The Espionage Game

by Susan Glinert Stevens

  Later, after most of the fueling had been completed, two men dressed in protective suits joined the crew fueling theYorktown . After a brief conference with the crew’s foreman, the two men began a careful check of the aircraft. They were the pilots, and they had every intention of satisfying themselves that the aircraft was completely ready for its mission.

  First, they walked around the outside of the aircraft, paying particular attention to the trolley’s many wheels and tires. Although roughly the size of the Concorde, the SR-96 weighed less than the Concorde when empty but a great deal more when fully loaded. Built of temperature-resistant titanium-aluminide honeycomb and carbon-carbon composite, theYorktown weighed less than fifty tons empty. Yet, when filled with slush hydrogen and liquid oxygen, the weight increased to over 220 tons, thus requiring the use of a special trolley for takeoff. Had theYorktown been designed to use its own landing gears for takeoff, far stronger and heavier gears would have been required than those required for only landing the nearly empty plane. Therefore, one of the first design decisions was to use a special wheeled trolley for launching the aircraft. Besides leaving the trolley’s weight on the ground after takeoff, the design also permitted twenty JATO rockets to be attached to the trolley to help accelerate theYorktown to the nearly three hundred knots required for takeoff.

  Next, the pilots walked under theYorktown to examine the underside. The wingtips drooped noticeably, as did the nose of the aircraft, forming gracefully curved surfaces. In the center, where the wings and fuselage flowed together, the aircraft had a decisively cupped appearance, like the palm of a hand. Aft of this were the twelve engines, or at least the twelve square air scoops, for the SR-96is powered by strutjets, a rocket-based combined-cycle engine that combined the design of the engines with the airframe.

  The air scoops, looking like a row of large pigeonholes under the wing, were separated from each other by a strut that not only formed the side of each engine cell, but also contained a small rocket engine. These rockets, when fired with the air scoops open, acted like ducted rockets, augmenting the native thrust of the rocket with the heated air being sucked through the air scoops even when the aircraft is stationary. The SR-96 can gain even more thrust for takeoff by injecting extra fuel into the exhaust stream, producing an afterburner effect.

  Once airborne, the aircraft is designed to accelerate to over Mach 2.4 before the rockets are turned off and the air scoops function as ramjet engines. Fuel alone is injected through the struts into the ram- compressed air forced into the air scoops by the movement of the aircraft.

  As the SR-96 accelerates even faster, the long, gracefully shaped nose of the aircraft generates a shock wave that gradually moves down the underside of the nose until, at Mach 6, the shock wave is located in the cupped portion of the underbody of the wings. This not only gives the aircraft a tremendous gain in lift, but as the shock wave moves farther back, it forces highly compressed air into the air scoops, which are now acting as scramjet combusters. Liquid hydrogen is sprayed directly into the air stream just as it entered the combuster. An instant later, the hydrogen bursts into flame as it reaches the flame front trapped inside each tube by the aircraft's shock wave. The exhaust is then forced out the back of the tube, driving the aircraft forward at ever faster speeds, allowing it to climb ever higher, until it reaches Mach 10.

  Now more spacecraft than aircraft, the rockets fire once again, driving the SR-96 until it reaches Mach 25 and orbital speed. TheYorktown 's mission was to fly into space, observe any point on earth without being detected, and then return with the pictures—all within a period of a few hours.

  Satisfied with the preparations, the two pilots left the shed to enter a nearby trailer. There they would don their orange pressure suits.

  Knowing that it would be crowded, Lazarus Keesley arrived early at the CIA’s viewing theater. To his surprise, the room was already nearly full, with a dozen of the best seats blocked and guarded by serious-looking, burly young men. They stood in front of the room with their arms crossed, exposing the bulges under the armpits of their jackets. Lazarus immediately recognized at least two as being Secret Service agents assigned to guard the president. The president was seated in the center of the first row. Jonathan Boswell, the Director of the CIA, was standing on the stage, waiting for the others to seat themselves.

