“What are you driving at?” the president asked anxiously.
“What I am driving at is the reason we kicked Saddam Hussein’s ass so badly was because we had dozens of satellites looking down at everything he did or said. This Khalid fellow is a whole lot smarter. Some people joke that he’s Saddam’s smarter, younger brother. In any case, Khalid has clearly learned from Saddam’s mistakes. One of which is don’t let your enemy see what you’re doing.”
“That bit of sage advice goes right back to Sun Tzu’sThe Art of War ,” Admiral Hillman remarked.
“Exactly,” Lazarus agreed. “Now, suppose that they decide to quietly put in a powerful weapons system that could neutralize our high-flying reconnaissance aircraft and satellites. Next, suppose that the Iraqis have their Russian mercenaries guard that weapon. Remember, the Russians are still technically allies of the United States. Finally, suppose that the Iraqis stage a surprise attack on Kuwait and eastern Saudi Arabia under the cover of this spring’s war games. We might suddenly find ourselves saddled with the dilemma of choosing between launching a preemptive attack on Russian troops or watching the Iraqis take all of the oil in the Persian Gulf.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say such things, Lazarus,” President Hayward grumbled. “You just might be right.”
“Perhaps, Mr. President,” Director Boswell interjected, “we should consider that potential.”
“What? Going to war? Killing Russians? You must be crazy!” President Hayward shouted.
“Oh, no, sir.” Director Boswell waved his hands in appeasement. “What I meant to say is suppose they are building something in that valley which, when we learn what it is, we might actually consider a preemptive attack against them. Given that premise, then what might it be?”
“A ground-based antisatellite laser or particle beam weapon,” Lazarus suggested.
President Hayward coughed, making a choking sound. “Lazarus,” he sputtered as he fought to recover from the shock, “you have an absolute talent for coming up with scenarios that make my skin crawl!”
“That is an interesting bit of speculation, Lazarus,” Secretary of Defense Gilbert Van Dyne commented. “Would you mind explaining your rationale?”
“You’re quite right in calling it speculation,” Lazarus said while he packed his pipe with the butt of his penknife. “It should be treated as a hypothetical situation presented only for discussion’s sake.”
He glanced around the room. “Everybody agreed?” He looked around again. Finally, President Hayward nodded.
“There are several interesting facets to this situation in Iraq,” Lazarus remarked. “The most fascinating is its location. Why did they pick a valley over a hundred and thirty miles from the nearest border friendly to the United States? My speculation is that they chose that valley because it’s far enough from the border to be defensible in case of war. Remember that all aircraft, including cruise missiles, can be easily defeated by a determined antiaircraft defense. And in this case, they’d have at least a hundred and thirty miles to shoot down any attacking force, if they chose to.”
“As much as I hate to agree with you, Lazarus, I have to,” Admiral Hillman said. “Even the F-117A stealth fighter would have a hell of a time getting in there if they put enough radar-controlled SAMs and AA guns around it. It might be a stealth airplane, but it’s not invisible.”
“Okay,” Lazarus continued. “Supposing that those assumptions are correct. Then what type of weapon would they put in there?”
He paused to glance around the room. “Let’s look at its characteristics,” he suggested. “What are they? Well, first, it obviously has to have a range of at least several hundred miles. Second, it doesn’t mind that it’s surrounded by hills. The only answer I can come up with that is consistent with all those criteria is some sort of antisatellite weapon, such as one of their free-electron lasers or perhaps a particle beam generator.”
“What are you driving at, Lazarus?” the president demanded.
“In just six weeks the Iraqis are holding their spring war games. They’ve just announced that this year’s games will simulate a defense against an ‘aggressor’ attack into southern Iraq. They’re already massing troops in the area, and it appears that the number of units involved will be larger than expected.”
Lazarus knocked some loose ashes out of his pipe. “Let’s suppose that they decide to suddenly charge out of Iraq and into Kuwait again. In days, they could get halfway down the western shore of the Persian Gulf and have control of all the oil fields.”
“However, that assumes that we don’t fight,” Admiral Hillman responded. “We’d make them pay dearly for every yard they take.”
