s going on?”

Manu kept looking at the screen as he replied. “We have a problem.”

“What? Talk to me.”

Manu hit enter and was still unsatisfied. “We expected that they would be logged onto the network. He was not logged on.”

The captain felt a knot in his stomach. Failure to access the Iranian integrated air defense network would jeopardize a meaningful portion of the planning for Block G. It would not make their trip worthless – they had already achieved the base foundational requirement for the mission to go forward by taking control of the complex – but it meant that the losses suffered by the IAF this night would certainly be significantly higher than otherwise. “Okay, what does this mean?”

What the Olympus planners did not know was that the procedures followed by all crews manning Iranian early warning radar sites had been changed effective the first day of July. Since then, all communications officers had been required to log off the network at the end of every shift. The new shift crew had to log back on using a password that identified that team. The assault by Task Force Camel had occurred before the new communications officer had logged on. “We are trying all of the passwords provided to us. No luck so far.” Aman and Unit 8200 had targeted Iranian military passwords and password methodology. But their ability to learn passwords relevant to the air defense network had been curtailed when the network was unplugged from the outside world.

“That will take forever. Damn, the man who knows the password is sitting outside,” the captain
commented. He turned around and walked to the door, looking outside at the four men sitting in the dirt. One man looked up at him and the captain recognized him as the man who had been at the communications console just minutes earlier. Ben Zeev turned to Hisami. “Bring that second man in here.”

Moments later
, the Iranian stood in the middle of the trailer. He looked directly into the eyes of the captain. Manu asked him for the password. The man was silent. The captain repeated the request. The Iranian stayed silent. The captain stood directly in front of the captive. “This is my word to you. Give us the password and you and the men outside will live through this unharmed. You have my word. If you do not tell us, you and the men outside will suffer greatly and we will break into your network anyway before the night is through.”

The man’s gaze into Ben
Zeev’s eyes did not falter. If he was afraid, he did not show it. “Go to hell you Jew pig.” The man knew exactly who he was dealing with.

The mountain goat stepped behind the Iranian and swung the butt of his M-4 into the man’s right kidney. The man made no sound but his right knee buckled. Hisami followed his initial action by grabbing the man’s hair and pulling down and back as he kicked his right boot into the rear of the Iranian’s left knee. The communication
s officer dropped to his knees.

“Take him outside and gag all four of them,” the captain
commanded to Yosef Hisami. Ben Zeev did not want the two Israeli computer men in the trailer to see what was about to happen. The captain turned to Manu. “Keep working. If we get this guy to talk, I will be back in.” Manu sat back down at the console.

Hisami grabbed the thick head of hair of the Iranian and dragged him across the floor and out the door. A couple minutes later, the captain stepped outside. All four men were now gagged by the insertion of a hand towel
retrieved from the middle trailer into their mouths. Three of the Iranians were sitting as they had been before, and the one who had been dragged out was lying on his stomach.

The captain addressed all four men. “Your friend has the password into the network. I need that password. When he gives it to me, at that point you will all be treated well and you have my word that you will all live through this ordeal. Until he gives me the password, you will suffer great pain.” The captain studied the faces of the three seated men, looking for the weakest. He already knew the man that had been dragged out was very brave and very strong-willed. On the right, a young man, probably no older than 22 or 23, kept his head down. The man was shaking like a leaf. The captain walked to him and squatted down. Ben Zeev lifted the man’s chin up and looked into his eyes. He pulled the gag from his mouth. “Do you want to die tonight?”

“No sir,” replied the young Iranian, his voice quivering and breaking.

“Tell your friend to talk to us.” The young man was too frightened to talk. “Go ahead, tell him to talk.” The man just sat there shaking, his eyes looking down even as his chin was being held up.

The captain stood and directed a command to one of his men. “Get that one into a seated position.” Ben Zeev was pointing at the communications officer. “I want him to watch this.” The Iranian was flipped over onto his back and his shoulders raised up, bringing him into a sitting position.

Ben Zeev decided he could not outsource what he had to do next. He looked at the two other men. The one sitting next to the young man looked to be the stronger of the two. The captain stepped to him and grabbed the man’s collar behind his neck, dragging him forward and onto his stomach. He pulled out his pistol and bent over to place the muzzle against the back of the man’s left knee. He pulled the trigger and the bullet exploded into and through the man’s kneecap, shattering the joint. The man screamed in pain, his gag seeming to make no difference to the volum
e coming from his vocal chords.

