The Planner

Chapter Two: Nicholas

The following morning, Bates and Planner were standing at an unremarkable door and gave it a knock. Nothing on the outside gave a clue as to what was behind the door.

“What was Nicholas’ minor health concern?” asked Planner.

“A heart attack?” said Bates.

“That’s minor?” said Planner incredulous.

“A minor one,” nodded Bates.

Colonel Nicholas opened the door and let them in. Nicholas was in his late fifties, clean-shaven, slim, bald and tall and dressed in a light gray suit. He certainly seemed fit for his age. He welcomed Bates and Planner into a busy office similar in size to Rainbow’s, and then into a further smaller, private inner office. On the wall was a large, military-style logo with a cartoon jet fighter in the middle of a cage with metal bars.

Nicholas explained, “Our job is to keep the air force at bay. Hence the cage”, He pointed to the logo. “Nicholas Cage. Sorry, all the code names are sort of stupid like that.”

“Right”, said Planner.

Nicholas continued, “Needless to say, it’s the air force’s job to intercept enemy aircraft, straying airliners and, dare I say, hijacked aircraft too.”

“And I guess they are good at that,” observed Planner.

Nicholas sat back in his chair, fingers pressed together. “The best air defence money can buy. Best radar, best aircraft, best computers.”

“Lots of money, sure, but how good is it, really?” asked Bates sceptically.

“On civil aircraft? The USAF intercept about 100 times a year?⁷” he replied coolly.

“How about for uncivil aircraft?” asked Planner.

Nicholas stood up and paced, after a few hums, he said, “For the past forty years, we have had biennium trials of our radar defences. The game was played out with real aircraft with the Brits acting as the Red Team. The Royal Air Force flew their stealthiest aircraft, three of them, Vulcan bombers, with the objective to nuke New York. We won if we could just spot their bombers. They won if one of their bombers got to twenty miles of New York. This is public record”.

Nicholas bent down and took a book from a bookshelf and dropped it in front of Bates and Planner. The book was “Vulcan 607” by Roland White. It was about the Falklands War raid undertaken by the RAF using the old British, Flying Wing, V Bomber, the Vulcan. Planner assumed that the book corroborated Nicholas’s assertion concerning these war games.

Bates murmured, “I’m thinking that I’m not going to like this.”

“Well, you’d be right”, Nicholas stated. “All three of their aircraft sailed through for the first ten years of these games. And they still technically won for next ten years. In theory, the Brits could have nuked New York. But since 1980, we’ve had a 100 % interception success rate.”

“So the USAF can protect New York?” mused Planner. “I presume you know about our target?”

“I do know, although no-one else in Operation Nicholas knows. Not officially,” stated Nicholas tightly.

“Officially I can tell you and your team,” said Planner. “It’s the World Trade Center.”

“Yes,” said Nicholas without emotion.

“On similar problems,” said Bates helpfully, “to cause a delay in a command-based hierarchy such as the USAF, the method, I’ve seen, is to chop-off-the-head⁸, paralyse the HQ and delay.”

“Yes,” said Nicholas in an overly drawn out manner. “What about three air commands: USAF, Navy and National Guard. And a lot of worthy hero-wannabes capable of independent action?” Nicholas asked rhetorically.

“So this is a bit of a show stopper?” Planner observed coolly. “How are we going to deflect the air defences? I know about switching off the Massachusetts J53 radar.⁹”

Nicholas smiled, “Ah yes, that’s just a minor part. We have three phases of the operation: Nicholas A, Nicholas B, Nicholas C…”

Bates turned to give Planner a knowingly look and wry smile.

The Colonel went to a white board that has a rough map of USA. “Naturally”, he started, “most aircraft will be deployed on training exercises.” He drew arrows from north-east USA to Alaska, New Mexico and Caribbean.

Planner interrupted, “Won’t that be kind of obvious?”

Nicholas added two more arrows, “Five separate training exercises. Most of which have been annual events for years. We’ll just be going-large this year¹⁰“.

“Uh. Ok. So how many actual interceptors will there be left?” asked Planner, cutting to crux of the issue.

Nicholas draws five little triangles to represent aircraft. “Flyable aircraft?” Nicholas said. “Five or six!¹¹ We’ll have each USAF, National Air Guard and US Navy aircraft pinpointed and pinned down. We’ll view the rota carefully. Each pilot and controller will be identified, each having an off-day with either senna pod or a celebration the night before… Their flight plans will have them flying in the wrong directions. The executive will be split and all orders have to be authorised by them, or rather, by the COG, and the COG Team will be unavailable, of course.”

The Colonel paused as he recalled the details from memory. “For Nicholas A: We’re changing all the intercept procedures. Emergency roll out: all sorted before the summer. The hardest job has been the computer software changes. A rush-job… but it has still taken a year to complete! We started by looking at the problem from the civilian side, the FAA air traffic controllers. By removing the raw radar picture from the FAA computer systems, they will only ever see the aircraft’s squawk code from transponders”. The Colonel cleaned an area of the map and drew a dot with four digits underneath to represent the transponder code.

