Splashdown

Chapter 2

Dane cracked a smile as he watched Bones duck under the doorway to the Learjet 35. The private plane was by far the nicest mode of transportation they’d taken thus far in their military careers, though certainly not the largest. Accommodating six passengers plus a crew of three, it made up in style what it lacked in size. An attractive flight attendant with strawberry blonde hair and a sprinkling of freckles across her button nose led Dane and Bones away from the cockpit, the mahogany door to which was closed, to two leather recliners, one each on opposite sides of a plush carpeted aisle. Behind these two seats, a drawn curtain divided the cabin; murmurs of soft conversation drifted in from the other side.

Dane sank into his chair while Bones stood there in the aisle, mouth agape, taking in the splendor. “One time I flew first class commercial because I got bumped from standby, but this makes that look like a cattle car,” he said, slipping into his seat like a man sitting down in his La-Z-Boy to watch TV after dinner, a leg flopped over one of the chair arms. “This rocks. I never fit an airline seat.”

“Please sit upright and buckle up for takeoff, sir. As soon as we’re at cruising altitude you’re free to do what you wish.” The flight attendant’s sharp tone belied her farm girl looks.

Bones turn his attention to the flight attendant, his gaze lingering over her crisply pressed uniform, and grinned. Dane tensed, wondering what might come out of the big Indian’s mouth next, but Bones complied, giving the young woman a wink as he clicked his seatbelt closed.

“Sure beats the heck out of trying to sleep in the cargo net of a C-130 transport next to everybody’s crap bouncing around, right?” Dane asked.

“Bro, you got that right! Remember that time on the way out to Honolulu…”

Bones was in the middle of recounting an anecdote about a loose surfboard waking him up in the cargo hold when the Lear pilot’s voice came over the intercom letting them know that they would be flying non-stop from Monterey to Cape Canaveral.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes to see if you gentlemen would like anything to eat or drink,” the flight attendant told them before retreating to the front of the plane.

Dane and Bones settled back and allowed the takeoff forces to pin them to their cushy seats. In short order they said goodbye to the Pacific, where the sun was already sinking lower in the sky as the aircraft banked into a turn toward the east.

True to her word, when the aircraft leveled off, the flight attendant returned with menus. Both men ordered three-course meals of spicy Mexican food along with bottles of Dos Equis. It had been a long day in the submersible and their sudden orders had left them with no time to eat until now. They feasted, saying little while they enjoyed the tang of cilantro and marinated beef, lost in thought about what might lay ahead.

No sooner had they cleared their plates than they heard the curtain behind them slide open.

“If you two gentlemen would be so kind as to join us in the conference room for your briefing, we’ll tell you what you’re doing aboard this flying luxury suite. This way please.”

Dane and Bones sat up and turned around. A naval officer they had never seen before stood behind them. Dane hastily wiped his mouth with a napkin before standing straight and saluting. Bones did the same and the officer briefly returned their salutes. The pair of SEALs followed him into the middle section of the jet, which had been sectioned off into a nicely appointed yet highly functional work area. A hardwood conference table occupied the center of the space, with leather office chairs fixed in place around it. A large LCD monitor was mounted on one wall. Paper nautical charts were spread out on the table itself, along with a bevy of open laptops. In addition to the officer who had escorted them back here, Dane and Bones were greeted by three other men, all of whom appeared to be in their late fifties. Two of them wore military uniforms while a third was dressed in a suit and tie.

Dane was stunned to recognize the insignia of a Navy admiral on one of their lapels. He did not recognize the other uniform and was correct in his assumption that it was not Navy. The admiral nodded to the naval officer, who promptly stepped around Dane and Bones to draw the curtain across the cabin.

“Gentlemen, please be seated,” the Admiral began. Dane and Bones followed the order, sitting next to one another in the only two available chairs. The admiral continued.

“I am Admiral Jeffrey Whitburn, based at the Pentagon, where I’ll be returning after we let you two off at Canaveral. Let me begin by saying that both of you come very highly recommended and it’s a pleasure to have you here.”

“Thanks. We think you’re pretty cool too!” Bones blurted. Dane kicked him in the shin under the table.

