The Espionage Game

by Susan Glinert Stevens

  Brush Burner Two, Jerry thought,this should be interesting. The last time he had flown the Brush Burner Two training course, it was years ago at an altitude of fifty feet as a passenger in an F-111. Designed to be a confidence building course for the F-111 crews, even the pilot of the F-111 closed his eyes as the plane dived and climbed furiously while it flew automatically fifty feet above the rough, mountainous terrain at four hundred knots.

  The tower called, breaking his thoughts. “Pixel Two-seven, cleared to runway three-two, wind calm, CAVU, barometer is two-niner, niner- seven.”

  “Pixel Two-seven,” Cleo answered. The throttles moved forward by themselves. The plane lurched and began to move.

  “Who chose Brush Burner Two?” Jerry inquired suspiciously.

  “I did,” Cleo replied. “We usually use it as a confidence builder for a new pilot.”

  Jerry swallowed hard as the hangar moved out of view.It’s only a simulator, he told himself,it’s only a simulator. Somehow, he knew he would forget that when he saw the first mountain rushing up at him at five hundred knots.

  “Pixel Two-seven, cleared to take off,” the tower called while Cleo taxied to the southern end of the runway. The throttles shot forward to military power. An instant later, the airframe shook as the afterburners kicked-in when Cleo went to maximum power.

  Chapter Six

  Khalid Rashid Ribat, Field Marshal and President for Life of Iraq, shifted in his chair at the head of the conference table. Around him sat a variety of Iraqi military officers and civilians plus two men who appeared out of place. They seemed uncomfortable, as though they were attending the meeting by special invitation. As interlopers, they huddled together at the far end of the table.

  The Iraqi leader glanced around the room as though he were counting the participants. As usual, Khalid was wearing an immaculate white uniform even though it was nearly three in the morning. That uniform was the fourth he had worn that day, and so he looked every bit the great leader he thought himself to be. The meeting was with his cabinet. Most of them were senior officers, with just a sprinkling of civilian ministers. The two visitors were scientists from the Iraqi Institute of Advanced Studies, a front organization for Iraq’s nuclear weapon efforts. Satisfied that all the required participants were present, Khalid reviewed his notes.

  “A few hours ago,” he began, “I was informed by our Russian, ah, friends that they are well ahead of schedule for finishingNew Babylon . Apparently, the original assessments of how much work that needed to be done were excessive. Or, perhaps the contractual condition that payment for any of the work would be only be made upon the successful firing of the first ranging shots somehow encouraged our Russian friends to expedite the work.”

  A twitter of chuckles interrupted Khalid, who smiled knowingly.

  “In any case,” he continued, “the weapon that shall wreak Allah’s revenge upon the Zionists occupying Palestine andEl-Quds, the Holy City, is in our hands—or will be in just one month instead of the two years we had thought. The question is, can we use it? Will the rest ofAr-Rasm as-Salah ad-Din , Operation Saladin, be complete enough to attack the Zionists next month?”

  Silence engulfed the room. The military men stared dumbfounded at their leader.

  “In the name of Allah, NO!” Lieutenant General Iyad Sa’id Rawi, the Iraqi Defense Minister cried. “Our defenses will be far from complete! Virtually none of our new pilots will have been trained. Only a few batteries of antiaircraft missiles will be operational. We’d be defenseless against a determined Israeli counterstrike. Their aircraft will pour into our airspace and destroy whatever they will, just as the Americans did. Their Jericho II missiles will come crashing down on Baghdad.…”

  “Tut, tut,” Khalid interrupted. “Do we not have squadrons of MiG- 39’s? Do we not have batteries of antiaircraft missiles? Can not these sweep the sky clear of Israeli warplanes? Do we not own five brigades ofAntey S-300V antiballistic missile interceptor missiles? Can not these destroy the Israeli missiles while they are still deep in space?”

  “B-b-but our men aren’t trained to use them yet,” General Rawi sputtered. “They are useless if there is nobody to use them!”

