"How may you 'elp me? You ask how you may 'elp me?"
"Yes, Sir."
"I will tell you, M'sieu Ie Capitaine Ol-iv-aire, how you can 'elp me. You can stop the . . how you say? foo-king of my wife zee second I take my eyes off the bitch." There was no French accent on the last part of the sentence.
"Who the hell is this?" Oliver demanded angrily. He was not in the mood for sophomore humor.
"Whaddasay, Slats? How they hanging?"
"Father, you sonofabitch!" Oliver said, all anger gone.
"What the hell was that all about?"
"I was practicing my French accent. Not bad, huh? Had you going, didn't I?"
"Things a little dull at Fort Bragg, are they? All you can find to amuse yourself on a Saturday night is to make sophomoric telephone calls? Why don't you call the drugstore and ask them if they have Prince Albert in the can?"
"Actually I'm in Dothan," Captain George Washington Lunsford said. "At the airport."
"What are you doing in Dothan?"
"At the moment, I'm in a phone booth," Father said.
"Oh, Jesus!"
"Are you going to come pick me up?"
"I'll be there in twenty-five minutes," Oliver said and hung up.
Father Lunsford was standing outside the Dothan Airport terminal when Oliver drove up. He was wearing a dark-blue suit under a double-breasted camel's hair overcoat. He pulled the door open, threw a suitcase in the back seat, and got in.
"I knew it had to be you," he said. "There's not too many people outside the pimp profession with pink automobiles."
"Screw you, Father," Oliver said, chuckling.
"I am famished," Father said. "Is there someplace we can eat?"
"Best place, I suppose, is the club."
"Then head for the club."
"What brings you here?"
"A couple of things," Father said. "What the hell, get it out of the way. I want to leave a letter with you for my father."
"What kind of a letter?"
"You know the kind, Johnny," Lunsford said. "To be delivered only in case of my death, heroic or otherwise."
"Meaning what?"
"Meaning I'm being sent on a job; and, the eternal Boy Scout, I want to be prepared."
"You mean overseas?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes. Across an ocean. But not to a theater of operations."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"You don't have the need to know," Lunsford said seriously.
"So what are you doing here? And don't tell me I don't have the need to know."
"I have to see some people. People I will see later."
"They have names?"
"They're assigned to the Aviation Board," Lunsford said.
"I'm scheduled to see them Monday morning. So I figured I'd come early and let you buy me dinner." Oliver glanced over at him.
At the Aviation Board? What connection does a Green Beret who's about to do something lunatic have with people at the Aviation Board?
And then he understood.
"The name Felter mean anything to you, Father?" Johnny asked, glancing at Lunsford as he spoke. The surprise he expected to see was there.
"No," Lunsford said. "Can't say that it does."
"And how do you feel about going back to the land of your ancestors?" Oliver asked. "Got your spear and tiger skin G-string all ready?"
"You're guessing, and that's dangerous."
"Not for those of us with an EAGLE clearance, it isn't.
Nobody thinks we're Russian spies."
"How the hell did you get involved in this?" Lunsford asked. "Where the hell did you meet Colonel Felter?"
"I'm good ol Sandy Felter's right-hand man at Rucker," Oliver said. "In addition to my dog-robbing duties, of course. I can-'t imagine why he didn't tell me you were coming."
"He doesn't know. My coming here was General Hanrahan's idea. You know anything about a U-8?"
"I even know where they're going, and when. What I don't understand is where you fit in."
"I'm taking an A-Team over there. The U-8 is to support us."
"Support you while you do what?"
"If Felter hasn't told you, I'm not going to," Lunsford said.
"Christ, why you? You just came home from 'Nam!"
"I speak the language."
"But you volunteered, right? They didn't order you."
"So what?"
"So why?"
"This is what I do for a living," Lunsford said. "You rob dogs, and I take long walks in the woods. I was .already getting a little bored with Bragg."
"When are you going?"
"If Felter didn't tell you, I can't, Johnny. You want to get off this conversation before we both get in trouble?"
