[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.The jet airliner had just left the runway with the ex-president of Gandiaaboard and was winging its way high over the snowballed Andes.In lessthan two hours it would land in the capital of Pegoan, where the ex-president had been assured of asylum and safety.In a remote office in Washington the watch officer awaited theexpected word from the agent who had arranged this flight, confirmingthat the departure had taken place.It was too soon to expect the collateralnews that General Alfredo Elciario Illona had secured the reins of theGovernment of Gandia.This news he would get as soon as a second agentarrived in the capital with the new president.Desk officers had worked allnight preparing releases for the news media and sending instructions to itsoperatives, readying them to support General Elciario's new government.In distant Gandia all was quiet in spite of the sudden coup d'état.Itmay have been the quiet before the storm.For the time being all had gonewell.In the cabin of an old converted transport C47 (DC-3) GeneralElciario was sleeping off the effects of a heavy drinking bout, on an armystyle cot that had been fitted into his modest VIP airplane.As soon as theplane had landed on its return from the frontier outpost, the pilot hadparked it behind the U.S.Air Force surplus World War II hangar.TheGeneral and his closest friends had not even left the plane.Their party hadcontinued on through the night in the plane.The pilot and friend of theGeneral, a U.S.Air Force Major, had sent the others home while he stayeduntil the General had slept it off.As he tidied up the plane he recalled similar days in Greece andIran, where he had worked as the mission commander on other exercisesfor "Acme Plumbing"[1] But this was the first time that he himself hadbeen the key agent in the making of a President.It had been hard work,and now all he could do was wait for the brilliant mountain sunrise andword from the embassy that all was well and that the city was undercontrol.In a few hours the General would be awakened and prepared toenter the capital as the new President.Now, as he lay there on that crudecot he did not even know that the coup d'état had already taken place andthat it had been completely successful.The Major had been in Gandia for slightly more than one year.Hehad come to join the U.S.Air Force mission there after six months ofaccelerated training at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.He had flown littlesince his duty in Korea, but it had come back quickly with the intensiveprogram the CIA had scheduled for him there.At Eglin he had learnednew paradrop techniques and had worked closely with the newly formedSpecial Air Warfare Squadrons.One squadron had been sent to SouthVietnam, another had gone to Europe, and the one he was to join hadflown to Panama.There he had received further operational trainingexercises with the U.S.Army Special Forces troops in Colombia,Venezuela, and Ecuador.Other operations had taken him on an earthquakemercy mission to Peru and a medical team paradrop exercise into a miningtown in Bolivia.It was while he was in Bolivia that the westernhemisphere division (WH) had contacted him through the embassy andtold him to report to Gandia.Not long after he had arrived in Gandia, he met General Elciario.The General had been working with a specially equipped transport planedoing paradrop work over the mountain forests of the eastern frontier.TheGeneral was from a leading family of Gandia and could trace his ancestryback to the days of Simon Bolivar.Yet he was proud of the fact that hewas Gandian and made slight reference to his Castilian ancestry.He lovedthe squat, barrel-chested mountain people.He was one of them.He was aman of the people, and he was the most famous flyer in the country.Hehad flown serum to stricken villages during an epidemic, and he hadairdropped tons of relief supplies after an earthquake.The people of thevillages loved the General, even though he was not a favorite in thecapital.As in most Latin American countries, the government wascentered in the capital.What took place in the capital was important; whattook place in the villages could be ignored.When the General was madethe chief of staff of the Gandian Air Force, the old President thought hehad made a safe assignment.The General was part of no clique in the city,and he was no threat to anyone.From the first, the General and the U.S.Major got along fine.TheMajor preferred the men of the villages to those in the capital, and in notime at all he was popular.Wherever he went the General, too, waspopular.In this remote site the Major had become the friend of everyonein the village and in the Gandian Air Force unit.The General had noticedthat the units the Major worked with always seemed able to get suppliesand favors, which had been hard to get before from military aid channels.The Major must have had some special influence with Washington.On theother hand, whenever the Major distributed these hard to get items, healways credited the General with getting them.This "magic" was simply apart of the long reach of the Secret Team.The "major" was on a CIA cover assignment, and althougheverything he did had the appearance of normal U.S.Air Force duty, hewas in Gandia to gather intelligence.He was part of a very normal insideoperation.He knew who was on General Elciaro's team, and he knew whowas not.He knew which elements of the government worked with the AirForce and which were aloof or antagonistic.When his routine reports,which he filed daily through his contact in the embassy and not throughAir Force channels, revealed that he was getting quite close to the General,they were passed on by the Deputy Director of Intelligence to the DeputyDirector of Plans, and thence to Western Hemisphere.From that date on,WH monitored all traffic to and from the "major", and from time to timewould feed him special instructions and other data.WH wanted to knowexactly whom the General trusted and who in the government he workedwith on official matters.In Gandia as in many other countries this couldmean, "Who does he share his cut of government funds with and whoshares theirs with him?"One day, General Elciario told the major of his growing displeasurewith the Government of the old President.This was passed on to WH.Dayby day the Major increased the scope and coverage of the civic actiontraining exercises that the U.S.Air Force and the U.S.Army SpecialForces troops were interested in and that gave special credit to GeneralElciario.He was seen everywhere with new projects to build rural schools.He was seen delivering water pipe to a remote village from an Air Forcetransport.His fighters roared over distant cities and towns, letting thepeople know that the Air Force was everywhere.General Elciario openedthe new U.S
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]