will land at Cairns in about twenty minutes, in a Cessna 310-H.”
“That probably means Colonel Lowell,” Mrs. Bellmon responded.
“Yes, ma’am, I think so. I’ve called the club and Magnolia House and laid on the general’s car. They requested ground transportation to Ozark, but I figured I’d better cover all the bases.”
“You’re supposed to be retired, Johnny,” Barbara Bellmon said.
“My last hurrah,” Johnny said. “I thought it would be better to spring General Hanrahan and Colonel Lowell on Captain Hornsby slowly. Or at least one at a time.”
She laughed.
“Where are you?”
“At Annex One, with Bobby,” Oliver said, then winced. Bobby, who did not like to be called “Bobby,” was shamelessly eavesdropping on the conversation.
“We’ll see you at the club, then,” she said. “Thank you, Johnny. Again.”
“One last time,” he said, and hung up and turned to Bobby. “Finish your beer, Roberto, duty calls.”
Until now, Oliver hadn’t paid much attention to the weather; it was important only when he was going to fly, but when they heard the horn of the Chevrolet staff car bleating and went outside, he grew concerned. It was drizzling and cold, which meant the real possibility of wing ice, and the visibility and ceiling were probably down to next to nothing.
It was a ten-minute ride before the general’s driver pulled the nose of the Chevrolet into the parking space reserved for the commanding general at Base Operations.
“Come on, Bob,” Oliver said. “The only way they’re going to get into here is ILS. You ought to see that.”
They entered the Base Operations building through the rear door, walked through the lobby past the oil portrait of Major General Bogardus S. Cairns, a former tank commander who crashed to his death in his white H-13 two weeks after he’d pinned on his second star, and climbed an interior stairway to the ILS Room.
ILS (Instrument Landing System), which permits an aircraft to land through fog without any visual reference to the ground until moments before touchdown, requires three things, in about equal priority: a high-quality, precision radar, so that the precise location of the aircraft is known second by second; a highly skilled ILS controller, who interprets the position (speed, altitude, attitude, and rate of descent) of the landing aircraft in relation to the runway; and a pilot of high skill who can instantly respond to the controller’s directions with precision.
The controller, a plump, thirty-five-year-old sergeant first class, looked over and glared at them when they entered his preserve. They had no business there, but the aide-to-the-general is a more equal pig.
“Is that General Hanrahan’s aircraft?” Oliver asked.
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said impatiently. “He’s about five miles out.”
Oliver then remained silent as Cessna Six-oh-three was talked down. It was not very exciting. The controller told the pilot what to do, and the pilot did it. Johnny was a little disappointed. He was pleased, of course, that everything went smoothly, but it would have been more of an education for Bobby had there been terse, quick commands to change altitude, or direction, or even an excited order to break it off.
But there were no such commands. The first Cessna Six-oh-three was heard from was when Lieutenant Colonel Craig Lowell’s voice came over the speaker.
“We have the runway in sight, thank you very much, ILS.”
“My pleasure, sir,” the sergeant said.
“We probably would have done much better if we were sober,” Colonel Lowell’s voice said.
The sergeant laughed, and turned to them.
“You know the colonel, Captain?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Quite a guy,” the sergeant said. “Hell, that landing was textbook. Couldn’t have been any better.”
“We better go down and meet them,” Oliver said. “Thank you, Sergeant.”
They went down the stairwell, and then through the plate-glass doors leading to the transient ramp. As they pushed them open, the Cessna’s engines could be heard, and then it could be seen, taxiing from the active runway.
“With a little bit of luck, Bobby,” Oliver teased, “Sergeant Portet will have been given a ride over here by the general. Wouldn’t that be a nice surprise?”
“Shit!” Bobby said.
General Robert F. Bellmon was finally reconciled to having his daughter marry a common enlisted man. Second Lieutenant Bobby Bellmon was not similarly adjusted, or even resigned, to having Jack Portet, the EM who had been fucking his sister outside the bonds of holy matrimony, accepted into the Bellmon platoon of The Long Gray Line.
The Cessna taxied past them. Sergeant Jack Portet, smiling broadly, waved at them from the pilot’s seat.
“Well,” Oliver said, chuckling. “That explains that textbook ILS, doesn’t it, Bobby?”