“With what?” Lazarus countered. “We drew down our troops and equipment in the area once Saddam Hussein departed the scene. We have only a limited force left.”
“Yeah, but we have enough forces to hit them with a surgical attack by focusing our limited resources on their tank columns,” Hillman argued.
“Suppose we’re blind and didn’t know where they were? Suppose every high-flying reconnaissance aircraft and low-flying reconnaissance satellite were blinded, if not destroyed, by a powerful laser located in that valley?”
“We’d nuke it,” Admiral Hillman insisted angrily.
“Oh?” Lazarus faced the president. “Wouldyou become the man who started a nuclear war and destroyed the Middle East to save it, Mr. President?”
His body trembling perceptibly, President Hayward stared angrily at Keesley, but he didn’t answer.
“If I were in your shoes, Mr. President,” Lazarus Keesley said in a conciliatory tone, “that’s one decision I would strive to avoid. That laser is an unacceptable risk to our men in the Persian Gulf. And speaking for myself, I would consider a preemptive, non-nuclear strike against any such threat should I become aware of it.”
The president nodded his head slightly.
“However, this is all hypothetical,” Secretary of Defense Gilbert Van Dyne protested.
“Agreed,” Lazarus replied emphatically.
“How do we find out what they’re up to?” Admiral Hillman asked.
“Well, for starters,” Lazarus said casually as he knocked his pipe clean in the ashtray, “I thought that you’d volunteer the SR-96.”
“No,” the president interrupted. “I don’t want to risk that.”
Admiral Hillman eyed the president. “We could try sneaking an SR- 85 over that valley. If they don’t see it coming, we might get the pictures.”
“You have one available?” President Hayward inquired.
“Yes, sir,” Admiral Hillman answered. “The Air Force has five ready aircraft scattered around the world. The nearest is parked at Mildenhall.”
“Then do it,” the president ordered.
“Don, I wonder if you can tell me what’s in these,” Lazarus Keesley said as he handed the large envelope full of photographs to Donald Chapman, the head of the CIA’s crateology section. A portly, middle- aged man with a neatly trimmed gray mustache, Chapman had one of the more esoteric jobs in the world of espionage: he identified objects by their packaging, be it a paper wrapper or huge wooden crates such as those in the photographs he now held in his hand. Don put his coffee cup down and examined the photos. Although it was barely seven-thirty in the morning, it was unwise to keep a director-level executive of the CIA waiting.
The photographs were of a dozen or so large crates loaded on a row of railroad flatcars. The train was stationary, parked near the entrance of a gorge leading into a valley. Several soldiers were clearly visible, examining the train and its load.
“Industrial crates,” he said immediately. “They don’t have any of the common military markings. The soldiers are obviously Russian, and, judging by the peaked caps they are wearing, I’d say they’re MBRF border guards, because only the border guards wear such fancy headgear in the field.”
“Industrial?” Lazarus exclaimed with a crestfallen look. “You mean you can’t iden
tify what’s in them?”
“I didn’t say that,” Chapman responded. “I think we have some idea. If you’ll excuse me a second, I’ll go get Jackie. I think she’ll be interested in your photographs.”
Chapman got up and left Lazarus in his office as he rushed out with unexpected energy. It took Chapman less than a minute to reappear with a younger, almost attractive woman following behind. She wore a plain cotton dress and red cardigan sweater that gave her a distinctly frumpy appearance.
“Jacqueline Kimber,” Don Chapman said, introducing her to Lazarus, “I would like you to meet Lazarus Keesley, DICS.”
Jacqueline’s eyes betrayed her shock at being introduced to someone so lofty as the Director of the Intelligence Community Staff. She extended her hand slowly, uncertain whether it was appropriate.
“Pleased to meet you,” Lazarus replied warmly. He took her hand and shook it.
“I think Director Keesley has found your missing pipes, Jackie,” Don Chapman told her affably.
“You what?” Jackie gasped.
“Yes, I believe he did,” Chapman repeated. “Could you take a look at his photographs?”
“Oh, please,” she begged with unmistakable glee as she glanced at one and then another of the photographs. She seemed to Lazarus to be as excited as a child opening Christmas packages.
