W E B Griffin - BoW 04 - The Colonels Page 7

  Socially, Tom was in an awkward position regarding the post. The brass made overtures of friendship to the mayors and other officials of Enterprise and Ozark. These had been given associate memberships in the officers' open mess. And the doctors and lawyers met regularly with their counterparts in uniform. But there was no counterpart to a peanut oil mill manager at Rucker; so Tom was left out.

  But if Jane lasted the first year and was promoted togs-7, she could join the officers' club herself, since a GS-7 rating carried with it the "assimilated" grade of lieutenant. She wasn't sure how Tom would respond if he would feel embarrassed about being his wife's guest. So she decided that if he objected, she wouldn't join the club. But when she told him, all he wanted to know was whether he could use the golf course at the post..

  "Find out about that, honey, will you?" Tom had asked.

  The internship year passed quickly, and one day Colonel Bellmon had called her into his office.

  "I had sort of a dilemma about you, Jane," Bellmon said. "On the one hand, I'm more than a little grateful for the way you've been running flight records and the Jeps, and God knows what will happen when you're gone. But on the other hand, it wouldn't be fair to you or the taxpayers to keep you on as a clerk and pay you a GS-7's wages. So I talked to Colonel Roberts at the Aviation Board about you, and next Monday you report out there to him."

  "I don't quite understand," she said. It was the first time she had thought about leaving Combat Developments.

  "Well, I've signed the papers making you an Administrative Assistant, GS-7," Bellmon told her. "And if there was someplace I aould put you here, I would. But there isn't. And Colonel Roberts says he's sure he can find a place for you out at the Board where your talents can be properly utilized." They had a little party for her that Friday, coffee and cake, and gave her a plaque: aviator's wings and the' Combat Developments insignia mounted on a piece of mahogany. And on Monday she had gone out to the Army Aviation Board's new building at Laird Army Airfield.

  For two weeks, she had trailed the Board adjutant around, to get a feel of the place, and it had looked during the second week that she would be assigned to the Technical Publications Section. TBS functioned both as the technical publications library, and "publisher" for the reports the Aviation Board issued on aircraft and other equipment it tested.

  TBS was under a woman, an "imported" DAC (a Department of the Army civilian transferred to Fort Rucker from someplace else), and Jane had met and liked her. But then she had been called into the office of Board president Colonel William R. Roberts. The adjutant- was there when she walked in.

  "Mrs. Cassidy," Colonel Roberts said, "the Board has been directed to immediately set up a new section within the Flight Test Division. It will need an administrative assistant, and we think you could hold the job down. Would you be interested?" She wondered if she was going to be clerk-typist under a fancier name, but she smiled and said she would.

  "If it doesn't work out, we'll think of something else," Colonel Roberts said to her. "Major Groppe will walk you over there it's in Hangar 101 and introduce you to Warrant Officer Cramer."

  Jane had been around the army long enough to know where a warrant officer fitted into the hierarchy, so she knew that she was going to be a clerk to someone with no authority or responsibility. She was disappointed until she reminded herself that being a clerk was better than sharing tuna fish sandwiches with the maid.

  When they walked into an office in a concrete block structure built onto the street side of the hangar, CWO Cramer was standing on a chair, nailing a sign to an interior door. The sign read:

  MAJOR C.W. LOWELL

  CHIEF

  ROCKET ARMED HELICOPTER SECTION

  Jane O'Rourke Cassidy knew a good deal about Major C.W. Lowell. She had met him several times when he had visited Combat Developments. He was a friend of Colonel Bellmon. He was rich, and even owned his own airplane. And she knew that he was in deep trouble with the army.

  Being assigned to work for him was proof that, rather than building on a career, she was being pushed aside. She would be working for a man who would shortly be out of the army.

  Without meaning to, she had overheard a conversation between Major Lowell and Colonel Bellmon. Lowell had been caught in an affair with a U.S. senator's wife in Washington, and they had sent him to Rucker, where Colonel Bellmon had told him he could either resign from the army immediately or be assigned as garbage disposal officer in the Panama Canal Zone until the board of officers was convened that would throw him out.

  Lowell had agreed to resign as of January 1, 1959, but he told Bellmon that he intended to spend the holidays with his friends on the post.

  When Jane had told Tom about Lowell one night at dinner, he'd laughed.

  But then the next day, Ed Greer had been killed when the Big Bad Bird crashed and exploded. Jane had known Greer, of course; Greer had been assigned to Combat Developments, but he was also married to Melody Dutton, the daughter of Howard Dutton, the mayor of Ozark. Howard and Tom were good friends.

  Jane and Tom Cassidy had been sitting in their reserved seats in the bleachers on the parade ground for Ed Greer's funeral services when the black-painted helicopter had appeared out of nowhere, buzzed the field, and then blown up a line of Russian tanks.

  Before they left the parade ground, one of the Combat Development guys had told her what had happened. Major Lowell had stolen an H-19 from the Aviation School. He'd taken it somewhere out on the post in the pine thickets and hidden it there. Then he'd made all sorts of unauthorized modifications to it: he had another door cut in the fuselage; had mounted rocket launchers on the skids; and then he had used it to shoot up the Russian tanks lined up at the funeral ceremony.

