Benny Stern laid his M-4 in the ditch and positioned his primary weapon, one of the two SR-99 sniper rifles the team was carrying, on its bipod. Its powerful scope and integrated light intensifier allowed Stern to observe everything happening at the radar station within his line of sight. Finally, Hisami pulled out a camouflage net — a smaller version of the one being used to protect the main body of the team — and covered both men and all their gear including their weapons. This spot would be their “hide” for the next 17 hours. During the coming daylight hours, they would be unable to move out from under the netting. Any required bodily function would have to be taken care off within the claustrophobic confines of their enshrouded ditch.
They maintained sparse radio contact with the captain, using single Farsi words to let Ben Zeev know they were in position and had visual contact with their ultimate objective. The mountain goat put his M-4 down by his side and pulled out his suppressed SIG Sauer P226 9-millimeter pistol, holding it in his hand. He assumed that the only way they would be found before the next nightfall would be if someone happened to walk within a few meters of their hiding spot. If that misfortune were to occur, Hisami would make sure whoever it was did not live to reveal what they saw.
Stern told Hisami to get some sleep. Dawn was about four hours away. Stern would sleep sometime during the day.
Back underneath the natural overhang, Captain Ben Zeev pulled out a TSU and turned it on. While they were hiking up the mountain, the device had been passively receiving encrypted information. The captain tapped on the screen to open a specific file. A small number of high resolution photographs of the Dehloran radar station appeared on the screen in cascading files. The photos were in both visible and infrared light and spanned the prior 24 hours in four hour increments. He looked through the photos. They were no different than the ones he had been viewing for months. His conclusion was that the Iranians were not expecting his team.
44 — Morning in Iraq
The morning sun broke the horizon as seen from Mudaysis Airfield in Iraq at 5:59 a.m. A soldier shook the shoulder of the Shaldag commander, who had been able to get almost four hours sleep. The commander awoke to the cold desert air and worked his way out of the sleeping bag he was in. He was wearing his uniform from the night before, complete with his boots. Fortunately, no one had come to the airfield in response to the explosion. Either no one was close enough to hear the small blast or, thought the commander, perhaps the locals were accustomed to animals occasionally detonating old landmines from time to time. Either way, solitude was a very welcome condition. The commander wiped his eyes and looked to see that the cart was parked inside the aircraft shelter. “How did it go?” the commander asked of the soldier who woke him, the same man who had been driving the cart all night.
“Finished an hour ago. No problems.”
“Any runway obstacles?”
“No.”
“General condition?”
“Seems to be perfect to me.”
“Did you remember the access road?”
“Yes, sir. It’s in good shape as well.”
“Good, good. Get some sleep if you can.”
“Yes, sir.”
The commander walked over to the meteorology machine that was lying in the middle of the pile of equipment and supplies unloaded the night before. He grabbed the machine, which was about the size of a microwave oven, and placed it outside the shelter in the clear path of the wind. He removed a plastic cover that exposed a weather vane and anemometer. He turned on the machine and pushed a button that quickly ran diagnostics to check its inner workings. I green LED lit up, indicating that the machine was working properly. Finally, the commander opened a panel on the side of the machine, reached in and removed a long USB cable. He walked back to the communication device he had used the night before with the cable in his hand and plugged the cable into the device.
He sat down in front of the keyboard and typed in a cryptic message.
Oscar Sierra. Quiet. Romeo condition alpha. Charlie clear. Victor unlimited. Shangri-La. +5.2C, 53.6P, 1.6K, W, 0307Z.
The update that Mount Olympus had been waiting for was received within a minute. The airfield was still secure and the condition of the runway, taxiway and tarmac was as good as anyone dared hope. The skies were clear with unlimited visibility. The commander did not enter the final set of numbers; they were automatically appended to the message by the meteorology machine through the USB cable, which was conveying temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction and the time of measurement in universal coordinated time, or UTC.
Now there was little to do until the afternoon except for updates to Mount Olympus every four hours. The commander headed out to relieve one of his men watching the entrance road. He wanted everyone to get as much sleep as possible. The commander’s plan was that at around 3 that afternoon he would leave only one man on watch and he and the remaining three men would walk the taxiway, the runway and the tarmac in search of any objects, such as rocks, that could be sucked up into jet engines.
45 — The Midas Touch
A little after 1:20 in the afternoon of October 5, the first of three Ilyushin 78 Midas aerial refueling tankers operated by Swiss-Arab Air Cargo touched down on runway 33L at Kuwait International Airport just outside Kuwait City. The plane had departed from Ras Al-Khaimah airport about an hour earlier with a crew of five and more than 12,000 gallons of fuel. It had burned almost 8,000 gallons during the 577 mile flight. The plane slowed and taxied onto the commercial freight tarmac, where it was directed to park. The pilot shut down his engines. He scanned the apron area and was very happy to see a line of 18 white refueling trucks of the Kuwait Petroleum Company waiting by the edge. Each truck held 5,000 gallons of JP-8 aviation fuel. Each of the three Ilyushin 78 tankers would require 30,000 gallons to reach their maximum fuel capacity.
The operations team at SAAC had no problem lining up the required fuel. The Kuwait Petroleum Company had become the largest supplier of JP-8 aviation fuel to the U.S. military in Iraq during the occupation, supplying millions of gallons of the fuel every month and billions of gallons over the prior decade. Kuwait Petroleum was now so eager for customers for its massive infrastructure that had been built to support the now departed U.S. military, that it had offered SAAC a five percent price discount if it signed a contract to refuel its fleet of Ilyushin 78s on a regular basis. The operations leader at SAAC politely deferred a decision, stating that the service they received on this trip would be the key to deciding whether or not to enter into a long-term contract and pointing out that the airport in Doha was also eager for their business.
As each of the other two Ilyushin tankers arrived and taxied to the tarmac, the refueling process began, with six trucks lining up to pump fuel at a rate of 500 gallons per minute into each plane. The entire refueling process would take almost 90 minutes to complete. The flight engineer of each of the Ilyushins walked out to oversee the refueling process while the crews took time to stretch their legs, the more adventurous looking for food or sodas in the nearby hanger area.
The captain of the first Ilyushin left his plane and walked over to speak with a representative of Kuwait Petroleum Company. The Russian pilot and the Kuwaiti manager shook hands and then spoke to each other in English. There was paperwork to be signed and the senior managers at Kuwait Petroleum Company wanted an authorized signer for Swiss-Arab Air Cargo FZE to attest to the actual delivery of 90,000 gallons of JP-8 fuel. Half of the payment for the fuel had been wired the prior day, but the other half was still due. When the paperwork was done, the Kuwaiti manager asked a question. “So what are you guys doing?”