Felter looked uncomfortable.
“Just kidding, Sandy,” the Director said. “Just kidding.”
XVI
(One)
U.S. Army Aviation Combat Development Agency
Fort Rucker, Alabama
16 December 1958
Colonel Bellmon pushed the lever on his intercom.
“Darlene, I can’t raise Mac. Is he in the building?”
“No, sir. He’s out at Hanchey.”
“What about Mrs. Hyde?”
“She’s out there, too, with Colonel Brandon and the camera crew.”
“Come in here a moment, will you please, Darlene?”
When she came into his office, he told her that he wanted her to take the staff car and driver and go out to Laird Field.
“You’ve met Major Lowell, haven’t you?”
“Yes, sir, I have.”
“Major Lowell is about to land at Laird in a civilian airplane. I want you to meet him. Tell him that I sent you to bring him directly here. There may be other people meeting him. But you are to make him understand that he is to come directly here to see me before he does anything else. Can you handle that?”
“Yes, sir, I’m sure I can,” Darlene Heatter said.
Darlene was waiting at the Base Operations building at Laird Army Airfield when the glistening, sleek Aero Commander taxied up to the transient parking area and was shown where to park.
When she started to go out the glass door, she almost bumped into a nigger woman. When she looked more closely, she recognized her as that nigger woman doctor they had over at the hospital, an object of some curiosity and a good deal of discussion.
“After you,” Darlene said, priding herself on this demonstration of lack of prejudice.
“Thank you,” the nigger woman doctor said and went through the glass door and started for the Aero Commander. The door in the back of the airplane opened and Major Lowell got out and stretched his arms and legs. Then he leaned back inside the airplane and took out a tunic. He put it on, and then he saw the nigger woman doctor.
“Well, as I live and breathe,” he said, “my favorite lady chancre mechanic!”
He kissed her, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Well, that wasn’t the only thing she’d seen at Rucker that she would never have believed in a thousand years.
“Phil’s out stamping out racial prejudice,” the nigger lady doctor said. “So here I am.”
“Major Lowell,” Darlene said, “do you remember me?”
He looked at her.
“I’m afraid not,” he said, after a moment.
“I’m Colonel Bellmon’s secretary,” Darlene said. “He sent me to fetch you.”
“I’ve already been ‘fetched,’” he said.
“Colonel Bellmon said I was to bring you back to him before you did anything else,” Darlene said. “I got the staff car.”
“That sounds like an order,” the nigger woman doctor said. “As opposed to a friendly invitation.”
“Doesn’t it?” Lowell said. “Well, let me see what he wants, and then I’ll come over to the hospital.”
“I’m on duty until half past four,” the nigger woman doctor said. “But the maid knows you’re coming; and Phil, I’m sure, will get loose as soon as he can.”
“Sorry about the wild goose chase,” Lowell said.
“Don’t be silly,” the nigger woman doctor said and kissed him on the cheek.
Lowell went back inside the Aero Commander and came out with several pieces of luggage, two limp garment bags, two suitcases, and a rigid oblong case that Darlene recognized after a moment as a gun case. The driver saw them and ran over to help with the luggage.
As they rode from Laird Field through Daleville onto the post, Darlene Heatter wondered what it would be like to do it with Major Lowell. Even if he did let himself get kissed by a nigger woman. Maybe it was true, what they said, about niggers really being good at it. Maybe nigger women were as good as it as the men were supposed to be.
Lowell knocked at Colonel Robert F. Bellmon’s door.
“Come,” Bellmon said.
Lowell marched in, saluted, and stood at attention.
“Sir, Major Lowell reporting as ordered, sir.”
“Not quite as ordered, I’m afraid,” Bellmon said. He walked over and closed his office door, and that was all that Darlene could hear.
“Oh, sit down, Craig,” Bob Bellmon said. “You want a cup of coffee, or something?”
“No, thank you. I drank coffee all the way down.”
“As I understand your orders, you were to proceed here by the first available commercial air transportation,” Bellmon said. “And I further understand that you were taken to Washington National by an officer, to encourage you to carry out your orders.”
