Here's the most intimate look at a military installation ever printed. Fictional, you say? Perhaps, but this sparkling, spicy tour of Joshua Tree Air Force Base is sure to keep your enjoyment as high as the stratosphere-reaching aces who bring their planes down to really take off-on booze and babes!
Here's a witty look at our defenders of the air, in their own slap-dash manner, which unerringly reveals that the best strategies of all are still played on the sizzling sheets of a motel bed or in a parked car.
CHAPTER ONE
The lonesomest, the bitterest, the sex-hungriest bastard in all these United States was First Lieutenant James B. Cross, U.S. Air Force, on that unhappy day in mid-August, 1962.
I know, because I have the misfortune to be 1st Lt. James B., etc. Just 15 days before this gruesome date I had me a shack in Waikiki with a genuine hula girl to go with it.
I was drawing flying pay and Kaniau had her salary as a belly twister in a tourist trap. We pooled our checks to go Dutch treat on expenses and lived it up in style.
Then some fly-brained idiot in personnel assignment at the Pentagon put my round peg in the squarest hole he could find in the entire U.S. Air Force...." 1st Lt. James B. Cross, USAF, will proceed on or about August I, 1962 to Joshua Tree Air Force Base, Calif...."
This hole turned out to be in the high desert ten thousand miles from nowhere, so damned far from civilization it seemed like another world.
I pulled up at the Bachelor Officer's Quarters about six in the evening. I was so depressed I just sat there staring dully at the misshapen Joshua tree that twisted its ugly form up against the darkening sky. Its spiney, cruel shape reminded me of the ill-begotten son of a bitch who picked my name for this miserable assignment.
"Going to the Club?" a cheerful voice interrupted my self pity.
I looked around. I saw a first class jerk. A first looie like me, but the silver bars was so new you knew he hadn't left his shavetail days too far behind. He had that clean cut, all-American boy look. The sort of thing I detested. On top of that, he had a grin on his face. I knew that anybody who could smile in a dump like this was a complete idiot.
"Club?" he asked again.
"I'd like to use one on any jerk brainless enough to smile while within the boundaries of Joshua Tree Air Force Base," I said.
He grinned a little bigger. "Newcomer huh?"
"How did you guess?"
"You got the attitude. But don't take it so hard, chum. The place isn't as bad as it seems."
"I can see where perverts, worn-out old men, and castrates would just love these wide open spaces," I said.
That just about tore up this splendid example of a defender of our country. He leaned against my nice new-and far from paid for-T-Bird, and laughed until he had tears in his eyes.
"I'm a wit," I said sarcastically, "and anybody who would laugh so hard is half that. Stop splatering your tears on the car finish. They must be acid."
"No hard feelings, friend."
"How could you have any in this spot?"
"I believe we have completely misunderstood each other. I was referring to your personal feelings."
"So was I. Some very personal feelings."
"Oh, let it lay-Oops! Sorry I said that. With your filthy mind you'd make something obsence of it, too. My friend-"
He stopped laughing and looked at me somewhat solemnly. His face was that pretty-boy type which women go for, but which I mortally hate because too many jerks with that kind of faces ran off with bed-loving babes I wanted to make myself.
"Chum," he said, "you got one hell of a lot to learn. Once I was an uneducated jerk like you. I remember it as if it were yesterday! I sat in an old jalopy right where you are parked and cursed the fate that sent me to what I thought was a sexless wilderness. Now that am so much wiser I know that kind Providence invented the institution of marriage so that a man would not be lonely."
"As far as I am concerned," said, "marriage is the last resort of the feebleminded."
"Now don't say that?" he protested. "If it wasn't for marriage, there would be no pretty wives at Joshua Tree AFB to console lonely bachelors like me-and-well, yes-like you."
"Any man with a wife in this hole, even if she was homely as a mule, would stand guard over her. Your own private stock this far from civilization must be a treasure untold."
"As I said," he retorted. "You are uneducated. But that can be remedied. Why don't we step up to the club? You buy me a drink and I'll start your education in sexual life at Joshua."
I looked at him sharply. I had already formed my idea of what sexual life in Joshua consisted of. He didn't look the type, but I knew from experience you could never tell.
He got under my skin, but I was so damned lonesome, I figured what the hell? I'd have a drink with him. Then if he was what I thought, I'd take him out in back of the club and knock his damn teeth down his throat.
He climbed in, giving the car a sort of snotty appraisal.
"Some buggy," he said.
"I like it."
"Me, I like something not quite so conspicuous," he said. "When you take a girl to a motel, the attendant remembers a car like this. I like some ordinary heap. Nobody remembers it."
When I didn't reply, he shut up while I drove up the hill to the Officer's Club.
I parked and we cut across the lawn. A woman was coming through the club lobby. I could see her through the double glass doors. We stepped back while a club attendant opened the door for her.
The first impression I got was that her dress was two full sizes too small. She was poured in it, and the brilliant red cloth revealed the kind of body every traveler hopes vainly to see coming through the door after he tell the bellhop to send up a broad. She had an ordinarily pretty face, but that body-if it was real-was dream stuff.
She turned her head suddenly as she went by. Our eyes met. It was only a second. I stared after her. Sex heat, too long banked, flamed up. I could feel it scorching.
She climbed into a white Cadillac. The tight red skirt flew up as she literally threw herself into the seat. I caught a glimpse of a maddening expanse of white flesh between the tops of her sheer nylons and a frilly row of black lace that trimmed panties as red as her daring skirt. A young girl who looked like her was in the back.
The door slammed, shuting off the vision. I turned to my companion.
"Is that real?" I said.
He looked at me oddly. "Too damn real," he said rather sadly. "Who is she?"
"Not 'who,' chum," he said, his overly cheerful manner suddenly deserting him. "What is the word."
"Okay, what is that?"
"That, chum, is-to quote every Joshua male over puberty and under senility-The Sex Machine."
"She looks it!"
"But every coin has two sides. The other side of her-to quote every Joshua female with either a husband or a boy friend-is a whorish bitch."
"I suppose something like that is tied in holy matrimony," I said. "Things like that don't run loose for long."
"That, chum, is the Colonel's Lady. The beloved souse of our glorious leader, Edgar B. Marstaff, Col., USAF, Commanding."
"Oh!" said. "You mean spouse."
"You heard me correctly the first time."
"Well! Anyway her position as First Lady of Joshua automatically removes her from my class."
"Come on," he said. "The bar's over here. As to your silly observation, I can only repeat: you are sexually uneducated, Joshualy speaking."
The bar was a dump. The mirror needed resilvering. The plastic on the stools was cracked. The walls could have stood a new coat of paint. With less than 200 officers on the base, the club obviously was hurting for customers.
Two couples were bellying up to the bar as we walked in. All four were pie-eyed. One of the men, a paunchy wreck with graying hair, was leaning on his elbows staring tearfully at a half-emptied shot glass. The woman beside him gave his slack face a contemptuous glance and said to the bartender:
"Another martini."
Her voice was a mixture of frustrated world-weariness that matched her face.
The way she was perched on the stool stretched her tight skirt over her hips in a revealing manner. It gave definite promise of providing a lively time for any man who could shake her out of that damn-life-anyway attitude.
My companion and I picked up a couple of drinks at the bar and retreated to a table against the wall. I nodded toward the woman.
"Is that her husband?" I asked.
"The gentleman is our brother officer, Lt. Col. Phil Vannel. The lady-and don't make any cracks for she's as much a lady as he is a gentleman-is the gracious Mrs. Vannel. Their peers, on the opposite side of them are Lt. Col. and Mrs. Stuart Signet."
Colonel Signet seemed as interesting in the ravishing rump of Mrs. Vannel as I was. He had leaned an elbow on the bar and was almost panting. His wife was staring at the bartender with a hungry look so she did not notice the attention her husband was paying to the seat of Mrs. Vannel's major attraction.
The bartender brought the martini to Vanessa Vannel. Lois Signet's eyes followed him. Vanessa picked up the liquor.
Signet suddenly tore his eyes from her rounded buttocks.
"No!" he said suddenly. "You gotta stir the thing first. Like this!"
He was on her left. He reached his hand completely around her, sliding his open palm across her right breast as he reached for the toothpick anchored in the olive in her drink. That breast-if it wasn't aided and abetted by foam rubber gadgets-was something to see.
She held the drink still half way to her scarlet-splashed mouth. The colonel stirred it rapidly. At the same time his forearm was rubbing circles against her breast.
She turned her body slightly so the friction was against the nipple. Her face stared dreamily into the back mirror. She no longer had that world-weary expression.
"Your sexual education is now beginning," my companion's voice interrupted some scorching thought running through my mind.
I suddenly realized I didn't even know his name. I started to ask, but at that moment Lois Signet turned to pick up her own drink. She caught a glimpse of her husband's breast massaging in the mirror's reflection.
"You chippie chasing sonofabitch!" she squalled.
Signet jumped back, losing his seat on the stool. He crashed to the floor.
His wife whirled around and threw the contents of her drink in Vanessa's face. Mrs. Vannel fell back against her husband, squalling like a suddenly frightened baby.
"I'm not going to tell you again, you cheap floozie!" Lois cried. "That undersexed pea-brain isn't man enough to take care of both of us. What little he's got it mine! If I ever catch you rubbing those dime store bubbies against him again, I'll scratch your damned eyes out!"
I was fascinated by an ice cube that fell into the deep valley between Vanessa's breasts. I honestly expected to hear it sizzle and see steam rise.
When she fell back the martini was upset and the lip of the glass broken. She jerked it up and tried to jam the pagged edges into Lois's face.
The other woman ducked the vicious blow. She got her hands in Vanessa's hair. They weaved and fell on top of Colonel Signet.
Vannel sat staring into his half empty drink, oblivious of the commotion behind him.
Lois tried to jab the broken glass in Vanessa's face. Both women were panting and groaning like nymphomaniacs in heat as they struggled.
Getting up hurriedly I said, "They're going to kill each other!"
My companion caught my arm. "Keep out of it!" he said quickly. "You'll only get in trouble."
They broke apart and backed off. Uneasily I sat back down. Signet got to his feet. He was weaving so badly he could scarcely stand. He leaned heavily against the bar for support.
Lois had dropped the glass, but she wasn't through. She grabbed one of the bar stools and shoved it into Vanessa. The Vannel woman was too drunk to take the blow. She fell. Her dress flew up around her waist, exposing the fact that she wore obsolutely nothing underneath the sexy dress.
She was dazed by the fall and lay there, her legs spraddled obscenely. Lois ran to her. Horrified I saw her raise her foot to jam her spiked shoe heel into Vanessa's stomach.
I was almost too late. I barely got a grip on her arm and swung the berserk bitch around. As it were, the sharp shoe heel dragged a red welt across the fallen woman's creamy thigh.
Lois tried to jerk away from me. The furious way she twisted threw us both back against the bar. I tried to grab her hands.
Then something hard slammed me against the head. It was a punch thrown by her husband. He was nearly dead drunk, but he packed a wallop. I stumbled and fell.
He stood over me with his fists clinched. "You tried to rape my wife!" he said thickly. "You tried to rape her!"
I scrambled up, expectly dodging another swing he threw at me. I looked around for the lieutenant I came in with. He kept his seat-which proved that he was a hell of a lot smarter than I was. I wished fervently I'd taken his advice and stayed out of this mess.
"Look, Colonel," I said hastily to Signet. "You got it all wrong. I was just-"
"Just trying to rape her!" he snarled. "I'm going to tie a knot in your rod!"
He started toward me. Lieutenants-smart ones anyway-don't hit colonels regardless of the provocation. I backtracked before his determined advance. He swung and missed.
My foot hit against Vanessa who had gone off into a drunken slumber. I fell over her. Signet fell over both of us. I tried to scramble up. He threw his arms around my knees. I fell, and he got a bear hug around my body that I couldn't break. He tried to jam his knee into my groin. I struggled violently, trying to break loose before he ruined me for life.
"What's going on here?" a harsh, querulous voice said.
Signet twisted around. His grip loosened on me. He got up and faced the bleak-faced full colonel who stood in the doorway glaring at us.
Signet's face twisted unpleasantly. I could tell he both hated and feared the colonel.
"What the hell is this?" the colonel said again. He shifted his cold stare from Signet to me.
"Nothing," Signet mumbled.
"We accidentally stumbled over each other, sir," I said quickly.
The colonel looked at the woman stretched out on the floor. Her dress was still up around her waist. He seemed fascinated. His hand came up in a nervous gesture and fumbled at his close-cropped gray moustache.
"Her, too?" he said. "She stumbled with you?"
I stared to say, "Yes, sir," then realized how stupid it would sound. Finally geting smart, I kept my mouth shut. I glanced around at her husband. He was still staring into his half-empty glass. The man hadn't moved an inch since I came into the room.
"She's drunk! Soggily, bitchily drunk!" Lois Signet put in.
The accusation sounded funny as hell coming from someone who had to lean against the bar to keep from falling herself.
The colonel turned to glare at the unconscious woman's husband.
"Don't go blaming Phil," Lois Signet said. Her drunken face twisted with hateful malice. "A man-any man-should not be blamed because his wife is a bitch he isn't man enough to handle!"
Blood rushed to the colonel's face. I held my breath waiting for the explosion. He controlled himself, but the look he gave smirking Lois Signet was murderous.
It would have been obvious to a blind idiot that he took a dirty dig at the colonel in her remark about a man who couldn't control a woman.
The colonel turned to the bartender. "Call the club officer," he snapped in a pretty good imitation of a military manner. "Have him get someone to take her out of here," he said.