"I told you I know about it."
"You know a U-8 and people to fly it is going to the Congo.
You only think you know why. And you now know, my fault, that I'm going over there. You know too much, in other words.
So as I was saying, how's your sex life?" "
Hey, Father!"
"I'm serious, goddammit," Lunsford said. "Change the goddamn subject!"
After a long moment Oliver said
"Well, since you have this prurient interest in my personal life, I will tell you. A couple of hours ago I proposed marriage."
"Who is she?" Father Lunsford asked, surprised and interested.
"She was married to a guy I went to flight school with.
He got blown away in Nam. She's got a kid, a really nice little boy."
"And you're going to marry her? That was quick, wasn't it? You sure you know what you're doing?"
"I'm' sure," Oliver said
"but that's a moot point. She turned me down."
"Why? "
"She said she doesn't want to marry another soldier." Father grunted.
"She says once, losing a husband, is enough."
"Maybe she's onto something," Father Lunsford said.
"Women are intuitive. People-make jokes about it, but it's true, they are. I gather this was more than a splendid roll in the hay?"
"For me it is."
"And for her?"
"For her too, I think."
"OK," Father said. "Taking you at your word. Why else would a woman turn somebody like you down? You have all the Brownie points. Nice-looking guy, steady job. You obviously like her kid, and kids need daddies. So why not? Unless she's got you pegged, intuitively, for what you are, in which case turning you down makes a lot of sense."
"Pegged me for what I am? What am I?"
"You're a warrior. Not just a soldier, a warrior. Warriors should not get married. Smart women don't marry warriors.
Warriors tend to be gone, temporarily or permanently, when women need them." Oliver thought that over a moment. Lunsford was obviously serious.
"Taking your philosophy to its natural end, Aristotle," he said finally
"if that's true, then how is the race going to be perpetuated? If women didn't marry warriors, in a couple of generations all that'll be left is feather merchants."
"Warriors get to rape the enemy's women," Lunsford said.
"Even if that's temporarily out of fashion. That's one way.
The other, of course, is that most women are too dumb to know what they're getting into when they latch on to a warrior."
"You really believe all this bullshit you're spouting?"
"Sure," Lunsford said. "Am I going to get to meet the lady?" .
"No. She sort of threw me out after I proposed. Or, really, after I turned down her counterproposal."
"Which was?"
"That I get out of the Army and go to work for her. She's in the real estate business. Does pretty well at it."
"You didn't mention that," Lunsford said. "Sort of proves my point, doesn't it? Since she doesn't need a meal ticket, she can look a little closer. And looking closer, she has decided she doesn't have to run the risk of having another husband disappear permanently after he gets her
in the family way. Intuition. I told you. My advice is to let it drop."
"Thanks a lot."
"Anytime."
[FOUR]
Building T-124
Fort Rucker, Alabama
1605 Hours 28 January 1964
Jose Newell came into Johnny Oliver's room via their shared bathroom. He was in a flight suit. Oliver, fresh from a shower, was in his underwear.
"And what did you learn in school today?" Oliver greeted him.
"Do you have a gold star for being a good little boy that you want to show Daddy?"
"At 1300 they gave us a slide show on the Chinook," Jose said." This is the front and this is the back, and these are the rotors,' they told us . . can I have a drink?"
"Help yourself. Make me one while you're at it."
"Anyway, when the slide show was over, they told us that if they were lucky, they would be able to arrange a static display of a Chinook for us before we finish flight school. No ride, of course, that would be out of the question-"
"Hell, Jose," Oliver interrupted
"the Army's bleeding for Chinooks. There's not enough to give to the 11th Air Assault, and we have half as many as we need here to train pilots and mechanics. They don't have any to spare to give fledgling birdmen a ride for the hell of it."
"Let me finish, Johnny," Newell went on. "And when that was over, I went out to Cairns and got in the right seat of one of the thousand-hour-test Chinooks and flew it back and forth to Mobile." The Army Aviation Board developed spare-parts levels, time..before-maintenance, and related data for new aircraft by flying a number of aircraft, usually at least three, for 1,000 hours each. The "time was put on" as quickly as possible by relays of pilots, flying round the clock, seven days a week.