  “However, there are soldiers trained to used them,” Khalid answered quietly. “And they are Iraqi soldiers—our Russian friends. They are in our pay, remember. True, they are mercenaries, but they are Iraqi soldiers nevertheless.”

  “But their contract stipulates that they will work only as trainers and advisers. They are not required to fight in any wars,” the general countered.

  Khalid laughed. “They will volunteer to fight when they learn that the Israelis are attacking the very bases they and their families are living on. They may not fight for Iraq, but they will fight for their own families. Why do you think that I not only agreed to permit them to bring their families, but also built housing for them on the bases so they can see their families every night?”

  General Rawi studied his leader for a moment and then begrudgingly nodded. “Yes, they will fight for their families,” he agreed. “We won’t even have to ask. Once they learn that Israeli nuclear weapons are headed toward their bases, they will fight like lions. We couldn’t stop them if we wanted to.”

  “Good,” Khalid responded. “It would appear that the only question is whether the projectiles forNew Babylon will be ready.” He focused his attention at the two nervous men at the far end of the table. “Dr. Muzahim, just how far along are you with the efforts? Will you have the nuclear weapons ready in a month?”

  Dr. Hussein Muzahim, Director General of the Iraqi Institute of Advanced Studies, became even more nervous. “We are having difficulties,” he replied. “Plutonium is very dangerous. It is a poison as well as being highly radioactive. The machining must be perfect, exact in every detail.”

  “How far along are you?” Khalid demanded.

  “W-w-we have finished the core of the first weapon,” Dr. Muzahim responded. “We can test it in the next few months—may-maybe in two months,” he added hopefully.

  “Test? You want to test the bomb?” Khalid snarled sarcastically. “Why not take an ad out in theTimes of London and theWall Street Journal ? And don’t forget to invite CNN, so they can cover the test live!”

  He glared at the scientist.

  “YOU FOOL!” he screamed, “testing the weapon will merely warn the whole world that we have nuclear weapons!”

  “B-b-but we must test it,” Dr. Muzahim protested.

  “I was told that we would not have to test the weapon. I was told that the design was proven, that it has been tested already.” Khalid’s face was a fiery red, the color emphasized by the pure white of his uniform. “Is that not so?”

  “Yes,” the scientist agreed, “that should have been the case. But we had to make some minor changes. Some of the components were not available. We had to improvise.”

  “Just what do your precious Russian scientist friends think? Will the bombs work?”

  Dr. Muzahim’s mouth felt dry. “Yes, yes, they think they will.”

  “Think?” Khalid’s stare burned into the scientist. “What do you mean ‘think’? Just why am I paying them so much foreign money for? I do not want ‘think’, I want ‘know’! Either those bombs are ready in a month and they work—without testing—or you will.…”

  He let the scientist and the others in the room complete the sentence in their own minds. Saddam Hussein was not one to accept excuses. Nor was Khalid. When problems arouse, those responsible paid with their lives, but only after the miscreants suffered some of the most unimaginable punishments and tortures.

  “Leave,” he said, pointing at the two scientists. “Go back to your institute. Go back to your overpriced Russian scientists and explain to them that I expect them to deliver what they are paid to do. Understand?”

  The two men nodded vigorously and slipped out of their chairs. Khalid glared at them intently as they crept to the door and departed. Finally, after what seemed an eternity t
o the others in the room, the door clicked shut behind the two men.

  “Show me the videotape,” Khalid suddenly ordered.

  The lights darkened as a large projection screen descended from the ceiling at the far end of the room. A panel high up on the wall behind Khalid opened, exposing three large lenses. A second later, light flickered in the lens as the videotape began.

  “Ar-Rasm as-Salah ad-Din, Operation Saladin,” a voice declared from the loudspeakers on either side of the projection screen. “The reconquest of Palestine.” Martial music swelled up as the title appeared over a map of the entire Middle East. The music subsided as the narrator’s voice continued.

  “The great Moslem general, Saladin, drove the invading European Crusaders from our lands centuries ago after many years ofJihad against the foreign invaders. Now, we again find our holy lands invaded and occupied by foreign invaders, the Zionists. Once again we must declareJihad against this scourge and drive them into the sea just as Saladin drove the Crusaders from our shores. Operation Saladin is the instrument by which we shall accomplish this holy objective.”