The young man lost control of
his bladder, wetting his pants. He began to cry. Ben Zeev stepped to him and squatted down. “Tell your friend to talk.” No words came from the young man’s mouth, only sobs. The captain stood up. “Now you all listen to me.” He spoke loudly to be heard over the screams of the man who had just been shot. “When I am done with this man, I will move to each of you until I learn the password. But I will not use my pistol. Instead, I will cut every finger off your hands one at a time and then will I cut off your ears. Then I will cut off your balls. We will spend all night cutting you to pieces. This is your choice.”

Captain Ben Zeev stood for a moment to let each of the men think about what was coming as they soaked in the screams and moans of the man whose left knee joint was now shattered beyond repair. Then the Israeli commander stepped over the man again and lowered his pistol down to the back of the man’s right knee.

“Stop,” yelled the young man.

Ben Zeev straightened up. “Then tell him to talk.”

The young man was sobbing heavily and trying hard to catch his breath and gain control over his emotions. The Israeli recognized this and gave him time to compose himself. “He doesn’t need to,” the young man finally said.

At the other end of the line of four Iranians, the communications officer began screaming and shouting into his gag as he wildly shook his head side to side. He tried to lunge toward the young Iranian seated about two meters away but Hisami was all over the man, grabbing his shirt to restrain him in place. But the gagged words could still be made out. He was cursing the young man and telling him to be quiet.

“Shut him up,” said Ben Zeev to Hisami. The mountain goat went down to one knee and placed the communications officer into a choke hold, squeezing with his arm until no more wind could pass through the Iranian’s larynx.

The captain turned to the young man, squatting down once again. “Tell me what you mean.”

The young man continued to keep his head bowed down. He started to talk at a low volume. “Seven, four, dash, three, three, nine, underscore ...”

“You need to speak up,” Ben Zeev
inserted, but he had heard enough to look at one of his men and motion for him to write what was said. That man pulled a notepad and pencil from his breast pocket.

The young man took a deep breath. He spoke louder. “Seven, four, dash, three, three, nine, underscore, one, one, eight, capital H.” Iranian military keyboards were western style qwerty boards.

The captain looked at the commando with the notepad, who nodded his head as he finished writing. He then handed the notepad to his commander. Ben Zeev walked into the trailer and handed the notepad to Manu. “Try this.”

Within seconds, Manu pumped his fist into the air. “We are in.”

The captain walked to the door. “Get that man medical treatment and remove their gags. Treat them well.” Ben Zeev then sent a message to Mount Olympus.

Two IAF G550 Eitams of the 122
nd
Nachshon Special Missions Squadron, known in the IAF as the Dakota Squadron, lifted off from Navatim Airbase in the Negev within an hour of each other. Each plane was a Gulfstream business jet converted into an Airborne Warning and Control System, or AWACS, by the addition of ELTA Systems’ EL/W-2085 radar and sensor package into large conforming blisters on the sides of the planes and a bulbous nose cone. Taking full advantage of the efficient long-range cruising capability of the base Gulfstream 550 jet, each plane could stay airborne for up to ten hours without refueling. With its advanced Active Electronically Scanned Array, or AESA, radar on the side of the fuselage, the Eitam can actively scan a massive area formed by a radius of over 300 miles in a 360º view around each plane. With its radar off, the plane doubled as a passive vacuum of any electromagnetic signals emissions that were within its line of sight.

The first
Eitam took off only ten minutes after the Saudi early warning radar network went off the air. Trailing only minutes behind, two F-16B two-seat fighters of the 140
th
Golden Eagle Squadron, each loaded with long-range and short-range air-to-air missiles, departed Nevatim to escort the G550. The trio of planes headed to a point on the map over the northern Saudi desert designated as “Point Romeo.” There they would spend the duration of Block G orbiting over Saudi Arabia. The G550 Eitam maintained an altitude of 47,000 feet, its crew acting as air traffic controllers for the coming waves of IAF aircraft that would all pass below it. But it also kept watch on the aircraft of all other nations in the area that could possibly interfere with Block G, including Saudi, Iraqi and American planes. The two F-16B fighters orbited in formation half a mile below the Eitam.

The second
Eitam took off an hour later with an escort of four F-16Bs. It followed the same corridor over Saudi Arabia and took up a position over the Persian Gulf. The four F-16Bs would take turns breaking formation to return to Point Romeo to refuel.

On board an Israeli Air Force C-130 that was descending through 15,000 feet as it approached the Iraqi border, a technician had just finished checking the satellite communications and avionics on the nineteenth of 23 disassembled unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, inside the plane’s cargo cabin. He would complete his diagnostics checks on the remaining four UAVs within the next ten minutes. The C-130 had been delivered to the Israeli Air Force only six
months earlier. It was a brand new C-130J model nicknamed the “Samson” by the IAF. Its cargo cabin was 55 feet in length, a considerable increase from the 40 feet of interior length of all other IAF C-130s. On this mission, all of that added length was being utilized.

