Blue Darker Than Black

by Mike Jenne

  “Do you know what happened to Taylor?” asked Carson. “Did they seize his plane at Gitmo? Henson implied that he was involved in some fairly shady dealings.”

  “They confiscated his plane initially,” answered Wolcott, nodding his head. “Once Base Ops ran his license and paperwork, he spent the night in the brig. As I hear it, the next morning the base commander received a phone call from someone highly placed up on the food chain. By the time Taylor was dropped off at the flight line, his plane had been spot-cleaned of every drop of blood, his maintenance paperwork was completely up to date, his engine was tuned, and he had a full load of clean fuel in his tanks. He filed a flight plan for Port-au-Prince, and went on his merry way, no questions asked. He even had two F-4’s escort him out to international airspace.”

  “Good.”

  “So how’s Ourecky knitting up, pard? Have you been keeping a close eye on him?”

  “He’s doing well, all things considered. He’s suffering a lot of pain in his gut, especially after all the surgeries and the last round of infection, so he’s still popping pain pills like Pez candy. Bea and I constantly pester him about it, though. I’m sure he’ll be weaned off them in a few weeks.”

  Wolcott chuckled. “Oh, that’s a hoot, hoss. It’s pretty danged sad when a guy is henpecked by his missus and his left-seater. Who can he turn to then?” He took a deep draw from his cigarette and asked, “So when will he be ready to go upstairs again?”

  “Honestly? I don’t know, Virg. Physically, he should be back up to speed in three to four months, but he has some tall psychological hurdles to clear before he’s ready to go back up, if he’ll ever be ready to go back up. And truthfully, Virg, he’s not the only one.”

  “You’ll burn through it, pard. So will he. Both of you will eventually recover the gumption to climb back up on the horse that threw you. I know; I went through some pretty dark interludes back during the War. I lost over half my crew on one mission. After we limped back to England, I spent over an hour in the shower, scrubbin’ off bits and pieces of my co-pilot. It was kind of like that song from South Pacific, except that I literally did wash that man out of my hair.”

  Grimacing, Wolcott continued. “That was definitely my blackest moment, but even after that, I went back up. There just comes a time when that sense of duty takes over, and you do what has to be done. That’s the way it was for me, anyway.”

  “I hope that’s the way it is for Ourecky and me.”

  Wolcott nodded, leaned back in his chair, and said, “Here’s a hypothetical question, pard. Let’s assume that Ourecky takes a wee bit longer to heal up than you do. The next shot is in September. Jackson and Sigler are still on tap to catch that elevator. If you’re healed up by then, how would you feel about flyin’ with Sigler in the right seat? Could you two geehaw?”

  Carson thought about it a moment and answered, “Honestly, Virg, I don’t know how to explain it, but I just don’t think I could make it happen with Sigler. Something clicks between Ourecky and me, kind of a yin and yang balance, and it works. I know I’ll eventually go up again, but I would prefer to go up with Ourecky, provided he’s cleared to go as well.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Wolcott said. “Well, in any event, we ain’t sending you back up until you’re completely mended. Both of you.”

  Carson looked at a clock on the wall. “They’re in their contact window. We should be receiving the word anytime now, whether they made the intercept or whether …”

  “… they ain’t,” said Wolcott, stubbing out his cigarette in a glass ashtray. “I spied you talking to Gunter, pard. I assume that he lent you the hot scoop about their PQI’s.”

  “So you don’t expect them to make the rendezvous?” asked Carson.

  “Nope,” replied Wolcott, shaking his head as he toyed with a chipped pearl button on his starched denim shirt. “If the truth be known, I didn’t much expect them to make the intercept when the hold-down bolts blew and they left the pad at the PDF.”

  “If you weren’t confident in them, Virg, why did you send them up?”

  “First and foremost, pard, despite what happened to you and your buddy during your Caribbean vacation, we still have a schedule to meet. The trains have to keep leavin’ the station at the appointed times. Now, I pleaded with Mark to request a hold on the launch schedule, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He was bound and determined to send up Jackson and Sigler, even though we both knew that they weren’t ready.”