  The scene shifted to a map covering the area between the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. Although the present boundaries of Israel were indicated, the area was marked as “Occupied Palestine.” A few seconds later, an arrow appeared in the northeast corner of Iraq, in the mountainous terrain bordering Iran.

  “The heart of Operation Saladin isNew Babylon , a super cannon capable of hurling rocket-assisted projectiles as far as two thousand kilometers. With this weapon we shall be able to rain destruction on the Zionists, destroying their cities, their military bases, as well as their will to resist. Our mighty armies shall march on them to reconquer our scared lands.”

  Again the scene changed, this time to a diagram displaying a cross- section of a mountain. A long tunnel had been bored at a steep angle into the heart of the mountain. Inside the tunnel was a long tube-shaped contraption that could only have been a monstrous cannon.

  “New Babylonis the name of our secret weapon,” the narrator continued. “It is located in the very heart of a mountain to mask both its location from the American spy satellites as well as to protect it from possible counterattack.”

  The scene then shifted to a computer-generated animation of the mountain in which the cannon was hidden. From the top view, it was immediately clear that the tunnel was pie shaped, widest at the mouth and gradually tapering toward the breech deep inside the mountain.

  “New Babylonis trainable over a range of twenty degrees of traverse, which at a range of one thousand kilometers permits it to be aimed at any target within the area occupied by the Zionists.”

  The animation first showed the whole cannon moving through its traverse and then cut to a map illustrating the whole of Israel and Jordan, plus southern Syria and the northern half of Iraq. Two bright red lines converging at the location of the monster cannon proved that all of Israel was indeed in range of the weapon. The scene shifted back to the cannon, presenting a side view of it and how it fired the rocket- propelled projectiles to such an extreme range.

  “Unlike normal cannons which fire simple shells,New Babylon achieves its phenomenal range by firing rocket-propelled projectiles calledAl-Harbi , the Javelin missile. The Javelin is, in fact, a three-stage solid-fuel rocket. When fired byNew Babylon, the Javelin projectile goes far out into space. The warhead, the final stage, has a number of thrusters that allow the onboard guidance system to make final corrections of the trajectory. Thus, the warhead may be aimed slightly to the left or right, or the range increased or decreased, so that it will land within one hundred meters of its intended target.”

  The narration was accompanied by a series of animations depicting the projectile being fired from the cannon, then the two rocket stages firing, followed by the final stage firing its thrusters as the warhead prepared to descend onto the enemy below.

  “Upon reentry, the warhead of the Javelin falls on its target. As it reaches the altitude of forty kilometers, the Javelin’s final stage ejects radar decoys to distract any Zionist antimissile missiles such as the American-supplied Patriot missiles. At an altitude of seven hundred meters, the enhanced radiation weapon explodes.”

  The videotape used a sequence of animations to portray the warhead falling onto a city situated by the sea. It then exploded, destroying the heart of the city. However, beyond that, the apparent damage was minimal.

  “The advantage of an enhanced-radiation nuclear weapon, commonly called a neutron bomb,” the narrator noted sardonically, “is that it has minimal destructive effects on buildings and property. It kills the Zionists with radiation. An additional advantage of the neutron bomb is that is it also exceptionally ‘clean.’ It gives off a minimum of radioactive fallout to drift back into Arab controlled lands. Thus, the Zionist city of Tel Aviv can be safely destroyed without affecting the many Arabs living in the nearby city of Yafa.”

  Incredulously, the video showed a group of Arab children playing, leaving the impression that they were safe and sound in the midst of a nuclear holocaust. A few seconds later, the video presented a map of Israel with the intended targets clearly marked.

  “Operation Saladin will commence at nightfall so as not only to catch the Zionists unprepared, but also to add the effects of darkness to their confusion. The first Javelin projectile will be fired at Tel Aviv. Then the targets shown on the map will be attacked until they are all destroyed. With this, the bulk of the Zionist war machine and population centers will be destroyed, permitting the Islamic armies of Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to sweep into the occupied lands and destroy the remaining Zionists.’”

