The Colonels, page 48
part #4 of Brotherhood of War Series
“My wife told me,” Charles said. “She’s a regular FBI.”
“Your wife is in error, Colonel,” Lowell said.
“Sure she is,” Charles said. “And at this very moment, she is a very pissed-off woman. She has the odd notion that I should have been home over Christmas.”
He tossed money on the bar.
“‘Keep your indiscretions a hundred miles from the flagpole,’” he said. “You ever hear that, Lowell?”
He walked away without waiting for Lowell’s answer.
Jesus, Lowell thought, shaken by Colonel Charles’s announcement, I did get out of that business with Jane Cassidy just in time. If Mrs. Augustus Charles knew, it was amazing that neither Bill Roberts or Paul Jiggs had heard from the wives’ grapevine.
And then calm returned. He was out of the affair with Jane Cassidy. And they had carried off Operation Fearless without a hitch.
God was in his heaven, all was right with the world.
“You want another drink, Major?” the bartender asked.
“No, thanks,” Lowell said. “I really didn’t want this one.”
He left it unfinished on the bar and walked out. He had a lot of work to do.
And that, too, was a good thing, he thought. It would give him something to do on Christmas Day. No matter how often he told himself that Christmas was just one more day of the year to someone like him, that just wasn’t true.
XIX
(One)
The Skyclub
National Airport
Washington, D.C.
1715 Hours, 19 May 1960
The Skyclub was maintained by American Airlines so that its frequent first-class passengers would not have to mingle with the riffraff. Nevertheless, it was crowded. It was a Friday afternoon, and people were leaving Washington for the weekend. There were senators and congressmen in the Skyclub, lobbyists, lawyers, a half-dozen executive directors of various national organizations, wives, one lady congressperson, and assorted girl friends. And about a dozen army officers, including an army major whose Skyclub card was made out in the name of C. W. Lowell, Vice Chairman of the Board, Craig, Powell, Kenyon and Dawes.
Major Lowell was in the Skyclub because when he had announced he was going to Washington, Colonel Bill Roberts had pointedly suggested that he “go commercial with the others,” in other words leave the Commander parked at Laird Field.
The others were a dozen officers from various departments of the Army Aviation School. With one exception—a newly promoted major—they were all senior to Lowell. They had come to Washington for a conference which had dealt with several draft reports concerning the formation and organization of the airmobile division. The conference was intended to resolve objections to the reports raised by the Infantry Center, the Armor Center, the Airborne Center, and the Artillery Center, each of whom had also dispatched a dozen officers. The conference had been chaired by the Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff, Operations, who had also decided to hold the conference in Washington (which was neutral ground) rather than at one of the posts of the involved combat arms.
The first meeting had been called to order at 0830 on Monday; the last had been adjourned (two hours late) at 1515 on Friday. For a solid week, there had been argument—often at length—over very minor recommendations. A phalanx of typists would now prepare a report that would summarize the agreements (very few) and detail opposing views on those points (most) that had not been resolved. This document would then be circulated among the various participants to insure that their views were correctly reflected. Then it would be corrected, typed yet again, and submitted through the Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff, Operations, and then through the Assistant Chief of Staff, Operations, and finally to the DCSOPS, for his decision.
The whole thing, which could have been handled in two hours on the telephone, would take at least a month, Lowell thought. He was by nature cynical insofar as army procedures were concerned. And a solid week of conference had made him bitter.
Not a few comments, he was sure, were made not for their validity but because the commentor felt obliged to say something—anything at all—in order to prove that he was making a contribution. Some of the comments had been silly, foolish, and even absurd. For example, the decision over whether to pool chaplains in a Chaplains’ Section of the Division Headquarters Company or to assign them on the basis of one per so many officers and men throughout the division had taken two hours of discussion before tentative resolution.
When they got to the important things (how many gas trucks would be required to fuel the division’s aircraft, and where and to whom they should be assigned, for example), the decision-making process had been even slower.
