Seminole Bend

by Tom Hansen

  They ate at Tuscan’s, an expensive Italian restaurant on the riverfront overlooking the Monongahela. The bill arrived in a leather binder from a waiter wearing a black tux. Roy put a dollar bill inside and closed the binder without his date noticing. The gorgeous gal and Roy left the restaurant and thanked the waiter on the way out. As soon as the door closed behind him, Roy suggested that they walk briskly back to her apartment. He claimed to be overstuffed from pasta and needed a bit of exercise. In reality, he wanted to be as far from the restaurant as possible when the waiter realized he had been stiffed.

  With the one night stand successfully completed, the young lady kissed Roy and said she would see him at the Greyhound station a little before ten so he could catch the bus to Milwaukee. Roy nodded, but then got dressed and walked quickly to Marks, Taylor and Smith for his first day of work. At ten o’clock, the bus pulled out from the station and headed west to Wisconsin. The ticket agent was bewildered that Roy hadn’t shown up, then became disconsolate with the thought that she may never see him again. But the memories of last night would never fade, especially nine months later when her only son would be born.

  CHAPTER 2

  House of Jasur

  1940s and 1950s

  L andlocked and surrounded by Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia is Jasurbia, a wasteland country of windswept sand dunes and a smattering of date palm oases containing a few patches of fertile soil. Once oil was discovered in the 1940s, no one cared much about the dates.

  Prince Adil Al Jasur was given his name because it meant fair, honest and just in Arabic. He was anything but. His father, King Mustafa ibn Jasur, relishing the newfound oil riches, proceeded to provide a lavish lifestyle for the Jasur family, building extravagant palaces in each of the five Jasurbian provinces. The king’s oldest son, Hakim, flaunting his wealth around Europe, built a mountain chalet in the Swiss Alps and a gambling hall in Monte Carlo. Prince Adil craved the same lifestyle as his brother Hakim, but was jealous that the crown prince had received all the family attention. When Adil turned fifteen, he was sent to govern the Al Qadir region of Jasurbia while Hakim became the Minister of Defense. Prince Adil was fascinated with the new attack planes built by the United States and was hoping his father would have named him to oversee the defense of his country instead of his brother. He had always been envious of Hakim and he vowed to someday embarrass his brother in hopes that his father would reassign him to the defense position. Adil made this his life mission and he didn’t care how long it took to accomplish. Meanwhile, he was a powerful prince in an adolescent boy’s body and it was time to build his harem. By the time he was sixteen, Adil had twenty wives and a countless number of concubines. He was never lonely!

  Yussef, born in 1933, was the oldest son of seventy-six children fathered by Adil and was the prince’s pride and joy. Yussef was a soccer star by the age of six and wanted to be just like his Italian idol, Giuseppe Meazza, when he grew up. But Yussef was intellectually gifted in the sciences and Adil saw an opportunity to use his son’s brainpower to finally unseat Hakim as Minister of Defense. The House of Jasur was wealthy beyond imagination with petroleum reserves in abundance under the arid desert just waiting to be tapped.

  Prince Adil sent Yussef to America at the age of fourteen to learn engineering skills from American professors in the hopes that his son could find a way to prevent enemies from attacking Al Qadir Province by air. Well, at least that’s what he told Yussef. Actually, the prince’s motive was to collapse the novice Jasurbian military aviation industry that his brother had implemented as a means of national defense. If successful, his father, King Mustafa, would surely replace Hakim’s ministerial position with himself. Yussef passed Yale’s entrance exams with perfect scores while his daddy sent a donation in the amount of one million dollars to the Yale Scholarship Fund, which prompted Yale administrators to welcome the youngest Ivy League student ever with open arms. Yussef played soccer at Yale and left three years later with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, then transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to specialize in physics. One summer, he was employed as a consultant for Marks, Taylor and Smith, a law firm in Pittsburgh.