The admiral seemed unsurprised by the comment. If he’d done his homework, he probably knew at least a little bit about Bones’ eccentricities.

“By way of introductions, the gentleman who brought you back here is Captain James Epson. Seated across from me is U.S. Air Force General Marcus Holloway, who sits on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

Dane felt a strange numbness come over him as the sheer magnitude of whatever assignment they were about to be asked to do hit home. Joint Chiefs of Staff? He shot a quick glance over at Bones, whose puzzled expression clearly said, What the…?

“Gentlemen: I’ll get right to the point. We’ll tell you what you need to know, nothing more. Don’t ask questions. We’re telling you everything we can. A lot of very smart people, smarter than us, have developed the plan of action we’re about to brief you on.”

Bones raised his hand like a kid in a classroom. The admiral scowled at him but waited for him to speak. Bones said, “Sir, are these smart people in the military?”

“Bonebrake, you do realize you just asked a question after I said not to? I can answer this one, but don’t let it happen again, is that clear?”

“Yes, sir, it’s clear.”

Dane couldn’t help but notice that Bones had not apologized. The guy was ballsy.

“Most of those who developed this mission are not in the military per se, but work for U.S. intelligence agencies that advise the military branches, including Mr. Sardowski, here, who is an analyst with the CIA based out of Langley.”

The guy in the suit gave Dane and Bones a curt nod. Dane and Bones sat still and mute as they processed this revelation. Central Intelligence Agency?

The admiral continued while the naval officer presented Dane and Bones with a paper form and a pen.

“We know that as SEALs you’re sworn to secrecy on every mission. But before we begin let me stress that this goes far beyond that. In order to participate in this assignment, you’ll need to be given Top Secret clearance. We’ve already taken the necessary steps to expedite the process. All you need to do is to sign the papers in front of you. But a word of caution. Not a single syllable of what you’re about to hear in this airplane ever comes out of your lips, is that understood? No matter how drunk you get at a party,” he said, staring at Bones for emphasis, who nodded his agreement while signing the document. Dane took a bit more time to read his, but also signed. While the officer snatched away the papers, the admiral resumed his talk.

“Our goal is to deliver your briefing with time left over for you to get as much sleep as possible. You’re about to embark on one hell of an assignment. So listen up, here we go.”

He nodded to Captain Epson, who promptly pressed a key on a remote control, activating a PowerPoint presentation on the wall-mounted screen. A photo of what looked to Dane and Bones like some kind of early diving bell sitting on a wheeled platform appeared on the screen.

Epson directed a laser pointer in a circular motion around the object on the monitor.

“This is NASA space capsule Liberty Bell 7.” He let that sink in for a moment on the bemused Dane and Bones as he advanced to the next slide. It also depicted the capsule on a wheeled platform, but in this shot a spacesuited astronaut stood next to the craft.

Epson went on. “This photo was taken in 1961, shortly before the capsule splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean, three hundred miles off Cape Canaveral, not far from the Bahamas, and was lost in a retrieval accident. Gus Grissom, the lone occupier of the capsule, was rescued, while the capsule sank to the seafloor. It has remained there for the last thirty-eight years undisturbed, at a depth of almost three miles, or 15,000 feet.”

The admiral’s gaze shifted to the marine chart laid out on the table, and Dane and Bones followed suit. “We believe it to be a flat, featureless bottom,” he noted, dragging a pointer finger across the chart. Then he looked up at the Air Force General, who stared right at Dane and Bones while he spoke.

“The Mercury-Redstone 4 mission, so-named for the rocket that carried the Liberty Bell crew capsule as part of the Mercury manned space program that preceded the more famous Apollo series, had two agendas.” The General looked around the table at his colleagues as if to see if any of them would object to where he was going. None of them indicated as such, so the Joint Chiefs of Staff representative resumed his delivery to a mystified Dane and Bones.

“The official, publicly known agenda was a short suborbital flight to demonstrate America’s space prowess to the Russians. You boys weren’t even born yet, but at the time the Cold War was heating up with Russia having launched their Sputnik satellite a few years earlier, and from there the space race was on.”

