Esther's Sling (44 page)

On October 2, two Ilyushin 76 cargo aircraft bearing the insignia of Swiss-Arab Air Cargo landed a half hour apart after 10 p.m. at Nevatim Airbase in Israel. One plane had flown in from delivering cargo to Sarajevo and the other had delivered cargo to Kiev earlier in the day. The captains of each plane, Oleg Kolikov and Jim Miller, taxied their respective aircraft into two separate hanger buildings and then were driven, along with their crews, to a building where they could get some sleep. For Oleg Kolikov, a secular Russian Jew, this was the first time he had ever stepped foot in Israel. For Jim Miller, a secular American Jew, it was only the second time, the first time having been with his parents as a teenager almost five decades earlier. All of the other eight members of both crews were Jews, most of them Israelis, working for SAAC under false identities.

The crews spent most of the next day either in briefings or being introduced to their new planes. The briefings continued the day after that. The men had new systems to understand. At sunset on
October 4, the crews boarded two Ilyushin 76 aircraft. They were each painted in the colors and logo of Swiss-Arab Air Cargo and carried the same tail numbers as the two planes the men had flown into Nevatim two nights before. But they were not the same planes. They were the two Ilyushins purchased by Sun d’Or II, the El Al subsidiary, which had first been flown to Nevatim during the last week of 2010 and the first week of 2011.

Captain Kolikov lifted off first, about 40 minutes after sunset. Captain Miller’s plane left the runway just ten minutes later. Both planes headed out over the Mediterranean. Kolikov flew 395 miles to the west and then turned to the north into the air traffic lane he would have been on had he departed Bangui
M’Poko International Airport in the Central African Republic as his filed flight plane claimed. He continued north for about a thousand miles and landed his plane at Luhansk International Airport in the Ukraine a little before 11 p.m. The crew spent an hour running diagnostic checks on the plane. A waiting corporate jet chartered by a Swiss company then flew Oleg Kolikov back to Israel, this time landing at Sde Dov Airport in the early morning hours.

Captain Miller flew
his Ilyushin 76 about a hundred miles to the west and north over the Mediterranean before turning the big cargo plane around to head east over Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf to finally approach Ras Al-Khaimah a little over three hours after he took off from the Israeli Air Force base at Nevatim. The plane followed the standard approach to the Ras Al-Khaimah Airport, entering the airspace of the United Arab Emirates to the south of the airport and then turning north to make its final approach to the single runway. At this late hour, Miller did not need to worry about any other traffic, but the tower was unable to give him any feel for wind conditions on approach. The best they could do is provide him an update from the anemometer on top of the tower and the lighted wind sock near the runway.

The big plane had its flaps and large leading edges extended to their maximum setting, Miller
needed all the lift available with the large load he was carrying. The plane was descending gradually on final as it approached the runway threshold. With 9,800 feet of runway to work with, and weighing more than he cared for, the American pilot was maintaining a higher than normal speed and a gentle glide slope, the high-winged aircraft maintaining an attitude that kept its nose level.

The plane passed over the threshold when an event occurred that is dreaded by all pilots – an event that could not be foreseen by Miller and for which he did not have the sophisticated
Doppler radar that may have saved him from the what he was about to endure. The prevailing northwesterly wind coming in from its journey across the cool mountains of Iran and the Persian Gulf was colliding with a wave of air just above the ground that had worked its way north from the hot desert sands of the Arabian Peninsula. Miller was preparing to flare his aircraft when the modest headwind he had been flying into suddenly shifted into a swirling invisible mass of air that drastically reduced the air flow creating lift on his wings.

A sudden sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach was Miller’s first physical notice of what was happening. The timing of the natural assault on his plane could not have been worse. The captain had no reserves of potential energy that gave good pilots the ability to fly their way through trouble. He had no altitude to work with and no time to apply power, the reaction time of the big jet’s four engines being far too slow to make any difference at this point. Miller continued his flare maneuver instinctively, wanting to be sure that the impact that was coming was borne by the main landing gear. He adjusted his ailerons slightly to keep his wings level – he was fighting to ensure as even a distribution of the forces of touchdown as possible. “Brace. Brace,” said the American, not even conscious of the words coming from his mouth – his decades of training and experience now combining into automatic responses.

The plane hit the runway hard, its heavy load absorbing many times the force of gravity at the moment of impact. The skill of the pilot had succeeded in distributing the force almost evenly among the 16 tires of the main landing gear. Miller winced as the plane touched down, the force hurting his back and reminding him of his age. But the plane held together, and, once the front gear and its four tires were on the runway, the deceleration was normal.

Miller taxied into the same hanger building he had departed from several days earlier. The four engines were shut down
, and thick cables were plugged into a receptor port under the nose of the aircraft, providing power from a large generator parked outside the hanger.

The co-pilot looked at his captain. The much younger man was pale. He understood exactly what had just happened. “That was not fun at all,” said the co-pilot. “You did a hell of a job getting this big son of a bitch to flair in time.”

Miller shook his head. “Too close for comfort.”

“You think anything is damaged?”

“I don’t know,” responded the captain. “That was pretty hard.”

The crew began to perform a series of diagnostic checks, relying on a computer which had been installed directly into the cockpit by the engineers from Israel Aerospace Industries. Miller drank from a bottle of water as the flight engineer ran through a checklist he had on a clipboard at his station. Twenty minutes later
, the flight engineer made a comment that caught Miller’s ear. “This isn’t good.” A discussion followed that lasted several minutes.

“Get through the rest of your checklist and then we can come back to this,” Miller
said. After another 45 minutes, the flight engineer repeated the routine that had prompted the earlier discussion.

