Esther's Sling (46 page)

At the same moment that Shahbazi completed his rounds and headed back to his desk, the pilots of the Boeing 737-400F parked on the tarmac at Ganja Airport received a communication from Mount Olympus. Their window was closing. The pilot looked at his co-pilot. “It looks like we are not getting fueled tonight.”

“
Yeah, that seems to be the case.”

“We have to go. How much fuel do we have?”

“We left Zurich with a full load. We have 11,070 pounds left.”

“Enough to get us to Point Charlie. We are going. Figure out what airport we can make it to from Point Charlie.”

“Tehran,” said the co-pilot nervously in response.

“Don’t be an asshole,” replied the pilot as he glared briefly at his co-pilot. But the joke by the co-pilot had helped each man relax just a little.

The cargo plane was airborne within a few minutes and soon resuming its course for Karachi, Pakistan. The course took it to the southeast across Azerbaijan and then out over the Caspian Sea.

All 206 Israeli warplanes refueling over the Saudi desert or on the ground at Mudaysis would fly over Iraq and enter Iranian airspace in a gap that the Olympus planners knew would exist in the Iranian early warning radar network. They were headed for a spot on the map codenamed Point Delta. It was the air
space over the Dehloran radar station now in the hands of Ben Zeev’s Sayeret Matkal team.

In the radar control trailer at Dehloran,
Manuchehr Moresadegh
looked at his commander with a smile.
Twenty minutes had passed since network access had been achieved. On the console counter top, Manu had a laptop computer open and running. From a port on the laptop to a port located on the console, a USB cable connected the portable Israeli computer to the Iranian air defense network. During the prior fifteen minutes, Manu and Isaac
Mofaz
had been running diagnostic programs written by the software coders of Unit 8200. The programs had confirmed connectivity and returned all of the radar and surface to air missile systems now connected to the air defense network grid. The laptop’s wireless card was also on and, without any intervention by the Sayeret Matkal operators, the laptop was communicating with the satellite burst communications device. Key information about the network was being transferred to the communications device, then being compressed, encrypted and sent in burst transmissions via satellite to Mount Olympus.

At the bunkers of Mount Olympus located on the edge of Sde Dov Airport, a team of specialists processed all of the information being received. Iranian radar frequencies were being analyzed and the status of surface to air missiles were being forwarded by satellite to three IAF G550
Eitams and two Eitan-B UAVs that would each play critical roles in Block G.

Now on the screen of Manu’s laptop a single dialogue box was open. The box held three simple words:
“Execute Block Protocol?” Manu looked at Captain Ben Zeev. “Ready to go on your command.”

Ben Zeev checked his watch. “Execute the block protocol.”

Manu smiled. “Yes, sir.” He moved the cursor until it hovered over the small box that simply said “Yes.” He clicked the mouse’s left button. “Done,” he said. The time in Iran was 10:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 5.

Amit Margolis did something at his desk he never did, he started chewing his nails. Around him in the main operations command room for Block G, dozens of young men and women of the Israeli Defense Force sat in front of computer screens and TV monitors. Each one had a specific job: gathering and analyzing intelligence; communicating with units now moving into combat; tracking unit locations. Several hours earlier, all of the men and women of the Golani Infantry Brigade and the Barak and Saar Armored Brigades had been quietly notified to report immediately to their units. Margolis was in awe over all that had resulted from his simple idea. He had no idea what most of these young Israelis in uniform were even doing.

A few meters in front of the twin desks of Margolis and General Schechter, a white metallic board with the map of the Middle East held a number of small plastic stylized planes. A young man moved the magnetized plane figures every minute or so. Two large planes represented the main body of attack aircraft from Shangri-La and Point Romeo
. They were now passing through a radar gap in Iraq and only minutes from entering Iranian airspace.

