The Aviators

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The Aviators Page 28

by W. E. B Griffin


  "What can I do to help?" Bellmon asked.

  Oliver saw that the way Bellmon treated Felter was not at all like the way he had come to expect a major general to treat a colonel. The normal- junior-senior roles seemed to be reversed, with Bellmon seeming to take as a given that Felter's authority was greater than his own.

  "I need some people," Felter said.

  "I was afraid you were going to say that," Bellmon said.

  "If I lose many more experienced pilots, Oliver and I will be out there in the back seat of an 0-1, teaching Basic Flight. "

  "This is important," Felter said.

  Bellmon waved his hand in a gesture that said, "I know."

  "What people?"

  Felter took a folded sheet of 'typewriter paper from his bulging interior jacket pocket. "DCSPERS came up with these three names," Felter sajd.

  DCSPERS is Deputy Chief of Staff, Personnel, pronounced, "dee see ess purse."

  "They're U-8-qualified, speak French, and have done a tour in Nam. I want to talk to them, to pick two of them." Oliver's mouth ran away with him. "Is my name on there?" Bellmon looked at him in surprise, almost shocked. Aids do not enter conversations like this until asked to do. so.

  Felter chuckled. "You don't speak French, Captain. You took French for three years at Norwich. There's a difference."

  Jesus Christ, how did he come by that information?

  "Sorry, Sir."

  "Would you like to use my office to interview these people, Sandy?" Bellmon asked.

  "Let's keep it informal. What about over a beer, at the club, after lunch?" Bellmon nodded and handed Oliver the list.

  "Johnny, get in touch with these people. Go through their department heads and inform them it is the General's desire that they attend him at the bar of the club at 1330, If you're" asked for details, as I suspect you will be, tell them there is some Washington big shot here who wants to talk to them.

  OK, Sandy?"

  "Make that State Department big shot," Felter said, smiling.

  [FOUR]

  Office of the Commanding General .

  The Army Aviation Center & Fort Rucker, Alabama

  1535 Houts 17 January 1964

  Captain John Oliver stood in General Bellmon's doorway and waited until Bellmon looked up from the paperwork on his desk. "Colonel Felter got off OK, Sir," he said. "Very classily, as a matter of fact. There was an Air Force Special Missions Lear waiting for him out there." Bellmon gestured for him to come in the office.

  "You made a very good impression on Colonel Felter, Johnny," Bellmon said, "which may turn out to be a mixed blessing. Anyway, he telephoned me just now-"

  "Just now, Sir? You mean he had to land again?"

  "No. Apparently there's a telephone-a radio telephone, whatever it's called-on those airplanes. The sort of thing I'd like to have in my aircraft."

  "I haven't forgotten, Sir." That's a bold-faced lie. Jesus Christ, why do I write things down in a notebook and then never look in the notebook?

  "Anyway, he called just now and said that if I didn't think it would interfere with your other duties, and since you know, more or less, what's going on, he'd like you to keep an eye on that U-8 he's sending to SCATSA, and on the two officers who're going to the Congo for him. So, 'in addition to your other duties, Captain Oliver. .' "

  "I understand, Sir."

  "You'd better let Colonel Augustus at SCATSA and Colonel McNair at the Board know about it," Bellmon said. "Exercise tact, just let them know that if they have any problems, they should tell you, and you'll tell me, and we'll do whatever we can to help."

  "Yes, Sir."

  "Put that pretty high on the priority list, Johnny," Bellmon said. "We have to presume that whatever Felter is up to is important. "

  "Yes, Sir. Sir, I'm pretty well caught up here right now.

  Would you like me to go see Colonel Augustus and Colonel McNair now?"

  "Go ahead, Johnny. And don't bother to come back. I'm going to playa few holes of golf as soon as I'm finished here.

  I'll see you in the morning. "

  "Yes, Sir." Colonel John W. McNair, President of the Army Aviation Board, wasn't in his office." His secretary-a statuesque blonde named Anne Caskie, whose' good looks, Oliver had already learned, masked an extraordinary degree of hard-nosed>competence-told him she had no idea where her boss was. Oliver was convinced she was not telling the truth; she just wasn't about to disturb him for anything unimportant.

  "I'll try him again later, or in the morning," Oliver said.

  "He'll be so sorry he missed you," Anne Caskie said, flashing him a dazzling smile.

  When he went to Colonel Augustus's office in the SCATSA hangar, and asked Augustus's operations sergeant if he could see him, the sergeant said, "Go right in, Captain, they're expecting you." Colonels Augustus and McNair were sitting around a coffee table with a third officer, an old major. He was wearing a flight suit and was introduced as "Pappy" Hodges.