  Upon graduation, Yussef returned to Jasurbia and was appointed Al Qadir Province Chief Science and Technology Officer by his father. Prince Adil wasted no time asking him to design some sort of device that could disrupt air traffic control communications with airplanes. Yussef thought his father wanted him to create a new defense system for Uncle Hakim in Fayez, the capital of Jasurbia. He had no idea that his father was trying to depose the crown prince from his ministry position by finding a way to bring down Jasurbian military planes.

  CHAPTER 3

  April 15, 1960

  W hen Ray Jackson learned that his baby brother had been working at a law firm in Pittsburgh as an attorney for the past four years without a law degree or passing the Pennsylvania state bar exam, he laughed uncontrollably. “That little con artist,” Ray said shaking his head. He was sitting at the Officer’s Club in Annapolis drinking with Oliver Harfield.

  “How did he get that job anyway?” asked Oliver in between sips of Miller draft beer. He and Ray had been living the Hi-Life themselves for some time, as well. Both had graduated with honors from the Naval Academy: Oliver because he was smart and Ray because he was a master at cheating. Now officially ranked as ensigns, the two friends were awaiting orders for their first command position.

  “Some lawyer name Daughtry hired him to help research an airplane crash investigation. Their biggest client is Northwest Orient and there was some sort of radar malfunction in Minneapolis back in 1950. They finally settled out of court last week. Roy said a Jasurbian prince’s kid was hired as a consultant to help out with all the technical stuff.”

  “Should have hired us,” joked Oliver. “I’m sure we know more about radar malfunctions then a spoiled rich kid from Jasurbia. Shoot, they don’t even have airplanes over there. I don’t think they even have electricity!”

  “Our training with naval radar functions is top secret, Ollie. I don’t think we should be talking too loud here with all these officers hanging out.”

  “Yep, you’re right, Ray. But you know, I bet there’s a lot of money that changes hands when an airplane crashes. Lawsuits galore!” Ray looked up from what was left of the foam head in his glass and met eyes with Oliver.

  “I hope you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, Ensign Harfield?”

  “Well, I might just be, Ensign Jackson. Any chance your little con artist brother, Counselor Roy, would like to take a nice vacation to Maryland someday soon? Sure would like to chat with him.” Oliver and Roy toasted each other and ordered up another round.

  * * * * *

  On May 1, 1960, the USSR shot down an American military U-2 reconnaissance jet that was searching for nuclear weapons over Soviet territory. Suddenly, the Central Intelligence Agency shifted from a fledgling spy service to the fundamental organization used to protect America from foreign adversaries.

  Those cadets and midshipmen who had graduated with honors from West Point and the Naval Academy were swiftly recruited into covert duty and assigned to an international location by President Eisenhower himself. Ensigns Oliver Harfield and Ray Jackson were given orders to report to a secret CIA research laboratory stationed underneath the Al Raha Bayt Hotel in Jeddah, then locate and convince a Jasurbian radio electronics expert named Yussef Jasur to come work for the CIA in the Saudi Arabian facility. Their mission was to oversee and assist the Yale and MIT grad in finding a way to prevent the Soviet Union’s military from shooting down American reconnaissance planes. But on the flight to the Middle East, Harfield and Jackson had a better idea, one their bosses must never know about. After all, treason was still punishable by death in the United States.

  * * * * *

  Oliver and Ray received no resistance signing a deal with the devil. Prince Adil gladly offered up his oldest son and all the cash necessary to successfully carr
y out Harfield and Jackson’s newly created masterplan.

  “How dastardly!” thought Prince Adil as visions of himself ruling the world danced in his head. “Why didn’t I think of that myself?”

  All the prince wanted in return for loaning out Yussef was a piece of the action and a chance to bring down one of the world’s two superpowers, the mighty US of A. Then he would prove to his father that he, not his brother Hakim, should have been appointed Crown Prince and the next king of Jasurbia.

  Yussef was sent to Jeddah and set up shop in an unused rat hole of a cellar built underneath the Al Raha Bayt Hotel that the CIA called a laboratory. Working around the clock, in a few short weeks Yussef was close to inventing a radar jamming device that could scramble and falsify air traffic signals. All he needed was a little more time to test it and tweak it.

