Pandemic (4 page)

In the Operations Room, a long silence followed, because the ship was out of radio range of the airfield, but Richter and Splot in Tiger One heard the reply clearly, and the Senior Pilot then
relayed the airfield’s response to the
Invincible
.

‘Pan aircraft Tiger Two, this is Brindisi Approach. What is your emergency, and what is your position, level, aircraft type and number of persons on board?’ The Italian’s
English was perfectly clear and understandable – English being the international language of aviation and air traffic control – but with a quite unmistakable accent.

‘Brindisi, Tiger Two is a British Royal Navy single-crew Harrier aircraft with a rough-running engine. Position approximately forty miles north of you, in descent passing Flight Level two
zero zero.’

‘Roger, Tiger Two. What are your intentions?’

‘Request navigation assistance and a straight-in approach to a priority landing.’

‘Roger. You are identified by your position report and secondary radar return. Steer one eight five and continue descent to Flight Level one zero zero. Standby to copy the weather and
airfield missed approach procedure.’

‘Tiger Two is ready to copy.’

Tiger One was still at thirty-five thousand feet, holding clear of Italian airspace and loitering to relay information to the ship.

‘Homer, this is Tiger One relaying for Tiger Two on Guard. Two is in descent out of twenty thousand down to ten, and receiving nav assistance from Brindisi Approach.’

Richter saw the airfield from twelve thousand feet and fifteen miles, and throttled back even further.

‘Brindisi, Tiger Two is now visual with the field.’

‘Roger, Tiger Two. Report approaching five thousand feet on the airfield QNH with Tower on two five seven decimal eight. We have no traffic in the circuit or local area.’

As Richter pulled his Sea Harrier round in a gentle turn to starboard, he glanced down and in front of his aircraft at the airfield below him. The Italians were obviously taking no chances: he
could see an ambulance waiting near the control tower, and at the holding point for the main runway two emergency vehicles – known in the UK as ‘Crash’ and ‘Rescue’
– were already in position, blue and red lights flashing. ‘Crash’ was a primary unit – a first-line heavy fire engine designed to dowse aviation-fuel fires using a foam
compound known as A Triple F (Aqueous Film-Forming Foam) – flanked by ‘Rescue’, a small four-wheel-drive go-anywhere vehicle.

Inside seven miles and nicely settled on the runway’s extended centreline, but well above the normal glide path to provide the margin of safety a prudent pilot would want with an engine
that might fail at any moment, Richter hauled the Harrier’s speed back to below two hundred knots. Once his speed was within the aircraft’s parameters, he dropped the landing gear,
checking the enunciator as four green lights illuminated, indicating that both the main wheel assemblies and the wheels at the ends of the wings were down and locked.

‘Tiger Two, Brindisi Tower, confirm landing checks are complete.’

‘Checks complete, four greens,’ Richter replied.

‘Roger, Tiger Two. Land runway three two. Wind is green one five at ten gusting fifteen.’

Richter played with the throttle all the way down, but he didn’t attempt to adjust the nozzle angle: he had over a mile and a half of asphalt and concrete in front of him, and was quite
happy to use all of it if he had to.

He flew over the touchdown end of the runway, coming in very high and very fast – the kind of profile one of his flying instructors had dubbed an ‘elephant’s arse
approach’ because it was high and it stank – then flared the Harrier and dropped it onto the rubber-streaked runway about four hundred yards beyond the piano keys. The moment the tyres
touched the concrete, Richter throttled back completely, and the aircraft’s speed began falling away.

‘Thank you, Tower,’ Richter transmitted. ‘Request taxi instructions.’

‘Take the next exit right and follow the taxiway to the first hangar.’

As Richter made the turn he saw the fire-and-rescue vehicles following behind him, the ambulance in trail. He waved an acknowledgement from the cockpit and received an answering flash from the
primary unit’s headlights in return.

Fifty-eight miles away and thirty-five thousand feet above the surface of the Mediterranean, the Senior Pilot in Tiger One, who had followed Richter’s frequency changes down to touchdown,
heard the transmission and pulled his aircraft around in a starboard turn onto east.

