by Mike Jenne
“Approved,” said Tew. “I don’t understand why we were still holding on to that damned old thing, anyway. Logistics?”
Frowning at Wolcott, the corpulent Rhodes stood up. He tried to fasten the buttons of his snugly fitting blue sport coat, but swiftly abandoned the futile attempt. He cleared his throat and spoke. “General, first up, I have a progress report on the Critical Target Upgrade program.”
“Go ahead.”
“Sir, we’ve successfully de-fueled and removed the first two Titan II’s from their silos, and they’re en route by rail to the contractor for the Critical Target Upgrade modifications.”
“General, I’m not familiar with this upgrade he’s referring to,” said Russo.
“Colonel Rhodes, would you mind giving Russo some background on this program?”
“As you wish, sir,” said Rhodes, turning to face Russo. “Major, the Air Force has about sixty Titan II’s buried in silos in California, Arizona, Kansas, and Arkansas. As the new Minutemen missiles are fielded, the Titan II’s will be kept in their silos to provide a redundant nuclear strike capability. They will be phased out, starting in 1971. I’m sure that you’re aware the Titan II has proven to be a reliable launch vehicle for orbital payloads. So, our plan is to quietly pull some of them out of their silos early and transition them from ICBMs to launch vehicles.”
“Certainly, we want our Titan IIs to meet the same standards as NASA’s man-rated Titan IIs, so we established a program to designate certain Titan II ICBMs for priority targets. We used this as justification to establish the Critical Target Upgrade program to overhaul and retrofit the designated launch vehicles to higher standards, which just happen to closely mirror NASA’s standards for man-rating the Titan II. After they’re modified, the missiles are returned to their silos. Theoretically, of course.”
“So this is essentially just a big shell game?” asked Russo, raising his eyebrows.
“Shell game? Essentially, yes,” answered Rhodes smugly. “Sir, with your permission, I’ll address General Wolcott’s concerns about the PDF work.”
“Go ahead,” said Tew.
“We’ve run into some significant setbacks, but none that have completely shut down the construction. The main problem has been with concrete curing on some of the major structures. Our construction specs anticipated a temperate climate, not the tropical environment that we’re working in. To make a long story short, we demolished the structures that weren’t cured to spec and we’ll start pouring the replacement structures next week, provided all our materials are shipped on schedule. The only loose end is disposing of the scrap concrete.”
“How much scrap concrete are we talking about?” asked Tew.
“About two hundred cubic yards, General.”
“And what does that weigh, pard?” asked Wolcott.
“Approximately three hundred tons,” replied the chagrined colonel, wiping his brow and sipping from a glass of water.
“Really?” asked Wolcott. “That much? Speakin’ of shell games, Grady, where exactly will all this busted up concrete go? Are you plannin’ to shoot it into orbit?”
“Right now, we’re planning to dump it offshore to build a breakwater and artificial reef.”
“Whew. That should make an awfully fancy reef,” noted Wolcott. “I guess I had better tote some fishing tackle with me when and if we finally start launchin’ from there.”
“Anyway, as I said, we’ll begin pouring the new structures starting next week,” said Rhodes, ignoring Wolcott. “Besides that, the Navy is assisting us with dredging the ship channel necessary to bring in the LST transports.”
Tew turned to a Navy liaison officer and asked, “Is Admiral Tarbox going to abide by his commitment to support the PDF?”
Nodding, the Navy officer answered, “We have two LSTs undergoing modifications at Norfolk. Those are the only vessels specifically committed to Blue Gemini. All other resources will be shifted as necessary to support each launch.”
“Good,” replied Tew. “Anything else concerning logistics, Rhodes?”
Rhodes shook his head. “Nothing significant, sir.”
“Fine,” said Tew. “Unless anyone has something else, let’s return to work.”
James M. Cox Municipal Airport, Dayton, Ohio
2:10 p.m., Monday, July 15, 1968
Pushed by a favorable tail wind, they had arrived in Dayton a full twenty minutes ahead of schedule. Ourecky chatted with Henson as they waited in the queue to disembark. He was fascinated by Henson’s stories of growing up in New Orleans and had made up his mind to visit the Louisiana city when and if he had some free time.
