Blue Darker Than Black

by Mike Jenne

  Beside him, Ourecky was tucked in a fetal position, hands jammed between his thighs, snoring and gurgling quietly. Both men were clothed in only the long underwear that they wore under their flight suits. Carson’s white cotton garment was sweat-soaked and smelled heavily of smoke and noxious chemicals. His expensive new Hamilton pilot’s chronograph was missing.

  He sat up to examine the gash on Ourecky’s forehead. The bleeding had stopped, but he was concerned that his friend had suffered a severe head injury, possibly a concussion. Listless in the oppressive heat, Ourecky tried to speak, but his speech was slurred and delirious.

  He obviously had no idea of where he was, but then again, neither did Carson. Last night’s events seemed like a distant dream—a nightmare—and today was shaping up to be a continuation of the same. Ourecky smiled weakly and then went limp as he lapsed back into blissful unconsciousness. Carson started to stand, but two large black men made it clear that he was not free to leave the premises.

  All the while, Haitians came and went, gawking at the two white men like they were on display at a zoo. For whatever reason, something that Carson could not quite fathom, most of the Haitians—even the pair of hulking machete-armed men guarding them—appeared frightened to be in their presence.

  Few visitors lingered long, and most seemed reluctant to make eye contact. One Haitian had apparently been pressed into service as a tour guide. As a newcomer entered the room, the guide pulled them off to the side and quietly spoke to them, perhaps offering an explanation of how they came to be here. Carson noticed that the guide frequently gestured with his hands, often using them to mimic a bird’s flight.

  Bearing two wooden bowls and a burlap sack, two ancient black women squatted on the dirt floor next to Carson. Jabbering in a strange language, they prodded his face and body with their fingers, as if they were subjecting him to some crude sort of doctor’s examination.

  Mumbling some incantation, one of the women dipped her hand in a bowl and swished it around. She spoke to the guards, who snatched Carson by the wrists, and then she slathered his burned hand with a rancid-smelling salve. The glowering guards held him firmly as he struggled and flinched, but the crude ointment slowly took effect. As disgusting as the goo smelled, Carson had to admit that it was soothing, and gestured his sincere thanks.

  Toothlessly grinning, the second woman offered him a mango from the bag. He furtively bit into the ripe fruit and found that its juices were like the sweetest ambrosia. Ravenous, he consumed the mango in short order and gestured for another.

  Chuckling, the women kept pace with his demands, lavishing him with mangos and bananas, each one tasting more delectable than the last. He pointed at his lips and made a swallowing noise, and they gave him a cup of cool water, and then another. He tried to wake Ourecky so that he could share in the offerings, but was unable to rouse his snoring companion.

  After gorging himself and slaking his thirst, he realized that he had to answer the call of nature. Carson pointed at his crotch and then towards the entrance, attempting to convey that he needed to go outside to relieve himself. As the crinkled old crones cackled at his discomfort, the guards debated the situation before jerking Carson to his feet and escorting him to the door.

  Staggering outside into the glaring sunlight, he saw that the building was constructed of concrete cinderblock with a roof of corrugated metal. The exterior was garishly painted, mostly in pastel shades of lime green and pink. In front of the building, several ornately colored flags snapped in the wind.

  A throng of children gathered to stare at him. He saw a gravel road nearby, possibly the one that he had seen earlier today. There were several wattle huts in the vicinity; perhaps this was a worship center that served a neighborhood.

  Walking back inside, Carson tried to make sense of it all. Were these civilians holding them as they waited for government or military authorities to arrive? Was there some form of reward involved? As he listened to the women’s nonsensical rant, he was confident that it was only a matter of time before rescuers were sent for them. In the meantime, he accepted that matters could be much worse; they weren’t being beaten or tortured, they had a roof over their heads, and were provided with food and water. Still, he was distraught over Ourecky’s condition, and desperately hoped that the rescuers would come before it was too late.