‘Tiger Two from Tiger One on Brindisi Tower frequency. Copy that you’re down safely. See you around, Spook.’

‘Roger that, Splot.’

The Senior Pilot checked his fuel state, selected Destination One – the
Invincible
’s programmed position – in his NAVHARS, and settled his Harrier into a high-level
cruise. Then he switched back to Homer frequency.

‘Homer, Tiger One. Tiger Two is down safely at Brindisi, my estimate at minute two six. Tiger One is now on recovery and requesting pigeons.’

‘Tiger One, Homer. Good news, sir. Pigeons zero seven five at fifty-three.’

At Brindisi-Casale, Richter switched off his Harrier’s electrical systems and then shut down the engine. The ground crew didn’t have a proper set of steps designed for the Harrier,
so they improvised with a small fork-lift truck, against the raised prongs of which they rested an aluminium ladder.

When Richter reached the ground he shook hands solemnly with each of the ground crew, then followed their hand signals and sign language towards the squadron building adjacent to the hangar. He
walked into the white-painted, single-storey building and followed another Italian’s directions to what he assumed was the squadron briefing-room.

The first, and in fact only, person Richter saw when he pushed open the door was Richard Simpson.

Monday
National Photographic Interpretation Center (N-PIC),
Building 213, Washington Navy Yard, Washington, DC

What may be termed the militarization of space began in 1960 when the US Air Force successfully recovered exposed film from Discovery 13, the first photo-reconnaissance
satellite, and when in a parallel but unrelated operation the US Navy orbited a Transit bird.

These two successes were quickly followed by a series of SAMOS (Satellite and Missile Observation System) reconnaissance satellites. The launches of these early and very basic vehicles were
followed by satellites of increasing complexity, and near-space orbits are now filled with a plethora of highly sophisticated, complex and very specialized pieces of equipment. These include
Defence Support Program infra-red early-warning satellites, Magnum electronic intercept birds, SDS information-relay satellites, and DSCS-3 jam-proof high-frequency communication platforms.

Project 467 began in the 1960s and culminated in the first long-lived surveillance satellite that included data transmission facilities. This was Big Bird, the first of which was launched in
1971. Compared to the early surveillance satellites, it was huge: forty-nine feet long, weighing nearly thirty thousand pounds, launched by a specially modified Titan 3D rocket, and with a design
life of months.

Its on-board equipment included a general area survey scanner developed and manufactured by Eastman Kodak, and a Perkin-Elmer high-resolution camera designed for detailed analysis of specific
areas of interest. Pictures taken by the area scanner went through onboard processing, and were then scanned and the data transmitted down to earth using a twenty-foot-diameter antenna located at
the end of the satellite. To provide hard copy for the analysts, up to six recoverable film capsules were carried, which could be ejected at intervals and recovered by air-snatch using a converted
C-130 Hercules transport aircraft.

Five years after the first Big Bird launch, an entirely new surveillance satellite was lifted into orbit. This was the KH-11, or Keyhole, vehicle. Only two-thirds the size of the Big Bird, at
just over twenty thousand pounds, but with an operational life of about two years, the KH-11 was initially employed as a back-up to its larger cousin, following an identical orbital path and
employing its higher-resolution cameras to take detailed pictures of areas identified by Big Bird as being of special interest. Unlike Big Bird, the KH-11 didn’t scan processed photographs:
digital images were produced immediately and the data transmitted to earth in near real-time. The Keyhole could also provide television pictures from its normal orbital elevation of one hundred and
twenty miles. In the late 1980s the more efficient KH-12 bird supplemented the KH-11.

Depending on the location of the satellite, digital images are beamed either directly, or via one of a number of dedicated communications satellites in geo-stationary orbit, to the Mission
Ground Site at Fort Belvoir just outside Washington, DC. The pictures are then forwarded to Building 213 in the Washington Navy Yard, home of N-PIC – the National Photographic Interpretation
Center – part of the Science and Technology Directorate of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Resolution, with particular respect to surveillance satellites, is defined as the minimum distance separating two point light sources so that it can clearly be determined whether those points
are dots or a line. The first reconnaissance satellites had an optimum resolution of just over eight feet from their normal maximum elevation of one hundred and twenty-four miles. Big Bird was a
huge improvement, and provided resolution of slightly under twenty-four inches from an orbital height of one hundred miles, and the KH-12 brought this figure down to a whisker under six inches from
a maximum orbital elevation of two hundred and fifty miles, close to the theoretical limiting resolution of just under four inches.