“Yes, they are,” Jackie declared as soon as she finished examining the photographs. “It’s the same crates, and the resolution of these pictures is so much better. May I have copies?”
“You know these crates?” Lazarus asked, surprised at Jacqueline’s knowledge of them. “I didn’t realize you were keeping track of individual crates. When did we start doing that?”
Chapman snickered. “No, sir, we’re not that crazy. We don’t have anything like the people we would need to keep track of everything. However, we do keep a lookout for anything unusual, and these are in that category.”
“Why?” Lazarus inquired. “They look like any other crates I’ve seen. What makes them so special?”
“Several things, Mr. Keesley,” Jacqueline answered. “That’s my job, to keep a lookout for unusual things, that is. First of all, when I first saw them in Russia, these crates had guards, lots of guards—two passenger cars full of them.”
“Where was that?” Lazarus queried.
“The Novgorod Steel Works,” she replied. “Why would the Russians want to guard steel pipes?”
“What?” Lazarus glared at Jacqueline.
“That what I thought,” she replied. “Then I remembered something from about ten years ago. Saddam Hussein almost built two super cannons by buying steel tubes from Britain and then assembling them in the desert of Iraq. Fortunately, they never got used. However, I do have one satellite picture of the workers at the Novgorod Steel Works building one those crates. All that was inside was a big steel pipe, like that you’d use in a refinery or chemical plant.”
“Or a super cannon?” Lazarus asked.
“It’s been done before.”
Chapter Twenty
The C-5B had landed at the Mildenhall Royal Air Force base in the United Kingdom a week earlier and been parked in a secluded and secured part of the base. Even though it looked like any other C-5B, this particular aircraft had what appeared to be a crew of thirty men, including its own security police contingent and two guard dogs. Day and night, at least two armed men patrolled around the aircraft, one of whom always had a dog on a leash. Everyone, including the dogs, wore radiation dosimeters, giving rise to speculation that the aircraft was transporting nuclear weapons. Within a few days, interest in the strange C-5B waned. Its crew kept to themselves, performing routine maintenance such as changing a tire on one of the main landing gears and filling the oil tanks of the four engines.
After a week of relative inactivity, a sedan painted Air Force blue drew up to the aircraft at 2200 hours. It was checked thoroughly by the guards, and parked by the side door of the airplane. Two officers entered the aircraft and stayed for an hour. By 2400 hours, the C-5B was airborne, flying southeast on what was allegedly a training flight over the Mediterranean Sea. It would instead fly to the southern Persian Gulf by way of Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Colonel Randy Palmer, the pilot and aircraft commander of the C- 5B that had departed so mysteriously from Mildenhall RAF six hours earlier, squinted as he peered out the windshield. He could see the blue Persian Gulf glittering far below them in the early morning sun. “How long to the Initial Point, Mike?” he asked his copilot.
“Ah,” Major Mike Reinders mumbled while he checked his notes and then the clock on the instrument panel, “in about fifteen more minutes.”
“Okay.” Colonel Palmer dug a checklist out of his flight case, “let’s start the depressurization checklist. Are the dogs in their kennel?”
Five minutes later, they had come to the end of their checklist. Major Reinders look up at Colonel Palmer. “That’s it, sir, except the guys in the Snake.”
“Tell Colonel McAtee that we’re ready to depressurize the aircraft and turn to launch course.”
“Colonel McAtee?” Reinders called over the intercom. “How are you and Major Hamamoto doing? We’re ready to depressurize the mother aircraft.”
“Ready and raring to go, Major,” McAtee called back. “Prelaunch checklist complete, all systems go.”
“Start depressurization,” Major Reinders called. Captain Hamlin flipped a switch and adjusted a knob on his control panel. The air pressure inside the huge aircraft began to drop. Soon, within a few minutes, it would match the outside air pressure of the thirty-five-thousand-foot altitude at which the C-5B was flying. Although originally built as a cargo plane, this particular C-5B, as well as four others of its type were now flying hangars for America’s most sophisticated operational spy plane, the SR-85 Snake, but better known by its original codename of Aurora.
