“Home, sweet home,” muttered Stine. He immediately claimed a hammock furthest from the door, and the rest followed suit. Kim and Bill both wound up next to the door.
“You’re free for the rest of the day, so get settled in and I’ll see you at supper,” Cheng said, then left.
“Now that we’ve all chosen our sleeping arrangements, let’s get our gear moved,” Mindy said. “Leave your packs and secondary survival kits on the plane, but bring your uniforms, and keep your belts and rifles handy.”
Being that they were at the tip of the exploration spear, nobody really knew what type of fauna existed in this timeline. According to Mindy, only a couple of timelines actually had any dangerous fauna on the islands of the Caribbean, or just about on any islands. “It’s usually on the continents you’ll find the big nasties. Here, it’s just bugs and sometimes snakes. Hence the screens and plank walls.”
Supper was grilled fish, along with rice and vegetables. Bill learned from one of the logistics crew, an Italian named Maria, that Bill’s plane had brought in the frozen vegetable. “We haven’t started getting regular supply yet, so we’re pretty limited on what we’ve got on hand,” she explained.
One of the many things that Z21 had carried in its hold was the daily alcohol rations for the base. Bill was surprised at that, never having heard about the Corps dispensing alcohol to Explorers, particularly in the field. Maria explained that it was a long-standing practice, actually taken from early US and British Navy traditions. Each Explorer was allowed one alcoholic drink in the evening while at a base. Since liquor had more bang for the buck, and because everything had to be flown in, the drink of choice was either whiskey or vodka. If one wanted, there was concentrated beer, but Bill wasn’t sure how that would taste mixed with well or rainwater, so he decided on whiskey.
As the group sat and talked after supper, Bill took small sips from his glass, making it last. He wasn’t much of a whiskey drinker, so it took him a while to make it through his ration. This was mainly because of the burning sensation it caused going down his throat, along with the sinus-clearing it induced. After an evening of getting to know others from the base, the crew of Z21 made their way back to their quarters and settled in for the night. The next day would begin the first of many journeys.
19
The next day, Bill lay in his hammock listening to the early morning sounds. Along with Doug’s snoring, he could hear a number of birds greeting the false dawn. He was about to jump out of his hammock and head to the latrine when he remembered the buddy rule. Looking around the room, he saw that Mindy was awake, so he got up and gestured toward the latrines. She got the idea, nodded, and climbed out of her hammock.
The two slipped into their flight suits and boots, put their belts on, grabbed their rifles, and headed out. After ablutions, it was off to the ops shack. Breakfast wasn’t ready, but coffee was, so the two indulged themselves as they waited for the sun to finally rise. They were soon joined by Kim and Doug, neither of whom looked wide awake or rarin’ to go. Doug barely grunted as he sipped his coffee, but became more animated as the cup was drained.
Mindy pulled out a map of Carib from the initial survey and explained that the day’s flight would take them along the southern coast of Carib. “From Gitmo to the Gulf of Ana Maria,” she said, running her finger from their location to a gulf several hundred kilometers to the west. It was then that Bill realized where they were—Guantanamo Bay! On Earth, this was still a US Navy Base on Raul Castro’s Communist Cuba. Here, it was just another protected bay.
“I want you two to ensure we image and map every square meter along the coast. We’ll be flying 1,000 meters AGL at 260 klicks, so you should be able to easily cover a three-klick-wide swath on each leg. The first leg out will be just along the shoreline, and the first return leg will be two klicks out, so be sure you cover everything and use the bathymetric system to get under the water. The second leg out and back will also be offshore. We want to make sure we get all the shoals and islands. The maritime units are gonna want that stuff, and it needs to be accurate.”
Bill calculated that flying 1,000 meters above ground level, he should easily be able to capture a swath between three and four kilometers wide.
“When we make a turn to start the next leg, start converting the captured LiDAR data into DTMs. You can convert the final leg once we land. No need to develop the topo maps, that’s what the guys at base’ll do. Your job is to gather the data and do the basics.”