And in the end, Lowell knew, the decisions would be made by the Deputy Chief of Staff, Operations, in about ten seconds. The DCSOPS would base his decision on what he thought and wouldn’t even look at the supporting arguments in the voluminous reports.
He might decide, for example, that chaplains belonged with the troops, and so order. Or that the only way to keep a handle on religion was to have the chaplains gathered together in one spot under a senior officer charged with keeping them in line. And so order.
After the final meeting had broken up, Lowell took a cab to the Hay-Adams Hotel, where he was staying, and quickly packed his bag. Then he was driven in the Hay-Adams Rolls-Royce to Washington National, where he missed the 1650 Southern Airways flight to Atlanta by five minutes.
Major Lowell turned his bags over to Southern, then went to the Skyclub and told the hostess of his problem. She assured him that American Airlines would do everything possible to get him on the very first available seat to Atlanta and that American would be delighted to call ahead and arrange a charter flight for him if there was nothing available on Southern to take him from Atlanta to Dothan. If the Vice Chairman of the Board of Craig, Powell, Kenyon and Dawes (who had a Skyclub Card with a discreet symbol that he was to be treated as a Very Very Important Person—as opposed to a frequent traveler who was a salesman, for example) wanted to go to Dothan, Alabama, she was being paid to see that he got there in the smoothest possible way.
She escorted Lowell to a red leather couch (none of the small tables was free) and got him a scotch and soda and a bowl of cashews. She handed him a copy of the Wall Street Journal, and told him she’d give him the word about his flight the moment she had it.
The woman who came into the Skyclub had three large leather bags suspended from her shoulders. She had just flown ten thousand miles. In thirty minutes, she would catch the New York shuttle. In the meantime, she wanted a drink, and she wanted to sit down.
There was no place she could sit alone, as she had hoped. So she decided the best vacancy available was on a couch beside a man behind a Wall Street Journal. As she walked to the couch she decided she would put her bags on the cushion between them, just to make sure.
She did so. She dumped the heavy bags on the center cushion, more than a little embarrassed that she bounced the whole couch when she did it. Averting her eyes in embarrassment, she sat down. Then she stole a look at the man. If he was glowering at her, she would apologize. She had been wrong.
“Oh, Jesus!” Cynthia Thomas said.
“We’re going to have to stop meeting this way,” Craig Lowell said. “People will talk.”
“Oh, my God!” Cynthia said.
“I’m fine, thank you,” Lowell said. “And you?”
“I just got in from Moscow,” she said. “I’m going to catch the shuttle…”
“Moscow in the spring!” Lowell said. “How chic!”
“Don’t, Craig,” she said.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t be cleverly bitter,” she said.
“Me? Bitter? Perish the thought!”
“What are you doing in Washington?”
“Leaving,” he said.
The hostess brought Cynthia a drink.
“So how have you been?” Lowell asked, sarcastically.
“I’ve been busy,” she replied. “And I’ve been lonely and miserable.”
“No new love?”
“That was a cheap shot!”
“Sorry.”
“But on the other hand, I haven’t been in Fort Rucker, Alabama, either,” she said, “making the both of us miserable.”
“So where does that leave us?” Lowell asked.
“Nowhere,” she said. “But we never were really anywhere, really.”
“I’d forgotten how beautiful you really are,” Lowell said softly, almost to himself.
“Damn you,” she said.
“I think I’d better change seats,” he said.
“No!” she said, immediately, so loudly that heads turned.
“Now everyone will think I’ve made a pass at you,” he said.
“Why don’t you, Craig?” Cynthia asked, very softly.
He looked at her in disbelief.
“Will they stand you before a firing squad if you don’t get to where you’re going by the dawn’s early light?” she asked.
“I have the weekend free,” he said.
“Isn’t a weekend better than nothing?” Cynthia asked.
“What if it’s not enough?” he asked.
“It’s all we’ve got,” she said.
There was a telephone on the coffee table. An operator answered.
“This is C. W. Lowell,” he said. “Call the Hay-Adams and tell them my plans have changed, and I’ll require my suite through the weekend.”
