by Dale Brown
“La, shukran,” al-Jufri said. “No, thank you.” He opened the back of the Range Rover and retrieved the battered bicycle, then stood beside it proudly, smiling at Whack-he did everything but hold out his hand. Whack took twenty U.S. dollars from his pocket-about four thousand Yemeni riyals, about a month’s wages for most working-class Yemenis-and gave it to him.
The man’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets. “Shukran, shukran jazilan! Thank you, sir!” he said over and over. “Please, if you need anything whatsoever, call. My sons will be by later in the evening and in the morning to look after the horses, and my wife and daughter will come to light the outdoor stove and lanterns.” He bowed several times, clasped Whack’s hand in thanks, then rode off.
Whack wished no one would come during the day, but for the mission he had to continue to accept the hospitality of the Socotra manager of the Yemeni Fish Company. Fortunately, the real robotic trap was coming in a separate shipment tomorrow, so his planned meeting and demonstration would take place as scheduled the day after tomorrow. That gave him a couple days to look around.
First things first. Whack took one of the laptop battery packs from his briefcase and the binoculars from his backpack, put on a Bluetooth earset, and went outside. He made it appear as if he were looking the place over, but he was checking to see if any of al-Jufri’s family members were already here. The place appeared deserted except for two Yemeni ponies in a stone stable. His last stop was the lighthouse. Although the outside looked original, it had obviously been extensively reinforced with steel inside. There was a ladder to the top, with a metal grate as the floor of the top story, and it was an easy climb up. He found some toys, a battery-powered radio, and a nice German telescope up there-obviously the owner’s grandkids liked coming up here.
He used his binoculars to scan the compound and the highway, then scanned the coastline and the nearby waters for any sign of surveillance-nothing. He then took the battery pack out of his pocket, flipped a hidden switch, and hid it as best as he could on the floor. The battery pack was actually a powerful ultrasonic motion detector that could detect any type of motion for several hundred yards in all directions, even through walls. Ignoring the soft beeps in his ear set, indicating his own movements, he went back down the ladder and to the house.
Whack brought his laptop computer and AC adapter to the patio outside the kitchen, booted it up, then selected an application from a hidden and password-secured menu. It showed a satellite image of the compound, along with red dots that indicated motion. He rotated the image until the dots representing the horses’ movements in the stable was aligned with the image of the stable. When he stood up, he saw the dot corresponding to his own movement on the patio, so he knew the image was properly aligned. Now he would receive a warning beep in his ear set when the motion detector saw something, and he could see where the movement was on the laptop. He was able to squelch out the movement of the horses in the stable from alerting him, knowing but accepting the fact that anyone else moving in that same area wouldn’t trigger an alert.
Perimeter security done, he opened his e-mail application. Armstrong Space Station and the Space Defense Force’s network of satellites provided most of the world with free wireless Internet access, and although in this part of the Middle East it was not high-speed access, it was still impressive service. Just in case the Russians were able to tap into satellite e-mail services, he sent an e-mail address to his phony home office’s address, then one to a phony colleague’s address. He knew if the Russians could beam damaging data to American Kingfisher satellites, they could probably pick up wireless data broadcasts for hundreds of miles around, so he had to make this look realistic.
He then opened a Short Messaging System chat window with a phony girlfriend, but writing messages took much longer than normal because he used a mental encoding routine he had learned in Air Force special operations. Every commando learned a system of messaging to be used on unsecure transmissions based on a twenty-five character alphabet, arranged in a five-by-five grid. The date of the message told which of six possible encoding grids was to be used, and the first word in the main message would indicate the sequence to pick letters out of words to use to compose the coded message.
He then mentally used the grid and the sequence to compose a regular-looking message, filled in this case with standard boyfriend-girlfriend chat, remarks on the trip so far, and a few sexually suggestive lines. The recipient would use the same grid and sequence to pick out characters to form the message. All special ops guys had to learn this system by heart and be able to execute it without using pencil or paper to encode or decode, which took time but was a very effective poor man’s secure telephone.
The phony girlfriend’s e-mail address actually went via several secure servers directly to Patrick McLanahan. OK HERE he wrote. Those six letters took an entire 160-character SMS message to write.
McLanahan had a computer that would do the encoding and decoding for him, but he knew to keep the messages short because Whack had to mentally do the decoding. Patrick replied, GUARDS 24. That was a doubling of the known number of Russian guards at the facility, a sign that the mission could be compromised.
Whack sent: GIA.
Patrick replied: NO WORD.
Damn, Whack thought, it’s gotta be tough on the old guy. He wrote: GIA OK.
Patrick: CUSTOMS.
Whack: CURIOUS.
Patrick: GEAR.
Whack: ALL HERE.
Patrick: ASSEMBLED.
Whack: VISITORS.
Patrick: COPS.
Whack: MAIDS.
Patrick: LUCK.
Whack: GIA OK, then LATER.
Check-in done, he prowled around the house and the grounds. He found plenty of Irish whiskey, Scotch, bourbon, and tequila semihidden in the kitchen, got out a bottle, dumped a little in the sink to make the bottle look used, poured himself a half glass of water, and strolled outside-just in case he was being observed, it hopefully would look like he had fixed himself a drink and was settling in for the night. He then went back to his laptop and reviewed the information on the robotic fish-trap thingy he was supposed to demonstrate in a couple days.
