59 — Desert Pit Stop
In the Iraqi desert, at a spot that would be known as Shangri-La at least until the sun came up, 85 F-15 and F-16 fighter-bombers of the Israeli Air Force began to touch down on the main runway. Major Gideon Meyer felt very confident as the first warplane, an F-16C of 101 Squadron, the First Combat Squadron, touched down at 8:53 p.m. Iraqi time, 9:23 p.m. Iranian time.
Like all the planes coming into Mudaysis Airfield, this F-16 was outfitted for a SEAD mission, or Suppression of Enemy Air Defense. This particular plane was carrying four AGM-88D HARM, or High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles, two AIM-120D AMRAAMs, or Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles, and two Python 5 infrared air-to-air missiles. After using its HARM missiles, the plane would assume its secondary role of providing air combat cover. Other planes flying into Shangri-La — the two seat B and D models — carried the Delilah missile. The Delilah would be launched from a distance of one hundred miles or more to fly to its target area. It would then hunt for specific targets such as mobile missile launchers or truck-mounted radar and command centers. An optical feed to the back-seat weapons officer allowed for positive identification of targets before ordering the Delilah to home in on its kill. Still other aircraft were armed with guided bombs to target fixed command, control and communication nodes.
The Israeli men in yellow shirts guided the first F-16C to the front of ten refueling positions that had been established on the tarmac of Mudaysis. Two purple shirted refuelers pulled a high-volume type-4 hydrant fuel hose underneath the plane’s left wing, opened a small access door, pushed the hydrant up onto the fuel nozzle and rotated the hydrant clockwise until it clicked. A flow of 1,000 gallons per minute of JP-8 fuel passed into the fuel tanks of the F-16. Next to the access door they had just opened, a number had been freshly painted. It told the two refuelers how many gallons needed to be pumped into this plane. It took less than two minutes to pump the 1,544 gallons, or 10,500 pounds, of fuel into the plane. By the time they were finished, three other F-16s were already parked in the line behind the lead F-16. Planes were landing every 30 seconds.
As soon as the hydrant was disconnected and the access door closed, a white shirted quality control officer checked the meter readings on the fuel pump, confirming the delivery of 1,551 gallons of fuel. He compared that against the number “1544” that was also painted very visibly on the nose of the aircraft. He then walked under the wing to confirm that the plane and its weapons were ready for flight. He stepped out from under the wings and to the side to salute the pilot, who knew he had been cleared.
The F-16 applied power to move away from the refueling spot and within seconds was on the long taxiway that ran parallel to the main runway. He applied military power and his afterburner to takeoff to the northwest directly into the path of oncoming aircraft. He turned on his navigation lights for the takeoff roll and immediately turned right as he lifted off the taxiway, turning off his navigation lights once he was about a kilometer off the end of the taxiway.
This same process was repeated 84 more times over the next 48 minutes. At Point Romeo over the northern Saudi desert, seven KC-707 refueling tankers of the IAF fueled 121 IAF warplanes during the same period of time. The planes refueling at altitude included 24 F-15I Ra’ams and 55 F-16I Sufas. Gadget’s F-15I was the first plane to mate with the refueling boom of a KC-707.
A little before 10 p.m. Iranian time, thirty minutes later local time, two planes throttled up their engines to taxi to the end of the long runway at Ras Al-Khaimah Airport in the United Arab Emirates. The first plane was a SAAC Boeing 737-400F cargo plane identical to the one now waiting for fuel at the Ganja Airport in Azerbaijan. The second plane was a white C-130 without any markings other than a tail number.
The second plane had landed at Ras Al-Khaimah only forty minutes earlier. None of the Emirati employees working at SAAC, all of whom had become accustomed to the 24 hour pace of a rapidly growing cargo airline, took notice of the C-130 as it refueled on the tarmac. When a panel van pulled onto the tarmac and drove up the rear ramp of the plane, the process was so routine that nobody thought twice about it. What the Emirati employees didn’t know is that the van held all of the records and computers of SAAC from the corporate office in Dubai.
A few minutes later, the Russian night manager finished loading his laptop computer and a handful of files into his briefcase and walked over to the desktop computer of one of the customer service women who worked standard daytime hours. He logged onto the company network using his user name and password and doubled clicked an icon that had been placed on everyone’s desktop screen. A dialogue box opened up and the manager entered his user name and password once again. Now another box opened with a request for a second password. The Russian typed in the name of his childhood pet dog. A confirmation came back. In 25 minutes a virus would be unleashed in the computer network of Swiss-Arab Air Cargo FZE and every remaining computer linked into the network would have its hard drive wiped out. The manager grabbed his briefcase and walked out, telling the handful of Emirati employees that he passed that he would be back in under an hour.
He walked across the tarmac and up the ramp of the C-130. On board, in addition to the van, was every employee of SAAC left in the UAE who was a foreign national. Once the white C-130 took off, the only employees of SAAC left in the UAE were all local Emirati citizens, none of whom had any idea about the events of the coming minutes or the true purpose of Swiss-Arab Air Cargo.
The Boeing 737 cargo plane took off and headed due west over the Persian Gulf. After reaching altitude, it turned slightly to a more northerly heading, establishing itself in the normal air traffic corridor heading towards Kuwait City. The C-130 took off a couple of minutes later and turned in the opposite direction, heading out over the Arabian Sea on its way to Mumbai, India. Somewhere over the ocean, the rear door of the C-130 was opened and the van — along with the computers and corporate records of Swiss Arab Air Cargo — was pushed out the back.
Inside the command buildings for the Iranian Air Force at Doshan Tappeh Air Base, General Hassan Shahbazi read through reports. The veteran F-4 Phantom pilot was bored as he caught up with his daily paperwork. He paused for a moment to think about what he would do if he were the commander of the Israeli Air Force. It was his favorite fantasy — the thought of having a real air force at his command. He ran through the scenario in his head that he had repeated over at least a hundred times before. He had Israeli planes coming into Iran in three waves from the north, south and over the central mountains. He shook his head to clear his secret fantasy. He had a lot of forms to fill out.
The message General Shahbazi sent earlier to each of the tactical air bases allowed pilots who had been close to their interceptors to relax for the night. As with all patterns of behavior that had gone unchallenged for long periods, the level of relaxation had gradually increased to a point where it was now routine for many pilots to go to bed or to even leave their base to return to their families in nearby homes. There was no reason for tonight to be any different — after all, the new moon had come and gone the previous evening and the Hammer Squadron was at its base in the middle of the Negev Desert.