That didn't bother either Rand or his wife. Colonels' quarters were plenty large, and they were comfortable. And compared to the quarters-half of a converted frame barracks-the Rands had occupied at Benning when newly promoted Captain Rand had reported for duty following his thirty-day Released POW Rehabilitation Leave, they were positively luxurious.
"Colonel Rand's quarters," Susan Rand said, answering the phone.
"Don't you mean 'General,' Susan?" Major General Robert F. Bellmon inquired teasingly.
"Oh, God," she said. "Bob, I was in the shower. I don't know where the hell he is."
"Could you find him? It's important."
"Maybe the garage," she said. "Hang on, Bob. If he was going someplace, he would have told me. "
"Thank you." Brigadier General George F. Rand came into the living room two minutes later. He was wearing oil- and grease stained khakis, and his face and hands were grease-stained.
"Bob?" he said to the telephone.
"Yeah. Good morning, George."
"I was in the garage, trying to get the station wagon started.
We stored it in Columbus while we were in Germany, and now that we finally had it hauled out here, it doesn't want to run. What's up?"
"I couldn't get through to Hok," Bellmon said.
"He's flying. Over near Fort Gordon."
"We lost a Chinook this morning," Bellmon said. "One of the Board's. Bad. The tail rotor came off, and it went in from twenty-five hundred feet."
"Jesus Christ! The crew?"
"A captain, a lieutenant, and a staff sergeant. They all bought it," Bellmon said. "Just as soon as I get off the phone, Barbara and I are going to call on the families."
"Is there anything we can do?"
"What I want you to do is round up the Vertol tech reps and get them down here right away. Can you do that without Hok's permission?" Technical Representatives of the various manufacturers-that is airframe, engine, and avionics engineering and maintenance employees-were assigned to Forts Rucker and Benning, and elsewhere, to provide technical support.
General Rand thought that over very briefly. In the absence of Major General Harrison O. K. Wendall, he was the division commander.
"I'll get right on it," he said. "And call you and tell you when they've left."
"It might be a good idea to send a Lycoming tech rep, or reps, if you can lay your hands on one," Bellmon said. "I want to be able to tell the Air Force what caused this accident, and how we're fixing it, by the time they get their act in gear."
"I understand," Rand said. "Is there anything else we can send you?"
"I can't think of a thing at the moment."
"I'll get back to you, General, as soon as I have anything to report," Rand said.
Bellmon hung up without saying anything else.
Rand broke the connection with his finger.
"What was that all about?" Susan asked.
"Under other circumstances, seeing you standing there in your wet T-shirt. . ."
"It's not a T-shirt, it's a blouse," Susan Rand said, her face flushing when she looked down and saw how the wet cloth was clinging to her chest. "In other words you're not going to tell me?"
"A Chinook crashed," he said. "Killing the crew. Bob wants our tech reps sent down there right away."
"Oh, my!" Susan Rand said, then: "You go in the kitchen and get that grease off of you; there's some Lava soap under the sink. I'll lay out a uniform for you." He nodded absently and then dialed the number of the fieldgrade OD.
[TWO]
Office of the Commanding General
The Army Aviation Center & Fort Rucker, Alabama
1020 Hours 12 January 1964
Bellmon put the handset in the cradle and looked up at the door. Captain John S. Oliver was standing there, now in uniform.
"That was quick, Johnny," he said. In a remarkably short time, Oliver had dropped the General off behind Quarters #1 (technically violating Bellman's own rules about aircraft activity in the housing area), returned the Huey to Hanchey Army Airfield, gone to his own quarters, changed into a uniform, and then come to the General's office.
"It's amazing, Sir," Oliver said. "MP radar breaks down whenever a car with a Number 1 Post decal on it gets near." Bellmon flashed him a quick, disapproving look. He's telling the truth; he must have gone like hell to get here this quickly. Still, he wasn't speeding because of my de facto immunity, but because he knew he was really needed here as quickly as he could get here.
And then General Bellman saw who was standing behind Captain Oliver.
"Good morning, Sergeant Major."
"Good morning, Sir," the sergeant major said. He was a stocky man in his late thirties, sharp-featured, his hair cut so close the skin of his scalp was visible.
"Oliver send for you?" Bellman asked.
"The AOD called me, General," the sergeant major said.
"I went right out to the Board."
He walked into the room and laid three service records on Bellman's desk.
