Robert Smith - The Planner

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-head 8, 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 year 10“.

“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! 11We’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. 12 13”

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 Secret 14, 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 Claus 15can 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?”