by Mike Jenne
“I don’t work for the CIA,” reiterated Henson. “I’m employed by Apex Exploration Services.”
“So, Henson, you disavow any connection with the CIA?” asked Roberto, smiling as he drummed his fingers on his desktop blotter. His fingernails were sparkling clean and perfectly manicured.
“I do. Sincerely, sir, I don’t work for the CIA.”
“If you insist, I’ll play along with your ruse. Open your suitcases, Henson,” ordered Roberto. “Let’s see what you have.”
Henson stood up and strolled over to the table that held his luggage. He unlocked the bags and flipped them open for Roberto’s perusal. Roberto totally disregarded the wooden case that contained his sampling tools, camera, notebooks and other sundry tools of the exploration trade, and focused instead on Henson’s suitcase.
Within the suitcase, on top of his clothes and personal articles, Henson had carefully arrayed the universal currency of enticement: three cartons of cigarettes, a fifth of Jim Beam, a small envelope of cash, and the latest edition of Playboy.
Roberto set those items aside and then carefully rifled through the rest of the suitcase. Smiling contentedly, he extracted a hardbound edition of William Manchester’s The Arms of Krupp. Henson had purchased the recently published volume during his layover in Miami just hours ago. “This should suffice for a gratuity,” he declared, very matter-of-factly. “But if I take this from you, will you have anything else to read?”
“No,” replied Henson. “That’s all I brought. I figured it would last me through this trip.”
“Oh,” muttered Roberto quietly, frowning as he leafed through his new acquisition. “Then look in my bookcase there and take anything that interests you. I’m done with all of those. I hope you’re not offended, but it’s just so hard to acquire anything decent to read down here.”
Henson looked at the bookcase to the right of the table; its three broad shelves strained under the weight of purloined literature. Above the case hung two hand-carved wooden picture frames; one contained a Yale diploma and the other displayed a black-and-white photograph of a much younger Roberto, dressed in a graduation robe and grinning broadly, receiving the diploma. Henson smiled to himself, realizing that Colonel Roberto was obviously one of the more educated, refined, and eloquent thugs in the Third World. Scanning the titles in the bookcase, he selected a French book, Papillon, by Henri Charrière, that detailed the author’s odyssey after being sentenced to life at the French penal colony on Devil’s Island.
“Ah,” observed Roberto. “Bon. Excellent choice.” Gesturing for Henson to take his seat, he picked up his phone and spoke in Haitian Creole. Setting down the receiver, he said, “My driver will take you to the Hotel Roi Christophe for the evening. Please enjoy the accommodations tonight, with my compliments. The manager there is an old friend of mine; I’m sure that he will see to your every need. I assume that your employer will facilitate the remainder of your stay?”
Repacking his bribe offerings before latching the suitcase, Henson replied, “I appreciate your kindness, but I really doubt that I’ll have much need for a hotel after tonight. I work in the field, mostly, and make my bed wherever I happen to be at the end of the day. I’ll be here for the next couple of weeks. Depending on what I find, my company might deploy some additional equipment. If that’s necessary, then I’ll try to stay close to it.”
“Hopefully, you’ll find what you seek, although I stringently doubt that there is anything of value to be found. In any event, Henson, I bid you the best of luck, but I also ask a favor of you.”
“Gladly.”
“You are free to travel as you wish. I will instruct my soldiers not to detain you or otherwise obstruct your passage. But wherever you go, don’t make the mistake of giving these people false hope. There is no hope here. Americans and Europeans flock to this place with grandiose notions that they can change things. It’s like they’re passing through a revolving door; they’re here, and then they’re gone. They arrive with lofty aspirations and then go home with tragic stories to tell at dinner parties and fund-raisers, but nothing is changed. The truth is that there is nothing that can be changed. The sooner that you accept that, the better.”
Henson nodded solemnly.
“But Henson, be forewarned: if you’re here for some form of mischief that has nothing to do with scrabbling around for bauxite, it’s better that you tell me sooner than later. Think about that tonight, and if you feel like paying me another visit tomorrow, then I’ll be happy to receive you.”
