Armageddon (74 page)

Despite his harsh appearance he was a pushover, with deep loyalties to persons other than Greek relatives. He supported the Church heavily and a string of charities from an orphanage to an animal shelter.

Scott Davidson was about his closest buddy. He had flown with the captain for nearly two years, and during the war Nick was there when Scott’s plane cracked up on a jungle runway.

With rough gentleness, Nick helped the captain undress and spilled him into bed. Scott clung to it, groaning, as the room started to whirl.

He folded Scott’s rumpled uniform, pinned a note on it for the houseboy to press it first thing in the morning, then set the alarm and lay in bed mulling over whether or not to call Cindy.

He wondered why bastards like Scott Davidson always tied up with nice girls like Cindy. Nevertheless it was something to watch him wheel and deal. Scott was a sort of alter ego.

“Hello, Cindy ... this is Nick. Sorry to call you so late.”

“Did you find him?”

“He’s at my place. I thought it would be better. I got to hustle him down to Hickam first thing in the morning.”

“Is he all right?”

“He’ll live.”

“Thanks, Nick.”

“Good night, Cindy.”

The next morning, with the help of thiamine chloride and charcoal pills, tomato juice and coffee, and in a rejuvenated uniform, Captain Scott Davidson was able to make a creditable appearance in the office of Colonel Garrett, commander of the 19th Troop Carrier at Hickam Field.

In thirty-six hours Scott would lead a group of eleven Skymasters as chief pilot on orders reading “extended training mission.” The flight plan was Hamilton Field in California to Westover, Massachusetts, to the Azores, and end at Rhein/Main in Frankfurt, Germany. Everything in the squadron would go; spare parts, office equipment, all crews, all personnel. Colonel Garrett said everyone should carry enough gear for two months “temporary duty” in Germany. He confided to Scott that twelve Skymasters of the 20th Troop Carrier Squadron at the Panama Canal and nine

Skymasters from the 54th in Alaska were getting ready for the trip to Germany. A big show seemed to be shaping up.

Scott had to get off his binge quickly. As chief pilot there were stacks of paperwork, briefings, meetings, inspections. Late in the afternoon all personnel were called and Colonel Garrett dropped the bomb with less than twenty-four hours to go. The meeting broke up with a stunned scrambling. Half the men were married, and others deeply committed to the area with apartments, cars, and furnishings. Once the shock set in, a breakneck scurrying ensued to salvage, say farewell, get the squadron ready.

Scott took a last look around the pleasant little studio apartment that stood along the Ala Wai Canal. There wasn’t much for him to take, a few shirts, a change of uniform, some toilet gear. Most of what was there, Cindy had brought and put the touches and frills that made it warm. Scott began to scribble a note saying good-by and asking her to sell his car, his only visible asset. He heard a key in the lock and his heart sank. He was hoping to get away before she came.

Cindy was still wearing the white uniform of a dental assistant. “I was passing by on the way home,” she said. “I saw your car parked out front.” She went to the phone, called her home, and told the housekeeper to go ahead with dinner for the children, she would be in late. And then she saw Scott’s handbag and uniform.

“You don’t have to leave,” she said. “I’ll settle for half a loaf.”

“I’m flying out tomorrow.”

She looked at him curiously.

“I was ordered out We’re going to Germany on that supply run to Berlin.”

“How long do you expect to be gone?”

Scott shrugged.

“And it all happened so fast you weren’t even given time to say good-by,” she said acidly.

“I’m chief pilot. The whole squadron goes. I’ve been over my eyeballs in work.”

“Too busy to phone.”

“I was just writing a note.”

“So long, Cindy. See you around, sometime,” she said with sarcasm. Those were the exact words he had planned.

“I want you to sell the car,” he said, “keep half ...”

“For practical considerations?”

Oh Christ, he thought, she’s simmering to a boil and getting good and bitchy. He was hoping to avoid a scene, but that seemed impossible. He sighed, now resigned to an unpleasant raking over. For some reason they all went in for the dramatic exit.

“I was hoping,” she said with her wound showing in every inflection, “that there was some feeling between us.”

“There was a lot.”

“I even thought, for a while, we had grown to mean something to each other. You were so good with the kids ...”

