by Marvin Wolf
That fact, coupled with Davis’s sterling repute among Army aviators around the world, allowed him to believe that he had more than a little latitude in dealing with matters concerning members of his command. An unusual situation had arisen on Fort Rucker, one entirely outside his experience and competence. It was potentially perilous; if not quickly resolved, it might force his untimely retirement from the Army.
There was no cause for alarm, mused Davis. Since his days at the Military Academy, he had borne the nickname Lucky Les: Somehow, the breaks always came his way. And, just as this unprecedented and potentially perilous situation had come to his attention, so had an unusual and unprecedented individual who should provide a happy resolution. Or at least a satisfactory one.
Lucky Les touched a button. “Send Mr. Spaulding in,” he said.
Davis’s junior aide, a burly lieutenant with the good looks of an Asian film star, opened the door, and Will Spaulding entered, again wearing the blue Class “A” uniform. He stopped three paces from Davis’s desk, assumed the position of attention, and saluted crisply.
“Warrant Officer Willson V. Spaulding reports to the commanding general,” he said.
Davis returned the salute, then pointed to a chair next to his desk.
“Have a seat, Mr. Spaulding.”
When Will was in the chair, Davis smiled. “Relax, Spaulding, you’re not in trouble. I was just about to have some coffee. Would you care to join me?
“Thank you sir, but I’m fine,” Will replied.
A moment later an attractive middle-aged woman in a brightly colored dress set a silver tray with two cups and saucers on Davis’s otherwise empty desk, poured steaming coffee from a silver serving vessel into both cups, added a spoon of sugar and a dollop of cream to one cup, smiled at Davis and left the room.
General Davis stirred his coffee, thinking. He put the cup to his lips, sipped, smiled, took a second sip, and returned the cup to the tray.
“It’s excellent coffee, Spaulding. You should try a cup.”
Will had been in uniform long enough to know that a general’s wish is an order cloaked in humble togs.
“As you wish, sir,” replied the younger man, and turning, reached across the desk and brought the second cup and its saucer to him. He sipped a little, then took a second sip, and carefully held the cup and saucer in his lap.
“The reason that you’re here,” began Davis, “has, first of all, to do with the board of inquiry that was convened following the loss of your aircraft.”
“Yes, sir,’ said Spaulding.
“The board deliberated for three days, and in the end, they agreed to disagree. The president of the board, Hal Donovan, who has been a colonel since about the time of the Wright Brothers, abstained from voting. Colonel Black and Colonel Dean think that you should get a medal. Colonels Ahearn and Giordano think you should be boarded out of flight school and offered a court-martial.”
“Yes, sir,” Will replied.
“So they bucked it up to me. That caused me to send for your personnel records, which I found very interesting but also very curious. I have a few questions.”
“Fire away, sir.”
“First, your next of kin is listed as your parents, Arthur and Beth Spaulding of Barstow, California. Is Arthur your biological father?”
“No, sir. Biologically, he’s my uncle—my father’s older brother. He and his wife adopted me when I was two years old. Right after my father died.”
“Was that William Sloan Spaulding?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Was he a helicopter pilot who died in the Gulf War?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I thought so, soon as I saw you,” said General Davis. “Your father was the boldest and most superbly gifted aviator that I have ever met. I think you might be his equal.”
“You knew my father, sir?’
“He was a classmate in flight school and my wingman during Desert Storm. I admired him extravagantly, and there is hardly a day that goes by that I don’t think of him.”
Will brushed a tear away with the back of his hand. “What was he like, sir?”
“He looked like you do, only younger. Maybe a tad thinner. He was a good soldier and a better aviator—he was in love with flying. Cocky, to a degree, but never boastful. He carried himself with tremendous self-assurance. Smart people saw that he didn’t need to brag about himself. Stupid ones thought that he was somehow challenging them. He was married, forgive me, to an alcoholic, but he was faithful to her, and I know that he loved her. He tried to get her help, but she wasn’t interested. And he was my best friend.”
“Thank you for telling me this, sir.”
Davis opened a desk drawer and withdrew a records jacket, which he opened. He pointed at Will’s uniform. Below his silver aviator’s wings were three ribbons in a row and one ribbon above them.
“Less than two weeks after you were inducted into the Army, you were awarded the Soldiers Medal for an act of life-saving heroism. And the Army Commendation Medal for a period that began with your second day in the Army and ended eleven days later. I’ve read the citations, so I have an idea of what you did to earn this recognition, but I don’t understand how this could have occurred to a recruit who hadn’t yet started basic training.”
“It’s a little complicated, sir.”
“I think you will find that I have total control over my schedule. Take your time.”
“Yes, sir. Well, on my first day in the Army, I arrived at Fort Fremont and was assigned to a detail unloading a boxcar. I found the body of a murdered woman inside, hidden under boxes of combat boots. The senior CID agent on the base, Mr. Chelmin, was shorthanded—he had only one other investigator available, and to be frank, that man was borderline incompetent, and yet couldn’t be fired or transferred. So Mr. Chelmin asked me—no, he ordered me—to help with the investigation.”