“Thank you, Colonel,” replied Henson, closing his suitcase and clicking the clasps shut. “But I don’t think there will be a need for that.”
Roberto reached into his jacket. “My card, Mr. Henson. Please don’t hesitate to call on me if I can be of assistance, particularly if you find yourself in difficult circumstances.”
Henson accepted the card like it was a delicate and valuable banknote, examined it, and then carefully placed it in his wallet. “Then I’m free to go?” he asked.
“But of course,” replied Roberto, gesturing at the door with a flourish. “My men will take you back to the airport, if you wish, or to the Roi Christophe. Be sure to visit the Citadelle while you’re here. It’s the big castle in the mountains overlooking the city. Fascinating place: a lot of history there, but not much of it pleasant.”
“I’ll be sure to see it. Adieu.”
“Adieu, Mr. Henson.”
6
FALSE FLAG
Gulf of Mexico, Sixteen miles south of Panama City, Florida
12:35 p.m., Thursday, August 14, 1969
It couldn’t possibly be a more beautiful day over the Gulf of Mexico. The air was sparkling clear, the water was crystalline blue, and the sun shone brilliantly. It was an afternoon tailor-made for a glistening image in a glossy tourism brochure.
As perfect as the conditions were, Carson and Ourecky weren’t here to frolic on the pristine white beaches, but were closing out an entire week of practice water landings. Presently, they were seated in a special water drop training vehicle being hoisted aloft by a massive Army CH-54 “Flying Crane” helicopter. Consisting of little more than two enormous Pratt and Whitney turboshaft engines bolted to a skeleton-like airframe, the Sikorsky cargo hauler looked like an enormous insect.
The water drop trainer was a new addition to their pre-flight training regimen. Before their flight in June, he and Ourecky had undergone rudimentary ditching drills in the infamous “Dilbert Dunker” contraption at Pensacola Naval Air Station. Compared to the live water drops, the Dunker experience was like riding a cheap carnival attraction. A mock-up of a helicopter cockpit was mounted on a 25-foot metal rail. Once they were securely strapped in, a klaxon blared and the mock-up quickly slid down the greased rail and into the deep end of an indoor swimming pool, where it abruptly plunged underwater and rolled over. In the lopsided and confusing environment, the principal takeaway lessons were to not panic and to use rising air bubbles as a ready reference to orient themselves so they could find their way to the surface. Just relax and follow the bubbles to safety declared their Navy instructors.
Like the paraglider training vehicle they flew to practice for normal landings, the water drop trainer was a stripped-down mock-up of the Gemini-I spacecraft. For simplicity’s sake, in order to prepare the crews for the most hazardous of the potential water landing scenarios, the three skids were permanently locked down and welded in place. The control panels were simply painted replicas of the real panels; very few of the instruments actually functioned.
Fabricated from sheet metal and spare parts, the water drop trainer was expressly built to be repeatedly immersed in brine. Consequently, it was furnished with only the most basic of appointments; the rest were simulated with carefully placed ballast to ensure the appropriate weight and balance characteristics. There was no environmental system, so their suits became hot and uncomfortable in very short order. But despite the ersatz quality of most of the equipment, the two hatch
es functioned exactly as they did on the real spacecraft; after all, one of the primary objectives of the training was to evaluate their ability to evacuate the vehicle if it was in danger of sinking. Rigid booms replaced the inflatable boom components of the paraglider, so the sail’s deployment was considerably faster and smoother than their live drops from a C-130 cargo aircraft.
Glancing to his right, Carson watched as Ourecky removed his helmet and tugged a rubber “neck dam” over his head. Shaped like a big gasket, the purpose of the tightly fitting diaphragm was to prevent water from seeping into the suit once they were dunked in the drink. Since the neck dams instantly rendered their suits into oppressively hot saunas, they typically didn’t don them until just a few minutes before the drop. As aggravating as the rubber collars were, they were essential: a suit with a little leakage was a problem, but a waterlogged suit could be a death sentence. After Ourecky replaced his helmet and locked it into place, Carson fitted his own neck dam and re-donned his helmet.