“Cindy, there were never any promises. You went into this like a big girl.”

“You have a lovely way of making a girl feel like a cheap whore.”

Here comes the self-condemnation bit, he thought. In the beginning a game was played. She wanted a husband, most of them did. He maneuvered to have her without commitment. Cindy knew what the score was. She had been divorced for five years. She’d been in other beds before, and she would again after he left.

Even though she accepts the rules in the beginning she has to begin to justify the affair by making herself believe it is more than an affair. She wants to feel needed. That is the face-saving stage. And then the initial excitement fades and she gets possessive and jealous. About that time another woman begins to look exciting.

“Don’t pretend you haven’t enjoyed it,” he said. “Why can’t we call it a day like nice people. We buried it last week, anyhow.”

She turned away from him to fight off tears. She’d be damned if she would cry in his presence.

The bastard had it all down to a science, even the farewell scene. She gained control of herself and looked at him. Lean, blue-eyed, curly hair. She had committed the cardinal sin of falling in love, and when she saw him slip away she compounded the sin by becoming desperate.

“So long, punk,” Cindy said.

“Cindy ...”

“Get out.”

The Skymaster lifted majestically over Mamala Bay, banked, gained altitude, and made a great horseshoe turn over Waikiki. Scott had a single fleeting thought for Cindy as he looked out of the window. By the time they passed over Diamond Head, he blew a long breath of relief. The orders had come just in time. Soon there was nothing below but blue water.

Scott’s copilot and friend of years, Stan Kitchek, had been glaring at him all morning. They barely exchanged a word beyond the official language of the checks. Stan switched off the radio to the intercom.

“You’re a no good son of a bitch,” he said to Scott.

Scott didn’t answer.

“I went over to say good-by last night. You couldn’t even spend the last night with her? You couldn’t even make a little game like you were sorry to go? She was crying her heart out. You’re a no good son of a bitch.”

“Fly the goddamned plane,” he snapped, “I’m going to sack out.”

He wrestled out of the seat and started for the makeshift bunk at the back of the cabin. Nick Papas’ big square frame blocked his way.

“All right, Nick, I didn’t beat her.”

“You should of, it would have been better.”

“Don’t kid yourself. There’ll be somebody else in the sack with her in a week.”

“You’re a prick ... Captain ... sir ...”

Scott took the cigar out of Nick’s teeth and stamped on it “No goddamned cigar smoking in the cabin.”

Scott shoved past him angrily, curtained himself in the bunk. Soon, he thought, the sweet music of the engines would sing him to sleep and he could forget. Everybody’s pissed at me ... Cindy ... Stan ... Nick ... half the squadron. Nobody can stand to see a happy bachelor escape.

The music of the engines did not work. Scott squirmed, bunched his jacket beneath his head. Once he had gotten hooked and it ended in disaster. What do women want, disaster? I’m doing them a favor by kissing them off.

Scott Welton Davidson, a son of Norfolk, Virginia. From the beginning, Scott had it his way. A comfortable home and too much doting. He was a three-letter athlete at Matthew Fontaine Maury High School and touted as one of the best in the state.

It was easy to smile his way through. He carried it out of Norfolk to William and Mary College where coeds adored him. The studies were easy, the girls were easy, the games on the field were easy.

Scott was among the first to enlist when the war started and one of the first in all of Virginia to come home on leave with flyer’s wings on his chest and new officer’s bars on his shoulders. Merely another chapter in the success story.

In that strange crush of war, furloughs, sentiment, Barbara Lundy somehow managed to win out over the competition. The Queen of the Chesapeake Festival, the senior class president, was in many ways Scott’s female counterpart.

Scott and Barbara. New flyer’s wings, big war, and lots of patriotic fever ... new wife.

It was a picture-book marriage of the All American Boy to the All American Girl. Norfolk was the proudest city in the country. It was a scene to sell War Bonds.

No one in Norfolk was really surprised when Scott Davidson became the first Virginia ace of World War II. In a dogfight over Bougaineville he shot down three Jap Zeros in a single day to bring his tally to seven.

And one day, Barbara received the dreaded telegram:

YOUR HUSBAND HAS BEEN WOUNDED IN ACTION.

