The Colonels, page 47
part #4 of Brotherhood of War Series
Colonel Charles hustled Major Lowell for one hundred and fifty dollars on the last three holes of their game. Major Lowell was impressed with Colonel Charles. There were few people able to hustle him—either on the golf course or on a caper that was very likely to melt the thin ice on which his chances of promotion were already skidding.
Lowell told himself that he should have known something crazy like this would come up. That very morning (when Jane Cassidy’s transfer to the Department of Publications at the Army Aviation School had at last come through) he had permitted himself to think that he had escaped for a while from crazy situations. He should have realized that he, of all people, couldn’t be that lucky.
Three months ago, Jane had come up to him in a rage and accused him of being just like every other man: “You just have to boast about your conquest, don’t you?” she screamed.
He had no idea what she was talking about—and said so.
“If you hadn’t boasted, if there had been no talk, the chief of police would have never found out,” she said.
“What chief of police?” he asked.
“The Ozark chief of police,” she hissed. “He knows.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” he said, without thinking. He immediately regretted his comment. If she thought the chief of police knew, she just might decide the whole thing was too risky.
“It’s over, of course,” she said. “You’ve left me where I thought you would.”
He could think of no reply to that, so he said nothing.
“You’re going to have to get me a transfer,” she said.
“If you think I should,” he said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
“You won’t ‘see what you can do!’” she snapped. “You’ll do it! You owe me that much! My marriage is at stake!”
The wheels of bureaucracy moved with their usual slowness. Even after he found her another job, it took a couple months for the transfer to be made official. During that time, she treated him with icy courtesy.
His relief when the transfer came through was enormous. Jane was replaced by a plain, pleasant woman in her late forties. An absolutely undangerous woman, delighted with the promotion the transfer had meant for her and determined to make good.
Once again, Craig now realized, he was jumping from one frying pan into—if not the fire—then another frying pan. If they were caught stealing radios at Davis-Monthan, he would be in as much trouble as if he had been caught with Jane Cassidy in his bed.
He consoled himself with the thought that at least there was a noble purpose in stealing the radios. Jiggs would understand that. But Jiggs would have been shocked and dismayed if he’d known about Craig’s connection with Jane Cassidy.
The first thing Major Craig Lowell and Colonel Augustus Charles realized when they got down to specifics was that they could not execute Operation Fearless with only three people. At least one more was needed.
That led them to Lieutenant Commander Eaglebury. As a navy pilot, he could fly the VIP Gooney-bird, which he could identify as a navy airplane. To save him from potential trouble, they tried at first to keep him in the dark about what they were up to. But Lieutenant Commander Eaglebury took only two days to figure out that they were going to do something in Arizona besides look at the desert flora and fauna. He demanded in on the whole picture, or they could get somebody else to fly their airplane.
Lieutenant Commander Eaglebury also pointed out that regulations prescribed that a Gooney-bird be driven by two chauffeurs. Another getaway driver was needed: CWO (2) William B. Franklin (whose promotion from Warrant Officer Junior Grade had come the week he had been qualified as pilot-in-command of R4D aircraft). Not only could Franklin be trusted to keep his mouth shut; but if they were caught, he told them, he would just play the dumb nigger warrant officer who didn’t even know he was in Arizona.
The sixth co-conspirator joined up when Lt. Col. MacMillan asked Master Sergeant Wojinski to get him a riot gun from the arms room and to keep his mouth shut about it. When Wojinski had demanded specifics, MacMillan told him Lowell wanted it, but he didn’t know what for.
M/Sgt Wojinski showed up at Fort Rucker with the shotgun in a golf bag, and announced that whither Lowell was going with it, so was he.
In order to discourage the sergeant from sticking his ass in a crack where it would very likely get nipped off, Wojinski was given the rough outline of the plan.
“No disrespect, Major,” Wojinski said. “But if you guys are going to get away with this, you’re going to need a professional. You’re, excuse me, just a bunch of fucking amateurs.”
He thereupon proceeded to point out several flaws in the operations plan. Wojinski was in.