"Yes, Colonel Marstaff," the bartender said.
I looked at the colonel with more interest now. Partly because I recognized the name as that of the base commander, and partly because he was the husband of that Sex Machine who brushed by me as I came in the club.
"Uh-" Marstaff began. Then he paused, staring down at the stretch of bare skin between the tops of Vanessa Vannel's sheer nylon stockings and the hem of her dress which was raised almost to her navel.
"I suppose," he said slowly, "Phil is too far gone to drive her home. Put her in my staff car. I can do that much for a brother officer."
The way he kept fingering his moustache and staring at Vanessa's nakedness made me a little uneasy about how far he intended to help out Phil Vannel.
Signet had moved back against the bar. His own face flushed angrily at the way the colonel was ogling Vanessa's nakedness. He was jealous, and his wife seemed to take delight in his frustration.
Colonel Marstaff kept staring at Vanessa until the nervous club officer brought four waiters to carry her away.
Then he gave me a hard stare. "Do I know you?" he said.
"No, sir," I replied. "I've just reported in, sir. Lieutenant James Cross."
"Your face looks familiar. Have I served with you before?"
"No, sir," I said. "You may be thinking of my father. I'm supposed to look a lot like he did. He was General Cross. Perhaps you knew him, sir."
"Old 'Double' Cross?" Marstaff said, smiling grimly. "Hell, everyone over 40 served at least one sentence under him."
"Well," I said, "that puts us in pretty much the sure what to say. It was too damn plain that my new CO. had no use for my father. I just hoped the dislike wouldn't rub off on me.
"You beloved father gave me the poorest OER I ever got in my life," Marstaff said. "That rating kept me from being promoted during the war. It set me back six years. I'd be a general now except for that."
"Well," I said, "that puts us in prety much the same dog house, colonel. Dad doesn't think much of me either. I guess that shows how wrong the Old Man was."
Marstaff smiled grimly. "On the contrary, 'Double' Cross was an excellent judge of men. I wasn't worth a damn and got what I deserved. I suspect the same applies to you, lieutenant!"
There isn't much a poor old First John can say to something like that, so I kept my mouth shut while I silently damned the personnel bastard who picked me for this miserable assignment.
Another officer walked in at that moment. Colonel Marstaff turned to him. "Jim," he said. "What kind of assignment do we have for the son of my old enemy 'Double' Cross?'
The officer paused and put out his hand to me. I was surprised. He was the first person who offered to shake hands since I arrived at Joshua Tree Air Force Base.
"I'm Colonel Hunter, Personnel Chief," he said. "He's a test pilot type, Ed. He'll be assigned to Stu Signet's group."
I felt like somebody had put his foot in my rear.
I turned to look at the man I had been fighting because he drunkenly accused me of trying to rape his wife.
He glared back at me, his bitter, drunken face mirroring as intense a dislike a man can have for another.
All I could do was hope Lt. Colonel Stuart Signet would feel better about the whole thing after he sobered up and I reported in the morning to work for him.
But somehow, sizing him up, I doubted that he would. He looked like the type of bastard who would hold a grudge forever.
I could just see him shoving off every crap detail he had right on the broad shoulders of that miserable peon, 1st. Lt. James B. Cross, the man both God and the Air Force had forsaken.
CHAPTER TWO
I got out of there as quickly as I could, my brother officer-the one who so kindly took me to the club-had sneaked out unobserved during the fracas.
I found the coward in the lobby. He grabbed my arm. "Let's get something to eat before the place gets crowded."
"Thanks for the help you gave me in there," I said sarcastically.
"I gave you some good sound advice to mind your own business. But you were too stupid to listen to me," he said, looking aggrieved. "Fools rush in where wise men fear to tread, as my dear old Granny used to say. I was the wise man. There's no point breaking up our beautiful friendship by pointing out who the fool was."
"You are a louse just the same," I said.
I didn't like his damn smart alec manner worth a damn, but I wanted to know something about the mess I'd gotten myself into. The way I figured it, I was in for a lot of trouble, and I wanted to know what I could do about it. A vindictive commander can make life miserable for a junior officer.
"I'm Jim Cross," I said as we took a seat at a table in the dining hall.
"And I admit being Philip-with one L-L. Phillips-with two L's. I hope you have them straight."
"Hell has two L's in it too," I said sourly. "And that's where I wish you were. What gives with this screwy setup?"
"Screwy is right," he said, looking serious. "I suppose you've been briefed on our mission. It is testing certain secret weapons which can't be handled at places like Edwards, Vandenberg, and those places. Because of the nature of the work they built this place then dozen miles from nowhere. It's so dreary, so boring, so godawfully miserable that there's nothing to do but work during the day, and drink and try to make your brother officer's wife at night."
"That deal in the bar," I said. "What the hell gives there? Does Marstaff put up with that kind of crap? The last base I was at, why the Old Man would have somebody's fanny on his trophy wall if anything one tenth that wild went on in the club."
"You are not where you were at," Philip L. Phillips said. "You have been dropped in the middle of the hardest drinking, hardest sexing outfit in the U.S. military service. You are a litle lamb among the wolves, as Granny was won't to say."
"I can hold my own in either of those categories," I said.
"Even I-who combines the thirst of a Bacchus with the sexuality of a goat-am no match for these madmen and madder women. I look on sex and liquor as life's two greatest pleasures. These bitches and bastards go at both like hopheads hooked on heroin. They don't seem to get one bit of pleasure out of it, but they have to keep going to avoid cold turkey shakes."
"Crap like this can't go on. Word will get back to Washington and the ceiling will fall in on Marstaff."
Philip blew a lazy smoke ring. Watching me closely I noticed a tautness about him I had not seen before. Suddenly I had the impression he was badly keyed up. The flip manner he affected was just a coverup for a badly disturbed young man.
I felt an uneasy prickling of gooseflesh along my back. I wondered if I had stumbled into a nuthouse the Air Force secretly maintained in the desert. I had not seen a normal person here yet.
"The ceiling has already fallen in on Marstaff," he said at last. "He was mixed up in a very shady deal concerning a tailoring concession in the Base Exchange at his last command. He would have been dismissed from the service except his wife-that's the Sex Machine-made a fast trip to Washington. There was a horny old bastard up there she'd been sleeping with for years. He's got more stars on his shoulders than they got in heaven. He got Marstaff out of his mess. Then he was transferred here to get him away from civilization until the scandal quiets down."
Suddenly I felt that cold chill again. I had thought Mrs. Marstaff looked familiar. Suddenly I remembered where I had seen her. It was outside the Army and Navy Club in Washington. There had been a four star general with her. I saw him pat her silk sheathed rump as she got in his car.
I remember how it shocked me. Now I got nothing against a 57-year-old general going out and getting him a little. I just hope I can still tom-cat at that age. But it is a distinct shock when the man you see doing it is your own father.
At the time I felt shock and resentment because of my mother. Now I felt shock and resentment because of me.
I got into a little trouble once, and he damn near tore my fanny of. I stole a neighbor's car to try and make a girl in my high school class. Now here he was compounding a crime himself for the very same reason I did-the wiggle of a broad's behind.
"The old son of a bitch," I said through clinched teeth.
"Huh?" Phillips said.
"Nothing," I replied. "Was the general's name Cross?"
"Yeah," he said. "They call him 'Double' Cross."
"How do you know this?" I asked.
"I worked my way through college as a newspaperman. One thing I learned. A good smart reporter never divulges his sources of information."
That's what he said, but two hours later-after he had lapped up liquor in every style served at the bar-he was in a weepy confessional mood.
I learned then that he got the story directly from the Sex Machine herself. She had been his mistress for three months, but lately had grown tired of him.
She was a lush and a nympho, and ten years his senior at least. But for all of that he had fallen in love with her. From hints he dropped I got the idea that he'd had some sort of unnatural affection for his mother and just naturally went for older women.
He had it bad. He nearly broke down and wept when he told me about it. He was a pitiful sight, sitting there swilling booze to try and drown his misery, but I didn't pity him.
I thought: "Why you stupid jerk!"
Later, when the same woman caught me momentarily in her web and started sucking my live juices like some monstrous spider, I wasn't quite so contemptuous of him. I understood things a little better then.
I learned a lot of other stuff from Phillips, too. Signet, who would be my immediate boss, was an embittered drunk. Vannel had been mixed up with Marstaff in that crooked deal and was a complete alcoholic. Apparently both had something else on Marstaff.
Phillips was just starting to give me the lowdown on their wives when he eased his head down on the table and went to sleep.
The next day I processed in the base, but did not report to my duty section. I could always claim I hadn't finished processing in time. The truth was I didn't want to meet my new boss just yet. I wanted to give him time to cool off.
That night there was a reception to introduce a group of new arrivals. I tried to duck the thing, but couldn't find an excuse. There were six of us replacement officers. I was the only one of the bunch under fifty.
It was a dull affair that lasted an hour. Then it broke up, and the sex hunt started. As the liquor flowed heavier, the hunt got hotter.
I stood back on the edge of the ballroom beside a room divider topped by some sickly potted plants and watched my brother officers pursuing each other's wives in what I presume was a sophisticated gentlemanly manner.
But apparently the game had its rules. I saw an unmarried officer expertly cut his dance partner out of the milling mess and guide her toward the terrace door.
They had just got out of sight when an angry husband went charging after them. Three minutes later the erring wife was back on the dance floor with a new partner. Her old one was in the bar having a hasty drink while his eye slowly turned more purple.
But a short time later this same loving husband and his wife left with another married couple. They suddenly changed partners when they got to the parking lot.
I watched the cars with their newly mated pairs roar off into the night on the way to gay beds and acknowledged that I had received a new lesson in my Joshua sex education, as Philip L. Phillips would put it. It was that if one wants to take somebody's wife to bed it is well to have one of your own to pass along to him. Otherwise he will be madder than hell at being left out in the cold.
PLP had indicated that Joshua was a sex-hungry bachelor's happy hunting ground. I was beginning to think he was nuts, when a squealing feminine voice rattled my nerves.
I turned and looked apprehensively at Lois Signet. She was not quite as drunk as she was last night when she was trying to pull Vanessa Vannel's hair out. But she still had a pretty good one on.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, her blood red lips parted in well liquored surprise. "I thought you were Phil Phillips! From the back you look at lot like him."
"Too bad I'm not," I said with a half-hearted attempt at gallantry. "He's a pretty lucky man to have someone like you looking for him."
Lois smiled. She wriggled with pleasure at the outrageous flattery. It was a curious shaking motion that caused her up-jutting breasts to shiver in time to the sway of her deliciously curving hips.
She caught my arm with both her hands. Through the thin cloth of my summer jacket I could feel her fingers tracing the line of my biceps.
She looked up at me. Her eyes half closed. The pointed tip of her tongue made a nervous flick across her too-red lips. The invitation was in her face. All I had to do was push her back. She'd fall in position with her legs spraddled, her knees upraised to lock her long lithe legs around me.
She was about 30. Once I'd looked upon that age as ancient, but a couple of recent experiences had shown me that a woman of experience was generally better than the younger stuff.
And after all, she only had four years on me. In a place like Joshua, beggars can't be choosers. I looked down at her upturned face. She had pretty features although they were spoiled at the moment by the slackness liquor brought to her mouth.
I knew how to remedy that, of course: have a few more myself.
From the open invitation of her mouth I let my eyes fall down on the quivering mounds that strained against her tight dress each time she breathed. I thought: "By God, if they're real-" I had a momentary ecstatic dream of burying my face between them, and nibbling and nibbling and nibbling.
I wasn't drunk, but I'd had enough to dull the sense of caution. We were standing by this room divider, half hidden by the mangey house plants on top.
I looked up, sweeping the room with a quick eye.
If no one was looking our way I intended to grab a handful and see if they were real or not.
She saw my cautious action. She moved in close to me, shoving those fascinating things against me.
"Don't worry, honey," she said, her seductive voice rising and falling with the intensity of her hard breathing. "He's on command post duty tonight."
Suddenly she stood on tiptoes so she could reach my mouth. Our lips touched briefly, but it was enough to send a searing fire scorching through my blood. It exploded in my loins with a shivering violence that destroyed what scant intelligence I possessed.
She was a drunken bitch, slut enough to go to bed with a man on a moment's acquaintance. Five years older than I and the wife of my commanding officer. She was everything I'd always promised my self respect that I'd never touch.
An out and out slut. An older woman. The wife of a brother officer. My three taboos. I could feel them crumbling as she ground her hot love mounds into me.
"Honey, don't you think it's hot in here?" she whispered huskily. Her voice was thick with drunken lust. "You have a car? Let's go sit in it and cool off."
She giggled. "I'm going to like you!" she whispered. "I'll have to meet you outside. My husband is a jealous sonofabitch. I can't let anyone see us going out together."
She didn't have to tell me. I'd seen-and felt-him in action the previous night.
"Get moving, damn you!" I said. "You'll find out soon enough!"
I watched her walk off, her hips swaying in a tantalizing motion that would have made a dead man sit up and reach for a contraceptive.
I walked rapidly out to the car, as eager as a virgin bridegroom heading for his first marriage bed. She followed in a couple of minutes. She was just as eager as I. She threw herself into the seat beside me. I put my arms around her, drawing her tightly against me.
Almost angrily she jerked my arms from around her and guided my hands to her breasts. My outspread fingers encircled their lush firmness. I squeezed hard. She gasped and said, "Oh! Oh! Oh!"