(Two)
Above Tallahassee, Florida
1730 ZULU, 14 October 1960
Major Craig W. Lowell watched the ADF needles reverse as he passed over the Tallahassee omni, and then picked up his microphone.
“Tallahassee, Trans-Caribbean Four Oh Two over the omni at ten thousand at thirty past the hour.”
“Roger, Trans-Caribbean, radar has you at one zero thousand, ground speed two one zero, on three ten true.”
“Trans-Caribbean Four Oh Two leaving 125.2 at this time,” Lowell said.
He leaned back in the pilot’s seat of the Gooney-bird, craned his neck further back to get a good look at the dial, and changed his transceiver frequency.
“Valdosta area control, Trans-Caribbean Four Oh Two.”
“Four Oh Two, Valdosta.”
“Valdosta, will you close me out, please?”
There was a moment’s pause, then: “Valdosta area control closes Trans-Caribbean Four Oh Two over Tallahassee at one zero thousand at three two past the hour.”
“Thank you, Valdosta,” Lowell said. “Four Oh Two switching to Tallahassee approach control at this time.”
He changed the transceiver and ADF frequencies again, but not to those utilized by Tallahassee.
He got the Laird omni.
Dah dah dah, dah dah dit dit, dit dah dit.
The international Morse code in his earphones spelled out OZR. Why the hell the Laird Omni didn’t spell out dit dah dit dit, dit dah dit, dah dit dit, for LRD, as in LaiRD, or dit dah dit, dah dit dah, dit dah dit, for RKR, as in RucKeR, was a mystery whose solution was known only to the FAA. The FAA assigned omni codes and persisted in using dah dah dah, dah dah dit dit, dit dah dit for OZaRk, which had never had an omnidirectional navigation aid, even before Fort Rucker.
He made a slight course correction, so that the needles were where they were supposed to be, and then went on the horn.
“Laird, Army Four Oh Two.”
“Aircraft calling Laird, say again.”
He was a bit far out, but what the hell.
“Laird, Army Four Oh Two,” he said again.
“Four Oh Two, Laird. You are weak but readable.”
“Four Oh Two, visual, seventy miles southeast at ten thousand. Estimate Laird in twenty minutes.”
“Understand seven zero southeast, one zero thousand, two zero minutes.”
“Affirmative,” Lowell said. “Laird, Code Eleven. Capacity eight. Confirm.”
“Understand Code Eleven, capacity eight.”
“Affirmative.”
“Capacity is eight? Confirm?”
“Affirmative, capacity is eight.”
He had just announced that he had personnel aboard requiring medical attention, including transport by ambulance. He had, he thought, just given the boys in the tower—and for that matter the boys in the hospital, and probably even Major General Paul T. Jiggs—something to liven up an otherwise dull day.
One of the hush-hush airplanes will land in twenty minutes, and requires ambulances for eight people!
They would probably be just a little disappointed when he landed and they learned that what he had aboard was just one wounded man (a Cubano had surprised hell out of a Green Beret hand-to-hand combat instructor by stabbing the Beret in the groin with a bayonet the instructor had planned to take away from him with skill and élan) and seven others, including five Rucker pilots, suffering from semiterminal cases of the running shits.
Lowell reached over his head again and adjusted the trim control, a four-inch diameter wheel. The nose of the Gooney-bird dropped just perceptibly.
He turned to the man in the copilot’s seat.
“Almost home,” Lowell said.
The man in the copilot’s seat was not an aviator. He was a Green Beret sergeant first class, an instructor in radio communication. He was riding in the right seat because there were no pilots available, and Lowell thought that if needed, the sergeant could be pressed into service to work the radios.
He had not been needed. It had been a long, slow, uneventful flight.
In addition to the eight passengers in the compartment of the Gooney-bird were a number of crates (Lowell had taken off considerably over the specified maximum gross weight). These crates contained items of equipment which, having been sent by a very circuitous route to Nicaragua, had not worked when they arrived there.