Lowell said nothing.
“Well?”
“It didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense to me to leave my airplane there at National,” Lowell said. “What’s the difference?”
“That’s always been your trouble, Craig,” Bellmon said. “You ask yourself what’s the difference, and you answer yourself, ‘none,’ and then you do what suits you. In this case, to be honest, the answer is that it makes no difference whatever.”
“If I’ve somehow embarrassed you, Bob, I’m truly sorry.”
“Hell, yes, you’ve embarrassed me.”
“I’m sorry,” Lowell said.
“You don’t really have any idea the trouble you’re in, do you?”
“I have the feeling that I have someone on high a bit annoyed,” Lowell said. “I’m not exactly sure who.”
“I might as well get right to the point, Craig,” Bellmon said. “I hope the senator’s wife was a good lay.”
“Oh. So that’s it.”
“Because that piece of ass has wiped you out,” Bellmon said. “You’re finished, Craig. I’ve got the unpleasant duty of making that clear to you.”
“Define finished,” Lowell said.
“You are on thirty days’ temporary duty here,” Bellmon said. “If you do not resign in that period, and it is hoped that you will resign today, you will be reassigned to U.S. Army, Caribbean. It will not be a flying assignment. Until they can think of some clever way of speeding up the process of separating you from the service as unfit, you’ll probably be assigned as dependent housing officer, or special assistant to the garbage collection officer.”
“Come on, Bob,” Lowell said. “I’m not about to be, I’m not about to let myself be thrown out of the army over some horny woman.”
“The horny woman was the straw that broke the camel’s back, I’m afraid,” Bellmon said.
“What else am I alleged to have done?”
“The air force knows about the Big Bad Bird.”
“I’ll bet I knew that before you did,” Lowell said.
“We need a sacrifice,” Bellmon said. “You’re it.”
“That needs an explanation.”
“Here’s the new scenario, which I don’t think you’ve heard, because I got it on the telephone less than two hours ago.”
“From whom?”
“Do you know Dan Brackmayer?”
“Dog robber to the Chief of Staff?”
“Colonel Brackmayer is Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff.”
“I know who he is.”
“This is the way it goes, Craig,” Bellmon said. “We plead guilty.”
“What’s that mean?”
“The Chief of Staff admits that we have violated the Key West Agreement of 1948 by arming a helicopter. An overzealous officer, you, is responsible.”
“And?”
“Most important, now that we have it, of course, it would be foolish to give it up. But since orders must be obeyed, the officer responsible must be punished. He will resign to spare the army embarrassment and himself the possibility of a court-martial.”
“In other words, I take the rap for everybody? The West Point Protective A
ssociation forms a circle to fight off the Indians?”
“I offered to take full responsibility,” Bellmon said.
“Oddly enough,” Lowell said, “I believe that.”
“Thank you,” Bellmon said. “Oddly enough, it’s very important to me that you do believe that.”
“Where does E. Z. Black fit into all this?”
“The Vice Chief of Staff has given his word to the Chief of Staff that you’ll resign.”
“He seems pretty goddamned sure of himself,” Lowell said.
“There was a last straw with him, too, Craig,” Bellmon said.
“Which was?”
“He told you to stay away from Felter. I heard him, as a matter of fact. He told you to stay away from Felter, and why, and you haven’t.”
“I had Sharon and the kids over to that whorehouse I set up at Black’s request a couple of times, so the kids could use the pool.”
“You were ordered to stay away from Felter, and you didn’t, period.”
“Well, fuck him!”
Bellmon didn’t respond to that.
“Everybody seems to think that I’ll just take this lying down,” Lowell said. “It must have occurred to somebody that I just might open the closet and show all the skeletons to the air force.”
“I was asked that question,” Bellmon said. “And I said there was absolutely no risk of that at all. I’m not sure the Chief of Staff believed me, but all your friends did.”
“Why am I flattered by that?”