  Oliver spoke to President Eisenhower personally and told him that the special assignment was sadly going absolutely nowhere, but he would continue to monitor Yussef’s progress and report back to Washington on a weekly basis. The president was disappointed and considered ending the project. Oliver was running out of time.

  To successfully complete the task and tie up loose ends in a rush, Yussef asked to have an MIT buddy who majored in electromagnetism, Abdul Samad, join him on this project. Abdul had returned to Jasurbia and started up the first Radio Shack franchise in the country. Oliver and Ray agreed that Yussef could use some help and Abdul was happy to partner up again with his old friend.

  Laboring relentlessly nonstop through twelve-hour days, five weeks later Yussef and Abdul finalized the creation of a small, electrical instrument they believed would jam radar functions if the correct frequency was located. But it would need to be installed in a flight control tower’s computer mainframe in order to work.

  Pretending to hold written orders from President Eisenhower, Harfield and Jackson commanded a low-ranking rookie CIA agent to break into a Soviet military aircraft center and position the jammer into the mainframe. A daunting task, but it could be done. Bringing down a MiG jet would be the ultimate test.

  CHAPTER 4

  July 3, 1960

  Y ussef and Abdul knew an important piece of Oliver and Ray’s plot was missing. Simply put, jamming the radar and providing false data signals between the control tower and airplane would not necessarily cause an accident. A well-trained MiG pilot would be able to see that the radar data feed was inaccurate and attempt to land visually. If the weather and visibility was bad, the jamming device would most likely work just fine, but at other times . . . it was just a crapshoot.

  Years earlier, while working on an end of semester project at MIT, Abdul had invented a remote control instrument that could infiltrate automobile steering functionality using radio band technology, thus controlling cars from a long distance away. The automobiles required the newfangled power steering option to be installed in the vehicle in order for the remote control to work. Abdul had used a 1951 Chrysler Imperial in his experimental tests at MIT. He believed that the same type of apparatus could be used to guide aircraft from a remote location. It was time to sell the idea to Oliver and Ray.

  “Mr. Oliver, please sir, Abdul and I have something to discuss with you,” Yussef uttered politely as he bowed his head and did not look Oliver or Ray directly in their eyes. He knew the CIA traitors would not be happy about another delay necessary to efficaciously complete their grand scheme.

  “What is it, Yussef?”

  “You are planning to secretly install our new jammer into a Soviet military base control tower next week, correct?” asked Yussef with a bit of trepidation. “What makes you think that will bring down a Mig-21 jet?”

  “What are you getting at, Yussef?” Oliver was puzzled. “You know damn well what our plans are!”

  “Well, sir, if successfully placed into the Soviet’s computer guidance system, I’m sure the jam will scramble signals effectively. However, the MiG pilot can still land the aircraft using his own visual acuity.”

  “Go on,” said Oliver, now listening closely. He and Ray had thought about that possibility, but guessed that jamming would occur only on a foggy or stormy night when visibility was deeply hampered.

  Abdul explained in great detail his remote control experiment at MIT and how in theory it could be used to pilot aircraft from a long distance away. It would require some sort of video guidance system so the operators on the ground could have eyes in the air. Used together with the radar jamming device, Oliver’s masterplan would be fail safe.

  Oliver and Ray talked about it, then Oliver went to the phone and called the CIA operative who was awaiting orders at Baranovichi Air Force Base in the Belarus Republic. He ordered him to stand down and wait for further instructions.

  Two days later, Oliver and Ray were sitting cross-legged on huge, silk pillows and sipping tea served from a brass pot as honored guests of Prince Adil of Al Qadir Province. The prince had just written a check to each man in the amount of one million United States dollars drawn from a Swiss bank account. The House of Jasur now had a finger in the pot of American espionage, albeit with rogue agents hell bent on personal gain.

