Blue Darker Than Black

by Mike Jenne

  Striving to remain calm, he shifted his focus to soak in other details. The burned spot was almost perfectly centered in an irregular patch of cleared ground, about four acres in size, on the top of a ridgeline that ran roughly north to south.

  At the north end of the field was a hut with a thatched roof, with an adjacent cleared area that was probably a vegetable garden. He had studied the map sufficiently to know that the nearest village was Menard, roughly a mile and a half to the west. A larger town, Dondon, was located just south of Menard, along Highway Three, a heavily used gravel road that meandered southwards to Saint Raphael.

  For an instant, he considered asking Taylor if he could land the Maule in the sugarcane field, but realized that it was too risky, for various reasons. He yelled for Taylor to fly another orbit around the site, looking for clues about how to gain access on the ground.

  Expecting to see a trail or route from Menard, he realized that the west side of the ridgeline was probably too steep to cut a road. Then he discerned a footpath running from the harvested area towards the northeast and realized that it merged with a narrow road, perhaps suitable for a jeep or small truck, that eventually ran towards the large town of Grande-Rivière-du-Nord.

  Completing the second circle, Taylor yelled, “See enough? Want to resume the pattern?”

  “Sounds good,” answered Henson. He decided that he would let Taylor stick with the search grid for another thirty minutes—fifty bucks worth—before he would ask to return to Cap-Haïtien. After all, if those were the pilots back there, they were obviously alive and kicking, so they should be willing to wait just a little while longer for Henson to make contact.

  Relieved, he took a swig of water from his canteen and formulated his plan: After Taylor landed him back at the airport, he would return to Morne Bossa, radio in a report with the good news, and then continue on to the crash site. If all went well, he would be talking to the pilots before noon.

  Mission Control Facility, Aerospace Support Project

  9:50 a.m., Friday, March 13, 1970

  Both exhausted, Tew and Wolcott were sound asleep at their desks when the Recovery Operations Liaison Officer pounded at the door. Marginally conscious, Wolcott looked up to see Gunter Heydrich standing behind the major. A broad grin on Heydrich’s face telegraphed that there was obviously good news.

  “Henson located the crash site!” declared the major. “He also thinks he spotted your men!”

  “What?” exclaimed Tew. “That’s excellent news!”

  “Thank God,” muttered Wolcott, leaning back to stretch in his chair.

  “So what’s their condition?” asked Tew. “When can we bring them out of there?”

  The major handed Tew a transcript of Henson’s transmission. “Regrettably, he hasn’t yet made direct contact with your men, but he’s on his way now. He spotted them from the air.”

  “From the air?” asked Wolcott. “Didn’t you say that our ceiling was ten thousand feet?”

  “He apparently hired a local plane to look for the crash site,” explained the major. “He found the crash site and saw two personnel—alive and moving—in the immediate vicinity.”

  “He wangled a plane?” snorted Wolcott incredulously. “Henson rented a danged airplane?”

  “I don’t care how he pulled it off,” interjected Tew. “He did it. That’s all that matters. Now, Major, how about the rest of this operation? When is your team going in to retrieve our boys?”

  “Sir, the RRF has moved to the staging site at Homestead. Ideally, we’ll drop our advance team directly onto the crash site tonight and have everyone out of there by the morning.”

  “Excellent,” said Tew.

  “There’s one loose end,” said the major. “Since we’ve pinpointed the crash site, General Fels asked if we can scrub the U-2 reconnaissance overflight. The aircraft has already launched from Arizona, but it can be recalled. After all, there’s no sense …”

  “Good point,” noted Tew. “Let’s shelve the U-2 pass. I don’t see the need to—”

  “No,” interjected Wolcott, reading through the message transcript.

  “No?” asked Tew, the major, and Heydrich simultaneously.

  “That’s right, pard. No. As much as I would like to trust your guy, until we actually place our hands on the vehicle, it’s merely a coincidence that this burned spot coincides with what our guys called in last night. I like to be as hopeful as the next guy, but I still want firsthand proof.”

