The young man lost control of his bladder, wetting his pants. He began to cry. Ben Zeev stepped to him and squatted down. “Tell your friend to talk.” No words came from the young man’s mouth, only sobs. The captain stood up. “Now you all listen to me.” He spoke loudly to be heard over the screams of the man who had just been shot. “When I am done with this man, I will move to each of you until I learn the password. But I will not use my pistol. Instead, I will cut every finger off your hands one at a time and then will I cut off your ears. Then I will cut off your balls. We will spend all night cutting you to pieces. This is your choice.”
Captain Ben Zeev stood for a moment to let each of the men think about what was coming as they soaked in the screams and moans of the man whose left knee joint was now shattered beyond repair. Then the Israeli commander stepped over the man again and lowered his pistol down to the back of the man’s right knee.
“Stop,” yelled the young man.
Ben Zeev straightened up. “Then tell him to talk.”
The young man was sobbing heavily and trying hard to catch his breath and gain control over his emotions. The Israeli recognized this and gave him time to compose himself. “He doesn’t need to,” the young man finally said.
At the other end of the line of four Iranians, the communications officer began screaming and shouting into his gag as he wildly shook his head side to side. He tried to lunge toward the young Iranian seated about two meters away but Hisami was all over the man, grabbing his shirt to restrain him in place. But the gagged words could still be made out. He was cursing the young man and telling him to be quiet.
“Shut him up,” said Ben Zeev to Hisami. The mountain goat went down to one knee and placed the communications officer into a choke hold, squeezing with his arm until no more wind could pass through the Iranian’s larynx.
The captain turned to the young man, squatting down once again. “Tell me what you mean.”
The young man continued to keep his head bowed down. He started to talk at a low volume. “Seven, four, dash, three, three, nine, underscore…”
“You need to speak up,” Ben Zeev inserted, but he had heard enough to look at one of his men and motion for him to write what was said. That man pulled a notepad and pencil from his breast pocket.
The young man took a deep breath. He spoke louder. “Seven, four, dash, three, three, nine, underscore, one, one, eight, capital H.” Iranian military keyboards were western style qwerty boards.
The captain looked at the commando with the notepad, who nodded his head as he finished writing. He then handed the notepad to his commander. Ben Zeev walked into the trailer and handed the notepad to Manu. “Try this.”
Within seconds, Manu pumped his fist into the air. “We are in.”
The captain walked to the door. “Get that man medical treatment and remove their gags. Treat them well.” Ben Zeev then sent a message to Mount Olympus.
50 — UAV Assault
Two IAF G550 Eitams of the 122 Nachshon Special Missions Squadron, known in the IAF as the Dakota Squadron, lifted off from Navatim Airbase in the Negev within an hour of each other. Each plane was a Gulfstream business jet converted into an Airborne Warning and Control System, or AWACS, by the addition of ELTA Systems’ EL/W-2085 radar and sensor package into large conforming blisters on the sides of the planes and a bulbous nose cone. Taking full advantage of the efficient long-range cruising capability of the base Gulfstream 550 jet, each plane could stay airborne for up to ten hours without refueling. With its advanced Active Electronically Scanned Array, or AESA, radar on the side of the fuselage, the Eitam can actively scan a massive area formed by a radius of over 300 miles in a 360º view around each plane. With its radar off, the plane doubled as a passive vacuum of any electromagnetic signals emissions that were within its line of sight.
The first Eitam took off only ten minutes after the Saudi early warning radar network went off the air. Trailing only minutes behind, two F-16B two-seat fighters of the 140 Golden Eagle Squadron, each loaded with long-range and short-range air-to-air missiles, departed Nevatim to escort the G550. The trio of planes headed to a point on the map over the northern Saudi desert designated as “Point Romeo.” There they would spend the duration of Block G orbiting over Saudi Arabia. The G550 Eitam maintained an altitude of 47,000 feet, its crew acting as air traffic controllers for the coming waves of IAF aircraft that would all pass below it. But it also kept watch on the aircraft of all other nations in the area that could possibly interfere with Block G, including Saudi, Iraqi and American planes. The two F-16B fighters orbited in formation half a mile below the Eitam.
The second Eitam took off an hour later with an escort of four F-16Bs. It followed the same corridor over Saudi Arabia and took up a position over the Persian Gulf. The four F-16Bs would take turns breaking formation to return to Point Romeo to refuel.
On board an Israeli Air Force C-130 that was descending through 15,000 feet as it approached the Iraqi border, a technician had just finished checking the satellite communications and avionics on the nineteenth of 23 disassembled unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, inside the plane’s cargo cabin. He would complete his diagnostics checks on the remaining four UAVs within the next ten minutes. The C-130 had been delivered to the Israeli Air Force only six months earlier. It was a brand new C-130J model nicknamed the “Samson” by the IAF. Its cargo cabin was 55 feet in length, a considerable increase from the 40 feet of interior length of all other IAF C-130s. On this mission, all of that added length was being utilized.
Each UAV on board the plane was a Hermes 450 that had been modified specifically for this mission. The team at Mount Olympus refereed to this modified version as the Hermes 450M. Each of these Hermes had a new 100 horsepower Wankel engine and a larger three-bladed pusher propeller on the back end of a 20 foot long fuselage. The fuselages looked just like a torpedo, even in their diameter of just under 21 inches. The normally fixed tricycle landing gear system was now designed to fall away upon takeoff, making the UAV more aerodynamic in flight. Landing gear would not be necessary — all 23 Hermes 450Ms on board the four engine transport were on a one-way mission into Iran. The final modification was the addition of a high explosive warhead weighing 49 pounds in the nose of each fuselage. With the more powerful engines and upgraded propellers, these UAVs could cruise at a speed as high as 145 miles per hour, about 50 % faster than their conventional cousins.
The torpedo shaped fuselages were arranged on two large racks that had been designed and built for this mission. The rack located forward in the plane, the second rack to be unloaded once on the ground, held twelve UAV fuselages that were placed four wide and stacked three high. Each other UAV fuselage in the rack was offset four feet forward to allow room for the V-shaped twin stabilizers mounted to the rear of the fuselage just in front of the rear-facing pusher propeller.
The rack in the rear of the plane, the first to be unloaded, held eleven fuselages and a device that would slide out and allow each fuselage to be lowered from the rack and mounted onto to its takeoff carriage. The fuselages were carefully arranged for the planned takeoff order, with their takeoff numbers painted on both the nose and the tail. Inside the cabin, 22 Israeli airmen were either standing along the sides of the cabin in the thin spaces between the UAV racks and the C-130 fuselage walls, or had found a small amount of space to sit on the floor at the front end of the cabin. Along the interior walls of the fuselage, the long wings of the Hermes UAVs, each only a little more than two feet wide, were stored on each side. Each man wore a helmet with its own flashlight mounted on it — in the style of a miner’s helmet.