“Quickly, lie down,” Amril said again. “I need blood from an arterial vein. And don’t worry about the pain, I am very good at this.” Ammon didn’t miss the sarcasm in his voice.
Ammon did as he was told as Amril approached him with an enormous needle. As he stepped to Ammon’s side, Amril jerked his arm above his head and held it while he smoothly inserted the needle into the axillary artery that ran under his arm and directly to his heart. It took only a moment to fill the syringe with blood. He then walked over to the partially inflated raft and squirted the blood all over, smearing it with his hands. After tossing the raft overboard, Amril turned to face his shivering passenger. “Now, we must get underway.”
Amrilled the way forward to the small cabin and started the boat. Gunning the throttles he turned northeast. After throwing Ammon a huge towel and cotton bathrobe, he motioned to a vinyl chair. Ammon sat down, and Amril closed the hatch door behind them, cutting the sound of the engines to a muffled roar. Amril had turned off all of the boat’s navigation lights, making the speeding watercraft impossible to see in the darkness.
After a moment of silence, Ammon asked, “Why did you have to stick me?”
Amril glanced at his passenger for a second before he replied. “For several reasons,” he said. “First, your death will have to be positively confirmed. By giving them a blood sample, they will have the DNA evidence to do that. But more importantly, by drawing from one of your arterial veins, we will help them identify a probable cause of death.
“You see, blood from a major vein, such as the axillary artery, is easily identified by the amount of oxygen it contains. When they analyze the samples taken from your raft they will conclude that you have suffered a major wound, probably a compound fracture of the arm or leg. It would be expected that you would lose a large amount of blood. Loss of consciousness would shortly follow, and since your raft was only partially inflated, the Americans will then theorize that you must have passed out and slipped peacefully into the cold, dark sea.”
Amril paused for a moment, then chuckled as he continued.
“I can see the accident report now:
“On 18 August, Richard Ammon, Captain, U.S. Air Force, was on a routine training mission over the Yellow Sea. For yet undetermined reasons, his F-16 exploded just prior to air refueling. The aircraft crashed at sea and was destroyed upon impact. Capt Ammon’s body has not been recovered, and we suspect he was a midnight snack for a herd of migrating turtles. The investigation continues.”
Amril continued to chuckle as he poured two steaming cups of coffee into capped mugs with his free hand and passed one over to Ammon. Amril sipped at the bitter brew in silence, then finally concluded. “It is a simple deception, but it will work.”
Ammon said nothing. By now the overcast had thickened and had completely obscured the once bright moon. They traveled in complete darkness. He felt dizzy and had to hold the brass side rail to steady himself in his chair. He began to realize how tired he was. Instead of the coffee, what he really needed was some rest and some time to think.
He stared into the darkness. As the boat sped on, bouncing from wave to wave, Ammon’s head began to slowly bob in rhythm. He listened to the drone of the engines. It was a pleasant sound, somehow comforting. It reminded him of when he was a small boy. Ammon could still picture himself as a child, huddled in the back seat, surrounded by thin wool blankets as his father drove the back streets of the Kasakstov and Prcshingtovalon districts. His father, more adept at drinking than holding down jobs, had finally found a job he could live with delivering newspapers between boroughs in eastern Kiev. The money wasn’t great, but it was enough to buy vodka and food. And since his mother had passed away several years before, his father had insisted that he accompany him on his rounds, rather than be left back in their tiny apartment alone.
As a young boy, Carl Vadym Kostenko was identified as having the potential to complete one of the Kollektive Sicherheit’s most rigorous tracks. He was separated from his family at age nine, and for the next nine years was indoctrinated with the theories of Marx and Lenin. He learned pcrfect English (with a slight southern accent) and American history and culture. Like American boys his age, he grew up to the music of Tom Petty, U2, and the Boss. He hated country and western. He loved the Dallas Cowboys.
But Carl Kostenko’s education didn’t end there. He also learned how to manipulate friends, communicate secretly with his handler, and operate miniature photographic and communication equipment. He learned how to evaluate others for tendencies of sympathy to his cause. He learned to exploit and deceive and lie. Finally, he was taught how to kill. Efficiently. Quietly. Without a trace. Without leaving a mess. It was a skill he anticipated he would never use, but if it ever became necessary, so be it. It was simply something he would do.
At the age of eighteen, Carl Kostenko found himself planted in the United States, complete with papers, a solid background, and a new identity as Richard Ammon. He entered UCLA, and graduated in three years with a B.S. in mechanical engineering. He received a reserve commission in the United States Air Force. A year later, he completed pilot training and had been flying the F-16 ever since.
During his first years at college, he had literally no contact with his handler. He didn’t even know if he had one. Many times he was left to wonder if he might be on his own. It wasn’t until he was ready to graduate that he was contacted. He was told that they had decided that he should accept his commission in the Air Force. This was very good news for Ammon, for although he would have done whatever was expected of him, he very much wanted to fly.