“It’s your first day in the Army, and he asked you to help?”
“I used to be a police detective in Barstow, California.”
“Ah. And he knew that—how?”
“After I found the body, I tried to preserve the crime scene in the boxcar from a quartermaster sergeant whose orders were to get the car unloaded as quickly as possible. The sergeant, of course, locked my heels, chewed my ass a little, and told me to wait in his office. When Mr. Chelmin learned what I’d said to the sergeant—that the police would want him to leave the boxcar as it was when the body was discovered—Chelmin sent for me, asked a few questions, and in that way learned of my background. He made some calls, and suddenly I was a temporary CID agent.”
“He must be a very special agent if he can move heaven and earth like that.”
“Yes, sir. I’d have to agree. He got his boss, the provost marshal, to call the deputy commander of the CID, and they made me an acting sergeant and hung a badge on me. Then we flew to Barstow, where I grew up, to the Marine Corps Supply Depot there, which was where the victim was working when she was murdered. As it turned out, her murder was just one thread in an enormous criminal conspiracy. When we started tugging on that thread, the conspirators tried to have us killed. That didn’t work, so they tried a few more times. Eventually, they drugged Mr. Chelmin and locked him in a big refrigerator, where they expected him to die of exposure. I found him first and shot it out with one of the conspirators. While Mr. Chelmin was recuperating, I found some documents in the original victim’s belongings that made clear what the conspiracy was and who the conspirators were. I turned that over to the FBI, and that resulted in a few dozen arrests, the seizure of millions of dollars in prescription drugs, weapons, and cash, and the recovery of about $11 million more from overseas banks. When Mr. Chelmin got out of the hospital, he put me in for those medals. I didn’t know about them until the end of basic training, when they were awarded. It was kind of embarrassing.”
“Are you still in touch with Chelmin?”
“We talk, now and then. He’s a terrific investigator, a dead-eye pist
ol shot, and next to my dad—my uncle, that is—about the best man that I’ve ever met.”
“He says the same about you. Except for the part about marksmanship.”
Will’s face turned crimson.
General Davis said, “I have the minutes of the board of inquiry, your statement, and I’ve seen the videos, but I’d like you to tell me about Pensacola. Talk me through it from the time you saw the explosion on the horizon, until the time you reported back here for duty. Tell me what was going through your head.”
“Yes, sir. Well, we were flying back from a night training exercise at Eglin when we saw the explosion. I was on the far right of the formation. I also had the most fuel left. That’s probably why Captain Chastain told me to go take a look and see if they needed help.”
“And because he considered you his best aviator.”
Again, Will’s face turned scarlet. “I don’t know about that.”
“It’s in Chastain’s report. He said you were his best pilot, exhibited great common sense and initiative, and displayed the greatest self-discipline of any student pilot he knew.”
Will shook his head. “I just try to do my job, sir. Listen to my superiors, do what I’m told to the best of my ability. I don’t think I’m the best pilot in my company, or any training company, not by a long shot. But, I do feel very confident and at home in the air, sir.”
“What did you do when you left the formation?”
“I was mindful that I had a limited amount of fuel, and that I was to return to Hurlburt for refueling. So I set my throttle at cruise, and about fifteen minutes later I was over the fire. I circled at about 4,000 feet, trying to get a picture of what was going on. I heard the police aircraft talking to their operations center on the emergency channel. I could see that the hotel was fully involved, and then a police chopper went in, made a gutsy rooftop landing, filled their chopper with people, but left the kid and the dog. At the time, I didn’t quite understand why.
“Captain Chastain’s last order to me was to see if they needed help. I thought then and I believe now that he meant that I should extend that help if it was needed.
“From the radio traffic, I knew that the police were going to go back for that kid and his dog. As they set up for their landing, I thought they might crash or blow up. I don’t understand why they made a horizontal approach, but I wasn’t flying their bird. So even before they caught fire, I was descending in a tight spiral. There wasn’t time for me to call Captain Chastain and get permission, and the other three aircraft circling the fire were all news media.”
“Let’s pause here,” Davis said. “You said that you didn’t like their horizontal approach. Why?”
“Two reasons: They couldn’t see where they were going—the smoke wasn’t bad on that side of the building, but JP6 was pouring out of those tank cars and the flames were 200 feet high all around the roof. The pilot had to have been—was—blinded by the firelight. Second, it was way too hot. That’s why I wasn’t surprised when they caught fire.”
Davis nodded his understanding. “Were you aware that your aircraft could catch fire?”
“Yes, sir. I saw it as a high probability. I wanted to delay that event as long as possible. First of all, I never intended to make two trips to the roof. I supposed—wrongly—that the cops would see me descending, grab the kid and the dog, and when I landed, load themselves, the kid, and the dog, and we’d all hover out. Mission accomplished.
“But the cops panicked—and I can’t blame them One grabbed my right skid, so I changed plans, and dropped until the other cop could grab the left skid.
