by Jerold Last
"Well, there's no time like the present. I'll talk you through it. Keeping us in level flight is easy. It's landing, navigating, using the instruments in bad weather, and taking off that you need all those lessons for.
"Step 1: Look at the control panel on the dash in front of you. There are a few key controls I want you to pay attention to. First, there's the altimeter, this thing that looks like a speedometer here," he said, pointing at the device. "It tells you what the altitude of the plane is with respect to the ground at sea level or at any other place you want to adjust it for. This one is adjusted to Iquique airport."
"Then there's the artificial horizon," he said, pointing to an image of an airplane with both of its wings on a horizontal line in a little window-like device on the control panel. "It tells you whether the plane is flying level, climbing, dropping, or turning. It's a lot more reliable than depending on your senses to tell you whether you are flying in level flight the way you want to.
"Next is the speedometer, which tells you your airspeed relative to the air around us. We should be going about 367 Km/hr give or take a few kilometers. That's air speed, not ground speed, which will be greater or less depending on whether we have a tailwind or a headwind. At this altitude we probably have a tailwind of about 15-20 Km/hr today, so we'll really be cruising at about 385 Km/hr."
"Finally, we have a compass. This is a modern compass, which navigates by GPS positioning off of a few satellites. Our heading is almost exactly due south now, about 170 degrees. We want to keep flying on this heading for at least 30 minutes.
"That's it on instruments. You'll start with one control, the wheel, and after you get comfortable with that I'll show you what your feet do with those pedals under them and how to use the throttles. The wheel steers right and left like the steering wheel on a car, but it's pretty sensitive so you have to learn to have a very light touch. The wheel also controls the plane going up and down when you pull on it or push on it. Put both hands on the wheel and just feel what I'm doing for a few seconds. When I let go, try to copy my technique. Remember, if you don't do anything the plane will fly itself the way you want to go, so be very gentle with it. Don't worry if things get a little wobbly for a bit. That happens to every beginner. If you screw up big time I'll take over. If not, you'll get a feel for things in a few minutes and I'll let you do more then. Your job is to keep us at the same altitude and compass heading at the same airspeed with the plane lined up level on the artificial horizon."
A few minutes later he let go of the wheel and put his hands in the air to demonstrate that I was driving, or at least sort of driving.
I got the hang of it after about two minutes of up and down, left and right. The old saying that less is more described the proper technique for level flying with a slight tailwind. I wasn't able to keep the plane flying in the right direction anywhere nearly as smoothly as Romero was flying it, but after a few minutes I was doing OK.
Romero showed me how to use the foot pedals to control the tilt of the plane while turning, how to move the twin throttles forward and back very gently to increase or decrease power to the engines and how to lower and raise the nose to descend or ascend, which in turn increased or decreased the airspeed.
"There are two engines that we want to work at the same RPM to prevent the turning torque we'd generate if the two engines were rotating at different speeds, so we want to give them the same amount of fuel, the same amount of power, at all times in normal flight. To accomplish that, we move both throttles exactly the same amount when we increase or decrease the amount of fuel we're feeding them," he explained.
Finally he explained how to use the control wheel recessed in a well between our seats to adjust the airplane's trim, its tendency to climb, drop, or remain level when neither of us was actively piloting the plane. Again, there was a learning curve of a few minutes with each new control, followed by my being able to fly the plane satisfactorily in level flight, but with hundreds of tiny corrections required to do what seemed effortless for Romero. I flew the plane for about 15 minutes before Romero took over again to change our course to fly inland to the east.
"We'll fly over the Atacama Desert a bit and Pedro and I will play tour guide when we fly over anything that you'll be able to appreciate from four miles up. We can go down for a closer look when we fly over San Pedro de Atacama, which is one of the major tourist attractions in this area. Pedro will also be doing some science stuff he'll explain to you while he's doing it.
"Hey, Suzanne, would you like to trade seats with Roger and get a flying lesson on the way back?" asked Romero.
"You bet I would," she answered enthusiastically.
We flew over a few towns that existed because underground water came up to the surface in the few oases that supported human habitation in the driest desert in the world. You could pick out the green color of an oasis from 50 miles away and 4 miles up against the dark sand that covered the desert everywhere else. San Pedro de Atacama was larger than any of the other desert cities we flew over, and we could clearly see streets and houses after we descended to 8,000 feet. Romero explained to us what we were going to be doing next.
"A group of researchers in Europe did a series of very interesting experiments several years ago. They found some isolated packs of wolves and foxes in the unpopulated forest areas of Hungary and started feeding them Purina Wolf chow and Purina Fox chow pretty much from the day they were weaned. Other than trucking plenty of food to the packs or dropping it from the air, they left the animals strictly on their own in the wild. Several years later they looked at what they had. What they had were animals that looked like foxes and wolves, had the exact same DNA as foxes and wolves, but acted like semi-feral dogs. The wolves and foxes gave up their ferocity for the free food, and gave up killing other animals for food since they didn't need to get their own dinners any more. This was hailed as Utopia in the forest, as wolves, foxes, deer, and small rodents could peacefully coexist in this model and all of the species could flourish. Well, you know the rest of it; without predators the populations of prey animals exploded uncontrollably and the balance of nature went totally out of whack. But there remained a lot of interest in asking whether if modern ecologists just tinkered a bit at the edges, could they maintain the balance of nature in the face of lost habitat due to human population growth?