(Five)
Immediately upon entering into Phase II of Operation Fearless—infiltration of the target area—it became apparent that there was a flaw in the operations plan that even Wojinski had overlooked. There was no way to get inside the airplanes from which the radios would be stolen; their doors were too high off the ground. Even with Lowell (six feet two) standing on Wojinski’s (six feet three) shoulders, he was at least four feet from a latch that might—or might not—gain them access to the aircraft.
“There is only one thing to do,” Wojinski said.
“Surrender, and throw ourselves on the mercy of the air force.”
“No,” Wojinski said. “I’ll go steal one of those pickup trucks with a stairs on it.”
“A what?” MacMillan asked.
“You know,” Wojinski said, patiently. “One of those things they drive up to airplanes so people can get on and off. There must be a couple of them around here.”
“If there is, it would be at Base Operations,” Lowell said. “That must be five miles from here.”
“I can go catty-corner,” M/Sgt Wojinski said. “I figure three, maybe three and a half miles.”
He took a compass from the knee pocket of his flight suit, consulted it a moment, replaced it, and then trotted off into the massed, parked airplanes, his forearms pumping parallel to the ground, his fists balled, his back straight—the jogger out for his daily physical conditioning.
Lt. Col. Charles, Lt. Col. MacMillan, and Major Lowell then went up and down the lines of parked C-54 aircraft, picking out aircraft which seemed most likely to have AN/ ARC-55 radios aboard in good condition. The aircraft in nonpreserved storage ranged from skeletonized derelicts, not much more than stripped airframes, to aircraft which appeared ready for takeoff. There was no problem finding a dozen likely candidates for their midnight requisition.
Then, curiosity aroused, they moved out of the C-54 area.
There came a loud shout from Charles.
Lowell first thought that Lt. Col. Augustus Charles had lost his marbles, calling attention to them. But then he realized that the chances of anybody else but himself or Mac hearing a shout were just about nonexistent. He went in the direction of the shout, and a minute or two later found Charles and Mac, beaming with delight, standing under a Lockheed Constellation. He didn’t know the air force nomenclature for it.
“Look at this!” Charles said, pointing up at the narrow nose. There was a legend painted on the nose, the word “Bataan” superimposed on a map of the Bataan peninsula.
“I thought he had a C-54,” Lowell said, remembering newsreels of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur regally descending from his personal transport aircraft.
“So did I,” Charles said. “But it says ‘Bataan.’”
“I’ll bet there’s beds on that sonofabitch,” Major Lowell said, thoughtfully.
Thirty minutes later, they heard the sound of a vehicle in the distance. It was possible that the air police patrolled the area, so they hid themselves behind landing gear and watched.
It was M/Sgt Wojinski at the wheel of an air force pickup truck. He was driving with his elbow out the window. The pickup truck was equipped with a stairway, and behind it was something else—a trailer holding a ground auxiliary power unit.
“The whole fucking operation almost went down the tube,” M/Sgt Wojinski announced.
“They saw you?” Lowell asked.
“Nah,” Wojinski said, offended at the suggestion. “What happened was that the base commander come by Base Ops to wish the troops stuck with the duty Merry Christmas. And he felt so sorry for Eaglebury and Franklin getting stuck here on Christmas Eve that he wanted to have the flat fixed right away.”
“How do you know?” MacMillan asked.
“I was looking in the window,” Wojinski said.
“So what happened?” Mac asked.
“Eaglebury said that he would rather not have the general ask enlisted men to work on Christmas Eve. He said that he would hate to have a work crew remember that they had to work on Christmas Eve because of some damned naval officer.”
“So they’re not coming tonight?” Charles asked.
“No. And the general was so touched by Eaglebury’s speech that he gave one of his own. He said he would hate to have two naval officers remember that they had spent Christmas Eve in a BOQ in Arizona, with the club closed, and that he would be honored if they would accept the hospitality of his quarters.”
“He took them home with him?” Lowell asked, incredulously.
“I hope to Christ he don’t ask Franklin anything about the navy,” Wojinski said. “For a moment, I thought he was going to turn white.”