“My rescue plan had three parts: Avoid the flames—so I used an arcing approach until I was directly above the roof and then a fast descent. I knew there would be smoke, so I put on my oxygen mask, and as I dropped I took deep breaths, pure O2. When I left the aircraft, I held my breath while I ran over to grab the boy and his dog, and didn’t take another breath until I was on the ground.”
“You said three parts of your plan?”
“Yes, sir. I thought that even if my aircraft caught fire, the only possible way off the roof alive was in that bird. The building was 15 stories, plus a floor of engineering and air conditioning machinery, meaning that the roof was at about 170 feet. We were at sea level. It was late at night, it was winter—the air was cold, and because Pensacola is a seaside town, humid. All that told me that I had very good density altitude. Lots of blade lift. A landing area was less than 200 horizontal meters away. Even if the aircraft caught fire, I could reasonably expect that my engine would run for another twenty or thirty seconds. So, once I had the kid and his dog, I pulled pitch, counted to ten as I gained altitude, then hit the fire extinguishers, cut the engine, and auto-rotated in. We fell fairly fast and most of the heat from the aircraft fire went straight up. It wasn’t that hot in the cockpit. We hit, bounced a little, and I got everybody clear, with, as it happened, about five or six seconds to spare.”
Smiling and shaking his head in amazement, Davis barely suppressed a chuckle. “You thought of all that in the seconds before you landed on the roof?”
“Yes, sir. I was very lucky.”
“Luck, my father used to tell me, is preparation meeting opportunity.”
“Sir, your father was a wise man.”
“One more question on this: After seeing the police aircraft catch fire, and knowing that you might lose your own bird, why did you attempt a rescue?”
“I couldn’t very well abandon two fellow aviators. Two police officers. And when they were safe, I believed that I could also save that kid. I could live with getting kicked out of the Army for losing the aircraft. But if I didn’t try to save him, when I was confident that I had a good chance, then I have no business being a US Army aviator.”
Davis let out a long sigh. “There’s an old movie, ‘The Bridges At Toko-Ri.’ Have you watched it?’”
Will shook his head. “No, sir.”
“It’s about naval aviators in the Korean War. You might enjoy it. Try Netflix.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pay attention to the very end, when the old admiral, played by Frederick March, muses about the men under his command.”
“I’ll do that sir.”
“Fine. We’ve got a couple of other matters to discuss. First, that kid you rescued. His name was Ron Rhenquist, and he’d been abducted by his mother almost six months earlier. Did you know that?”
“No, sir. I didn’t even know his last name. He told me that his dog’s name was ‘Dick Grayson.’”
Davis laughed. “I guess that means that the kid sees himself as Bruce Wayne.”
Will smiled, not understanding.
“Anyway, little Ronnie was snatched by his divorced mother after she lost a custody hearing. Took him out of school onee morning and drove to Pittsburgh, where she caught a train to Toronto.
“His father hired private detectives, and they traced the boy and his mother to a smaller city in Canada. Then they disappeared. I don’t know how they wound up in Florida, but they were on the lam. I also don’t know what happened to his mother—I’m guessing she was one of the adults that the police rescued. Anyway, two days ago I got a call from Rolf Rhenquist, the kid’s father. Heard of him?”
Again, Will shook his head.
“West Point, class of 2000. ‘Rambling Rolf’ was an All-American running back. Which is like saying that Babe Ruth played baseball. Army lost to Navy again that year, but even so, Rhenquist ran for four touchdowns, racked up almost 250 yards on the ground. He won the Heisman Trophy. He finished second in his class, academically. After graduation, he pulled two tours in Iraq. Lost both legs in Ramadi in 2005. He took medical retirement and then married a woman whom he barely knew. But Rolf had some family money, in the neighborhood of a thirty or forty million. With a friend, he started a hedge fund. Did rather well for himself.”
Will said, “You seem to know a lot about him, sir.”
Davis laughed. “Recall that I said
he finished second in his class?”
Will nodded his understanding. “Yes, sir.”
“The cadet who finished first was my son. He was the team punter and kicker. And they were roommates for two years. Hell yes, I know a lot about Rolf.
“Anyway, and this is the point, months ago, when his kid was taken, Rolf offered a reward of a million dollars for his safe return. Long story short, he sent you a certified check for $1 million,” Davis said. “And they call me lucky.”
Will’s head spun. His mouth fell open. Then he shut his mouth, closed his eyes for a a moment, then looked at the general.
“Sir, I can’t accept that money, I want to donate it to Army Emergency Relief.”
Davis laughed.
“Will, take the money. According to Fortune Magazine, Rhenquist is worth $7.6 billion. That’s billion with a b. A million bucks in Rolf’s world is a rounding error. He’s a West Pointer, he’s a friend of my youngest son—so he gave another million to Army Emergency Relief, and then a million more to the Fort Rucker Chaplain’s Fund. He’s also going to pay for building and staffing an animal shelter on this base—because you rescued his son’s dog. And by the way, Rhenquist wants the shelter named after that mutt!
