Spycraft - Melton [87]
The leafy trees along the roadway shielded Ken as he slipped into a pair of chest waders and pulled a specially made tool from the backpack to open the manhole. The operation required simple, as well as sophisticated technology. Once in the manhole, the waders would provide warmth and dryness. But first, the manhole’s heavy metal cover had to be removed quickly, a task for which OTS had designed a special implement. Fashioned from aluminum, the 12-inch curved tool was compact and lightweight, but strong enough to lock into a utility hole and pry the heavy iron slab from its position.
Moving to the manhole, Ken inserted the pry bar and lifted, sliding the cover off the hole just enough to lower himself into the dank semidarkness. “That was easy,” he thought, and made a mental note to thank the designers of the pry bar when he was back at the OTS lab.
Descending the ladder, Ken stepped into cold water. Looking up through the partly opened manhole, he could see only a small slice of gray sky and a thick cluster of treetops. Measuring four feet by six feet, the chamber was eight feet from bottom to top. Exiting from a matrix of conduits on one side of the manhole and reentering an identical conduit matrix on the opposite side were the lead-shielded cables that carried the target communications along with the rubber-encased civilian telephone lines.
Thigh-deep in cold water, Ken began the technical part of his clandestine work. His objective was to obtain samples of communications from the streams of high-speed data traffic flowing through the dozens of wires contained in each of the lead-sheathed cables. Although the CIA was confident that Krasnaya Pakhra communications were carried in one or more of the cables, Ken needed to identify the specific cable of primary interest by sampling signals from each of the dozen cables.
The sampling and monitoring device carried in the shabby backpack was engineered to pinpoint that cable. Designed by a private CIA contractor, the collection equipment had been shrunk down into a 25-pound package that looked like a rectangular portable radio with an array of indicator lights mounted on the top and leads set into one side to accommodate several probes simultaneously. The extracted data was recorded on what appeared to be a standard cassette tape, though capable of capturing high-quality signals on multiple tracks.
Pulling the device and various components from his backpack, he meticulously assembled the equipment before applying a probe to the first cable. The only indication of technical success for Ken, standing in the bottom of the manhole, would be if the tape moved and the light came on. If an indicator light failed or the tape malfunctioned, he had no way to troubleshoot the system and would need to abort the operation.
Ken placed the formfitting two-piece sensor, one section at a time, on either side of a cable and strapped it together with lengths of white fabric measuring a foot long by an inch wide. He then tightened and buckled the strap to hold the sensor in place. Ken’s twelve buckling straps were white by design. If he dropped one, white would be easier to spot in the poorly lit manhole. Twelve was also an easy number to remember when he inventoried the gear prior to leaving the hole. No evidence of an unauthorized entry could be left behind.
A grid of more than a dozen underground cables entered the chamber, although Ken’s attention focused on the well-protected, lead-sheathed, and gas-filled cables whose very design betrayed their significance.23 Since the data flow was often irregular, he needed to keep the monitors on each cable long enough to get an adequate sample.
Above, the noise of traffic whizzing by only a few yards away was a constant reminder of Ken’s vulnerability. If an inquisitive Soviet citizen crossed the road to look down the partially