There was a good deal fucked up in this operation, fuckups which sorely tried the patience of the Action Officer, one Sanford T. Felter. Felter had been nearly as furious about the failure to properly treat the water, which had laid low eighty-five Americans and several hundred Cubanos, as he had been to learn that the medicine on hand to deal with this unfortunate contingency was out of date and useless.
But not as furious as he had been when the Gooney-bird delivering fresh medicine had landed at Nicaragua with Major Craig W. Lowell at the controls.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he had snapped. “I told you you were not to come down here.”
“Somebody, Little Man, had to drive the airplane.”
“You are Category I, goddamn it!” Sandy had fumed, genuinely angry.
Category I was that small list of persons who had knowledge of the entire operation. Category I personnel were not to be placed in a position where they might fall into the wrong hands, and thus compromise the security of the operation.
“Sandy,” Lowell had tried to reason, “there was nobody else available to fly it. I had two choices: delay shipment from thirty-six to forty-eight hours (and you wanted this stuff immediately) or come down here myself.”
He was tempted to add, but didn’t, that his presence was proof positive of his noble self-sacrifice in the name of duty: Cynthia Thomas, just back from London, had suggested that she was free to spend a few days with him. He was at the humiliating point with her where he was willing to settle for a couple of days, anywhere, anytime, at her pleasure.
“You should have waited however long it took,” Felter said, coldly furious.
“Forgive me, Generalissimo, I have erred,” Lowell said.
“It’s more than an error, Major Lowell,” Felter said, his voice as cold as Lowell had ever heard it. “It’s direct disobedience of an order.”
“Forgive me, Colonel Felter,” Lowell said, “you won’t be able to make that stick. It may be an error of judgment, but I was responding to an emergency situation to the best of my ability.”
“This is an order,” Felter said. “I will try to phrase it so that even you cannot misunderstand or misinterpret it. You will not leave the airfield. You will get whatever sleep you feel you need, you will service that aircraft, and you will immediately return to Fort Rucker. You are never to come here again unless I expressly order you to do so. I hope, Craig, for your sake, that you understand how serious I am about this.”
“Yes, sir,” Lowell said.
Felter had glowered at him and stalked off, and he had not seen him again.
Lowell had napped for a sweat-soaked four hours on a blanket spread out under the wing. He had been bitten awake by a swarm of insects, feasting at his crotch and armpits. He had stripped and sprayed himself with a stinging DDT aerosol bomb, and then gone to Base Ops, a tent, and announced he was ready to go back.
The surgeon had met him there, asking that he take as many people as he could in addition to the priority cargo and the two priority passengers: the Green Beret radio sergeant and the sergeant stabbed by the Cubano.
“I think the priority, Doctor, would be my pilots,” Lowell said. “The sooner I can get them cured of the GIs, the sooner they can be back at work.”
The surgeon had thought that over and nodded agreement.
Thirty minutes later, a thousand pounds over max gross, Lowell had finally managed to get the Gooney-bird airborne. He had cleared the rain forest at the end of the runway by no more than twenty feet, and it had been a long time before he had been able to pick up either airspeed or altitude.
The Gooney-bird did not have the range to fly over the Gulf of Mexico directly to the States. There had been two options: flying up the coast and refueling at least once in Mexico, or going the long way (which would, it was hoped, make the Gooney-bird flights much less suspicious and conspicuous).
The long way was from the field in Nicaragua to Grand Inagua Island in the Bahamas, where they’d refuel. This was the longest leg—close to the maximum distance the Gooney-bird could fly. The greatest risk occurred on the way down from Grand Inagua to Nicaragua. The last five hundred miles on that leg were over water. Lowell had been willing to take the chance of flying over max gross on that leg because his route to Grand Inagua would take him over Jamaica and then through the Windward Passage between the southern tip of Cuba and Haiti. If he ran low on fuel, he planned to put in to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, or if necessary, Kingston, Jamaica—or, in a genuine emergency, into Guantanamo, the U.S. Navy base on the tip of Cuba.