They were almost off the plane when Bea met him at the door. “Scott, if you’re not in a huge rush, could you sit down for a moment?” she asked, gesturing towards a first class seat. “There was something I wanted to ask you.”
Perplexed, Ourecky nodded.
Henson winked and said, “See, man? I told you so. Hey, I enjoyed chatting with you.”
“You, too, Matt. I hope your interview goes well. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
“Maybe,” replied Henson, stepping out into the sunlight.
Ourecky waited patiently. Finally, Bea joined him, sitting in the adjacent seat. Sighing, she slipped her shoes off and wriggled her toes. “Oh, these new pumps are just killing me,” she declared. “So, Scott Ourecky, we’ve known each other for three months, but you’ve never once asked me out. Is there a reason for that? You don’t like me?”
Ourecky was dumbfounded. Maybe that guy Henson was actually right. “Well, I, uh, just assumed that you had a boyfriend or fiancée, or that you dated one of the pilots.”
“I don’t date pilots,” she answered emphatically, shaking her head. “Ever.”
“Well, I’ve been really busy,” he stammered. “I just . . .”
“Excuses, excuses. Here, sweetie, I’ll make this easy for you.” She handed Ourecky a folded slip of paper. “That’s my number. You’ll still be in town Friday night, right?”
Ourecky nodded.
“Good. Ring me on Thursday night, right after Bewitched, and we’ll make plans for Friday.”
“Bewitched?”
“The television show, silly. The one where that pretty witch is married to the cute advertising guy. It’s on from eight to eight-thirty. Just call me after that, please.”
Ourecky made a note on the slip of paper, and said, “But I don’t have a car, Bea.”
“Well, I do. I’ll drive, unless you’re offended to be driven around by a woman.”
Ourecky shook his head. He gathered his things and stood up.
She smiled. “Don’t forget to call.”
Simulator Facility, Aerospace Support Project
3:12 p.m., Wednesday, July 17, 1968
Gunter Heydrich took a swig from a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. Just a few more hours to go, he thought, and then a night off and then back into the barrel again. To Heydrich, this was beginning to feel considerably less like a job and much more like an endurance contest. He was tired, and his men were tired. At least things were going smoothly today; Carson and Agnew, the crew locked in the Box, were relentlessly closing on their intercept target.
Suddenly there was a commotion. A blistering torrent of profanity blasted from the intercom, except this time it was Agnew’s voice and not Carson’s. An observer standing next to the simulator yelled down, “Gunter, we have a problem in the Box! A big problem!”
3:15 p.m.
Wolcott was immersed in paperwork when there was a knock at the door. A captain popped in and calmly announced, “General Wolcott, the Simulator Facility is reporting an emergency, sir.”
Emergency? thought Wolcott. An emergency in the Simulator Facility? He immediately recalled last year’s tragic Apollo 1 fire, when Gus Grissom and his two crewmates were incinerated during a pre-flight test. His thoughts were interrupted by the wail of a siren. He sprang out of his chair and headed toward the simulator hangar.
With red lights flashing, the a
mbulance was just departing as Wolcott arrived. Gunter Heydrich, nervously smoking a cigarette, met him outside. He was unshaven, and his white shirt was rumpled and dotted with coffee stains. His black hair was awry, and he looked distraught.
“What happened?” demanded Wolcott, almost out of breath. “Who went to the hospital?”
“You’ll just have to see this one for yourself, Virgil,” replied Heydrich, shaking his head. “I warned you. You can only stew people in a pressure cooker for so long before the stress finally takes over.” The two men walked into the hangar, breezing right past the well-armed guard without showing any identification.
Carson was seated on the stairs leading to the simulator. His right eye was purple and the knuckles on his right hand were scraped and bloody, clearly evidence of some sort of a scuffle. Several technicians examined the interior of the simulator. The remainder of the simulator faculty sat idly at their consoles. One man had his head down on his desk, snoring loudly; he wasn’t loafing, but apparently had succumbed to sheer exhaustion.
Rushing toward Carson, Wolcott erupted in anger. “Major, can you possibly fathom how inappropriate your actions were? Officers do not come to blows, regardless of the circumstances. Trust me, pard, I fully intend to file disciplinary paperwork on you after I collect some witness statements, and I can assure you that some negative action will be forthcoming. Do you understand me, Mister Carson? Am I making myself clear?”
