by Jerold Last
And that’s how Eduardo, General Aleman, and Bruce met on Saturday afternoon inside the general’s office on the Air Force base on Baltra. The office was surprisingly large and functional given the sense of neglect and deterioration in the civil aviation portion of the airport. It featured a large desk with a comfortable ergonomic chair behind it, several large tables with six functional chairs, and enough space to comfortably accommodate up to eight large people. A modern laser printer and an espresso coffeemaker stood on one of the tables.
The General had personalized his office with a framed photo of his family, a wife and four children ranging in age from college to early teens, plus a large dog, on his desk. The photo shared space with a large computer monitor, a wireless router and modem, and a telephone. The walls were decorated with photos of General Aleman smiling and shaking hands with a lot of different important-looking people, a large-scale map of the Galapagos Islands, and another large-scale map of Ecuador. Other photos showed the general in, or standing next to, various models of airplane, mostly jets or turboprops. A small Ecuadorian flag was mounted on the far wall.
Four commandos from the general’s brigade had been sent to search the entire base to fill a rapidly written equipment list the planning team had completed shortly before this meeting. A growing pile of material they had already collected sat in several duffel bags occupying a corner of the room. The major goodies collected thus far included Ecuadorian Army dress uniforms for officers ranging in rank from Captain to Colonel, a small pile of carefully forged Ecuadorian diplomatic passports--courtesy of Eduardo--that matched the various members of the team, an assortment of weapons—lethal and non-lethal, four deflated and compressed life rafts in case the plane had to ditch over water or they needed to cross the lagoon, and several sets of Scuba tanks and gear for shallow ocean diving.
At the moment, the three group leaders were scanning satellite photos of Diego Garcia downloaded from a classified and elaborately password protected Internet site Eduardo had logged onto. Eduardo, the local expert on espionage, was interpreting the downloaded images collected over the last 48-hour period. “It looks like all of the activity is centered on the airstrip, the deep water port, and the maintenance facilities next to the airport. It also looks like they work during daylight hours, but aren’t busy enough to do any night shifts. I don’t see any areas that are brightly lit up at night except the runway and harbor area. That makes sense in peacetime, and the U.S. Navy is more or less at that status these days. What’s the normal routine in the navy under those conditions, Bruce?”
Bruce looked carefully at some of the night satellite images. “Let’s see. There’s about 12 hours between sunrise and sunset, so maybe 13 hours of light between dawn and dusk. I’d expect breakfast at, or shortly after, dawn, work a morning shift between 7 or 8 and noon, take an hour for lunch, work an afternoon shift from 1 to 5, an hour break, then dinner at 6:30 or 7. Something organized to do at night like a movie or show. Everybody probably goes to bed early, say 9-10 PM or so. The contractors live and work up by the marina north of the airfield. The military types are either living on ships in the harbor area or in barracks or housing near the harbor. If there are any guards posted, they’re probably guarding the power plants north of the runway and in the harbor zone and the main wharves.
“Hey, Eduardo, what rank am I going to be this trip? I’ve never been an officer before.”
“What do you think you deserve, Bruce?”
“I’m the commander of our little force, so should be the highest rank of the five of us going out on the island when we get there. What’s the highest rank uniform you found, Eduardo?”
“Congratulations, Bruce, or should I call you ‘Sir’?” It looks like you’re going to be a Colonel. If any of the guards challenge you, you’ll outrank them, so you might be able to bluff your way through any checkpoints you find. The guards should be used to foreign uniforms. There were, and may still be, a whole bunch of European and Asian allies nominally fighting with the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan. A lot of the supplies and logistics came through Diego Garcia, and a few of the foreign contingents were posted to the base there.”
Eduardo pointed to the pile of duffel bags in the corner of the room. “We’ve also got some generic naval seamen’s garb to make you and your men look plausible as part of the Navy detachment assigned to Diego Garcia, and some forged I.D.s that make you U.S. Navy sailors, Bruce. We’ll have it on the plane if you decide that’s the best way to sneak around while you’re stealing a truck from a well-lit area on the base. Unless someone starts asking you for details of what you’re doing in a restricted area, that might be enough cover to get you from the Gulfstream to the old plantation, and back. You’ll have to make the judgment call on whether bluffing your way as U.S. Navy sailors, as Ecuadorian army visitors, or as diplomatic types is the best way to accomplish your mission. You might even want to mix and match your covers depending on who specifically are challenging you. If we’re really lucky, everybody will be in bed or at a movie while you’re doing your thing.”
The general studied the daylight reconnaissance photos, especially the enlarged area of the runway and the facilities to the north of the runway near the main wharves where the big ships were loaded and unloaded. “I can confirm that the vehicle maintenance shop and the truck garage are less than a mile from the north end of the runway and less than three miles away from where I assume the Gulfstream will be parked overnight.”
