The Israelis referred to the device as the tactical situation unit, or TSU. The TSU that was now in the hands of the Israeli captain, was connected via satellite to an uplink in the Negev desert. The screen presented synthesized information being fed to Olympus from a single unmanned USAF RQ-4 Global Hawk flying at 64,000 feet above the eastern border between Iraq and Iran, and a manned U.S. Rivet Joint electronic intelligence plane flying over Turkey. On the screen, the captain could see real-time infrared images of Iranian and Iraqi border guards and posts for a 20 mile radius around the drop zone. Periodic blinking lights pinpointed the approximate location of Iranian radio transmissions on frequencies used by the border guards and the military. Transmissions that were unencrypted or for which the code was easily broken on board the Rivet Joint aircraft were forwarded to Olympus, which analyzed them and decided which were relevant and important enough to send on to the device in the captain’s hands. Ben Zeev could choose from his menu a chronological transcription of the communications, all presented to him in Farsi written in Arabic script.
On the Iraqi side, the image was as expected, with border guards in their static shelters scattered sporadically among the mountains about two miles inside the border. The primary drop zone was well chosen. It was in a high valley that was uninhabited and unobserved by any known border post either Iraqi or Iranian. But the initial relief was interrupted by tension as the captain looked at the Iranian side of the border. To his horror, he saw dozens of small red dots on the screen, most stationary but some moving south. All of the dots were close to the border and in the very valleys that he had planned to move through while crossing into Iran. They appeared to his experienced eye to be in ambush positions. On the screen, a light yellow star flashed in the lower left corner indicating that a message or messages were waiting for him. He pressed a button on the bottom of the device and a menu popped onto the lower left quadrant of the screen. He touched the screen and a message from Olympus opened up.
IRGC activity vicinity Dezli. Estimated company strength.
Of course, Yoni Ben Zeev thought, tell me what I already know. I need to know why? The captain reviewed his alternatives. His secondary drop zone was just to the north of the primary, which would route his men through the valley just north of the primary infiltration route. But on the Iran side, that valley was full of tiny red blips. During mission planning this scenario was discussed. Two more alternate drop zones had been identified, but both of them added miles of hiking for the team once inside Iran. More time on foot meant greater risk of bumping into unfriendly elements — or Kurdish goat herders. Contact with anyone other than Arsadian equaled danger and risk.
The captain had the authority to scrub the mission. Are we compromised? He thought about Hamak Arsadian, a man he had spent considerable time training in Yerevan. He had grown to like, respect and, most importantly, trust the Armenian. Had Arsadian been arrested? Iranian interrogators were not shy about the use of torture, especially in the case of anyone suspected of spying for Israel. Even worse, was he a double agent all along? The truck driver knew nothing about the mission other than that he was supposed to meet Ben Zeev and an undetermined group at Point Kabob sometime before the coming dawn. The driver would then continue on his route until told to pull over by the captain, at which time the Israelis would depart and go on their way.
The possibilities screamed through the head of the Israeli officer. Ben Zeev ran through the scenario that had gnawed at him for weeks. If Arsadian was compromised and the Iranians knew an Israeli team was on the way, then they could easily understand how this last minute helicopter mission to ostensibly retrieve a wayward American drone was an obvious cover for the insertion. It was common knowledge in the IDF that Iranian intelligence had deeply penetrated the Iraqi military since the Americans purged the mostly-Sunni Saddam Hussein loyalists in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion. But the 28-year-old Israeli captain, as well as every member of his hand-picked team, also knew that this mission was perhaps the most important operation of Project Block G. If Task Force Camel failed for any reason, there was a back-up plan, but the cost to the Israeli military of having to turn to the alternative plan would be very steep. And the potential cost to Israel of failure could mean its very existence. Against that cost, Ben Zeev weighed the cost of the capture of any member of his team. Such an outcome could jeopardize all of Project Block G and the avoidance of capture under all scenarios was the first priority of the mission. This fact had resulted in a discussion with his men many months earlier in which a unanimous pact was made to fight to the death if the situation arose, including an oath to kill any wounded man if that man was unable to fight on and was in danger of capture.
All of these possibilities had been thought through in advance. In his final meeting with General Schechter a week earlier, the general had told Ben Zeev that scrubbing the mission and evading detection was a better outcome than a firefight with the Iranians. But none of these discussions made this decision any easier for Ben Zeev. As he thought through his alternatives, the captain looked at the number of enemy soldiers in and around the Iranian village of Dezli. Point Kabob was only a few kilometers south of the village on Road 15. He had expected no military presence in the village and now the amount of men was consistent with the entire mission being compromised. For the sake of security, in case anyone unintended was picking up and reading the same screen that Ben Zeev was looking at, the position of Arsadian’s truck was not being broadcast. The captain suddenly cursed this decision. He was uncomfortable not knowing precisely where that truck was located. I need more information. Just as his mind began to entertain the unthinkable, a new message from Olympus popped up on the screen.
Confirmed negative AISR.
Flying just south of Hakkari, Turkey, about 200 miles north of the Chinook helicopter, a single USAF RC-135 Rivet Joint, a converted Boeing 707 with a 22 man crew and millions of dollars worth of the latest electronic equipment and computing power, quietly vacuumed in every radio transmission over northern and western Iran. Over years of experience and intelligence gathering, the Americans had learned all of the frequencies used and characteristics emitted by the growing fleet of Iranian drones. While often hard to pick up on radar, drones had to communicate with their pilots on the ground and provide real time intelligence, which was their purpose. This meant that they had to broadcast either upward to overhead satellites or downward to listening stations on the surface. Either way, the Rivet Joint picked up their radio wave emissions. On this night, the crew on the Rivet Joint could locate the approximate location of four Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles. One was operating at high altitude just south of the Azerbaijan border, two were at medium altitude in circular patterns over the Iran-Afghanistan border and one had recently taken off from Mashhad Air Base in the northeastern corner of Iran. This fourth drone was climbing to the south, apparently heading for the Afghanistan or Pakistani border. No Iranian drone was airborne over the country’s long border with Iraq.
Captain Ben Zeev immediately recognized the acronym for aerial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and knew that the message meant that there were no Iranian drones operating in his area of concern. He processed this new information in a logical manner. Iran’s operational drone fleet was growing, but its best reconnaissance drones were expensive to operate and the financial pressures on the Iranian regime limited their flight time. This had the practical effect that every mission had to be prioritized and approved by Revolutionary Guard headquarters in Tehran. As Ben Zeev reviewed this situation in his mind, he concluded that there could be no higher priority operation for the Islamic Republic of Iran than to catch or kill a group of Israeli commandos on Iranian soil. This would command all available resources and the fact that Iranian drones were looking for drug smugglers coming into the country from Afghanistan instead of his team coming in from Iraq meant to him that the Iranians must not know about his mission. Or so he reassured himself.