The Aviators

by W. E. B Griffin

  "Sir, I don't think one is available this time of morning."

  "Why the hell not?"

  "Well," the sergeant said, somewhere between reasonably and righteously, "if a plane comes in at this time of the morning, they rarely go anywhere before five, or six. And if one came in last night, it should have been serviced when it landed."

  "Well, Sergeant, Nine One Seven came in about seven last night, and it has not been serviced. The General wants to take off in Nine One Seven at O4OO. Now what do you think we should be doing about that?"

  "I guess I better go get a fuel truck," the sergeant said.

  "But I'll need somebody to man the extinguisher. That's SOP. "

  "You get the truck and I'll handle the extinguisher."

  "What about the phone? Who'll answer the phone?"

  "If the phone rings while we're gassing the airplane, we will just let the sonofabitch ring, OK?" Oliver said sarcastically.

  "Yes, Sir," the sergeant said with more than a hint of contempt in his voice.

  Congratulations, Oliver. You handled that beautifully. You are a real leader of men, who has just made another significant gesture to buttress the opinion held by-most senior NCOs that officers generally, and dog-robbers in particular, are pompous assholes.

  When they had finished topping off the tanks, he went to Weather Briefing. An Air Corps staff sergeant there, who looked no older than seventeen, painted, between yawns, a detailed picture of the dismal weather he could expect to encounter between Rucker and Washington. To make matters more interesting, it would worsen as the day passed, and they were on their way back.

  He would be in the soup all day. It was even possible that if they got into the Army Airfield at Fort Eustis, they wouldn't be able to get out. He remembered then that he had ,not brought a change of linen. If they weathered in, he wouldn't be able to change his socks or his underwear; He hated that. General Bellmon and Harry Schultz, the Boeing- Vertol tech rep from Benning, were in the lobby of Base Operations when Oliver came out of Flight Planning. Schultz was unshaven and wearing the same World War II leather pilot's jacket Oliver had seen him wearing the day before. General Bellmon was in his overcoat, buttoned around his neck. He carried a blouse and, shirt on a hanger. He was also unshaven.

  That mysterious behavior was explained as they got into 917. Bellmon took off the overcoat and Oliver saw that he was wearing an old athletic jacket under it.

  "Would you like to fly, Sir?" Oliver asked.

  "I'm going to catnap in the back," Bellmon said. "If we run into any weather or something wake me."

  "Yes, Sir." Forty minutes later, at Fort Benning's Lawson Army Airfield, a man walked up to the U-8F as Oliver was shutting down the engines. He was attired in a zipper jacket worn over a gray cotton sweat suit, and he was carrying two plastic bagged hangers of uniforms and a small pillow under his arm.

  Oliver recognized him only after Schultz had opened the door and gotten out onto the wing to reach down for the luggage and pillow.

  "You stay right where you are, Harry," Brigadier General William R. Roberts said, quickly declining Schultz's offer of the seat in front. "I'm going to crap out with General Bellmon in the back." Three minutes after that, as Johnny Oliver pushed the throttles of the U-8F to takeoff power and told Lawson he was rolling, he thought wryly, Oh, what a grand and glorious aviator you must be, Johnny Oliver, to be at the controls of a flying machine with both the Army's most experienced airplane driver and the headman of the flying school trying to go to sleep in the back seat, placing full trust in you as you soar off into the wild blue yonder.

  A moment later he thought that it really wasn't the blue yonder; he wasn't going to break out of the soup at all.

  Weather had told him it topped out at fifteen thousand or so, and he wasn't going over ten thousand, and would thus be in the gray soup all the way. But aside from that. .

  [FOUR]

  262 Winding Glen Road

  Silver Spring, Maryland

  0720 Hours 14 January 1964

  As soon as they landed at Eustis, Harry Schultz disappeared in the direction of Base Ops. Generals Bellmon and Roberts helped him tie down the airplane.

  How many lowly captains, Oliver thought, have had the Army's most experienced aviator and the Commandant of the Aviation School help them tie down an airplane in a freezing drizzle?

  When the three of them approached Base Ops, they found Harry Schultz waiting with a huge man in a Navy officer's uniform. Oliver was not at all surprised when Schultz introduced him as Commander Bull Jenkins, but he wondered who the hell he was. No explanation was offered, and Oliver believed that good little aides should not ask questions.

  Bull Jenkins drove them in a Buick station wagon to Silver Spring. Once there, Bellmon gave directions, and they ended up in front of a two-story brick house. Everybody got out.

  "Thanks, Bull," Harry Schultz said.

  "My pleasure, Admiral," Commander Jenkins said.

  "Anytime!"