  “Why?”

  “Why, pard? Simple. He’s insistent on hoistin’ some of the load off of you and Ourecky. For him, I think that a big part of the process was proving that Jackson and Sigler could deliver the mail. So we went round and round about it, and I finally folded my cards and let it happen.”

  “I still don’t understand why, Virgil.”

  “Carson, did I ever tell you that I was raised on a cattle ranch in Oklahoma?” asked Wolcott, tilting his Stetson back on his bald head.

  “Not directly, but I was certainly aware of it.”

  “Well, pardner, what with all the movies and TV shows about cowboys, I think people tend to form a lot of romantic notions about ranchin’. They probably think it’s all like one big endless episode of Bonanza. In truth, ranchin’ is hard, backbreakin’ work. Moreover, it’s a damned business like any other business, but there are some oddities to it. For example, long before you drive the cattle down to the stockyard, you can predict almost to the penny what you’re going to make off the herd and whether it’s going to be a good year or a losing year.”

  Gazing through the glass, Wolcott continued. “Every time you lose a head, that’s another notch cut out of your profit margin. My daddy used to fret all night when bad thunderstorms blew in. He would tally the lightning strikes, and when the storm passed, he could tell you how many carcasses we would find out on the pasture after the sun rose. And damned if he wasn’t smack dead on most of the time.”

  Wolcott took a sip from his coffee and added, “So, long before we saddled up for the last drive, even though there might be some miniscule fluctuations in beef prices, my daddy plainly knew what payout would be waitin’ at the teller’s window at the stockyard. My point is that you still have to keep plugging away, even when you already know the outcome, and even more so when it’s an outcome that ain’t necessarily in your favor.”

  “I understand,” Carson said. “But you’re still planning to send them up on Six?”

  “I am, pardner,” replied Wolcott, nodding. “Not that it’s my decision to make. Mark Tew is just dadblamed adamant that if those rascals don’t get it right this time, then they’ll get it the next. So I suppose I’ll just keep on placating him, until we run out of rockets or until you two are ready to fly again.”

  “Sure seems like a waste of hardware.”

  “Yup. Yea and verily,” answered Wolcott. “But let’s ride another trail for the moment. When do you expect the flight surgeons to clear Ourecky to fly?”

  “To orbit?”

  “No, pard. When do you expect that he’ll be sufficiently recuperated to go back up with you in a T-38?”

  “Probably mid-September, sir. October at the latest.”

  “Good. When you feel confident that he’s ready to ride cross-country with you, I have a job for you two,” said Wolcott. “It’s more of a public relations venture than an operational mission, but we need some positive public relations in our favor, so I’d like to send you two out to knock on some doors on behalf of Blue Gemini. I’ll read you into the specifics when the time comes.”

  “Sounds good, Virg.”

  A collective groan rose from the floor below. Although they couldn’t hear his words, they turned to the window to watch as a somber Heydrich read aloud from a Teletype print-out.

  Moments later, Heydrich knocked on the door and stuck his head in. “Virg, they botched the intercept. They finished the closing maneuver too high, so they’re sitting less than a quarter-mile away above the target. And they’ve a
lready exceeded the mandatory return threshold.”

  As an anguished look crossed his weathered face, Wolcott nodded.

  Carson imagined the frustration that the guys upstairs must be feeling. The Soviet satellite was probably hovering right in front of their nose, taunting them. Eventually, it would progressively drift away since it was moving slightly faster in a lower orbit.

  A quarter-mile probably seemed inconsequential, and he was sure they were tugged by the temptation to continue maneuvering, but closing that gap would expend virtually all the OAMS thruster propellant they had left. Not only would their safety margins for reentry be erased, but there also wouldn’t be sufficient fuel to adequately execute a close-in inspection or deploy their Disruptor. What a tremendous waste, he thought.

  “What do I tell them?” asked Heydrich.

  “Bub, there ain’t nothing to tell them,” drawled Wolcott. “Shucks, Gunter, you know the rules. Abandon all intercept operations and maneuver for reentry. That simple. They know that, so they should already be executing without us having to cite chapter and verse.”