  Jane thought she understood why he had done it. The rocket armed helicopter was important to the army, and it was liable to go down the tube because of Ed Greer's accident. Lowell had decided in effect, to commit suicide in order to prove beyond question that a helicopter could kill a tank. It was generally agreed that Lowell would be court-martialed for what he had done, and would probably spend some time in the federal prison at Leavenworth.

  Thus, when she walked in on Cramer hanging up the sign with Lowell's name on it, she believed she had been assigned to an office where nothing would happen until they courtmartialed Major Craig Lowell.

  As it turned out, Jane was wrong. She soon learned that

  Major Lowell was not going to be court-martialed, nor was he going to resign. The Rocket Armed Helicopter Section of the

  Flight Test Division was indeed what Colonel Roberts had said it was, a brand new division of the Board, and she was its administrative assistant.

  And Major Lowell himself was not what she expected him to be. She had thought he was a swinging bachelor and had learned that he was instead a widower; a widower with a son, whose photograph in a silver frame was the only decoration in

  Lowell's office. About the first thing he ordered Jane Cassidy to do was to put in a telephone call to his son in Germany.

  Neither did he look at her as a man on the make looks at a woman. He spoke to her briefly when Mr. Cramer introduced them, telling her that if she had worked for Bellmon for a year, that was all the reference she needed. He was polite, but not charming.

  Other small things about him surprised her, too. For instance, he immediately proved that he was the best and most accurate typist in the office. She would not have expected a somewhat dashing pilot to be a skilled typist... Tom couldn't type at all.

  And she saw something else that interested her. The officers and men who worked for him, with whom he dealt casually and jokingly, regarded him with great respect and admiration. Colonel Bellmon had been known behind his back as

  "Old Iron Britches." But Lowell was either "the Duke," a flattering reference to his finely tailored uniforms and to the mustache, or he was simply "the Major."

  By the end of her first day working for Major Craig W. Lowell, Jane O'Rourke Cassidy had learned som
ething else: she was as attracted to Major Lowell as she had been to Tom Cassidy, Auburn halfback, the first time she had seen him up close.

  At 2:30 P. M." there was a phone call for the Major, and she had to wait before he looked up at her. He had an ability to concentrate on what he was doing to shut everything else out that was almost frightening. Despite his casual manner, she knew right away that he was probably the most intense individual she had ever met.

  "Colonel Bellmon's wife," Jane said, then immediately corrected herself, "I mean General Bellmon's, is on the phone if you're not busy, Major."

  Lowell picked up the telephone, idly thinking that tension had done it again, had made him aware of Jane Cassidy's breasts and her sexuality.

  Whenever he was tense, he got horny. Of course, after the ass-chewing session he had had with Paul Jiggs, he would not have jumped her if she had come into the office starkers.

  And besides, this was not your typical Rebel broad, ready to jump into the bed of her dashing lover. This one was a lady; married, Cramer had told him, to a former football hero now running the peanut mill. She would not be interested in fun and games with Craig Lowell; "Hello, Barbara, what can I do for you?" he said to the telephone.

  "Southern's having "equipment problems' again," Barbara Bellmon said.

  "The next flight to Dothan is at 11:15 tonight."

  That translated to mean that General Bellmon was stranded in Atlanta, Southern Airways having decided again that safety required that they delay their flight to Columbus, Georgia, Dothan, Alabama, and Panama City, Florida, until they were reasonably sure the wings of their DC-3 wouldn't fall off.

  "How can I help?" "Bob tried to call Macmillan," she said, "so Mac could fly over and pick him up."

  "Mac is on the golf course," he interrupted.

  "Where else?" she laughed. "So when he couldn't get him, he called me and asked me to find Mac and see if Mac could arrange to have somebody else come pick him up. Get a plane from the school fleet I mean. But he cail't."

  "Let me call you back in a couple of minutes," he said. "I think I can fix this." "I hate to bother you, Craig," she said..

  "No problem," he said. "I'll call you right back." He told Jane Cassidy that if there were any calls, he would be in Colonel Roberts's office.

  Roberts's office, which occupied the left rear corner of the two-story concrete block building, was guarded by Florence Ward. Florence was a heavyset, southern. Alabama farmer's wife who, like Jane Cassidy, had "gone out to the post to see if she could find some kind of work." She had surprised everybody, including herself, by turning into a crisply efficient administrative assistant.

  "Is the colonel in, Mrs. Ward?"

  She dida't reply, but instead went to Roberts's open door and asked if he could see Major Lowell.

  "Come in, Lowell," Roberts called.

  Lowell walked in the office and saluted.

  "What can I do for you?" Roberts asked.

  "I know I just got here, Colonel, but could I take a couple of hours off?"

  "Still getting settled, are you?" Roberts asked. "I don't think the place will collapse if you take off. It is New Year's Eve."

  "I want to go to Atlanta," Lowell said.

