When Joel went to work at the Israeli Strategic Defense Control Facility, he tried for two years to convince his superiors of the need to develop the same type of system for Israel, but to no avail. At one point he considered resigning to protest their refusal to even talk about it, but his wife convinced him to be patient and wait until those in charge were more sympathetic to the idea. Actually, that was one of the most irritating parts: the head of the Israeli SDCF was Dr. Arnold Brown, one of the men who had played a crucial role in developing the OSTF concept for NORAD. It never made any sense to Joel that Brown would refuse to consider providing the same capabilities for Israel.
Joel's initial response to Scott Rosen's suggestion that the Strategic Defense Control Facility had an OSTF was that Scott was simply believing more rumors like the one about the hijacked supply truck. Still, there were some things to which Scott, with his compartmentalized clearances, might have had access that Joel could have been totally unaware of. And the look on Scott's face said he was serious.
"Scott," Joel said as he leaned across the table, "is this a game? Are you putting me on?" Scott's eyes answered the question. "But, Scott, I worked at SDCF for over five years. I ran configuration scenarios on the facility's computers a thousand times. If there was an Off-Site Test Facility why didn't it turn up in the simulations?"
"It was there. Its functions were masked to hide its true purpose, but it was there."
Joel's eyes asked, "Where?"
"SF-14," Scott answered.
There was no way of knowing whether Scott was telling the truth. Sensor Facility 14, as far as Joel had known, was a non-operational and entirely redundant infrared tracking station for terminal-phase acquisition and discrimination of ballistic reentry vehicles. Perhaps by coincidence – and then again, perhaps not – SF-14 was one of only two remote facilities that Joel had never actually visited. Now that he thought about it, he couldn't remember ever seeing anyone's name on the duty roster for a site check of SF-14. This would certainly explain Dr. Brown's lack of interest in considering an Off-Site Test Facility. After all, why talk about building something that was already folly operational?
If Scott Rosen knew what he was talking about then Joel wanted to know, but if this was just more wishful thinking then he wanted to be done with it, and the sooner the better. "Okay," he said, abruptly, "take me there." To Joel's surprise Scott didn't come back with some flimsy excuse but instead got to his feet and started to leave the cafe with Joel in tow. "What about the check?" Joel asked Scott.
"It's on the house," answered the cafe owner.
Scott drove straight into the eastern business section of Tel Aviv and parked in the basement parking lot of a tall but otherwise nondescript office building that appeared to have only minor damage from the recent war. Joel followed as Scott walked toward the elevators and then paused to look up at a security camera near the ceiling. In a moment a red light on the camera blinked and Scott pushed the call button for the elevator. As the elevator door closed behind them, Scott flipped the emergency 'stop' switch, and, on the numbered buttons of the elevator, punched in a seven digit code. Despite already being in the basement, the elevator lurched downward, taking them, Joel guessed, several floors farther beneath the building.
The elevator door opened to a small room about twelve feet square where two armed guards waited. Badges were out of the question under the circumstances, so they were operating strictly on a recognition basis. Joel would soon learn this was not that difficult a task: very few people were involved in this operation. As Scott introduced him to the guards who were obviously studying every aspect of his appearance, Joel noticed his photograph laying on the desk beside an array of security monitors, one of which was focused on the elevator in the garage where they had entered.
Scott then opened the cipher lock of an armored door that was the only exit from the room other than the elevator. Before them lay a small sea of computers and defense tracking equipment on a raised floor, filling a room about 8500 square feet. An array of symmetric multiprocessors made up the heart of the operation, with integrated routers/ATM switches feeding real-time input via broadband fiberlinks. Joel had seen this hardware configuration before, at the Strategic Defense Control Facility in the mountains near Mizpe Ramon in southern Israel. There was much less room here than in the mountain, but at first glance this seemed to be an exact duplicate of the core of the SDCF.
Scattered around the facility were a handful of men and women busily working at Sun workstations. A few slowed their pace just long enough to look up and acknowledge Scott's and Joel's presence with friendly smiles before going back to their work. While Joel looked around in disbelief, a short well-built man entered from another room and approached them. Scott abruptly ended the brief tour to greet the man.
"Good afternoon, Colonel," Scott said, formally. "Allow me to introduce Mr. Joel Felsberg; Joel, this is Colonel White."
"Welcome to the team," White said. "Glad you could join us."
"Uh… thank you, sir," he said, unaware that he had.
"You're coming in at a crucial time. Scott has told me all about you and I've seen your record. I'm sure we can count on you to help us make this thing happen.
"Scott," he continued, "introduce Joel to the rest of the team and get him briefed on what his role is. We'll talk later." With that the Colonel left.
"Uh, yeah, that's a good idea, Scott. Get me briefed on what my role is," Joel repeated. And then more to the point, "What the hell is going on down here?!"
Scott smiled. "Welcome to SF-14," he said.
In the facility's briefing room, Scott poured coffee and proceeded to present an overview of the project and a discussion of the highly classified maximum capabilities of each of the four phases of the Israeli strategic defense. After nearly an hour, he finally got around to explaining where Joel fit into all of this.
"The reason you're here," Scott explained, "is that two nights ago Dr. Claude Remey, our software guru, very stupidly got in the way of his neighbors' domestic quarrel. As a result, he's now lying unconscious in a hospital with a stab wound three quarters of an inch from his heart. You've been brought on to finish the project he was working on."
Joel knew Remey. They had worked together on a couple of projects but had never gotten along well. Still, Joel was sorry to hear of his injury.
"What you see here is a fully operations-capable backup facility to the Strategic Defense Control Facility. It is not simply a 'test' facility. Dr. Arnold Brown, who was in charge of its development, determined from the outset that knowledge of its existence should be limited to as few individuals as possible. It was felt that, should Israel ever be invaded, this facility should be maintained at all costs.
"Colonel White, actually, Lieutenant Colonel White, whom you just met, was part of a chain of officers, decreasing in rank from General to Captain, charged with operation of the facility in case of an invasion. The purpose of the chain was to prevent any invading force from disrupting the operation of this facility by systematically arresting all high-ranking officers. As it turns out, each of Colonel White's superiors were arrested in the first days after the invasion and the responsibility fell to him.
"The initial plan for this facility, in an invasion where the SDCF was lost, included three scenarios. First, should the opportunity present itself, this facility could be used to launch on the invader's flank, thus cutting off his supply lines and weakening the forward forces. Second, should there be an attempt by an invading force to use our own nuclear capabilities against us, this facility could frustrate that attempt by overriding the controls at the SDCF. And third, should there be any attempt to remove a warhead from a silo, this facility has the capability to neutralize the nuclear device. Had either the second or the third scenario occurred, the established procedure would have been to initiate the destruction of each threatening, or threatened, missile by remotely setting off small explosives in the silos that would disable both the silo and the warhead, without, of course, detonating the nuclear device.