The fabric of her dress was sheer and she wore no brassiere. I could feel the rigid outline of the nipples through the cloth. But even this sheer barrier irritated me. Impatiently I pushed the spaghetti-thin straps off her shoulders so I could peel back the bodice of her skin-tight dress.
Her imprisoned breasts popped out. The nipples were so rigid they almost twanged when I touched them.
I buried my face in the valley between the lush flesh mountains. My lips nibbled hungrily at the soft, yet firm, beauty.
She took a deep, shuddering breath. Twin breasts quivered against my cheeks, caressing them with a lust-breeding quiver.
Leaving my lips to satisfy her craving for erotic massage of her breasts, my hands slipped down, seeking her dress hem.
I pulled it halfway up to her thighs. One of my hands went around her, sliding over her rump. They spreadeagled over her thigh and slowly worked its way upward. The fingers explored gently, seeking greater joys.
Lois wore nothing under the dress. That irritated me. Some men like to find only bare skin when they explore. I like to touch lace. I like to twist my fingers in its sensual softness, and slowly pull it down and off.
A deep sob choked her. Her entire glorious body jerked and shivered. She started to cry.
"Oh, God!" she whimpered. "I've waited so long for this. So long-so terribly, terribly long!"
I fumbled at my pants. The zipper stuck. I cursed and yanked so hard the seam gave way. I pushed the trousers down and moved passionately against her exposed body.
"No! No!" she whimpered. "Not yet! Wait."
"You can't imagine the torture of living with a man like Stu. He's so much older than I. He can't give me all I want-all I need-all I must have!"
She twisted her fingers in my hair. Roughly, brutally she jerked my head away from her breasts. She crushed her hungry lips against mine.
She broke away, panting for breath, and shoved my face back between her quivering breasts.
"He can't give me all I need, but he is too jealous to let me get it from someone else. He's so wild about it everyone is afraid to touch me. It isn't fair! Other women have a half dozen lovers, but I have to do with what crumbs he can throw me. And even then he wants to waste half of that on other bitches!"
She seemed almost in spasms. Her body alternately grew rigid-deathly stiff-and then shivered like jelly.
"Take me!" She cried. "Take me!"
I twisted around so I could. The stupid bastard who tagged a T-bird as a sex wagon never tried it in the front seat. Bucket seats are made to sit in and that's all.
As I turned I caught a glimpse of a face peering in the window!
In the darkness I couldn't tell much about it except that it was young and a girl's. I saw a pony-tail switch around as she saw me look up.
Lois' quivering body grew rigid again. "What-what's the matter?" she whispered. Fear had replaced lust in her voice.
"It's okay," I said. "Some kid peeking in. Forget it."
"No!" she said, struggling to sit up. "If Stu finds out, he'll kill me!"
"It's just some nosey kid! What the hell? Be still!"
She was trying to sit up. "I'm afraid!" she whimpered. "He's a mandman when he thinks somebody is touching me!"
She didn't have to tell me. I'd seen him in action the previous night.
"Stop thinking about him," I said. "Think about us. Think about this!"
I grabbed her hand and guided it. She shivered again. "Hurry!" she whispered. "Hurry! I'm afraid."
"Stop worrying. Don't think of anything but you and me and love!"
"Hurry!" she whispered.
I tried, for in her present mood she might go cold on me at a second's notice. Her fear of her husband was that great. I knew it would be disastrous for me. I was worked up to the point where I did not intend to stop regardless of her desires.
If she tried to fight me, I knew I'd rape her.
I also knew it would probably ruin me if I did. If she screamed, and someone came running from the club, I'd be cashiered out of the service if I escaped the guardhouse.
I'd never be able to prove she started the whole thing and then got scared.
"Sweetheart!" I whispered. "You beautiful, beautiful doll-"
I succeeded in pulling her closer. She groaned like a soul in agony. The upper part of my uniform hampered me. I like to feel flesh against flesh all the way. But she didn't seem to mind the scratchy material against her breasts.
Our bodies had just come together-just begun that rhythmatic motion of two perfectly mated bodies.
Then-suddenly, shrilly out of the night-
"Colonel! Colonel Signet! If you're looking for your wife, she went over that way to the other side of the parking lot!"
It was a young voice-a girl's-probably the little bitch who had been peeping at us.
Instantly Lois Signet turned from a lustful wanton to a frightened, cringing wretch.
She flopped from under me, and frantically jerked her dress down. She started to jerk the top back up over her breasts, but stopped. They were smeared with heavy streaks of lipstick. It had been transferred to my own lips when she kissed me. Then I offset it along the nipples as I nuzzled and kissed my way from the valley to the summit. She wiped frantically at the streaks.
"Go! Go! Quickly!" she whispered to me as she pulled the straps up, shutting away the moonlit beauty of her ripe bosom.
"I'm not afraid of the son of a bitch!" I said.
"I don't care about you!" She was so frantic she was completely honest for once. "I care about me! He'll kill me if he finds me with another man!"
I could see Signet moving along the line of cars back of us. He had a small penlight and was flashing it in cars as he went along.
Lois slipped out of the car, stooping low as she hastily opened her compact to daub powder on the tear marks that streaked her face.
I slipped out on the other side, closing the door softly. I moved toward the front of the car so I could speak around if he showed an indication of coming toward my side.
As soon as she got her face repaired, I saw her stand up. She took a deep, shuddering breath. Those magnificent breasts strained against their imprisoning cloth.
"Stu!" she called.
I saw the penlight beam flash around toward her. The light was too weak to carry that distance. Signet came striding forward. I started inching my way under the T-Bird.
"What in hell are you doing out here?" he demanded.
"Looking for the damned car," she replied. "I forgot where I parked it."
"Yeah? Did you forget to bring someone with you?"
"Oh, are you going to start that again? The way you get wild when anybody even looks at me has them all scared off," she replied, deep resentment in her voice.
"We got in five replacements today. They might not understand that you're not a public whore like these other bitches! You're private stock."
"So that's why you came sneaking back here when you should be on command post duty," she said bitterly. "You were spying on me."
"Not spying, sweet. Prudently checking up."
"And what did you find?"
"I don't know yet," he said grimly.
He flashed the light into the front of my car. Finding no one there, he walked over to look in the last car in the lane.
"Well?" she said with a sneer when he returned. "Are you satisfied now? You've looked in every damn car in the lot."
"Maybe you were going to meet someone later?" he said darkly.
"I could never get away with it," she said bitterly. "You are too smart for me."
There was a silence. From the position of their shoes they seemed to be looking at each other.
I heard him say, "I can't see you going home this early. I still think you intended to meet someone out here. Whose car is this, anyway?"
"How in hell do I know?" she snapped. "Look on the steering column. California law requires the driver's registration be-"
"I know all about California law," he snapped.
He elaned over, flashing the light on the registration card.
"James B. Cross!" he read aloud. "That puke-faced bastard!"
He whirled around. He must have grabbed her arm for she cried out. "Don't! You're hurting me!"
"If you don't tell me the truth, I'll twist it off. Did you come out here to meet that bastard?"
"Damn you, turn me loose! After last night he was scared to get within a mile of me."
"And he'd better not, if he knows what's good for him. I'm not forgetting last night. Wait until he reports for duty! I intend to show him who's boss around here."
His ankles were close enough I could have reached out and tripped him. An almost overpowering urge to do it gripped me. I could have done it and then slipped from under the car by the time he hit the ground. Then I could smash his goddam face into the gravel. He would never know who hit him.
It galled me to crouch there under the car like a frightened old maid huddling under a bed while he bragged about making things tough for me.
I hated his guts enough to kill him. I'm not sure whether I hated him more for his cheap threats to hurt my career or for interrupting me with his wife.
The only reason I didn't jump him was fear for his wife. There was no telling what he might do to her.
I saw her shoes move up close to his. I heard her whisper: "Stu! I'm hurting, honey."
"I've got to get back to the command post. If that bastard Marstaff found me gone-"
"Don't worry about him. He's chasing that new WAF lieutenant like a dog after a bitch in heat."
"Stu, honey, I'm hurting! If you'd give me enough, you'd never have to worry about me playing around."
"I'm not worrying. It's these other sons of bitches who had better be worrying."
"Stu! Here in the T-Bird. He won't be back for hours. Please, baby, I need it!"
"Well, I got to hurry-" he said.
He could talk about hurrying, but he didn't do it. He took his own good time. And judging by the creak of the springs, and the moans and the groans he did a pretty good job of finishing what I'd started.
I sneaked out from under the car when the party got sufficiently lively that I wouldn't be noticed.
I was in a terrible shape. My fly seam was ripped. The knees of my trousers were cut from the parking lot gravel. An oil leak in the oil pan of the car had soaked the back of my mess jacket.
I couldn't go back inside in his condition. With Lt. Col Stu Signet with his wife-or is it fornicating in my car, there was nothing I could do except keep out of sight until they finished. Or, since the BOQ-Bachelors Officer's Quarters-was just down the hill, I could walk home and pick up my car in the morning.
I decided the latter was the smartest thing to do. Presumably Colonel Signet was in a pleasant mood for a change. It was prudent of me to keep him that way.
I walked through the lot, and as I started to step off into the road, a voice said, "Hi!"
I whirled and saw her leaning against the side of a station wagon. She had hold of the end of her pony-tail and had dragged it around where she could chew on the end. It struck me as nauseating.
It was the same half-pretty, half-pixish face I saw staring through the window at me when I was preparing to mount Lois Signet.
Seeing her up close under somewhat better circumstances, I recognized her as the curious girl-child I saw in the back of Mrs. Marstaff's station wagon yesterday.
She still wore a sloppy joe sweater that hung on her like a sack and a pair of toreador pants that fitted snugly and gave promise of another sex machine in the making.
"Are you angry with me?" she said, her face an impish mixture of amusement and contriteness. "For what?" I asked.
"For telling Colonel Signet where you were."
I didn't answer. Something in her manner told me that this was no casual meeting. She had waited for me. Somewhat uneasily I wondered why.
"Your fly is open," she said.
With a start I remembered ripping the seam when the zipper wouldn't work. I hastily pulled it together.
She seemed amused. "Don't bother. Remember I saw all you've got to show when I peeked in at you and that Signet slut. Not bad! Of coure, I'm hardly a connoisseur since the only ones I've seen besides yours are that creep kid who took me to the senior college prom and a half dozen boy friends Mama brought home. I don't mean by that that she only brought six home. There must have been a hundred! But six are the only ones I was successful in getting a peak at."
That kind of talk from one so obviously young made me nervous as hell. I wasn't a Californian, but I'd heard of San Quentin Prison, and damn well knew what San Quentin Quail was.
"Well, it's been nice, but it would have been a hell of a lot nicer if you'd stayed home. So long."
"I'll walk along with you. I got nothing else to do," she said.
"But I have something better to do!" I snapped.
"You're afraid I'm Jail Bait, aren't you? Well, don't be afraid. I'm older than I look. There's a story behind that. I'll tell you sometime."
"I'm sure it must be a great one, Lolita. Now you crawl back into the sexy novel you came out of and forget you ever saw me."
She shook her head. The blonde pony tail waved gaily. The bright moonlight glittered like molten silver over it. For all of her sloppy dress and extreme youth, I suddenly decided she was a highly attractive kid. This only scared me more.
"I'm not going to forget you. I'm ready for a boy friend. Not one of those sappy college kids, but a real man who can make real love."
"Well, it's not me! I like the more mature type."
"Do you believe in love at first sight? I do. I didn't, but then I saw you turn and stare at Mama when she came shaking her fanny out of the club yesterday."
She paused and sighed. "I wasn't sure. So I came out tonight to take another look. I guess you're mad at me for busting up your party with that Signet slut. But I can't have you wasting what's going to be mine!"
I turned and almost ran down the hill toward the BOQ.
At the foot I looked back. Joshua's equivalent of Lolita was sitting on the stone fence that -rimmed the officer's club parking lot. She was staring down at me.
"I've got to get a transfer out of this damned crazy place," I muttered, "before I get shot by a jealous husband, jailed for rape, or go plain nuts!"
CHAPTER THREE
The next morning-loaded down with a lamb-to-the slaughter feeling-I reported to Provisional Test Group headquarters.
A washed out blonde secretary with a run-through-the-wringer look pointed out Signet's office.
"He's expecting you," she said, and then added in a sort of confidential aside, "And he's madder than hell."
"What about?" I asked.
She smiled and looked like the type of woman who would give a man "any"-defining any as anything-under the sun. I smiled at her sort of leering like. Even as hard up as I was right then, I wouldn't have touched her with a ten foot pole. But one can never tell when a really hard winter will set in. Be nice to them all, I say.
"He thought you should have been here when he arrived. If you've ever taken a good look at a horse from the south end when he was heading north, you won't need an introduction to this creep. You know him."
"When I take a good look at the south end of a horse pointed north, I have an almost uncontrollable desire to reach out and tie a knot in its tail," I said.
She giggled. "Tie a hard one and everybody who knows the bastard will cheer you on."
I tipped her a goodbye wink. She colored and actually looked confused. If I could just affect the pretty ones the way I do the bags, future generations would speak of Cross the way they talk of Casanova today.
I knocked on the door. Signet growled for me to come in. I opened the door, marched up before his desk and gave him my snappiest salute.
Most people in the service hand out and receive highballs until it becomes mechanical. They don't think about it one way or another. But occasionally you run into the type who get their kicks from gloating over someone acting inferior to them. Then the military salute, which is supposed to be a greeting, becomes the service equivalent of Uncle Tom quavering, "Yes suh, bossman."
I had Signet pegged as one of those Napoleon, complexed bastards. So, while I generally am considered a pretty sloppy soldier, I spruced up for Signet.