“Virgil, I didn’t start the fight,” avowed Carson quietly, furtively rubbing his discolored eye. “I just defended myself.” The collar of his Nomex flight suit was torn, and he smelled like he was badly in need of a long hot shower.
Heydrich corroborated Carson’s story. “He’s right, Virg. They were twenty hours into a twenty-four hour full-up. Agnew just detonated without warning. My platform guy saw it all through his observation window. One minute, Agnew is planted in his seat working calculations, and the next moment he’s piling over onto Carson’s side with his fists flying. Carson just defended himself. He didn’t do anything I wouldn’t have done in the same circumstances.”
Wolcott turned back to Carson. “Pardner, go pack some ice on that eye before it swells up. Your duty day ain’t over yet, not by a long shot.” He turned back to Heydrich and asked, “Gunter, how long before you can have the Box back up and operational?”
“Maybe an hour,” replied Heydrich, watching Carson walk away. “My guys need to slide in there and clean it up, plus there are some bent switches and broken bulbs that have to be replaced. Just for future reference, a spacecraft cabin is not an appropriate venue for a fistfight.”
“Well, pard, we can thank our lucky stars that it happened in the Box, and not upstairs.” Wolcott bounded up the four steps and looked inside the mock spacecraft. Simulator time was extremely valuable, and he couldn’t bear to see it wasted. “How bad is Agnew? Can we put him back up on the bronco? The faster he saddles up, the better.”
Heydrich shook his head. “Virg, that isn’t happening. Agnew’s beat up pretty bad.”
Wolcott frowned. He knew that Carson had been a varsity boxer at West Point, and that he had also been a Golden Gloves champ before he went to the Academy. Agnew obviously wasn’t cognizant of that; otherwise he wouldn’t have been in a hurry to pick a fight.
“Carson apparently packs a mean punch, even in close quarters,” said Heydrich. “To his credit, he held back. He could have really pulverized Agnew if he wanted to. Anyway, Agnew made it abundantly clear that he would resign his commission before he climbed back in the Box with Carson or anyone else.”
Cringing, Wolcott closed his eyes. Losing a pilot this way was so incomprehensible that they had never considered the potential consequences. It could jeopardize the entire Project. But Wolcott was a practical man, and he had immediate issues to contend with. “Gunter, I’ll deal with Agnew later. We still have Carson. Can we load one of your techs in there with him?”
Heydrich shook his head and took a long pull on his cigarette. His hands were trembling. Exhaling a pall of smoke, he replied, “Ja, Virg, I can stick one of my guys in the Box to run basic procedures with Carson, but that would be futile.”
“Why?”
“Carson has the basics down cold,” answered Heydrich. “And my guys aren’t up to speed on the intercept procedures, so they wouldn’t be able to do the calculations in a timely manner. If Carson was frustrated with Agnew, you could just imagine what he’s going to be like with someone who’s learning all this on the fly. I strongly recommend that we keep my guys out of the Box. I can’t afford to lose anyone.”
“This ain’t good, pard,” observed Wolcott. “It ain’t good at all.”
Heydrich continued. “Virgil, I think you need to just accept that you’re going to lose a day of simulator time while we wait for the next crew to come in. Why don’t we call it a day, and just pack it in? Everyone could use the break.”
Wolcott scratched his head and asked, “If they were twenty hours in, how close were they to completin’ the intercept? Anywhere near close to puttin’ the horse in the barn?”
Nodding, Heydrich used a finger to push his heavy glasses back on his nose. “They were probably two hours out from final closure when Agnew snapped. Unless they made some really ugly maneuvering errors in the last phases, they would have closed the deal. We had already thrown them an intermittent power failure on the new radar, but they resolved that in no time. I was really hoping that this run would boost Agnew’s confidence.”
Wolcott watched a technician use a screwdriver to remove a damaged toggle switch from the left side instrument panel. The technician leaned out of the hatch and held out the bent switch for their perusal; there was blood and a small fleck of skin on the steel post. “So once they rendezvoused, Gunter, what was next in this profile?”
