Power Play (25 page)

Skimming through the
Denver Post,
she found what she was seeking. At 11:00 a.m. on Friday, June 28, next year, 2019, he would attend a military ceremony in the city of Littleton, south of Denver, Colorado. The event was a biannual presidential occasion when the commander in chief honored his decorated Navy SEALs, the bravest of men who had died in action on foreign soil.

The ceremony in Littleton would be to honor Navy Gunners Mate 2nd Class Danny L. Dietz, whose bronze statue in full battle dress, M4
rifle at the ready, stands in a small park on Berry Street. Danny died, along with two of his comrades, in Operation Redwings, a battle in the Afghan mountains, on June 28, 2005. He was awarded the Navy Cross posthumously for courage beyond the call of duty in the face of an overwhelming enemy.

The only eyewitness account put the number of Taliban and al-Qaeda warriors at 150, against four SEALs. Danny Dietz was still fighting after being shot five times. He was a native son of Littleton.

The park, where the statue stands, is flat and tree lined, and the
Post
carried a photograph of the grassy surrounding area. In the background were the snowcapped shapes of the towering Rockies, the great craggy peaks that had turned Danny Dietz into a mountain man. He was a natural expert among the massive escarpments of the Hindu Kush in Kumar Province, where he finally went down fighting.

The current president was an emotional man, visibly moved by the families of those who died in action on behalf of the United States. He never missed this particular ceremony and took great pride in giving the address, and he always wrote it in his own words. The story in the Denver newspaper suggested that Air Force One would land at 10:00 a.m. at Buckley Air Force Base and that the C-in-C would go directly to Littleton, where he would host a luncheon for SEAL commanders.

And right there Miss Tamara had it. She had pinpointed the time and place of the president on a specific day next summer. Her task was completed. Better yet, she had been asked to try for a hillside town if possible, though the reason for this had not been made clear.

She sent an e-mail with her information directly to the Foreign Office deep in the Kremlin, and within moments it was relayed to the office of the Northern Fleet commander, Admiral Ustinov, thankfully now rid of the threat of court-martial.

The admiral was now in supreme command of Operation FOM-2, and the message from Washington was hugely welcome. There had been a lot of roadblocks on this black operation, and now, for once, there was some plain sailing. Tamara’s words had clarified many things, like time and date of attack. They provided a critical path to the most important Russian strike for many years—and they carved out a timing chart for the missile production, the establishment of a “jammer” for the football, and the date the Russian ship must clear Murmansk.

The communiqué also made clear the date by when the ship must land in Central America and off-load her cargo. Plus, it specified the time frame necessary to transport the huge generator up to Colorado. The presence of Dr. Yang had already presented them with details of the machinery necessary to put that football out of action, but this new message laid out exactly how long they had either to buy it or to make it.

Dr. Yang considered it impossible to devise a program to get into the Pentagon computer systems and somehow insert a virus that would cause chaos and thus disrupt the nuclear football programs, making them unreceptive to the presidential codes that activate them. In the jargon of US security, those are the “Gold Codes” to the nuclear launch signal.

Dr. Yang’s principal objection was the difficulty of penetrating the exquisitely designed US system. His view was, “It will take forever to achieve a specific time, and anyway it’s not really possible. You take very successful mission, like when Iran centrifuges were in chaos, no one knew exactly what time the disruption would occur, or even for how long. Only that it
would
occur. Computer virus very crazy. Not good for you.”

Dr. Yang was correct. The cyber-warfare route was too unreliable. And anyway the nuclear football was a system for satellite telephones. There was nothing high-tech about it. The president simply needed to punch in the codes. The US Command Center would do the rest.

The solution required a powerful “jammer,” a device that could be activated on demand to go straight in and knock all of the efficiency out of the football and render it useless, unintelligible. That meant positioning the Russian device in precisely the correct place and switching it on at precisely the right moment, timing it to the split second.

“That way you cut off president’s balls,” disclosed Dr. Yang helpfully.

But he confirmed such a “jammer” was difficult to make, because it needed serious electronic power, and for that it required either a US power source at exactly the place it was situated or a very large generator.

There were a zillion complications, but at least the most critical one—the path—was now clear. Admiral Ustinov sent a navy helicopter three hundred miles south to Solovetsky, to fly Dr. Yang to Severomorsk in order to lay out the engineering requirements to make a large electronic jammer with its own mobile generator that could somehow be transported up the Rocky Mountains.

When he arrived, Dr. Yang made no attempt to sugarcoat the dimension
of the task. “All jammers need to know the precise frequencies your enemy is using for transmission. Your effectiveness to cripple him will always depend on the size and power of your transmitter, because this basic electronic muscle will decide the range it will operate from.”

He explained that if the admiral hoped for a distance of three or four miles from the target, that would require a generator the size of a small room. “You want very small, unobtrusive ‘jammer’ you stand right next to target, and shudder president’s balls when you turn it on.”

Admiral Ustinov politely informed the electronic doctor that he thought two or three miles would be ideal.

“Okay. No problem. Generator will be in a very large truck and will need a supply of diesel to keep it running. How long you want it?”

“Once we’ve deactivated the target, we’ll want it to keep working for a couple of hours. Making sure the football will not transmit the critical codes.”

“With big generator, transmitting on the exact right frequencies, that football will not work until someone gets it out of your range.”

“Do you think we’ll need to make it here in the navy yards, starting from scratch?”

“No. I think we buy big industrial generator, with its own radiator control panels, compressor, pumps, and appliances. We can find one in a manufacturer’s warehouse. Then we fly it here, work on it, and build the jammer around it. We want the most powerful, ready-made jammer from China Shenzhen Technology, and then we make changes to it, so it jams what we tell it.

“This thing very heavy—maybe build it on back of truck that transports it.”