Both aerial survey specialists nodded. Bill didn’t have a lot of experience running the LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) equipment, but he had the basic knowledge, and converting LiDAR data into digital terrain models was an easy process for him. The imagery Mindy referred to was really nothing more than advanced overhead digital photography, where one had to line up the images in the proper order to show a complete overlay of the land.
“Great. Let’s eat and get this show on the road,” Mindy said, as the smell of cooking food wafted into their noses.
After breakfast, Mindy filed her flight plan with operations, and the four made their way out to the plane. After a quick pre-flight inspection, she contacted the tower and was given take-off permission. “First in line, again,” she drawled over the intercom, sounding very much like a female Forrest Gump. The sun had broached the horizon less than an hour before, but the temperature was already climbing when the plane rose into the cooler air.
Once airborne, Mindy circled until Kim and Bill announced they were ready and recording. At this point, Mindy headed south to the coast, then turned west, following the coastline.
As with all long flights, this one soon became monotonous, despite all the work everyone was doing. Looking out one side, Bill saw a green island with uninterrupted vegetation extending as far as one could see. To the other side was an empty sea. He watched his displays, with brief interruptions for lavatory breaks, coffee runs for him and the crew, and to look out the windows. He noticed that they had turned north and then northeast, so he assumed they were entering the Gulf of Guacanayabo, one of the largest gulfs on the southern side of the island.
Eventually, they reached the Gulf of Ana Maria and Mindy announced the turning maneuver. The second leg was as exciting as the first, which means that it was endless wilderness with endless seas and the droning of the engines through the fuselage.
Soon it was lunchtime, and Kim offered to get everyone’s feed on. As somebody was needed to man the LiDAR equipment and at least one person was required to fly the plane at all times, the crew ate in shifts. Bill ate with Doug, who had become more animated as the day wore on. It was obvious that mornings didn’t agree with him.
Finally, they reached the third and final turn. After the maneuver, Bill could hear Mindy talking on the radio. “Carib Base, this is Flight Zulu 21, RTB. You copy?”
“Roger that Zulu 21, RTB at twelve twenty-seven hours. Advise when ten mikes out, over.”
“Roger Base. Will advise when ten mikes out. Zulu 21 out,” Mindy replied, affirming that she would notify them when she was ten minutes out from the field.
A bit over two hours later, Mindy again got on the radio to Carib Base. They were given the field conditions and cleared for first to land on the lone runway. “Again,” Mindy drawled on hearing the flight order. The crew got another chuckle out of that.
Once on the ground, the two pilots exited to complete their post-flight inspection while Bill and Kim continued converting the third leg’s LiDAR data to DTMs. The fourth leg’s data was sent to the server in the operations building where either Kim or Bill would run the conversion. The two had decided to take turns daily; that way one of them could at least get part of the afternoon off. Kim had volunteered for the first day’s run, so once the data transfer was complete, she and Bill headed over to the ops shack, maintaining the buddy system, with rifles in hand and heads on swivels.
Inside, Kim got to work. Cheng asked Bill how the survey went. They were soon joined by Mindy
and Doug, both of whom had changed out of their flight suits to the standard Explorer uniform, having showered after shutting out their flight plan. “No sense waiting until the last minute,” Mindy said. Bill figured he would wait until Kim was done before taking his. The showers, like the latrines, were co-ed, but each stall had its own privacy curtain, so it wasn’t as if they were showering together like the ground survey crews had to do in the boonies.
After Kim was done converting the data, she and Bill made their way back to the crew quarters, which Mindy had dubbed “The Swamp,” to get their toiletries. After bathing, hanging towels to dry, and placing soiled clothing in mesh laundry bags, the two headed back to the ops shack for some downtime. Both had also traded flights suits for regular uniforms. Bill figured he would do laundry in a couple of days before he used his final flight suit.