  “Watertown Tower, this is Eagle Five-four,” Colonel Jake Crowell, theYorktown ’s pilot, called. “Takeoff checklist is complete and all systems are go. Permission to take off.”

  “Eagle Five-four,” his earphones chattered a moment later, “cleared for takeoff on runway three-two.”

  From the tower, the scene was spectacular. Contrasted by the predawn dark of 0530, pale blue flames shot out of the twelve rocket engines as they went to full power. At first, the flame was barely visible. Seconds later, the JATO rockets began to fire two at a time in rapid succession, lighting up the surrounding desert with brilliant white light as they drove the SR-96 and its launch trolley down the miles-long runway.

  “TheYorktown should be airborne,” Jonathan Boswell, the Director of the CIA, announced. He rested his hands on the edge of the podium and looked around at his audience. The president and Secretary of Defense Van Dyne were sitting together in the first row. Senator Bennett chose to be seated in the second row, right behind the president. The senator smiled when he heard Boswell refer to the aircraft by the name he had chosen for it.

  “While we wait,” Director Boswell announced, “I’d like to review the situation we have in the Gomazal Valley in Iraq.” A color image of Gomazal Valley taken from a satellite flashed on the screen as Director Jonathan Boswell started his presentation.

  Within seconds, theYorktown had climbed to fifteen thousand feet and had exceeded the speed of sound while still in a steep climbing turn. Inside, the event was silently noted by the navigation computer as well as by Colonel Crowell, who continued scanning the instruments, searching for the slightest hint of trouble. So far, there were none. Sunlight filled the cockpit as they climbed into the approaching dawn. Finally heading toward the southwest, Colonel Crowell completed the turn and leveled the wings. They would soon leave the sunrise behind.

  The digital Mach meter continued to blink as the SR-96 accelerated. Mach 2.4 flashed on the display. In the tail section, a small, triply- redundant computer reacted to by first throttling the liquid fuel rockets back as it began injecting fuel alone into the air channels of each air scoop. Air compressed by the movement of the SR-96 itself was rammed directly into the burner chambers.

  Temperatures and pressures rose as the engines became more ramjet than rocket. The thrust increased and accelerated the aircraft. This, in turn, increased the pressure of the air being rammed through the air intakes, setting up a cycle that drove the SR-96 ever faster through the rapidly thinning atmosphere.

  Mach 3 and then Mach 4 flashed on the digital display in theYorktown 's cockpit. The little California town of Kernville lay eighty-six thousand feet below. A few seconds later, the aircraft reached Bakersfield and began to level off as it reached Mach 5. Outside, unseen by human eyes but sensed by pressure transducers set into the aircraft's skin, the shock wave caused by the aircraft moving through the air had migrated down the fuselage to the wings. A bubble of air compressed by the shock wave formed under the wings, forcing the aircraft ever higher into the sky. TheYorktown was now a shock-wave rider, being held in the sky by the shock wave as though it were a surfer riding the crest of an ocean wave. A minute-and-a-half later, theYorktown crossed the California coast. Just south of Santa Barbara, the scramjets ignited.

  Avraham Harkabi, Prime Minister of Israel, gazed silently at Saul Kedar, the head of the Mossad. “You are certain?” he asked in a voice that sounded almost like a croak. The shock of Kedar’s last statement had caused the prime minister’s face to turn almost white.

  “Yes, Avraham, I am,” the younger man answered. “We got this information from one of our moles in the Russian SVR. His informat
ion is always accurate. It appears that the Iraqis have a long-range missile capable of reaching Israel.”

  “But how? We’ve been watching them like hawks for years, and we know that they didn’t buy any from the Chinese or even the Russians. We also know that they haven’t conducted any tests that would permit them to build their own missile.”

  “The testing was apparently done in Russia,” Saul replied. We thought that it was a new tactical missile the Russians were developing. It wasn’t. It was one of Dr. Bull’s designs that they were finishing for their good customer, Khalid.”

  “Dr. Gerald Bull?” The old man peered intently at the head of the Mossad. “I haven’t heard that name for nearly ten years.”

  “Since he died?”

