The Aviators

by W. E. B Griffin

  Captain Johnny Oliver had signaled the bartender for another round of beers, and the bartender had just stooped over the cooler to get them, when the phone rang. Bobby picked it up.

  "Annex #1, Lieutenant Bellmon, Sir," he said in the prescribed manner.

  "Is Captain Oliver in there?" a male voice asked. "This is Major Ting. I'm the AOD."

  "Hold one, please, Sir," Bobby said, and covered the phone with his hand. "It's for you. Major Ting. The AOD."

  When Bobby handed him the telephone-and he knew goddamned well that he was again being summoned to duty, if probably for the last time-Captain John S. Oliver had actually been thinking that his year as General Bellmon's aide had gone very quickly, and that he was really far unhappier now that it was just about over than he ever thought he would be.

  Nearly, but not quite, he thought, as unhappy as he was over his ex-relationship with Liza.

  The word for that, though, was not unhappy. It was miserable.

  His replacement was already on the job. And so, when the Bellmons had a few (160) friends for dinner at 1845 tonight, Johnny would be there as a diner and not as the social secretary. He'd even received a formal invitation:

  Major General and Mrs. Robert F. Bellman

  Request the Pleasure of the Company of,

  Captain John S. Oliver at dinner Friday,

  December 18, 1964,

  at six forty-five o'clock

  The Officers' Open Mess R.S.V.P.

  Actually he was going to be more than one more plate at the table. He was, more or less, the guest of honor. That was supposed to be a secret, but he had set up the same ceremony last year for Jerry Thomas, when Jerry's tour as an aide had been up. Just as it had been last year-and for God knew how many years before-there would- be drinks and dinner, and when dinner was over, Bellmon would tap his wineglass with his knife and stand up, and when the conversation had died down, he would summon Oliver to the head table, and make his speech, and give Oliver a farewell present. I will even miss this goddamn dump, Oliver thought, looking around Annex # 1. I am either losing my mind or drunk. Or both.

  He waited until the bartender had punctured the lid of the Millers High Life can and slid it to him before he took the phone, from Bobby.

  "Captain Oliver, Sir," Johnny Oliver said to the battered telephone at the end of the green linoleum bar.

  "Major Ting, Oliver. I'm the AOD."

  "Yes, Sir?" Oliver said.

  "The tower just got a call from a civilian Cessna 31O-H," Major Ting said. "They're thirty minutes out. They have a Code Seven aboard. No honors, but they request ground transportation."

  A Code Seven, based on the pay grade, was a brigadier general. "No honors" meant the General didn't want a band playing or an officer of suitable-that is, equal or superior rank to officially welcome him to Fort Rucker. All this Code Seven wanted was a staff car to take him to Ozark.

  Oliver had no doubt about who it was. It was Brigadier General "Red" Hanrahan, Commandant of the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy School for Special Warfare at Fort Bragg.

  Oliver was sure that it was Red Hanrahan for a couple of reasons: When he had seen Hanrahan at Bragg the week before (having gone there with Father Lunsford), Hanrahan informed him he'd be visiting Rucker on Monday to deliver a briefing on Army participation in OPERATION DRAGON ROUGE (the Stanleyville jump) to Rucker officers.

  More importantly, he was arriving in a 310-H. That almost certainly meant Lieutenant Colonel Craig W. Lowell's 310-H.

  But it never hurt to check.

  "Sir, have you got a name for the Oh Seven?"

  "General Hanrahan," Major Ting said.

  "Thank you very much for calling me, Sir," Oliver said.

  "I appreciate it." It was not the time to mention that he was no longer aide de-camp to General Bellmon, and that calls like this should be directed to his replacement.

  "My pleasure," Major Ting said and hung up.

  Captain Johnny Oliver, with visible reluctance, pushed his beer can away from him and then made several calls, dialing each number from memory.

  He called, the General's driver and told him to get a onestar plate, and the staff car, and to pick him up at Annex #1. He called the billeting office and told them to make sure the Magnolia House was set up and prepared to receive Brigadier General Hanrahan and a party of God Only Knew.

  Then he called the main club and told them to be prepared to reset the head table for General Bellmon's dinner party on short notice; there would probably be Brigadier General Hanrahan and who else Only God Knew.

  Finally he called Quarters #1. Mrs. Bellmon answered.

  "Johnny, Mrs. B," Oliver said. "General Hanrahan will land at Cairns in about twenty minutes in a Cessna 31O-H."

  "That probably means Colonel Lowell."

  "Yes, Ma'am, I think so. I've called the club and Magnolia House and laid on the General's car. They requested ground transportation to Ozark, but I figured I'd better cover all the bases."