Each UAV on board the plane was a Hermes 450 that had been modified specifically for
this mission. The team at Mount Olympus refereed to this modified version as the Hermes 450M. Each of these Hermes had a new 100 horsepower Wankel engine and a larger three-bladed pusher propeller on the back end of a 20 foot long fuselage. The fuselages looked just like a torpedo, even in their diameter of just under 21 inches. The normally fixed tricycle landing gear system was now designed to fall away upon takeoff, making the UAV more aerodynamic in flight. Landing gear would not be necessary – all 23 Hermes 450Ms on board the four engine transport were on a one-way mission into Iran. The final modification was the addition of a high explosive warhead weighing 49 pounds in the nose of each fuselage. With the more powerful engines and upgraded propellers, these UAVs could cruise at a speed as high as 145 miles per hour, about 50% faster than their conventional cousins.

The torpedo shaped fuselages were arranged on two large racks that had been designed and built for this mission. The rack located forward in the plane, the second rack to be unloaded once on the ground, held twelve UAV fuselages that were placed four wide and stacked three high. Each other UAV fuselage in the rack was offset four feet forward to allow room for the V-shaped twin stabilizers mounted to the rear of the fuselage just in front of th
e rear-facing pusher propeller.

The rack in the rear of the plane, the first to be unloaded, held eleven fuselages and
a device that would slide out and allow each fuselage to be lowered from the rack and mounted onto to its takeoff carriage. The fuselages were carefully arranged for the planned takeoff order, with their takeoff numbers painted on both the nose and the tail. Inside the cabin, 22 Israeli airmen were either standing along the sides of the cabin in the thin spaces between the UAV racks and the C-130 fuselage walls, or had found a small amount of space to sit on the floor at the front end of the cabin. Along the interior walls of the fuselage, the long wings of the Hermes UAVs, each only a little more than two feet wide, were stored on each side. Each man wore a helmet with its own flashlight mounted on it – in the style of a miner’s helmet.

The plane continued to descend and turned off all emissions as it passed from Saudi into Iraqi airspace. This would be the sole planeload of UAVs to operate out of Mudaysis during Block G – the single exception to the plan’s policy of redundancy. For this reason, the best C-130 pilots in the IAF had been chosen to make this flight from
Palmachim Airbase to Mudaysis.

From the perspective of Mudaysis Airfield, the sun set below the western desert horizon at exactly
5:44 p.m. Iraqi time. The weather was perfect, with no clouds in the darkening sky and only a soft four knot breeze out of the northwest. The five surviving men of Shaldag had completed their preparations for the coming evening. Small lights with infrared strobes on the northwest face of their heavily weighted base were placed on each side of the runway about every 1,000 feet. They were not powerful, but were enough to provide a clear silhouette of the otherwise unlit runway from the air.

Almost
one hour after sunset, the Shaldag commander was the first to hear the hum of distant turboprop engines. They grew rapidly in intensity but only slowly in volume, the westerly breeze carrying the sound from far off. Using night vision goggles, the plane first appeared as a dot more than five miles distant. Flying under 1,000 feet, the C-130 Samson had no set base leg vector to approach Mudaysis. Instead, the pilot turned slowly to the southeast to line up on the runway at a heading of 130 degrees magnetic. With a long runway to use, he maintained a landing glide slope of three degrees and an indicated air speed of 155 knots.

The pilot
turned on his landing lights when he was a quarter mile off the end of the runway. The plane kissed the concrete at the gentle descent rate of only 200 feet per minute and slowed down gradually until the pilot could turn left on a short connector. He then turned the plane back to the northwest and taxied along the taxiway until he came to the Shaldag soldier who had swept the airfield the previous night. The soldier, using two orange coned flashlights, marshaled the C-130 to a stop just past the access road, which ran into the taxiway at a perpendicular angle.

The cargo ramp was lowered and a loadmaster pulled the quick release tab on two restraining straps that held the rear UAV rack in place. The loadmaster pulled out a stopwatch and clicked the start button. “Okay, we have ten minutes. Let’s
move.”

Eight men, four on each side, pushed the rear rack down the cargo ramp and onto the taxiway, continuing to push the wheeled device off the taxiway and about one hundred yards down the access road. Eight other men pushed the second rack through the cargo cabin, down the ramp and onto the access road. The remaining men began to remove Velcro straps that held 35 foot long wings in place against the cabin sidewall. Three men handled each 152 pound wing, one on
each end and one in the middle.

The first wing, painted with the number
“1,” was walked down the ramp and toward the front of the first rack. By the time the wing arrived, a fuselage had already been removed from the rack and mated to its takeoff carriage. The men with the wing walked around the fuselage and maneuvered the wing in place as the loadmaster placed floodlights outside the plane to light the work area.