  “Yes,” the Israeli Prime Minister answered quietly. He nodded his head slowly, almost painfully. “He was helping that mad dog Saddam Hussein with a monster cannon capable of firing rockets.”

  “The man may be dead, but his creation lives on,” Saul remarked. “The missile was apparently fired by a monster cannon hidden somewhere near the eastern edge of Iraq.…”

  “Eastern edge?” Avraham Harkabi interrupted. “Why so far away? I would think that they’d locate it closer.”

  “It would allow a cannon with a limited traverse to cover more of Israel,” David Eshkol, the Israeli Defense Minister, explained. “Also, it would place it out of range of our aircraft.”

  “And possibly permit it to be hidden deep underground as well,” Saul Kedar added. “The only mountainous terrain in Iraq is along its border with Iran. They may have located this cannon deep underground.”

  Avraham Harkabi looked sadly at the others. They were, as usual, in his private house in the hills west of Jerusalem. He shifted in his easy chair. “What do the Americans know about this?”

  “We don’t know what they know,” David Eshkol replied. “They certainly have told us nothing, but they must know a great deal more than we do. For one thing, their early warning system triggered our Patriot missile batteries several days ago. As you know, whenever their satellites spot anything that might be a missile launch, it automatically sets their missile defenses on alert. That includes our Patriots. Our radars reported a brief echo from Iraq, but it was too short of a period for us to track. It was almost as though the missile we were tracking blew up.”

  “Why didn’t you report it to me?” Avraham Harkabi glared angrily at his defense minister.

  “It could have been a meteor breaking up,” Eshkol suggested, trying to explain his apparent dereliction of duty.

  “Or an unknown missile capable of reaching Israel,” Harkabi snapped.

  Avraham Harkabi suddenly fell quiet, gazing at the far wall of his living room. “What else do we know about this missile?” he asked pensively. He looked at Saul Kedar and then David Eshkol. “Have either of you run a risk assessment?”

  “Yes,” Eshkol said. “It’s not good. If there is a cannon such as Dr. Bull is known to have designed for Saddam Hussein in eastern Iraq, we would be unable to destroy it with aircraft. We can’t fly our aircraft that far without out refueling and expect them to get back.”

  “Can they reach it one-way?”

  “It would be suicide,” Eshkol exclaimed. “Both the Iraqis and Iranians would shoot any captured Israeli pilots—or worse.”

  “I asked you a question,” the old man snarled.

  “Yes,” the defense minister answered reluctantly. “They could, but they would probably suffer at least fifty percent losses going in, and none of them would get out. Khalid has bought very sophisticated antiaircraft defense systems from both the Russians and the South Africans. Without stealth technology, our boys would be slaughtered.”

  “How about our Jericho II missiles?” Harkabi probed. He glanced anxiously back and forth between the two men. “Could they reach this cannon?”

  “They have the range, but not the accuracy,” Eshkol replied. “We would have to use nuclear warheads to do any significant damage to a cannon that might be buried deep inside a mountain. Even then, we’d have to send literally dozens of them in the hope that one of them hits the target.”

  “And don’t forget the Russian S-300V missiles,” Saul Kedar interjected. “Khalid has enough of those to destroy most of our Jerichos while they are still deep in space.”

  “What you are telling me, then,” Harkabi said slowly and carefully, almost pedantically, “is that Israel is at the mercy of this Khalid. That he not only has twenty or so nuclear weapons, but that he also has the technology to deliver them to Israel, and there isn’t a thing we can do about it. Is that correct?”

  Both Kedar and Eshkol remained silent. Each man appeared to be barely breathing as they contemplated Harkabi’s summation of the situation.

  “Yes,” they whispered in unison.

  Avraham Harkabi’s expression was full of the pain that touched his very soul. He reached over to the table next to his chair and picked up the telephone.

  “Hello,” he said stolidly. “This is Avraham Harkabi. I would like you to get the President of the United States on the telephone. Tell him that it is an extreme emergency and that I must talk to him at once. Tell him that there may be no Middle East this time tomorrow.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The sky above Colonel Jake Crowell's head was almost black. Soon they would no longer be flying—they'd be in space.

