Mission Compromised (51 page)

For some reason he did not feel as if this were the place he was supposed to be.

Lord, do You want me to stay or go back?
Habib had prayed earlier. He had no immediate sense of what to do.

Now it was just after 1:00 P.M. and as he finished his midday meal, Habib prayed again. This time he was impressed with the idea of leaving Laqlaq right away. He paid for his meal and room and carried his things to his Toyota truck.

“What was the commotion about this morning? I saw several Army trucks,” he said to the Iraqi owner of the inn, sitting nearby in the shade, out of the mid-afternoon sun.

“You should wait until it is cooler to go,” the man said.

Habib tried again. “The Army trucks—what were they doing?”

The man shrugged. “Who knows? But my brother just returned from Tikrit, and he told me they have roadblocks around the town. No one is allowed in. Are you going that way?”

Habib shook his head. “I am driving to Jisr Al Tharthar—about fifty kilometers due west of Tikrit.”

“Ah, yes, the way you came last night. I remember you told me.”

“Saddam must be at his summer palace,” Habib guessed. “The roadblocks must be for his security.”

“Yes, no doubt that is it.”

Habib drove about a kilometer to the town's only petrol station and filled his tank. He also filled two spare gas cans and two five-gallon water cans. His route was mostly deserted; it was the road alongside the petroleum pipeline, and there was seldom much traffic.

He also purchased some dates and cheese in case he did not arrive at his destination before nightfall. But what was his destination? He had no idea. He was simply following the leading of God.

It was almost two o' clock in the afternoon by the time Habib was ready to leave. But before he did, he spread out his prayer rug in the shadow of the truck and prostrated himself in prayer. It was 2:15 P.M. when he got up again and climbed into his truck. It was finally time to go.

MD-80 Command Center

________________________________________

Siirt Air Base, Turkey
Monday, 6 March 1995
1313 Hours, Local

 

“Colonel Newman, sir. Captain Weiskopf has just sent the signal to launch the UAV. Shall I call Incirlik and tell Sgt. Major Gabbard?”

Captain Ben Phillips, one of the British officers assigned to ISET Charlie had been manning the Comm Station aboard the MD-80.

“What's the latest, Ben?” Newman asked.

“Picnic Base reported in via satellite link. They have everything set up and have been checking in every half hour as instructed. They just sent the launch order three minutes ago, while you were off the plane at the head. They said they're about a klick from the target; they have the laser-targeting device tested and in. Everything is go. Captain Weiskopf said they were going off-air so the Iraqis wouldn't intercept their transmissions. Even though we've got the element of surprise, he says that we can't presume that Saddam won't be on alert—if for no other reason than the company he has for the weekend.”

“Is Josh sure that he has a good angle on the target so that the UAV will be able to pick up the reflection from his LTD and not the designator itself? We don't want that thing to fly up his nose.”

“Affirmative, sir. They're just sitting and waiting for the guests to show up at the palace.”

“All right, let's do it!” Newman said. “Alert the QRF to start moving toward the Iraqi border in case they're needed. Call Sergeant Major Gabbard and tell him to launch the Global Hawk. Get Major Robinette out of the powder room or wherever she is and tell her to get this crate into the air. I want to be airborne in case something goes wrong. Ben, have your ISET suit up for a jump just in case we have to drop Charlie in to help Echo out of trouble. Call General Harris down at the 331st Expeditionary Air Group and tell him the fireworks are about to start in Tikrit and remind him that the contingency plan calls for his F-15s and -16s to fly cover for the exfiltration.”

The men all stood and grabbed their weapons and gear. Jane Robinette boarded the plane wearing her flight uniform and helmet. Newman noticed she was packing her side arm. While the men inside prepared their weapons and equipment for takeoff, Major Robinette and her crew made a hurried last inspection of the aircraft.

Newman climbed into his seat at the command console, where he had directed the insertion three nights ago. Tom McDade settled himself into the electronic warfare station. Strapped into the red nylon web seats, three on one side and four on the other, were Capt. Phillips and his ISET Charlie men.

