Blue Darker Than Black

by Mike Jenne

  “Who’s that? Someone from Nebraska?”

  Bea laughed softly. “Not quite. Drew, allow me to introduce Andrew Carson Ourecky.”

  “He’s named after me? You named him after me?” asked Carson incredulously.

  “That’s what Scott wanted,” she replied. “I hope you’re not too offended, Drew, but we’ve decided to call him Andy, at least until he gets a little older.”

  Staring at the baby, Carson asked, “And he’s okay? No … problems?”

  “He’s perfectly healthy,” answered Bea. “Ten fingers and ten toes, two little ears and a little button nose. I don’t know what all the fuss was about. So, do you want to hold him?”

  “I’ve never held a baby,” admitted Carson. “I’m scared to death I might drop him.”

  “Well, he has Czech blood in him, so he’s pretty damned tough.” Bea kissed the baby on his forehead and held him out to Carson. “Just try not to drop him directly on his head.”

  Carson awkwardly cuddled the infant close to his chest. Captivated by his namesake, he looked at the infant and smiled.

  Dubuission Homestead, Haiti

  9:15 a.m., Friday, April 10, 1970

  Taking care to remain well clear of Dondon, Henson remained in Haiti for another month to tie up loose ends. To his great relief, he had been informed that he would be reimbursed for all of his expenditures in the quietly executed rescue mission.

  He closed out his Morne Bossa site and relocated to Taylor’s old place. Since he was a man of simple needs, well accustomed to fending for himself, he gave Lydie a generous severance before returning her to her family in Limbe, about twenty miles southwest of Cap-Haïtien. Besides, although he found Lydie attractive and immensely desirable, Henson resolutely adhered to Abner Grau’s admonition to never mix business and pleasure.

  In what was certainly one of the slowest logistical exercises in modern history, he orchestrated the piecemeal movement of the dismantled spacecraft from the Dubuission brothers’ hilltop. To accomplish this task, Henson hired the services of a flatbed truck, eight porters, and four watchmen.

  The flatbed delivered building supplies—wood, nails, and corrugated roofing tin—to a rented staging site near Grande-Rivière-du-Nord. Every day for two weeks, pushing an oversized cart mounted on a truck axle and tires, the porters negotiated the rough road from town to the Dubuission property.

  In the morning, they carried in construction supplies and in the evenings, they hauled out big crates of ore samples. The flatbed delivered the samples to the airport, where Henson locked them in the big shed thoughtfully provided by Taylor. A small contingent of armed watchmen—all former Fad’H soldiers vetted by Roberto—maintained a constant vigil on the building.

  It took the porters an entire day to drag out the largest piece, wrapped snugly in a canvas tarp, which weighed roughly half a ton. Once all of the ore samples had been brought to the building at the airport, a chartered DC-3 arrived from Miami to transport them to the headquarters of Apex Exploration in Dayton, Ohio.

  Well-paid by Haitian standards, the porters and watchmen were delighted to be of service; moreover, they were more than content to keep their mouths shut about the mineral deposits discovered on the Dubuission farm. Well, most of them kept quiet, anyway.

  A man of his word, Henson provided the Dubuission twins with not just enough corrugated metal to put a roof on one house, but he had arranged for the delivery of sufficient roofing tin to outfit another house as well.

  Jean Dubuission had quickly found success in the romantic department, particularly after the word circulated that a wealthy blan mining venture was extremely interested in the brothers’ property. Assuming that Jean would soon be wed, Henson had provided enough materials for a second dwelling, since it just wouldn’t be proper for Henri to live under the same roof as a married couple.

  With his official tasks accomplished, Henson had packed up his gear and was due to fly to Miami the next morning. But still, there was yet one more thing to be done. Returning to the Dubuission farm for perhaps his final visit, accompanied by the brothers, he walked out into the burned field where the Gemini-I had come to rest. In the natural cycle of the earth healing itself, green shoots were already sprouting up in the midst of charred cane stubble.

  In the bright morning sunlight, he noticed something odd. Taking off his hat, he stooped down to see scrape marks in the ground where the black dirt had recently been turned by a shovel. “What’s this?” he demanded, pivoting around to face the brothers.