But it immediately became apparent that he was gunning for me. Nothing I could do was ever going to be right.
The regulations say a salute must be returned. But they don't say anything about how quickly. Signet left me standing there with my fingers touching my forehead while he completely ignored me.
I must have stood there two minutes while he fiddled with some papers. He never looked up once. If he had, he would have been forced to acknowledge my salute.
I knew he was giving me the "treatment"-putting me in my place. I knew he was trying to make me mad enough to make a mistake. I silently cursed him for every kind of a son of a bitch, and made a silent vow to take Lois Signet to bed every night in the week just to get revenge. I'd cuckold him blind.
Finally he looked up. He made a vague wave which came close enough to his head to pass for a salute. It was as much of an insult as his making me wait.
He did not ask me to sit down as normally a commander would a newcomer. He left me standing at attention. I was too smart to relax until he gave me permission.
"You are not very prompt, lieutenant," he said harshly. "One of the things I insist in my junior officers is promptness. Duty begins in this office promptly at seven-thirty, lieutenant, and not at seven-forty-five as you seem to think."
"I see, sir," I said with what I felt was the proper degree of meekness.
He leaned back and stared at me with those hateful, puffy eyes. One of them had a light purple stain encircling it-a moment of our little wrestling match two nights before. I tried to keep the satisfaction I felt from showing.
"You'll see a lot more before you finish your assignment here, lieutenant," he said.
He took a deep puff on a cigarette, and said, "I have a reputation for being a fair man, lieutenant. But fairness carries with it the responsibility of returning fairness for fairness. I suggest you show me the same fairness that I show you."
I thought it would be only fair-as he called it-to buy him a book of synonyms so he could find a replacement word for "fairness" when he wore it out.
But to demonstrate my own "fairness" I resisted the impulse to tell him so. I said, "Yes, sir."
In the service, when up against a martinet, "Yes, sir" are the safest things a man can say. Regardless of the situation you have a fifty-fifty chance of being right with either one. No other answer gives you that good odds.
"Fairness to me," he said, "means doing your job in a military manner, minding, your own business personally, and getting to work on time. Do I make myself clear, lieutenant?"
He did. I just hoped that he had sense enough to know that I understood him.
He picked up my officer's qualification card and almost glared at it. "I see you were picked for this job because of your scientific and technical background. That's fine. We need technicians on this job, but I insist that my men display soldierly qualities as well, lieutenant."
"Yes, sir," I said.
He flipped on an intercom and called the secretary. "Get me Lieutenant Phillips," he said.
I noted the lack of courtesy in his brusque command and could understand the secretary's dislike.
Phillips reported quickly. Signet looked at him with the same dislike he condescended to give me.
"Take Cross out and show him around. Explain his duties to him. Explain everything, lieutenant!"
"Yes, sir," PLP said. "Where will he be assigned?"
"Number three chase," Signet said.
"A new man?" I don't think Phillips intended to challenge the coloonel. Surprise let it slip out.
Signet's face turned purplish. He got heavily to his feet. He glared unadulterated hate at Phillips. "Are you challenging my authority, lieutenant?"
"No, sir!"
"Then what in-what are you doing?"
"Making a fool of myself as usual," Phillips said.
"You are very good at it, lieutenant," Signet said with a twisted smile that had no mirth in it.
Once we got outside, Phillips turned to me. "Welcome to the club," he said. "The passwords are 'Have you been Signetized today?' and the battlecry is "Damn the ASS!' The word becomes logical when you learn the bastard's name is Albert Stuart Signet."
"I'm not the only whipping boy then?"
"Every male who looks capable of stirring a sexual response in a woman is automatically ASS's bitter enemy."
"That woman of his looks like a good lay, but she can't be that good."
"He's not jealous of her."
"The hell he isn't!" I retorted. "Where were you when he was wrestling me all over the bar?"
I also thought of him almost catching me in the T-Bird, but prudently kept that to myself.
"You are an innocent soul, Cross. I've said it before, and I must say it again. As we know sex at Joshua, you are sexually ignorant. Everybody on the base knows what's wrong with Signet. Hell, he's almost impotent. That's what is wrong with his wife. He can't take care of her, but he's like a goddam dog in a manger. He won't let anyone else get at the hay."
"You're crazy," I said. "I saw him make a play for that Vannel woman."
"That's right. He keeps playing up to the sexiest women he can find. He hopes it will stir his banked fires. His head is full of sex, but his body can't produce. It's driving him wild with frustration. And he's taking out his bitterness on the rest of us."
I thought of the position I'd left him and Lois in. "I still say you're crazy."
He grinned hastily. "Do you know Naismith of the Air Police?"
I shook my head. He said, "He was O.D. last night. He was telling me he had to go stop a fight between Signet and his wife in the officer's club parking lot. He finally got enough fire up to start something with her in a parked car, but petered out before he could give her enough. She was so frustrated and mad she started a brawl."
"Why don't the medics retire him?"
"Because his testicles wore out? He does his military job, and has a great record behind him. You know he was a famous test pilot years ago?"
"Well, I think something should be done. A sex-frustrated lunatic like that could ruin all our careers."
"What's he done that you could explain to the Inspector General about and make stick?"
"Nothing-yet," I admitted reluctantly.
He has been nasty, inconsiderate, and bullying, but nothing that violated any regulation I knew of. As for the bar brawl, there was nothing there I could prove.
I tried to make a joke of it, but I wasn't feeling amused. I had to work for the man. My future, my promoitions, and maybe even my life depended upon the efficiency ratings and assignments this man gave me.
The way Phillips made Ms surprised outburst when Signet told him my job made it look to me as if I was in for some tough sledding.
"Let's put Signet on ice. What's going on here at the base? All I know is that it is something hush-hush."
"Officially it is know as Project Hot Fire. Publicly we're supposed to be doing some high altitude weather reconn work, and even have a couple of U-2's based to cover. Actually we are flight testing and atomic engine for aircraft. A nuclear powerplant for bombers."
"Does it work?"
He shook his head. "Too heavy and too big. The shielding necessary to keep the radioactivity from broiling the crew weighs too much. It doesn't leave any space for bombs, cargo, or more than a three-man crew."
"Is the project about to fold?"
"Are you nuts?" Phillips said contemptuously. "Somebody in Washington stuck his neck out on this thing, and now that somebody won't admit it was a mistake. The thing's a flying bomb."
I thought that over uneasily. "What's this number three chase Colonel ASS has cut out for me?"
"On any kind of test flight we have so-called chase planes-fighters usually-that fly alongside the test model and observe the action. Number three chase simply means the third observation plane on the test flight."
"Maybe not to you," Phillips retorted. "But I know something you don't. The number three spot in Operation Hot Fire is known to Joshua's hot rock test pilots as 'Dead Man's Corner.'" v
"Oh," I said. "I might have known."
"Number Three's position is right under the B-52 bomber that carries the nuclear reactor. If something goes wrong and the damned thing explodes, Number Three will be riddled before the poor bastard of a pilot could possibly pull his eject handle and bail out."
"Oh," I said.
"But that's okay," Phillips said. "You're the Nathan Hale type. Me-well, I'm no coward, but I just believe I can be of more benefit to my country alive than dead."
"Well!" I said. "When do I get a look at his flying wonder?"
"Not until you get a security pass. The security people here are seeing Russian spies behind every Joshua tree. As if any self respecting spy would go to the trouble to come here. He can get a complete report on our work by sleeping with the right girl clerk or the right boy queer in Washington."
"My records show an atomic clearance," I said.
"It'll still have to be verified through security channels. Thank your lucky stars for it. It will delay your date in Dead Man's Corner."
"Maybe it is not as bad you make out. I got an idea you exaggerate things just a little."
He laughed grimly. "When you're here a while you'll find that I understate usually. Did I exaggerate about the whores in the officer's club?"
"No," I admited. "How in the hell do they get away with that stuff here?"
"Because of the nuclear stuff we work with, we have a hell of a lot of civilians-we call them "silly-villains"-who wear officer's uniforms as a disguise. They are not in the service and not subject to service regulations. If they get into trouble the Air Police can't touch them. There is a special commissioner appointed by the President was acts as their judge. But that is just for violations of Federal laws. If they raise hell in the club, the worst that the Air Force can do to them is cut off their membership."
"Why don't they?"
"Because the civilian bastards outnumber the military here. If we pitch them out of our club, there are not enough officers to support a club of our own. We have to keep them members. Marstall can't let them get away with a lot of raw stuff in the club and then soak his officers. So he looks the other way unless things really get rough."
"How much rougher can they get?"
He looked thoughtful. "Not much. People around here keep worrying about "The Monster' expolding. I'm not worried about that damned engine. I'm worried about the people here going up in one big blast. They are right on the edge of it. When it comes it will shower dirty little pieces of sex all over this damned desert. You'll find pieces from Death Valley to Mexicali. Exploding emotions can cause more trouble than exploding reactors."
I didn't say anything. I felt that he wasn't through. He was silent until we turned back past the fenced area where "The Monster" was under guard.
He jerked his thumb toward it. "When it explodes, the best it will be able to do is kill six or seven of us. But there's a woman on this base-when she explodes it will destroy ten times that many. And God help me, I expect to be one of them."
"Lois Signet?" I asked.
He shook his head. "Irene Marstaff," he replied. "You may thing I'm ballooning things up again, but wait until she starts on you."
"I don't think I'm here type," I said. "I met her at the reception. She didn't give me a second look."
He gave a short bitter laugh. "Anything in pants is her type," he said. And then burst out: "I hate her!"
"So you hate her," I said, but I was thinking about the way he got roaring drunk and cried about he loved her.
For the first time since I knew him, I felt a slight tinge of sympathy for his troubles. Once I was mixed up with a woman I both loved and hated at the same time. There is no human misery any greater.
By this time we were back at Test Operations. We met Signet coming out the door.
"Phillips!" he said harshly. He acted like I was a piece of furniture or something.
"Yes, sir," Phillips said.
"Connolly is sick. He had to come in from Site Four. Get Cross up to the hospital area. The Crash and Rescue helicopter will be there at thirteen hundred. Have Cross on it when it goes back."
"Yes, sir," Phillips said, turning to throw me a wry look as ASS went on.
"So?" I said.
"So you're off to the Siberian salt mines. Site Four is a telescopic camera station so far back in the sticks even the guides have to have guides to find it. R's used as part of the tracking for the Monster's flights. A tour up there is like solitary confinement in Alcatraz."
"One thing about solitary confinement is that you have good company," I replied.
"It's rotten, lonely, miserable duty, and you're denied even the pleasure of getting drunk. Signet must really have it in for you. You noticed how he ignored you. I've never seen him treat anyone like that before. Have you considered putting in for a transfer?"
I smiled rather grimly. "There is a General Cross in the chain of command who would have to approve any transfer request I'd make. This General Cross would review my request both as a father and a general officer. Now it so happens that he has 19th Century views on parental treatment of children, and 18th Century ideas on a general's treatment of lieutenants. I could expect about as much sympathy and help from him as I could from you."
"That's not very much," he admitted. "I always thought a G.I. with a general for a father had it made."
"Take it from me," I said, "he has only had it."
"Well, come on. We have to get your gear and field equipment ready."
I drew mess gear, bed roll, and combat boots from supply, and then went with Phillips to the club for lunch.
As we went into the dining room we passed Marstaff and Signet sitting at a table. I just got the tail-end of something he was saying about sending me to Site Four.
There was an empty table adjoining them, but PLP showed rare good judgment by passing it for one on the opposite side of the room.
Unfortunately we didn't move fast enough. Irene Marstall came sweeping into the room. She saw us.
"Oh, lieutenant!" she called.
"Yes, ma'am," Phillips said, turning around.
"Oh, I don't mean you," she said, brushing him off with much the same air one would push aside an annoying puppy. His face reddened.
"Lieutenant Cross," she said. Her voice dripped with the honeysuckled lushness of the deep South.
"Oh, Mrs. Marstaff," I said politely.
"Didn't I tell you at the reception last night to call me Irene?"
"It just doesn't seem right for a mere lieutenant to speak so familiarly to a Colonel's lady," I said.
"I do not stand on ceremony," she snapped. "Call me Irene. That's an order, lieutenant!"
"Yes, sir, Irene, sir!" I retorted, drawing up to attention and giving her a mock salute.
Over her shoulder I saw her husband glaring at us. Signet, who had also risen politely when Irene came in, seemed amused.
"Stop trying to be funny," Irene said. "You'll have people thinking I'm one of these bossy commander's wives who try to run a base. Now what I wanted to say was for you not to make any plans for next week. I am giving a reception for your father. He's coming on an inspection trip. Did you know?"
"No, I didn't, but I don't think the Old Man cares to see me."
"I don't care what he thinks or what you think. I need you to escort one of the unattached ladies. You'll receive the invitation tomorrow."
"I trust it is a pretty one?" I said.
"Oh, she's a dear. It's Mrs. Mallott. Her grandson is president of the Chamber of Commerce. That's why she's invited."
"Grandson?" I said. "How old is she?"
"Oh, in her seventies, I suppose, but she's quite a dear. You'll find her really delightful."
"I'm sure I would, but unfortunately I'll have to decline with regret. I'm leaving for Site Four right after lunch."
"Oh?" she said. Her eyebrows went up. Her face went hard. Usually, especially under the soft club lighting, she looked in her late twenties. Right then she looked like a well preserved woman on the sad side of thirty-five.
"You must be mistaken," she said positively. "Colonel Marstaff approves all officer assignment, and he only a few minutes ago told me he wanted you here when your father arrived."
