Book Passages

[Fake Messiah]

This is from an autobiography of Mike Mullane, who is a retired space shuttle astronaut and a goofball.

At every opportunity the military TFNGs also introduced the civilians to our lively, sometimes sick, sense of humor. During our tour of NASA’s California facilities, Steve Hawley made the mistake of asking Loren Shriver, Brewster Shaw, and me to dinner with a former colleague of his. In the course of the meal Steve’s friend, a male astrophysicist, became overawed with the Vietnam aspect of our past lives. Like me, Loren and Brewster were combat veterans of that conflict. The young scientist was relentless in probing for information on our experiences. “Mike, what did you do in Vietnam?”

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to play with his head, so I seamlessly replied, “I flew a candy bomber.”

“A candy bomber? What was that?”

I had a fish on the line and began to reel it in. “In the villages the women and children would hide in their spider holes and trenches. You could never get them in the open. So I flew a plane loaded with canisters of candy and would swoop low over the villages and drop them nearby. This would bring the women and children out of their holes to scoop it up.” At this point in my story I pointed to Loren and Brewster. “And these guys would be thirty seconds behind me loaded wall to wall with napalm and would lay it down on those villagers. It got them every time.”

The scientist’s eyes widened in shock and outrage. I could just imagine the scene playing out in his brain: images of women and children dipped in jellied gasoline running around on fire. He snapped his head to Loren and Brewster, anticipating a denial. At this point I expected my twisted joke to come undone but Brewster and Loren picked up my lead. They assumed the steely eyes of professional killers and silently nodded in the affirmative. Every Vietnam atrocity this young scientist had ever heard of was now confirmed.

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The day only got more unusual. We were driven to a classified location for an awards ceremony. As we followed our escort through multiple layers of security, I whispered to Hoot, “Maybe we’ll meet Pussy Galore.” He replied with a snort.

We were finally led into a walk-in vault where we were greeted by a senior government official. He offered his thanks for our work, then pinned the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement on each of our chests. Inwardly I laughed at the title. It sounded like an award for the brainless scarecrow inThe Wizard of Oz. But it was a pride-filled moment for me, even exceeding what I had experienced in Admiral Crowe’s office. I felt directly connected to America’s defense in a way I had never felt in Vietnam or in my NATO forces tour.

As the meeting broke up, I was looking forward to telling Donna about the award. It was as much hers as it was mine. She had earned it on that LCC roof. But my anticipation ended at the vault door. We were asked to hand back the medal. “Sorry, but this award is classified. You can’t wear it publicly or talk about it. It won’t appear on your official records. But if you are ever in town and want to come over and wear it in this vault, be our guests.” Amazing, I thought. We had received a medal we could only wear in a vault. James Bond might have been able to tell Dr. Goodhead(snort) about his daring adventures, but we couldn’t tell anybody about ours, not even our wives. (The award was declassified several years after the mission.)

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Our air force host led us to his favorite East Berlin restaurant. I was prepared to be disappointed, but the place was clean, brightly lit, and staffed with young and beautiful East German fräuleins. As we entered, the rest of the patrons, all East German and Soviet military officers, gave us their best game face. We ignored them. Several tables were shoved together to accommodate our entourage and we got down to the business of drinking. We were soon a rowdy spectacle for the rest of the crowd. They stared at us with disapproving expressions, as if laughing and smiling were forbidden in the workers’ paradise.

Later in the evening an intoxicated John Blaha grabbed a vase of daffodils and began to peer into each bloom with the focus of a horticulturist. I wondered if he had slipped into alcohol poisoning, but he whispered to me, “I’ll bet the KGB has bugged this vase. They’re probably in a back room listening to everything we’re saying. Well, I’ll give them something to think about.” He lifted the flowers to his mouth like a microphone and began to speak loudly into their blooms: “Mike, wasn’t that briefing about our new F-99 Mach 7 fighter really interesting?” Then he handed the vase to me.

I joined in the fun. “Yeah, and to think Mach 7 is itssingle -engine speed.”

The others at the table picked up on our disinformation campaign and the vase of flowers went from hand to hand while the rest of our group made even more outrageous claims about secret weapon systems we had recently seen or flown. Meanwhile, the humorless commie diners stared at us as if we were mad. Since we were talking into daffodil blooms, I could understand their bewilderment.

When the vase finally made it back to Blaha, he closed the floor show by speaking into it in an exceptionally loud voice. “Why is it that visiting Soviet basketball teams never play the Celtics or Lakers? Whenever they come to the USA they always play some piss-poor university team. What are they…pussies?” We all wondered how that would translate back in the Kremlin.

Imagine my shock when, several months later, Blaha ran into my office with a newspaper article describing how the Soviets, for the first time in history, were going to allow their basketball team to play an exhibition game with an NBA team. “I told you that vase was bugged,” Blaha shouted. We laughed at the image of an army of KGB spies hunting for that F-99 fighter.