He finished Wolters overall second in his class, rated outstanding, just behind an ace called A. A. DeWitt. More travel vouchers had them heading out together, over to Fort Rucker in Alabama, for another four months in advanced flight training.
‘Have I heard of this guy DeWitt?’ Reacher asked. ‘The name rings a bell.’
Conrad was following progress upside down.
‘Could be General DeWitt,’ he said. ‘He runs the Helicopter School back at Wolters now. That would be logical, right? I’ll check it out.’
He called direct to the storeroom and ordered up Major General A. A. DeWitt. Checked his watch as the phone went back down. ‘Should be faster, because the D section is nearer his desk than the H section. Unless the damn master sergeant interferes with him again.’
Reacher smiled briefly and rejoined Jodie thirty years in the past. Fort Rucker was the real thing, with brand-new frontline assault helicopters replacing the trainers. Bell UH-1 Iroquois, nicknamed Hueys. Big,
fierce machines, gas turbine engines, the unforgettable wop-wop-wop sound of a rotor blade forty-eight feet long and twenty-one inches wide. Young Victor Hobie had hurled one around the Alabama skies for seventeen long weeks, and then he passed out with credits and distinctions at the parade his father had photographed.
‘Three minutes forty seconds,’ Conrad whispered.
The runner was on his way in with the DeWitt jacket. Conrad leaned forward and took it from him. The guy saluted and went back out.
‘I can’t let you see this,’ Conrad said. ‘The general’s still a serving officer, right? But I’ll tell you if it’s the same DeWitt.’
He opened the file at the beginning and Reacher saw flashes of the same paper as in Hobie’s. Conrad skimmed and nodded. ‘Same DeWitt. He survived the jungle and stayed onboard afterward. Total helicopter nut. My guess is he’ll serve out his time down at Wolters.’
Reacher nodded. Glanced out of the window. The sun was falling away into afternoon.
‘You guys want some coffee?’ Conrad asked.
‘Great,’ Jodie said. Reacher nodded again.
Conrad picked up the phone and called the storeroom.
‘Coffee,’ he said. ‘That’s not a file. It’s a request for refreshment. Three cups, best china, OK?’
The runner brought it in on a silver tray, by which time Reacher was up at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, with Victor Hobie and his new pal A. A. DeWitt reporting to the 3rd Transportation Company of the First Cavalry Division. The two boys were there two weeks, long enough for the Army to add air-mobile to their
unit designation, and then to change it completely to Company B, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion. At the end of the two weeks, the renamed company sailed away from the Alabama coast, part of a seventeen-ship convoy on a thirty-one-day sea voyage to Long Mai Bay, twenty miles south of Qui Nhon and eleven thousand miles away in Vietnam.
Thirty-one days at sea is a whole month, and the company brass invented make-work to keep boredom at bay. Hobie’s file indicated he signed up for maintenance, which meant endlessly rinsing and greasing the disassembled Hueys to beat the salt air down in the ship’s hold. The note was approving, and Hobie stepped on to the Indochina beach a first lieutenant, after leaving the States a second, and thirteen months after joining the Army as an officer candidate. Merited promotions for a worthy recruit. One of the good kids. Reacher recalled Ed Steven’s words, in the hot sunshine outside the hardware store: very serious, very earnest, but not really a whole lot out of the ordinary.
‘Cream?’ Conrad asked.
Reacher shook his head, in time with Jodie.
‘Just black,’ they said, together.
Conrad poured and Reacher kept on reading. There were two variants of Huey in use at that time: one was a gunship, and the other was a transport chopper nicknamed a slick. Company B was assigned to fly slicks, servicing the First Cavalry’s battlefield transport needs. The slick was a transport hack, but it was not unarmed. It was a standard Huey, with the side doors stripped off and a heavy machine-gun hung on a bungee cord in each open doorway. There were a pilot and a co-pilot, two gunners, and a crew chief acting as an all-purpose engineer and mechanic. The slick could