“You mean a remote?” Joel asked finally, under his breath.
Scott signaled an affirmative with his eyes.
Joel had heard talk about a remote, an off-site test facility for the Strategic Defense Control Facility (SDCF), but he had written it off as speculation by people who didn’t know any better. If the Off-Site Test Facility (OSTF) was real, it would have been evident in the communications configuration needed for such an operation. True, the communications links could have been intentionally mislabeled to conceal its existence, but Joel had worked at the SDCF for more than five years and had run numerous configuration scenarios on the facility’s computers. If the OSTF existed, it would have turned up in the simulations.
Joel was intimately familiar with the concept of an OSTF. Early in his career, before leaving the U.S., he had been a low-level software analyst for Ford Aerospace, assigned to North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). He remembered those long walks down the cold tunnels in Cheyenne Mountain to test software upgrades. He had been there in the mountain on November 9, 1979, when for several terrifying minutes it had appeared as though the Soviet Union had launched a full-scale nuclear attack on the United States. American Strategic Air Command (SAC) bombers were launched and nuclear missiles were put on alert, awaiting the president’s order. As it turned out, the alert had been caused by a test scenario inadvertently being fed into the on-line NORAD computer network. As a result of that false alarm the U.S. Congress immediately authorized the construction of the NORAD Off-Site Test Facility in downtown Colorado Springs.
Prior to the establishment of the Colorado Springs OSTF, the standard operating procedure for testing software upgrades had involved taking NORAD’s backup systems for the critical missile warning computers off line while the tests were run. It was risky business at best. What if there had been a failure in the primary system? In the fifteen minutes it would take to get the backup system out of test mode and back on line, it could be all over. The OSTF was definitely the way to go. Besides, as far as Joel was concerned, downtown Colorado Springs was a much easier commute than Cheyenne Mountain in the middle of the night. The OSTF included a complete duplicate of all the systems at Cheyenne Mountain. All testing of new software was performed there. Only after the software passed testing were the cryptographically check-summed object modules—used to authenticate and ensure system security—electronically downloaded to the operational center at NORAD. And there was one other benefit to the OSTF: In the unlikely event of a total failure of the NORAD systems, the OSTF could take over the actual operation. Computers, communications, and cryptographic equipment were all in place. All that was needed was loading of the proper cryptographic key material into the cryptos.
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, 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 more than five years. I ran configuration scenarios on the facility’s computers a thousand times. If there was an OSTF, 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 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 OSTF. After all, why talk about building something that was already fully 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, put on his coat, and started to leave the café with Joel in tow. “What about the check?” Joel asked Scott.
“It’s on the house,” answered the café 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, pausing 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 lying 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 opened the cipher lock of an armored door that was the only other exit from the room. Before them lay a small sea of computers and defense tracking equipment on a raised floor, filling a room about 8,500 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 fiber links. 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 busy 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,” Joel 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 on earth is going on down here?!”
Scott smiled. “Welcome to SF-14.”
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 its 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.
“What actually happened with the Russian invasion was something that had not even been considered. As I alluded in the café—oh, by the way, the café is one of several safe houses around the city—the Russians have presented us with a totally unexpected opportunity. By concentrating their forces away from populated areas”—Scott paused to point out the Russian troop locations marked on a large wall map—“they have literally made themselves sitting ducks to the capabilities of this facility.
“The first phase of our plan, then, is to neutralize the SDCF and launch six neutron-tipped, short-range Gideon missiles, one against each of the Russians’ positions. There are three very important reasons we’ve chosen the neutron-tipped Gideons. The most obvious is that since we will be launching on targets within our own borders, it is absolutely imperative that we limit the area of destruction. We’ll come back to that in a minute.
“The second reason is that the Gideon-class warhead produces the most rapidly dissipating radiation pattern of any of our war-heads. Our forces will be able to reenter the initial kill radius within six to eight hours after impact. Ground Zero will be entirely habitable in three weeks.
“Third, if the launch is successful and our strategic defense successfully defends Israel against a Russian retaliatory nuclear strike—that’s phase two of the plan—we will very quickly face a second threat from both Arab and Russian conventional forces. We hope to limit the immediate response of the Arabs by, one, creating a communications blackout, thus maintaining the highest possible level of confusion for our enemies; and two, by planning the strike during the Hajj.” Scott was referring to the annual pilgrimage of Muslims to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. The rites of the Hajj include circling the Ka’bah in Mecca and going seven times between the mountains of Safa and Marwa as Abraham’s concubine, Hagar, is believed to have done during her search for water. This can take several days and is followed by group prayer on the plain of Arafa. During the Hajj, Muslims are forbidden by the Koran to harm any living being, including their enemies.
