Pilots of Convenience, Part 1 Commentary
Back in college, my friend Mike told me about his dream job – flying for Air America, the CIA’s secret airline during the Vietnam War. And we discovered that although Air America was officially disbanded back in the 70s, the CIA still engaged in secret air operations, as was discovered when Eugene Hasenfus was captured by the Nicaraguan government in 1986. And now, twenty years later, the CIA was back in the news for their rendition flights. I wanted to write a story about how the pilots would react to that exposure.
The character of Dart is loosely based on my friend Mike. His name is homage to two people; one, Dart’s full name is similar to Mike’s name, and two, I worked for a commander in the military whose name was Dartanian. I thought it was a really cool name. And for the record, neither one plays the bongos. At least to my knowledge.
The character of Foe is developed to be the opposite of Dart. Whereas Dart loves flying for the CIA and enjoys the adventure, Foe is in it only for the hour building. The stuff about “Paying for Training” is completely true; I have a number of friends who are airline pilots, and they frown on the people who, in their words, “cheapen the entire career by trying to short-cut the system.” I decided to have Foe take the short-cut route and kill his shot at his career. He also violated a strike order, and thus has been labeled as a “scab” – a kiss of death in the airline industry. (I made up a back-story about Foe and his problems with the pilot union, but I wasn’t sure how realistic it was; a week after I posted this part, I found a blog post by a guy who had almost exactly the same experience as I wrote for Foe.)
I took some liberty with the CIA operations. The code names are all completely made up; I would imagine there is a certain degree of trust between the handlers and agents, but I wanted there to be some distrust between Dart and Foe and the Agency. I got the code name for Clint while racking my brain and seeing a Ford Taurus pass me on the street.
The airline for whom Dart and Foe work is based as closely as possible on actual CIA airlines. There are a variety of front companies, and most of them are tied to addresses in Massachusetts, so I set my airline there among them.
This story is about having a fun and thrilling plot with some interesting characters. I took some liberties with both the flying and the intelligence, but I hope that you, the reader, will forgive me for those while enjoying a rousing ride with the pilots of convenience.