Kim elected to take the time before supper to write letters, using stationery provided by the Corps. Bill had wondered why and then decided it was probably because it was less expensive than using flash drives. Since there was no internet, only a local intranet, email wasn’t an option. Bill wrote a brief note to Meri describing the trip, the base, and his first survey. All in all, exciting, yet dull at the same time. It reminded Bill of his dad’s comments about war being 99 percent boredom and one percent sheer terror.
After writing the letter and placing it in an envelope, he was stumped as to how to get it to Meri, so he asked Mindy.
“If you know her address, put that on the envelope, and just write the word ‘SC Free’ in the place where a stamp goes.”
“’SC Free’?”
“Yeah, ‘Survey Crew Free.’ It means you’re on a survey, so all postage is free for you.”
“What if I don’t know where to send it?”
“Address it to her last known posting. Somebody’ll know where to send it on to. It may take a while, but it’ll get there. Usually, most mail is delivered within two to three weeks, which ain’t bad considering how spread out we are.”
Bill addressed the envelope to Meri at her cabin on Sacajawea Base and placed it in the mailbox on the wall between the door and the gun rack.
By this time, it was approaching supper, so he joined the crews as they formed a line to serve themselves from the buffet-style service.
Mindy waved him over to where she was sitting. Bill joined her and Mindy introduced him to a couple of Explorers, one a logistics engineer and the other a logistics supply specialist.
Bill learned there were only two supply personnel on base, along with the two mechanics he had met the day before, and eight engineers. There was also the kitchen staff, which consisted of the cook and an assistant cook, who was responsible for most of the cleanup details. Along with the crew of Z21 and the operations personnel (all two of them), that was it for base personnel.
Over supper, Bill learned that all the engineers were cross-trained in various civil engineering tasks, including light and heavy equipment operations. “We’re sorta like Navy SeeBees,” the engineer said, referring the US Navy Construction Battalions. “We do it all.”
As the meal wrapped up, Cheng stood up and tapped his plastic drinking glass with his knife. Once the room quieted, Cheng said, “Good. Looks like the entire base is here. Kim Smith and Bill Clark, please rise.”
The two did so, with befuddled looks on their faces.
“Explorers from Carib Base, let’s give a round of applause for these two. They’ve just completed their first actual survey,” Cheng announced, leading the ensuing applause.
Kim turned a bright shade of red, enhancing her brunette hair, while Bill felt the heat of a flush building under his tan. The room erupted in hooting and clapping.
Cheng gave each of them a small sky-blue uniform ribbon: the Survey Medal ribbon. “Just in case anything happens to you before you get back to Hayek, I wanted to make sure these were awarded. Put them on when you get back; it’ll impress the guys and girls,” he said with a grin.
“That is all,” Cheng formally announced to the room, shooing the two newly bemedaled Explorers back to their tables.
That evening Bill had another whiskey for his daily ration, or ‘tot’ as he was learning to call it, then he turned in with the crew.
The days followed a similar pattern. The crew would arise before dawn and be in the air within an hour after sunrise, if not earlier. The first several days were spent mapping the southern coast of Carib, including all the archipelago chains that extended along it. As the mapping progressed further from base, the flights became longer and the mapping covered less ground.
The entire crew, base and survey, were finally given a day off after their sixth day of mapping. The crew all did laundry, hanging damp clothing all over “the Swamp.” Bill found out that there was a cribbage board in the recreational portion of the ops shack, so he enticed Doug into a game, and promptly got skunked.
A resupply plane was expected. Nobody wanted to miss that, just in case there was mail or something special on board. Of course, meeting new or familiar faces was also a draw.
Shortly after four o’clock in the afternoon, the tower called the ops shack and said a Provider was inbound and twenty minutes out. Everyone headed out of the building to watch the plane land. Soon the orange high-wing craft was spotted, and in a couple more minutes it was on the ground, brakes and reverse thrusters kicking in to slow it rapidly. As it was a transient bird, rather than a semi-permanent fixture like Z21, it turned and parked on the apron.