  "Colonel Felter called me," McNair said, "and said that you would run interference, where necessary, with the bureaucrats. We were wondering when you would show up. "

  "Sorry I'm late, Sir."

  "Well, right now we don't see any problems," McNair said. "That doesn't mean we won't have any in five minutes.

  The airplane will arrive either tomorrow or the day after, from Beech. I'll run it through our contract maintenance people on a priority basis for installation of the auxiliary fuel tanks, and then Charley will install the avionics. Pappy feels, and of course, he's right, that they should train on the airplane they're going to use, so getting it ready is the first priority. While that's happening, why don't you get the pilots through the paperwork? Passports, shots, household goods, you know what they'll have to do."

  "Yes, Sir. Sir, are the avionics here?"

  "The 'stuff from ARC is on the way from Boonton, , , Colonel Augustus said, referring to the Aircraft Radio Corporation. "Collins will ship their/stuff air freight from Cedar Rapids no later than five o'clock tomorrow afternoon. The Sperry stuff is in stock here. Most of it belongs to Dick Fullbright, but we'll use it and then replace it when Felter's stuff 'arrives from Phoenix. No problems there, as I see it." They've obviously done this sort of thing before. How much of this sort of thing is going on?

  "In other words, Oliver, you walked in as the meeting ended," McNair said. "I wish I could learn to time it like that."

  "Unless you've got' something?" Augustus asked.

  "Pappy? "

  Major Pappy Hodges shook his head, no.

  "Oliver? "

  "I'd be grateful for a moment of your time, Colonel," Oliver said. "Nothing to do with this." Colonel McNair and Major Hodges left. Colonel Augustus heard Oliver out about the equipment that would permit General Bellmon to talk on the telephone while airborne.

  "If it was anybody but Bellmon, Oliver," Augustus said, "I'd tell you to send the aircraft over. I've got a couple of them in stock. But they belong to Fullbright." That s the second time he s said that. What the hell does it mean?

  "and Bellmon, as we all know, doesn't want to be indebted to Fullbright. They cost $9,100. Have you got $9,100 in funds you can lay your hands on to buy one?"

  "No, Sir, I don't think so."

  "Well, don't get your hopes up, but I'll look around and see what I can do," Augustus said "Bellmon is one of the good guys. But don't hold your breath."

  "Thank you, Sir." Oliver used the sergeant's telephone to try to report to Bellmon, but the sergeant major told him that "The General is out swatting a small white spheroid with a weighted stick." Because he had the rest of the afternoon off, Oliver took advantage of it by spending an hour in Daleville dropping off and reclaiming his laundry and dry cleaning and then having the oil in the Pontiac convertible changed.

  When he got to the BOQ, he saw Jose Newell's MG of Many Colors and Charley Stevens's Mercury in the parking lot and guessed, correctly, that they would be in Annex #1.

  They were, sitting at the bar in fl
ight suits, flying with their hands. "There I was," Oliver said as he slid onto a bar stool beside them, "at ten thousand feet with nothing between me' and the earth but a thin blonde."

  "Fuck you, dog-robber," Charley Stevens said.

  "Hey, I'm the guy who introduced you to Marjorie Bellmon."

  "You got me," Stevens said. "Sergeant, give the dog robber whatever he thinks he's man enough to drink." Then he turned to Oliver. "Hey, I saw you leaving my new colonel's office this afternoon."

  "I didn't see you," Oliver said truthfully.

  "You had the glassy eyes of someone thinking profound thoughts," Stevens said. "What were you doing?"

  "Trying to figure out how to tell the General he can't have an airborne telephone. "

  "Why can't he? I thought generals got pretty much what they damned well wanted."

  "Because they're nonstandard, and they cost $9,100, and I don't think he wants to buy one with his own money."

  "What's an airborne telephone?" Jose Newell asked.

  "An airborne telephone," Oliver said. "You talk on the telephone while airborne."

  "You said something about $9,100."

  "That's what they cost. Colonel Augustus told me."

  "Oh, hell. All they are is a switch," Jose Newell said.

  "You can get the parts in Radio Shack for no more than a hundred bucks."

  "Why do I have this strange feeling, Jose, that you know what you're talking about?" Oliver asked.

  "Because I do. I've made a couple of them myself." He then delivered a ninety-second lecture on the functioning of such a device. Oliver didn't understand a thing' he said.

  "Tell me, Lieutenant Newell, how would you like to do your commanding general-more important, your roommate-a large favor?"