As the engines spooled up, the electronics on the consoles in front of Newman and McDade flickered on. Because it was midday instead of the middle of the night, the video feeds were much more visible than they had been when they had dropped Weiskopf and his ISET Echo three nights ago.

It took less than fifteen minutes for the crew to finish its pre-flight checks and for McDade, acting as the EWO, to make sure that all the necessary data was uploaded into the plane's computer.

In the cockpit, Major Robinette and Lieutenant Haskell were checking their instruments, as was Master Sergeant Maddox, the Crew Chief. Some smart aleck had hung a sign over Maddox's little compartment: “Galley Slave.”

Haskell's copilot seat on the right side up front had been slightly reconfigured by the spooks out at Nellis Air Force Base when the MD-80 was borrowed from the “bone-yard” for this mission. On his side of the cockpit Haskell had a complete navigator's station with video displays for radar, altitude, VORTAC navigation, GPS, heading, and two radios—one of them an ARC-210 for secure voice transmissions.

Just as they completed the pre-flight check, Lieutenant Haskell said into Newman's intercom, “Sir, there's a call coming in on the ARC.”

Newman flicked a switch on his console and keyed his mike. “Picnic Six, go ahead.”

“Colonel, I'm glad I reached you.”

Newman recognized Major Ellwood's voice.

“What is it? We're about ready to leave.”

“I know that, sir. That's why I called on the secure channel. I just wanted you to know there are some suspicious happenings here. I don't have anything specific to tell you, except that there is a live
audio
feed of the RF transmissions between you and your units that is being fed back to here. Did you know about this connection, sir?”

“Are you sure? How are you picking me up?”

“It's being fed to us from your Air Force sat com link at Incirlik, apparently at the direction of the White House,” the British major replied. “Every time you communicate with one of your units, we're picking it up here. And I'm concerned that the information we're receiving may be getting fed to Baghdad.”

“Baghdad! Major, are you sure?”

“I'm not positive, but I have noticed over the last three days that after every MoveRep and SitRep from your unit in Iraq, within minutes there has been a call to a satellite phone number in Iraq—and none of those calls show on the communications log. I raised the matter with Deputy Secretary General Komulakov and he told me, in so many words, to mind my own business. Well, I'm making it my business now. We'll sort things out here, or when you get back. I just wanted you to know… and to watch yourself up there.”

“Copy that… Let me know if anything turns up while we still have our guys on the ground. Newman out.” He toggled the switch back to intercom. “I want you guys on radar and the radios to be extra alert. There may be someone monitoring our RF communications and passing info to the bad guys in Iraq. From here on out, I want to keep our radio communications to an absolute minimum.

“Major Robinette, hold our departure. Lieutenant McDade, I want you to type up a ‘Top Secret' encrypted data message—no voice, no video—to Brigadier General James Harris in the 331st Expeditionary Group command center at Incirlik. Tell him we have reason to believe our RF messages to him and to the ISETs in the field are all being picked up by somebody at UNHQ in New York and being re-broadcast to someone in Iraq. Tell him that, if he is relaying our comms to the UN in New York at the request of the White House, that as the mission commander, I respectfully request he pull the plug on any feeds to the UN in New York until we can sort this out. I want to talk only to the faces I've been talking to the last three days… and shut down
everyone
else. Ask him to please keep
his
comms up with us, the EA-6s, F-15s, and with the F-16s, but no one else. Now, type that up, print it, and hand it to the nearest airman on the ground crew with instructions to get it to General Harris ASAP. Got that?”

“Yes, sir!” McDade began typing the message on his keyboard. He
turned his monitor display so Newman could proof it before it was printed. Newman read it and nodded. McDade keyed in the print command and the document was ready in twelve seconds. He grabbed it from the console and opened the closest escape hatch. He waved to one of the ground crew. “Airman! Take this to General Harris as fast as you can.”

Within a couple minutes there was another call on the ARC radio line. Newman took the call from General Harris and explained the situation. Then the general asked Newman, “When is the next time we're supposed to hear from your team on the ground in Iraq?”