“And we control those transponder codes?” Planner asked.

“Yes,” said the Colonel, “allowing the FAA only to see what we want them to see. And all this is just-in-case someone in the command chain attempts to by-pass the new procedures.”

“But the military will still be able to track aircraft down without transponders,” observed Planner.

The Colonel speckled the board with extra dots. “But not if we introduce extra radar blips via FAA’s link to NORAD. And before you ask, yes, we do have a subcontractor in place to add those tracks.¹²¹³”

Planner glanced over to Bates, before asking Nicholas, “Ok. But how do we track our aircraft?”

Nicholas replied, “We have an entirely separate radar picture delivered via AWACS. Processed at Top Secret¹⁴, NORAD and FAA won’t be able to see what is really going on. Just us.” Nicholas drew a crude picture of an AWACS aircraft in red and circles certain dots in red and continued, “So that’s Nicolas Phase B. Our simulations indicate that there will be no fighter intercepts for around 90 minutes.”

“Hmm, that’s a good constraint on the event,” Planner mused. “The politicians wouldn’t want to be out of control any longer than that.”

Bates chipped in, “And Nicholas Phase C? What’s the tidy up phase looking like?”

Nicholas laughed. “I had a few plans in my head about Phase C but I think that will be the easy part,” he said. “The military will act all incompetent and then argue for money for an upgrade to their radars. I’m sure there’s a few migrating birds that we can’t track at the moment.”

“And Santa Claus¹⁵ can be pretty tricky”, added Bates.

Nicholas laughed, “That’s right!”

Planner and Bates spent the rest of the afternoon talking over details of Operation Nicholas with the Colonel. When the meeting broke up Planner asked Nicholas, “So I’m sort of taking over from you on Rainbow. Do you have any advice for me?”

“KISS!” replied Nicholas.

“Kiss?” smiled Bates.

“Keep It Simple, Stupid,” Nicholas explained.

“So that’s what you’ve done?” smiled Planner.

“Not exactly,” Nicholas winked back.

* * * *

Planner was packing up, ready to leave the office when he heard a deliberate cough behind him. Planner turned to see Indigo, his curly hair looking ruffled, wearing an uncertain smile. “I was just wondering whether I can have a quick word,” muttered Indigo uncertainly.

“Sure. Sit down. Actually let’s go into this room,” said Planner pointing to a side office.

“So what’s your role?” asked Planner once reaching the relative privacy of the room.

“I’m in charge of Alignment: story and artefacts. I liken the role to a Continuity Supervisor on a movie,” said Indigo briskly.

“So any problems with that?” asked Planner.

“I feel as though we are getting on top of the problem now with more staff coming on board. We have access to workshops and materials now, which was a problem last month,” said Indigo airily.

“So what’s up?” asked Planner trying not to sound irritable.

“You said that people should voice their concerns over the mission,” said Indigo meekly.

“Right. I felt you were a little bit wary about the mission in the briefing. Are you going to ask me, is it really going to be worth it?”

“Pretty much…” admitted Indigo.

“Is this about being a domestic job or just the whole job in general?” asked Planner carefully.

“I think I’m thinking more about the job because it is in the US. It’s hard to articulate because I know it shouldn’t matter… but it does.”

“So is it the objectives of the mission? Or the possibility of collateral damage?”

“Both really,” squirmed Indigo.

“Collateral damage. Yes, there will be. The PsyOp needs the shock value of many deaths. But as I mentioned earlier we have a range of measures to reduce the real numbers compared to the publicised numbers.” Planner stands up and paces he room. “US citizens are confronted with danger every day: on the roads, by medical procedures, military missions. There is risk in everything. Our operation is just adding to the risks for one day. One day. And from that day, our sponsors are hoping and expecting a pay off of long-term security and benefits to the American people. I can’t give you any assurances on that pay off. I’ve been involved in several of these types of missions; Horrible events… They are not pretty… You really don’t want to know… They often do not even achieve the end result required by our sponsors. But that’s our job. We won’t be told all the objectives. For this one, it’s the same. I’ve been given the general context no different from the one I mentioned in the briefing. I haven’t been told any more than what you have. I just have to trust the people in Washington and hope to God that they know what they’re doing. I don’t know whether that has helped at all?”

“Yes it has,” Indigo replied with an uncertain smile.

“If you want to exit the mission, then just say and I’ll get you re-assigned tout suite,” said Planner.

“No… no. It’s ok. I just needed the pep talk. Thanks for that, Planner. I hope you don’t mind me laying this on you,” said Indigo.

“It’s not a problem, Indigo. This mission is a hard one, that’s for sure. And these chats can really only be done one-on-one. If you hear of anyone else with similar concerns then refer them to me,” replied Planner with inner satisfaction.

“Sure. Ok, thanks.”