The Generals (31 page)

She was marveling at her previously unsuspected ability to lie with skill and artistry. First she told her mother that the kids were just dying to come “home” to see Grandma and Pawpaw. Absolutely untrue. The kids wanted to stay in Fayetteville and enjoy their vacation. She then told the kids that Grandma and Pawpaw wanted to see them (which was true) and that they should remember that they would themselves be that old one day, which was a cheap shot if there ever was one.

She next told her mother and her father that she really must go to a protest meeting in Washington, clearly implying that it was her wifely duty to Tom. That was the same story she gave Roxy MacMillan, though in fact, she wasn’t going anywhere near Washington.

The trouble was that now Craig Lowell had not showed up. Where the hell was he?

She had called the apartment twice, but there had been no answer.

And the terminal was practically deserted, which meant that no plane was scheduled soon to arrive or depart.

She forced herself to slowly sip the lukewarm coffee until it was gone, which took two more cigarettes. She asked the cold-faced bored impatient waitress in a beehive hairdo for the bill. Then she put the magazine under her arm, picked up the makeup case and the overnight bag, and walked out of the nearly empty restaurant into the nearly empty terminal.

There weren’t even people working the ticket counters! Just a girl at the Hertz desk and a distracted security officer leaning on a wall.

The glass doors from outside opened, and she looked and saw a man in a cotton windbreaker coming through. He seemed to be looking for her.

“Mrs. Sims?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“I’m from Lewis Aviation, ma’am,” he said. “Your charter just called in. He’s ten minutes out. He asked me to fetch you.”

“Thank you very much,” she said.

“Here, let me have your bag. I’ve got a truck outside.”

She gave it to him and walked on light feet—light-headed—after him. She should have known that Craig would have thought of something like a charter.

The man in the windbreaker put her bag in the back of a pickup, and then slammed the door once she’d got in.

“You’re Mrs. Sims, aren’t you?” the man said, as he drove away from the passenger terminal. “I mean, you were Dorothy Persons, weren’t you?”

“Yes, I was,” she said. “Or I am. Do I know you?”

“I used to work for your dad’s company,” he said. “Before I went to work for Lewis. I’m still a backup pilot for them. I’ve seen you around.”

“I think I’ve seen you, too.”

Dear God, don’t let him bump into my father out here, and tell him that “it was nice to see Mrs. Sims, when the charter came and picked her up.”

“That’s probably him now,” the man said, gesturing out the windshield. It was dark, but still bright enough to see a light twin airplane making its landing. Where did he get that plane? She’d expected him to show up in the Army plane he’d flown her in from Atlanta.

The plane was now down and taxiing toward the commercial aviation facility.

An attendant in a white suit went out to guide it to a parking stop, then ran to a fuel truck and drove that to the airplane. She was driven directly to the airplane.

Craig was standing beside the plane—what looked to be a brand-new Cessna 310, a sleek, fast, twin-engine aircraft—watching the attendant open the fuel filler plate. He turned.

“Mrs. Sims?” Craig Lowell asked, his eyes smiling. She nodded. “I’m sorry to be late.”

“It’s perfectly all right.”

“We’ll be ready to go in just a moment,” he said. “We’ll make up the lost time.”

“There’s nothing to be concerned about,” she said.

It didn’t take much gas. Craig put her bags on the floor of the back seat of the plane. He signed the credit slip for the gasoline, put the credit card back in his pocket.

“Where would you like to ride?” he asked. “Up front? Or in the back?”

“In front,” she said. “If I won’t be in your way.”

“Not at all, ma’am,” he said. “I like company. But I’ll have to get in first. Be careful of your head.”

He climbed onto the wing, and then got inside the plane, crawling into the left-hand pilot’s seat. She climbed in, and the man from Lewis Aviation closed the door after her.

He checked to see the door was closed, and that she had fastened her belt.

And then he started the engines, waved good-bye to the man from Lewis Aviation, and started taxiing toward the runway.

“Winston-Salem ground control, Cessna Four Niner, taxi to the active,” he said into a hand-held microphone.

“Cessna Four Niner is cleared to the threshold of Runway Two Eight,” a speaker said in her ear. “Contact Departure Control on one two one point nine.”

He fiddled with the radios.

“Winston-Salem Departure Control, Cessna Four Niner, request takeoff from Two Eight, visual to Atlanta, Fulton County.”