  “We're almost to Mach 10 and two hundred thousand feet,” Major George Thomas called. “Five seconds to ignition, Colonel.”

  A moment later, Colonel Crowell felt a nudge as the rocket motors started.

  “We'll be a spaceship in just three-and-a-half minutes, Colonel,” Major Thomas said.

  TheYorktown pitched over a few moments after the rocket engines ceased. The equator lay some three hundred thousand feet beneath. Now in a ballistic orbit above the earth's atmosphere where aerodynamic forces no longer mattered, they could travel tail-first if they wished. However, the mission required a nose-down attitude. Colonel Jake Crowell and Major George Thomas heard the thrusters hiss and sputter as the nose dropped to the prescribed forty-five-degree angle. For the first time since takeoff, the two men could see the earth through the windscreen. Outside, it was dark; the sky was filled with a brilliant display of stars and galaxies.

  Ahead of them, to the east, lay the thin crescent-shaped line of the horizon where tomorrow's setting sun still illuminated the sky. In less than fifteen minutes, they would catch up with tomorrow as they crossed the international dateline south of New Zealand. Seven minutes later, they would be over Antarctica at an altitude of 150 miles, the apogee or high point of their single orbit of the world. They then would rush backwards through the day just now beginning in Nevada.

  Director Boswell walked to the map projected on the screen behind him and pointed to the Gomazal Valley.

  “We first noticed the activity around the Gomazal Valley about two weeks ago, when what appeared to be a full division of Russian troops moved into the area.”

  Director Jonathan Boswell strode to the corner of the stage. “Two weeks ago we arranged for an Advanced KENNAN satellite to make a low-level reconnaissance of the valley, and this is what we got.”

  The slide changed. The area around the Gomazal Valley was easily recognizable. However, the valley itself was covered by a dull, gray cloud. Several dingy yellow flashes could be seen scattered throughout the dull gray cloud.

  “The Russians can completely obscure the entire area over the valley in two minutes,” Director Boswell commented. “On a good day, one with light winds, the smoke remains suspended over the valley for a half-hour. Since they can track our satellites as closely as we can track theirs, they have at least an hour’s warning whenever we redirect one of our Advanced KENNANs.”

  “How about using aircraft?” one of the analysts sitting in the middle of the theater asked.

  “We tried that,” the Director replied. “High flying aircraft such as the SR-85 were spotted on rad
ar and, puff, up went the smoke screen.”

  “How about a low-level overflight?”

  “Too dangerous for any of our aircraft, including the TR-3A,” Director Boswell answered. “That area is heavily defended with SAM and AA guns. Given the density of coverage, they would probably shoot down anything that flies.”

  “And the SR-96?” somebody inquired. Jonathan Boswell wasn’t certain, but the voice sounded like Secretary of State Louis Downley. He faced toward his audience and saw Secretary Downley staring intently at him.

  “That’s what we’re here for, Mr. Secretary,” Director Boswell responded. “The president approved an overflight of eastern Iraq by the SR-96 a few days after the Russians first used the smoke rockets. We have ideal conditions for the flight today—there isn’t a cloud in the sky anywhere in Iraq. In short, it’s wide open.”

  “Where is the SR-96 now?” President Hayward queried.

  “If I may have theYorktown ’s mission flight path.” Director Boswell checked his watch. A map of the world appeared on the screen. A neat wave-like line depicting the flight path of the SR-96 had been added.

  “As you can see from the flight path shown on the map,” Director Boswell told his audience while he used the pointer to trace the projected flight path, “most of the flight is over empty ocean. It goes from Nevada to the Antarctic south of Australia, and then up the middle of the Indian Ocean. In fact, it isn't until here, over the southern tip of the Saudi Arabian peninsula, that theYorktown is in range of the Russian long-range radar located near Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea. Given the very stealthy nature of the SR-96 in space, we doubt that the opposition will spot theYorktown until it's here over the middle of the Persian Gulf, barely five hundred miles from the Gomazal Valley. That's about a minute and a half worth of warning, maximum.”