Oliver, who had been pinning his double row of miniature medals to the lapel of his mess dress jacket, stopped, stood erect, and turned to look at Newell.
"With Charley Stevens?" he asked levelly.
Jose Newell nodded as he handed Oliver an inch of whiskey in a water glass.
"That's what's known as goddamn dumb, Jose. If that gets back to Augustus, you'll both be in the deep shit. Christ!
What the hell was Charley thinking about?"
"It was Augustus's idea," Newell said, sitting on Oliver's bed and sliding upward to rest his back against the headboard. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about. You got a minute? What the hell are you doing, anyway?"
"I'm getting dressed."
"Now? I thought that dinner started at eight."
"It does. What do you mean, it was Augustus's idea?"
"I mean it was Augustus's idea. I was talking to Charley, waiting for them to put gas in it, and Augustus walked up and said they were short a pilot, and why didn't I ride along with Charley and work the radios and get a little bootleg instruction?'
"That's hard to believe," Oliver said." McNair will have a fit if-when-he finds out."
"McNair was there with Augustus," Newell said." All he said was
"Try not to bend our bird, Lieutenant."
"I don't think you're putting me on," Oliver said." So what's going on?"
"That's what I wanted to talk to you about. McNair endorsed
"in the strongest possible terms,' a letter Augustus wrote to DCSPERS, asking that Second Lieutenant Newell, US Army Reserve, be ordered to extended active duty and assigned to SCATSA as a critically needed expert."
"Go over that slowly," Oliver said. "I thought you were in the National Guard, not the Reserve."
"You're in both when you're in the Guard."
"I didn't know that," Oliver said. "How'd you get to meet Augustus? '
"He came in the SCA TSA shop when I was making those voice-actuated switches for General Bellmon. And he started asking me questions, where was I from, where did I learn about avionics, that sort of thing. And then he apparently checked me out, and the next thing I know he called me in and said he can get me called to extended active duty with a shot at a Regular Army commission."
"What about the no college degree?"
"He said that if you know how to do it, there's a waiver for everything in the- Army. '
"So you told him yes?"
"Yeah," Newell said. "And now I'm not so sure that was such a smart idea. That's what I wanted to talk to you about.
Can I trust him?"
"If he says he can get you called to extended active duty, I'm sure he can. He's got a lot of clout in the Signal Corps, and if McNair endorsed it-"
"Augustus wants to put me in charge of the shop," Newell said. "They've got a captain in charge who's not really sure of the difference between an ohm and a volt. Good technicians, though. I could do the job."
"Augustus has a reputation for being ruthless."
"Meaning I can't trust him? I shouldn't have?"
"Meaning he's ruthless. He doesn't let things get in the way of his mission."
"What are you saying?" Newell asked.
"And he's on orders to 'Nam. So what I'm saying is that he won't be around to make good his promises to you. What he gets from you is somebody to run his avionics shops, at least for as long as he's here. After that the shop is somebody else's problem. And Jose Newell's career plans are Jose Newell's problem." Newell grunted and drained his drink, then looked at the empty glass. He shrugged and raised his eyes to Oliver. "Opportunity knocks but once," he said. "You ever hear that? '
"No, but now that I have, I'll write it down so I won't forget it. ' ,
"You-and for that matter, Charley Stevens-are different about flying than I am," Newell said. "Why did you become an aviator? The flight pay?"
"That, sure, and because it struck me as a desirable alternative to standing around in a blizzard on the East German or North Korean border changing the tracks on a cold and dirty tank." Newell chuckled, pushed himself off the bed, and asking permission with his eyebrows, went back to the bottle of scotch. He made himself another drink, then turned around and leaned against the chest of drawers.
"I like to fly," he said.
"So do I."
"I love it," Newell said. "I mean, I really love it. I was as happy as a pig in mud flying that Chinook this afternoon.
The Aviators Page 30