Esther's Sling (42 page)

Underneath the two returning C-130s, four vehicles loaded with sixteen Shaldag soldiers sped along the access road from Mudaysis to Highway 21. The Humvee and Ford pickup from the first plane reached the highway and turned to the north, away from the two small villages. The two vehicles drove three kilometers along the two lane road and pulled over just before a 350 meter long section of bridge passing over the Wadi al Tubal. Two soldiers exited from the back seat of the Ford pickup and quickly walked across the road and through twenty meters of desert sand to the base of a telephone poll that carried both electrical and telephone lines from the main east-west artery of Highways 10 and 11 down to the villages of Al Kasrah and Al Habariyah.

One soldier was wearing a pole climbing belt and a pair of steel climbing spikes over his boots. He stopped at the base of the pole and wrapped a leather strap around it. He was ten meters up the pole in less than a minute. After setting his position on the pole just underneath the lowest wire, he reached down and pulled up a pair of bolt cutters that
was hanging from his belt by a short tether. He cut through the cable that was attached to the pole just above the level of his head. The telephone service that connected the two villages to the rest of Iraq was now severed.

The soldier was back down on the ground within a handful of seconds. There was no intention of cutting the electrical service – the planners at Olympus were hoping that the inhabitants of the two villages would spend the evening watching their TVs. The
young European football season’s first “El Classico” was due to start in a few hours and Amit Margolis had incorporated this into his planning. Televisions all over Europe and the Middle East would be tuned in to watch Real Madrid and Barcelona – the two giants of Spanish soccer – square off for the first time this season. Minds would be focused on football, guards would be lowered.

The two men returned to the pickup and the two vehicles now parted ways. The Humvee continued on its way north for another twelve and a half miles, or twenty kilometers. The vehicle stopped and parked in the middle of the southbound land, its lights on. The men in this vehicle had a single job to do for the next several hours:
They would turn away all traffic headed south on the road during that time. The men removed two stop signs and placed them in the road, each one had a flashing red light mounted on top of the sign.

The pickup truck turned back south and parked at the turnoff onto the Mudaysis Airfield access road. Their secondary job was to stop any of the locals fro
m turning down the access road. But the primary mission of the men in the Ford truck was to use sophisticated jamming equipment mounted into the bed of the truck to stop any outbound transmissions from the two small villages to the south. The single phone line had been cut and the spreading cellular service in Iraq had not yet reached into these villages, but many of the homes had satellite phones to communicate with the outside world. More importantly, the single police station located on the southern edge of Al Kasrah had a two-way satellite connection to the provincial government in Ramadi.

The
Shaldag soldiers retrieved a parabolic dish and mounted it on a pole swiveled upwards from the bed. They positioned it to point south toward the two villages. Then they opened a box and rotated what looked like a flat panel TV upward, swiveling it on its base until its business side was pointed south. The equipment in the pickup bed worked automatically, sending out signals which interfered with satellite phone frequencies and the frequencies used by the police satellite system. The parabolic dish listened for other suspicious signals and the computers in the system were programmed to respond to any known transmission frequencies other than those being used by the IAF.

Fifty kilometers to the south, the other two vehicle team of Shaldag soldiers set up a similar roadblock just to the south of Al
Habariyah. At this location, the Ford pickup was parked on the edge of the southbound road, its jamming equipment quickly put into operation. Within fifteen minutes of their arrival, a sedan approached the Humvee from the south. It was stopped and its two occupants were searched. A cell phone was confiscated and the occupants were forced to turn around and head back to south, cursing the Iraqi Army the entire way.

At 7:23 p.m., one minute behind schedule and only four minutes after the second C-130 lifted off, a huge Ilyushin 78 Midas aerial tanker touched down on the runway. The plane was carrying over 25,000 gallons of JP-8 aviation fuel, having burned just over 9,000 gallons to fly from Kuwait International Airport. The plane had departed Kuwait one hour and forty-eight minutes
earlier to fly to Mudaysis. The large tanker, carrying fuel weighing 170,660 pounds, needed most of the long runway to slow down. The pilot used his reverse thrusters and full braking, finally getting the plane slowed down to a speed that left the pilot comfortable, but doing so with less than three football fields of runway length left in front of him.

