On board the plane were two pilots, four operations managers from SAAC and a single wooden crate that was wrapped in clear plastic. The two pilots carried passports from Germany and Spain and the four operations managers all held Russian passports. But every man on the plane was in reality an Israeli citizen. The men on board settled down to wait for a ramp agent to come out to the plane and inspect their paperwork. But in Saudi Arabia, nothing happened quickly and the men on board were counting on a long wait. The co-pilot exited the plane to go find a refueling truck. They had enough fuel to get out of Saudi Arabia, but to do so without first refueling, they would have to fly back to Kuwait instead of to their next planned stop, which was home to Israel. Each of the two pilots carried more than three thousand dollars worth of Saudi riyals. The money had two purposes: to ensure the procurement of fuel and, if necessary, to make the judicious payment of “service taxes” that was often necessary to get paperwork and processes efficiently administered.
At the same moment, an Israeli Air Force RC-12D Kokiya, the military version of the twin-engine Beechcraft King Air 200, was flying a long oval circuit pattern over the Gulf of Aqaba. At the moment, the plane was about 54 miles south of Ovda Air Base, where it would return once its mission was over. The plane had two pilots and was crammed with electronic sensors. Since the plane’s initial delivery to the IAF in 1985, the electronic equipment it carried had been upgraded three times. The plane was a flying suction device, gathering in all of the communications and radar emissions that made their way to the aircraft as it flew at 22,000 feet. All of these data were then relayed by an encrypted spread spectrum microwave communications link to a ground station adjacent to Ovda.
On this day, the Kokiya had a very specific mission. Its latest upgrade fitted the plane with differential Doppler and time of arrival antennae that allowed the plane’s sensors to determine the bearing of most of the signals it received. The plane’s computers were looking for the specific L-band pencil beams of the Saudi AN/FPS-117 early warning radars. With its systems, it could identify each of seven AN/FPS-117 sites ranging from Jeddah far to the south to the unit operating just north of King Khalid Military City to the east. Over the next 25 minutes, one site at a time went off the air. At a few minutes before 5:00 in the afternoon, the last Saudi radar set still emitting, the one just outside of King Faisal Air Base adjacent to Tabuk, finally shut down. At the ground processing unit inside Ovda Air Base, a message was sent to Mount Olympus. The Saudi early warning radar network was down.
One minute later, at the Al Udeid Air Base just west of Doha, Qatar, American military personnel turned on an AN/TPS-77 phased array radar, the transportable version of the AN/FPS-117 radar used by the Saudis. The radar was programmed to use the same frequencies and search patterns utilized by the Saudis. The intention was to mimic the Saudi early warning radar site just to the west of King Abdulaziz Air Base outside of Dhahran.
Back on the cargo apron at Qaisumah Airport, the co-pilot had finally found the local fuel company. The plane needed 425 gallons to top off its tanks. The payment of cash for the fuel and a 500 riyal note to the office manager resulted in the procurement of an authorization form that allowed the company’s truck driver to pump the required fuel. However, it was the payment of another 500 riyal note to the Indonesian truck driver to get him to “get around to do deliver” that finally ticked off the co-pilot. Now the co-pilot stood outside the plane waiting to direct the fueling truck to the where it needed to park.
Inside the plane, the pilot checked his watch. It was almost 5 p.m. and he needed to start one of the plane’s engines to provide electrical power since the small plane had no auxiliary power unit. He reached up to his overhead console when he noticed the fueling truck approaching. Now he had to wait as the truck followed the co-pilot’s instructions and came to a stop in front of the starboard side wing. The pilot impatiently drummed his fingers on the control yoke as he watched the young Indonesian driver fuel the plane. He caught the eye of the co-pilot, who was still outside on the tarmac, and rotated his right index finger in the air in the universal sign to speed things up. The co-pilot lifted his left hand palm upward and shrugged. There was nothing he could do; they needed the fuel.
After nine painful minutes, the driver finally reeled in the fueling hose, got in his truck and drove away. The co-pilot re-boarded the plane. The pilot was eager to start an engine. “Everyone on board?” he asked to the co-pilot as he climbed into the right seat.
“Affirmative,” came the reply.
The pilot looked out the window to his left. “We are clear,” he said. He reached up with his right hand and flipped a toggle downward to turn on the engine start batteries. Next he flipped the engine fuel pump toggle down into the open position and the air flow toggle from the normal to the ground position. He looked at a gauge on his instrument panel. “Batteries charged. Pressure good. Ready for ignition.” The pilot reached up and used his finger to lift a red cover flap and push the left engine ignition button while he watched his gauges. The unmistakable whine of a turbine engine slowly built in volume and pitch. “Rotation check. Pressure twelve percent and climbing.” He released his finger, bringing his arm back down to the left engine throttle. “Secondary ignition.” As the engine built to the expected rotations per minute for the idle throttle setting, the pilot continued his mental checklist. “Pressure stabilized. We look good. Please lower the cargo ramp.”
The co-pilot reached over to the center console with his left hand and turned a recessed dial clockwise one position. “Ramp down.”
At the rear of the plane, the cargo ramp divided, with one portion lowering to the tarmac and the other portion raising up into the cabin roof. In the cabin, one of the operations men walked to the wooden crate, which was at the rear of the plane just inside the edge of the ramp. He kneeled down and pulled off a piece of wood, the only piece that was not covered by the clear plastic wrap that covered the rest of the crate. He reached in and pulled out a heavy cable that was over half an inch thick and had a male receptacle at the end. He stretched the power cable out and plugged the receptacle into a socket built into the side of the cabin. Almost immediately a hum emanated from the crate and it began to vibrate.
The rear of the crate was pointed in the direction of Kharg Island, which was 260 miles away. Inside the crate, a powerful L-band radar emitter was now sending a focused beam of invisible energy in the direction of the island. The emitter was programmed to mimic the frequencies and transmission pulse patterns — especially the pulse repetition rate — used by the Saudis. The plane was sitting in a position that was almost directly on the line formed between the fixed early warning radar site north of King Khalid Military City in Saudi Arabia and the Iranian listening post on Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf.
In the rear cargo cabin, the men joked about being cooked as if they were in a microwave oven, despite the fact that the crate had a thin layer of lead that lined the bottom, the top and three of the four sides of the box. A betting pool formed on whether or not interference created by the emitter would cause befuddled Saudis to come out to the plane to investigate. The group was unarmed and their only method of escape would be to take off, head west toward Israel and hope that no fighter jets were vectored toward the slow plane before they could reach the protective umbrella of the IAF. In the cockpit, the co-pilot powered down the few flat panel displays, which were suddenly incapable of producing a clear image. Three of the four men in the back decided to exit the plane and pass the time by watching the comings and goings of civilian aircraft while seated in the shade underneath the starboard wing. They figured that the further they were from the crate, the better. The fourth man joked that he hoped they would all visit him when he was dying of cancer twenty years in the future.