But Margolis’ eyes focused on the four small plastic planes that were painted in red and white stripes. They represented the positions of the four aircraft that comprised Esther’s Sling. One
– Kolikov’s plane – was over the northwestern portion of Iran and heading toward the underground enrichment facility north of Qom known as Fordow. A second plane – representing the Il-76 being piloted by James Miller – was now passing to the east of Isfahan and headed north toward Tehran. It would pass very close to the main Iranian enrichment facility at Natanz. Another plastic plane was being moved as Margolis watched. It has just passed over the coastline of Azerbaijan and the Caspian Sea. It was headed toward Karachi and would pass within a hundred miles of Tehran. The fourth plastic plane was over the Persian Gulf and heading west toward Kuwait City.

Margolis felt a push on his shoulder. He turned to look at David Schechter. The general tapped his watch with his right finger as he spoke. “Time for 8200 to implement Operation Accident.”

“Yes.” Margolis snapped his mind back to the tasks at hand. “Yes.” He picked up a phone that connected him to the command center of Unit 8200. Located on the northeast edge of Ramat HaSharon, the underground command center was not far from Mount Olympus. Margolis was immediately connected to a senior officer of Unit 8200. “Execute Operation Accident now.”

At the same moment, General Hassan Shahbazi was listening to a radio broadcast of the
second half of the Classico match along with about half of his men. He would not have allowed this if the whereabouts of 69 Hammer Squadron was not known. But he drew the line at bringing in a television set, much to the chagrin of his men. A young adjutant had just asked the general if he wanted tea when Shahbazi’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. It was a text from his wife.

Tahmineh in bad auto accident. I am on way to Arad Hospital. Meet me there.

Shahbazi’s knees buckled. He had just read the text that every parent dreads. His daughter had been in an accident and was in the hospital. “Allahu Akbar,” said the general under his breath. Like most officers in the Iranian Air Force, he was more secular than not, but he was now praying hard for his daughter. He headed to an empty office room, desperate to contact his wife and desperate to keep his men from seeing the tears welling in his eyes.

He pulled up his wife’s number and pressed the dial button. After a moment, he heard the sound indicating that the call could not go through. He cursed silently. He tried the cell phone of his
16-year-old daughter. It was the same sound of non-connection. “What the hell is wrong?” he asked himself.

Shahbazi stuck his head out of the office and caught the eye of Colonel
Alireza Askari, the night watch deputy commander. The general called him over by motioning his head. When Askari walked in, he saw his commander with a look on his face that he had never seen before. “What’s wrong?” There was sincere concern in the colonel’s voice. The two men had worked together for years and Shahbazi had long been Askari’s mentor.

“My daughter has been in a car accident.”

“Oh, no.”

“She is apparently at Arad Hospital but I can’t get through to my wife or to her.”

“Let me call the hospital. We are talking about Tahmineh, right?” The general nodded his head in agreement. He was in no shape to leave the office. The colonel walked out of the barren office to find a phone.

Colonel Askari returned a few minutes later with a frustrated look. “They say they don’t have a record of her. But they did say that they have admitted several people tonight who have been in accidents.”

“Any a teenage girl?”

“They didn’t know.
Just go to the hospital. I can handle anything that comes up. Can you drive?”

“Yes.” General Shahbazi thought for a moment, using the pause to gather himself. “Okay. Let me try to get my wife or my parents to see if I can learn anything. If not, I will leave in a few minutes.”

“Yes, sir.” Colonel Askari left the office.

Across Iran at that same moment
, similar texts were being read by senior officers and pilots of the Iranian military. All of the texts came from the phones of their spouses or children and all of the recipients were unable to get through if they called back. The planners at Unit 8200 had been careful to select the most important decision maker at each command node. They also picked out twelve pilots on stand-by that night who were rated as the most capable fighter pilots in Iran. The data necessary to pull off this diversion had been mined from the information sent to Israel by the Flame virus. It was the same virus that Yavi Aitan had informed the members of the Kitchen Cabinet was referred to internally as the Tunnel. Unit 8200 had been able to build a complete library of the key officers of the Iranian military and their families. This knowledge was now being put to use.

“SAAC six-two-two heavy, Isfahan.”

