least we will be ready and can get the hell out of here,” I said, pulling the start cord. The engine sprang to life and purred softly.
The returning team needed only spot the dock and slip onto the boats, and we would pull away into the darkness. I heard a second engine start and idle quietly.
“Shit, mine won’t start,” was the next sound that penetrated the night.
Christ! That can’t help anything.
“Keep trying,” I said.
“I am, I am,” he shot back, just as the attack team appeared out of the tree line and moved quickly toward us. Two jumped into each boat—and waited.
“Let’s move,” one of them said.
“Engine won’t start.”
I don’t know if the instructors had built this into the exercise or not, but clearly we had to react to it.
“We can’t stay here. We’ll tow you. Pass us a line,” I said quietly to the men in the disabled boat.
They did, and we pulled slowly but steadily away from the dock and out into the blackness of the estuary. We followed the lone boat, and everyone tried to keep a low profile. No other problems developed, and our field improvisation had worked. The instructors made no complaints. They may or may not have realized that one of the boats had been towed; so much the better.
The exercise was realistic enough to show how difficult and dangerous such a raid could be. We imagined being on an enemy coast and having to limp out with failed equipment, possibly under hostile gunfire.
Small-boat and explosives training turned out to be useful. We didn’t gain expertise in either area, but we learned and practiced enough to become effective later in our careers, where certain situations would demand paramilitary skills.
3. Bats and Bohios
Panama 1962
We finished our instruction with two weeks at the Army’s Jungle Operations Training School at Fort Sherman, at Toro Point in the Canal Zone. We had heard about how demanding the sessions would be down there, but we looked forward to the challenge.
By then we had really improved our physical conditioning and honed our abilities in the areas I’ve mentioned.
We felt ready.
Fifteen of us landed in Panama late in the morning on a pleasant, sunny day in May 1962. It had been a long flight from Washington aboard Director McCone’s private plane, with one refueling stop in Tampa, Florida. Happy to touch down we practically tumbled out of the plane, stretching our legs and waiting for the base bus to pick us up.
“What’s that?” Bob Manning asked, gesturing at a sleek, black jet aircraft taxiing to the end of the runway where we had just landed.
“Don’t know,” I answered. “Never seen anything like that. What are those things under the wings?” I asked, referring to the droppable skids that supported the wingtips when the plane was fully fueled.
“I think it’s a U-2,” Ralph McLean said.
Ralph was an officer in the Marines assigned to the agency in a special program, as was Mike Deuel. I figured he had seen one before at some military base.
“Yeah, I think you’re right, Ralph,” someone else said. By now we all watched intently as the plane prepared for takeoff. We whipped out our cameras, everyone wanting a photo. The U-2 had gained international notoriety in the spring of 1960, when an agency pilot, Francis Gary Powers, had been shot down flying a high-altitude reconnaissance mission over Russia.
Powers, who remained in Soviet custody for two years, had been sent home in February 1962 as part of a prisoner exchange. The incident caused increased tensions between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It also caused worries within the agency, because Powers had failed to autodestruct his aircraft before ejecting, and so the Reds were probably able to recover or reconstruct some of the plane’s secret equipment.
As JOTs we didn’t know any of this at the time. We only knew the U-2 was an amazing-looking airplane, and we watched, fascinated, as the pilot started his takeoff and accelerated down the runway. As the plane gained speed, its wings, which could only be described as droopy, visibly lifted, and the wheel struts attached beneath the tips dropped away. Designed by the technicians at the famed Lockheed Skunk Works in Palmdale, California, the U-2 needed its extra-long wings for efficient cruising at high altitudes. But on takeoffs, when the fuel tanks were full and the wings sagged, the struts kept the tips from dragging on the runway, and when those wings lifted in takeoff they almost seemed to flap like a bird’s.
As soon as he had the wheels up the pilot must have given the engines full throttle, because the U-2 mounted an angle of ascent steeper than I had ever seen. It shot up into the air and soon disappeared from sight, mightily impressing us observers on the ground.
At Fort Sherman we settled into a small section of a large, concrete barracks, nothing fancy but adequate. Just like at the Farm we would not be spending much time there. We joined a group of about a hundred military officers sent to Panama from all over the United States to take this course, which was given only twice a year.
Except for our group and a platoon of SEALs, all of the men were young Army officers. Such a large class embarking on the two-week course surprised us, but we felt no less eager to get started.
I’m not sure why, but we also sensed the others were looking askance at us unlabelled civilians intruding into a military training program. Maybe they suspected who we were, or they wondered whether we’d be able to keep up. Either way, that perception piqued our competitive spirit, and we resolved to make a good showing.
After dinner the first evening our instructors assembled us behind the barracks for what they billed as an administrative briefing. Instead they gave us an introductory exercise in the nearby jungle. It was nearly dark. Just a walk through the jungle to a nearby clearing, they told us. We milled around before they lined up our groups, one behind the other.
“Okay, let’s move out,” one instructor announced, leading the first group into the thick vegetation. Soon we could barely see, as is the case near the equator when night falls quickly. Other instructors positioned themselves along the path while we moved forward into the darkness, which had become almost total.
“Hold hands,” another instructor ordered. No one argued.
“I can’t see a damn thing,” said Bill Watkins, a former Marine helicopter pilot.
“It’s like walking in a bottle of ink,” I heard another man say.
“I hope all the snakes are asleep,” someone else muttered, and everyone chuckled.
We half-stumbled through thick undergrowth up and down small knolls, holding on dearly to the hands in front of and behind us. The trees had sharp needles. I didn’t hear much conversation, just a few curses as people tripped or encountered the needles, but otherwise we stayed quiet. Soon we arrived at another clearing, relieved to be out of the ink bottle.
The instructors had set us up, but it was an effective learning experience. They knew that our inability to see while trying to move amid unfamiliar jungle surroundings would unnerve us. When they led us from the well-lit clearing behind the barracks into the darkness, the sudden change gave our eyes no chance to adjust to night vision, and the brief walk didn’t allow time to adjust, either.
The experience created a memorably negative first impression about nighttime movement in the jungle. But we learned later that the impression was false. Our instructors would correct it over the two-week program, which would start the next morning.
“Be sure to keep a firm grip just behind his head,” the instructor told me, as the 2-foot boa constrictor threw a couple of coils around my arm and started to hug.
The