The composite wing had two large bolts and two wiring harnesses protruding from the bottom of the wing directly in its center. The man in the middle rested the wing on his shoulder as he fed the two wiring harnesses into the opening in the central wing mount pedestal on the fuselage. He made sure that the bolts lined up with two receiving holes and the wing was then lowered into place. A missing access panel on the right side of the fuselage just behind the wing ped
estal allowed necessary access.

The man who had been carrying the center of the wing now retrieved two large nuts and washers from a tool pouch worn around his waist. He reached into the fuselage and slid a washer around one bolt and used his hand to thread a nut onto the bolt. He repeated the process with the second bolt. He then pulled out a ratchet wrench and tightened each bolt in place. Next he reached in and connected a wiring harness that mated the wing’s aileron and flap actuators to the flight control computers in the fuselage. He then clicked together a second wiring harness that connected the UAV
’s mission control and avionics modules to two launch rails mounted underneath the wing, one on each side of the fuselage.

“Done,” yelled the man over the sound of the four idled engines of the C-130. On the edge of the road
, two Shaldag soldiers kept an inquisitive watch.

A second man stepped to the newly re-assembled UAV and looked into the opening in the side of the fuselage to inspect the connections using both a flashlight and his headlamp. In his left hand he held a curved sheet of aircraft aluminum that was two feet long and 18 inches wide along its arc. When he was satisfied that the connections were properly completed, he placed the aluminum sheet over the opening and snapped six latches which locked the panel in place. Behind him, the first man had folded up a hinged mast that was three feet in length and locked it into its operating position on top of the fuselage and just forward of the V-shaped tails. On top of the mast was a teardrop shaped pod that contained the UAV’s satellite link system. Two other men walked to the wings. Each man had retrieved a single Hellfire missile from the rack and now mounted his Hellfire onto one of the lau
nch rails underneath the wings.

As soon as the men had completed their roles, they each moved on to retrieve another Hermes fuselage from the rack and a wing from the C-130 cabin and repeat the process. Elsewhere on the access road, three other Hermes 450M UAVs – numbered
“2,” “3,” and “4,” – were completing their assembly, each one positioned slightly behind the one in front of it.

The senior C-130 loadmaster, one of four loadmasters now on the ground and assisting with the assembly of twenty-three drones, looked at his stopwatch as he walked through the busy team of men. He was counting out the minutes as they passed. “Four minutes,” came the yell.

Finally the man who closed the wing mounting access hatch reached down along the side of the tubular fuselage. A single orange streamer about eighteen inches long and two inches wide flapped lazily in the dry desert breeze. It was connected to a pin that protruded from a small hole in the side of the UAV. The man grabbed hold of the streamer and yanked it and the pin it was attached to out of the UAV. Inside the Hermes, all of its systems came to life and a pre-programmed autonomous software routine commenced.

Over on the edge of the access road, just a few feet from where the Shaldag soldiers watched the process, the technician who tested the satellite communications while on board the C-130 had set up a small folding table that was waist high. On the table
, a laptop computer was open and connected by USB cable to a small plastic dome that was six inches in diameter and eight inches tall. The dome was communicating with each of the UAVs as they came online. On the computer screen, a status box indicated the number “1” and started to flash yellow. A series of boxes underneath turned from yellow to green as the UAV ran internal diagnostics to verify that all of its systems were online, communicating and in operating condition. The process took only eight seconds and when the last of the small boxes turned green, the main box on the screen also turned green and an “Engine Start” dialogue box appeared. The technician looked over at the first UAV to make sure the propeller was clear. He yelled “Clear One” as loud as he could and used his mouse to click the “Start” icon.

The engine on the UAV turned on almost immediately, the three propeller blades spinning to life. On the screen of the laptop
, a new dialogue box opened with the query to “Initiate Mission.” The technician clicked the “Initiate” icon. The Hermes 450M sat in its position for another half minute as the technician repeated the same process with the second UAV.

The senior loadmaster yelled out
, “Five minutes.” Suddenly the engine revolutions on the first UAV increased to full power and the flying machine started down the access road, rapidly gaining speed and autonomously taking off after a takeoff roll of 952 feet. Along with the next three UAVs, the flight of four was now on a journey to Tabriz in the northeastern corner of Iran. Their course would take them well north of Baghdad and cover over 450 miles, taking 3 hours and 22 minutes. The first UAV was on a mission to strike the Tall King early warning radar located near Tabriz International Airport, which shared its two parallel runways with a tactical airbase. The next UAV had no missiles, but carried the Skyjam electronic jamming system in its payload bay. Its mission was to suppress communications at the tactical airbase at Tabriz.