“Isfahan control. This is SAAC six-two-two.” Jim Miller’s voice was recognized by the air traffic controller on duty at the Isfahan regional air traffic control center. Miller was worried that his voice was wavering, but to the ear of the Iranian controller, the American pilot sounded normal.

“Contact Tehran approach on one-nineteen point seven. Have a good night.”

“Tehran approach on one-one-nine point seven. SAAC six-two-two heavy. Good night.” Miller’s mind was racing. He had to turn the plane sometime within the next few minutes. Mount Olympus would let him know the timing
. Once he turned, he would be headed toward restricted airspace over the uranium enrichment facility of Natanz. Everything else would then be controlled automatically by the mission computer on board. The captain’s hands were shaking. He had a parachute on and a helmet. An oxygen mask and small tank, enough for about 15 minutes of oxygen, was sitting on the co-pilot’s seat. Soon the computer would depressurize the entire plane. With the mask on, Miller would find it difficult to respond to any radio communications.

Flying in the opposite direction at a point 234 miles to the north-northwest, SAAC 715 Heavy was at 32,000 feet and flying to the southeast toward
Ras Al-Khaimah. In a conversation with the Tehran Air Traffic Control Center, Captain Kolikov had ironically just been handed off to the Isfahan center. The plane was on a course that would take it within 33 miles of the underground Fordow enrichment complex.

The
Ilyushin 76 passed over a small town called Saveh that was just to the west of Fordow. With the plane depressurized, the mission computer took over. It was the equivalent of the pilot giving control of a World War II bomber to the bombardier. The rear cargo doors opened – two doors underneath the tail split in the middle and opened to each side. The main ramp just forward of those two doors lowered so that the ramp itself had a slight decline down toward earth.

Inside Mount Olympus, Amit Margolis stood in a soundproof room overlooking both of the remote control flight rooms. The rooms were just down the hall from the main operations center where the Block G co-commander had called Unit 8200 to initiate Operation Accident ten minutes earlier. On the left hand side, a room contained Captain Kolikov and two other men who had been remotely flying SAAC 715 Heavy. On the right hand side, a separate room that should have had Captain Miller plus two men, instead held only two men who were doing nothing other than monitoring the information coming from SAAC 622 Heavy. Within the next few minutes, the concept of Esther’s Sling
would meet success or failure.

SAAC 715 Heavy turned 85 degrees to its left.
The Fordow complex was now 33 miles in front of the plane’s nose as it covered one mile every seven seconds. On the ground underneath the plane, the air defenses of Fordow slept. No alerts had been issued and no radar systems were turned on. The overnight technicians – the centrifuges never stopped spinning – worked inside a mountain in the belief that they were impervious to attack. On the radar screens of the air traffic control centers in Tehran and Isfahan, the green triangle with the moniker “SA 715” next to it, continued to head toward Ras Al-Khaimah. The computer network that controlled the radar screens of the Iranian civilian air traffic control system had long been hacked into by Unit 8200.

Almost immediately after turning toward Fordow, 39 Spice 1000 flying bombs were ejected off the cargo ramp door. The Spice is a bomb with folded wings that deployed as soon as the weapon left the aircraft. From the altitude of the Ilyushin, the bombs could fly to targets as far as 100 miles away. Each bomb had a target programmed into its GPS guidance system. Eighteen of the bombs turned to the north to fly to targets in and around Tehran, including the headquarters of the IRGC and the Iranian Air Force and the basement room at Tehran University where Chinese IT specialists were engaged in a cyber war with Israel. Two bombs turned south to head for the headquarters of the IRGC in the city of Qom. The remaining 19 Spice 1000 bombs flew straight ahead to targets around the Fordow complex, including eight SAM sites, five tunnel entrances and the uranium delivery and processing facility building that had not yet
been buried under the mountain.