"Part of what we're doing here is trying to get baseline data on lots of animal and plant populations in the Atacama Desert so we can look at the impacts of water diversion to the big cities like Antofagasta and Iquique on these populations. The long-term plan is to try doing some of that tinkering at the edges to see if we can maintain the population levels of the local animal and plant species like they were in the face of continuing urban growth here in this region.
Pedro was taking photographs with an aerial camera for much of this part of the trip. He explained that he had GPS grid coordinates for when to take each photo so that he could create a systematic aerial survey of the desert using very high-resolution normal images and infrared sensitive images with different digital cameras. The cameras were military issue and gave resolution from 20,000 feet that was as sharp as a good civilian digital camera might give at 20 feet. These images would be reconstructed as a montage that would tell the biologists at the university what plants and animals were in the desert today and where exactly they were. The GPS grid coordinates were used to precisely position the plane and cameras. That way all of the photos were taken from the same place each time so that the montages taken on different flights would align exactly, and precisely the same areas were sampled for counting each flight.
We gradually worked our way south and west until we could see the ocean again, with a big city visible to the south.
"That's Antofagasta over there," announced Pedro from behind me. "We have one more detour to take after we fly over the city, then we'll head back to Iquique."
We descended to 8,000 feet again and flew over the port city of Antofagasta. It looked somewhat
like Iquique, but a good bit larger and a lot dirtier.
We ascended back to 21,000 feet and flew east and south again, back over the desert, for about 15 minutes. At that point Pedro got busy with the cameras and took a lot of pictures of the areas in and around a couple of large observatories we flew over. He used a third camera as well as the two he had used previously.
Romero once again took the lead in explaining what was going on.
"I mentioned yesterday that we had several sources of funding for the airplane and the technology on it. These special cameras and some more gadgets that aren't usually available on civilian planes were donated by the U.S. CIA via Vincent Romero in return for our doing regular surveillance over those two observatories. We don't know what they're doing with the images we gather, but I assume they use them to make sure that nobody is in or near those facilities that doesn't belong there. We are free to use the extra digital camera capacity for the various field research studies we are collaborating in, so everyone in our group at the university is very satisfied with this arrangement."
After about half an hour of high and low altitude reconnaissance over and around two observatories, we turned back north to return to Iquique by a much more easterly route than we had taken on the flight down to Antofagasta. Pedro stayed with his aerial photography equipment while Romero stayed in the pilot's chair. Suzanne and I changed seats. That's harder than it sounds while you are in midair with four full grown adults and a lot of equipment in an airplane the size of the Beechcraft. Eventually Suzanne had the co-pilot seat and I was relegated to a back seat.
Romero asked Suzanne, "Were you able to hear me when I explained what each of the controls does to Roger when he took over flying the plane?"
"I think so," she replied just a little tentatively.
"Put your hands on the steering wheel," he said.
She did.
He let go of the wheel. "You're steering the plane now. Put your feet on the pedals."
A moment or two passed. "You're flying the plane now. And you seem to have a nice light touch, so I'm very comfortable just leaving it to you for a while. You're good at this; maybe you should consider getting a pilot's license."
Suzanne turned back to look directly at me, stuck out her tongue in a decidedly unladylike gesture, and bragged, "I can fly better than you!" She gave me a beautiful smile and turned back to the controls.
A little more than an hour later, Romero guided Suzanne on how to bring the plane down to the appropriate altitude as we approached Iquique airport, turn the plane several times so we could line up with the runway while facing into the wind, and do most of the final descent before he took over for the critical final minute or two of the landing.
"Very, very nice job, Suzanne," Romero complimented her.
When we had landed and were taxiing to the tie-down area for the plane Pedro talked quietly for a couple of minutes on his cell phone. He turned back to us and told us, "Vincent would like to invite you two and Eduardo for lunch back at his house. I can drive you there if it is OK with you. He said that you all had a lot to discuss and this would be a good time for him."
Romero helped us get out of the plane correctly and told us we were great passengers and he hoped to see both of us again. We thanked him for the experience and the flying lessons, shook hands, and left him to take care of the plane before he left the airport. We walked with Pedro back to his car, a few hundred meters from the plane.
Pedro dropped us off at Vincent's about 20 minutes later, apologized for his imperfect English, said a warm good-bye, and drove off.
Vincent was standing in the doorway with Eduardo, who had already arrived, just behind him.
"Perfect timing," Vincent said cordially, "Just in time for lunch. Let's sit down and start eating. We can talk while we eat."