He braked the airplane to a stop, raced the engines, checked dials.

“Cessna Four Niner, you are cleared for takeoff from Runway Two Eight. The winds are negligible. There is no traffic. The time is five past the hour. The altimeter is two niner niner eight.”

He looked at her. She looked back at him.

“Hello, my darling,” he said, and leaned over and kissed her.

“Hello yourself,” she said. She could taste cigar on his tongue.

“Winston-Salem,” he said. “Four Niner rolling. Thank you.”

The plane gathered speed quickly and lifted off into the sky. She fished in her purse for her cigarettes and took one out. She looked around for a lighter. There it was, right under a little illuminated sign saying
LIGHTER
.

“What did you do, rent this?” she asked, as she pulled the tray outward.

“No, this is mine,” he said. “I just got it, as a matter of fact. I used to have an Aero Commander. This is a lot faster, and I really didn’t need all that room. I had it brought up from Alabama.”

“It’s a nice plane,” she said. “Now will you kiss me again!”

He leaned over and kissed her again, and she kissed him hungrily.

He went back on the radio, asking something called Atlanta Area Control for an IFR flight plan.

“We have a decision to make,” he said to her. “We can either go into Fulton County, which is miles from Atlanta, and where there isn’t much chance of anyone seeing us together, or we can go into Atlanta itself, where, if we’re seen together, we can look innocent. If we’re seen at Fulton County, we will have a hard time looking innocent.”

“You obviously have more experience in this sort of thing than I do,” Dorothy said.

“But you have more to lose,” he said, not taking offense.

“Let’s go into Atlanta,” she said. “And take our chances.”

He parked the plane at the Southern Airways portion of the terminal, beside several comparatively huge commercial airliners.

“You don’t see many little airplanes here,” she said.

“And they don’t like this one, either,” he said. “It is a courtesy discourteously offered.”

She smiled, hoping for a better explanation, but he offered none.

He locked the airplane door, gave the keys to a Southern attendant, and then they caught a taxi to the Hyatt Regency Hotel. At the end of their elevator ride outside the building was a suite furnished in what she thought of as North Carolina Louis XIV. Compared to Craig’s apartment, it was the height of elegance.

They were no sooner in the door than a waiter appeared with a cart, on which were hors d’oeuvres, whiskey, and a bottle of champagne. He had apparently taken some pains with the arrangements. She was touched. And then he sprawled into a chair and picked up the telephone, and dialed a number.

“Sign that thing, will you?” he said, gesturing at her.

What am I going to sign? she wondered, taking the bill from the waiter.

She signed “Mrs. Craig Lowell,” looked at the key and wrote “2406,” and then “Add 15% tip.”

“Thank you, Mrs.
Lowell
,” the waiter said, and left them alone.

What the hell, Dorothy thought.

“Colonel Lowell, Sergeant Major,” he said to the telephone. “I’m in 2406 of the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta. You got anything for me?” There was a pause. “Yes, thank you,” he said, and chuckled. “I intended to have a good time.”

He dropped the phone in its cradle and motioned to her. She went and sat in his lap.

“What was that all about?” she asked.

“Do you really care?” he asked.

She kissed him, and after a moment she felt his hand on her leg, sliding up it under her slip.

(Three)
Point Clear, Alabama
26 June 1969

When Colonel Craig Lowell saw the pilot crawl out of the Hughes LOH-6 and walk toward Base Ops at Hurlbert Field on the Gulf Coast west of Eglin Air Force Base, he was genuinely surprised, furious, and a little sick. He knew the captain. The captain was just back from his third ’Nam tour. He still had the ’Nam look.

He was a tall, good-looking young officer, tanned and lean. There was an anticipatory smile on his face. And he walked with a jaunty step. He was good at what he did, and he knew it. And right now he was specially pleased with himself. He thought he was being really clever—and that he would be welcomed with open arms because of that.

Lowell had called the Aviation Board and asked them to send him a chopper. He had expected the pilot to be one of the warrant officers, or a young lieutenant. Not a captain, and certainly not
this
captain.

The captain pushed open the door to Base Ops and threw Lowell a snappy salute.

“Colonel Lowell,” he said. “How nice to see you again, Colonel. I have your aircraft, sir.”

Because the Air Force was watching, Lowell returned the salute.