About an hour before sunset, the motion sensor alerted him to a vehicle in the driveway, and a few minutes later Salam al-Jufri’s family arrived in a dilapidated Toyota pickup. Whack thought they acted as if he’d given Salam a yacht instead of a twenty-dollar tip-they bowed profusely every time they made eye contact, they brought enough food to feed a family of six, and they lit enough lanterns around the place to land a Boeing 747. The mother handed Whack a message written in broken English saying that they’d be back around seven A.M. for their morning chores, and reminded him to keep the big lantern near the front door lit so they would know not to disturb him in his bedroom as they worked. After they departed, Whack took the time to look around the compound for signs that any of the family had stayed behind. Satisfied he was alone, he got to work.
It took him just minutes to assemble the Tin Man armor exoskeleton from the parts in the big duffel bag, then hide it in the bathroom. He waited another hour until well after sunset, donned the Tin Man armor, then slipped on the exoskeleton and powered it all up using the battery packs in the duffel bag, which had been redesigned to resemble scuba diver’s weights. Everything appeared normal-another big hurdle crossed.
Now using the suit’s built-in secure communications system, he radioed: “Whack here.”
“Good to hear your voice,” Patrick McLanahan responded.
“Same here, General. Anything on Gia?”
“Navy helicopters have been on station for about two hours. They found wreckage but no survivors. No beacons. A destroyer from the Reagan carrier group will be there in a couple hours to assist.”
“She’s okay, General. They’ll find her.”
“Head back in the game, Whack. You copy the message about the guards?”
“I’ll be ready for twice that number.”
&
nbsp; “You think customs suspects something?”
“The inspector didn’t look like your run-of-the-mill Jamaican glorified skycap-turned-customs-agent, General,” Whack said.
“He made me as military right away. I’d be surprised if he didn’t drop a dime.”
“Then maybe we’d better wait another night or two,” Patrick suggested.
“They won’t be expecting a Tin Man, General,” Whack said. “I assume the Russians are watching the house, and I assume they’ll be watching to see if I take off in the Range Rover-I’m a good six miles from the airport and to town at least. My tails will stay with the car, and I’ll be out and back in no time while they twiddle their thumbs. I say we press on.”
Patrick hesitated, but only for a moment, before replying, “Okay, Whack. Press on.”
WENCHANG SPACEPORT, HAINAN ISLAND, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
THAT SAME TIME
Riding an immense column of fire, the Chinese Long March-5 booster rocket lifted off from its launchpad on Hainan Island into the chilly, clear early morning sky. The massive rocket, China ’s heaviest-lifting model, had a three-stage, fifteen-foot-diameter core, with four ten-foot-diameter strap-on boosters, for a total of almost a million tons of thrust.
The launch window was very narrow for one reason: The payload for this mission was Shenzhou-10, the next component of the Chinese military space station, which was to link up with Shenzhou-7, already in orbit. Like the earlier spacecraft, Shenzhou-10 comprised three modules: the orbiter section, where most work was done; the command module, which was designed for reentry and had accommodations for the three-man crew; and the service module, which had all of the systems and equipment to support the spacecraft and also provided storage space. The payload also contained a docking module.
The launch was a complete success, and Shenzhou-10 entered its orbit in perfect synchronization with SZ-7. It would take just two orbits to close the distance between them, and then docking would commence. That would double the size and personnel aboard China ’s first military space station, Tiangong-1…
…which happened to be in precisely the same orbit as Armstrong Space Station.
TEN
The most rewarding things you do in life are often the ones that look like they cannot be done.
– ARNOLD PALMER
SOCOTRA ISLAND, REPUBLIC OF YEMEN
A SHORT TIME LATER
Whack waited until two A.M. before venturing outside via the back patio and roof of the house. He made careful scans of the area with the Tin Man suit’s millimeter-wave radar, infrared sensor, and sound amplifiers. Sure enough, there was a car parked about thirty yards east of the driveway, tucked behind a tree, with a view of the Range Rover parked at the base of the lighthouse.
“One tail on the main highway,” he radioed to Patrick McLanahan via his secure satellite transceiver built into the Tin Man armor.
“How many observers?” Patrick asked.
Through his telescopic low-light sensor he could see a lone white-skinned occupant in the vehicle, smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper, with what appeared to be a camera with a long lens on a monopod. “One. Distracted. Good time to leave.”
“Roger.”
Whack dropped off the house, then down the embankment to the shore. He ran until he saw lights from a fishing boat, then climbed back up the rocky ledge and scanned again. He was out of the line of sight of the surveillance car, and the way was clear, so he went south of the highway, scanned again, then started running west toward Socotra Airport. The terrain was rocky and barren, with few places to hide, but it would make it easy to spot pursuers or locals. The land rose steeply at first, then dropped into narrow crevasses and then smoothed out to vast wastelands. Running and jumping would’ve been easier closer to the ocean, but he wanted to avoid fishermen and patrols.