  “Sorry,” replied Jean sheepishly. “About a week after you left with the last piece, two European blans came up here to dig up some soil. They gave us some money. A few days later, they came back and offered us a lot of money for our land, enough to make us the richest men in the Department du Nord. So, anyway, we are thinking about buying some property closer to town and perhaps building our homes there. We’ve been on this hill a long time, you know.”

  “Are you angry with us?” asked Henri shyly.

  “It’s your land. Do with it as you wish,” replied Henson, smiling as he replaced his hat. In truth, he already knew about the transaction. Roberto had confided that a Belgian mining company had secretly taken samples there and had found minute traces of valuable metals—including nickel and beryllium—in the soil. He had relentlessly hounded Henson for the past week, insisting that he quit fumbling around and secure the mineral rights to the Dubuission property before the greedy Belgians snatched them away. “Just don’t ever tell anyone about what happened here. Fair enough?”

  “But of course!” replied Jean.

  Henson walked with them to their humble hut, the place where Baker had performed his impromptu miracle. Remembering that day, he looked at Henri’s face. Although still shiny and pink, the scar on the Haitian farmer’s forehead was healing well. Only a week ago, following instructions that Baker had left for him, Henson had removed the stitches.

  “Henri, have you ever seen the ocean?” asked Henson. “It’s very beautiful, and it’s only a few miles north of here.”

  “I’ve been on this hill all of my life,” said Henri, sighing as he rubbed his scar and shook his head. “I was a leper. Matthew, you know that. You and that blan zanj cured me.”

  “Then I would like the honor of taking you on your first excursion into the world,” declared Henson. “We’ll take a ride to Cap-Haïtien and perhaps drive around some towards the west as well. Jean, would you be opposed?”

  “No. I would be honored, Matthew, after all that you have done for us.”

  “So, Henri, have you ever been on a motorcycle?” asked Henson, straddling his Motoguzzi.

  “No, I haven’t,” answered Henri, climbing on behind him.

  “Well, it’s sort of like life,” replied Henson, kick-starting the bike. “Just jump on and hold tight.”

  18

  KOCHEVNIK

  Burya Test Facility Kapustin Yar Cosmodrome, Astrakhan Oblast, USSR

  7:17 a.m., Wednesday, May 6, 1970

  Yohzin arrived at the meeting place—a defunct launching facility—that General Abdirov had specified. Over the phone, his friend had said that he would not have time for their usual picnic lunch, but he wanted to meet all the same.

  Yohzin motioned for Magnus to remain in the car and instructed his driver to pull away a short distance and wait for his signal. The secluded site resembled a ghost town in a Western cowboy movie. A pair of wary vultures gnawed at a fox’s decaying carcass while more of the scavengers circled overhead, impatiently waiting their turn. An old telemetry antenna swayed against slackening guy wires. A rusting rocket gantry creaked in the wind. Parked at the base of the structure, a derelict armored car—with scorched paint and melted tires—was evidence of an explosion and subsequent fire during a refueling accident three years ago.

  As he waited for Abdirov, Yohzin loosened his stiff collar. The sky was clear and the sun shone brightly. The grass and clover were ruffled by a gentle breeze, which also wafted
a faint scent of kerosene. Curious, he leaned his head back and sniffed; the distinctive odor was an almost certain clue that a nearby rocket was being fueled in preparation for an imminent departure, but he was not aware of any impending launches.

  Abdirov arrived, slowly climbed out of his sedan, and also directed his driver to park elsewhere. The two men greeted each other. Seemingly in a hurry, Abdirov looked at his wristwatch and said, “Let’s take a hike, so I can show you our most momentous development.”

  The two men slowly walked about four hundred meters to the west, crossing a line of low hills that concealed the remote area—the former Burya test facility—that was Abdirov’s domain. As they walked, Yohzin noticed that the scent of kerosene grew progressively stronger. He also heard men shouting and the clanking of tractors and other machinery.

  The two men clumsily ascended to the top of an earthen berm that surrounded a disused fuel depot for test rockets. Handing him a pair of powerful naval binoculars, Abdirov pointed towards a launching pad roughly a kilometer away.

  Yohzin was startled by the spectacle before him. Swallowing deeply, he was absolutely confident that he should not be witnessing this sight. Abdirov obviously assumed a great risk by taking him here. The pad held a venerable R-7 “Old Reliable” rocket, topped by an intermediate stage and an aerodynamic shroud encasing its payload. At the base of the launch gantry, men and machines worked feverishly to ready the rocket for a departure that was obviously imminent.