She looked past me, and caught her husband's eye. Marstaff colored slightly. He did not say anything. Signet looked as if he had been slapped in the face with a bucket of latrine oil.
Irene Marstaff turned her deep violet eyes back on me. She smiled. Despite my dislike of the woman I felt fire surge through my veins. She was easily the most beautiful woman on the base. Her curving body with its sculptured breasts radiated sex the way a stove throws out heat. Much as I wanted to resist her, I could feel my own fires blazing up.
I started to sweat. I was scared to death the passionate desire I had to rip her dress open and bury my head between those sculptured mounds would show in my face. Marstaff probably wouldn't be amused. I was in enough trouble because one jealous husband thought I wanted to make his wife. I couldn't afford to add another.
"So don't pack yet, lieutenant," Irene said gaily. She patted me on the shoulder and added, "You'll love Mrs. Mallott. She's a dear!"
She swept past us. Marstaff pulled out a chair for her, and Phillips and I went on. I noticed uneasily that PLP had suddenly become morose.
I looked back. Irene was chatting gaily. Marstaff was looking at his plate. Signet stared across at me, bitter hatred etched in every line of his face.
"You're off the hook," Philips said when we had seated ourselves.
"Hell, she can't countermand Signet's orders."
"That's where you are wrong. You're next in line for her bed. She doesn't intend for you to get away."
"You damned fool! Marstaff would never-"
"Marstaff owes every promotion he ever got to her bedroom politicing. He'd probably be in Leaven, worth right now if she had not pulled off her clothes to pull him out of his last scrape. On top of that, he knows lie isn't man enough to satisfy her. He's content to take a few crumbs she drops for him."
"Oh, hell-!" i
"No, I'm giving it to you straight. At one time or another she has had every desirable male on this base in her bed. The officer's roster is her stud list. She's a bitch, the mistress of Joshua. You are the latest fruit to be plucked, nibbled on, and tossed aside when a fresher plum blossoms on our Joshua tree."
I looked uneasily across the room. Irene Marstaff was half burned. My eyes followed the jutting curve of her breast, and then followed the line of her body to a shapely thigh that was beautifully outlined by the tight skirt she wore.
I found myself hoping that he was right and that she was after me. I mentally licked my lips as I ogled her form.
Suddenly a strange feeling gripped me. I looked up quickly. Phillips was staring at me. I saw naked, jealous hate in his eyes.
Although he never lost an opportunity to speak ill of her, it was apparent that he was trying to convince himself instead of me. Phillips loved Irene Marstaff, and was viciously jealous of any other man she noticed.
CHAPTER FOUR
There was a strained silence between Phillips and me during the meal. He sat staring at his plate, picking at his food. I tried several times to get some sort of conversation going without success.
I didn't feel that right then was the psychological time, but I decided I had to get him off in the corner for a heart to heart talk. He needed to understand that I had no designs on Irene Marstaff myself. If he was having a secret affair with her, he need never worry-about me cutting in on him.
But as I sat there telling myself that, my eyes kept straying unconsciously across the room at her. I could feel my flesh rising. It embarrassed me. I hastily readjusted the napkin across my lap.
None of this was lost on my companion. He kept glancing up under lowered eyebrows to catch me staring at Irene's lush, lust-breeding body.
Finally I got smart. I pushed back my half-eaten steak.
"I'd better hurry," I said. "I got to get up to the hospital area and catch that helicopter."
"Sit down, stupe," he said, attempting to regain his former lightness, but not succeeding very well. "You aren't going anywhere. The real commander of this goddam base has spoken."
"You're crazy," I said. "Marstaff wouldn't dare cancel my orders now. He'd be laughed off the base."
"Okay. Since you're so damned smart put your money where your mouth is. You want to make a little bet?"
"Make it light on yourself, sucker," he said quickly. I hesitated. Something told me I was being sucked into something. But his contemptuous air stung me. "A months' pay?" I said to cut his water off. "Done!" he snapped.
One hour later I stood at the edge of the hospital heliport with full field gear piled on the ground beside me. A staff car pulled up behind me. An officer I had never seen before climbed out. He was wearing fatigues, and carried a bed roll and field gear.
He looked madder than hell, but that would be a natural reaction of anyone heading for the isolation of Site Four.
I was surprised to see him. I thought there would be only one of us up there.
"Going up to the site?" I asked.
He glared at me. "You know goddamn well I am," he retorted.
He was the same rank I was so I didn't have to take any crap from him.
"You might be a little politer," I said. "I didn't cut your orders."
"The hell you didn't," he said with a snear. He looked me over with a contemptuous air. "You're cutting something else too, huh?
"Personally," he added, "I can't see what the bitch sees in you, but you must ave something hidden under your clothes that may not be as apparent to me as it is to her!"
"Just what in hell are you talking about?" I dropped my bed roll and stepped toward him.
"As if you didn't know! I was supposed to go on leave to get married this week, but instead I draw your 30 days at Site Four so you can stay home and stud for the Colonel's Lady!"
"That's a damn lie! I-"
His fists doubled. He glared pure hate at me. "Don't push me, Cross!" he said. His voice shook, and he seemed on the verge of throwing himself on me.
I stepped back. I wasn't afraid of him, but I knew what would happen to two lieutenants who started trading blows.
But he was so far gone he had lost all good sense. He came after me, swinging. I ducked. Then came in fast. I didn't want to hit him. Hell, I'd have been just as angry in his position. I caught his arm, and sprawled him Judo fashion.
He bounced up, and started to circle me warily.
"Stop! You stupid bastard! Are you trying to get us both busted out of the service?" I said hoarsely. "Get some sense in your head!"
He took a deep breath. A little of the red faded from his face, but not the bitterness.
"Some time, some way-" he said in a low, trembling voice, "I'll square this thing with you. I'll square it if it takes me twenty years. Think about that when you're in bed with your bitch while I'm spending what should be my honeymoon staring at cactus!"
"Look! You got me all wrong. I didn't have anything to do with this. In fact, I haven't received any orders canceling my tour up there. Hell, when that whirly-bird lands, I'm climbing on."
"I'm supposed to tell you to go back," he said bitterly.
Then he grinned with grim pleasure. "The one thing about this that tickles me is the thought of you facing Signet when you go back. He couldn't hate you any more than I do, but he's trying hard!"
He was dead wrong about my conspiring through bedroom politics to get Irene Marstaff to put pressure on the colonel to get me out of the tough assignment. But he was dead right about Signet's reaction.
His face was almost purple when I reported back to him. For a long time he could do nothing but sit and glare at me. He wasn't trying to give me the silent treatment this time. He just didn't trust himself to speak. He was a man who was careful to keep his petty tyranny within the bounds of military regulations. He had to get a grip on himself before he could trust himself to speak.
Finally he said: "Lieutenant, the only thing I hate worse than a military politician is a bedroom politician. I think that must be the most dispicable thing in the world!"
"Sir-!"
"Lieutenant! I am not here to argue with junior officers. I am here to get a job done for the U.S. Air Force. With the kind of "democratic" service we have today, it is not my job to worry about your morals. Apparently it is no longer the duty of a commander to try to teach his subordinates the basic principles of being a gentleman. Too many people have gotten the idea that this can be achieved by an act of Congress and by stating on his commission that the recipient is now an 'officer and a gentleman'."
He leaned back and glared at me. The dissatisfied lines in his puffy face had deepened. He tried to preserve the judicial calm with which a senior officer is supposed to reprimand a junior in today's "democratic" service.
His nervous hands, clinching and unclinching around a pottery pencil holder on the desk, betrayed the pent up emotions inside him.
I kept my mouth shut, but I don't suppose I could keep my bitter resentment from showing in my face. Any commander who has his orders countermanded by the meddlesome influence of a higher commander's wife has a right to be madder than hell. But I thought his resentment should be directed to Marstaff and his wife. God knows I had nothing to do with it.
"Now I suppose it is none of my business whom you sleep with," he went on in a nasty tone. "But that is true only up to a point, Lieutenant Cross. And that point is where it starts to interfere with your work as a member of my group. You have reached this point!"
I knew it was stupid to argue with him, but I had reached the point where I could not contain my rage any longer.
"Sir! The colonel is doing me an injustice!"
"Am I now?" he said with a nasty grin.
"Yes, sir! The colonel keeps dropping snide hints that I am uh, having illicit relations with Mrs. Marstaff. And that this is the reason for her interference with my assignment to Site Four. I have never even been alone with this woman, much less been in bed with her!"
"Perhaps not, lieutenant, but you will! You will!"
"Sir-!"
"That'll do! I've heard enough of your whining excuses. A number of young officers seem to think the fastest way to rise in the service is through kissing asses. Some try it with senior officers. Others try to do it with the wives of senior officers. Sometimes this reprehensible practice seems to work. But only for a little while. Any person who tries to build a military career on such a foundation finds evenutally that he built on quicksand. Sooner or later he will sink and destroy himself!"
"Colonel, you've done nothing but ride me ever since I came to this organization! I-"
"If you consider pointing out your deficiencies as an officer and a gentleman in the United States Air Force to be riding you-well yes, lieutenant, perhaps I have. I don't know when I have seen a young office who so badly needed it."
He dismissed me then. I left shaking with impotent rage. But what could I do? In the service they have you over a barrel. You are at the mercy of every Napoleonic-complexed bastard who has rank on you. Hit one of the sons of bitches and you're guardhouse bound. Argue and your promotions are cut off at best. At worst you'll find what little pay you do get cut in half by a bust.
I promised myself right then when my obligated tour was over I was getting out. Back to democracy for me. They could take their totalitarian society and jam it!
Signet hit back at me with the silent treatment. He refused to give me any kind of assignment until my security clearance came through. I sat around group headquarters doing nothing all day.
The other officers, much as they hated Signet, sided with him against me. They, too, thought I'd shafted Lt. Coleman who had to take my place at Site Four. Phillips was the only one who would even speak to me, and he was eaten up with jealousy because Irene seemed to favor me.
For two days I ate at the snack bar and kept to my room after duty hours. But I am not the hermit type. I can't live alone. I got to have people around me. I prefer friends, but I'll take enemies to nobody. On the third night I went to the club.
It was slightly after dark when I parked the bus and started across the parking lot. As I passed between two cars someone said:
"Hi!"
It was the first friendly sound addressed to me in days, but I did not welcome it. It chilled me. I turned to confront my Lolita friend. Since our last meeting I had learned who she was. That information had only confirmed my previous suspicion that she was the last person in the world I wanted to get mixed up with. Phillips told me she was Donna Marstaff, the eighteen-year-old daughter of the Sex Machine and our distinguished and beloved leader, Edgar Marstaff, Commander, Joshua Air Force Base.
"Good evening, Miss Marstaff," I said.
"Call me Donna," she said.
"No, thank you."
"Okay, call me Lolita-like you did the other night. But it really doesn't fit. Actually I'm much older than you think."
"Actually I don't think at all. I've been told, 'You are not here to think, lieutenant,' so often it has finally sunk in. It was nice seeing you again. Good night!"
I beat a hasty retreat, leaving her standing beside her father's station wagon. At the club entrance I suddenly looked back. I don't know why. It was some impulse I can't explain. She was standing where I left her, a dark, forlorn little figure in her droopy clothing. I felt a wave of sympathy for her. Like she she seemed to be an outcast.
I went on in the bar and took a stool at the far end. As I nursed my drink my mind kept reverting to the kid in the parking lot. There was something strange about her. It wasn't natural for someone her age to roam around alone in the dark, watching the lighted windows of a club for older people. She should have been skating, or dancing or learning the first elements of love from someone her own age.
I had a very uneasy feeling that something was going to happen to her, and I wanted to make damned sure 1st Lt. James B. Cross did not put himself in any compromising situation.
I drank my drank and tried to put her out of my mind. She kept forcing her way back. There was something about her eyes. They were deep and violet like her mother's. But there the resemblance ended.
Irene Marstaff only wanted to possess others. Her daughter seemed only to want to be possessed. Watching Irene, I felt that she had possessed many men without having ever been really possessed herself. She struck me as sex greedy and self-centered. An act of sex with a man was something she took solely for her own pleasure, and a man was entitled only to such crumbs of love that fell from her greedy passion.
Phillips, I thought, was a good example of what happened to a man who let himself get entangled in her web of lust.
"By God," I thought as I went on in the club, "that bitch will never tie me in knots like she did him."
Then I looked up and saw her. Her flame-red dress was a second skin. The neckline scooped so low that every time she bent over she proved to the world that the ill concealed mounds were all woman.
From the over-ripe breasts the fiery cloth swept down over gracefully curving hips. The peculiar cut of the skirt made it cling in around her legs as she walked. It revealed the lines there almost as much as a bathing suit.
But where a bathing suit's revelations are natural, this curious garment was almost tantilizingly obscene.
Personally I'd never gone for this crap that a dressed woman was more sexy than a naked one. For me the sexiest thing on earth is a beautiful nude, breasts jutting out with passion-rigid nipples.
But looking at Irene Marstaff at that moment, I was damned near ready to reverse my opinion.
She swept past me, nodding pleasantly. But once past she stopped. She came back.
I could feel my face burn. I knew I was turning red as hell. Half the eyes in the room were watching us. I knew what they were thinking. Our local Catherine the Great was picking out another grenadier for her stud harem.
A second before I was wanting to rip off that flaming cloth and get my hungry fingers on the hot flesh beneath.
Now I wanted to clinch those same fingers and smash her false smile down her throat.
Everyone there knew about her interferring in official matters to get off the Site Four assignment. I felt humiliated. Bitter. Outraged.