“Negative function.
It’s not working.”

Miller buried his forehead into his left palm, his large hand massaging his own scalp. “Talk to Olympus and let them know. I need to walk around.” Jim Miller worked his body out of the
captain’s seat and was quickly onto the concrete floor of the hanger. He walked around the plane inspecting the landing gear and tires in particular. They had a full complement of skilled mechanics to address any problem – so long as it was a problem found on any normal Ilyushin 76.

After about ten minutes the flight engineer emerged from the fuselage and called the captain over. “They want you back. The jet is waiting outside. They are sending a couple of experts over in the morning.”

Captain Jim Miller was airborne again within twenty minutes, this time as a passenger in the back of Dassault Falcon corporate jet. He slept on and off, short catnaps as the plane made its way west. The plane passed over Israel and headed out into the Mediterranean on a path that would take it to Italy, and then abruptly turned back to the east to land at Sde Dov Airport north of Tel Aviv.

Jim Miller walked into a conference room at Mount Olympus at
one in the afternoon on October 5. It was a scheduled review for the two critical pilots of Block G on a day when everything that was occurring was scheduled down to the minute. Oleg Kolikov and four other men were in the small room seated around the table. All six were scheduled to fly the two Ilyushins – one now on a tarmac in Luhansk and the other in a hanger at Ras Al-Khaimah – later that night. Only they would fly the planes from remote control “cockpits” set up next to each other in a room just down the hall from the conference room they now occupied. Each plane would be flown by a flight engineer, a pilot and either Captain Kolikov in command of the Luhansk flight or Captain Miller in command of Ras Al-Khaimah flight. The role of each of the two captains was to use their experience over the last couple of years of flying in, over and around Iran to communicate with air traffic control personnel. The two flights later that night had to appear to be as routine as possible.

The men in the room welcomed the American who had become the respected father figure for all of the Ilyushin crews operating for Swiss-Arab Air Cargo out of
Ras Al-Khaimah. “Welcome to Israel, Captain Jim,” said Oleg Kolikov as he stood and shook the American’s hand. “I hear you had some wind shear.”

Jim Miller shook his head as he shook hands with the other men in the room. “It was bad. Downdraft hit us just after we passed over the threshold. We probably had fifty, sixty feet to touchdown.”

“Ouch,” replied Kolikov. “Please tell me the plane is okay.”

“The plane is fine except that when I left last night to fly here we still had no connection on the primary satellite control link. I heard that they sent a couple engineers out to fix it. I’m sure it’s working by now.” Miller sat down and the men talked about the coming night, waiting for Amit Margolis to show up.

After half an hour, the room’s door opened and General David Schechter walked in followed by Amit Margolis. They were both clearly concerned – Miller thought they were agitated and that made him nervous. Everyone in the room knew Margolis well, but it was the first time any of them had met the general. The Mossad agent introduced his co-commander to the group and then summarily asked everyone other than Kolikov and Miller to leave.

With just the two captains, the general and Margolis in the room, Amit took the lead. “We have a serious problem,” he started. Miller felt his blood pressure drop involuntarily. He knew it involved the Ilyushin he had piloted the night before from Israel to the United Arab Emirates. “The primary flight control computer on Jim’s plane is out of order.”

“It was just the satellite communications module when we were running diagnostics last night,” Miller protested.

“Yes, Jim, that is what the diagnostics said and that was confirmed by what we saw here. The two IAI technicians we flew to
Ras Al-Khaimah early this morning took a replacement and switched it out. The communications now work but the real issue was being masked. The primary remote flight control computer is fried. The plane has to be flown back to Israel to fix and IAI says they need at least a day here to do the work. That plane cannot fly tonight as planned.”

“What are we going to do?” asked Kolikov, beating Miller to the question.

“We are working on re-tasking strike packages now to replace Captain Miller’s plane,” responded Schechter. “This is a contingency we have planned on for some time.”

Jim Miller interjected. “But a lot of targets
will have to be scrubbed from the list and a lot of men may die or become prisoners in Iran tonight because of this. Can’t we postpone for 24 or 48 hours?”

“We are past that point,” stated Schechter. “Too many assets are in place or in motion already. We made the decision long ago that we would go so long as we have one of your two planes still in the show. At this point, the risk from postponing is much greater than the risk of going forward.”

The room became quiet, each man reflecting on the change of plans at this eleventh hour of Block G. Jim Miller asked a question. “The plane still flies, right?”

“The plane is fine and all the systems are working other than the one system we need to fly it remotely from here,” responded Margolis.

“From here,” Miller repeated like a distant echo. Kolikov seemed to pick up on where the American pilot was going before either of the two co-commanders. “Amit, may I talk to you alone?” Miller asked.

Margolis looked at Schechter. The general didn’t say a word or even look back at Margolis, he simply stood and walked out, holding the door for the trailing Kolikov. The door closed and now only the American and the Israeli spy remained. Jim Miller took a breath and looked Margolis in the eye. “Get me back to
Ras Al-Khaimah this afternoon. I am going to fly that plane into Iran.”

Margolis slowly shook his head. “We spent a lot of time and resources to enable us to fly those two planes from right here. We did that for a reason. I
…”

Miller raised up his hand, palm out in the signal to stop. “I understand fully why the money was spent to convert those planes into giant UAVs. But you – the man who conceived all of this – are forgetting why it is you had to come up with such a plan. If that plane doesn’t fly tonight, then how many F-15 and F-16 crews are going to pay the price? Ten? Twenty? More?” The American stared Margolis in the eye
, inviting a response. None came. “Amit, I am 62 years old. I have no kids and no family. I am a gay man who lost the love of my life many years ago. How old are you?”