“You’re sure nobody saw you steal this?” MacMillan asked.
“Nah,” Wojinski said, deprecatingly. “They had four of them in a motor pool.”
“How’d you get it out of the motor pool without being seen?” Lowell asked.
“There’s generally two gates to a motor pool,” Wojinski explained. “All I had to do was go to the back one and pick the padlock.”
“What about the ground power unit?” Lt. Col. Charles asked.
“That was on the transient parking lot,” Wojinski explained.
“Aren’t they going to miss it?”
“Not before we’re long gone,” Wojinski said.
(Six)
Phase III of Operation Fearless went very smoothly. They drove the pickup truck with the stairway to the door of the first C-54 they’d selected, opened the door, and Lt. Col. Charles and Major Lowell entered the aircraft. Major Lowell carried one of the nickel-cadmium batteries, and Lt. Col. Charles and Lt. Col. MacMillan carried between them the tool kit.
Five minutes later, the dials of the AN/ARC-55 radio aboard glowed, Lt. Col. Charles having powered it up by disconnecting it from the 24-volt major buss and to the nickel-cadmium battery. He set a frequency he thought was unlikely to be monitored by the Davis-Monthan tower, closed his tool box, and then he and MacMillan went down the stairs.
Lowell was left alone in the aircraft. It was an eerie feeling. He wondered how long it had been since anyone had sat on the radio operator’s stool.
Ten minutes later, there was a voice in his earphones.
“Air Force Six Thirteen, Air Force Fourteen Ten.”
“Go ahead, Fourteen Ten,” Lowell said to the microphone.
“How do you read?”
“Five by five,” Lowell replied.
“Six Thirteen, give me a long count, please.”
“Ten, Niner, Eight, Seven, Six, Fiver, Four, Three, Two, One.”
“Six Thirteen, I read you five by five. Fourteen Ten, clear.”
They now had two functioning radios.
Ten minutes later, having removed an ARC-55 and its immediate wiring and power supply from Donor Aircraft No. 2, Lt. Col. Charles went on the air using the ARC-55 in Donor Aircraft No. 3. There was no reply. He checked his connections and found nothing wrong, which meant that particular radio was not working. So he closed his tool kit, went down the stairs, and was driven to Donor Aircraft No. 4.
By 2045 hours, the bed of the pickup truck held twelve AN/ ARC-55 radios, four more than Operation Fearless called for, plus so much other “excess to air force requirements” aviation communications and electronic equipment that it was impossible to lower the hydraulically operated stairway.
A thirteenth (“for good luck,” Lt. Col. Charles said) AN/ ARC-55 and its ancillary equipment was removed from Donor Aircraft No. 1, and Major Lowell was able to evacuate the radio operator’s stool in that aircraft as he joined the others. Then M/Sgt Wojinski drove the pickup truck onto the runway to their own R4D aircraft, tilted to one side on its flat tire.
The avionics equipment was loaded aboard the aircraft: in the baggage compartment in the nose, in the radio compartment between the passenger compartment and the cockpit, and in the toilet in the rear of the cabin.
The operations plan for Operation Fearless next required that they reload the food and sleeping bags aboard the Gooney-bird. They had been off-loaded against the contingency that the air force would either move the Gooney-bird to Base Operations or place a guard on it.
“If you’ll go get our crap and load it, I’ll put the truck back,” M/Sgt Wojinski said.
“Sergeant Wojinski,” Major Lowell said, “far be it from a ‘fucking amateur’ such as myself to offer a suggestion to a fucking professional such as yourself, but how would you like to sleep in General of the Army Douglas MacArthur’s very own bed?”
“Come on, Lowell,” Lt. Col. Charles said. “We’d need the stair-truck to get in it.”
“And you, Lt. Col. Charles, how would you like to sleep in a bed previously occupied by Mrs. MacArthur, or at the very least by Major General Willoughby? Or some other member of the Imperial Guard?”
“What do we do with the truck?” Lt. Col. MacMillan asked. Lowell’s suggestion had struck a chord.
