The Last Heroes (Men at War 1)

An insane idea!

‘‘Good night, Sarah,’’ he said, and leaned over to kiss her.

She avoided his mouth, but wrapped her arms around him. He was confused. And then, after a moment, she said:

‘‘Hung for a wolf as a sheep.’’

‘‘Jesus!’’

She just smiled—a sweet, trusting smile.

He opened the door and she followed him through it. He turned around and fastened the latch. He turned to face her.

‘‘Jesus Christ, you’re beautiful!’’

‘‘I’m glad you think so,’’ Sarah Child said. She met his eyes and then she pulled the cord of her bathrobe open and let it fall off her shoulders.

That, she thought, was easier to do than I thought it would be.

I was right, he thought, when I thought she wasn’t wearing much under the bathrobe. She had worn nothing under it.

‘‘Sarah, I . . .’’ he began. She shut him off.

‘‘Let’s not either of us say anything we might not feel like repeating in the morning,’’ Sarah said. She turned around and walked to the bed and slid under the sheets.

FOUR

Transient Officers’ Quarters Anacostia Naval Air Station Washington, D.C. 1645 Hours 16 June 1941

At 0815 that morning the admiral’s aide had handed Lieutenants (j.g.) Edwin Bitter and Richard Canidy an envelope containing tickets on the Pennsylvania Railroad from Washington, D.C., to New York, and a slip of paper on which two addresses were typed:

Commander G. H. Porter

Special Actions Section

BuPers Room 213 Temp. Building G-34

CAMCO

Suite 1745

Rockefeller Center

1230 Sixth Avenue

New York, New York

Then he drove them, in the admiral’s car, to Base Operations, where he waited to make sure nothing unforeseen would keep them from getting seats on the courier plane, an R4-D, the Navy version of the new Douglas DC-3 twin-engine airliner, which made an every-other-day round-robin flight from Washington to Key West, with stops at points of naval interest, including Pensacola, in between.

They landed at Anacostia a little after two, checked into the transient quarters, and then took a taxi to Temporary Building G-34, one of the buildings on the mall that had been built to provide temporary office space for the Navy during World War I.

It soon became apparent that Commander Porter knew only that higher authority had decided that Lieutenants Bitter and Canidy were to be honorably discharged for the convenience of the naval service—and as quickly as possible. Commander Porter was not aware, Canidy thought cynically, that the two of them had volunteered to sweep the Japanese from the skies over China in defense of Mom’s Apple Pie and the American Way of Life, and thus he had reasonably concluded that the reason they were being discharged—and as quickly as possible—was to spare the naval service the inconvenience of court-martialing them for having been caught with their hands in the till of the officers’ club, or in the pants of some brother officer’s wife.

Commander Porter therefore treated them with icy courtesy, according to the book, and informed them that while the paperwork was being prepared to effect their separation, they would undergo a complete physical examination at the naval hospital. It did not matter, Commander Porter told them, that they had six weeks before been certified as physically fit for aviation duty. That was an aviation physical; this was a separation physical.

When they went to the naval hospital, they were told that separation physicals were given at 0800 in the morning, and they should return then.

‘‘Look at the bright side, Eddie,’’ Canidy said as they came out of the naval hospital. ‘‘With a little bit of luck, we can get laid.’’