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.
62 — Tally Ho
“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.