W E B Griffin - BoW 04 - The Colonels

by The Colonels(Lit)

  "You're getting the Legion of Merit for what you did for Black in Vietnam," Paul Jiggs said.

  "You'll mail it to me, of course?" Lowell said, sarcastically. "Pray permit me to finish, General. What our senator found out, General... and I find it difficult to believe that you didn't know this... is that I have been passed over twice for promotion, and as soon as this Cuban thing is settled, I will be involuntarily separated. So let's stop the crap."

  "They're throwing you out, Duke?" M/Sgt Wojinski asked.

  "On my ass, Ski," Lowell confirmed.

  "Sonsofbitches!" Wojinski said. "That ain't right!"

  "But it is the fact. So what else can you threaten me with, Paul?" "OK," Jiggs said. "Go ahead, make a god damned fool of yourself. You won't get near Cuba. Or for that matter, Nicaragua. If the Cubans don't shoot you down, our people will. I told you, it goes on Monday."

  "Don't be a fool, Craig," Jane Jiggs said.

  Lowell picked up the telephone and dialed a number.

  "You want to get your ass in a really big crack?" he said to whoever answered.

  "Who is that?" Jiggs demanded.

  "Bring the Commander and a change of underwear to the Ozark airport," Lowell said, not replying to the question

  "Right now. I'll be there."

  He hung up.

  "Who was that?" Jiggs demanded.

  "Franklin," Lowell said.

  "You're willing to get him in trouble, too? In this childish gesture of yours?"

  "If we get in trouble, I'll hire him a good lawyer," Lowell said.

  "Franidin is a freak like me, General. When his friends are in trouble, they worry about paper-pushers later."

  "That was a cheap shot, Craig," Hanrahan snapped.

  Lowell looked at him, and then at General Jiggs.

  "Yes, it was, and I'm heartily sorry," he said.

  "Forget it," Jiggs said. "I realize you're out of your mind." "I'm going to pack," Lowell said. "Will you see yourselves out?" "Colonel," MI Sgt Wojinski said, "I want to go."

  Hanrahan looked at him.

  "And I am going, too," Jannier announced.

  "No, you're not," Lowell and Melody Jannier said in almost perfect unison.

  "I have no intention," Jannier said, "aware that I am about to become a father, of doing anything that would in any way endanger me. But I do travel on a diplomatic passport, and diplomatic passports are often very convenient."

  His reply shut both his wife and Lowell up. Lowell because he knew that a diplomatic passport was more valuable than money, Melody because she knew that she could not stop him from going anyway.

  "Obviously, Sergeant," Colonel Hanrahan said, breaking the silence, "I cannot approve in any way your getting yourself involved in Major Lowell's insanity. You are officially forbidden to do so. On the other hand, if you have any leave coming, I see no reason why you can't take a few days off."

  "-"You don't actually think," Jiggs said, "that this is going to be anything but a useless tragedy, do you?"

  "I think the odds are against them," Hanrahan said.

  "You got some kind of a weapon for me?" Wojinski said.

  "Sure," Lowell said, "come along."

  Wojinski followed him into the house.

  Major General Jiggs poured himself another drink and then went into the bedroom after them. Lowell was wearing a German Luger in a shoulder holster, and Wojinski was closing the lid on a case which held two shotguns and a.45 Colt pistol.

  "Jane will drive you to the airport," General Jiggs said. "For obvious reasons, I can't afford to be seen seeing you off on this escapade."

  "Thank you," Lowell said.

  "The last time I saw that GOT MIT UNS holster," Jiggs said, making reference to the Wehrmacht belt buckle that Lowell had mounted to the custom-made holster, "was a long time ago."

  "When I was a bright young major, with a very promising career, right?"

  Lowell replied, dryly.

  "In those days, Craig, I thought you thought very clearly." You going to wish us luck, Paul?" Lowell said. "Sure," Major General Jiggs said, and offered his hand. Jane Jiggs was surprised that Melody didn't try to stop her husband. And then she understood that Melody knew that she could not have stopped her husband except at a price she was unwilling to pay. Melody was wiser than she should have been at her age. It might be because she had already lost one warrior husband.

  Or it might be that she, like Jane herself, was that rare woman who understood the price that had to be paid for being married to a warrior. "Melody," Lowell said, "I need a favor."

  "I regret," Melody mockingly quoted, "that I have but one husband to give to my country."

  Lowell looked as if he was going to reply, and then changed his mind.

  "Call Cynthia at the Time-Life bureau in Mexico City," Lowell said.

  "Cynthia Thomas?" Melody interrupted.

  "Yeah," Lowell said.

  "Well! Well!" Melody said.

  "I was supposed to meet her down there," Lowell said.

  "You don't say?" Melody asked, innocently.

  "Call her and tell her I can't make it," Lowell said.

  "Why don't you call her yourself?" Melody asked, pointing to a telephone.

  "Because if I call her," Lowell said, "she'll want to know why I can't come, and I can't tell her. And that would make her mad."