“Dr. Yang, we lift and transport warships around here. Lifting generators is no problem. Can you supply me with a list of requirements? This is a classified program, so I will make the documents myself.”

“Good plan. Don’t want information leaking to spies, huh?”

Admiral Ustinov unsurprisingly agreed with that. He reached for his notepad and pen.

“Okay,” said the doctor. “First thing, we need antennas, big ones. And they have to be external. We fix them to ‘jammer’ and have them jut out of truck roof. High, tuned accurately to frequencies we specify when we find out what they are.”

“Where do we get ’em?” asked the admiral.

“China Shenzhen. But we don’t order until we know size. You have very good electronic warfare team in monastery—they make good plan. Shenzhen fly parts in here very quick.”

“Thank you, doctor. What’s next?”

“We need a large voltage-controlled oscillator.”

“No problem. We may even have one here.” Admiral Ustinov understood very thoroughly that any “jammer” sufficiently powerful to work at a three- or four-mile distance would require an electronic circuit producing a repetitive signal of similar penetration to that on a major transmitter.

He also knew the function of this oscillator would be to create the electronic carrier wave, which would be so much more efficient if transmitted above ground level. It was Admiral Ustinov himself who had always briefed Russian military staff in the United States to seek out hilly ground for the mission.

“Recommend you have Shenzhen build special one. No mistakes,” replied Dr. Yang. “That oscillator life-or-death situation. That’s what sends the radio signal that will ruin phone signal.”

Admiral Ustinov continued to be amazed at Dr. Yang’s capacity to say precisely what he meant in a language that was plainly foreign to him.

“Next component is a special tuning circuit, which must control the frequency,” said Dr. Yang. “This jammer can only broadcast its signal by sending the exact correct voltage to the oscillator.”

Right here, the Chinese doctor lost the Russian admiral, who looked up, raised his eyebrows, and said, “Don’t worry about translating that for me. Just tell me how we get the tuning circuit.”

“We get it from Shenzhen again. They make parts compatible, not leave much testing to do here. But we will test, make sure this thing hits hard at four miles, working above its target. No mistakes.”

Admiral Ustinov smiled. “Next,” he said.

“We need a noise generator, a device that generates white acoustic noise, in the speech frequency range of 250–4,000. These things are not very big in Shenzhen, and not much range. We may have to enlarge it, give it more power, maybe attach it to our own jammer.

“But one idea for you—why not have a couple of your people in the target area carrying these things, just as backup? They could also hit home
on the football at the appointed time. When we finish, football might never work again!”

“I like it,” said the admiral. “Anything else?”

“We will need extra RF amplification.”

“We will?”

“It’s not too difficult. Just means boosting the radio-frequency power output to levels sufficiently high to jam a phone signal. And we will have a very big generator to make that simple.”

“How do we know when it’s high enough?”

“Admiral, I’m sure you have heard a small radio station being drowned out by a major national network. That usually means the small station must look for a new frequency. It’s the same all over the world. The big transmitter will choke out the lesser signal.

“That’s what we’re trying to do. Just send out one powerful beam, make president’s nuclear football useless. We get jammer well tested and in right place. We can manufacture in very few weeks. And, of course, missiles and launcher are ready.”

The admiral was thoughtful for a few moments, and then he asked for advice. “Dr. Yang,” he said, “I understand the effectiveness of this electronic hardware can vary. Do we need to consider stuff like the proximity of towers, buildings, and landscape, or even temperature and humidity? I mean, factors that could increase or decrease the range of the jammer?”

“Very definitely. We should select a three-mile launch site for our beam and make sure it’s four-mile effective. That way we’ll be okay. It will all be much better if we can get the electronics high, looking down on the target area.”

“There’s no possibility of laser beams to zap the football, is there?” asked Admiral Ustinov. “I did read somewhere the military was using them to disrupt and destroy enemy electronics.”

“That’s true,” replied Yang. “My own corporation is leader in this field, especially target acquisition. But lasers require line of sight, most effective as a ground-to-air or air-to-ground weapon. No good for us. We cannot get too close to president security. They find anything, US military first get rid of our generator truck, then Moscow, in that order. Very bad. No lasers.”

 

The visit of Dr. Yang had concentrated the admiral’s mind. It was now clear to him that the puncturing of the presidential football would require
troops on the ground. Well, spooks, not troops. This operation needed constant intelligence about the surrounding environment, and Russia needed to make a start very swiftly. That June 28 day already seemed pressing, and it was only September.

Planning was everything, and work must start this day designing a replica “football” based on whatever intelligence was available. Everyone needed to conduct rehearsals. Failure at any level could result in a hostile nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia, and the United States would win. So far as Admiral Ustinov was concerned, that was a possibility, even if Operation FOM-2 was successful. An elementary mistake in execution would be unforgivable.

He spent the rest of the day in conference with naval procurement departments, placing the electronic orders with Shenzhen Technology, knowing that Dr. Yang would personally ensure that top priority was given to everything connected to FOM-2.

His staff had located a huge industrial-size generator in a warehouse in Sofia, Bulgaria. A navy freighter was flying it in tomorrow, complete with six technicians to ensure it functioned properly. Naval engineers would make the adjustments and additions.

Admiral Ustinov had at least fifty skilled men at his disposal in the shipyards of Severodvinsk and Severomorsk.

At five he contacted the naval attaché in the Russian Embassy in Washington and tasked him with finding the frequency numbers that were normally utilized by the president’s aides. This, Admiral Ustinov knew, was not so daunting a problem as it seemed.

There were more than 3 million Russians living in the United States, many of them members of that shadowy group once known as “the Soviet sleepers”—men and women known to the Russian authorities who had been encouraged to join major US telecommunications and electronic companies with contracts with the US Department of Defense.