He heard the helicopter pilot’s voice over the intercom: “We’re steady at altitude. Angels twelve. Five minutes to drop. Ready, gentlemen?”
“We’re good,” replied Carson. “Angels twelve. All secure and ready for drop.”
“Good luck,” said the pilot. “Have a safe ride down. Make sure you steer clear of any oil rigs out there.”
“Will do. Have a safe flight back to Rucker,” replied Carson, consulting the pre-drop checklist and turning his head towards Ourecky. “Arm pyro and seats.”
Ourecky threw a series of toggle switches. “Paraglider jettison pyro armed. Hatch pyro armed. Ejection seats are armed.”
Carson ensured that the check lights were showing green. “I verify that paraglider jettison and hatch pyro are armed. Seats are armed. Beacon transponder is activated. Check hatch pawls.”
“Hatch pawl is neutral.”
“My hatch pawl is also neutral,” answered Carson, running his hand along the hatch locking mechanism. “Both hatch pawls in neutral position. Tighten and lock restraint harness.”
“Restraint harness is locked.”
“Roger. My restraint harness is locked as well. Ready for this, buddy?” asked Carson. He spit out his chewing gum and stuck the gray lump to the “circuit breaker panel” to his left. “Last drop before we head for Wright-Patt.”
“I’m ready as I’ll ever be,” answered Ourecky. “But I’ll be even happier when I’m back home.”
“Me too.” Carson had been concerned with Ourecky’s behavior this week. Although the engineer consistently executed his procedures correctly, it didn’t seem like he had his head fully in the game. He didn’t fear that Ourecky was losing his confidence; if anything, the right-seater had recently become almost annoyingly cocky at times. Still, something was off; Carson felt sure that he was distracted, but couldn’t divine the source of the distraction, and Ourecky didn’t seem too willing to share.
Now, it was time to focus on matters at hand, because even in a training environment, they could swiftly find themselves in tremendous danger. Although they had practiced landing the paraglider-equipped Gemini-I on virtually every imaginable surface—snow, ice, desert, sand, gravel, packed earth, rain-slick asphalt—in any conceivable environment, this intensive training session prepared them for the most dangerous post-reentry scenario of all, an emergency splash-down at sea.
Why could water landings be so dangerous? The first problem was the physical nature of water. As high divers, water skiers, and Golden Gate suicide jumpers could readily attest, although water might appear to be a kind and forgiving medium, it was brutally incompressible. The fluid may yield ever so slightly to the knife edge of a diver’s hands, but it didn’t readily surrender the right of way, particularly to large blunt objects.
The second problem with water landings lay in the highly utilitarian design of the Gemini spacecraft. From the very outset of the program, the Gemini was ingeniously designed to touch down on dry land. NASA’s water-landing configuration was actually an afterthought. Had the designers known that every NASA Gemini mission would eventually terminate in a splashdown at sea, they could have readily omitted the landing gear skid wells from their blueprints even before they left the drawing board, and the astronauts could have ridden into orbit in a cockpit considerably more spacious and accommodating. Why did NASA shelve the concept? The crucial paraglider could not be refined in time. After expending four years and over 165 million dollars in development, NASA abandoned the concept of returning to terra firma when the paraglider proved troublesome during initial testing. Luckily for the Project, the primary contractor—North American Aviation—was well on its way to perfecting the paraglider even as NASA’s ten Gemini flights were drawing to a close.
But an object exquisitely configured to touch down on dry land did not necessarily do so well on water. In an absolutely perfect world, as a paraglider-equipped Gemini-I made contact with the water, its skids would skim along the surface of the sea like a giant water bug in a Disney nature documentary, eventually losing momentum and slowly settling into the waves to bob gently like a massive fishing cork. But reality was much harsher. Numerous experiments had shown that upon contact with the surface of the water, instead of dissipating energy by hydroplaning, the three skids effectively acted as a giant speed brake.