  Adjusting the focus of the powerful binoculars, Yohzin spotted some surprising details. A stubby launch escape rocket, an almost certain clue that the spacecraft would be manned, protruded from the top of the sleek shroud. “Is that a Soyuz, Rustam? Is it manned?”

  “It is,” replied Abdirov proudly.

  Yohzin swallowed. The rumors were apparently true; clearly, Abdirov was actually set to launch men from his secret facility at Kapustin Yar. “For what purpose?” he asked.

  Abdirov answered, “We’re sending up three men tomorrow to evaluate some new equipment and procedures, to prepare for establishing a permanent station in orbit. The station will be called Krepost. It will be launched on a UR-500 booster and is designed to remain in orbit indefinitely. We will launch the crews and supply ferries from this pad.”

  “So it’s a reconnaissance mission?” asked Yohzin, handing back the binoculars. “Similar to the Almaz that Chelomei is building?”

  “Nyet,” replied Abdirov, frowning. “Krepost will not be a reconnaissance mission. Listen, it took us a decade, but we are finally making good on Khrushchev’s big promise.”

  “Khrushchev’s promise?” asked Yohzin. “What promise?”

  “After Titov orbited in his Vostok, Khrushchev told the West that we would eventually put nuclear weapons in space, so we could drop them on our enemies whenever we chose. That was his promise.”

  “I don’t think that was a promise, Rustam; it was more like a threat.”

  Abdirov chuckled. “Trust me, with Khrushchev, a threat was a promise. Anyway, Gregor, the Krepost will be armed with a powerful nuclear warhead. The General Staff had wanted it to be at least a hundred megatons, but the weapon currently in development will likely yield between thirty and fifty megatons. Once it is in orbit, we will rotate crews to keep it company. And that’s not all: that station is just the first of many more. Soon, we’ll have an arsenal in the sky, so it won’t matter whether the Americans can build better bombers, more rockets, or submarines that we can’t detect. We’ll be able to rain hellfire on them at our discretion, regardless of whether they land the first blow and destroy all of our weapons on Earth.”

  Yohzin restrained an urge to gasp. “You’re serious, Rustam?” he asked.

  “Deadly serious.”

  “Why are you showing me this?” asked Yohzin, handing back the binoculars.

  “Because the General Staff has finally granted me approval to have you transferred to my faculty,” declared Abdirov. “Think of it … we will finally be working together again, and we will be sending men into space!”

  It was a truly momentous occasion, thought Yohzin. And then he recalled that he had many other commitments, not the least of which was to deliver fresh information to the Americans, and that commitment entailed travelling to Moscow every month. “But what of my additional duties with the GRU?” he asked. “Will I have adequate time to fulfill those responsibilities?”

  “That’s all over,” declared Abdirov. “As part of the arrangement that I made with the General Staff, I stipulated that you be relieved of your extra duties so you could focus entirely on preparing the Krepost for flight.”

  Yohzin frowned.

  “Are you disappointed?” asked Abdirov. “I would have thought you would be delighted.”

  “Well, I am, but because of my background, the GRU counts on me to …”

  “Don’t worry, little brother,” said Abdirov, displaying his contorted half-smile. “There’s no need to deceive me. I know precisely why you are always so anxious to travel to Moscow every month.”

  Yohzin swallowed. “You do?” he asked quietly.

  “Sure. I know that you are enthralled with the ballet and theater. Look, I will still be going there for briefings at least once a quarter, so I’ll just make sure that you accompany me, and we can also make plenty of room for Luba and your boys. You’ll be working plenty hard for me, so I’m not going to deprive you of the arts that you so love.”

  “Spasiba.”

  “There’s something else you should know,” added Abdirov. “The network of Krepost stations will eventually be linked to Perimetr, once that system is made operational. Even if all of our strategic leadership is decapitated by the Americans, the warheads will still find their targets.”

  Although he wasn’t fully cleared to know all of the details, Yohzin was conscious of an ongoing debate concerning Perimetr, a proposed automated firing apparatus for strategic weapons. Those who knew of it also referred to Perimetr by its macabre nickname: The Dead Hand.

  In Yohzin’s opinion, the entire Dead Hand concept was insane, but adding a space-borne component was even more deranged. Shaking his head in sheer amazement, Yohzin asked, “But, Rustam, tell me, are you truly comfortable with placing nuclear weapons in space?”