Like the C-
130s before it, the Il-78 turned left at the last connecter and then made its way onto the tarmac. An Israeli soldier acted as the marshal for the plane, wielding two orange coned flashlights and signaling to the pilot from the far northern edge. The plane turned left and headed to the north-facing corner at the top of the tarmac. As it neared the corner, the pilot turned his nose gear to the right to taxi toward the northeast edge of the tarmac. The soldier acting as marshal walked backward, continuing into the desert sand and waving on the Ilyushin as he walked. The plane’s nose tires went off the edge of the tarmac. The sand had the consistency of dirt, not as soft as a fine powdered beach but not as hard as compacted gravel. The pilot did not know what to expect since this aspect of his journey had never been rehearsed. He and his co-pilot each kept one hand on the four throttle levers located between them, ready to add power if the plane felt like it was bogging down.

After a few feet in the sand, the pilots increased throttle. The plane continued on deeper into the sandy desert. The soldier guiding them was backpedaling faster as he hear
d the jet engine whine increase. The plane continued on until the main landing gear tires left the tarmac. The goal was to get the entire tail section clear of the tarmac and the pilot could feel the plane slow. He applied more power to drive the plane forward, but the nose tires were burying deeper into the sand. The plane was able to make it another thirty-seven feet before the pilot shut down the engines. The nose gear was now almost completely buried. This was a one-way trip for all three of the Il-78 Midas tankers. They would never leave the Iraqi desert.

The crew of the first Ilyushin lowered the rear ramp, allowing access to fuel pumping equipment in the cabin. The engines were
shut down, but the plane’s auxiliary power unit continued to run, providing power for the plane’s fuel pumps and systems.

Over the next eight minutes, two other Ilyushin
78s landed. Each of these was guided into the sand off the long northeastern edge of the tarmac. The planes were maneuvered into the spaces between the telescoped floodlights that had been placed along the edge only minutes earlier. Once all three of the big Russian-built planes were in position, more than 30 men, along with the electric cart and its rotating brush attachment, set to work sweeping sand off the tarmac. They had a seventeen minute window.

The three large Ilyushin tankers
collectively held over 75,000 gallons – 500,000 pounds – of aviation fuel for the thirsty warplanes on their way. But that amount of fuel was still not enough for all of the aircraft that would be passing through Mudaysis. Before the night was over, 85 IAF warplanes would refuel on the outbound strike mission to various targets inside Iran and up to 45 on the return from Iran, the final number to be determined by the randomness of war.

Israeli Aircraft Industries and the IAF publicly unveiled a new UAV on October 8, 2007. As large as a Boeing 727, it was called the Eitan – Hebrew for “steadfast.” The twin-tailed aircraft, also called the Heron TP, had been under development by IAI for several years and brought a new generation of UAV capabilities to the IAF. With a length of 43 feet and a wingspan of 86 feet, the Eitan could carry sizable payloads in its fuselage and stay airborne at high altitude for up to two days.

But to achieve this endurance, the Eitan relied on a propeller driven engine that allowed
the UAV to cruise at a speed of only 145 knots, perfect for loitering over Lebanon but ill-suited for the requirements of the Olympus planning team. In early 2010, the IAF planners at Olympus approached IAI to create an upgraded version of the Eitan that could fly higher, faster and carry a heavier payload, including underwing mounted weapons.

Progress had been set back in January 2012
, when an early version of the modified Eitan crashed during a test flight. But development continued and the resulting model was designated the Eitan-B. Its critical upgrade was the replacement of the propeller driven Pratt & Whitney engine with a new quiet and efficient small jet engine – the GE/Honda HF120 delivering over 2,000 pounds of thrust. The engine, combined with upgraded wing spars, allowed the Eitan-B to fly higher, carry more payload and, most importantly, fly much faster.

Israel had successfully kept the development of the Eitan-B secret for initial use on Project Block G – even to the extent of reprimanding those IDF officers who knew of its existence and asked for operational deployment over Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip during the winter months of 201
2-2013.

But now the time had come and the first Eitan-B to takeoff on a combat mission lifted off
a runway at Tel Nof Airbase as the last of the big Ilyushins was maneuvered into place at Shangri-La. The UAV carried two Modular Stand Off Vehicles, or MSOVs, that each carried 36 runway denial submunitions. The MSOV was designed to create enough craters to keep enemy aircraft from using targeted runways until repairs are made. The MSOV itself was unpowered but able to glide for up to 75 miles on two wings that deploy from the delivery vehicle. The Eitan-B also carried two Spice 1000 gliding bombs that could autonomously glide up to 100 miles from the altitude that this UAV would be operating at.