Heydrich referred to his notes. “The usual. Nothing exciting. They do a fly-around inspection of the target to make sure that it was safe to execute a close approach. We’re still working on the close approach procedures, so normally we jump the scenario forward at that point.”
“They go through a power-down sequence and then park the spacecraft in loiter mode. We generally leave them in loiter mode for about twenty minutes to let them grab a little shut-eye. Then we wind the clock forward before they do a power-up, and then reentry. We’re not doing the landing yet, because the paraglider simulator isn’t ready yet.”
Wolcott stuck a finger in his mouth, extracted a worn lump of chewing tobacco, and flicked the brown wad into a trashcan. Pulling an envelope of Red Man from his pocket, he stuffed a replacement into his mouth. “Okay, Gunter. Let’s assume the worst case. At least for today, Carson is the only hand left in the bunkhouse. What can we do with just him by his lonesome?”
“Not much,” replied Heydrich. “We can do an immediate abort-to-reentry scenario, with the assumption that the co-pilot is disabled. Unfortunately, Carson’s been through that drill so many times that he could probably fly it in his sleep. Virg, I know that you don’t want to waste any simulator time, but sticking him back in there by himself would just be negative training.”
A worker walked up and announced that the simulator would be ready to go again in thirty minutes. As the technician recounted the damages to Heydrich, Wolcott walked to the second row of desks and made a phone call.
Thirty minutes later, Ourecky walked into the hangar. Wolcott instructed one of the technicians to fit him with a communications headset. Then he waved Carson over.
“Sir?” asked Carson. He had gone to the locker room to change into a clean flight suit but emerged still smelling fairly rank. He was obviously sore and very tired. He held a cloth-wrapped icepack against his injured eye.
Wolcott pointed at Ourecky. “That’s your simulator buddy for the rest of the day, Carson. You had better treat him appropriately, pard.”
Obviously rankled at Wolcott’s decision, Carson vigorously shook his head. “Virgil, I have to lodge a protest. I don’t—”
> Wolcott cut him off. “Pardner, you will finish the simulation with Ourecky, or you will suddenly discover yourself permanently on the low end of the pecking order for any potential mission assignments. You understand me, bub? Savvy?”
It was a bluff, and a shaky one at best; Wolcott knew that if they launched in accordance with the current schedule, he had no option but to slot Carson on the first mission since he was the only pilot even remotely ready to fly into space. Of course, although Carson was a shoo-in, that plan hinged on whether they could find someone sufficiently compatible to fly with him. Ideally, it should be someone who could make the trip without being sedated or wearing boxing gloves.
Placing his hand on Carson’s shoulder, Wolcott gently nudged him toward the simulator, where the two met Heydrich and Ourecky at the base of the stairs leading up to the mock-up.
Wolcott leaned toward Heydrich and said something quietly. Heydrich nodded his head and then called for one of the technicians. “Chris, help the captain into his seat and answer any questions he might have on the controls or where we are with this scenario.”
The technician nodded. Ourecky was obviously thrilled with the opportunity to go through an actual run on the Box. When he was out of earshot, Wolcott spoke quietly to Heydrich and Carson. “No slips, gentlemen. Gunter, be patient with our young captain, and adjust the pace as necessary. Same for you, Carson. He might not be up to full speed on the instruments, but he knows the intercept calcs inside and out, so let’s take full advantage of that. Are we all ridin’ in the same direction?”
“We are,” answered Heydrich. Rubbing his uninjured eye, Carson nodded in affirmation.
“Splendid. Gunter, I’m going to mosey on back to my office to wrangle some paperwork. Do me a favor, pard, and call me before they start into their reentry sequence. If Mark doesn’t have me tied up, I’ll come back over here to watch.”
Carson climbed the stairs and slowly edged into the cockpit. He nodded his head, and the technicians closed the hatches. He slipped on his headset and adjusted the microphone.
“Gunter, switching off VOX,” announced Carson brusquely. He threw a switch that cut off the voice-activated intercom circuit to the simulator controllers. “Don’t get comfortable over there, Captain, because you aren’t going to be sitting in here for very long. Once they figure out that you can’t keep up, they’ll shut down this charade. You understand me?”