Subsequent advances in aircraft design and stealth technology, as well as improvements to air-tracking radar systems employed by unfriendly nations, had rendered the Skyhook system effectively obsolete; there were much better ways to rescue downed pilots and deep-cover agents, much safer and much more pleasant ways.
The principle behind Fulton’s system was fairly simple. A transport aircraft would make a foray into enemy territory and airdrop a package containing all the necessary equipment: a harness, five hundred feet of high-tension rope, and a self-inflating balloon. The man on the ground would don the harness, connect himself to the balloon and then send it aloft. The whole process could be accomplished in just a few minutes. Once the balloon was in the sky, the plane would make one more pass, driving straight at the balloon. A special trap attached to the nose of the aircraft would snag the rope and yank the man into the sky.
That was where the really uncomfortable part began. The first thing the person in the harness would experience was sudden rapid acceleration — zero to two hundred miles an hour in the blink of an eye. The elasticity of the rope alleviated some of this effect, but the G-forces involved were enough to make some people black out. Next, came the high-altitude double whammy: freezing temperatures and low air pressure. While the plane beat a hasty retreat back to friendly skies, the unlucky CIA asset would experience the equivalent of climbing an Alpine mountain in the space of a few seconds. Last but not least, there was the spinning; an object trailed at high speed through the air had a tendency to spin like an out-of-control kite. This spin could induce dizziness, nausea or even unconsciousness. Fortunately, there was an easy way to stop the spin: the disoriented man dangling at the end of the rope needed only to extend his half-frozen arms and legs, spread-eagling like a body-surfer, until the air crew in the plane managed to reel in their catch.
Capture and torture by the enemy was almost a preferable alternative.
Officially, the Air Force ceased using the Skyhook in 1996. Unofficially, the equipment and the capability to employ the Skyhook was maintained by the Joint Special Operations Command as a ‘just in case’ measure.
No one had been especially thrilled by King’s suggestion that they use the Skyhook to whisk them out of Iran, least of all King himself, but with time and resources in short supply for the team, and with secrecy a paramount concern, Deep Blue had signed off on it. There was the matter of retrofitting Senior Citizen to accommodate the thirty-foot long horns that would be used to snare the balloon — no simple task since the craft was designed for super-sonic travel. There was also the question of whether the pick-up line could hold the weight of six passengers; it was theoretically possible, but the system had never been used to pick up more than two men at a time.
What was most certainly not in the original plan was deploying the STARS from inside a moving vehicle while being chased down a rural highway by half the Iranian National Police force.
In a rare instance of serendipity, the forward momentum of the Toyota actually made things easier. Like with a kite pulled along by a running child, the line pulled taut, and the balloon — which was festooned with blinking infrared lights — cut through the sky in an almost perfectly straight line, providing an easy target for the pilot sitting at the controls of Senior Citizen.
Unseen by anyone on the ground, the stealth plane came from out of the west and streaked across the sky. Even without the constantly updated GPS coordinates supplied by the mysterious entity known only as Deep Blue, the pilot would have been able to find the target vehicle simply by following the string of flashing red and blue lights trailing behind it.
The pilot banked the aircraft to the right, carved a tight turn in the sky and with his computerized targeting system, locked onto the balloon. The plane advanced unerringly toward the blinking lights, and then, with textbook precision, it snared the balloon in the V-shaped trap.
One at a time, like an unraveling chain-stitch, the six passengers in the SUV were plucked from their seats. The empty vehicle cruised forward a few hundred yards before veering off the road and crashing into a stand of trees. By the time the police cars arrived, the plane, still trailing the Chess Team plus one, was already several miles away.
Because they were already traveling forward at about seventy miles per hour, the effect of the sudden acceleration was considerably reduced, though understandably, this was of little comfort to the six people dangling daisy-chained from the nose of the aircraft.
King had imagined that being jerked out of his seat would feel a little like what happened when his parachute opened during a jump — a sudden bone-jarring snap. He would later reflect that his erroneous assumption had been for the best; if he’d actually known what to expect, he never would have gone through with it.
For several long seconds, he struggled through a barrage of sensory inputs, all of them unpleasant. Biting cold ripped into him, blasting his face with such intensity that he couldn’t breathe, much less open his eyes. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that he was spinning uncontrollably, but the accompanying disorientation, coupled with the relentless assault from the wind, confounded his efforts to take any sort of action to arrest the spin. Mustering his last vestiges of will power, he unclenched his limbs from the protective fetal curl he had instinctively assumed, and extended his arms.
The sense of vertigo started to abate after a few moments, emboldening him to stretch his legs out as well. Now, instead of corkscrewing through the sky, he felt himself bouncing up and down, buffeted by invisible currents of air. He felt like he was trying to swim up Niagara Falls, but there wasn’t a single thing he could do to end the ordeal.
Then, almost without being aware of the transition, the pervasive Arctic blast and the jarring turbulence stopped, and he felt something solid beneath him. His face felt like a frozen mask, but he managed to open his eyes enough to see two men in cold-weather flight suits dragging him up a metal ramp and into the relatively protected interior of the stealth transport’s cargo hold.
There was a loud whine and a deep rumble as the ramp began moving, and then a metallic thump, completely cut off the howling of the wind.
At first, he didn’t see anyone except the crewmen, and a wave of panic crashed over him. He tried to ask them for an update, but the words wouldn’t come out. One of the men said something, a reassuring comment that barely registered through the lingering fog of the experience, and then King was wrapped in a heavy blanket. There were other blankets strewn about the floor of the hold, and after a few more seconds, he realized that nestled within each of the shapeless heaps was one of his companions.
He did a quick count. Five altogether.
They’d made it.
He huddled his arms around his torso, pulling the blanket tight, and savored the warm feeling of relief that came with that realization.
Eventually, they emerged from their cocoons, imbibed hot beverages supplied by the flight crew and displayed fits of outrage at the nightmare they had just gone through — some of it was directed at King, and not all of it was playful. King kept his distance, focusing his attention on Sasha, who seemed practically comatose; he wondered if she actually understood that she had been rescued.
When the plane touched down at Incirlik Air Base half an hour later, and the team members roused themselves and prepared to disembark. Rook loudly announced that the first thing he was going to do was kiss the tarmac. Sasha just sat in her seat, staring blankly ahead, as if she was waiting for further instructions. King gently grasped her arm and coaxed her to rise.