  Wolcott added, “And just because Henson spotted two hombres at this alleged crash site doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re our hombres. So before we jump to conclusions and turn back this platform, let’s put it overhead to fetch detailed imagery. And let’s make damned sure that imagery lands in the hands of your boys at Homestead before they traipse into Hell’s Kitchen tonight.”

  “As much as I hate to admit it, Virgil,” declared Tew, “you’re exactly right. Major, the U-2 overflight will proceed as planned. Anything else?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then keep us apprised. Carry on.”

  Southwest of Grande-Rivière-du-Nord, Haiti

  10:52 a.m.

  Although it was clearly marked on his topographic map, the road from Grande-Rivière-du-Nord was marginal at best. It was deeply rutted, and large areas were washed out from last night’s heavy rains. Henson picked along with his Motoguzzi, frequently climbing off to walk the bike through the more difficult stretches. He finally came to the point where the meandering road petered out to a footpath. A squat hut stood close by the junction. The ground was too soft to trust the kickstand, so Henson leaned the Italian motorcycle against a sturdy tree.

  “Bonswa,” grunted an elderly man emerging from the hut. He was carrying a machete, which didn’t alarm Henson in the least; outside the cities of Haiti, the chopping tools were so ubiquitous that they might as well be articles of clothing. Wearing no shirt, the man was dressed in ragged bib overalls that were more tatters than whole cloth. Seeing Henson, his eyes flew open wide. His machete clattered to the ground, scarcely missing his bare feet.

  “Bonswa,” replied Henson politely, puzzled at the man’s apprehensive reaction.

  They talked. In a short exchange, the man timidly explained that he was the caretaker for a nearby grove of banana trees. Henson pointed up the hill and asked who owned the land on the ridgeline. The man said that it was the property of two reclusive brothers who grew sugarcane that they sold to a local rum distiller.

  He said that one of the brothers came down from the hill perhaps once a month to venture into town. According to him, the other brother never came down, except to haul their crops at harvest time, when the siblings toted the ripe cane down the trail to make a pile at the roadhead. Otherwise, he remained on the hill.

  “Poukisa?” asked Henson, pulling off his sunglasses to wipe sweat from his brow. “Why?”

  “Lèp,” muttered the man, gesturing at his face and grimacing. “Leprosy.”

  “Lèp?”

  “Lapenn anpil,” said the man, nodding. “Very sad.”

  Now it was Henson’s turn to be apprehensive. Virtually all he knew of leprosy was what he had recently read in Papillon, where Charrière described receiving assistance at a leper colony on Pigeon Island. Henson also knew that while leprosy was largely eradicated throughout the world, it still persisted in isolated pockets.

  He wasn’t quite sure how to handle this awkward situation but felt that if he kept his distance and avoided physical contact, he should be safe. He knelt down and snugged his bootlaces for the walk ahead. Reaching into his wallet, he offered the banana farmer a few Haitian gourde to watch the motorcycle until he returned.

  Fanning his wizened hands in front of him, the farmer nervously refused Henson’s offer, claiming that it would be an honor just to assist him. Henson noticed that the elderly man’s eyes never met his, but remained intently focused on the satchel hanging at his side.

  Chink … chink … chink … chi
nk. As Henson ascended the steep footpath, he heard hammering sounds, and he wondered if the brothers might be building something. The trail was a series of switchbacks gradually climbing the east flank of the ridgeline. It took him almost an hour to navigate his way up, all the while searching his memory to dredge up any facts about leprosy.

  At several points, the narrow track was blocked by thick vines bearing harsh thorns, so he dug his short machete from his canvas shoulder bag. Fashioned after a Filipino bolo knife, it was ideally suited for lopping vines and hacking through dense undergrowth.

  Finally, he crested the ridge, arriving at the north end of the brothers’ land. Their humble dwelling was a one-room shack with wattle walls and a roof of thatch. Beside the austere shack was a meticulously tended vegetable garden enclosed by cacti woven into a dense lattice to exclude animals. Outside the barrier, clucking white chickens pecked at the bare brown earth, while wandering goats foraged in nearby scrub. In a ring of stones, this morning’s cooking fire still smoldered.