  Morne Bossa, Haiti

  2:25 p.m., Friday, March 13, 1970

  Anxious to make radio contact with Ohio, Henson mentally composed his message in his head as he raced north up Highway Three. Turning off the main road onto the dirt track that ran to his shed, he saw a Fad’H jeep and truck waiting. As he braked to a stop and killed the motorcycle’s engine, he saw Colonel Roberto and a squad of Fad’H soldiers. All were dressed in cotton Army fatigues; unlike the others, Roberto’s uniform was heavily starched and accented by a brown leather Sam Brown belt that bore a Colt .45 pistol in a polished leather holster.

  Roberto had obviously just finished his lunch and handed his lunch pail to one of the soldiers. Carrying a Thermos bottle, he greeted Henson. “Matthew, you’re a difficult man to find. Have you been busy this morning, by chance?”

  “Just the usual work. Poking around, raking up ore samples, the normal routine,” replied Henson casually, closing the motorcycle’s fuel valve as he swung out the kickstand. “And you?”

  “It’s been an unusual morning,” said Roberto, taking off his cap. “Let’s go inside and chat.”

  “It’s hot in there in the afternoon. Why don’t we just stay out here in the shade?”

  “No. Let’s go inside, Matthew.”

  As Henson walked up, he realized that the brass padlock on the door was undone, but distinctly remembered closing it this morning when he left to go into the mountains.

  Entering the shed, Roberto gestured towards a chair and said, “Have a seat.” A Fad’H sergeant stood beside the door. Roberto unscrewed the cup from the Thermos and filled it with steaming hot coffee. Henson could not conceive of drinking coffee in this heat. In moments, his clothes started to dampen with perspiration. In contrast, Roberto might as well have been seated on an iceberg, because he remained cool, dry, and unflappable as ever.

  “Interesting radio you have,” noted Roberto, using a pocketknife to snip the end from a Dominican cigar. “I hope you’re not offended, but I took the liberty of examining it while I was waiting for you. I’m somewhat of a radio aficionado, much like those ham radio operators you have in the States. That’s a top-of-the-line Heathkit shortwave, isn’t it? Very nice. Do you use that for business or are you a ham radio operator yourself?

  “Business. I’m sure you’re aware that the telephone cables aren’t very reliable down here, but my company—Apex—wants daily reports, so we use shortwave radio to communicate.”

  “Interesting,” said Roberto, lighting the cigar. Puffing at it, he added, “And that UHF radio over there? What’s that for? It seems like it would only be good over relatively short ranges.”

  Henson nodded. “We have that so that when and if more specialized teams come here to do more precise survey work, we can talk to them on the land and in the air.”

  “Specialized teams,” mumbled Roberto. “And that gadget outside in the tent? What’s that? It looks like an aerial beacon of some sort.”

  “Precisely. We plan to eventually use airplanes to do most of the spotting work. That beacon will allow us to determine an exact location when they report a finding.”

  “Fascinating,” said Roberto. “I am so impressed with the scientific nature of your business.”

  Anxious to report the latest information, Henson stole a quick glance at the shortwave radio.

  “Am I keeping you from something, Matthew?” asked Roberto.

  “Nothing too important. Nothing pressing, anyway.”

  “Good. I was going to ask your assistance, since you have the latitude to travel around so freely in the outlying areas,” said Roberto. “Here’s my dilemma. During their routine patrols
this morning, my soldiers took several reports in villages in the mountains south of here. It seems that late last night, immediately before the big thunderstorm, there was some sort of strange apparition in the sky.”

  “An apparition?” Henson smirked.

  “Wi,” replied Roberto. He puffed on his cigar and added, “The villagers insisted that they had witnessed a giant bird carrying another animal clutched in its talons. They said that they saw it clearly because it was illuminated by the lightning flashes.”

  “But, Roberto, you’re an educated man. Surely you don’t believe their claims.”

  Roberto clicked his tongue and said, “Matthew, it’s easy for you to just wave aside these sorts of things, but this isn’t an incident I can afford to dismiss so readily.“ He turned towards the sergeant and gruffly ordered, “Pote m’ kat la.”

  The grim-faced sergeant nodded, left the shed and returned with a map.