The propellers wound down and the rear ramp lowered. Two Explorers stepped out, whom Bill surmised were the crew chiefs, responsible for loading the cargo and ensuring it was properly stored. If things weren’t stored according to a specific calculation, it was likely the plane would have issues taking off and might crash. Cheng and the base head of logistics went up to meet them.
Soon Cheng waved the crowd over and requested they help unload the plane. This was a team sport, with the flight crews pushing containers of supplies out the door and logistics crews operating small forklifts to move the cargo to the supply depot. Bladders of fuel were emptied from their locations in the cargo fuselage into the small fuel truck that served as the airfield’s fuel depot. Bill was dragooned into unloading loose items, one of which was a folding boat. He wondered about why such a small boat was brought to Carib and then he heard the assistant cook yell out, “It’s here!”
The cook told Bill it was going to be used to capture some lobsters and crabs that lived in the bay. “Nothing like fresh lobster,” he said, as he helped carry the boat off the plane. There were also oars, along with lobster and crab traps with ropes and buoys.
“Is this pretty much normal?” Bill asked, gesturing to the boat.
“Oh, yeah. Usually, they’re brought in earlier. Not sure why it took so long this time.”
One of the final items off the plane was a flitter, but unlike any that Bill had seen on Hayek. This one was a single-seater with a small metal medical litter slung under the bottom. The four propellers were in boxes rather than attached, which made it easier to transport.
When Bill asked one of the other Explorers about it, he was told it was an emergency response flitter. The four encased propellers were designed to fold up, just like old World War II Navy planes folded their wings. Unlike those planes, however, the flitter’s propellers were developed to drop down, lock into place and engage while falling. It was designed to be carried in the support Caribou, and if needed, would be dropped out the back of the plane, land, and pick up an injured Explorer. Flitters could also hover, lower the basket, and then retract it to retrieve an injured Explorer if there was insufficient space to land. The Caribou, and its larger cousin the Provider, were the only Corps planes capable of deploying a flitter in mid-flight. Such actions were possible due to each plane having a cargo door in the rear that opened down into a ramp. These doors also made it easy for the Corps to airdrop supplies to ground crews.
“It’s only got a 250-klick range, so it real
ly is only for emergencies. The batteries can be changed, but that requires landing,” Bill was told. “Either way, it’s better than trying to haul somebody out on your back five hundred klicks.”
The two mechanics jumped all over the flitter, attaching the folding propeller nacelles, the propellers, and then starting it up to ensure it flew. One of the mechanics took it for a quick loop around the field, then landed it inside the hangar next to the CL-415.
After the plane was unloaded, everyone was dismissed. The crew grabbed small overnight flight bags from the plane and walked to the ops shack. After they were settled in the transient crew quarters, they returned for supper. The co-pilot joined Bill and Kim, and explained that the crew was only going to remain overnight, or RON in pilot lingo, and be out early in the morning to get another load from Primary Base.
“We’re one of the primary support craft for Carib, so we should be back every five days or so,” she told him. It turned out that the Provider could make the trip from Primary Base in just two days, albeit two ten-hour flying days. Bill didn’t envy the flight crew those long hours.
The next morning the C-123 took off early, and for once Z21 wasn’t first in line for take-off.
Within two weeks the crew of Z21 had finished surveying the Carib coast and started mapping the interior. They began at the southeastern end of the island, close to the base, and worked their way from east to west, flying mainly north-south patterns. Each pass covered a swath between three and four kilometers wide and between 60 and 130 kilometers long, which meant they were turning every half-hour to hour. Bill calculated that they would have to fly over 38,500 kilometers just in surveys, not including transit time to and from the surveys. It would take almost a month just to cover this island. Of course, it was the largest island in the sea, so the rest of the islands should take far less time to map. It would just take more time to get to them.
The Corps of Discovery Trilogy Box Set: Books 1-3: A multiverse series of alternate history Page 23