  Admiral?

  Commander Bull Jenkins saluted, got back in his Buick, and drove off.

  Harry Schultz said, to Oliver, "Bull was "my aide when 1 had Guantanamo."

  "Sir, I had no idea you were an admiral," Oliver said, feeling like a fool.

  "The operative 'word, Johnny' Schultz said "is was." What 1 am now is the Vertol tech rep, and you don't say 'Sir' to tech. reps. "

  "Yes, Sir. . ooops," Oliver ,said. Schultz chuckled and patted Oliver's arm, directing him, up, the walk to the front of the two-story house. Bellmon and Roberts were already there. There were lights visible in the rear of the house, and as Oliver watched, lights came on in what was probably the living room, and then over the door. A middle-aged man in a bathrobe, holding a cup ,of coffee in his hand, opened the door, but he made no move to open the glass storm door. He was Lieutenant General Richard. J. Cronin, Deputy Chief of Staff, Operations, United States Air Force. He was also Major General Robert F. Bellmon's brother-in-law..

  "What 1 think I'm going to do is to go back in: the kitchen and pretend I didn't hear the chimes," General Cronin said.

  "I don't want to see you guys Good God!"

  "Open the damned door," General Bellmon said. "It's cold out here."

  "Dick, for God's sake," General Roberts said.

  "Who is it?" a female voice demanded impatiently, and then appeared, also in a bathrobe. "Bob!" she said, pushing past the man in the bathrobe, unlatching the storm door and opening it. "What's the matter with you, Dick, why didn't' you open the door?"

  "I was hoping they'd go away," he said perfectly seriously.

  "I know why they're here."

  "What?:' she asked as she held the door open and hurried them through. "What is all this, Bob? What are you .doing here at this time of the morning?"

  "Don't ask, Helen," the man in the bathrobe said.

  "Why didn't you call or something?" the woman said, kissing Bellmon's cheek and then Roberts's. "You, :too, Bill?

  What's going on?"

  "How are you, Helen?" Roberts asked.

  "Do you know Harry Schultz, Dick?" Bellmon added.

  "No, I don't think so," Dick Cronin said. "Wait a minute, sure I do. You were at the War College, weren't you? Well, it's good to see you, at least, Admiral"

  "I'm on their side, Dick," Schultz said.

  -"With respect, Sir, I'm sorry to hear that."

  "And this is my aide, Captain John Oliver," Bellmon said.

  "Johnny, this is General and Mrs. Cronin. United States Air Force. ;, General Cronin, and then his wife, offered Oliver their hands.

  "Well, whatever this is all-about, it will wait until I can get some coffee into you. And breakfast," Mrs. Cronin said.

  "You haven't eaten, have you?"

  "No, we haven't, "-Bellmon said. "Thank you, Sis~ And we'll need, Bill and I, your bathroom to shave and change."

  "Well, you know where it is," she said. "Take Bill with you and I'll get started in the kitchen."

  "Whe
re are the kids?" Bellmon asked.

  "Nobody's home," she said. "So there's room for everybody if you're staying. Unless you're going out to the Farm?"

  "We're not staying, but thank you," Bellmon said. Then

  he added, "As soon as we finish at the Pentagon, we have to get back for a memorial service for a pilot we lost."

  "Apropos of nothing whatever, of course," General Cronin said.

  Bellmon glared at him but didn't reply directly. He handed .Oliver an attache case. "While General Roberts and I are changing, Johnny, why don't you show General Cronin the photographs of the Chinook accident? There's some new~ ones in there, too. Harry can show him what happened."

  "Jesus Christ, Bob!" Cronin protested angrily.

  Bellmon touched Roberts's arm and guided him toward the stairs.

  Cronin looked coldly at Johnny Oliver.

  "Aides are supposed to learn how things are done, Captain," he said. "I hope you don't come to the conclusion that this is the way things are supposed to be done."

  "Dick!" Mrs. Cronin protested. "Whatever this is all about, it's certainly not the Captain's fault."

  "No," General Cronin said, ".it isn't. I know whose fault it is. I'm sorry, Captain. Come on up. the study." Johnny and Schultz followed Cronin through his living room to a small room equipped with a desk and a wall lined with bookshelves. There was no window.

  There was a silver-framed photograph on the desk. A wedding picture, taken outside the chapel at West Point. Oliver saw a second lieutenant, wearing U.S. Army Corps insignia, and the woman who had just defended him, and' a lieutenant colonel, and brigadier general, and their wives. And a cadet wearing corporal's chevrons. The cadet corporal was now Major General Robert F. Bellmon. The Brigadier General was almost certainly, Oliver decided, former Lieutenant General Robert F. Bellmon, Jr.