  You're supposed to be retired, Johnny," Barbara Bellmon said.

  "My last hurrah, I thought it would be better to spring General Hanrahan and Colonel Lowell on Captain Hornsby slowly. Or at least one at a time." She laughed.

  "Where are you?"

  "At Annex One, with Bobby and Jose Newell," Oliver said, and then winced. Bobby, who did not like to be called "Bobby," was shamelessly eavesdropping on the conversation.

  "We'll see you at the club, then," she said. "Thank you, Johnny. Again."

  "One last time," he said then hung up and turned to Bobby.

  "Finish your beer, Roberto, duty calls. And you, Jose, better be at the club at the proper hour in the properly appointed uniform. "

  "Hey, I don't really belong in that company," Newell said.

  "Are you sure?"

  "I'm not supposed to know this, but it's a surprise party for me and I want my friends there." Newell shrugged. Oliver saw that he was pleased and was glad he had thought to get the Newells invited. Until now Oliver hadn't paid much attention to today's weather-weather was important only when he was going to fly-but when they heard' the horn of the Chevrolet staff car bleating and went outside, he grew concerned. It was drizzling and cold, which meant the real possibility of wing ice. And the visibility and ceiling were probably down to next to nothing.

  It was a ten-minute ride before the General's driver pulled the nose of the Chevrolet into the parking space reserved for the commanding general at Base Operations.

  "Come on, Bob," Oliver said. "The only way they're going to get into here is on a GCA. You ought to see that." They entered the Base Operations building through the rear door, walked through the lobby past the oil portrait of Major General Bogardus S. Cairns, a former tank commander who crashed to his death in his white H-13 two weeks after he'd pinned on his second star, and climbed an interior stairway to the GCA room.

  GCA-Ground Controlled Approach-which permits an aircraft to land through fog without any visual reference to the ground until moments before touchdown, requires three things, in about equal priority. A high-quality, precision radar so that the precise location of the aircraft is known second by second; a highly skilled GCA controller who interprets the position (speed, altitude, attitude, and rate of descent) of the landing aircraft with relation to the runway; and a pilot of high skill who can instantly respond to the controller's directions with precision.

  The controller, a plump, thirty-five-year-old sergeant first class, looked over and glared at them when they entered his preserve. They had no business there, but the aide-to-the general is a "more equal" pig.

  "Is that General Hanrahan's aircraft?" Oliver asked.

  "Yes, Sir," the sergeant said impatiently. "He's about five miles out." Oliver then remained silent as Cessna 603 was talked down.

  It was not very exciting. The controller told the pilot what to do and the pilot did it. Johnny was a little disappointed. He was pleased, of course, that everything went smoothly, but it ' would have been more _of an educat
ion for Bobby had there been terse, quick commands to' change altitude or direction, or even an excited order to break it off.

  But there were no such commands. The first Cessna 603 was heard from was when Lieutenant Colonel Craig Lowell's voice came over the speaker.

  "We have the runway in sight, thank you very much, GCA. "

  "My pleasure, Sir," the sergeant said.

  "We probably would have done much better if we were sober," Colonel Lowell's voice said."

  The sergeant laughed and turned to them.

  "You know the Colonel, Captain?"

  "Yes, Sir."

  "Quite a guy," the sergeant said. "Hell, that approach was textbook. Couldn't have been any better."

  "We better go down and meet them," Oliver said. "Thank you, Sergeant." They went down the stairwell and then through the plate glass doors leading to the transient ramp. As they pushed them open, the Cessna's engines could be heard, and then it could be seen, taxiing from the active runway.

  The General's driver, a staff sergeant, followed them. out.

  There was probably luggage, and brigadier generals are not expected to carry their own luggage.

  "With a little bit of luck, Bobby," Oliver teased, "Sergeant Portet will have been given a ride over here by the General. Wouldn't that be a nice surprise?"

  "Shit!" Bobby said.

  General Robert F. Bellmon was finally reconciled to having his daughter marry a common enlisted man. Second Lieutenant Bobby Bellmon was not similarly adjusted, or even resigned, to having Jack Portet, the EM who had been fucking his sister outside the bonds of holy matrimony, accepted into the Bellmon platoon of the Long Gray Line.

  The Cessna taxied past them. Both Captain Oliver and Second Lieutenant Bellmon saw that General Hanrahan had not given Sergeant Portet a ride over here. The reverse was true.

  Sergeant Jack Portet, smiling broadly, was waving at them from the pilot's seat.

  "Well," Oliver said, chuckling, "that explains that textbook GCA, doesn't it, Bobby?"

  "Goddammit, will you stop calling me Bobby?"