After the Spice
1000s left the plane, four MSOVs, each with 36 runway denial submunitions, were ejected. Like the Spice weapons, the MSOVs had wings that allowed them to fly long distances. They were essentially unpowered cruise missiles. Two MSOVs headed for Imam
Khomeini International
Airport and two for the runways at Doshan Tappeh Air Base. Then two more MSOVs were ejected, only these carried a new weapon developed by Boeing and being used for the first time in combat. The Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile, or CHAMP, had been tested in the field for the first time the prior October. The weapon was able to emit targeted electromagnetic pulses that could fry the delicate internal circuits of unprotected computers. Each CHAMP had a programmed flight path over Tehran, including flying over the homes of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and numerous government and communications buildings.

The big cargo plane, now 53,460 pounds lighter than when it made its turn toward Fordow, continued onward. On the ground, there was still no idea that anything was happening out of the ordinary. When the plane was five and a half miles from Fordow, a large earth penetrating bomb, known in America as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP, was
released by parachute extraction from the back of the plane. The plane climbed several hundred feet after the 30,455 pound bomb exited the rear cargo ramp.

The bomb’s internal guidance computers knew exactly where it was above the earth to within a meter of error – and it knew precisely where it was going to strike the rocky ground of the mountain that housed the Fordow facility. Immediately after the huge MOP cleared the ramp, a second parachute inflated behind the plane and quickly extracted another MOP from the cargo hold
. Its strike coordinates were precisely eighteen meters east of the strike point of the first MOP. It had been calculated that the second MOP would hit the eastern rim of the crater caused by the first MOP precisely 2.3 seconds after the first explosion.

The two MOPs had been secretly delivered to Israel during the summer of 2012. The delivery was the end product of extended behind the scenes maneuvering by Prime Minister Eli Cohen. In a late spring phone call with the President of the United States, he had agreed to stay quiet and become a “non
-factor” in the upcoming American presidential election in return for the two MOPs and assurance that the president would tacitly support Block G if he was re-elected. The agreements had been honored by all sides.

To the south, as the weapons of SAAC 715 Heavy were falling to earth, James Miller turned his plane to the left just after being prompted by Mount Olympus. He was now headed due west, directly toward the Natanz facility. As with the Fordow plane, the computer now took control of
the plane and its cargo. A warning light and buzzer in the cockpit – as well as the popping of his ears – notified Miller that depressurization was underway. The American pilot quickly placed the oxygen mask on, making sure the valve on the tank was open. The plane automatically began the process of opening the cargo doors and dropping its preliminary cargo of Spice 1000, MSOV and CHAMP weapons on targets in and around Isfahan and Natanz.

On the ground,
an Iranian sergeant manning a 5N62 “Square Pair” targeting and illumination radar for a surface to air missile battery consisting of SAM-5 Gammon missiles, turned on his radar. He was bored and had authorization to activate his radar if he had reason to believe that a threat existed, even though good electronics emission discipline dictated sparse use. He scanned the skies to the west and south, slowly rotating his radar between the two directions. He saw nothing unusual, just the standard commercial air traffic in well-established lanes – the same thing he always saw.

He was about to turn the radar off when he decided to try one 360 degree sweep. The radar swiveled on its turntable at its slew rate of 20 degrees per second. As it came through due south, it continued until it was pointed due east. The blip
that appeared on his screen caused the sergeant to react immediately. Air traffic lanes out of Isfahan to the north were only about forty miles away to the east, but this blip was closer. The return was strong, the radar cross section of the big Ilyushin being easy for the Square Pair radar to analyze.

The sergeant stopped the radar’s rotation and pointed the transmitting panel directly at Miller’s Ilyushin 76. He studied the data now being fed to him by the Russian-built radar’s computer system. The plane was at cruising altitude but was headed directly for Natanz at a speed of 420 knots. The sergeant picked up a phone mounted onto his console. It rang instantly in the command bunker located about 100 meters away. An officer picked up. “I have an unidentified bogey above flight level thirty, dead bearing ninety-three and closing at four-twenty. Distance is forty-eight. Negative squawk
.”