Scott spread out a handful of photographs on the table. “As you can see, our satellite reconnaissance of the Russian encampments reveals extraordinarily large caches of weaponry, both Russian-made and captured Israeli weapons.”
Joel was surprised by what the photos showed. Dozens of huge temporary warehouses had been constructed, with tanks, helicopters, and armored personnel carriers parked nearby in neat rows. It looked like a massive car lot. “What are they doing out there?” he asked.
“We suspect the Russians are storing up military equipment for a conventional attack on Saudi Arabia and Egypt. After that, we have to assume they will go after each of the other oil-rich countries in the area. We have only limited intelligence reports to support that assumption, but it’s obvious they don’t need that kind of armament simply to keep Israel under thumb.”
“They’re planning on using Israel as home base to go after the Arab oil fields and the Suez Canal!” Joel concluded in disbelief.
“That’s what it looks like,” Scott said without emotion.
“But if we have these satellite photos, then surely so does the U.S. Why haven’t they done anything to stop it?”
“They are pursuing the matter through diplomatic channels. If they have plans for a military response, we have not been informed of it. Apparently their assumptions of the Russians’ immediate intent do not match our own. As you know,” Scott continued, getting back to the subject at hand, “the neutron bomb was developed to destroy personnel, not materiel. It kills primarily by an immediate burst of radiation, not by heat or the sheer power of the blast, as in the case of other nuclear weapons. The third reason, then, for selecting the Gideons is to eliminate the Russian personnel while preserving the weaponry. As you said earlier, even if we get rid of the Russians, we don’t have any weapons to defend ourselves from the Arabs. The Russian stockpiles will provide us with the weapons we need. To further reduce the damage to materiel, we are actually targeting a point four hundred meters outside of the perimeter of the Russian camps. Targeting is being coordinated by Ron Samuel, who will be briefing you on that part of the project when we’re finished. With a little luck, he’ll be able to finish his work in the next few days and then he can help you with your project.
“Now let’s get back to the first reason I mentioned for selecting the Gideon. The initial kill radius for the Gideon-class warhead is only one kilometer, with a secondary radius extending another three kilometers. In most cases those limits will allow us to hit the Russians and entirely avoid initial or secondary kill of our own population. However, there are two places where because of adjacent villages and kibbutzim, that will not be possible. In those cases, and in the case of nearby farmers at the other sites, an evacuation team will be given approximately eight hours to effect evacuation of all civilian residents before the launch. The plan is for this to occur under cover of darkness, and to avoid tipping our hand the evacuation team will not be given the word to begin evacuation until after we have secured control of operations from the SDCF.
“Neutralizing the SDCF and transferring operations to this facility is the easy part, relatively speakin
g; that’s what this facility was set up to do. The hard part is to make the Russians believe they are still fully in control long enough for us to evacuate our people and launch the six Gideons. That’s where you come in. We need you to give us those eight hours. Your job is to create the illusion, through a software dump to the SDCF computers, that their systems are operational.
“After we transfer control to this facility, it will take approximately twenty minutes for us to download the retargeting data into the missiles. If the Russians realize what’s happened, they will first attempt to regain control and then very quickly disperse their troops in the mountains. Should that happen, we will have no choice but to launch immediately, killing more than a thousand Israeli civilians and evacuation team members.”
Joel mulled over what he had been told. It was a lot to digest so quickly. “What about the Russians in the cities?” he asked.
“Immediately after the launch, teams of Israeli commandos will take over all radio and television stations from the Russians. Where they are unsuccessful, other teams will destroy those stations’ antennas. It is critical to our success that the Israeli people be rallied to attack the Russians in the cities, but it is equally important that we keep the rest of the world, especially the Arabs, confused about exactly what is going on. If we make things too clear for our own citizens, it will be equally clear to the Arabs, who—Hajj or not—may seize the opportunity to strike while we’re still disorganized and before we can take control of the Russian weapons caches. Rather than broadcasting reports that would be picked up by the Arabs, the radio and television will play a continuous loop of a single message, the words of the prophet Joel, from Joel 3:10.”
Scott paused. He may have been a scientist but, like his father, he was a zealot first, though for a different religious cause. He was hoping his friend at least might have studied enough Scripture to be familiar with the writings of the prophet whose name he bore. But, if Joel was familiar with the verse he gave no indication of it to Scott. Scott gave a sigh of noticeable disappointment and then continued, “‘Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears.’”
In His Image Page 24