  "What I should do to you, Craig, is call her and tell her the reason you're standing her up is a peroxide blonde with a forty-inch bust named Wanda." "I thought we were pals," Lowell said.

  "We were," Melody said, "until you blew the "charge' on your trumpet.

  You should have known that would cause the god damned Pavlovian response in the father of my unborn child."

  "All he's going to do is go wave that diplomatic passport around," Lowell said. "Nothing mbre."

  "Said the Tooth Fairy," Melody said.

  "OK, don't call her," Lowell said.

  "Melody," Jean-Philippe Jannier, now the French husband, said, "you will do what Craig asks."

  Melody stuck out her tongue at him.

  Then they went out and got in the car and drove off.

  Major General Jiggs waited until it was clear that Lowell was not going to come back to the house for something he had forgotten before he got on the telephone.

  Melody watched as he placed a person-to-person call to Mr. James W.

  Stemme at the Central Intelligence Agency in Mclean, Virginia.

  After some delay, General Jiggs reached Mr. Stemme at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland. When he'd explained what was up, Mr. Stemme assured Jiggs that there would be no problem. When Lowell arrived in Miami he would be met by agents of United States Customs. Acting on a tip, they would search his aircraft, find contraband, and arrest the airplane's occupants. After everything was over, they would be released with apologies.

  Mr. Stemme thanked General Jiggs for bringing the matter to his attention.

  Jiggs hung up.

  "Why didn't you just have the MPs hold him here?" Colonel Paul Hanrahan asked. "Was all that necessary?"

  "It's a long way to Miami," Jiggs said. "Craig's a smart fellow. He'll come to his senses long before he gets there."

  Hanrahan nodded.

  "And I didn't want to have him arrested for wanting to do something I wish I could do myself," General Jiggs added.

  "You underestimate them, General," Melody Jannier said. "Good try, but it won't work."

  General Jiggs and Colonel Hanrahan looked at Melody but they didn't respond. They thought that Melody simply didn't know what she was talking about.

  (Four) Monte go Bay, Jamaica 0945 Hours, 17 April 1961

  Lowell, dressed in khaki pants and a T-shirt, found Captain Archibald Needham in the bar of the Prince Charles' Arms' Hotel. Captain Archibald Needham, chief pilot for Air Hire Jamaica (and its sole stockholder) was, despite the hour, visibly drunk.

  "Needham, you sonofabitch!" Lowell said.

  "Well, good morning, Mr. Lowell," Needham said.


  "You gave me your word," Lowell said.

  "Oh, don't be an ass," Needham said, so clearly and so angrily that Lowell suspected he- wasn't quite as drunk as he wanted to appear.

  "Haven't you heard the radio? Radio Havana is already boasting that your invasion is a disaster."

  "So what?"

  "So I have no intention of flying you anywhere. This isn't the Battle of Britain, you know. Western civilization is not really hanging in the balance."

  "How the hell are we supposed to get there?"

  "Don't go," Captain Needham said. "Discretion, I've heard, is supposed to be the better part of valor." "And I thought I could take an English gentleman's word," Lowell said.

  "You must know how absurd you sound, Old Boy," Needham said. "And I don't think you're naive. So I must ask myself, why did he say that?"

  "I'll fly it," Lowell said. "You just come along."

  "But that's why I got drunk," Needham said. "So I would not be of any use to you in case you were either very persuasive or kidnapped me at the point of a gun."

  "Just come along and show me how to fly it," Lowell asked, reasonably.

  "I'll tell you what I will do," Needham said. "I will buy that Catalina of yours... for ten thousand American dollars less than you paid me for it. "-" "You are a miserable sonofabitch," Lowell said.

  "And the day after tomorrow, I will be a live, if miserable, sonofabitch," Needham said.

  "Fuck you," Lowell said, ineffectually. It was all he could think of to say. Hitting Needham would accomplish nothing.

  He walked out of the bar.

  He heard Needham chuckling behind him.

  When he got to the airfield, Jannier, Franldin, and Wojinski were sitting in the shade of the wing of the airplane. The airplane was an amphibian, a Consolidated Vultee Catalina. This particular airplane was relatively new. It had been delivered to the U.S. Navy as a PBY-6A in 1944. Two 1,200-lip Pratt & Whitney

  "Twin Wasp" radial engines, sitting on the wing above and just behind the cockpit, drove it at a top speed of 179 miles an hour.

  The airplane was designed for long-range reconnaissance before radar was more than an engineer's interesting idea. Two ovoid bubbles were on the sides of the fuselage. And there was another observation position in the nose in front of the cockpit windows.

  When the airplane had been sold as surplus, the machinegun ports in the observation windows had been filled with Plexiglas, and the cabin interior outfitted with sound-deadening insulation and seats. No other changes were required to modify the plane for commercial use. Indeed, the Catalina was ideally suited for service in the Caribbean and West Indies. If there was an airfield, it used the wheels. When there was no airfield, the wheels folded up against the fuselage, and the Catalina had the water to use for a landing field.