  Chink … chink … chink … chink. The brothers weren’t present, so Henson went towards the hammering. He followed a path through still intact sugarcane until he reached the burned area that he had seen from the air. In the middle of the burned area, he saw two black men, obviously the brothers, standing beside an odd cone-shaped object lying on its side. Expecting to find an F-111 ejection pod or something similar, he recalled his “safing” lessons at Aux One-Oh. Startled, he realized that he was looking at a partially dismantled Gemini spacecraft.

  Intent with their labors, the two men were oblivious to Henson as he paused to stare in sheer wonderment. Using a large rock as a hammer and a rusty leaf spring as a chisel, they were systematically loosening and prying off the heat-resistant shingles that covered the spacecraft’s exterior.

  They had obviously been chipping away for quite a while, since virtually all that remained was the heat shield, titanium frame assembly and pressure vessel. The corrugated metal shingles were stacked neatly in three nearby piles. It was an odd sight; the ravaged spacecraft looked like some otherworldly insect undergoing a metamorphosis, shedding off metal scales as it molted.

  Henson continued his stealthy approach. Even as he drew close enough to reach out and touch the two men, they didn’t sense his presence. Thin and muscular, they looked to be in their late twenties. Shirtless and barefoot, both wore old khaki work trousers, probably gleaned from a bundle of donated clothes from the States.

  Leaning into their work, they chattered away at each other while they diligently hammered and tugged. They didn’t know that he was there until one dislodged a shingle and turned away from the spacecraft to carry it to a pile. Seeing Henson, the man dropped the black metal tile and screamed at the top of his lungs. Staring at Henson’s machete, the man was obviously petrified with fear. Gasping, the other brother threw away his makeshift hammer and chisel. Both men approached Henson and fell to their knees in ashes, bending their heads forward as if to offer themselves for sacrifice. Wailing, they shook with abject fear as they awaited their fate.

  Tapping his machete on his thigh, Henson wasn’t sure what to make of this surrealistic scene. As the men wept and trembled, he removed his Panama hat and mirrored sunglasses, and then wiped sweat from his face with a red bandana. Squatting on his haunches, he examined their faces.

  One brother’s face appeared entirely normal, if not handsome, while the other brother had an enormous growth protruding from his forehead above his left eye and a similar tumor jutting from back of his head. The repulsive growth on his face—about the size and shape of a mango—was so large that it prevented him from opening his eye completely. Other than the two abnormal growths, the man looked to be entirely normal; Henson saw that his fingers were intact and that there were no sores or boils on the rest of his body.

  Finally, the normal-looking brother spoke. Begging for mercy, he offered his life in exchange for his brother’s safety. Hearing that, the leper brother chimed in, likewise offering his life if Henson would see fit to spare his sibling. Like the elderly man at the base of the hill, both men would not look him in the face, but instead stared at the canvas bag hanging from his shoulder. Heavy with the weight of his canteen, binoculars, and some other oddments, the bag’s strap dug painfully into his neck, so he shifted it slightly. He couldn’t help but notice that both men cringed when he did so. As the two men continued to plead, Henson lost his patience with them.

  “Ase! Pa fè bri!” bellowed Henson, standing erect to examine the spacecraft. “Enough! Be quiet!” He saw that one of the two hatches was open. Half-expecting to glimpse the mangled remains of the two pilots, he peered into the vehicle and found it vacant. He quizzed the brothers, asking if any men had arrived with the vehicle, and what happened to them.

  Clearly relieved that Henson wasn’t going to summarily execute them, the two men enthusiastically recounted last night’s events. They said that they had been awakened by the crash. They witnessed two white men climbing out of the vehicle as the fire was just catching, and were initially very angry with them for setting their sugarcane ablaze. Furious, they chased the blan strangers into the woods, but after they realized that the men might be injured, they gallantly followed them in hopes of rendering assistance, but they lost them shortly after the rains began.