“May I observe, sir, that the colonel looks a little beat?”

“I have been in the Army nearly as long as you are old,” Lowell said. “I am entitled to look beat.”

“That’s right, isn’t it?” the captain said, doing the arithmetic.

“Let’s go, Captain,” Lowell said.

“Yes, sir,” the captain said, and held open the door for Lowell to pass before him.

They walked back to the Hughes LOH-6, a small, single-rotor helicopter. On the day it had been certified for flight by the FAA the LOH-6 had set fourteen world records. It was, among other things, the fastest helicopter flying.

Lowell got in the copilot’s seat and fastened his shoulder harness. The captain climbed in the other side, strapped himself in, and reached for the master switch.

Lowell put out his hand and stopped him.

“What the
hell
are you doing here, Geoff?” he asked.

Captain Geoffrey Craig looked at Colonel Craig Lowell. His smile was not quite as self-satisfied as it had been a few moments earlier, but he was still smiling.

“Inasmuch as that remark was not preceded by ‘How’s Ursula and the kids?’ I presume that’s a Colonel Lowell, as opposed to Cousin Craig, interrogatory?”

“You bet your sweet ass it is,” Lowell said.

“Ursula and the boys are doing very nicely, thank you for asking,” Geoff said.

“Answer the goddamn question,” Lowell said, sharply.

“I was available when the mission came in,” Geoff said. “When I heard it was you, I took it.”

“That’s all?”

Geoff looked at him and hesitated a moment before replying.

“I thought maybe there would be a chance for a little chat,” he said.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Lowell said. “Let’s get it in the air, Geoff.”

“You want to drive?” Geoff asked.

“No. You drive,” Lowell said. He had been flying all day, and while the Chinook had a complete electro-hydraulic control system and was allegedly capable of reducing pilot effort to the minimum, it was still a heavy sonofabitch to fly, especially if you were one year shy of a quarter century’s service.

“I’ve got an hour thirty’s fuel aboard,” Geoff said. “Is that going to be enough.”

“You have a credit card?”

“Yeah. But I filed local, and you’re not supposed to charge gas if you file local.”

Despite everything else, Lowell was touched. Geoff had decided that his cousin had requested an “unofficial” (unauthorized) ride. So instead of having it down on paper, he had filed a local flight plan (“test” or “proficiency”) within the Fort Rucker immediate area.

“When you go back, say you got the wrong word,” Lowell said. “I’m authorized.”

“Sorry, Craig,” Geoff said. He smiled mischievously at Lowell. “I thought maybe it was a pussy mission.”

“Why would you think that?” Lowell asked.

“No particular reason,” Geoff said.

“I wish it was,” Lowell said, thinking that sounded more credible than a fervent denial. “No, it’s authorized. Call the board and tell them I said it was authorized.”

“Christ, and here I had visions of New Orleans,” the captain said.

“You’re out of luck,” Lowell said.

Geoff cranked it up.

“You say we’re authorized? You want me to file?”

“Just buzz west along the beach,” Lowell said.

“You care if I lay a little rank on them?”

“If you’ve got it, flaunt it,” Lowell said.

“Hurlbert, Army Chopper Two One,” Geoff said to his microphone. “In front of your Base Ops. Taxi and takeoff, VFR nap of the earth. I have a Code Six aboard.”

Hurlbert came right back: “Hurlbert clears Army Helicopter Two One for immediate takeoff from the parking area. There is a C-131 inbound, five miles out. The winds are negligible, the time is four-five past the hour, and the altimeter is two niner eight. Have a nice flight, Colonel, and hurry back to Hurlbert.”

“Two One, light on the skids,” Geoff said. The Hughes climbed smoothly to about fifty feet, with no more feeling of motion than in a good elevator. After swooping over the other parked aircraft, the main highway, and the beach, it turned west. Jesus, Lowell thought, he flies this thing as if it’s part of him. Well, he’s had a lot of practice, and it’s a lot easier when they’re not shooting at you.

“Bill Franklin sends regards,” Geoff said.

“Yeah, I thought maybe he would,” Lowell said. “How is he?”

“About as well as any man who learns on his return from ’Nam that his wife apparently went right from the maternity ward to some other fucker’s bed,” Geoff said bitterly. “And the bitch is trying to take him for everything he owns.”