"The sergeant and the Captain lived in quarters, General," the sergeant major said. "The Lieutenant lived in Ozark. The notification teams are on their way. You want me to put in calls to DCSOPS and CONARC, Sir?"
"Send a priority TWX to DCSOPS, info to CONARC," Bellmon ordered. "Very brief. There has been a fatal crash. We are investigating. I don't want to give them a chance to say something on the telephone I don't want to hear."
"Yes, Sir," the sergeant major said.
"Get the TWXes out, and then, if you will, come with us to see the sergeant's family. Then you come back here and hold the place down while Oliver and Mrs. Bellman and I go see the others."
The sergeant major nodded his acceptance of the orders, then asked, "What about the press, Sir? There have been calls. The PIO's out here."
"Tell him to say the same thing we're telling DCSOPS," Bellmon said. "And that he is not, not, to permit the press anywhere near the crash site until the accident-investigation people are through out there."
"Sir, I took the liberty of notifying the Chief of Staff. He's on his way in."
"Good man," Bellmon said. He exhaled audibly and moved his fingers around the papers on his desk. "The car here, Johnny?"
"Yes, Sir."
"I just talked to General Rand at Benning, Sergeant Major," Bellmon said. "He will telephone reporting when the Vertol tech reps, and Lycoming, if he can lay his hands on one, will leave Benning. When he does, notify Colonel McNair and the Accident Investigation Board that they're on the way. You better make arrangements to billet them, and lay on a car-two cars, as many as they'll need-for them."
"Yes, Sir," the sergeant major said.
One of the telephones on Bellmon's desk rang. Oliver grabbed it.
"Commanding General's Office, Captain Oliver, Sir."
"Johnny, this is Geoff Craig. Have you got names for the people that went in on the Chinook? Was Lieutenant Jack Dant one of them?"
"Who told you a Chinook went in?" Oliver replied, aware that Bellmon was looking at him with what was certainly curiosity, and more likely grave annoyance.
"It was on the radio," Geoff Craig said. "Dant lives behind us. He's been flying a Chinook for the Board. His wife heard that one went in. She called the Board and they wouldn't tell her zip. So she came here. She's hysterical. Ursula just took her back to their house. I'm not asking to be told who it was, but, Jesus Christ, why can't we tell her if it's not Jack?
She's pregnant, Johnny." Oliver had trouble finding his voice.
"Geoff, the notification team is on the way. But for Christ's sake, you keep your mouth shut until they get there."
"Oh, shit!" Geoff Craig said, and the line went dead.
"I presume, Oliver," Bellmon said icily, "that you carefully considered the effect of what you just said before you said it. "
"Sir, that was Lieutenant Geoff Craig. Lieutenant Dant lives-lived-behind him in Ozark. Dant's wife, who's pregnant, heard about the crash on the radio and is hysterical
. Denying that it was Dant would be despicable, and 'no comment' under the circumstances would have been the same thing as telling him. So I told him." Bellmon thought that over for a full ten seconds.
"You were right," he said finally. "OK. Let's go."
[THREE]
1105 Hours 12 January 1964
"Johnny," Major General Robert F. Bellmon said, "I've been thinking." Oliver, who was sitting beside the driver in the front seat of the Chevrolet staff car, turned on the seat to face Bellmon, who was in the rear with Mrs. Bellmon.
"Yes, Sir?"
"There ought to be a better way than the way we did it earlier to communicate between a chopper-or my chopper, a command chopper, anyway-and a telephone."
"Yes, Sir," Oliver said.
On the flight back from the crash site, Bellmon had wanted to ask questions and issue orders to people on the post. The only way this could be done was for the tower operator to call whomever Bellmon wanted to deal with on the telephone and then relay what Bellmon had to say.
"Not only was it inconvenient, but it tied up the tower operator," Bellmon said.
"Yes, Sir."
"See what can be done," Bellmon ordered. "Put it up close to the top of the list."
"Yes, Sir," Oliver said. He took a small wire-bound notebook from his shirt pocket and wrote chopper phone in it.
He had worked for Bellmon long enough to understand what that was all about. Bellmon had the habit, which Oliver found admirable and intended to emulate, of keeping himself from dwelling on a problem he had no immediate control over by forcing himself to think of something else. At the moment that something else had been access to the phone lines from a chopper.