If the Gemini were designed like a more conventional aircraft, where the landing gear could be lowered and retracted by a hydraulic mechanism, this might not be an issue. Theoretically, if the gear were raised and lowered by hydraulics, then the crew could simply retract the skids if they saw that they were coming down over the water. But alas, the Gemini was contrived with the most spare of functionality in mind. The tripod landing gear’s design reflected this simple philosophy. Once the gear were down, there simply was no means to raise them again. The skid struts were actuated by an extremely reliable compressed gas system, and once the gas forced the struts to their full extent, a simple set of spring-loaded detents latched them irrevocably in their extended position.
So, almost without exception, even in the most tranquil of sea states, their water landings were typically much more traumatic than sliding in on gravel or even packed earth; as soon as the skids bit water, the two men were usually subjected to a bone-jarring wallop that slammed them forward against the windows and instrument panels.
Worse yet, combined with the braking effect of the skids, the spacecraft’s forward momentum had a profound tendency to swiftly propel the nose underwater. Once its blunt nose planed underwater, the Gemini-I acted with all the hydrodynamic characteristics of a concrete cinder block. Consequently, flaring and jettisoning the paraglider became that much more crucial. Even then, it was extremely difficult to gauge the spacecraft’s height above water in daylight, even in the best of conditions, and virtually impossible at night.
If the paraglider was not stalled and was still driving forward with any appreciable speed at all, the effect was not unlike an unconscious skier being dragged behind a very powerful speedboat. More often than not, they would go underwater fast, a consequence which presented them with an entirely new set of potential hazards. Within a matter of seconds, as they sank, water pressure would prevent them from manually opening the hatches. If they were quick on the draw and not incapacitated from impact, they could disable the low-velocity ejection seats and fire the hatch pyro. Then it was a simple matter of scrambling out as quickly as possible as seawater gushed in. Of course, the spacecraft sank even faster as it progressively took on water.
The hatch pyro was the fastest route to safety, but it was ineffective once the spacecraft had submerged a few feet underwater. Actually, the pyro charges weren’t just ineffective, they were downright dangerous. Given the incompressible nature of water, the explosive force of the pyro charges had to be dissipated somewhere, and the only somewhere that was available was the spacecraft’s cabin. So, the crew had to detonate the charges at exactly the right time to make their escape, because if they fired them too late, th
ey would likely die in the process. And if by chance they inadvertently skipped the all-important procedural step of disabling their ejection seats, it really didn’t matter when they fired the pyro, because the ejecting seats—even though they were low velocity models and not the standard Weber seats fitted in NASA Geminis—would smash their heads against the unforgiving hatches, which would simultaneously shatter their necks.
If there was even the most remote possibility that they might overshoot or undershoot a dry landing site and come down in water, they learned to delay lowering their skids until the last minute, even though there was a risk that the skids would not fully deploy. After all, a dry ground belly landing with skids up was far preferable to a water landing with skids down. If the skids weren’t deployed, there was a fairly good chance that the spacecraft would remain afloat almost indefinitely, provided they landed in a decent sea state. That was the ideal outcome, since the spacecraft could be recovered with all the intelligence data they had collected on the mission. On the other hand, the spacecraft could not be economically recycled after immersion in salt water; some parts could be recovered, but for all intents and purposes, the vehicle would be counted as a lost asset.
If the skids were already deployed and they saw that they were definitely going down in the drink, the most prudent recourse was to jettison the paraglider and eject. If they did elect to ride the spacecraft down with skids deployed, the underlying theme was to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. The best case scenario ended with them floating peacefully on blissfully serene seas, patiently awaiting the arrival of stalwart pararescuemen from the 116th Wing; the worst case scenario saw them helplessly descending to the ocean floor as their precious air gradually dwindled.