But like everything about the Kollektive Sicherheit, there were strings attached. No rewards werc ever free. Richard Ammon was told that if he didn’t do well enough in pilot training to get a combat aircraft upon graduation, then the agreement to allow him into the Air Force would be terminated. In addition, his superiors would be extremely disappointed in his performance and would have to question his ability to successfully complete future assignments. His whole situation would then he re-evaluated.
Few student pilots entered undergraduate pilot training with as much hidden baggage or secret motivation as did Richard Ammon.
But once he started to fly, Ammon began to relax. He discovered that he was a natural pilot. Flying just seemed to come easily to him.
He remembered clearly the day he knew he would make it. It was on his second sortie in advanced aerobatics in the T-38. The instructor pilot, who occupied the rear seat, was in a sour mood and nearly impossible to please. While completing a simple loop, he had suddenly grabbed the controls from Richard Ammon and snapped back hard on the stick.
“I said, pull more Gs!” he screamed, while pulling the little fighter around in a sharp bank. “You’ve got to G up this aircraft to get it around. Now do it again, and this time keep it coming. When I say pull, I mean pull! Don’t nanny around with the stick!”
Ammon shook his head with disgust, both at his own mistake and at his instructor for being such a jerk. Taking the stick in his right hand, he set up for another loop. Pushing the T-38’s nose toward the earth, he shoved both throttles into afterburner and accelerated quickly to 500 knots, then with a sudden snap, jammed the stick back into his lap. The Talon’s nose arched gracefully skyward as the G meter pegged at seven Gs. Grunting against the strain, he kept the pull in through the top of the loop, then accelerated downward once again. As he reached the bottom of the loop, he should have eased off on the stick and leveled off. But he didn’t. Instead, he kept the aircraft in full afterburner and jammed the stick back into his lap once again. Four times he pushed the aircraft through a graceful arch, constantly pulling seven Gs, forcing his instructor to groan and strain just to keep the blood in his head. At the bottom of the fourth loop, he heard his instructor mutter through the strain of his mask, “Okay, okay, I’ve had enough. You can let go of it now.” Ammon leveled off and headed back to base. His instructor didn’t say a word. He slowly shook his head. The guy ha
d a lot of nerve, pulling such a stunt on him. Cocky little jerk! Arrogant, snot-nose kid!
But inside his mask he was smiling. He loved it! It was just what they were looking for! It was exactly the kind of mentality that a combat pilot would need. From that day on, Ammon’s fighter was almost guaranteed.
First Lieutenant Richard Ammon graduated number one in his class. As such, he was entitled to get his first choice of aircraft and assignment. Lt Ammon didn’t even have to think.
He selected an F-16 to Bitburg Air Force Base, Germany. Not only would this assignment make it easier for him to be “handled,” but he would have access to important intelligence information concerning NATO and the American forces in Europe.
He was in Europe for almost a year before he heard again from the Sicherheit. He was told early to protect his position and not to take any chances that might expose his operation. They would need him later in his career, and they didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances at this time. As a result, he was never asked to pass along any information before he was transferred back to the States.
It was then that things had begun to unravel.
Few Americans watched the fall of the Berlin Wall or the breakup of the Soviet Union with as much interest as did Richard Ammon. Over the next few years, he watched in bewilderment as one communist government after another fell, along with their anti-West intelligence machines. During this time Ammon’s contact with his handler became less and less frequent. After a while he was not sure any of his former supervisors even remembered he was there. Now it had been years since he had any communication with them, and he doubted they knew of his assignment to Korea.
So Ammon couldn’t have been more surprised when, two days earlier, he was contacted. The message was simple. “The train is leaving at two. Gather your luggage.” Translation: Expect to be brought in. No more than two days. Gather any classified information that you can and be ready. We will act.
He wondered who had ordered him in? Who were they working for now? What government did they represent, and what did they really want?
But he realized his concerns didn’t matter. In such things he had very little choice.
So he gathered what information he could and prepared for the unknown. Although he knew the microfilm he brought with him was worthless, hopefully his superiors wouldn’t. And that would buy him their trust, and maybe a little time.
Thinking of the microfilm brought Ammon back to the present. He reached down to massage his wrapped knee, feeling the plastic bag as it rubbed against his skin.
Ammon stared into the darkness as they cruised toward the dim lights of P’yongyang. Amril remained silent, studying oceanic charts that lay on a small table by the pilot’s wheel. Ammon glanced at his watch, then returned his gaze to the darkness, his eyes unblinking, deep in thought. But he wasn’t considering the possibilities of his future, or even reflecting on the life he had just left behind. The only thing he was thinking about was how hard it would be to find a telephone once he arrived in the communist city of P’yongyang.
OSAN AIR FORCE BASE, SOUTH KOREA
Eighteen hours later, all nine members of the accident board that would investigate the downing of the F-16 met together for the first time inside a cavernous hangar. They watched in huddled silence as a deflated raft was brought through the hangar doors and placed on a stainless steel table in the middle of the floor. Normally, the place would have already been strewn with charred and splintered pieces of aircraft wreckage, carefully laid out, like pieces of a huge jigsaw puzzle. Normally, chunks of engines, computers, and fuselage would have already been placed end-to-end and piece-to-piece in an effort to determine the cause of the crash.