  Heydrich nodded. “I just wanted to hear it from you, Virgil.”

  “And you did. One more thing, pard: hustle someone upstairs to inform Mark Tew. Make sure he knows that we’re shuttin’ down this rodeo.”

  20

  ON THE ROAD WITH DIONYSUS

  Aerospace Support Project

  8:36 a.m., Friday, September 11, 1970

  In the throes of a terrible cold, Wolcott was overcome by yet another hacking spell. He considered lighting another cigarette, hoping that would calm his throat, but unwrapped a Vicks medicated throat lozenge instead. If there was ever a week not to be under the weather, this was definitely it. Mission Six was due to launch in five days, and there was yet much to be done to prepare for it.

  Despite their last fiasco in June, Jackson and Sigler were bound again for orbit, this time to target a suspected OBS platform launched two months prior from the Soviet launch complex in southern Kazakhstan. If the pending mission wasn’t enough to keep Wolcott on pins and needles, virtually everyone assigned to the Blue Gemini was stricken with the same debilitating cold. In particular, Gunter’s mission control crew had been decimated by the passing illness; less than a third of his staff was available to work, and some of his key players would probably have to double-shift until their reinforcements rose from their sickbeds.

  Listening to Merle Haggard’s gravelly voice singing “Okie from Muscogee,” Wolcott smiled to himself. Tew did not tolerate music—especially country music—in the office. But at present, Tew was laid up at home, felled by the cold that he had probably passed to Wolcott, so Merle crooned at full volume from the cassette player on his desk. Savoring the last strains of the song, he listened for a loud click that signaled the end of the tape and then turned the cassette over to listen to one of his personal favorites—“Mama Tried”—of Merle’s repertoire.

  Although the pre-launch details of Mission Six were pressing, Wolcott took a few moments to review some intelligence data. Wiping his sore nose with a tissue, he flipped open a folder and perused a stack of photographs.

  Although Wolcott had no way of knowing, an agent had placed his life at grave risk to hurriedly snap the images at the TsKBEM “Central Design Bureau of Experimental Machine Building” aerospace facility in Podlipok, Kaliningrad. They showed a full-scale mock-up of the three-man “Salyut” space station currently under development.

  Although the program was guarded in the usual secretive folds that enveloped all Soviet aerospace progress, the Salyut’s mission wasn’t unduly different than that of the planned Skylab space station that NASA intended to launch after the Apollo moon missions drew to a close.

  Sniffling, Wolcott scrutinized a report that revealed troubling details about the otherwise innocuous Salyut. According to the file, another design bureau—OKB-52, under the leadership of famed Soviet aerospace engineer Vladimir Nikolayevich Chelomei—was laboring on yet another manned space station.

  The second effort—tentatively named “Almaz”—was shrouded in even greater secrecy than Salyut. Initially, US intelligence officials suspected that Almaz and Salyut were competing projects by the rival bureaus, particularly since the OKB-52 organization had been ordered to transfer a significant amount of Almaz technology to the TsKBEM bureau to expedite development of the Salyut. But the intelligence report alluded to a more sinister purpose for Almaz; it wasn’t merely a competing design that had been left by the wayside in favor of Salyut, but a totally different vehicle intended solely for military purposes.

  Masters of obfuscation, the Soviets apparently were using Salyut as a cover for Almaz, since Almaz would be launched in roughly the same timeframe as Salyut. One detail of the report caused Wolcott to gasp in dismay; the Almaz was to be outfitted with a 23mm Nudelman automatic cannon, apparently to repel US space vehicles sent up to intercept it. The Soviets arming a manned space station? It was just too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence.

  Merle was silenced in mid-song as the cassette tape came to an abrupt end. Re-reading the section on the automatic cannon, Wolcott listened to the annoying tick-tick-tick of the wall clock on the opposite wall. Were the Soviets on to them? Was there a leak within the Project?