  CHAPTER 5

  November 7, 1960

  O n November 7, 1960, Oliver Harfield phoned CIA Director Alex Dulles to tell him that he and agent Ray Jackson were forced to execute Yussef Jasur after they caught him red-handed selling secrets to the USSR. It was a lie. Harfield claimed that Yussef was providing Soviet KGB agents with technical information that would be used to crash Air Force One during President Eisenhower’s trip to New York to celebrate Richard Nixon’s anticipated presidential win over John F. Kennedy. They telegraphed a completely fabricated official report detailing the KGB’s use of implausible technical advancements that were going to be used to bring down the world’s most famous airplane.

  Coincidently, the report also appeared to demonstrate Harfield and Jackson’s extraordinary heroics in the face of immense danger in order to protect the president. Director Dulles and President Eisenhower discussed the startling details of the apocryphal report and immediately promoted Oliver Harfield and Ray Jackson to CIA Supervisors.

  Harfield’s first assignment was to head up intelligence operations in the Bahamas and Caribbean Islands, but use Florida as his home base due to the covert activity passing between Cuba and the Sunshine State. Meanwhile, Ray Jackson was assigned to oversee operations in the northern countries of South America. Harfield and Jackson needed to solidify their credentials, and for the next two years they were exemplary employees of the nation’s clandestine spy agency.

  * * * * *

  MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa had morphed into a Tactical Air Command facility in the 1960’s when the fear of a nuclear attack by Russia raised the blood pressure of many Americans, military personnel and citizens alike. But with the possibility that the Cold War would soon become hot and espionage out of control, it was time to ramp up America’s surreptitious warmongering efforts.

  Nike Missile Bases had been constructed throughout the United States to protect our homeland from mass destruction. On October 29, 1962, the day after the Cuban Missile Crisis ended, President Kennedy ordered the covert development of an underground nuclear weapons control facility in Gainesville, Florida. From that secret command center, nuclear weapons located in Nike bases around the country could be aimed and launched at enemies of the US. The current command center located at the Pentagon would be decommissioned and used only as a decoy.

  Kennedy dispatched fifty-five high-ranking Corps of Engineers officers, architects, construction supervisors, electricians and communication experts to create and assemble a subterranean structure in Gainesville. They would be required to handle the manual labor involved in excavating the dig, and shelling up the concrete and triple-reinforced steel structure. Due to the top secret nature of the project, Kennedy wanted only trusted officers deployed to complete the mission. The men began by erecting a thirty-five-foot opaque canvas fence around the perimeter of the site.
Two digging cranes and a bulldozer were transported in by Army flatbed semis, as were steel beams and construction materials. The president ordered two, recently promoted top CIA staff members to oversee the mission. Chief Supervisor Oliver Harfield and Senior Supervisor Raymond Jackson were assigned by the new CIA Director, John McCone, for this duty.

  The project location was selected because it was a vacant area within the environs of the University of Florida. Director McCone explained to President Kennedy that by constructing on the college campus, residents of Gainesville would assume the university was simply building another dormitory or classroom building and would suspect nothing out of the ordinary. College administrators were told that the Corps of Engineers needed to construct an underground sewage pumping station in order to enhance drainage during times of flooding. Kennedy himself had issued the letter and assured the university that the federal government would pick up the tab and the project would be completed in less than a month. College officials were perplexed that the president would write the letter personally, but seeing they didn’t need to provide any funding and the construction zone was in a vacant area of campus, they were satisfied and did not question any further.

  Construction of the subterranean facility was completed in twenty-five days, but the trench wasn’t finished for another month. The Corps of Engineers were building dedicated railroad tracks for military use only that linked all Nike bases throughout America for the transport of missiles and nuclear warheads. The tracks had already been completed from Site TU-79 in Albany, Georgia, to Site HM-97 in Homestead, Florida. Those tracks ran directly through the city of Gainesville and less than a quarter mile from the new underground command center. Electrical engineers carefully ran one-inch-thick cable wire from the facility to a connection box next to the military tracks. From there, cable ran along the tracks to every Nike site in the United States.