HAITI DAY
The manuscript is dated 1995-96. It was part of the jumble of digits that appeared in an old group of files. There were digital communications back then, but they were still new. What follows is one of the first Official Reports distilled through paper copies, fed through scanners into different processing systems and tucked away in several iterations of MicroSoft Word for nearly thirty years. The stories have emerged, and the manuscript of which they are part are headed for publication. This episode is plucked from Real Official Travel.
The management of the Naval Intelligence organization back then discovered that their relations with the Congress of the United States was being handled by two officers from the communications discipline. They had the clearances to handle the material dealing with programs and activities because they had to carry the classified paperwork to support them. What they did not have was the urgency associated with all those dollar signs reflect in- upward- career progression. Which led to the following unexpected adventure.
Those aspects what the book is about- the two major elements of interest. More precisely, the trips were Official and funded by your tax dollars. They were also filled with surprise, since the trips harnessed big steel ships and little jet airplanes and a startled look when the Gnarly Old Captain told us we were going to plan and execute a trip to the island of Hispaniola!
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They had the portfolio and they We roared around the corner, hell-for-leather out of Port Au Prince and rocketing through the desolate country toward the border. The Peugeot was spinning wheels on the soft gravel of the new road. The young Haitian man at the wheel held his arms rigid, but the beating the front end had taken make his arms shake like he had Saint Vitis Dance.
Beside us the lake was placid, the low hills beyond them barren. Small boats smuggling fuel down towards Port au Prince made a brave profile in the morning, triangular sails bright in the low, soft light. The lake was lovely from this vantage. You could see no poverty, or pain, or even a mounting international imperative. It was just a place, and a pretty one, where the light reflected against the green and grey hills that ran away to the northwest.
We could see the Haitian border checkpoint to the right, low crude cinder block buildings that once might have been pastel. Brett pointed over the ear of our FAH’D Security Escort into the rosy light of the dawn over the dark green Dominican mountains that loomed before us.
“Look!” he said, leaning forward against his lap belt “the helos are landing at Jimani!”
We squinted into the dawn and saw the clouds of yellow dirt rising against the sun, just as they had the morning before as we plunged down out of the 21st century into the 19th. It seemed an eon before, like life had undergone a fundamental alteration like MacArthur Park, all the sweet green icing melting down, But no one left this cake out in the rain.
There wasn’t any cake. Or icing, or anything much to eat in this place. But the vision before us meant almost certainly that we were going to live, and absent some mischance associated from the armed men around me, we would be home later in the same day. The knot in my stomach began to unwind a bit.
The Helos were here, just on the other side of the border. Soon, we will leave this place and return to our own. It all worked out, the meetings and the helter-skelter Haitian night had passed and this headlong high-speed Haitian Motorcade, headlights on and blinkers flashing would soon be history.
I wondered if Pierre Cardin, nom de guerre of our FAD’H Officer Guard in the front right seat saw it the same way. They had done exactly what they promised. They were professional and mostly prompt, even if their jackets did not button well across their pistols. How did this all square with what we had seen and direct aid from the US Treasury?
It was probably going to be OK. Really, what could happen?
Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
From: “A Little Traveling Music: Travel Agent for Trouble”
www.vicsocotra.com