The Eitan-B took off at 7:37 p.m. Israeli time to the northwest and climbed as it headed out over the Mediterranean Sea. The UAV flew to a point 87 miles off the coast and turned north. By the time it had reached its operating altitude of 59,000 feet, it turned again to head east over the northern portion of Syria, just inside its border with Turkey. The UAV’s target was the two parallel runways and two connector strips that provided access to the runways at Tabriz International Airport, an airport used jointly by civilian aircraft and the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force. At the average cruise speed of 330 knots, the UAV would take just under two and a half hours to reach its weapons launch point. Once its weapons were launched, each of which operated autonomously, the UAV would fly to the southeast into Iran on a mission to jam radar and communications emissions in the area of Hamadan and Kermanshah.

Ten minutes later, two more Eitan-Bs lifted off the same runway. They carried no external weapons and were able to cruise at a speed of up to 405 knots. They would assume a tight formation with the lead UAV until they passed over the Iranian border. At that point, the two unarmed Eitan-Bs would turn north and then east again to pass well north of Tabriz before turning south and southeast to execute their missions. Each UAV was armed with chaff dispensers and electronic jamming gear that was designed to simulate the electronic emissions of a large force of aircraft. Chaff, a World War II innovation that is still effective to this day, involves the release of thousands of strips of aluminum foil into the air to create large radar echoes. It is used to create confusing radar returns and mask the approach of aircraft. The two UAVs were part of Operation Northwind, the plan to convince the Iranians that the attack was coming from Azerbaijan.

The planners at Olympus did not expect any of these three Eitan-B U
AVs to make it back to Israel.

Eighteen minutes after the last of the three Ilyushin Midas tankers shut down its engines, the first of four C-130s landed at Mudaysis. The plane taxied to the upper northeast corner of the rectangular tarmac, heading toward one of the four telescopic floodlights. When the plane was about 80 feet from the light, the pilot turned its nose left, sweeping the plane around on its axis until it faced almost due south, its open rear cargo ramp now facing the floodlights. Two of the men on the ground acted as marshals, working as a team to act as the eyes for the pilots in the cockpit. The pilot altered the pitch of his propellers, causing them to reverse their thrust. He applied power until the plane and its heavy cargo reversed, the open ramp slowly moving toward the floodlight pedestal. The pilot continued to reverse as directed by a marshal standing off to his left side, out of the blast area of the reversed propellers. Just as the pilot was getting nervous, the marshal finally raised his hands over his head, forming an “X” with his two orange-coned flashlights. The pilot stopped the plane.

In the cargo cabin,
the loadmaster released the restraining straps and floor locks that held the cargo in place during flight. He walked to the front of the cabin and stood behind the last of three 2,500 gallon fuel bladders. Each bladder, weighing 17,900 pounds, sat inside an aluminum bath tub that rested on the C-130’s floor roller system that ran the length of the cabin floor, including the cargo ramp. The loadmaster told the pilot he was ready.

The pilot set his propeller pitch to takeoff angle and applied military power to his throttles, holding the brakes. After three seconds, he released the brakes and the plane jolted forward. The forces of acceleration and inertia worked together, with the help of a push from the loadmaster, to slide the three large bladders and their aluminum tubs
off the ramp and onto the tarmac of Mudaysis. Where they landed was where they would be used. There was no equipment big enough on the ground to move the bladders.

The pilot pulled his throttles back to idle just a couple of seconds after releasing the brakes, his timing based on dozens of rehearsals, all of which were done using bladders full of water. He could feel when the final bladder left the plane in the same way a bomber pilot could feel his plane lighten as the load exited the bomb bay. Over the intercom, the loadmaster sim
ply said “Cargo free. Perfect.”

The C-130 closed its rear ramp and continued
on to the taxiway which served as the takeoff runway for this operation. As soon as he turned onto the taxiway, he applied military power and began the journey home. Behind him, three other C-130s repeated the same maneuver at the base of the three other telescoping floodlights.

The entire process, from the touchdown of the first C-130 to the takeoff of the last, took only twelve minutes. Mudaysis now had 105,000 gallons of fuel awaiting the IAF strike force, with more fuel on the way.