  "You mean, build one-"

  "Two," Oliver said.

  "Where would I do it?" Newell asked.

  "Three," Stevens said. "You. will build three of these things, and in the SCATSA workshop. My new colonel will be impressed with my genius when I show him what I have done. "

  "I will have a word with your IP, Lieutenant Newell. I will get you out of class For the Good of the Service," Oliver said. "How long will it take?"

  "A couple of hours," Newell said. "I could do it in an afternoon."

  "I'll drink to that," Stevens said, "since it's the dog robber's turn to buy. Sergeant, three of the same, if you please? "

  "Just two," Oliver said. "I have a date."

  "I heard you melted the Ice Princess," Stevens said.

  "Who told you that?"

  "Miss Marjorie," Stevens said triumphantly.

  "We're going to have dinner, that's all."

  "Yes, Sir, if you say so, Sir," Stevens said.

  "Screw you, Charley," Oliver said.

  Bellmon gets his airborne telephone, Oliver thought, and I seem to have indeed melted the Ice Princess. Right now, God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.

  "On second thought, Sergeant," Oliver said to the bartender, "I think another little nip might be in order after all. "

  XII

  [ONE]

  Quarters #1

  Fort Rucker, Alabama

  1610 Hours 19 January 1964

  "Hi," Barbara Bellmon said to her husband and Captain John S. Oliver as she and Marjorie walked into the kitchen.

  "Nice flight?" The women were dressed up, including hats. They looked good, Oliver thought-wholesome and pretty. He remembered vaguely that they had been to some kind of religious function, something about churchwomen. He hadn't paid a lot of attention to it. The General-wasn't going to be involved, and it was happening on a Sunday, normally his day off.

  General Bellmon and Oliver, in flight suits, looking a little worn, were slumped in chairs at the kitchen table, drinking beer from the bottle neck. There was a stick of pepperoni and a knife on a chopping block.

  "Johnny's a very good IP," Bellmon said. "It was . .educational."

  "Don't sound so surprised," Barbara said as she bent and kissed her husband.

  If she's concerned that he' s been flying the Chinook, Oliver thought, it doesn't show. Which means that she's concealing her concern; she is certainly aware that a lot of people call the Chinook "the flying coffin." Oliver had been surprised when Bellmon had told him he thought he should get himself checked out in the Chinook.

  The General had, of course, been given seven hours of "familiarization" time in the helicopter, which meant that Colonel McNair at the Board had taken him for several rides and had let him steer.

  Getting "checked out" was a more complicated process.

  Officially called' 'transition," it required a lot of preparation-ground school, so to speak-to prepare for the written examination, as well as in-flight instruction. Bellmon had cracked the books like any other candidate for Chinook qualification, employed Oliver as a tutor, taken and passed the written examination, and was, Oliver thought, about three flight hours away from the point where he would feel comfortable signing him off and turning him over to one of the school's flight examiners for the flight check.

  Oliver was ambivalent about the whole idea. For one thing, it was highly unlikely that Bellmon, as a major general, would ever be called upon to fly a Chinook as pilot-in-command.

  For another, getting transitioned into the Chinook was costing Bellmon a lot of time, and he didn't have much-anytime that could be easily spared. And finally there was the question of risk. If another tail rotor assembly came off, for example, when a lieutenant or captain was driving, there would always be another lieutenant or captain to take his place. Major General Bellmon would not be easy to replace. He was, Oliver often thought, one of the very few general officers around Army Aviation who hadn't learned to fly last month, and whose expertise Army Aviation would really miss.

  Would it be worth, Oliver wondered, the loss of a general officer of Bellmon's value to Army Aviation just so that he could adhere to the philosophy that an officer should never order a subordinate to do something he was unable or willing to do himself?

  Oliver did not doubt that that was the only reason why Bellmon wanted to transition into the Chinook. There was no ego involved.

  "Where did you go?" Barbara Bellmon asked.

  "Birmingham," Bellmon said. "I rubbed salt into the wound of making Johnny work on Sunday by feeding him in the airport restaurant. They make the worst hot turkey sandwich I've ever had."

  "Well, we'll make it up to him," Barbara Bellmon said

  "I've got steaks."

  "No, Ma'am," Oliver said. "I've got a date, thank you just the same."

  "Speaking of that," Marjorie said, turning from a kitchen cabinet with two beer glasses in her hand and setting them on the table. "I relieve you, Johnny, of your obligation to take me to the Norwich Dinner."

  "I was looking forward to it," Oliver said.

 

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