  "How're you going to do that?" Roberts asked, puzzled, and then answered his own question. "Is your airplane, of course."

  "Barbara Bellmon just called," Lowell explained. "Southwesterm cancelled, and Bob's, the general... is stranded." "Isn't that a shame?" Roberts said, dryly.

  "Barbara asked me, Colonel," Lowell said.

  "Well, we can't turn her down, can we?" Roberts said. "Go ahead."

  "You're going to go up and come right back?" Florence Ward asked.

  "Yes," Lowell said. "I'll be at the party." Then he realized that wasn't what she had been asking. "Colonel, could I take your secretary with me?" "Sure," Roberts said. "Thank you," Florence said to Colonel Roberts.

  "I'll see you tonight, Lowell," Roberts said pointedly. Earlier that day Roberts had "suggested" to Lowell that he make sure he came to the New Year's Eve party. Lowell had no more wanted to go to the officers' club party than he was thrilled with the notion of taking the fat farmer's wife for a ride.

  "Thank you, sir," Lowell said. "Mrs. Ward, when you're ready, will you come to my office?"

  "I'll be right there," Florence said.

  Lowell returned to his office in the hangar and told Jane Cassidy to call Mrs. Bellmon.

  "Problem's solved," he said, when she came on the line. "Where's Bob now?"

  "In a phone booth at the airport, waiting for me to call back."

  "Tell him to catch a cab to Fulton County Airport," Lowell said. "I'll be there in about an hour, maybe a little longer." "I am now forced to become a dishonest wife," she said.

  "I don't think that's a proposition," Lowell said. "He said I was not to ask you," she said. "You know how he feels about your airplane." "Then screw him," Lowell said. "Let him wait for the 11:15." "Then he would miss the party," she said, plaintively. "OK. So I'll go get him," Lowell said. "I'll think of some imaginative excuse which requires his riding in my airplane.

  "Oh, Craig, would you?" Barbara asked, happily. "I'd really be grateful. I'll pay you for the gas, or whatever, of course."

  "You want to fly up with me, Barbara?" Lowell asked. "That way you could face the wrath of your righteous husband."

  "Oh, I can't, Craig," she said, laughing. "I've got to have my hair done. And a hundred other things." "Coward," he said. "But all right. You call him back, and tell him somebody's on the way to pick him up at Fulton County. You don't know who."

  "Craig, you're a darling," she said. "I owe you one."

  "One what?"

  "You bastard," she laughed, and hung up.

  Lowell hung the phone up and looked at Jane Cassidy. She had listened to and understood what the call was about.

  "Call Sergeant Kowalaki and ask him to bring my airplane to Base Operations, will you, please, Mrs. Cassidy?"

  She nodded.

  And then Florence Ward appeared.

  "Ready any time you are, Major," she said.

  Lowell saw the surprise on Jane Cassidy's face, when she realized that Florence Ward was going with him.

  "Would you like to come along, too, Mrs. Cassidy?" Loweli asked.

  "Would there be time?" Jane Cassidy heard herself replying. "Before quitting time I mean?" "God willing," Lowell said, mockingly pious. He immediately regretted it, thinking that either or both of the women were likely to take offense.

  "I don't know if I should," Jane Cassidy said. She had joined the officers' club as soon as she had been promoted and she and Tom would be going to the party at the officers' open mess tonight (in black tie and formal dress), instead of the one at the Enterprise country club.

  "Come along," Florence Ward said.

  "I've got to get ready for tonight," Jane said. "We're going to the club."

  She knew she was lying. All she had to do to get ready was take a quick shower and put on her dress.

  "Another time," Lowell said. He wasn't sure if he was disappointed or relieved.

  "I'll go," Jane said, suddenly.

  "Fine," Lowell said.

  Florence Ward had commandeered Colonel Roberts's staff car for the thousand-yard ride from the Board building to the hangar, and then for the second thousand-yard leg from the hangar to Base Operations.

  Although Lowell moved as far as he could to the left, there was not room enough in the back of the Chevrolet for the three of them. His hip and ujiper leg were pressed against Jane Cassidy.

  At Base Ops, Sergeant Kowalski, the noncom in charge of the Aviation Board's flight line, was standing, beneath a bad oil portrait of Major General "Scotty" Laird, Jr." which was next to the double glass doors to the transient aircraft parking area.

  Shortly after they had given Scotty Laird his second star, the week before the $97 million main airfield complex had been completed, Laird had picked up an H- 13 in front of post headquarters.
Climbing quickly, his mind apparently on other things, he had forgotten to turn on the caburetor heat. His H-13 went down in the woods just the other side of the golf course, within sight of his brand-new two-starred flag flapping from the Rucker flagpole.

  The airfield had been named for him: Laird Army Airfield. But the Morse code from the Omni identifying the field had remained what it had been, OZR. Everytime Lowell heard OZR on his earphones, he thought of Scotty Laird, a passenger in Lowell's H-13 on the way to Bad Godesburg, Germany, immediately after Laird had turned down an assignment as deputy commander of the 2nd Armored Division to become, at forty, an aviator.