  One by one, the targets on the map disappeared with a flash indicating a nuclear strike. Then arrows indicating the various armies listed moved relentlessly from the borders of Israel toward Tel Aviv, where they met.

  “And theJihad will be complete!” the narrator shouted as the tape ended. “Allahu Akbar!God is great!”

  Khalid remained silent for several moments while he gazed at the now blank screen. A blissful smile appeared on his face as he contemplated the great glory that theJihad will bring to him and Iraq. In one brief day, he will have succeeded in destroying the Zionists as well as purging them from the lands they have occupied for so many years. It will be he, like Saladin before him, who will purify the land. Once that is accomplished he, like Saladin before him, can move on to building a great Arab empire, one that will be based in Baghdad, much as the Abbasids ruled their empire from Baghdad during the golden years of Islam.

  “I will have my gloriousJihad ,” he said quietly. Then he got up and left the room.

  Chapter Seven

  The flight so far had been an afternoon lark for Jerry. Cleo flew the aircraft expertly, scrupulously following every regulation in the book. Even her radio chatter with tower and ground controllers had the air of expert professionalism and self-confidence about it.

  “Initial point in ten miles, sir,” she called. “Descending to brush burner altitude.”

  A line of hills lay ahead of them; it was about time for the excitement to begin. Brush burner altitude literally meant burning the brush with your jet exhaust at fifty feet above the ground, following the nap of the earth—whether it is flat or mountainous.

  As they crossed the initial point, the throttles suddenly moved forward. The airframe shook again as the afterburners ignited, and the plane shot forward, causing the ground to rocket by in a blur. Jerry looked down through the translucent skin of the airplane in horror as a sharp outcropping of rock reaching up to rake the underside of his aircraft. Cleo banked gently to avoid it. A second later, another pile of rock flash by under the right wing.

  “Opaque!” he cried. “Make this damn thing opaque, before I have a heart attack.”

  I’m not going to close my eyes,he promised as the first hill loomed up from the desert.I’m not going to close my eyes .

  It was a violent elevator ride. First, th
e nose lurched up as Cleo maneuvered to avoid hitting the hill. An instant later, the nose pitched sharply down as they crested it. Jerry thought that his breakfast would climb back out his mouth as he glanced at the g-meter. It read -4 g’s. Then the g-meter flickered back to +6 g’s as they climbed once again.

  Before them lay an open expanse of flat desert. A steep range of mountains edged the far side the desert, about ten miles away. Jerry Rodell glanced nervously at the airspeed indicator and gulped; it now read Mach 1.2. “Oh-my-god,” he whispered slowly. He glanced outside again.

  They raced across the open stretch of desert valley. Cleo abruptly veered to the left and nonchalantly flew down into a canyon that ran across the valley.

  “What the hell are you doing!” Jerry screamed when he realized that he was looking up at the rim of the canyon. “We’re supposed to be fifty feet above the ground.”

  “We are,” Cleo grumbled with indignation.

  “The hell we are! I’m looking up at the goddamn ground.”

  “We are fifty feet above ground level. Look at the laser altimeter,” Cleo insisted as she banked the airplane to follow the canyon where it made a left bend. A second later, she jerked back on the stick and popped out of the canyon to head once more in a mad dash over the open desert.

  “Thank god,” Jerry mumbled thankfully as he leaned back in his couch. Then he saw the mountain.

  “Pull up!”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s a goddamn mountain ahead of us.”

  “I know,” Cleo responded calmly.

  “Aren’t we going over it?”

  “No,” Cleo replied casually. “I usually go around this one.”

  Jerry’s fingertips sensed the handgrips molded into the armrests of the pilot’s couch. Instantly, he seized them in terror as the airplane banked sharply to the left and headed toward the south side of the mountain. Beyond, he could see a pass, a thin corridor of open space, barely a few hundred yards wide, which separated the mountain from its neighbor.