  Henson asked the brothers to show him where the two men went, and they brought him to the edge of the wood line, where he found a damaged flight helmet. He ventured into the woods for about a hundred yards, following a fairly discernible trail of broken vegetation, boot prints, scuff marks and diluted blood spatters. Realizing that the two pilots were probably long gone from this locale and likely holed up somewhere during daylight hours, he decided that the best course of action was to report these new wrinkles as swiftly as possible.

  As they walked back uphill, with the brothers becoming progressively calmer and more communicative, he learned that they were twins. The normal twin was named Jean, and the leper twin was Henri. Their mother had hemorrhaged to death after their birth. Their father was killed when they were twelve, and Henri’s tumors appeared shortly afterwards. Seeking medical attention, Jean had brought Henri to Grande-Rivière-du-Nord; not wanting a leper in their midst, the townspeople had exiled them to their hilltop farm. Jean was convinced that he was immune to leprosy and took it upon himself to care for his stricken twin. It was only a few years ago that Jean was allowed to return to the town, and even then most of the residents shunned him.

  Henson asked the brothers why they were stripping off the shingles from the vehicle. Chagrined, staring at the ground, Jean tearfully apologized for damaging something that wasn’t their property. After Henson succeeded in calming him, Jean explained that after they had returned to their plot, the rain had quenched the fire and they realized that they hadn’t lost their entire crop of sugarcane. When they examined the object and found that it was covered with some sort of metal shingles, they assumed that it must have be a gift from the Almighty.

  “De Bondye? Poukisa?” asked Henson incredulously. “From God? Why?”

  “Yon do kay!” blurted Jean, pointing towards their simple hut. “A roof!” He apologized again for stripping the shingles from the vehicle, but stated that their sole intent was to build a new roof for their shanty. He explained that with a good metal roof over their heads, he might be able to entice a woman into marriage. And since having a sturdy roof was perhaps his only chance at love and marriage, surely then the shingles had been delivered by God’s divine hand.

  Covering a grin and stifling a laugh, Henson considered the absurdity of the situation. Here were these two secluded and destitute brothers, ripping apart a sophisticated spacecraft that probably cost millions of dollars, just so that one of them could woo a woman. And that God sent it here? Only an idiot would believe such a ridiculous thing. But looking at the three heaps of black shingles, Henson mused that the truly faithful might believe it also.

  Struggling to maintain a straight face, Hen
son sternly declared that the object was his property. He scolded the twins, but also told them that he would be lenient if they assisted him. He told them that that he had to leave but should return within a few hours.

  He offered to compensate them if they concealed the object, guard it until he could return with other men, and not ever speak of it with anyone. He instructed them to immediately bathe and wash their hands thoroughly, and to dare not touch the object again.

  There was a practical reason for his last admonition. Besides all the unexploded pyrotechnic charges and other hazardous materials aboard the spacecraft, Henson knew that some of its metal components, made from special alloys and beryllium, could be toxic to handle, and he hoped that the brothers hadn’t already made themselves sick with their impromptu home renovation project.

  The twins swore their vigilance. Henson donned his hat and turned to leave. As he walked away, Henri called out after him, asking him how much he would pay them to do these things. Henson thought about it for a moment, and replied that if they did everything precisely as he asked, he would give them at least enough gourde to purchase a new roof of corrugated tin.

  Peristyle de Beasujour, Dondon, Haiti

  1:35 p.m., Friday, March 13, 1970

  Blinking his eyes, Carson slowly came awake. Groggy, he surveyed his bizarre surroundings. He guessed that they were being held in some form of occult temple. The orange-painted walls were decorated with pictures of grinning skulls and demon-like figures. The room was roughly thirty feet square; a thick wooden pole, decorated with bizarre carvings, was the centerpiece of the space. It stank with an indescribably foul stench, as if years of sweat, smoke, blood, and grime had permeated the stucco walls and were now slowly leaching out into the air.

  His right hand throbbed with indescribable pain, and his head ached like it was being crushed between two locomotives. Running his left hand along the back of his skull, he discovered that his hair was matted with blood, probably from where someone had bashed him.