And the captain of the Chernova Ukraina had been given very specific orders. Take any means necessary to avoid being detected as the source of the ULFT transmission.
But the Orion couldn’t home in on their transmissions until she got to within two hundred miles of the Chernova.
The captain looked at his watch once again. Six minutes, thirty seconds to go.
“Is the message ready to send?” he asked his communications officer sharply.
“Yes, sir. We are awaiting your word,” he replied.
“How long will it take to broadcast the entire message?”
“Three minutes and eighteen seconds, sir. The ULFT is very slow. It can only transmit one character every seven seconds and—”
“I know the limitations of the ULFT,” the Captain snapped. He turned and looked at the radar screen once again. The Orion had picked up her speed just slightly and was now approaching at 340 knots. She was charting a course that would bring her to within seven miles of the Chernova’s starboard bow.
“At this speed, how long until she is within homing range?” the captain asked.
The radar operator pushed two buttons next to his screen. The radar’s computers did the calculations within a fraction of a second.
“Six minutes, twenty-two seconds, sir.”
The Captain scowled as he did the math in his head. Six minutes until he was suppose to send the message. A little over three minutes to send it. That was nine minutes. The P-3 would now be within range in six minutes and twenty seconds.
It wasn’t going to work. That would leave the Orion with almost three minutes to home in on their transmitter. That was about sixty seconds too long.
The Captain considered his options for only a moment before he made up his mind.
“Stand by to broadcast message. Commence broadcast in…,” he paused to look at his watch, “three minutes. That will ensure the message broadcast is complete before the Americans get into homing range.”
The Chernova’ s communications officer glanced at the Captain for just a moment. He was one of the few men on board that had been authorized to read the orders that had sent them here to the Gulf of Mexico. He understood the importance of not being identified as the senders of the ULFT transmission.
But he also understood something else. Their mission was very urgent. And the timing was critical. Absolutely critical. They were to begin their transmission at a very specific time. Not a second early. Not a second late.
The communications officer considered arguing this point to the captain. Then he changed his mind. The captain knew what he was doing. He would trust him to do the right thing.
Ammon and Morozov stopped in their tracks. The guard closest to them swung his M-16 down from his shoulder.
“Approach the gate one at a time.”
Morozov looked at Ammon, then turned and walked up to the gate. He stood just outside the revolving steel door. The guard spoke to him through tiny slots in the steel.
“May I see your identification please, sir?”
Morozov reached into the breast pocket of his flight suit and extracted his military ID and his line badge and slipped them through a slit in the door.
The guard reached through and picked up the cards. He began to study them as Morozov looked at his watch. Six minutes.
“Sir, will you step back as we rotate the gate?” the guard asked. Morozov stepped back two paces and the gate began to revolve. He judged the timing so that he could walk through the swinging arms. As he passed through the gate, the first guard returned him his ID.
“Sir, please proceed to the next gate.” Morozov stepped by the first guard, whose German shepherd sniffed and strained at his harness as Morozov passed by.
Morozov walked up to the second gate. Again the guard spoke to him from a slit in the door.
“ID,” he said curtly.
Morozov passed him the two pieces of identification. He looked back at Richard Ammon, who was still standing outside the first gate. He glanced at his watch, trying to make his preoccupation with time as unnoticeable as possible. Five minutes, twenty seconds.
“Bring the other one in,” the second guard yelled. The first guard motioned for Richard Ammon to step forward. Ammon proceeded on up to the gate and quickly passed his identification through the slit to the guard.
Within a minute he was standing next to Morozov, trapped between the two fences. He passed his ID to the second guard, who studied them as carefully as he had Morozov’s.
When he appeared to be satisfied with the ID, he motioned for Morozov to step forward. On the side of the gate was a simple keyboard with a small computer screen. Morozov would have to type the code word into the computer before he could pass through the gate.
“Sir, are you ready to type in the code word?” the second guard asked through the fence. Morozov nodded in reply.
“Type in the code word then, sir. Time now is 1409 Zulu. The code will change again in fifty-one minutes.”
Morozov reached out and began to type in the code.
“Commence broadcasting,” said the Chernova’s Captain. His communications officer nodded, then turned back to his console. He punched a series of buttons on his keyboard and the ULFT began to transmit. The communications officer checked his watch and noted the time of transmission into the ship’s log.
As the transmission began, long radio waves in the ultra low frequency began to spread out from the enormous antenna that trailed from the Ukrainian cruiser. The radio signals extended out in all directions. They spread across the ocean waves until they hit landfall, then continued to roll across the terrain. It was only a few seconds until they had reached the wheat fields of southern Kansas.
The former Soviet Union was never shy about their intention to take advantage of what they perceived as one of the United States’ key weaknesses; their unregulated environment in matters of defense. This enabled the USSR to commit various acts of sabotage and subversion, many times without the Americans even knowing what had been done.
One example of this was the McConnell Air Force Base new fuel storage facility. Millions of gallons of JP-8 jet fuel were stored in eight huge tanks sitting on a small hill at the north end of the runway. The tanks were just three hundred yards from the B-1 alert parking area. Huge pressurized underground fuel lines carried the JP-8 to the fuel pits where hoses could be attached to the B-1s. This made refueling the thirsty aircraft very easy and efficient. It also made the transfer of the fuel much more secure.
At least that was the theory. But there were a few things that the Air Force didn’t know. For example, they didn’t know that one of the civilian contractors who helped to build the storage facility was a paid Soviet informer, controlled by a Ukrainian officer from the KGB. One day, just as the construction project was being completed, the contractor walked by one of the tanks and dropped in what looked to be a large black lunch box. The box immediately sank to the bottom of the tank where its presence was never detected.
Now, as the ultra-low-frequency radio transmissions rolled across the McConnell flight line, the black box suddenly came to life. A tiny computer inside the watertight box began to decode the message. When the complete message had been received, it would be verified against the black box’s computer files. If it confirmed to be valid, the black box would go into a countdown.Ten seconds later it would explode.
Morozov finished typing in the code. He looked at the screen on the side of the fence. He studied the code word for just a moment to check his spelling. There was a policy of zero tolerance for spelling errors. It was the same thing as having the wrong code. When Morozov was satisfied, he reached up and pushed the “send” button.