Ten minutes later another C-130 landed at Mudaysis and taxied to a stop on the tarmac about 200 feet away from the northeastern edge, being careful to maintain a safe distance from the large fuel bladders that had just been dropped off. Within twenty seconds, a second C-130 stopped one hundred yards behind the first. Both aircraft held identical loads and within ten minutes each plane had dropped off an Air Traffic Control, or ATC, trailer with five trained ATC personnel. Following the ATC trailer, an airplane tug towing three wheeled carts full of spare parts and tools and twenty more ground personnel emerged. In addition, each plane unloaded an eight man IDF security team armed with four FIM-92 Stinger heat seeking surface to air missiles and a three man team of IDF demolition experts with enough C-4 plastic explosive and timed detonation triggers to accomplish their assignment to destroy all equipment left behind in the Iraqi desert, starting with the three Ilyushin aircraft. The last man out of each airplane was an officer, bringing the ground force command team for the night to four.

Each ATC
trailer was quickly towed to a spot close to one of the two Pramac generators. Power cables were run to the trailers. Within minutes, the redundant trailers had established a communications link with the G550 Eitam orbiting about 120 miles to the south over Point Romeo. The trailers had no active radar and were reliant on the information being beamed to them via encrypted microwave link from the Eitam. One trailer took responsibility for aircraft inbound to Shangri-La and the other for aircraft outbound to Iran. But each trailer could perform both functions if either was unable to proceed.

After the
se two C-130s lifted off on their journey back to Israel, Gideon Meyer called all of the personnel left on the ground at Shangri-La, with the exception of the Shaldag and IDF soldiers on watch, over to the edge of the tarmac. The warplanes of the Israeli Air Force were on their way to this landing strip in the middle of the desert. In front of him stood 95 hand-picked men and women of the Israeli Defense Force. Everyone on that tarmac had been training for this evening for years and so far – with the exception of the mine that claimed the life of Uzi Helzberg – everything had gone as well as could be expected.

Gideon
Meyer had been personally selected to command Shangri-La by General Schechter over two years earlier. His first job had been to think through how 85 F-15 and F-16 aircraft could land, refuel and takeoff from a deserted airbase with only one runway and one taxiway that was located in the middle of nowhere and over 600 miles away from Israel – all in the dead of night using a small tarmac and within the space of 45 minutes.

After a month of thinking about the challenge,
Meyer had approached General Schechter with a request. He wanted permission to spend at least one month on a U.S. aircraft carrier operating at sea. He explained to Schechter that the tarmac at Mudaysis was only slightly larger than the flight deck of a U.S. carrier. The Americans had not only solved the dilemma, he argued to Schechter, but they had decades of experience and lessons learned. Schechter agreed and Meyer landed on the deck of the USS George H Bush in the back of a Grumman C-2 Greyhound cargo plane on October 12, 2011. He spent the next three weeks in the Persian Gulf soaking up the U.S. Navy’s knowledge and experience on how to handle a large number of combat aircraft operating in a very confined space within extreme timetables. The flight deck of a carrier in the middle of combat operations was nothing short of controlled chaos and Meyer realized within the first 24 hours that he had made a wise decision. He returned to Israel with a clear picture of how he wanted to arrange and manage the Mudaysis airfield.

Among the 90 men and
five women standing in front of him, 68 of the men were wearing colored shirts. All of these men wore the same helmets and hearing protection worn on the flight deck of U.S. carriers. In addition to the helmets, Meyer had borrowed the color coding scheme used on the USS George H Bush. Meyer had quickly realized the wisdom of making sure that every person operating within a tight space in which military jets were landing, taking off and moving about, needed to know instantly the role of every other person.

Four men wore blue shirts. These were the men who would operate the two airplane tugs if needed. Six men wore red shirts. They were the ordinance experts who were there to handle any weapons that might come loose on the airplanes that landed that night. Ten men wore yellow shirts and were responsible for directing the aircraft that would be landing in rapid succession and queuing for fuel ten aircraft at a time. Another ten men wore white shirts. These men were responsible for quality control. They had to be sure that the airplanes that landed were ready for their missions and
had to clear each plane for takeoff from Mudaysis. Each plane had to have the fuel it required, its access panels needed to be closed and properly latched, and its weapons needed to be properly mounted and ready for action.

The next group of men numbered 14 and wore green. These men were all mechanics and included many of the most experienced mechanics in the Israeli military. Among this group were experts in the F-15, F-16 and C-130 and other men who were equally comfortable working on any plane – or fuel pump – that required their attention. Ideally, none of their services would be required, but prudence dictated their pres
ence at Mudaysis on this night.

