Mrs. Jacques Portet, although she and her husband had retired early—actually, very early—the previous evening, had not actually gotten much sleep during the night, and she was therefore annoyed when the door chimes sounded, and even more annoyed when she glanced at the bedside clock and saw that it was only quarter to seven.
She nudged her husband, who, like her, was sleeping au naturel, because he could, she reasoned, more quickly slip on a pair of pajama bottoms and answer the door than she could modestly cover her nakedness and do the same thing.
His groan of protest, which was almost a groan of agony, made her regret her selfishness. He was exhausted. He had every right to be exhausted. Not only had he flown all over the Congo when he was there, but he had spent twenty-eight hours returning from the Congo and then, on arrival the previous late afternoon and evening, expended considerable energy on the nuptial couch.
She pushed herself upright and then out of bed, finally found her bathrobe, which had somehow wound up under the bed, and walked through the living room to the door.
There was a small lens through which she could examine callers. She peered through it, deciding as she did that it would have to be Jesus Christ himself out there before she opened the door this time of morning, thereby depriving herself of rest—and very possibly, some physical manifestation of husbandly affection—in her bed.
It was not Jesus Christ. It was instead Major George Washington Lunsford, in a class A uniform.
She opened the door anyway.
“Whatever it is, no,” Marjorie Bellmon Portet said.
“We have a small problem,” Major Lunsford said.
“You have a small problem,” Marjorie said. “Jack’s exhausted. I won’t wake him up.”
“Johnny is supposed to fly me to Rucker this morning,” Father said. “Last night, he drank about a quart of scotch. He’s still drunk.”
Johnny was obviously Major Lunsford’s roommate, Captain John S. Oliver, Norwich ’59, and former aide-de-camp to Major General Robert Bellmon. Mrs. Portet had never seen him drunk, or heard of him being drunk.
“What happened?” Marjorie asked.
“When he called the Goddamn Widow to tell her he was going to be at Rucker, she hung up on him.”
“Goddamn her,” Marjorie said as she opened the door wide enough for him to enter.
“Was Jack drinking last night?” Father asked, quietly.
“I had a bottle of champagne on ice when he got here,” Marjorie said. “We drank that early. That’s all.”
“I’m sorry, Marjorie,” Lunsford said.
“Where’s Johnny?” Marjorie asked.
“In the apartment. I called Doubting Thomas. He’s on his way from Mackall to baby-sit him.”
“You weren’t with him?”
“I thought he was over that woman,” Lunsford said. “If I’d known he’d called her, I would have stayed home.”
“Put some coffee on, you can take a Thermos with you,” Marjorie said. “I’ll wake Jack up and get him showered.”
“I’d like to say we’ll be back tonight,” Father said. “But it will probably be tomorrow or the day after.”
“No problem,” Marjorie said. “This will give me a chance to go back to Sears Roebuck and count the tools in the hardware department again.”
“Is it that bad for you?” he asked.
“Yeah, it is,” Marjorie said. “You say you think you’re going to at least RON?”—Remain Over Night.
“I think we’ll have to.”
“Stay in the Daleville Inn,” she said. “Separate rooms.”
“You’re going to fly down?”
“If I can get on an airplane, I will. If I can’t, I’ll drive the Jag. Don’t tell Jack.”
“Okay.”
[ THREE ]
Base Operations
Cairns Army Airfield
Fort Rucker, Alabama
1115 23 January 1965
The parking space immediately before the Base Operations building is reserved for transient aircraft. Fort Rucker’s aircraft park elsewhere on the field. There are exceptions to every rule.
For example, when Captain Darrell J. Smythe, at the controls of a Grumman Mohawk, got on the horn and requested of the Cairns tower landing and taxi instructions: “Cairns, Army Six-oh -six, five miles out, landing and taxi, please,” he added another phrase: “I have a Code Seven aboard.”
The Cairns tower operator understood that there was a general officer in the Mohawk. In the Army rank structure, a second lieutenant is identified as an O-1, a first lieutenant as an O-2, and so on up to through the grades to O-10, which is the code for a full, four-star general. A Code Seven is a brigadier general.
“Army Six-oh-five, Cairns,” the Cairns tower replied, “you are number two to land on twenty-seven, behind the L-23 on final. The winds are negligible, the altimeter