I'm not a good actor. I know I show my emotions. I just can't hide them.
But Irene was undaunted by the glade of bitter dislike I gave her. She was all bubbling brightness.
"Jim!" she said, "you got my invitation? Excellent! Now don't go sour on me because I ask you to escort a grandmother. After all, a grandmother may be just as glamorous as a movie star."
I didn't trust myself to answer. She babbled on:
"There are some things I need to tell you about her. Do you have a couple of minutes?"
She didn't wait for an answer. She walked toward the French windows opening on the moonlighted terrace. Her hips, rounding out from a remarkably tiny waist, were so persuasively beckoning that I forgot the raised eyebrows and cynical smiles that followed us. I forgot my resolution. I forgot my manhood. I followed the lustful song of those swaying hips the child once followed the siren whistling of the Pied Piper.
She walked across the terrace and sat on the low brick wall that separated it from a strip of grass that ran down to a kidney-shaped pool.
Her back was toward me. The silk fire that clothed her was pulled so tight over her flaring buttocks I wondered how it escaped splitting.
Her gown was cut so low in the back it stopped just short of being jailable for violation of public decency. The moonlight glistened off her smooth flesh, increasing its sensual appeal.
I reached up, not fully conscious of what my hands were doing. They touched Irene Marstaff's shoulders. The flesh was cool and soft.
She didn't protest. I let my hands sink, trailing my fingers down the bar back and then along the sides of her hips. The tightly drawn sild I fould there frustrated me.
We were in perfect sight of anyone who might come on the terrace. But I forgot all that in the blinding flame of lust the engulfed me.
I had been too long without a woman. The abortive session with Lois Signet had only piled fresh fuel on my consuming fire.
I had reached the point of explosion. If every damned officer and his lady on the base came out and ringed around us, I would not have stopped then.
She shivered under the touch of my fingers. I could hear her deep, passionate breathing. She did not move. She sat still until my searching fingers found a tiny zipper in the back of her dress.
I pushed it down and the strapless top slipped. Her breasts almost slipped 'free. She-gasped and got hastily to her feet.
"You idiot!" she cried. But she wasn't angry. It was obvious she was having difficulty stifling her laughter.
"You idiot!" she said again. "Not here!" She pulled the sagging cloth over her breasts, and turned her back on me. "Zip me up." she said. "No!" I said thickly.
I grabbed her shoulders and spun her around. She gasped angrily when I pulled the silk from her hands. It fell, leaving her nude to the waist where the tight fit over her hips kept the cloth from falling entirely off.
"You bastard!" she said softly. "I knew you looked like him, but you're him in every other way, too."
I knew she was talking about my lather. Thought of the iron-bound old soldier sobered me. I realized with a shock what I was doing. I drew back.
And when I did I was lost. Before I had the initiative. Now she seized it.
She didn't bother to pull up the dress top and cover her bouncing breasts. She grabbed my arm.
"Come on," she said hurriedly. "That husband of mine will be back shortly with some guests from Los Angeles. I haven't much time!"
Keeping the heavy shrubbery between us and the terrace, we crossed the grass and skirted the swimming pool. Irene led the way. She took me into the women's section of the dressing room. Unlike the men's side, which was just showers and lockers, this place was almost a boudoir. There was even a day bed in it.
Irene did not put on the lights in the lounge section, but did in the shower stalls. This permitted a twilight effect to filter into the room. The soft light made Irene look even younger.
She pushed at the red silk. "I can't get it off," she whispered. "It's too tight."
Breathing hard I came up to help her. It was like trying to pull off her skin. How in hell she ever got into the thing is a mystery to me.
I tugged and pulled, then then said impatiently, "To hell with it!"
I swept her up in my arms and carried her to the bed. Her arms went softly around my neck. The nipples of her heaving breasts were so hard I could feel them through my mess jacket.
As I lowered her to the bed, her hungry lips sucked at mine with the obscene passion of a vampire taking blood.
My hands ran up over her belly toward her breasts. I could feel the flesh shudder beneath my fingers. I stroked the firm, swelling flesh, and spread-eagled my fingers to enclose as much of their beauty as possible.
Then keeping one nipple imprisoned between thumb and forefinger as the rest stroked the bulging flesh, I jerked the other hand down and impatiently pulled her skirt up around her belly. Long, tapering, dancer's legs flowed up through shapely thighs to merge with the flare of her hips.
I looked down, breathlessly watching my fingers moving up those glorious thighs-getting closer and closer-
Suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my head. My vision blurred momentarily. Then instead of her bared body, I looked into the smoldering violet eyes of the wanton woman.
She had almost torn my hair out in jerking my head around. Her feverish lips crushed against mine. It was overpowering-stifling-lustfully cruel. She seemed to be trying to suck the fire in my loins up through by mouth.
Then suddenly she altered her technique. Her lips grew soft against mine. Her tongue-hesitant as a virgin-slipped shyly between my parted lips.
I shivered as it touched here and then, tenderly exploring. Then I felt it withdrawing as shyly as it entered. I closed my lips hard, trying to imprison it-to keep it inside me forever.
But she was too wise to hold any sensation too long. I learned later it was an old trick of hers. Always leave your victims wanting more.
One of her arms was locked around me. The other was insistently forcing itself under my belt, burrowing under the trousers and shirt tail and shorts to the bare flesh beneath.
I couldn't wait any longer. I tried to tear loose from her imprisoning grasp and get up. She clung to me so tightly we were like two people.
"Damn it!" I whispered impatiently. "Let me go.
I've got to get my pants off!"
"just one more minute!" she gasped. "Just one more glorious minute!"
For that brief time she clung to be as if she would never turn loose. Then with a deep shuddering sigh she put her hands against my chest and pushed me away.
Now it was I who was reluctant to break that passionate embrace.
Her litle fists hammered impatiently on my chest. "Flurry! Hurry!" she cried.
We were both smoldering with an inflamed, compulsive desire that could not be denied. I got the pants off, throwing them in a wrinkled mess on the floor. Somehow I got out of the mess jacket. The shirt I pulled so violently I tore off the buttons.
I was down to my shorts when she grabbed my hands. In rising her skirt had fallen. She stood before me naked to the waist with the flame red silk imprisoning her beauty from the hips down.
"Let me!" she said, shivering. "Let me take them off."
I dropped my arms from the shorts and brought them up to squeeze hard on the trembling breasts she shoved against me. Her inpatient, yet gentle hands pushed down my shorts. Her fingers did the work while the palms rubbed erotically across my flesh.
The pants fell around my feet. I ignored them. The torrent of passion swept away everything but the vision of the half naked woman in front of me. I swept her up in my arms to carry her back to the bed.
The shorts around my ankles tripped me. I fell. We were close enough to the bed so that we rolled across it.
There was a jar and a shuddering crash. The slats, holding the box springs, broke. The mattress sagged. We rolled, locked together, off on the floor.
I started to get up. She clung to me.
"To hell with it!" she whispered. Her voice was as thick as a drunkard's. As I think it over now ,I guess she was drunk. We both were. Wildly intoxicated from drinking too deeply of unfulfilled lust.
"To hell with the bed!" she cried, agony in her voice now. "I can't wait! I can't wait even that long! Take me! Take me, you slow son of a bitch! Hurry! Hurry! I'm dying! I'm dying-for-for-for love!"
CHAPTER FIVE
Irene groaned in agonized pleasure under the hot stab of passion. I was panting until my whole body heaved.
It wasn't love. We writhed, twisting-slamming our enflamed bodies against each other in a cyclone of passion. It was lust, tantalized and stimulated until it became not an act, but an explosion of emotions.
We tore at each other like animals fighting. It was vicious and overpowering. The grinding together of two souls in a self induced torment.
Tortured, frustrated we built rapidly to a climax, and burst open, flooding both of us with a volcanic lava that raced through our bodies with a thrilling orgastic shock.
As the thrills of explosive orgasm kept echoing, we clung to each other-no longer violently writhing, but shuddering as gasping as the fires of emotion died away.
Dreamily Irene looked at her watch. She gasped, "So late! Time passed so quickly! My guests! I've got to run. But first! Hold me tighter. Kiss me just once more!"
Her hands gently pulled my head down until our lips touched.
She said, "It is more than just" looks. You are him in every way."
"What the hell are you talking about?" I said, anger rising in me. It is not pleasant to lie naked skin to naked skin and hear the woman under you talk about another man.
"Your father," she said.
And with those words the magic of the evening disappeared. I hated him and just the reminder was enough to turn me sour, but her mention of him brought a forceful reminder that Irene Marstaff was older than I. She didn't look it there in the near darkness of the room. But it was true and I suddenly resented it. Why, I don't know exactly. The object of a man and a woman coming together is gratification of sexual desire.
God knows a bedroom session with Irene Marstaff was gratification.
Slowly we disengaged from each other. She smoothed out the flaring skirt of her dress while I sat down on the edge of the broken bed.
She hummed some little song to herself as she pulled up the dropped bodice to hide her beautiful breasts. I wondered how she could have such vivacity after such a hectic affair. I was so given out I hadn't yet bothered to pull on my shorts. I sat there naked, watching her.
She got the top of the gown in place and whirled around for me to pull up the tiny zipper. This done she whirled away from me.
"Where is my hag?" she asked, suddenly growing fretful.
Then she saw it near the door where she had dropped it when she first grabbed me. She took out a compact and repaired her smeared lipstick.
After slipping th-compact back in the bag, she smiled at me.
"How do I look?" she asked.
Being naturally honest I said: "Beautiful."
And being naturally prudent, I didn't add what else I thought, which was, "Beautiful, yes, but hateful, too!"
She came over and patted my cheek before leaving.
"It makes yon angry to compare you with your father?" she said softly. "It shouldn't. He was a real man-in his day. I remember the first time I saw him. I thought him the most handsome person I'd ever seen. I was eighteen. He was fort)'. But age makes no difference when two people truely love."
She sighed and for a brief moment the light of memory made her face look as young as Donna's.
"We were very-close," she said, closing her eves. "Then changing assignments took us to different parts of the world. Sometimes we saw each other briefly, but it was never for long.
"The last time I saw him, he had aged tremendously. Twenty-two years difference is not important when one is eighteen and the other forty, but it becomes romantically impossible when one is still in her thirties and the other approaches sixty."
She paused, the sudden sadness in her face disappeared as her deep violet yes roamed over my naked body.
The expression on her face turned strangely soft. She said:
"I loved that man. And he was a man. In every possible sense of the word. He is one of the very few real men I have ever known. As long as I live I'll never forget the way he thrilled me as no one else ever has. But he's old now.
"And so I thought that wonderful dream was over forever. Now. I'm not so sure. Perhaps Fate is trying to make up for the dirty deals I've gotten by sending me back my only true love as a young man."
The way she looked at me left no doubt of her meaning. I was so startled I burst out:
"You're crazy! Dad and I look alike, but we're as different inside as sun and moon. You can't make me into another-"
She closed my mouth with a kiss Then drawing back, she laughed and her deep violet eyes sparkled. "You are just like him. In looks, in mannerisms, in little boy petlishness, and most of all-thank God-in the way you make love!"
She did not wait for me to reply. She ran her hands down the lines of her flaming gown.
"Everything seems to be all right," she said. "That's one of the beauties of silk It doesn't wrinkle easily."
I stared at her in amazement. She wore nothing but that single sheath of silk. No slip, no girdle, no bra, no panties. I swallowed hard. It took a woman with a magnificent body to pull off a stunt like that-and a woman with supreme gall.
"I must go now," she said, and sighed. "One last kiss! Not a night cap for this-romance, but an eye-opener for our next!"
Her face came down close to mine. Her lips were as insistent as ever. I looked into her deep violent eves and thought-strangely-how much they looked like Donna's.
Even more strangely. I spoke my thoughts aloud.
"You eyes are so beautiful," I said. "They look just like Donna's."
She stiffened. The tenderness with which she was regarding me congealed into a mask of cold anger.
"What about Donna?" she asked.
"Nothing. I just said you both have the same eyes."
She glared at me, and I took a savage delight in her anger. Now, I thought, she knows how I feel about her comparing me to my father.
Where did you get close enough to Donna to tell what her eyes were like?"
Suddenly I realized what I should have known all along. Irene Marstaff was insanely jealous of her daughter. I would have liked to have taunted her, but I was afraid she would take out her rage on the girl.
"Where did you see her!" she repeated.
When I didn't answer she slapped me. It was a hard vicious blow that stung and made my eyes water. It was surprisingly heavy for a hand that had caressed my sex so tenderly.
I got up. My fists clinched. I didn't give a damn if she was a woman and the wife of the base commander. I took a step tov 'rd her.
"You bitch!" I said through clinched teeth. "If you ever slap me again, I'll-"
She gasped and retreated before my enraged advance. She did not appear afraid. Instead a strangely lustful light blazed up in her eyes.
"By gosh!" she whispered, "You are him. Just exactly!"
This brought me up short. I stopped, confused, and stared at her.
She looked me straight in the face. Her voice was calm, but it carried a definite conviction. It is seldom that a man can tell whether a woman really means what she says. But I knew then that Irene Marstaff was absolutely sincere this one time.
"You are mine!" she said in a low, positive voice. "I can take care of all you can possibly want-and perhaps a little more. I will not tolerate you playing around with another woman. Especially my daughter. Do you understand that?
"And just to put teeth into what I am saying let me point out to you that Donna is only eighteen. And damn you, Jim Cross, I'll have you in San Quentin if you even so much as put your hand on it!"