  “Of course,” vowed Abdirov. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Yohzin looked at his friend’s disfigured face. Shuddering, he suddenly grasped that there could be no man more perfect for this mission. Abdirov had been to the far shore of the River Styx, and although he had returned—barely—he was indelibly scarred by his trial. So if he had suffered the ravages of fire, he obviously wasn’t reluctant to sentence the enemies of the Soviet Union to a similar fate.

  Burya Test Facility Kapustin Yar Cosmodrome, Astrakhan Oblast, USSR

  6:15 a.m., Friday, May 8, 1970

  Soviet Air Force Major Pavel Dmitriyevich Vasilyev climbed down from the GAZ-66 van that had delivered the three-man crew to the launch pad. He was designated as the First Flight Engineer, the second-in-command of the flight that was scheduled to launch this morning.

  As he gazed upwards at the R-7 rocket waiting on the pad, Major Petr Mikhailovich Travkin, the mission’s Second Flight Engineer, stepped down after him. They were close friends with almost identical military pedigrees; after initially flying fighters, the two had graduated together from the Soviet test pilot school at the Central Scientific Research Institute in Chkalovsky in 1967 and were selected for the Krepost program a year later. Both were thirty-two years old. Unlike most of their fellow cosmonauts-in-training, both were married. Their spouses—Irina and Ulyana—and children had remained at Star City, home of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center near Moscow, during their husbands’ temporary assignment at the Kapustin Yar Cosmodrome. Their families had grown close; at Star City, they met often to dine or socialize together.

  Their Soyuz flight—code-named “Kochevnik”—was a ten-day mission to evaluate the weapons deployment control systems that wou
ld eventually be installed in the final version of the nuclear-armed Krepost. A secondary goal was to ensure the men’s adaptability to living in space, as well as their capacity to function effectively as an integral and harmonious crew. Since the planned Krepost missions would be of thirty to sixty days duration, living in intimate quarters, the question of their compatibility was crucial. It was something that could not be left to chance; the only alternative was to subject the three-man crew to an acid test above the atmosphere. This journey was a perfect opportunity for them to not only hone their skills, but also to forge a close rapport as a team.

  As he considered the R-7, topped by the aerodynamically shrouded spacecraft that would be their home for nearly two weeks, Vasilyev was tremendously excited about the prospects of flying into space, but he also felt great trepidation. His reluctance had little to do with the treacherous dangers they would face, but rather grew out of his concerns with the mission commander, Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Felixovich Gogol.

  To imply that Gogol was an odd duck would be a gross understatement. He was short-tempered, belligerent, and abrasive. Short, squat, and heavily muscled—built like a stump with arms—the Ukrainian officer possessed the physique of an Olympic wrestler or power lifter. His grizzled face was like a gnarled potato left too long in the ground, replete with moles and warts. As best as Vasilyev could determine, there was absolutely no logical explanation for Gogol’s selection as a military officer, much less a cosmonaut, except perhaps some mysterious connection to someone with significant political influence.

  Taken at a glance, Gogol’s qualities were few, and his shortcomings many, but there were some facets not so easily discernible. Although he could probably pass himself off as a rural bumpkin, entirely content to perch on the high seat of a Belarus tractor, tilling soil to plant a new crop of beets at a collective farm, Gogol’s rough exterior concealed a shrewd intellect. He was immensely tenacious and by far the toughest man that Vasilyev had ever met.

  Despite his myriad quirks, Gogol also happened to be the most experienced cosmonaut in the Krepost program, if not one of the most accomplished cosmonauts in the Soviet Union. While the other eleven pilots had never even ventured above the stratosphere, Gogol was already a veteran of three ten-day missions in space. Secretly flown in parallel with the Soviet’s six Vostok flights, the long duration flights were purely military missions to practice reconnaissance procedures and to test specialized equipment designed to detect ballistic missile launches. When several less stouthearted cosmonauts declined the task, Gogol enthusiastically volunteered to fly in a Vostok stripped of its heavy ejection seat, but packed with an extensive battery of optical equipment, sensors, and related gear. Vasilyev smiled to himself; perhaps Gogol’s selection to pilot the dangerous solo missions could be explained by another trait: besides being durable and intelligent, he was also immensely expendable.