The Shooters (Presidential Agent 4)

"Yes, sir. It's a Blue Flight aircraft, Colonel. They always park here."

"Thank you, Sergeant."

"Yes, sir."

Blue Flight was the name assigned to a special function of the Aviation School's flight training program. If, for example, it was determined for some reason that a nonflying field-grade officer-sometimes a major, most often a lieutenant colonel-needed to learn how to fly, he was sent to Rucker and assigned to Blue Flight.

He-or she, as the case might be-was then subjected to what amounted to a cram course in flying.

This was not to suggest that the course of instruction was less thorough in any way than the regular flight training programs of the Aviation School. If anything, Blue Flight instruction-the best instructors were assigned temporarily to Blue Flight as needed-might just be a little better than that offered by the school.

As Colonel Edmonds thought of it, there were several factors driving the philosophy of Blue Flight instruction. High among them was the realization that it was in the Army's interest to send a senior officer student back as a fully qualified pilot to whatever assignment had necessitated that he or she become a pilot as quickly as possible.

Further, if the Army felt an officer in midcareer needed to be a pilot, it made little sense to send them to Rucker only to have them fail the course of instruction. With this in mind, Blue Flight students were tutored, rather than simply taught. It was in the Army's interest that they earn their wings.

While most Blue Flight students were majors or lieutenant colonels, there were exceptions at both ends of the rank hierarchy. Most of these officers were colonels, but there was-far less commonly-the occasional captain or even lieutenant.

In the case of the junior officers, they were most often aides-de-camp to general officers who were already qualified rotary-wing aviators. They were assigned to Blue Flight for transition into fixed-wing aircraft. It made sense to have an aide-de-camp who could fly his general in both a helicopter and in the C-12 Huron, a twin turboprop, used to fly senior officers around.

"Huron" was the Army's name for the Beechcraft Super King Air. It annoyed Colonel Edmonds that Army Aviators almost invariably called the aircraft the King Air rather than the Huron, but he couldn't do much about it except ensure that the term "King Air" never appeared in news stories emanating from his office.

Such a junior officer-this one a lieutenant, a general officer's aide-de-camp sent to Blue Flight for transition training into the C-12 Huron-was to be the subject of the story Colonel Edmonds planned to write today.

Colonel Edmonds was more than a little annoyed that he had had to dig up the story himself. He should have been told, not have had to hear a rumor and then run down the rumor.

He had happened to mention this to the post commander, when he suggested to the general that if he were to release a photograph of the general standing together with the lieutenant before a building named for the lieutenant's father, it would more than likely be printed widely and reflect well upon Army Aviation and the Army itself.

Two months before, Colonel Edmonds had thought he was onto another story, one just as good, perhaps, as the one he was onto today. That one, however, hadn't worked out.

What had happened was that Colonel Edmonds had seen a familiar name on the bronze dedicatory plaque of the building. He had inquired of Brigadier General Harold F. Wilson, deputy commander of the Army Aviation Center and Fort Rucker, if there was any connection between himself and Second Lieutenant H. F. Wilson, whose name was on the dedicatory plaque.

It had been too much to hope for, and asking General Wilson had been a mistake.

"Colonel, I have been asked that question many times before," the general had said. "I will tell you what I have told everyone else who's asked it: Don't ask it again, and whenever you hear that rumor someplace else, repeat this conversation of ours."

Obviously, General Wilson, himself a highly decorated Army Aviator, was anxious not to bask in the reflected glory of another hero who happened to have a similar name.

With that encounter with General Wilson in mind-and knowing the odds were that General Wilson would not be enthusiastic about what he had in mind-Colonel Edmonds had taken his idea directly to Major General Charles M. Augustus, Jr., the commanding general of the Army Aviation Center and Fort Rucker.

General Augustus, not very enthusiastically, agreed that it was a good idea, and told Edmonds to set it up. But he didn't respond to Edmonds's complaint that he had not been advised, as he should have been, that the lieutenant was a member of Blue Flight.

Edmonds further suspected that the Blue Flight people were either unaware of what the lieutenant was doing or didn't care.

When he called Blue Flight to ask that the lieutenant be directed to report to him at his office, in Class A uniform at 1300, they said that might be a little difficult, as the lieutenant was involved in a cross-country training flight in the Mohawk under simulated instrument conditions, and that he might be back at Cairns a little before noon, and then again he might not. No telling.

Like the C-12 Huron, the Grumman Mohawk also was a twin-turboprop aircraft, but not a light transport designed to move senior officers in comfort from one place to another. It was, instead, designed as an electronic surveillance aircraft, normally assigned to military intelligence units. The only people it carried were its two pilots.

The military intelligence connection gave it a certain elan with Army Aviators, as did the fact that it was the fastest airplane in the inventory. The pilots assigned to fly it were most often the more experienced ones.

So, Edmonds concluded, there was something extraordinary in a lieutenant being trained by Blue Flight to fly the Mohawk.

The only thing Colonel Edmonds could think of to explain the situation was that they might be using the Mohawk as an instrument flight training aircraft. Yet when he really thought some more about that, it didn't make sense.

He looked up at the sky and saw a triple-tailed Mohawk approaching, and he followed it through touchdown until he lost sight of it. And then suddenly there it was, taxiing up to the tarmac in front of Base Ops.

He remembered only then that it was said of the Mohawk that it could land on a dime. This was accomplished by reversing the propellers' pitch at the instant of touchdown-or a split second before.

Ground handlers laid ladders against the Mohawk's bulbous cockpit. The two men in the aircraft unbuckled their harnesses and climbed down and then started walking toward Base Operations.