“Woolworth, Woolworth, Birddog Three,” Geoff said into his microphone.
“Where the hell are you?” the tower operator replied.
That was not the standard response of a tower operator, but the tower operator in this case was not a tower operator but rather Major George Washington Lunsford, and Major Lunsford had been troubled over the past six, even seven hours over several things.
For one thing, no one had been able to establish radio contact with Outpost George, and Major Lunsford had been unable to establish contact with Colonel Jean-Baptiste Supo to report the situation.
The last time Major Lunsford had seen Colonel Supo was when, after they had dropped off the corpse of SFC Withers, Colonel Supo and Lieutenant Jacques Portet had taken off in the Beaver for Costermansville. Inasmuch as neither Colonel Supo nor Lieutenant Portet was in Costermansville, the possibility existed that they and the L-20 were down somewhere between Woolworth (Stanleyville) and Costermansville.
Further, although it was unlikely, the possibility that Outpost George had been overwhelmed again had to be considered. It was not possible to dispatch the reaction force to Outpost George, because the reaction force had already been dispatched to Outpost George, which opened the possibilities (a) that it had been ambushed after Major Lunsford had flown over it on Route 5 when it had been en route to Outpost George, or (b) that it had been overwhelmed after it reached Outpost George.
Under that circumstance, Major Lunsford had deemed it unwise to dispatch a reconnaissance team from either Outpost Fox or Outpost Item (the nearest outposts, on either side of George). Such reconnaissance teams would stand a high risk of ambush if, in fact, the reaction force had been overwhelmed before or after reaching Outpost George.
It would be wiser, Major Lunsford had decided, to wait until contact was established with Birddog Three (Lieutenant Craig), which, at Lunsford’s order, was engaged at overflying all the outposts to determine (a) how long it actually (as opposed to theoretically) took to fly from one to the next and, (b) to test and judge the efficiency of the ground-to-air communications thereof.
Birddog Three’s ETA at Woolworth had been 1630, opening the possibility that Birddog Three, now two hours and fifteen minutes overdue, was down somewhere, God only knew where.
If the reaction force had been overwhelmed, that would mean that it had been attacked by a superior force, which meant that everybody was now in a much larger ballgame, the ramifications of which Major Lunsford did not even wish to think about, but privately thought was going to be a three-star fucking mess.
In addition to which, of course, he had considered the possibility that he was going to have to be a notification team of one to tell Mrs. Jacques Portet that her husband was missing and to tell Mrs. Geoffrey Craig very much the same thing.
“I’m over the river, about ten minutes out. Will you light it up, please?”
“You sonofabitch!” Major Lunsford said, tossed the microphone to Spec7 Peters/Captain Weewili, and stormed down out of the control tower to see if he could find someone who could turn on the generator to power the runway lights without fucking that up, too.
“Birddog Three, Woolworth,” Captain Weewili called. “Roger your request for runway lights. They should be on by the time you get here. The winds are negligible, and you are cleared for a straight-in approach to Two-seven. Report when you have the lights in sight.”
“Roger, Woolworth.”
“And have we got a surprise for you!”
“I heard,” Lieutenant Craig replied.
Major George Washington Lunsford was waiting when Lieutenant Geoffrey Craig taxied the L-19 to the door of Hangar Two and shut it down.
“Where the fuck have you been, you sonofabitch?” he greeted him. “You’ve had everybody scared shitless.”
Lieutenant Craig knew Major Lunsford well enough to know that if he really had his ass in a crack, Major Lunsford’s greeting would have met the requirements of military courtesy and protocol in every minute detail. What he had here was a concerned friend.
“I tried to call,” he said. “All I can do is talk into the microphone. I can’t make the radio work.”
“What’s going on at Outpost George?”
“I just came from there. Aside from their shit-for-brains commo officer not having brought one—not-fucking-one— undead battery for their radios with them, they’re in pretty good shape. Doubting Thomas has tracked the Simbas about fifteen klicks into the bush, and asked for twenty shooters and a jeep to be sent to him. They’re on the way.