The SR-85, the replacement for the now obsolete SR-71, lay on its belly in the cavernous cargo hold of the C-5B. An obvious descendant of the SR-71, the SR-85 had the same tapered-chine-shaped fuselage. However, the differences were obvious to even the most casual observer, for there were no wings as such. Its fuselage widened gradually, giving the aircraft a wedge-like shape that was swept back at seventy-five degrees. The aircraft was a lifting body; its aerodynamically shaped fuselage provided all the lift it needed. There were also no engine nacelles—just an air intake on each side of the fuselage.
Designed to fit the space available in a C-5B, the SR-85 quickly earned its nickname from its appearance. Long, thin, and black, the eighty-foot-long aircraft looked like a snake, particularly when resting on the floor of the C-5B with the outer portion of its “wings” folded over its bulbous body so that it could fit inside the cargo bay.
There were also less obvious differences between the SR-85 and its predecessor. One was skin deep, for the SR-85 was built largely of boron-reinforced and carbon-carbon composites, necessitated by the tremendous temperatures the aircraft generated when it flew. Unlike the SR-71, which was powered by J-58 turbo-ramjets and thus able to reach only Mach 3.8 or 2500 miles per hour, the SR-85 was propelled by a pulsed detonation engine and could theoretically fly at nearly Mach 8, or 5300 miles per hour. In reality, its top speed was closer to Mach 6 or 4000 miles per hour.
Another of the less obvious differences was the series of little holes located on the nose, tail and wingtips. The SR-85 also had a second ancestor, the X-15. Like its illustrious rocket plane forerunner, the SR- 85 could climb high, to the very edge of space at 150,000 feet, where the aerodynamic control surfaces no longer functioned and reaction control jets were required to keep the aircraft in its proper attitude. There was also one more similarity between the two aircraft—the SR- 85 was air-launched.
“Open the tail ramp,” Colonel Palmer called. A second later a green light went off and was replaced by a blinking red one. Colonel Palmer fought the controls as the C-5B bucked in response to the changes in aerodynamics caused by opening the tail-l
oading ramp. He retrimmed the airplane and had it flying straight and level at thirty-five thousand feet and two hundred knots airspeed.
“Launch in one minute,” Major Reinders yelled as he glanced at the clock on the instrument panel. “Colonel McAtee,” he called over the intercom, “Is it a ‘go’?”
“Go!” McAtee called back.
“Forty-five seconds … thirty seconds … fifteen … ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, launch!”
For a moment, nothing happened. Then a drogue parachute popped out of the open loading ramp of the C-5B, blossomed, and with a jerk, pulled the SR-85 out as though the C-5B were giving birth in mid- flight. Colonel Palmer wasted no time in banking his aircraft away in a steep turn as the SR-85 fell free of the mother ship. Inside the Snake, Colonel McAtee and Major Hamamoto felt themselves become weightless as the drogue parachute detached itself, allowing them to free-fall. The outer portions of the wing-like fuselage folded out, giving the aircraft its final wedge shape.
The two men felt their aircraft glide momentarily until the control computer fired the two booster rockets that would build their airspeed high enough for the pulse detonation engine to ignite. A few seconds later, they heard the reassuring pulsating roar of their main engine, and they accelerated even harder.
Colonel Palmer turned back to watch the SR-85. There was no mistaking its location. A string of cotton-ball-like clouds formed in its wake. Each cloud was the result of the rapid detonation of fuel and air in the revolutionary engine that powered the spy plane.
At first, the SR-85 flew level. As they reached Mach 2, Colonel McAtee pulled the nose up, and gained altitude at an ever-faster rate until they reached 120,000 feet. McAtee then lowered the nose and permitted the Snake to accelerate again. The Mach meter shot forward over its scale until the SR-85 reached Mach 5.8, 3,940 miles per hour, the maximum speed the SR-85 could fly at that altitude. Even though the plane was capable of flying faster and higher, this mission called for a lightning dash from the launch point, up the Persian Gulf between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and over Iraq to the Gomazal Valley, 810 miles north. The plan was to cover the distance in as short a time as possible, roughly twelve minutes, take the photographs and continue north to land at a secluded Turkish military air base.
The Espionage Game Page 19