The officer was annoyed. He had a small portable radio in his hand and had been
listening to the football match, which was now in its fiftieth minute. This interruption meant that he now had to follow protocol. “Just one target from the east?” The question was rhetorical. “Let me interrogate it. I’m sure it’s just a commercial flight.” The officer flipped a switch that turned on his IFF interrogator, a green light indicating the device was active. He pressed a button on his console and the radio device sent a coded message to the unidentified plane’s transponder that was intended to trigger an automatic response. None came. He pressed the button again. The officer cursed his luck. “Hold on. I need to call him.” The officer lowered the phone and called out to a radio technician sitting across the room. “Ahmed, wake up. You have work to do,” said the officer sarcastically. He stood and walked a couple of meters across the floor to stand and look over the shoulder of the missile battery’s communications technician.

“Open all civil air frequencies,” the officer ordered. “Let me see the microphone.” The officer reached out with his left hand and the communications technician flipped several switches and handed a microphone to his commanding officer. The officer held down the talk button. “Unidentified aircraft, you are entering restricted military airspace. Identify yourself.” The challenge from the officer was in English.

In the cockpit of SAAC 622 Heavy, Captain Jim was just exiting the captain’s seat, the chord connecting his helmet to the communications console just about to reach its full extension and get its plug pulled out by the egress motion of the American. At the last moment, Miller heard the Iranian officer’s challenge. Miller stopped his motion and listened.

“Unidentified aircraft, you are entering a military area inside which deadly force is authorized. You must change course immediately.”

James Miller thought through his options. He was not sure if all of the weapons had been launched yet. He was not even sure if any had been launched. Unlike the Fordow plane, there was no MOP on board that would announce its departure by creating sudden lift. In this case, the plane’s primary weapons were 28 EGBU-28B earth penetrating GPS-guided bombs that each weighed 4,500 pounds, or 2,041 kilograms. Most of the bombs were targeted on Hall A at Natanz, which now had over 18,000 centrifuges installed and operating. Three bombs were targeted on the Pilot Enrichment Fuel Plant, a small underground chamber with almost 1,000 operating centrifuges. Five bombs were targeted on Hall B, which was as large as Hall A but as yet had no operating centrifuges.

Miller figured he would feel the main payload leaving the plane and he had not yet felt such a lightening of the airframe. The captain returned to his seat and picked up a microphone. With his left hand he released the oxygen mask he was wearing. He held the mask against his mouth and opened it just enough to talk into the microphone, replacing the mask as soon as he was done. “This is SAAC six-two-two Heavy. I am a commercial cargo flight.”

“SAAC six-two-two you are entering restricted airspace. Alter your course immediately.”

Miller thought for a few moments. He needed time. “Who are you? You are not Isfahan center.”

The reply angered the Iranian officer. “SAAC six-two-two, this is an Iranian military facility. You must change course or you will be fired on.”

Miller hesitated for as long as he dared. He heard noises from the cargo cabin. He was certain that weapons were being ejected, but he didn’t think the main load of EGBU-28Bs had yet been released. “Whoever you are,”
continued the American pilot, “I am under the direction of Isfahan regional ATC. Please contact them for further commands.”

“Listen to me,”
responded the officer, the anger no longer contained. “Alter your course immediately. You will be fired upon in thirty seconds if you have not altered course.”

Miller started to feel a shuttering of the large plane – a feeling much different than before. The large bunker busting bombs were being ejected in pairs from the plane. “Okay, sir. I am happy to comply. Please allow me to check in with Isfahan center for vector guidance.”

“You are on our radar. There is no other traffic. Turn immediately to bearing three six zero.”

Again, Miller paused. In
side the SAM battery command post, the officer yelled at his missile launch officer, who was listening in on the conversation. “Prepare to fire bird one.” Six SA-5 Gammon missiles were at the command of the officer. Each missile had a range of up to 300 kilometers at a top speed of Mach 4. The plane was now being illuminated by both the Square Pair radar and a second radar unit known as a PRV-17 “Odd Pair” that was being used to pinpoint the altitude of the target.