What all this means in practical terms is that if a man is sitting outdoors reading a newspaper anywhere on the surface of the earth for more than about an hour, an analyst sitting at a
purpose-built computer console in Washington will be able to identify which newspaper he’s reading, while he’s still reading it.

Surveillance satellites follow standard and pre-determined polar orbits. They can be manoeuvred to some extent to provide additional pictures of particular areas of interest, but this costs fuel
and reduces the life of the bird, so most agencies simply study the ‘take’ obtained when the satellite passes over a particular location during its normal operations.

Frequently, the bird’s sensors are deactivated when it crosses large stretches of water, simply because there’s generally nothing much to see, but there are exceptions. One such
exception, originating from the Intelligence Directorate of the CIA at Langley, Virginia, was somewhat unusual, for three reasons.

First, it was old now, having been initiated in the winter of 1972. Most satellite imagery requests have immediate and obvious relevance to whatever troubles are currently being fomented in the
world. Second, the area specified was simply a ten-mile square of the eastern Mediterranean, of no obvious strategic or any other importance. Third, it asked for the simplest possible report
– the identity and type of any vessel remaining in the same location within that square for more than three hours, or any vessel which returned to the area twice or more in any thirty-day
period. No follow-up, no further action.

Since 1972, N-PIC had forwarded some two hundred and eighty reports to the Intelligence Directorate, had received an acknowledgement each time, and had heard nothing further. The report that
morning was almost identical to every other one they had sent, with one exception – they hadn’t been able to identify the
Nicos
, simply because the vessel had no identification
marks visible from above, but they had been able to state exactly what the boat was, because they could see the purpose-built racks for the aqualungs.

This time, they got the usual acknowledgement from Langley, but also an instruction for additional material on the next and all subsequent passes by the bird, and a request for the hard-copy
pictures to be forwarded immediately.

Aeroporto di Brindisi, Papola-Casale, Puglia, Italy

‘So just what the hell is all this about, Simpson?’ Richter said, putting down his flying helmet and life vest, and sitting opposite his superior. ‘I
don’t appreciate being told to pull stunts like this. Scrambling safety services raises pulse rates and costs money, not to mention the fact that the ship’s now going to have to send a
team of maintainers all the way out here by helicopter to spend a couple of days examining a perfectly serviceable Sea Harrier.’

Simpson waved one small pink hand dismissively. ‘Your comments are noted, but this seemed the easiest way to get you into Italy without anyone knowing you’ve been here.’

‘And that’s important, is it?’

‘Yes,’ Simpson said flatly, ‘or it could be.’ He gestured towards a small brown suitcase standing upright against the wall. ‘You might be here for a day or two, so
I brought you a change of clothes. You can hardly,’ he added, with a glance at the flying overalls and anti-g trousers Richter was wearing, ‘wander around wearing
that
outfit.’

‘I
thought
you had a sudden change of heart about my doing a bit of continuation training,’ Richter said. ‘And I suppose it also explains why I had to fly down at such
short notice to join the ship at Gib. So what am I supposed to be doing in Italy? Are we working for the Mafia now?’

‘Not that I’m aware of, Richter,’ Simpson replied. ‘We have a little business to take care of here in Italy. I suppose it is faintly possible that the Mafia might be a
beneficiary, but our real client is the SISDE – the Italian Secret Service.’

‘And what exactly does the
Servizio per le Informazione e la Sicurezza Democratica
want with us?’ Richter asked, in perfect Italian construction yet badly mangling the
pronunciation. Simpson even looked impressed. ‘I do know my business, Simpson,’ Richter added.

‘I’ve no doubt you do. We – or to be more accurate
you
– have been sort of lent to them for a while.’