  “If there had been merely one sighting of this giant bird, perhaps I could disregard it,” explained Roberto, tapping on the map with the earpiece of his gold-framed Foster Grant sunglasses. “But there were many sightings. The details were very consistent. Granted, it was after midnight and most of these people were probably returning from voodoo rituals and were fairly well soused, but it’s difficult to discount the uniformity of their descriptions.”

  “You’re right,” commented Henson, nodding. “Interesting.” He felt sweat pouring down his spine, like someone had stuck a fire hose down the back of his shirt. He couldn’t understand how Roberto could remain so incessantly cool.

  Roberto laughed. “Oh, yes, very interesting. Anyway, most of these people swore that they had witnessed a loup-garou.”

  “A shape-shifter?” asked Henson. “A werewolf?”

  “Werewolf? Not every loup-garou assumes the visage of a wolf. They can be birds, snakes, dogs, anything. A true loup-garou can become any creature that he wants to be. They can change from human form to animal form and back again, at will. So the legend goes.”

  “But all this is just superstition isn’t it?”

  Roberto frowned. “Personally, I don’t think that there are any loups-garous around here, at least not any real loups-garous. In many places, when a child comes up missing, the ignorant and superstitious are quick to attribute the disappearance to a loup-garou. I suppose that blaming a mythical monster is easier than accepting the knowledge that a child molester lives in their midst, especially someone so evil that he’s willing to murder a child to cover his tracks.”

  Roberto finished his coffee and threaded the plastic cup onto the Thermos. “So, Matthew, have any of your contacts mentioned seeing a giant bird carrying a wounded animal? Perhaps you could lend me some insight into this apparition.”

  Henson shook his head. “Sorry, but no, Roberto. I wish I could be of more help.”

  “I see. One more question.” Roberto pointed at a town—Dondon—on the map. “Here’s something odd. I had no such reports from Dondon, even though some of those people should have seen it as well. It struck me as so odd that I sent some of my soldiers there to canvass the inhabitants, but they all insisted that they saw nothing unusual last night. Strange, isn’t it?”

  Examining the map, Henson nodded.

  “Have you been to Dondon?” asked Roberto. “Is there any chance of you passing through there in the near future? Perhaps you could let me know if you hear anything.”

  “I’ve not been to Dondon,” said Henson truthfully. “I usually stay east of the river and Grande-Rivière-du-Nord. Besides, from what I hear of Dondon, it sounds like a place to avoid. There’s apparently a lot of bad voodoo and criminal activity there: trucks hijacked on the road and people found murdered. So I stay out of there. I don’t need any unnecessary confrontation.”

  “Good idea.” Smiling, Roberto stood up. “Please accept my apologies for interrupting your day. It’s obvious that you have much to do, so I’ll leave you to your chores.”

  Henson stood up and shook Roberto’s hand. “I hope you find your answers,” he said. “I’ll keep my ears to the ground while I’m out in the countryside. Sounds like quite a mystery.”

  “Quite. Oh, Matthew, one other thing …” Roberto snapped his fingers. The gruff sergeant stepped forward and handed him a thick rubberized packet, something that Henson recognized immediately. Roberto opened it, and yanked out a fistful of Haitian currency, as well as a rubber-banded bundle of large denomination US bills.

  “My men found this buried out back,” explained Roberto, thumbing through the bills. “I personally know the man who owns this property. Most of his residual earnings end up going to rum, whores, and gambling, so I suspect that this is yours. Am I correct?”

  “Yes,” replied Henson quietly. His mind spun as he tried to invent a plausible explanation, but there was none. He swallowed; his throat felt like it was on the verge of swelling shut.

  Roberto tucked the money back into the pouch and handed it to Henson. “There’s quite a sum in there, Matthew. I suppose mining exploration is quite an expensive endeavor.”

  Henson nodded solemnly.

  Roberto slipped on his sunglasses and gestured at the door. “Care to walk me out?”

  The two men walked outside. “I suppose we should be on our way,” said Roberto, smoothing the tips of his perfect black moustache. “I consider you a dear friend, Matthew, but let me reiterate something. So long as you insist that you’re doing nothing but innocent work and I have no reason to suspect otherwise, my soldiers will not interfere with you. But if you’re up to anything else, it would behoove you to tell me immediately. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Yes.”