Eduardo pulled out a montage he’d constructed from downloaded printouts and Scotch tape, taped to a backing of stiff cardboard. “This is the highest magnification I could accomplish with good enough resolution to still identify details of what we’re looking at. This is a small area of the old plantation at East Port where we thought we saw something interesting on the satellite image at normal size. You can recognize some of the features---the edge of the lagoon, a bunch of coconut palms, part of the ruins of an old house. If you have a vivid imagination, you can see something that looks like a straight line running from here to here,” he said, pointing at a feature on the enlargement and then at a parallel feature a few inches above the first on the montage.”
Bruce’s eyes followed the direction Eduardo was pointing and he stared intently at the photo. “What, exactly, do you think we’ll find when we get there?”
General Aleman and Bruce moved closer to Eduardo, leaning over the photo and peering intently at the details from as close as they could get. Eduardo cleared his throat and continued. “The satellite photo experts are calling this, and I agree, some sort of fence and it’s most definitely manmade. We don’t see anything like it on digital surveillance photos from a couple of months ago, which we had on file. This is where I’d start looking for a tortoise enclosure if there is one on Diego Garcia. If what we’re looking at really is a couple of fences, you’d expect to see food, water, and several mud puddles inside the fences. In this case food would be just about anything green and edible. And, if we’re right, you might find some big tortoises.”
Eduardo pulled out a set of topographical maps he’d printed out from the Internet site that he was trying to align with the satellite images. “I don’t see any lights or activity after dark on the road on the east side of the atoll south of the plantation in the area corresponding to the British Gate. That means you might be able to steal a truck, drive more than half way around the island, do whatever you have to do, return the truck, and get away with nobody ever being able to prove you were there.”
The general’s fingers moved along the montage, then the maps, as he studied them closely. First he traced a circuitous route around the island’s horseshoe topography, then a straight line from the airstrip across the lagoon to East Port. This provoked a question from Eduardo. “What do you think Vincente? Should Plan A be travel by truck on the road around the island or across the lagoon by raft?”
General Aleman ran his finger across the lagoon and around the island on the road while he repeated the
calculations he’d made previously in his head. “This is where we do some contingency planning, depending on how things play out after we get there. The best-case scenario is they send a jeep for my co-pilot, Major Ortiz, and me. We spend the night at the base commander’s visitor facilities for VIPs. That contingency lets us sneak the five of you on and off the island, and officially you were never there. You wait till the lights go out after they pick us up, then do your thing. The worst-case scenario is they search the plane and we have to declare you as passengers or crew. The diplomatic passports will let us stonewall on what your duties are but we hint about spooky stuff in Sri Lanka. The Gulfstream plane was custom designed with some non-standard compartments for hiding drugs or other contraband, so the gear will be safely out of sight if the worst-case scenario comes true.”
The General stood up straight, with the air of a man who had made a decision. “Best-case scenario I’d go with the truck as Plan A. If we pack the rafts on the truck, we have plan B available, if need be. If the road doesn’t go through or you can’t get past a checkpoint on the road, you hide the truck and switch to the rafts. Plan B is paddling across the lagoon to East Point from the south end of the runway, which is more than 7 miles, and walking around once you get there. There are a lot of problems with Plan B, so let’s hope you can borrow a truck. The worst part of using the inflatable rafts as transport would be if you found a couple of thousand pounds of tortoises and had to ferry them across the lagoon in the rafts, you’re going to be doing them one at a time!”
All three of them looked at the satellite images again. Finally General Aleman seemed to make a decision. “My examination of the CIA maps and the satellite surveillance data convinces me that stealing a truck looks like a winner as our strategy. The road around Diego Garcia is paved all of the way on the west side of the atoll and from East Point northwards on the east side. There’s a well-graded, unpaved, road in the Eastern Restricted Zone at the southeast side of the atoll. There’s also a gate across the road controlling the flow of traffic on this unpaved portion of the road. The gate is a simple pole that’s easily raised and lowered, and seems to be unmanned at night on the island.”
Bruce looked at the others. “OK, we all seem to agree if there’s an illegal Galapagos Tortoise raising operation being put together on Diego Garcia, the stolen tortoises are most likely to be somewhere on the old coconut plantation at East Port on the far side of the atoll from the landing strip. That makes the plantation, and especially the area that seems to be recently fenced in, our primary target for this mission. We’re going to try to steal a truck from the maintenance facility in the harbor area near the landing strip and drive around the island to the plantation to search it in the dark. If we get lucky, we drive back to the plane and stash the tortoises on board before we return the truck and disappear in the Gulfstream. General Aleman will get back in the morning and off we go.”
Bruce briefly studied the maps again. “If we don’t find the tortoises in the fenced off area, we’ll search the rest of the plantation as best we can. We’ll also check out the dry land between and around the tidal pools at the southeastern end of the road on the way back to the plane if we have enough time.”
General Aleman nodded. “So far, so good. What other problems might we have? I’ll try to get a full tank of fuel at Diego Garcia. I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t sell us however much we are willing to pay for unless they’re rationing fuel. But the Navy could decide to just give us enough fuel to get to Sri Lanka with a safety margin. If that happens we’ll probably have to head back with a 1,000-mile detour to Colombo. Have you taken care of those arrangements, Eduardo?”