“Because you’re a soldier,” Bellmon said.
“‘You’re a soldier,’ says the vice president of the WPPA, ‘now get your ass out of the army.’”
“The Big Bad Bird is what’s important, Craig,” Bellmon said.
“Oh, shit,” Lowell said. “Don’t wave the flag at me, Bob.”
“I wasn’t,” Bellmon said. And then he corrected himself. “OK, I was. What’s wrong with that?”
“You want to hear about this dame?” Lowell said. He went on without waiting for a reply. “She climbed over the wall into my backyard. Actually climbed over the fucking wall. And groped me. And when I suggested that might be a little risky, she said what was risky was her going to the senator and telling him I had made lewd advances.”
“Oddly enough,” Bellmon said, “I believe that, too.”
“So what the hell do I do with my life, now?” Lowell asked. “The army’s all I know.”
“Well, you won’t wind up on welfare,” Bellmon said. “I’m sure that was a factor in the equation.”
“I could go to Germany, I suppose,” Lowell said. “God knows, I don’t want to work for the fucking firm.”
“Buy yourself an airline,” Bellmon said.
“What am I going to tell my father-in-law?” Lowell said.
“The truth,” Bellmon said. “He’ll understand.”
“In his army, they handed an officer a Luger with one round and let him do the honorable thing,” Lowell said. “I’ve still got my Luger someplace, come to think of it.”
“Don’t be melodramatic,” Bellmon said. “You don’t mean that.”
“I wouldn’t have the courage,” Lowell said. “When I was in Greece with Felter, the day we got there, the guy in the next room to us stuck a .45 in his mouth and pulled the trigger. That sort of thing is very messy.”
He looked at Bellmon and smiled.
“Don’t look so stricken, Colonel,” he said. “I’m really not all that fucked up by this involuntary sacrifice I’m making.”
“If there’s ever anything I can do for—” Bellmon began. Lowell interupted him by holding up his hand.
“Resigning today is out of the question,” Lowell said.
Bellmon’s eyebrows went up.
“Why?” he asked.
“Well, there are several reasons. For one thing, I’ll have to…you’ll have to…find someone trustworthy to whom I can turn over the secrets of where I stole the money for the Big Bad Bird. If that doesn’t get blown up, you can get money there again.”
“And the other reason?”
“It’s the holiday season,” Lowell said. “Old Home Week. Sandy Felter is bringing Sharon down here. The little bastard has her on the edge of a nervous breakdown with his spy business. She wants to be an officer’s lady on New Year’s Eve, and I want her to have that.”
“You’re in no position to announce what you want,” Bellmon said.
“Get on the phone, Bob,” Lowell said. “Call Brackmayer and tell him I will silently steal away as of 1 January 1959. Not one day before. At least not quietly.”
“OK,” Bellmon said, after thinking it over. “I’ll call Brackmayer. I’ll tell him that you understand the situation and will do what is expected of you. I’ll tell him that I need you to tie up the loose ends for the Big Bad Bird. I’ll reassure him that his concerns about skeletons are groundless.”
“Fuck him, tell him the opposite. Let him lose a little sleep.”
“Until a decision is made, Major Lowell,” Colonel Bellmon said, formally, “You will find yourself a BOQ, and you will stay in that BOQ, or the club, and you will not leave the post.”
“I’m staying with Phil and Antoinette Parker,” Lowell said.
Bellmon nodded. “All right, Lowell,” he said. “So long as you understand me about keeping yourself under wraps.”
“I understand,” Lowell said. “Is that all, Bob?”
Bellmon nodded.
Lowell stood up, saluted, and walked out of the room.
(Two)
Auxiliary Field Three
Hanchey Army Airfield
Fort Rucker, Alabama
22 December 1958
The hangar was constructed of plasticized cloth in the manner of an inflatable life raft. It had been erected in fifteen minutes. First four stakes were pounded into the ground at precise distances from each other. Then what looked like a pile of camouflaged tenting was spread out. Each corner was attached to one of the stakes.