Scott’s squadron had been rammed in one of those crazy last-ditch suicide orgies. Both he and his craft were badly torn up, but he managed to nurse it to a belly landing on a New Guinea airstrip. Nick Papas was one of those who pulled him out of the ship before it exploded.

A Red Cross Girl in Australia wrote for him, “Don’t worry honey, it was only a scratch.”

At the age of twenty-three Scott Davidson refused to believe the big lark of life was over. In a hospital in Australia, identified to Barbara only by a mysterious APO number, he fought to a remarkable recovery.

It was disappointing not to be able to get back into fighters, but the big slow transports of the ATC had their compensations. He could move around to a number of civilized places where he was able to break marriage vows he never intended to keep in the first place.

As a flyer he became enthralled with the precision-flying of four engines and learned to love his new home in the clouds. He was tried time and again as a squadron commander but Scott had no mind for turning in reports on time or taking the responsibility for other men. He just wanted to fly.... And then, one day, the war was over.

Scott returned to Norfolk, bemedaled, to accept the latest chapter of glory, the worship of the returning war hero.

He weighed a number of offers. In those days it was good to have Scott’s name in your business.

He made a vague pass at reorientation to civilian life. Soon he left his young wife confused and weeping by his strange, morose behavior. Scott was still out there, maybe flying over a nameless island, shooting, drinking, gambling, singing ... loving. After her naive desperation passed, she saw a stranger who looked not at her, but through her. The humiliations piled until she had no choice.

“You’re a spoiled little boy. You’ve had it all your own way all your life. You can’t love anyone because you love yourself too much.”

Scott took it like a gentleman and with a sense of relief that he would soon be free of this trap. And all the while Barbara was cutting their ties, she loved him.

“You haven’t got the courage to live in this world and take your share of its responsibilities and its bitterness. You think you can go on living in the clouds, but you’re fooling yourself. One day life is going to catch up with you and you’ll crash harder than you did on that jungle airstrip and when you do there will be a lot of people whose hearts you have broken standing on the side lines and cheering.”

Scott justified the final phase with Barbara by saying he was a lousy husband and she deserved better.

Scott flew off with his infectious smile and easy way, seeking the thrill of new conquests, and he left a trail of damned fool women like Cindy who thought for a moment the wings of the eagle could be clipped.

Chapter Thirteen

S
COTT CUT ENGINES AT
the hardstand at Rhein/Main and growled for Nick and Stan to secure the craft. He was weary. He stretched, looked forward to a hot soaking tub, securing a three-day pass, and shaking down Frankfurt for quail.

As the last craft of the squadron cut engines, a burst of activity erupted. The planes were engulfed by ten-wheel army trailers whose crews began pulling out the cargo; first sergeants assembled the squadron personnel on the apron, and maintenance men queried each captain on the condition of his ship.

Colonel Matt Beck, head of Operations and chief pilot on Stonebraker’s staff, met Scott at the bottom of the ladder.

“Would you come over to Operations with me, Captain,” he said. “We want to run down the personnel and condition of the craft.”

“Excuse me, Colonel ... what’s the fire?”

“These ships will be worked on tonight and stripped of certain components. They’ll be flying cargo to Berlin tomorrow.”

“We’re beat, sir ...”

“You’ll bed down on the field tonight and be ready to fly tomorrow.’’

Scott’s bath and the great treat that lay in store for German womanhood went up in smoke. He got into Colonel Beck’s jeep, drove down the row of Skymasters.

The first thing Scott saw of Rhein/Main was a coal dump fifteen feet high covering an acre of land, and a field of antennas that covered another acre. He had never seen anything like it. Bustle was everywhere. Huts were being hammered together for enlisted personnel like a Gold Rush boom town. Maintenance docks, hangars, warehouses, fire stations were being erected; roads were being built on a base of mud. They passed an immense park of the transportation corps jammed with newly arrived trucks and trailers. The sign read:
24TH TRANSPORTATION TRUCK BATTALION, UNITED STATES ARMY.
Negro soldiers were shaking them down.

Across the road, Colonel Beck pointed to a small city of displaced persons who were the laborers. The movement, the gray dinginess, the mud that encased the entire field, the temporary structures all reminded Scott of wartime. Rhein/ Main was a far cry from the neat lawns and hedges of Hickam Field.