purchase. Johnny had signed a power of attorney authorizing him to handle the deal.
And had promptly forgotten about the deal until his sister had telephoned, hysterical, furious, and, he suspected, drunk. After she delivered a ten-minute lecture about what an ungrateful sonofabitch he was, he finally understood that she had received a letter from Craig, Powell, Kenyon & Dawes, Investment Bankers, informing her that John S. Oliver, Jr., was exercising his right to purchase her share in Jack’s Truck Stop, for the amount she proposed, and enclosed please find a cashier’s check in the amount of $268,000.00.
Johnny had called Colonel Lowell.
“Mattingly found out the property’s worth a little more than four million, Johnny,” Lowell said. “So I told him to buy it for you, for—what did she offer?—a quarter of a million.”
“I don’t have $268,000,” Johnny said.
“The firm loaned it to you,” Lowell said. “That’s what we do, Johnny, we’re investment bankers. This was a very good deal for an investment banker. We knew our money was safe.”
In the end, his sister got to keep Jack’s Truck Stop, and Johnny deposited a certified check in the First National Bank of Ozark for $2,327,000.00.
With that kind of money, Liza argued, they could really build a life for themselves, if he would only get out of the goddamned army.
He found he couldn’t do that. He did not want to go into the real estate business, or buy a Ford dealership, or even a charter boat in the Florida Keys. He was a soldier. He was a good soldier. He liked being a soldier, and he knew that he would be miserable doing anything else.
Liza told him the decision was his, and it was either her and Allan, or the goddamn army.
Now she wouldn’t even talk to him on the telephone. It really hurt to know she was only seven miles away and wouldn’t talk to him.
On 1 January 1965, he would report to the Special Warfare Center at Bragg—new surroundings, new duties, and maybe the pain wouldn’t be as bad.
“Captain Oliver, sir,” Johnny Oliver said to the battered telephone at the end of the green linoleum bar in Annex #1.
“Major Ting, Oliver. I’m the AOD.”
“Yes, sir?” Oliver said.
“The tower just got a call from a civilian Cessna 310-H,” Major Ting said. “They’re thirty minutes out. They have a Code Seven aboard. No honors, but they request ground transportation.”
Major Ting obviously doesn’t know that I have been replaced as aide-de-camp to the commanding general.
A Code Seven, based on the pay grade, was a brigadier general. “No honors” meant the general didn’t want a band playing, or an officer of suitable—that is, equal or superior rank—to officially welcome him to Fort Rucker. All this Code Seven wanted was a staff car to take him to Ozark.
There was little question in Oliver’s mind who it was. It was Brigadier General “Red” Hanrahan, Commandant of the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy School for Special Warfare at Fort Bragg. Oliver was sure that it was Red Hanrahan for a couple of reasons. When he’d seen him at Bragg the week before, when he’d gone there with Father Lunsford, Hanrahan had told him he would be coming to Rucker on Monday anyway, to deliver a briefing on Army participation in Operation Dragon Rouge to Rucker officers.
More important, he was arriving in a 310-H. That almost certainly meant Lieutenant Colonel Craig W. Lowell’s 310-H.
But it never hurt to check.
“Sir, have you got a name for the O-7?”
“General Hanrahan,” Major Ting said.
“Thank you very much for calling me, sir,” Oliver said. “I appreciate it.”
It was not the time to mention that he was no longer aide-de-camp to General Bellmon, and that calls like this should be directed to his replacement.
“My pleasure,” Major Ting said, and hung up.
Captain Johnny Oliver, with visible reluctance, pushed his beer can away from him, then made several calls, dialing each number from memory.
He called the general’s driver and told him to get a one-star plate, and the staff car, and to pick him up at Annex #1.
He called the billeting office and told them to make sure the Magnolia House, the VIP quarters, were set up and prepared to receive Brigadier General Hanrahan and a party of God-only-knew.
He called the main club, and told them to be prepared to reset the head table for General Bellmon’s dinner party on short notice; there would probably be Brigadier General Hanrahan and who else God-only-knew.
Finally, he called Quarters #1. Mrs. Bellmon answered.