But the most numerous were the men wearing purple shirts. Onboard a U.S. carrier, these personnel are known as the
“grapes.” At Mudaysis, there were 24 of them and their job was certain to be necessary. They were responsible for refueling the planes and overseeing the fuel pumps that would deliver JP-8 jet fuel from the three Il-78 Midas aircraft, the twelve 2,500 gallon bladders deposited on the tarmac, and the four KC-130M aircraft that were then inbound, all at a rate of 1,000 gallons per minute. On their shoulders rested the timetable for Block G.

More than
200 men had volunteered to try out for this small group of fuelers under the cover story that the elite Unit 669 was looking for men to join the team. The tryouts had lasted for three days and included a sleepless night. In the end, the 24 men on the tarmac had been selected. They had been formed into six teams of four men each by Major Meyer and placed in competition against each other. Training progressed during the prior year at Nevatim Airbase. A chart kept the results of bi-weekly competitions to determine which teams could fuel four F-16s and four F-15s the fastest. The teams gave themselves nicknames based on Formula One racing teams, the observation having been made early on that they were like a Formula One pit crew. Team Mercedes had edged out Team Sauber to win the final competition conducted the preceding May.

Finally, four men – including Major Gideon
Meyer – wore referee shirts, making them easily stand out. They were the senior officers on the ground at Shangri-La and the referee shirts were Meyer’s idea. They seemed completely appropriate since, Meyer believed, the role of an officer was often to act as referee.

Meyer
spoke to the assembled team of professional warriors in front of him. He removed his Afika Korps pith helmet. “First, give yourselves a hand.” In the absence of any running aircraft engines, his voice was easily heard. He started to clap and within seconds was joined by 95 men and women. After about ten seconds, the clapping rapidly died off. “I am very proud of this team, but the easy work is done. We have four KC-130 tankers inbound and then, within fifteen minutes of their arrival, the real show begins.”

Meyer
held his right hand in the air and extended his index finger upward toward the sky. “One,” he stated loudly with authority. “Less than one hour. That is the window we will have once the first F-16 lands. You have all been working your asses off for a long time for this forty-five minute window that is about to happen. Everyone here knows exactly what they are doing and exactly how to do it. Tonight is no different than the dozens of rehearsals. Just one more time. One.” The Major thrust his finger upward to reinforce his point.

“The KC-
130s will be here in about ten minutes. Take this time to double check all of your systems, all of your connections. When you are done, check the connections and systems of the team next to you. Make sure you are ready to go. Plane directors – you should know exactly where each of the KC-130s is going. If you are not one hundred percent certain, then ask me.

“Finally, if you need help, if you have a problem, if you are not sure about something, then find me or any officer wearing a referee jersey. That is why we are here. That is why we are wearing these ridiculous outfits,” he said as he waved his pith helmet in the desert air. The group laughed in unison. “Find us and tell us what you need or ask us what to do next. Always remember, the only stupid question is the one you don’t ask. Now let’s get to work.”

Ninety-five professionals set about their tasks.

At 8:38 p.m. Iraqi time, the first of four KC-130H aerial refueling tankers, which itself had been refueled over the Gulf of Aqaba by another KC-130H, touched down at Mudaysis. The plane taxied to a position as close to the edge of the tarmac as the nerve of the pilot tolerated. The plane was parked
close to the first of the beached Ilyushins. The pilot shut down his engines. The second plane landed and assumed its position.

The pilot of the third plane made his approach to Mudaysis only thirty seconds following the second plane. By now, darkness had
completely swallowed the desert landscape. The pilot and co-pilot wore AN-AVS 6 night vision goggles inside the blacked-out plane. As they lined up on the infrared strobe lights that outlined the runway for their final approach, they turned on their landing lights about a half mile off the end of the runway. The pilots removed their night vision goggles and the co-pilot concentrated on the altimeter to call the rate of descent and the distance remaining to touchdown. The plane was very heavy, as were all of the planes that had landed before it. Its weight as it touched down would be just under 157,000 pounds, a weight that was tolerated only out of combat necessity.

The heavy weight of the plane put tremendous stress on the landing gear and all of the cargo planes landing that night had higher than usual air pressure in their tires to help compensate. But the most important
factor was the individual skill of each pilot. The heavy loads meant that the pilot needed to land at as gentle a descent rate as practical. However, the same heavy load put a premium on landing as close to the start of the runway as possible to allow for the maximum amount of runway to slow down. As the third plane approached the runway threshold, the pilot was concentrating on his descent rate. He wanted to touchdown at a descent rate of somewhere around 200 feet per minute.