“It’s getting more rugged farther west,” he radioed. Northeast of the town of Qadub, he found himself running up a large plateau that rose precipitously a thousand feet above him to his left. He stopped to scan the area and check battery levels. “Damn, I’m already down to fifty percent,” he radioed, “and I’m only halfway there.”
“You got the second set of batteries?” Patrick asked.
“Yes, but I might have to risk returning via the coastline and avoid this terrain on the way back if I’m burning watts like this.”
“We might need a third set of batteries?”
“I thought of that, but I also thought it might arouse suspicion-that’s an awful lot of weights for a beefy saltwater diver. I’ll be more careful.”
From his premission target study, he knew he had to cross the highway east of Qadub, because the plateau dropped quickly south and east of town. Locals in Qadub seemed to be having some sort of festival or mass gathering. The town was actually split into three neighborhoods, divided by the highway and by the dirt road leading from the main part of town to the sea: the fishing village near the ocean, the town itself south of the highway, and a cluster of farms and orchards to the west. South of town was impassable-the town sat at the base of two sheer plateaus. The only way around was a narrow strip of sand north of the highway and south of the fishing community.
Whack knew he was in trouble the minute he scanned the area around the town. “I don’t friggin’ believe it,” he radioed.
“What?” Patrick asked.
“It looks like they’re having a fiesta or something down there,” Whack said. The townspeople were actually holding a procession from town to the fishing community along the dirt road! “I just got reminded again of the commando’s ‘Six Ps’: Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance.”
“Abort and try tomorrow night,” Patrick suggested.
He was 3.4 miles to his objective and still on time. “The procession looks like it’s just getting started,” Whack radioed. “It’s the middle of the night, for Christ’s sake. Don’t you people sleep?”
“It’s a weekend-long party celebrating the beginning of the fishing season,” Patrick said. “I just Googled it. They’ll be out there tomorrow night, too.”
“Great.” He could see lights being carried by townspeople, but through his infrared sensors he could see that not everyone was carrying lights, so the procession was quite long-probably a couple hundred people in all. There was absolutely no place to hide north of the highway.
“I’m going to go for it,” Whack said. “I’ll pick a gap in the procession, jump over the dirt road, and hope to get lost in the darkness.”
“Too risky, Whack,” Patrick said. “If someone sees you, they’ll certainly alert the police, who would alert the Yemeni army border patrol, who would undoubtedly alert the Russians. Better off not pushing a bad situation. You got a couple more nights to-”
“Wait!” Whack exclaimed. At that moment the skies to his right over the ocean erupted in a shower of rockets and sparkles. “Fireworks! They’re having a friggin’ late-night fireworks show at the fishing village!” The people on the dirt road began running toward the sea, and in minutes the road was clear. A quick scan showed the area clear for two hundred yards in all directions. “How about that, boss? Looks like it’s clear.” He didn’t even need to jump the highway-that would have highlighted him against the fireworks in the sky. He simply sprinted across the sandy marsh, across the road, and straight ahead north of the highway, halfway up a gentle sandy dune leading to the highway. There were a few homes on the crest of the dune overlooking the ocean, but if anybody was home, they’d probably-hopefully-be looking up at the fireworks, not down toward the beach.
Another three-mile run, and soon he was at Socotra Airport. “I made it, boss,” he radioed. He made his way east of the airport and up a gentle rise to just outside a very large rectangular fenced compound situated on a rocky plateau overlooking the airport. During World War II, this compound had been a British prisoner-of-war camp, and then became a British military headquarters and radar site after the war until they withdrew from Yemen in th
e late 1960s. When the Soviet Union was invited by the Communist Democratic People’s Republic of Yemen to use port facilities in Aden in the 1970s, the Soviets took over the Socotra facility, enlarged and modernized it, and turned it into first an observation post, then a sea-and air-scanning radar facility, and finally into a combined space tracking facility and intelligence-gathering site, listening in on transmissions from space and from ships transiting the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean. It was again modernized and enlarged two years ago, when the United States started expanding its Space Defense Force satellite network.
The twelve-foot-tall perimeter fence was brightly illuminated. “Just as our intel said,” Whack radioed. “Roving patrol on the west side, guard towers at the corners. The objective is in sight.” It was right in the center of the compound, mounted near and below a large radome: a 150-foot-diameter steerable open latticework dish antenna, pointed almost straight up.
A lot of times, the first sight of the objective made commandos anxious and excited, and it was vital to squelch that feeling and stick with the plan. The most important thing was not to alert the Russians to the point where they would shut down the transmitter or inspect the antenna. They were already alerted to Whack’s presence by the inspector at the airport, and they had probably assumed this was his objective.
He moved to his planned entry point on the east side of the facility, the farthest away from the airport, then took a few moments to study the guard towers on the corners. They were the farthest apart here and, being away from the airport and the highway, the least busy. His telescopic TV sensor showed two men in one cab and one in the other, so he chose the area closer to the tower with two men-the odds were better that the one guard in the other tower wouldn’t be looking in his direction. Whack also changed batteries-the first set was down to 15 percent. He would enter the facility with fresh power in case he needed to bug out fast.