“If Ski tries to take it back, he’s liable to get caught.”
“Bullshit,” M/Sgt Wojinski said, flatly.
“He’d have to use headlights, and there would be a risk. However, in two or three days, after the air force finally misses their truck and the ground power supply, and after they start looking for it, if they were to find it parked against the ‘Bataan’ with the power supply plugged into it, they would probably decide that several of their own people had used the Christmas holidays to view an historic aircraft.”
Lt. Colonel Charles thought that over a moment.
“Lowell,” he said, “I hate to admit it, but you are one smart sonofabitch.”
“Thank you, sir.”
When they got aboard the “Bataan,” they found that it had one permanently installed double bed. Lt. Colonel Charles claimed the privilege of rank and shared it with M/Sgt Wojinski. Lowell and MacMillan spent the night in their sleeping bags on couches made up from folding seats.
They also found that with the ground power supply plugged in, it was possible to close the curtains over the windows, thus permitting the cabin lights and a broadcast band radio to be turned on. The electric galley worked, and thus they were able to warm their rations and heat water for powdered coffee. This, to mark the successful completion of Phase IV of Operation Fearless, they laced with cognac that Major Lowell had included with the rations against the chance one of the team might suffer snakebite.
(Seven)
Phase V of Operation Fearless went smoothly. At first light, they left the “Bataan” and walked to the Gooney-bird. M/Sgt Wojinski sat in the cockpit and served as lookout.
When an air force caravan (two pickup trucks; a staff car; a huge, bright yellow truck equipped with a derrick and sling; and a fuel truck) appeared on the taxiway shortly after 0800 hours, Lt. Col. Charles and Major Lowell secreted themselves in the radio-navigator’s compartment, and M/Sgt Wojinski and Lt. Col. MacMillan in the toilet.
Air force technicians quickly arranged a sling around the left wing, and the derrick raised the aircraft off the ground. The blown tire was quickly removed, replaced, and the aircraft lowered to the ground.
Lt. Commander Eaglebury profusely thanked the aerodrome officer for all his courtesies, and told him that if he was ever in the vicinity of the Anacostia Naval Air Station to be sure to look him up.
Greetings for the holiday season were exchanged. The pilots boarded the aircraft.
“Davis-Monthan clears Navy Eight Twenty for taxi to the active. You may use the taxiway as the threshold. There are no winds. The altimeter is two niner eight. The time is forty-five past the hour. You are cleared for takeoff when ready.”
Five minutes later, Bill Franklin spoke to his microphone: “Davis-Monthan, Navy Eight Twenty rolling. Thank you, Davis-Monthan.”
“Merry Christmas, Navy Eight Twenty.”
(Eight)
Major Lowell offered to spring for the Christmas Day buffet at the Dallas Country Club when they landed at Love Field for fuel, but the others were anxious to get home, so they took aboard more in-flight meals from Executive Air Catering and flew on to Laird Field at Fort Rucker.
MacMillan, Eaglebury, and Wojinski took off again as soon as the ARC-55s and other equipment had been off-loaded. Franklin announced he had “plans,” and Lowell told him to go ahead.
“I think we’ve earned ourselves a drink,” Lt. Col. Charles said. “Can I buy you one?”
They went to the officers’ club. There were few wives, for it was Christmas Day, but it was fairly crowded with bachelors. They spent ten minutes trying to play the devil’s advocate…what could go wrong now?
They came up with a number of possibilities—that someone at Davis-Monthan would have noticed that the tail number of “Navy Eight Twenty” did not include those numbers, or that the stolen truck would be discovered missing in time to make the connection with them—but it seemed as if Operation Fearless had been flawlessly executed.
“You really are a pretty smart fellow, Lowell,” Lt. Colonel Augustus Charles said.
Lowell suspected that there was a hooker in the compliment even before Charles asked, “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“Sure.”
“How come a smart fellow like you is fucking his secretary?”
“What makes you think I am?”
“His married secretary,” Charles went on.
“Where did you get that idea?”