  Lieutenant Colonel Craig W. Lowell came out of the sleek Cessna first. He was wearing civilian clothing: a Harris tweed jacket, gray flannel slacks, loafers, and an open-collared, yellow, button-down shirt. There was a paisley foulard around his neck.

  He stood on the wing root and stretched his arms over his head. Then' he looked down at Captain Oliver and Second Lieutenant Bellmon and smiled.

  "Hello, Bobby," Colonel Lowell called down cordially.

  "How nice of you to come out here in the rain to meet us. "

  "Hello, Uncle Craig," Bobby said. .He had known Lowell since he was a little boy; that, Oliver had noticed, gave Lowell the right to call him Bobby without his taking offense.

  Lowell came down off the wing and offered his hand to Johnny Oliver.

  "I thought you'd been retired," he said. "But thanks anyway, Johnny."

  "My pleasure, Colonel," Johnny said. "How was the flight? "

  "Humbling," Lowell said. "Safe, but humbling. You know we had to come in on a GCA?"

  "Yes, Sir. We watched your approach. The GCA controller said it was textbook." "What made it humbling was that he carried on a conversation with us while he was doing it," Lowell said. "When I make a GCA approach in weather like this, I resent the intrusions on my concentration of a watch ticking."

  Brigadier General Paul T. Hanrahan emerged from the Cessna's cabin next. He was in uniform, wearing only his combat-jump-starred parachutists' wings and his Combat Infantry Badge with the star above the flintlock that indicated a second award.

  "Oh, hell," he said. "I didn't expect you to come out to meet me. All we asked for was a ride."

  "Our pleasure, General," Oliver said, saluting.

  "And you, too, Bobby. Well, I appreciate it," Hanrahan said as he came off the wing root.

  Lowell walked over to the baggage compartment and took out their luggage. He gave the first two pieces to the General's driver and then extended the rest to Bobby Bellmon.

  Sergeant Jack Portet was the last to emerge. He stood on the wing root and pulled up his tie, rolled down and buttoned his shirt and cuffs, and then reached back into the airplane for his uniform blouse. He put that on and buttoned it, then reached inside a last time and came out with a green beret. He put that on, then stooped to adjust the "blouse" of his trousers around the top of his highly polished parachutist's jump boots.

  He stepped off the wing root and saluted Johnny Oliver.

  "Hello, Jack," Oliver said, returning the salute and then offering his hand. "That was a nice GCA."

  "That wasn't quite what I hoped to hear," Portet said.

  "So far as I know, she's at Quarters One."

  "And doesn't know I'm coming?"

  "She probably suspects by now," Oliver said.

  Portet went to a compartment in the side of the airplane and took out wheel chocks and a cover for the Pitot tube. He then walked around the plane and put them in place. While he was doing that, Oliver took tiedown ropes from the compartment and tied the wings down. Then they walked together to Base Operations.

  Just inside the double glass doors, an Asian-American major wearing an AOD brassard was talking to General Hanrahan. Oliver decided that had to be Major Ting, who had telephoned him in Annex #1. Captain Oliver saluted as he walked up. Sergeant Portet did not, until he realized that Major Ting was looking at him at least curiously and probably disapprovingly.

  It was more curiosity than disapproval. Ting had watched the passengers deplane, and knew the Cessna, and he knew that the pilot was the last man out. The Green Beret sergeant with the strange wings-two sets of them-over his right blouse pocket-in addition to U.S. Army parachutists' wings over the left pocket-had obviously been flying the Cessna.

  Lieutenant Colonel Craig W. Lowell saw the Major's interest.

  "This is Sergeant Portet, Major," he said. "He's been demonstrating Congolese Air National Guard GCA procedures to us."

  Ting's eyes went up, and General Hanrahan looked at Lowell and just perceptibly shook his head resignedly.

  "I've been looking at those wings," Major Ting said. "I don't think I've ever seen them before."

  "Congolese pilots' wings, Belgian parachute wings," Lowell said. "Our Sergeant Portet is a remarkable young man. He also does very well with Fort Rucker belles."

  "Are they authorized?" Bobby Bellmon asked.

  "I'm surprised your father hasn't told you, Bobby," Lowell said. "We Green Berets are not bound by the petty regulations that affect lesser mortals. "

  All right, Craig," Hanrahan said. "Sergeant Portet was involved, Major, in the Stanleyville operation. That's where he got the Belgian jump wings. I don't know where he got the Congolese pilots' wings."

  "He was a member of the Congolese Air National Guard," Lowell explained solemnly. "where did you get them, Jack?" Portet was, just visibly, slightly embarrassed.