The four of us sat down to a lovely lunch of selected reheated and cold leftovers from the party the night before along with a nice Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon wine and orange juice for Suzanne. Vincent waited until we had all helped ourselves then spoke.
"I don't think any of us have actually lied about anything important to each other, but I suspect we've all been less than totally forthcoming. I propose that we switch to "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" mode. To show good faith, I'll go first. It'll be a whole lot easier for me if you'll answer a single simple question completely honestly first. I don't care which of you answers it. OK?"
"Yes, I think so," replied Eduardo.
"Are you all here only to investigate a series of murders of women in Peru, Bolivia, and Chile over the last couple of years?"
"Yes," replied Eduardo.
"That's a very good start," answered Vincent. "Now I'll tell you the rest of my story. I hope that if we compare notes we can actually make some progress on all of our concerns.
"Several years ago Eugene Colon, Francis Roberts, and I decided that it was time for us to come home and leave Chile and the CIA behind us. The agency agreed, but with the stipulation that we train our replacements and do whatever testing of the chosen replacements might be required to guarantee that they could do the job we'd been doing and would indeed do it. That sounded reasonable, so we agreed. The CIA arranged to vet our suggested replacements and give them standard training for normal incoming CIA agents in Langley, Virginia, and advanced covert operations training at two other locations I can't tell you about. They also got standard pilot training at one of our Air Force bases in Texas. The cover story was that they spent several years in the Chilean Air Force learning to fly airplanes for the university's benefit. Suzanne and Roger just spent the morning with two of them, and you met the third one, Felix Figueroa, in Cuzco and again last night at the party. That took care of training the replacements.
"The other requirement was testing them on the job to make sure they could do everything we've had to do. The surveillance and technical stuff went smoothly. They'd been well trained back home, the same way we were. But Eugene, Francis, and I agreed that there were some other job requirements that we needed to test them on that were a little less conventional. I'm not sure of the best way to say this. Our little slice of Paradise here has a few problems that occasionally need to be dealt with. We have a large immigrant population here in Iquique, Arica, and Antofagasta, some of whom are from Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Over the years we've caught some spies trying to get into the observatories and either destroy them or else inventory the equipment and figure out all of their capabilities. What's the best thing to do with a Syrian or Uzbekistan national who is caught spying on a European multinational facility that's a cover for clandestine U.S. operations in Chile, which is a sovereign nation? Our orders were to kill any of the bastards we caught, and that's what Eugene, Francis, and I did, several times.
"So, we had a little problem. How could we guarantee that Pedro, Romero, and Felix, all native Chileans, were prepared to kill to protect the United States CIA's interests in the Atacama Desert? We agreed to arrange a little test to find out. In retrospect I can see that this was a terrible idea, but it made sense to us at the time. We didn't want to draw attention to Northern Chile, so we arranged for our test to occur in Bolivia. Each of the three trainees had to kill a "random" victim under my supervision so we'd have a single Modus Operandi for all three killings. Actually, the victims weren't random. Eugene and Francis carefully selected three whores who were deeply involved in narcotics trafficking, prostitution, and other serious criminal activities and who had evaded any involvement with the law. We didn't tell the trainees anything other than they were to select random victims to kill. We actually set it up so that we selected the victims, who were anything but random, even though the trainees thought they had picked out the victims themselves. We initially planned to tell the cops that these victims were deeply involved in drug trafficking. But things got a little bit screwed up the first time like they always do out in the field and the message we had our trainee write, 'no more drugs' ended up with 'drogas' too blu
rred to read, so the signature morphed into 'no mas' for 'no more', then and subsequently.
"To make a long, and bloody, story short, they all passed their test. Mission accomplished. We're ready to retire from Arturo Prat University and come home. But the CIA says no. There have been six more bodies killed the same way that have turned up in Peru and Chile. We can add one more to the list after our recent experience in Lima. Until the murderer is taken off the books none of us can go home. I'm screwed. As of now, I'm stuck here until somebody figures out whether the murderer is Pedro, Romero, Felix, Eugene, Francis, or Vincent. And does something about it. Right now I'm no closer to having an answer to which of us it is than when this all began. I can assure you that it isn't me, but I'd lie to you if I were the guilty party, so what good is my assurance? OK, Eduardo. I think maybe it's your turn now. What are you really doing here in Iquique?"
Eduardo cleared his throat and answered. "Muy bien. You've got the right idea. I've been completely honest with you thus far. There was a lot of squabbling between Chile and Bolivia when they tried to co-ordinate their investigations of the killings, so they asked Paraguay if they could borrow someone like me from a neutral country that wasn't part of the pattern to direct the multinational task force investigating the murders. That's what got me involved. We were able to match up the dates of the killings with meetings of the biochemistry group you're part of, so we approached the scientific society and got stonewalled. They don't seem to like cooperation with the police. So I approached Suzanne because I knew her from a different case and knew she had the credentials to infiltrate your tight little group. And here we are, in large measure thanks to the help you've given us thus far. Suzanne, why don't you take it from here?"