  Flying south from Ozark, Lowell had known they would need an amphibian.

  And he knew that he was going to need a Catalina, because all the other amphibians (the Grumman Widgeon, for example) would not be able to carry Ellis's "A" Team.

  He had also suspected that Paul Jiggs (with Hanrahan's unspoken agreement) had given in to his going to Cuba too easily. There would almost certainly be military police waiting for them at Miami. And so, twenty miles out of Tallahassee, he had gotten on the horn and told Valdosta area control to close out his Miami instrument flight plan. He had announced his intention of going back to Tallahassee for fuel.

  He had then dropped down to the deck and flown right down the center of the Florida peninsula to Palm Beach.

  The -only thing that surprised the proprietors of the Palm Beach Flying Service was that the pilot of the Craig, Powell, Lowell and Dawes Aero Commander was colored. It did not surprise them at all (for this was Palm Beach, where the rich were accustomed to getting what they wanted) that they wished to charter another aircraft with crew to continue their journey to Jamaica.

  The American Express card offered in tender of payment identified the holder as Vice Chairman of the Board, Craig, Powell, Kenyon and Dawes.

  A quick telephone call to American Express had gotten a blanket OK for whatever Mr. Lowell wished to charge.

  They weren't even surprised that the big, Polish-looking character with them had a Colt.45 pistol tucked in the waistband of his trousers.

  Bodyguards for the very rich were not at all uncommon in Palm Beach.

  "Couldn't find Captain Needham?" Jannier asked Lowell. "He chickened out when he was sober," Lowell said. "Now he's drunk again."

  "You want me to go talk to him?" Wojinski asked. There was a good deal of menace in the innocent question.

  "It wouldn't do any good, Ski," Lowell said.

  "So what do we do now?" Franidin asked.

  "If I can get this machine started," Lowell said, "I'm going to drive it into the water, see if I can find out how to make the wheels fold up, and then I'll shoot some landings. Then you can decide if you still want to go along." "No," Franldin said.

  "I understand, Bill," Lowell said. "You want to pick up the Commander at Palm Beach? Take Ski to Bragg and then wait for me at Rucker." "I meant no touch and go's," Franklin said. "Since your experience with a seaplane is nil, the more landings and takeoffs you make, the greater the chance that you'll dump it."

  "You mean just get in it, fire it up, and go?" Lowell replied.

  "We've been listening to the radio," Wojinski said. "The fucking Cubans have announced that the invasion's failed."

  "Then there's really no purpose in going, is there?" Lowell said.

  "Why don't we just stop the bullshit, get in the fucking airplane, and go?" Wojinski said, flatly.

  When Lowell looked at him, Wojinski crossed himself, folded his hands before him in an attitude of prayer, and raised his eyes toward heaven.

  By that time, Franklin was already tugging at the fuselage door to open it.

  Lowell put out his hand to Jannier.

  "Merci, mon vieux," he said. "Thank you for coming. You'll be able to get back into the States all right?"

  "I am going back to the States, in that airplane," Jannier said, pointing to the Catalina.

  "The deal was that all you were going to do was bring along the diplomatic passport, to be used if needed."

  Jannier didn't reply.

  "That's what you told Melody," Lowell said.

  "But she knew I was lying," Jannier said, and crawled into the Catalina.

  (Five)

  An hour after British Jamaican Airways One Seventeen (which is how Lowell had decided to identify himself to the air traffic control people) departed Montego Bay for Grand Cayman Island, Georgetown tower came on the air and announced that due to "conditions," Georgetown Field was closing down. Jamaican Airways One Seventeen was directed to return to Montego Bay.

  "British Jamaican diverting to Montego Bay at this time," Lowell said.

  He pushed the stick forward.

  "What are you doing?" Franldin asked, in alarm.

  "I'm going down on the deck," Lowell said. "I don't believe that bastard for a minute. They know it's us. There's no reason Georgetown should be shut down. Jiggs almost certainly turned us in before we were off the ground at Ozark, and they've been looking all over for us.

  That radio call meant they just now found out where we are."

  "Why on the deck?" Franidin asked.

  "Maybe they've got radar."

  "I'll bet the Cubans do," Franldin said.

  Lowell didn't reply.

  He had the ADF tuned to Ellis's nay-aid, which was transmitting. That meant that Ellis was probably operational unless he had been overrun, and the ADF permitted to operate because that would attract Cubano airplanes to Fidel Castro's antiaircraft batteries.

  An hour later, three U.S. Navy fighters appeared on their wing. Their flight commander got on the horn and ordered them out of the area.

  Lowell pretended not to hear. When the navy pilot made violent "get out of this area" gestures, Lowell chose to interpret these as friendly waves.
He waved back in a very friendly fashion.

  When, five minutes later, they approached several tiny islands, the navy fighters turned back. Lowell and Franklin could now see a small fleet of ships. Beyond these was the landmass of Cuba.