Eduardo checked his notes. “Yes, I’ve got authorization for you to land there, Vincente. If you want to maintain your cover as innocent travelers who were blown off course, it might be a good idea to take the detour and spend a couple of hours in Colombo so there’s a record of your coming and going to Sri Lanka.”
The general thought about Eduardo’s suggestion. “Once we’re off Diego Garcia with enough fuel to get to Papeete, I can’t think of any reason we need to maintain our cover identity unless our commandos need to assault or kill someone on the island. So I guess there’s a contingency based on what happens while we’re un-kidnapping a bunch of tortoises. I assume once we’ve got a plane full of illegal tortoises on their way back to the legal owners in the Galapagos Islands, the U.S. Navy will be as eager as the Ecuadorian Air Force to keep all of this little adventure, both the legal and illegal parts, hushed up if they can.”
Eduardo nodded that he agreed and handed Vincente a sheet of paper. “We can stay in touch by radio---here are the details about secure frequencies. I don’t have to tell you to be careful what you say over a clear channel. I’m sure if anything comes up, you and the new colonel here can improvise. I think we leave the abstractions like justice for the Smarts to others to worry about. I suspect the Navy will be most unhappy with them if our colleague Detective Obregon requests their extradition after you get back. Offhand, my guess is if the Navy court martials the two of them for all of the violations of regulations and derelictions of duty they’ve committed just in regard to tortoise thefts from Ecuador and misuse of facilities on Diego Garcia, they’re looking at loss of rank, loss of pensions, forfeiture of salary, and 20-30 years in a very unpleasant Federal Prison somewhere. That’s probably more severe penalties than they’d receive if they were convicted of murder in Ecuador.
“It would also be a very good idea if Obregon tips off the U.S. Navy after we leave Diego Garcia and not the British authorities so the Navy can intercept the current shipment of stolen tortoises en route by freighter. The Navy should be highly motivated to keep everything as quiet as they can. The Brits may not be as cooperative as the U.S. Navy if they get wind of this little commando raid on their turf.”
Eduardo checked the photographic montage again before he turned back to Bruce. “Make sure you leave the fences intact, Bruce, so there’s some DNA evidence on Diego Garcia there were Galapagos Tortoises on the plantation, even if the animals catch a flight back to Ecuador before the newlyweds get back from their honeymoon. I think we can rely on the U.S. Navy to make sure the Smarts, who weren’t particularly smart, get what’s coming to them in this case.”
Chapter18.Diego Garcia-Almost an anticlimax
Darwin: Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of facts will certainly reject my theory.
The most common experience for scientists running an experiment for the first time or for the army or air force executing a military operation is that extensive planning and rehearsing doesn’t protect you from Murphy’s Law. “If anything can go wrong, it will!”
This operation was quickly assembled, hastily planned on the basis of incomplete information, and depended at every step on improvisation and luck. Strangely enough, everything worked and went smoothly, at least as far as getting a plane full of commandos onto the tarmac on a tiny island in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
The Santa Cruz had taken us all back to Baltra by way of a short return visit to Santa Cruz Island on Friday morning. We had learned a lot in our four days of island hopping in the Galapagos, a lot more than any of us realized. Visiting the large central island made us all aware of how much better prepared we were to appreciate what we were seeing in the context of our experiences of the last few days. Boobie bird watching, admiring the swooping frigate birds, spotting the iguanas scooting around, and revisiting the sea lions had a completely different context. This wasn’t a big open-air zoo any more. It was a celebration of life’s diversity and how all the species we watched productively shared the space.
After visiting the island and lunch onboard, most of the passengers from the Santa Cruz were delivered to Baltra the same way we had arrived, theoretically just in time to catch the flight to Guayaquil, with connections to Quito or wherever the travellers planned to go next. We said our good-byes to D
etective Obregon, our cabin steward, and our trip guides as we disembarked from the ship and caught the water taxi and bus to the airfield.
All of our departing fellow passengers except Eduardo and Sophia caught their flights, while the Bowman and Gomez parties stayed behind on Baltra as pre-arranged. Bruce and General Aleman, accompanied by Eduardo, disappeared to the Air Force base to complete the planning for their grand adventure in the Indian Ocean. Suzanne, Robert, and I had an hour or so to kill before boarding our special flight to Guaymas, which we spent walking outside of the airport checking out the vegetation native to South Seymour (Baltra) Island. We saw a lot of sand, as well as Prickly Pear Cactus and salt bushes growing more or less at random. The Prickly Pear cactus was familiar to us from Southeastern California desert areas. This close to the airport the fauna were few and far between.
We lucked out and spotted a Galapagos Land Iguana crossing the road as we entered the airport en route to the passenger terminal where we had to wait for a military escort to our plane. The species wsn’t rare, but they were hard to find, so seeing one in the wild was a special treat. Eventually our Ecuadorian Air Force flight was ready and an officer escorted us to the plane, which was already warming up on the tarmac. We left Baltra for Guaymas amid promises we’d be at our hotel in Mexico in time for dinner that night.