"For hell's sake, woman! I haven't touched the kid. Hell, I'm no cradle snatcher. All I did was look at her. Is it a crime to look at her?"
She laughed, a short, cynical burst.
"I've never yet met a man who could look without wanting to touch! Look at me? You took one look and then look what happened!"
Angry as I was, I nearly laughed in her face. She seemed so outrageously sincere that I got the feeling she actually thought I had seduced her when it was definitely the other way around.
She took a deep shuddering breath. "Damn you!" she burst out. "You are just like him. You can make me so damn mad I want to kill you!"
"Irene," I began.
She cut me off. "I must run, dear. I'll sneak off in an hour. Meet me here then."
She blew me a kiss and was gone.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. I was pooped. I lay back, but the mattress sagged down on the iron end and my head dropped lower than my feet.
I got up and started wearily to dress. My clothes were a mess. My pants and jacket were wrinkled too badly for me to wear them back inside. The shirt was a mess.
Worst of all, my knees were scrubbed raw from rubbing on the concrete. I rubbed my hand over them. There were traces of blood and they were starting to sting and hurt unpleasantly.
I wondered if the same thing had happened to Irene's buttocks. The way she ground and hunched she should have worn the skin completely off.
Then on deeper reflection I decided that with her experience she probably had sufficient calluses there to take care of her. More than likely it was the concrete that got worn.
My clothes were so badly wrinkled I couldn't return to the club. Instead I went out and crawled into the T-Bird. I intended to go back to the BOQ, but the thought of having to stare at those damned cell-like walls depressed me.
So I just sat there staring out over the lights of the base which sprawled below the hill where the club was situated.
Here on the high desert it is cool after the infernal sun goes down. It was comfortable, and I was tired and didn't want to move. The hands of the dashboard clock went around and then around again.
The time for my appointment in the pool dressing room with Irene came and went. I was too deep in a tangle of disturbed thoughts to care.
My last assignment-in Hawaii-had been a delight. Then I was in love with service life. I was going to make it a career and become Chief of Staff at least.
Now this rotten mess I found myself in swept away all those thoughts. Joshua Air Force Base was a rude awakening from my military childhood. I was up against the stark realities at last. Life in the service could be a hell as well as a heaven.
Once I heard an old soldier say that in a military lifetime the had assignments just about balanced the good ones. Rut who wants to spend exactly half his lifetime beating his head against stone walls in the Joshuas of the service?
"To hell with it!" I told myself bitterly. "Just as soon as my obligated service is out of the way, I'm resigning. They can take the goddam Air Force and ram it and jam it!"
I was a damned good test pilot and a graduate engineer. I didn't figure I'd have any trouble getting on with a big aircraft company.
Having once made up my mind, I felt at ease for the first time since I came to this miserable base.
Resolving the problem of my future, my thoughts gradually shifted back to my present. And this brought up the subject of Irene Marstaff.
She was a bitch-a nymphomaniac-an adulterous whore-and all the other things jealous women of Joshua called her.
Rut for all of that she was an artist on the bed sheets. I closed my eyes and could see her as plainly as life. She was laying there with the bodice of her dress pulled down and her skirt jerked up. The silk made a flaming splash of red across her belly. Her legs opened, and her upraised arms echoed their erotic invitation.
Suddenly the breeze off the desert wasn't sufficient to cool me anymore. I was scorching.
Muscles grew rigid and ached with frustration.
I opened my eyes to shut out her naked vision, but the witch would not go away. I saw her, her breasts, flaring hips, tapering legs, and exposed sex like a ghost image in front of my eyes.
Her deep violet eyes glowed, and her smile was an invitation to violent love.
I got stiffly out of the car. Cramping muscles made me walk somewhat spraddle-legged, and I hoped no one would come out of the club and see me. I skirted the building and walked around the swimming pool.
I was thirty minutes late, but hoped that she would be late too. Or had waited.
"Why in hell didn't I come on time?" I asked myself.
The answer, of course, was that she wasn't my kind of woman. She was a bitch and I preferred my women at least partly exclusive. I had no intention of ever coming back to her when I left.
I had no intention of letting myself get trapped in a spider web the way Phillips had.
But I forget all my good intentions. All I could think of was hot naked flesh grinding breasts, thighs and loins against me in the most violent passion I'd ever experienced.
I wanted some more of it. I wanted it as badly as I ever wanted anything in my life. Vaguely I realized that Irene's flesh was like dope. I could be hooked as Phillips was if I wasn't careful.
But I went on anyway.
Coming in from behind, I saw a filter of light through the ventilator in the women's shower section. I wondered if I had left the light on or if someone else was using the place as we had. I did not expect that Irene had waited if she came out and not found me.
What I expected to do was go to the terrace and wait until I could catch the eye of a waiter. Then I'd send her a message that I was there.
The light bothered me. I stepped to the door. The sign, "Women," made me uneasy. If I burst in on someone-
I hesitated, my hand on hte knob. I heard noises inside. Panting. Groaning. Creaking of springs. Gasping. All the erotic sounds of a man and woman in a sexual embrace.
I should have smiled and turned away. But I couldn't. I stood there, my hand frozen on the door knob. The man's heavy breathing and grunting meant nothing to me. But the woman's vocal reaction to orgasms were registered indelibly on my mind. I would have recognized them in a totally dark whorehouse with fifty pairs of people in action.
It was Irene Marstaff.
I was caught in a blinding, unreasonable rage. I hated her. She had promised me! I hated the man. He had no right to cut in on what I thought was mine!
I grabbed the knob and pushed at the door. It squeaked on its hinges. The sound jarred some sense into me. I retreated hastily.
Whoever the man was in there with Irene, he had as much right to take her to bed as I did. I walked back and stood beside the bushes that -rimmed the terrace.
Time passed. Ten. Twenty. Thirty minutes. I was tired, bitter, and impatient, but determined not to leave until I saw Irene.
After what seemed ages, during which I was sure he was wearing it out completely, Irene came out. She was alone. In my mind I could see the man sitting exhausted as I had on the edge of the bed.
She looked fresh herself. The silk dress, I made a special note-was still unwrinkled. Like the phoenix that is rejuvenated by fire, the fires of lustful sex seemed to recreate a new woman of Irene Marstaff.
Never before nor since have I seen a woman who thrived on violent orgasms as she did.
She saw me. Her initial exclamation of delight turned into a petulant compaint.
"I waited for you," she said accusingly. "You didn't come."
"One or two," I said sarcastically.
"One or two what?"
"Minutes?"
"What are you talking about? I hate riddles."
"Did you wait all of one or two minutes?"
"I'll wait for a man exactly ten seconds!" she snapped. "No longer. Where in hell were you?"
"What do you care? You were taken care of!"
"So you're jealous!" She sounded pleased.
I hated her smug tone. I wanted suddenly to hurt her. To smash my fist into her face. And then to rip that thin red sheath from her shuddering body and drag it into the bushes.
She came up close to me, apparently mistaking my rage for passionate desire. She rubbed her breasts against my chest and gently touched my cheek with her cool fingertips.
"You need not be," she said gently. "All you have to do is be there when I need you. I can't wait. I'm just not the waiting kind. I sometimes wish I were. But it's not my fault. I'm the way God made me."
I looked at her in amazement. She sounded so sincere. I had to believe she meant it-fantastic as it sounded.
Her face, upturned to me in the moonlight, looked almost girlish. It was beautiful, and the delicate line. of her throat running down to swell into those magnificent breasts was even more lovely.
A man would have to be an unsexed woman hater not to be moved by the moonlit beauty of a body made for love. I could feel myself falling into the web. Deep inside something warned me. The memory of that hot, passionate body stretched out with legs slowly opening to expose her total nakedness caught me up in a rage of lustful fire that consumed all reason.
My arms "went around her. She looked around quickly toward the terrace. There was no one there, and her own arms came up around me.
"After I left you there," she said huskily, "I thought I had only been carried away by-a memory. But I knew when I saw you just a moment ago, that I was wrong. You are not just another man. I love you!"
"Then there'll be no more slipping off to the bathhouse-"
"Only with you, my love, my dearest, my only love!"
Our lips met hungrily-as maddeningly passionate as our first embrace had been earlier in the evening.
When we broke she buried her head against my shoulder and her hot lips sent goose-fleshing chills and thrills chasing each other as she bit lustfully at my neck.
My fingers dug into her smooth shoulders. It was like touching silk. I closed my eyes under the tantalizing shock of her avid mouth.
Then when I opened them I stared across her head into the face of a man who had come from the bathhouse while Irene and I were locked in our erotic embrace.
It was Lt. Philip L. Phillips. The moonlight was full on his face. I could see the sweat trickling slowly down it. His mouth was drawn back in a snarl. Hrs eyes were those of a drunk man in a consuming rage.
He must have heard what Irene said to me. He took it hard-coming as he did from an adulterous bed with her.
His nervous hands balled into fists. He said thickly: "You son of a bitch!"
Irene had not known he was there until Phil spoke. She whirled, startled.
"Oh!" she said, relieved. "It's you! Run along now, Phil, like a nice boy. I'm busy."
The casual-almost childish-way she dismissed him who had been her ardent lover only minutes before caused the blood to rush to Phillips' face. Changing emotions chased each other across his stricken face. He looked sick, and then furious. One second I thought he would cry, and the next that he would burst out cursing.
"You son of a bitch!" he repeated. "She was mine! And you had to come sneaking in and steal her!"
"Phil!" Irene snapped. Her face flamed with anger. In some women rage makes them ugly. It heightened Irene's beauty. "You are acting like an idiot!"
"The hell I am!" he said, spitting the words at her. "I'm acting like a man for the first time since I met you, you whorish birch!"
"Phil-!"
"Damn you, Phillips-!"
He lurched toward us. Irene tried to get in front of me. Phillips caught her arm. He flung her roughly aside. She stumbled and fell.
He came at me swinging. I didn't want to hit him. He was drunk. I backed off. He followed. My back was against a hedge. I couldn't go any farther.
He swung. I tried to duck, but my shoulders were fouled by the shrubbery. He caught me a glancing blow. He might be drunk, but he packed a wallop. My head was rammed back into the hedge. Sharp twig ends ripped bloody streaks across my face.
Before I could react, Phillips hit me on the cheek, and then in the belly. I was off balance. With my head jammed in the hedge I couldn't duck.
I was in danger of being beaten to death by the berserk man. I couldn't hit back. Much as I hated to do it, I brought my knee up in his groin.
I had no alternative. It was that or be badly hurt myself.
He doubled up, grunting in pain. He fell and rolled over. His sweating, agonized face glared murderous hate up at me.
"I-I'll kill you-for this!" He painfully spit the words out through clinched teeth.
"Get him out of here!" Irene said, looking toward the terrace. "We have guests from the city. They are influential politicians. If they see this, it will not be possible for Edgar to cover it up."
"Phillips," I said, stooping to help him up.
"Get away-from me-you bastard!" he said, choking.
Even in the moonlight I could tell his face was deathly pale.
I stepped back confused. He choked again, and dropped his head. Vomit gushed from his mouth. He groaned-double sick from drink and from the cruel blow I gave him.
I looked at him in helpless pity. I think the crudest thing one man can do to another is to kick him like that. But I kept telling myself that I had to do it.
Nervously I rubbed my face, and was surprised to feel smeared blood. I had forgotten that the hedge had ripped my skin in several places when he knocked me back into it. I realized then for the first time that the wounds were stinging painfully.
I looked around for Irene. She had gone, but it was only for a moment. She came back with a grim faced lieutenant colonel in uniform. He gave me an unpleasant look.
"Frank," she said. "Can you get him to his quarters without anyone knowing about this?"
The colonel stared at Phillips. "He should be taken to the hospital."
"There's nothing wrong with him except a little too much to drink," Irene said impatiently. "Those damned doctors make a record of everything. I want this kept undercover."
"I've covered up just about all I can for you, Irene," he said. "And for Ed, too, for that matter. Things are getting out of hand here. I can't keep covering up."
"Frank-"
"Go inside, Irene."
"Frank!"
"Go inside! Damn it, woman, can't you see I'm trying to protect you? That son of a bitch from the city is an anti-administration man. You know that Senator Leffington was instrumental in getting this base established. If Connolly in there can find anything to howl about, he'll do it to embarrass Leffington."
"Ed invited the bastard out to try and convince him the base is a good thing," she said heavily.
"And he'll make a good thing politically out of it if he discovers a couple of drunk junior officers are fighting over their commander's wife."
"That's not true, Frank! You have no right to say that!"
"Okay, you've convinced me, but you won't convince Connolly so easily. Now get out of here and let me besmirch my honor as an officer in the Air Force and as Provost Marshal of this goddamn base by covering up for you the best I can."
Her anger vanished. She smiled at him like he was the only man in the world. She squeezed his arm, and said breathlessly, "Thanks, Frank!"
She swirled away. Phillips glared hatefully at her. Lt. Col. Frank Castelman, the Provost Marshal, looked unhappy. I felt uneasy and jealous.
Castleman said to me, "I want a talk with you when this is over."
His tone was unpleasant, and boded little good for Jim Cross.
CHAPTER SIX
Castleman said, "Give me a hand with him, lieutenant."
I stooped to help him pull Phillips to his feet. The sick man struck viciously at my arm.
"Don't touch me, you bastard!" he said.
"That's enough, lieutenant!" Castleman snapped. "This is Col. Castleman. We're trying to help you."
"I don't need any help. I can take care of myself!"
Phillips tried to get up unaided. He fell back, smearing his face in the drunken puke on the grass.
Castleman and I grabbed his arms. Phillips tried to fight us off.