“They're supposed to call me as soon as Saddam shows up at the palace with bin Laden, and then I'm to vector the UAV from its loiter station over Turkey on to the target. I'll fly it from here until it picks up Weiskopf's LTD reflection off the target. There shouldn't be that many radio communications with them until we pull them out after the UAV detonates.”

“Roger that. What do you want me to do?”

“I don't know whether there's a problem, but I want to err on the side of caution. Please, General, pull the plug to New York now, before the call comes in from ISET Echo.”

“You've got it, Colonel.” Newman heard the general's voice giving the order to cut the feed to New York. “The guys are asking, ‘What about Washington?' Is there a chance that the feed to the Pentagon or the White House has been picked up?”

“I don't think so… but use your own judgment. There's nothing we need from them, and they just want to know what's going on. But just to be safe, cut the audio feed only. Let them keep the video feed. That way they can still see what's going on.”

“Lieutenant Colonel Newman, we have clearance for takeoff. Is it a go?” Major Robinette asked.

Newman paused for a moment. There was too much at stake not to go. “Yes, let's go!” he called to the pilot. The engines accelerated and the aircraft began to pull forward on the tarmac and move toward the end of the runway. Within three minutes they were airborne. Major Robinette retraced her flight path from the previous mission, this time filing an enroute flight plan as a United Nations humanitarian aid flight from Turkey to Yemen.

While they were climbing to altitude and awaiting clearance from the International Airspace Coordinator in Ankara, the Global Hawk's preprogrammed satellite radio queried McDade's console, seeking instructions, as its Rolls-Royce turbofan engine pushed it to 65,000 feet at 350 knots. Up to this point the UAV was simply flying a parking pattern pre-programmed into its GPS-guided memory.

McDade pushed a button on his terminal and sent a stream of zeros and ones to the UAV's electronic brain, programming the huge flying bomb to head for the coordinates of Saddam's summer palace and then, at precisely 1500 hours, to activate the seeker head in its nose cone and search for a laser reflection at those coordinates. Once it found the laser reflection, the UAV was instructed to hurtle its 22,900 pounds of explosives and fuel at the point where the reflected beam originated—the building housing Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and, according to Harrod, the killer of Peter Newman's brother, Mohammed Farrah Aidid.

Ten minutes after Major Robinette had requested the over-flight clearance, Ankara granted it, and instructed her to contact Baghdad flight control. Even though United Nations sanctions limited Iraq to no more than one commercial flight in and out of the country each day, Baghdad was still required to maintain flight clearance facilities for other nations' commercial flights.

Robinette came up on the assigned frequency, contacted Baghdad, and switched her commercial IFF transponder to the assigned squawk. She then picked up a heading that would have taken the MD-80 roughly parallel to the Tigris, but twenty miles west of the river, and finally out over the Persian Gulf, west of Basra. Baghdad Center specifically instructed her to avoid Tikrit since it was a “Head-of-State Restricted Area.”

At precisely 1415 hours, Newman saw Tom McDade signal him.

“Colonel Newman—I've got him!” McDade announced over the intercom. “Captain Weiskopf is on comm one.”

Newman, not knowing whether the audio feed to New York from the Incirlik Air Base Command Center had actually been cut yet, asked if the call was on the ARC secure radio. McDade nodded. “The call is being relayed from a satellite in earth orbit.”

Weiskopf's voice was clear and crisp. “This is Picnic Base. We are go for video in ten seconds… switching to video feed in… five, four, three, two,…”

On “one” the video monitor on Newman's console flickered and a picture flared on-screen. There was too much light, but the camera quickly compensated and the image cleared up.

“We've got your pictures,” Newman told him. “Are you guys set?”

“Affirmative. The finger is pointing and ready for your model airplane.”

“It's on the way. It should be in your area in another forty minutes if it's working right. Do you have guests at the hotel?”

“Do we have guests? It looks like a used Mercedes auction over there. We saw Saddam with bin Laden and a whole raft of straphangers. Couldn't pick your buddy Aidid out of the crowd, but he's probably one of the dozens dressed in the Ali Baba and the forty thieves' outfits.”

“Any unwanted visitors to
your
location?”