  Roberto nodded, then grinned and asked, “So, are you free tomorrow morning?

  “It’s Saturday. Roberto, you know that I never work on Saturday.”

  “I know,” said Roberto, dropping his half-smoked cigar before crushing it under the heel of a custom-made combat boot. “Julienne and I would love to have you for breakfast. We just received a package of peppered bacon from Santo Domingo. Is seven too early?”

  “Seven? Oh, no. Seven is fine. I’ll see you then.”

  It took Henson several minutes to calm down. As his heart rate gradually quieted, he switched on the shortwave and dialed its transmitter to the emergency frequency. Keeping a watchful eye on the door, he tapped out a message in Morse code. The gist of the dispatch was to let them know that he had physically confirmed the location of the vehicle, that it was damaged but secure—at least for the near future—but that he had still not made contact with the two pilots.

  Although it took only a few minutes, it seemed like he waited an eternity for the reply. The distant operator acknowledged the update and told him the rescue team was still arriving tonight to take over the mission. The rest of the brief message gave the specifics of the team’s infiltration plan, particularly focusing—in detail—on the role that Henson would play. Henson acknowledged the message and cleared out the contact before shutting down and zeroing the radio. He memorized the pertinent information and then carefully burned his notes.

  He wished that there was time for at least a brief nap or a quick bite, but there was not a second to waste. He grabbed a few items from an old pine armoire and then went back outside to his motorcycle. Filling the Motoguzzi’s tank from an old jerry can, he reflected that it was probably going to be another very long night.

  11:30 p.m.

  Nestor Glades knelt on the port side of the MC-130 Combat Talon’s broad tailgate. He glanced down to verify the altitude—ten thousand feet—from the altimeter mounted on the top of his reserve parachute. Leaning slightly outside of the aircraft, he looked forward and observed the flickering lights of Cap-Haïtien in the distance.

  Under cover of darkness, a three-man advance team of the Rapid Response Force was making a HALO—High Altitude, Low Opening—free fall infiltration jump into Haiti. Their primary mission was to locate the two missing crew members. Glades was confident that w
ould merely be a matter of tracking them until they were found holed up in an evasion hide site.

  The remainder of the RRF—fifteen men—was staging at Homestead Air Force Base, near Miami. Their infiltration plan was still being finalized, but their main task was to pinpoint and recover the spacecraft. Of course, since the advance team was literally jumping right on top of it, locating it should be a simple endeavor. On the other hand, quietly sneaking it out of there might be a trick. Ideally, the entire mission would be conducted as a clandestine affair, with the Haitians—and the remainder of the world—totally unaware of the American presence on their soil. A totally clandestine operation was certainly preferable, but if necessary, the RRF could execute a much more overt—and appropriately violent—rescue operation if the circumstances dictated.

  After being involved in the RRF’s training over the past few months, Glades had been pressed into service as a jumpmaster for the free fall jump. Although the team made ten or more practice jumps every month, none of their members had successfully graduated from the Army’s strenuous HALO jumpmaster school, so they relied on Glades to perform the task.

  As jumps went, this should be a fairly easy operation, not unlike a stringently controlled jump at the Fort Bragg schoolhouse. Since Haiti lacked a sophisticated air defense radar network, there was little risk incurred in making the high altitude incursion into their airspace. But there was no room for complacency, since this was a genuine operational mission—the RRF’s first—and they were jumping into a sovereign foreign nation without State Department sanction or any other legitimate authority.

  Glades would be delighted if he could just perform his jumpmaster duties, close the tailgate, and return to Homestead for a cold beer, but he didn’t have that luxury. Just three hours earlier, General Fels, an officer he greatly respected, personally asked Glades to accompany the team as a technical advisor. Although his duties were vague at best, his singular task was to ensure that the team didn’t do anything stupid, at least to the extent that he was asked to prevent any stupid actions that might result in the team’s compromise and/or annihilation. Glades hoped for a short and uneventful mission, where he could remain quietly in the background while the team took the lead and did their job.