Free Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02 by Day of the Cheetah (v1.1) Page B

front of the conference room and selected one
marked: “COMBAT CREW EMERGENCY WAR ORDER
COMMUNICATIONS PROCEDURES—TOP secret/noforn/siop/wivns.” It was the master
document used by all of the American strategic combat forces all over the
world—aircraft, submarines, intercontinental missile sites, and command
posts—outlining every one of their communication sources and methods, procedures,
frequencies, timing and locations of the nation’s domestic and overseas
communications facilities. The hieroglyphics after the title warned that the
document was top secret, not releasable to foreign nationals, part of the
Single Integrated Operations Plan—the master plan on how the United States and
its allies would conduct “the next world war.” This particular volume was dated 1 October 1994 ,
some two months from now, because it belonged to the new SIOP revision
scheduled to take place at that time. The procedures in that manual would be
used by all strategic forces for the next twelve months afterward.
                 It
made it convenient for him and the KGB, Ken thought, to have to do these
once-a-year briefings for the wing commander. The annual Mission Certification
briefings were required by law. The wing commander of each SAC base with
nuclear missions had to certify to the Commander-in-Chief of SAC, and he in
turn to the President of the United States, that each crewman knew precisely
what his duties were in case the SIOP was “implemented”—a euphemism for the
so-called unthinkable, the declaration of World War Three. Normally the
certification briefings were given once, when a crewman became mission-ready.
But the SIOP was revised each year, reflecting new rules, new tactics, and so
every year each crewman had to dig out the changed books, study them, then
brief the wing commander on the revised mission. The top-secret books were
trotted out for the certification, studied for a week, then locked away, usually
never to be seen again except for base-wide exercises or inspections. The
opportunities were rare to have such free access to these manuals, and Ken had
to work fast.
                 He
opened the manual to section four, “ELF, LF, HF and SATCOM SIOP Frequencies and
Broadcast Schedules,” and propped the pages open with a couple of books. This
section detailed all of the frequencies used by aircraft and submarines to
broadcast and receive coded messages from SAC and the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
along with what time of the day these broadcasts would be made. Anyone knowing
these frequencies and times could jam or disrupt them, specific broadcasts
could be intercepted and decoded. The crew charts had stickers that had only
one frequency, but this book had all the frequencies for the nuclear strike
force of the United States .
                 James
unzipped a leg pocket of his flight suit and took out what looked like a
thick-barreled marking pen. Moving his chair so his body would cast no shadows
across the pages, he twisted and pulled the cap, held the device a couple of
feet over the pages, and pressed the pocket clip to activate the shutter.
                 Murphy
was close, James thought as he worked. He would have liked to get assigned to
F-15S or F-i6s, or the new F-117 Stealth fighter unit, but he went where Moscow told him to go, and that was where he could
learn as much as possible about the new B-i’s nuclear-strike mission. Dreamland
was the most secret base in the country. B-i Excalibur bombers were fine, but
he would give anything to get his hands on the United States newest fighters.
                 Two
minutes later Kenneth James had finished photographing the entire chapter and
its accompanying appendices with the tiny microdisk camera. He wrapped the
device in a handkerchief to help protect it, then zipped it safely away in his
leg pocket, out of sight so no one would be tempted to ask to borrow his “pen.”