A five-horsepower gasoline generator was started. The engine drove an electric motor, and the electric motor powered an air compressor. The pile of camouflaged tenting seemed to sit, then to grow and subside, grow and subside, until it rather suddenly assumed its ultimate shape, ninety feet long, forty feet wide, and fifteen feet high at the center. An enormous empty toilet tissue center half buried in the ground.
Whenever the pressure of the air in its hollow walls dropped below 7.5 psi, the generator started up automatically. There were doors of the same construction. There was another generator—larger, diesel, jeep-trailer mounted—which provided electricity, heat, and compressed air for the aircraft mechanic’s tools.
The Kit, Hangar, Service, Field, Inflatable, Self-Contained, also included poles and ropes and camouflage netting. When the whole thing was in place, properly inflated, and covered by the netting, it was very hard to see from the air or the ground, even if you knew it was there.
The Big Bad Bird sat in the balloon, as the hangar inevitably came to be called, its fifty-six-foot-diameter rotor blades parallel with the fuselage.
The Big Bad Bird had been one of the very first Sikorsky H-19s the army had purchased. It had seen service in the Korean War, and had later been assigned to a transportation helicopter company at Fort Lewis, Washington. It had suffered three minor and two major accidents. After the second major accident, it had become a hangar queen at Fort Lewis, losing most of its remaining functioning parts as replacements to keep newer, better H-19s flying.
Just over a year before, it had left Fort Lewis on a truck, and had been dropped from Fort Lewis’s property books. It had been acquired by Plans and Requirements Division (Fiscal), Aviation Maintenance Section, DCSLOG. It was thereafter logically assumed by those who knew Tail Number 50–3003 that the old wreck would be sold for junk, or maybe used as a target on a tank range, or something. It would never fly again, that was for goddamn sure.
The Army Aviation Base at Anchorage, Alaska, was that year s
cheduled to receive two new fire engines and three ground power generators. It got one of each. The Army Airfield at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, which was supposed to get two fire trucks got none, and neither did Kitzigen, Germany, or Headquarters, U.S. Army, Panama.
The Walla Walla (Washington) Flying Service, which operated civilian models of the Sikorsky H-19 in timber applications, received a purchase order from the Plans and Requirements Division (Fiscal) of the Aviation Maintenance Section, DCSLOG, to make such repairs as were necessary to restore H-19 50–3003 to minimum standards of flight safety. The funds expended had been intended for fire engines and ground power generators.
Double Ought Three, the Big Bad Bird, was not what someone coming across its listing in the inventory of Aircraft, Non-Serviceable, Awaiting Evaluation, would have envisioned. It had been restored to flyable condition and modified.
It had a new (actually rebuilt) engine, a new power train and rotor head, and new rotors. At Fort Hood, the fuselage had been modified.
The standard H-19 has one cargo compartment door, on the right. The Big Bad Bird had another cut through the left fuselage wall. The interior of the passenger compartment had been strengthened, the seats were removed, and “stores racks” installed.
The landing wheel struts had been reinforced, and on each strut was a circular canister, holding three 3.5 inch rockets with explosive heads. The canister functioned very much like the cylinder of a revolver. As the canister revolved, the rocket was fired, just as a cartridge is fired in a revolver when its cylinder is aligned with the barrel. (There was, of course, no barrel on the Bird’s rocket canisters.) A feed chute ran from each canister into the Bird’s fuselage. The chute was connected to a bin. The bin and the feed chute were filled with 3.5 inch rockets.
When the rocket launching device was activated (by a switch mounted on the pilot’s control stick), an electric motor turned and an electric firing circuit was activated. The canister revolved 120 degrees, moving a 3.5 rocket into firing position, where it was fired. Then the canister revolved 120 degrees again, the empty cylinder picking up a 3.5 from the chute, and the chute picking up a 3.5 from the bin. There were a total of fifty-four 3.5s in the bins, the chutes, and the canisters, twenty-seven on each strut. They could all be fired in fifteen seconds.
The Majors Page 34