But not this investigation. The Yellow Sea had seen to that.
Air Force Colonel James Wood stared down at the deflated life raft and admitted to himself for the first time that it would likely be the only piece of evidence he would ever have to work with. The Falcon had gone down in more than 1,800 meters of shark-infested water. The initial report from the Navy indicated that the possibility of recovering the aircraft was fairly remote, perhaps impossible. Upon impact with the water, the F-16 would have been blown into a thousand shattered pieces. The fragments would have then been scattered across miles of ragged ocean floor, drifting here and there with the cold water currents.
No, unfortunately, there would be no aircraft wreckage to help them in their investigation. The accident board would be on their own.
Wood ran his hand over his head and let out an audible sigh. He watched the flight surgeon don surgical gloves and carefully spread the raft out upon thc examination table. As the accident investigation board president, it was his responsibility to determine exactly what had caused the F-16 to go down. He had spent the past eighteen hours talking to the KC-135 refueling crew and taking their statements, coordinating the rescue effort, searching through Capt Ammon’s official flight records, and organizing the members of the accident investigation team.
Together, he, the maintenance supervisor, and the chief flight surgeon had huddled in conference as they tried to put the initial pieces together. But as was usually the case, the early pieces did not fit very well.
Never had he seen anything quite this odd. Never had he heard of a fighter simply exploding in mid-air. The tanker boom operator had described it as a huge explosion—a billowing fireball of blue and yellow flame. He had been very specific. A bright blue and white explosion, followed by a billowing yellow fireball.
The yellow made sense. The blue surely did not. Yellow was within the color spectrum of burning jet fuel. Blue was not. Blue indicated a much hotter flame—a much more powerful explosion than one would expect from burning jet fuel.
Another fragmented piece to the puzzle.
And then there was the most troubling question of all. What had happened to Captain Richard Ammon? What sequence in the survival chain had failed him? Where was his body? Why was he dead?
There had been no radio call. No emergency beacon. No flares or smoke or signaling device of any kind.
And then the rescue helicopter had located the empty life raft floating around in the sea, half inflated and smeared with diluted blood. This would give them some answers. This was where they would begin.
Colonel Wood watched in silence as the flight surgeon and two assistants began to take blood samples on thin cotton swabs and place them in sterile containers. These would be used to make a DNA comparison of Captain Ammon, which would hopefully lead to a positive identification. The blood samples would also be analyzed to help determine the cause of death.
As the Colonel watched the flight surgeon work, a young captain approached him and tapped him lightly on the shoulder.
“Sir, there’s someone here I think you should talk to.”
The colonel turned and looked at the captain. “Who is it? What do they want?”
“It’s one of the tanker pilots, sir. He has something he wants to add to his official statement. Something about seeing a small boat ncar the crash site. I don’t know, sir. Why don’t you come and see what you think?”
For the next half hour, the colonel listened carefully as one of the tanker pilots described what he had seen the night before. It looked like a small speedboat, he remembered, heading northeast away from the crash site at a very high speed. He had only caught the briefest glimpse of it in the moonlight while they had been orbiting at two thousand feet. But he was certain it was there. He had clearly seen the splash its bow made in the moonlight and he had even seen its wake spreading out behind it as it ran. There was a boat in the area, he was certain of that. A small craft, but very fast, and it was operating without any lights.
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Wood muttered. “A small boat, out in the middle of the night, more than a hundred miles from shore, at the exact location of the downed pilot. It sounds very odd. So think. Think very carefully. What else could it have been?”
The tanker pilot met Wood’s eyes
with a cold and self-assured stare. “It was a small boat, colonel. I know that. Now who it was, and why it was there, I guess that’s something you ought to look into. All I’m telling you is what I saw.”
For two days Colonel Wood stewed about what the captain had told him. Three times he interviewed him again, hoping to find some crack in his story, hoping the pilot would rethink what he saw, hoping it would just go away. But the captain held firm, and so, much as the colonel hated to open such a rotten and unpromising can of worms, he felt compelled to follow his instincts. Late in the evening on the third day after the accident, he sent a highly encrypted message to a very small and crowded office deep in the bowels of the USCOM building at Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C.
TO: Director, Internal Counter-Espionage Division (ICED)
FR: President, Accident Investigation Board, F-16-12-21
RE: USAF Directive 99-03
Sir:
We find ourselves in the midst of a class A accident investigation involving a Captain Richard Ammon, 445-78-932l.
Although insignificant and completely unsubstantiated at this time, there are certain factors which lead me to believe that it is at least possible that espionage and/or sabotage may have played a part in this accident. These factors include, but are not limited to the following unusual considerations:
- Captain Ammon’s body has not been recovered.
- The sudden explosion onboard the incident aircraft cannot be explained, nor does the eyewitness account of the explosion fall in place with what we would expect from a fuel-feed fire.
- Witness places an unidentified watercraft in the vicinity of the accident at the time rescue attempts were under way.
In accordance with Air Force directives, I am therefore advising you of my intention to seek further latitude in this investigation than would normally exist. If you have any information which could be of any assistance, please advise.
Shattered Bone Page 5