  General Cronin took the two envelopes of photographs. from Oliver and sat down .at the desk.

  "Please sit down, gentlemen," Cronin said and began to study the photographs.

  Mrs. Cronin came in with coffee just as he said, "Good God! "

  "May I see those?" Mrs. Cronin asked.

  "No," General Cronin said immediately, sharply. Then~ "Oh, what the hell. Have a look if you'd like."

  "Are they classified, or what?"

  "Probably," General Cronin said. "They should be. But there's never any telling with your brother."

  "Oh, my God!" Mrs. Cronin said as she looked down over her husband's shoulder~ She looked at Oliver, then at Schultz, and walked out of the room.

  "OK," Cronin said, looking at Oliver. "What have I seen?"

  "The tragic results of inadequately supervised maintenance," Harry Schultz answered for him. "What happens when you don't put safety wire where there is supposed to be safety wire. And what happens when an inspector signs off a job without' going to the trouble of actually checking to see that it's been done properly."

  "That's a theory," Cronin replied. "There is also a metal fatigue theory, and several other theories having to do with basic design inadequacies." .

  "There is another theory," Bellmon said, walking into the room, tying his tie as he walked, "that there was great jubilation in the. Air Force when this aircraft went in."

  "Goddammit, Bob!." Cronin exploded. "No one likes fatal accidents! Jesus Christ, how can you say something like that? ' , "Because it's true," Bellmon said. "Because that goddamned accident-investigation team of yours' was off the ground at Wright-Patterson three minutes, after they got the TWX. "

  "They should have been at Rucker all along," Cronin replied. "And I have pretty reliable information about who kept them from being there."

  "And I still don't," Bellmon said. "I have no intention of feeding a Trojan horse."

  "You're paranoid," Cronin said. "We're not the enemy."

  "The hell you're not," Bellmon said. "You bastards wouldn't give us the support we told you we needed, and you thought it was hilarious when we said, 'OK, we'll do it ourselves,' and now that it looks like we can do it ourselves, you're doing everything in your power to screw us. "

  "Stop it!" Mrs. Cronin said angrily, rushing into the room. "You're not going to start in on that argument again, not at this time of the morning. I mean it."

  "Sorry," Bellmon said.

  "You remember what happened the last time!" she said, still angry.

  There was silence in the small room.

  "Breakfast is ready," she said. "Come and eat it. Where's .

  Bill? "

  "Bill has learned to be very careful around sharp instruments like a razor," Bellmon said. "He's a little slow, but he'll be along in a minute."

  "Well, you two knock it off and come out and eat.'"

  "In just a minute, honey," Cronin said.

  "Don't start it up again, Dick," Helen Cronin said. "I mean it. You either, Bob." Both of them raised their hands in a gesture of surrender.

  When she had gone, Cronin looked at Schultz.

  "If you were to tell me, Admiral, that it is your best professional judgment that this accident is'; as you say, attributable to gross, damned near incredible, sloppy maintenance; I'd take your word."

  "I'm not an admiral anymore, Dick," Schultz said. "I'm the Vertol tech rep." .

  "I'm asking you as an admiral" Schultz's lips twisted in thought momentarily.

  "General," he said finally, formally, "it is my judgment that there is nothing wrong with the rotor, assemblies on Ch-47-Series helicopters. I would bet my life that this accident was caused by a mechanic's error; that a safety wire~ or wires, that should have been installed was not, or were not, installed."" Cronin looked 'at him intently for a moment.

  "The trouble, Harry," he said sadly, "is that at our age and. position we're betting other people's lives, not our own. ' , He looked at Oliver. "Can you fly this machine, s()n?"

  "Yes, Sir."

  "Would you feel safe in taking one of them for a ride, right now, without further investigation of the cause of this accident? Were you at the crash site, by the way?"

  "He took those pictures at the crash site," Bellmon said.

  "Let him answer, Bob," Cronin said softly but sharply.

  , 'I would pull the inspection panel and look at the rotor head myself," Oliver said. "But, yes, Sir, I would fly it.

  Confidently." . .

  "I would have been surprised if you said anything else," Cronin said, resignedly. "Isn't that why you brought him along, Bob, because you knew I would- ask that question and you were sure of what his answer would be?"

  "1 suppose it looks that way," Bellmon said, "but no. He's here because he's my aide and I needed someone to drive the 'airplane. And I didn't know until just now what his answer would be. Now that I think of it, if I were Johnny Oliver I would be more than a little insulted at your implication that he would lie for me or for anybody else." .

  "No offense was intended, Captain," General Cronin said.