  Cap Nellis Air Force Base, Las Vegas, Nevada

  9:25 p.m., Monday, October 5, 1970

  As he listened to the drone of turboprop engines, Eric Yost was a happy man, bound for his personal version of heaven, courtesy of the US Air Force. He was returning to the States after a fifteen-month stint at a DEW—Distant Early Warning—Line radar site in Greenland. As of tomorrow, his Air Force service would be complete, so a lifetime of military retirement checks and free medical care awaited him.

  Ironically, Jimmy Hara was responsible for his resurrection. Although Hara had made it abundantly clear that he could turn Yost over to appropriate authorities to be prosecuted for treason, he was willing to cut Yost a break if he promised to never again speak of Morozov, Hangar Three, or anything else that happened at Wright-Patterson. If he did ever see fit to mention any of those things, declared Hara, he would be sitting in a cell at Leavenworth before the sun went down and would remain there for the remainder of his natural life.

  As he dispatched Yost to Greenland, Hara admonished him to keep his nose clean—no drinking and no gambling—for the duration of his purgatory tour, and when he returned to the States, he could retire as if nothing had ever happened. The only other provision that Hara specified was that Yost would never again set foot anywhere in the vicinity of Wright-Patterson or Dayton; Hara advised him that it would be wise to steer entirely clear of the entire state of Ohio, unless Yost felt compelled to settle his gambling debts with his loan shark creditors.

  Because he was returning from a remote site and had no family anxiously awaiting his homecoming, the Air Force offered to fly Yost to any installation in the United States—other than Wright-Patterson—for his retirement out-processing. Since he had no inclination to see snow or be cold ever again, a warm and welcoming climate was his primary consideration.

  For a while, he had considered retiring in Hawaii but realized that living on an island would be a little too claustrophobic for his tastes. Finally, he settled on Nellis Air Force Base; located in the desert immediately proximate to Las Vegas and its abundance of glittery casinos, it was the ideal place for Yost to begin his new life. He smiled as he looked out the circular window of the C-130 transport that was delivering him and two heavily crated F-4 jet engines from New Jersey to Nellis. Glimmering neon lights beckoned in the distance.

  In his first six months of his Greenland ordeal, he had adhered to Hara’s instructions and diligently salted away every hard-earned nickel of every single paycheck. Like an Arctic hermit, he stayed on the radar site compound, never venturing out to the nearby Danish community a few miles away. During that period, his existence was simple, almost monk-like. He minded his business, pulled his guard shifts, ate all of his m
eals at the chow hall, and slept. Despite a wealth of enticing opportunities, he even abstained from drinking and gambling.

  Then, seven months into his stay, he finally surrendered to the urge and threw his ante into a barracks poker game. The rest was history; it was as if he couldn’t lose. In time, he had his run of the garrison; he could do anything he wanted, except leave.

  He lived like a king, dwelling in a Quonset hut normally occupied by ten men, along with a native woman who cleaned, cooked and otherwise catered to his every need. When he finally left Greenland, everyone at the camp—officers, enlisted, civilian contractors, Danes, natives, you name it—still owed him money.

  He patted the duffle bag jammed under his webbing seat. To imply that he was flush with cash would be a tremendous understatement. Except for his shaving kit and a couple of intricately carved ivory figurines to commemorate his Arctic sojourn, the duffle was absolutely stuffed with money. He bore nothing else but the uniform on his back and aspirations of hitting it big—really big—in Vegas.

  Giddy with anticipation, he felt a phantom itch and rubbed the gap once occupied by his left index finger. He had lost the digit to frostbite after falling asleep at his guard post on his third month at the radar site.

  After amputating the blackened finger, the doctor recommended that he be evacuated to the States, but the camp commander was under strict orders to keep him up North, except in truly life-or-death circumstances. Looking back on the episode, he smiled at the commander’s stubbornness; Yost was now a wealthy man as a result of his protracted stay, and a sizeable chunk of his net worth came straight out of the commander’s coffers.

  Holding out his hand to examine his remaining digits, he mused on whether it was worth the sacrifice, and then assured himself that it was. After all, it was just a finger and he had nine more. But as he snugged his lap belt for the final approach to Nellis, Yost could have no inkling what turmoil his missing finger would eventually bring.