What he was not allowing himself to dwell on was what they had just gone through twice, and were en route to go through again: dealing with the family of a soldier who would not be coming home that day because he was dead.
They had arrived at the sergeant's quarters while the notification team was still there. Notification teams consisted of a commissioned officer, who was of equal or superior rank to the deceased, but was in no case lower in rank than a captain; a chaplain, preferably of the same faith as the deceased; a physician; and an officer of the Adjutant General's Corps, who would explain to the surviving spouse what benefits were immediately available to her and her family and assist in making funeral arrangements.
The AGC officer at the sergeant's quarters had been a self-important paper pusher, a first john. But that didn't matter, because they had had the sergeant major with them, and whatever paper had to be pushed in behalf of the sergeant's family, he would push himself.
It had occurred to Oliver then that the last time he had encountered death in a family situation was when his parents had been killed. He'd seen some death since, but in 'Nam.
Here it was worse. The dead are out of their misery; for the survivors, the misery is just starting.
The notification team sent to the Captain's quarters was leaving as the Commanding General, his wife, and his aide de-camp arrived. The widow had been a carbon-steel-tough lady who had maintained her composure behind her shocked eyes, and had even insisted on making coffee.
"Sir," the driver said softly to Oliver, "aside from Ozark, I don't know where we're going."
"You know where Melody Lane is?"
"No, Sir."
"Well, where we're going is the next street from Melody Lane, and I know how to find that." On the outskirts of Ozark, Johnny saw a staff car, loaded with officers, heading in the other direction back toward the post.
"I think that was the notification team, General," Oliver said.
Bellmon grunted but didn't reply.
They found Brookwood Lane without difficulty; it was the street before Melody Lane. And they found 123 Brookwood just as easily. There were cars parked allover the street in front of a modest, relatively new "ranch house." Oliver saw it had the number he was after.
When they were out of the car and walking up the driveway, Oliver could see the back of Geoff Craig's house through the carport. He walked to the door and pushed the doorbell button. He could hear the chimes inside playing, "There's No Place Like Home." A moment later the door opened.
A striking redhead appeared. She was fashionably dressed, blue-eyed, with lips a sensual red lipstick slash against her pale skin. Her hair was cut short in what Oliver thought of as Roaring Twenties Flapper Style. The redhead looked at him with what, for a moment, he thought was recognition.
But that look, even before she spoke, was replaced by a look of anger. Or contempt.
"What do you want, Johnny?" she snapped.
How does she know my name? Oliver thought. I would remember her; she's gorgeous. . . . But where?
He hesitated just long enough for Bellmon to step in. "Good morning," he said. "I'm General Bellmon and this is Mrs. Bellmon. We've come to offer our condolences."
"Oh, Jesus Christ!" the redhead said disgustedly.
"I beg your pardon?" Bellmon asked.
"The widow is unavailable, General"
"Ma'am?" Bellmon asked, confused by the hostility.
"She's been sedated. She was hysterical, thanks to you. And the last thing in the world she needs to see right now is another goddamned uniform." The door slammed shut."
"My God!" Barbara Bellmon said softly. "What was that all about?"
"I haven't the faintest idea," Bellmon said.
"Let me try," Barbara said. "There has to be some misunderstanding."
"No," Bellmon said, not loudly, but in an unmistakable I-will-be-obeyed tone of voice. He looked at Oliver, fixed him with a cold stare, and said, "The first thing that pops into my mind, Oliver, is that whatever is going on here is connected with that telephone conversation you had with Lieutenant Craig. I hope I'm wrong, but whatever it is, you will stay here until you find out what it is. Then-without opening your mouth beforehand-you will tell me what you found out. Clear?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Come on, Barbara," Bellmon said, and took his wife's arm.
"What telephone call with Geoff?" Barbara asked.
Bellmon did not respond, and his wife did not press him.
They got into the staff car, the driver closed the door, got behind the wheel, and the car drove off.
Now what the hell do I do? Oliver wondered.
The question was answered for him about a minute-which seemed much longer than that-later. The front door of the ranch house opened and Geoff Craig came out.
"This is a real bitch, isn't it?" Geoff said. Then, without waiting for Oliver to reply, he gestured toward his own house and went on: "Come on, I need a little liquid courage. And you look like you could use one too."
Oliver started to decline, to tell him "Sorry, I'm on duty." But then he changed his mind. To hell with it, he decided.
The Aviators Page 16