Dane nodded. He’d always been fascinated by the space race and the Apollo moon missions in particular.

“But the unofficial agenda of that mission is why you’re here today. As I said, the U.S. was looking to use the fourth Mercury mission as a message to the world, and in particular the Soviets, that America was the preeminent space power. But beyond that, the Kennedy Administration had something up their sleeve.”

Dane looked away from the photo of Grissom and the capsule on screen to gauge the faces of the other men. All of them appeared dead-serious, almost grimly determined. Dane saw the Admiral eye the General and lift a hand in his direction from where it had been resting on the table. Stop.

The Admiral took over. “Liberty Bell 7 carried a as part of her payload a small nuclear bomb.”

Dane gave a low whistle. For a few seconds the only sound was the rumble of the jet’s engines as they cut through the evening sky.

The Admiral spoke up again. “We can't tell you why that device was on board, so don't ask.”

The General nodded and then resumed his talk by clicking to the next slide.

“This shot was taken from a U.S. Navy air craft carrier, and shows Gus Grissom treading water while the Liberty capsule is flooding. Poor ol’ Gus was blamed for the rest of his career and even afterwards for accidentally blowing the explosive hatch bolts prematurely.”

Dane could almost hear Bones’ gears churning to put out a dirty joke, but the loquacious Indian seemed to realize he’d pushed right up to the edge with his earlier question, and he remained silent along with the rest of the room.

“But the truth is, he did it on purpose. He did it to sink that capsule because of what it contained on board: an unexploded nuclear bomb that no one was supposed to know about,” the General interjected once again, reading the questions apparent on the SEALs’ faces. “The reason the bomb was never detonated, and that no one has ever heard of a nuclear weapon aboard a U.S. spacecraft, was because of Gus Grissom. Once he was in space, apparently he got cold feet and refused to carry out his orders. He got scared or something. The psychologists still aren’t exactly sure — but the upshot of it was that he absolutely would not cooperate to carry out the flight objective, making the working atmosphere non-conducive to completing the mission.”

“So instead,” the Admiral resumed, “it was arranged that NASA would announce they had successfully completed a short sub-orbital hop that just happened to have a little glitch on splashdown. They carried a few ordinary science experiments aboard, nothing special.”

Sardowski made his voice heard for the first time since the briefing began. “The end result of all this is that the A-bomb is still resting inside the capsule on the ocean floor,” he stated. “And until now that hasn’t posed much of a problem. Back in 1961, deliberately sinking that capsule was a good move if you didn't want it to be found. Undersea salvage capabilities were far behind what’s needed to raise the capsule. But in recent years that began to change, and very recently…” The CIA man paused to hit a key on his laptop, advancing the slide to one that showed the logo of a popular cable television network.

“…the TV network, The Science Channel mounted a privately funded expedition to locate the spacecraft on the ocean floor. Interestingly enough, for a while it looked like they would be unsuccessful, although they did find a wreck of another sort— one that historians agree is most likely a sixteenth-century Spanish treasure ship.”

“And that find has a lot of unwanted attention converging on the area,” the General chimed in.

“Yes,” the Admiral said, “but since then the TV expedition succeeded in locating the capsule and have made a series of preliminary unmanned dives to it with a remotely operated vehicle. CIA intelligence shows that they are now on site preparing to make a serious attempt at raising Liberty Bell 7. They, of course, have no idea that a nuclear bomb rests inside that capsule.”

The analyst clicked off the overhead monitor, casting the room a shade darker. The admiral spoke next, leveling a steely gaze at Dane and Bones.

“And we have direct orders from the President of the United States to make certain it stays that way. We need you two to ensure that the network’s effort to raise the capsule is not successful. We need you to do this as quietly as possible. The optimal outcome would be for you to extract the nuclear payload from the capsule before anyone knows about it and bring it to us. Failing that, either destroy the bomb on the seafloor — without getting yourselves killed. Or, as a last resort…”

The admiral trailed off, eyeing the CIA agent, who finished his sentence for him.

“…make sure that the television expedition meets with an accident.”