"Be still, you stupid bastard!" Castleman said harshly. "Oh I'll forget I'm a senior officer and kick your damned ass!"
Phillips glared hatefully up at Castleman, but the discipline of military training won over his drunkenness.
He kept his mouth shut while we got him to his feet and around the building. By that time he could balance himself fairly well. With us supporting him, we got him to Col. Castleman's car.
"Are you sure you are all right?" the colonel asked. "I can take you to the hospital?"
"You heard the lady," Phillips said heavily. "It would go on the record for some nosey inspector to see."
"Damn the lady," Castleman sail, "If you're hurt."
"I'll live," Phillips said. "But I don't know why."
"Okay, I'll drive you to the BOQ. Get in, Cross."
"Sir, I have my own car."
"Okay, but follow me. I want a few words with you.".
Unhappily I wheeled out the T-Bird, and pulled in behind him. We drove down the hill to the BOQ where I helped Col. Castleman get Phillips into bed.
When we walked back to the car, Castleman said, "This is a very unusual situation, lieutenant."
"Very much, sir."
"Do you think anything of your career, lieutenant?"
"Why-yes, sir, of course."
"Then I would strongly advise you to stay away from Irene Marstaff."
"But I didn't run after the damned woman! She-!"
"That I understand. But it is easy to break off with her. She is sensitive about her age-which incidently is considerably older than she claims. Considerably."
"Yes, sir," I said.
"Just make a few cracks about your differences of age and she'll drop you like a hot potato."
I was tired and irritated and the scratches on my face hurt. All this combined to dull my good judgment. Instead of a safe, sane 'Yes, sir,' I said:
"The voice of experience, sir?"
"I'm not Irene's type," he said coldly. "Now out here in the dark with only God and the stars to hear us, I can speak bluntly man to man and not as senior officers to a junior one.
"Lieutenant, you are as stupid as a man can be. This woman has destroyed everything fine in every man she has got her teeth into. You may wonder why I don't jug Phillips and let him face a courtmarital for action unbecoming an officer and disgracing the uniform of the United States. It is because she and not he is the guilty one and should be punished.
"Unfortunately, I can do nothing about her. She is not under military control. When dependents get out of hand the usual procedure is to turn them over to civilian police or move them off the air base. I can do neither in the ease of this woman because she is protected by an extremely influentail man high in Air Force circles."
"I know who you mean," I said. "Well, let me tell you something else. Her protector is still infatuated with her. So much so he finds an enormous number of excuses to inspect this base, flying all the way from Washington to do it. However, he isn't young anymore. Irene likes them young. You look a lot like-your father."
"So she told me."
"General Cross is extremely jealous. If there's a father and son flare up over this bitch and it gets out-well, it will do damage to the Air Force that will be difficult to repair."
"For hell's sake, if the old man wants to get some of that, I'm not going to jump on him."
"But what about him? I don't want you to come near Irene while the General's here."
"Colonel, you're way off base."
"How well do you know your faher?"
"Hell, I lived with him for 18 years!"
"You saw him as a martinet father. What do you know of his sex life?"
"Well, he must have had some. After all, I'm here."
"If that's all you know, you have a shock coming. Old Double Cross's amatory adventures around the world would make a male version of "Forever Amber." Parents have a second life that their children rarely know about. I've seen him in action here during his visits."
"You're got nothing to worry about me," I said. "But what about Colonel Marstaff?"
"Ed and Irene haven't slept together for years. He has a WAF officer who takes care of him, and Irene takes care of half the young officers on the base. He hangs on to her because he's afraid of a scandalous divorce which could ruin his chances for a star. She needs him as a convenient front for her respectability. And she wants almost as bad as she wants sex to be a general's wife. Marstaff is just one step from it."
"Who would promote him?"
"Despite some trouble among his staff, the work here is progressing satisfactorily. If the tests prove out, Marstaff will have redeemed himself, and will be back in the race for a general's star."
"I don't see how you figure I'm at fault. This has been going on for years."
"Yes," he admitted, "but it was just a game with Irene then. You see, she really loved General Cross once. He was the only man who ever aroused that kind of an emotion in her. But love and sex are not separable. The general is still willing, but he hasn't got the fire any more.
"In you she sees her lover reborn. That would be fine, but Irene is as much older than you as your father is older than her. No matter how violent your love affair may be at the start, sooner or later you'll be looking for a younger woman. When you do all hell will break loose. Irene makes a game of squeezing out men and throwing the husks aside. She could never stand a man treating her the same way. When she gets mad, she goes crazy."
"Thanks for the advice, colonel," I said politely.
"You don't believe me?" he asked.
"I believe you, sir."
"But I wonder if you really believe this is serious."
"I don't think it is as serious as you seem to think it is."
"It is this serious. If you really get embroiled with Irene Marstaff and try to break it off, she'll kill you. She's that wild."
"What the hell? If I break it off now, what's the difference?"
"It's just started. Make a few snide remarks about her age. You won't have to get rid of her. She'll drop you. Let things develop too far and it will be too late. Believe me, I know this bitch. She's a sex crazy ego-maniac. And she wields a lot of power through the protection of your father."
"The old bastard!" I said.
"I understand," Castleman said dryly, "that you and he do not get along very well."
"That, colonel, is an understatement."
"Good night, lieutenant. Think over what I said. It's for your own good and the good of the service."
I thought it over as he requested. I thought for a long time as I lay in bed unable to sleep. But thinking about Irene always brought a vision of her gloriously naked body. I knew Castleman was right, but the lustful itch of desire is more powerful than good intentions.
When morning came I was still awake, aching with frustrated passion. In the rosy glow of thinking about Irene's hips grinding her body against mine the troubles of the night seemed remote and dream-like.
The seriousness, however, came back to me when I reported for work. I found that I was scheduled to fly my first chase mission, jockeying an F-104 fighter plane along with the bomber carrying the nuclear engine.
Phillips was also scheduled to fly. I thought he would have forgotten last night after he sobered up. The first glimpse I got of him showed that his fury was as great as ever.
He looked terrible. His face was drawn, and his eyes blood shot. He walked with a limp from the kick I gave him in the crotch.
He gave me a killing glare as I walked in. I stood there awkwardly for a moment. I wanted to go over and apologize, but the savage look on his face assured me that I would only stir up more trouble.
I walked past him and started to take my gear out of the steel wall locked. I'd just taken out my crash helmet when I heard Phillips explode:
"You rotten basard! You tried to de-nut me! You tried to ruin me so you could have Irene for yourself!"
His voice was high pitched. The other pilots whirled around, startled. A couple of mechanics passing by stopped to look curiously in the window.
I tried to back out of Phillips' rushing attack. It was different from last night. He wasn't drunk now. He caught me a hard right on the cheek. I was knocked against the opposite row of lockers. There was a loud double clang. One from my head hitting the steel, and the other inside my addled brain.
I tried to hit back. I was off balance and flailed air. He hit me again. My knees buckled. I folded up on the floor.
My mind was fuzzy. I felt a sudden, excruciating pain in my side as he kicked me. I had been trying to get up, but this flattened me again.
I heard somebody say in an agitated voice: "Cut it out, Phil! You can't kick a man when he's down!"
Another voice said, "Let him alone. Phil, I mean. The rotten bastard beat hell out of Phil when he was drunk last night. Phil's got a right to even it up!"
I felt another savage blow on the thigh.
"He tried to ruin me last night!' Phillips cried in rage-choked voice. "I'm going to grind his testicles to mush!"
He kicked at my crotch again. I managed to jerk around enough to again take the blow on my right thigh.
"Phil's going to kill the bastard. Help me!"
"Aw, hell-!"
"You stupid bastard! Help me! If Phillips kills him we'll all be in trouble! Help me, I can't hold the crazy joker alone!"
I heard Phillips cursing, and a bell-like clang as the struggling men fell back against a metal locker.
They tripped him, and got on top of the berserk man when he fell.
I got painfully to my feet. One of the pilots struggling with Phillips shouted to me: "Get the hell out of here! We can't get him quiet as long as he can see you."
I backed away, shaking my head to try and clear it. I stepped out the door and leaned against the wall.
The blinding desert sun sent needles of pain into my aching eyeballs.
I dropped my head and closed my eyes. I was bewildered, frustrated, and afraid.
I didn't know what to do. Every time I turned around I found myself getting deeper involved in trouble. I knew I couldn't go on like this. It would-sooner or later-mean courts-martial and a dishonorable dismissal from the service if not a prison term.
And the hell of it was that I could do nothing about it. A civilian could quit and move on. A man in the service is tied down until some idiot in the Pentagon assignment section got around to moving you. I still had some obligated service and could not resign my commission for two more years.
I stood there for several minutes. Then someone touched my shoulder. I turned to confront the grim face of Capt. Charles Branch, the flight leader for today's mission. He had not been in the locker room when the fight started, but he must have got the details.
"Do you think you can fly today?" he asked abruptly.
I looked back at him. He was a run of the mill Air Force officer. He did his job in an efficient manner, was married and acted like it, and had a right to be contemptuous of men like Phillips, Signet, Marstaff and me.
Although he treated me courteously, it was plain from the expression on his face that he detested me. "Why not?" I said curtly.
"There are a lot of reasons why not," he said sharply. "Last night for one and this-incident for another. Now we are hurting for chase pilots today. If you and Phillips can't fly, we'll have to scrub the mission.
Washington is on our tail for some results. We'll be embarrassed trying to explain why we couldn't fly today's test."
"I can fly," I said, shaking my head in a futile attempt to stop the painful ringing. "I don't know as I'd trust Phillips in a plane today."
"I've got to get four chase planes up. Three are carrying motion picture cameras to photograph the test. The other will take along an Atomic Energy Commision man as observer. We must have every plane. We only have eight assigned chase pilots. One is on regular leave. Another left last night on emergency leave. His father died. Steve Rhoads is in the hospital, and Coleman was sent up to Site Four."
I felt my face burn at the mention of Coleman, the man who had to take my place at the desert station when Irene interferred.
"That leaves us just enough pilots with you and Phillips. There isn't enough time to get Edwards Air Force Base to send us up some substitutes. We must have test pilots. An ordinary pilot will not do."
"I can fly," I insisted. "I'm just shook up a little. I'll be okay."
He looked at me uneasily. He had a difficult decision to make. If he sent us up and sc mething happened, his neck was in a noose. On the other hand, if he cancelled the mission, Marstaff would have some hard explaining to do. With the Atomic Energy Commision and several other agencies concerned with the nuclear engine testing, it could not be covered up.
Capt. Branch was a good, loyal officer. He wanted to protect his commander to the best of his ability. That was commendable. It is one of the things they drum into a young officer. Loyalty, it is called. The military definition of that word is "cover up for the Old Man because lie is the son of a bitch who writes the efficiency reports upon which your goddam promotions depend."
I could see from the twisting emotions on his face that Branch was having a hard time weighing his loyalty to his commander against his good sense and loyalty to the Air Force. I had a feeling that good sense was going to win.
Fortunately for him, he was saved the responsibility of making a decision.
Signet came running from the Operations building. His florid face was redder than usual. His unnatural exertions had covered his body with sweat. It showed damply in huge spots on his short sleeve 505 shirt.
"Askins called me!" he said, almost shaking with agitation. "We can't cancel this damned mission out!"
"Sir," Branch said, "it's too risky."
"The hell it is!" Signet snapped. "If this just meant these two young fools, Marstaff, and his bitch wife would hang, I'd be the first to cancel out. But all of us have been involved in covering up for him in the past. If the whole story came out, it would ruin all our careers. Including yours, captain!"
"Sir-!"
"I want that mission in the air at 1000 hours! I don't give a damned how you do, but I'm holding you personally responsible if it doesn't. In my report you'll take full responsibility for your own failure to preserve discipline among your men. Do I make myself plain, captain?"
Branch's face turned red and then pale. I felt sorry for him. It was not his fault, but Signet left no doubt that if he were caught in a jam with higher headquarters, he would shift all the blame he possibly could to his deputy.
A sergeant came from the Flight Test Operations. "Colonel Signet," he said.
"Don't bother me now," Signet snapped. "Whatever it is take care of it yourself. Use my name if necessary."
"Sir, it's Colonel Marstaff. Some four-star general is landing at Base Ops in fifteen minutes. The colonel wants you in the welcoming party."
Signet let slip a filthy word. "That'll be Cross," he said, glaring at me as if it was my fault my father was coming to witness the nuclear engine test.
The Director of Test Operations took a deep breath. He said to Branch: "Get that mission in the air, captain!"
"Yes, sir," Branch said in a low voice.
When Signet had gone Branch sighed. "Well, that settles that, lieutenant. You fly. And God help you if you don't do it well. This is a dangerous flight. You shouldn't be making it until you've had some more practice. Just graduating from Test Pilot School isn't enough to make a man a test pilot. But I have no choice."
He hesitated, watching Signet climb into a staff car and head off toward base operations. When Signet was out of sight, Branch said, "He keeps a bottle in the bottom drawer of his desk. I have an ironclad rule that no pilot gets in the air if he's had a drink within the last three hours of takeoff. But-there is an exception to all rules. Don't drink it, but one stiff one might settle you down."
"I'll be okay," I said.
"I hope so," he replied. "Don't go back to the locker room until they get Phillips out of there. Then get your gear and go directly to briefing. When it's Over, don't hang around. Get your gear and go to the flight line. Understand?"
"All A-OK," I said.
At the mission briefing I learned that my part was to fly directly under the left wing of the new atomic bomber with the automatic radiation detection gear sweeping the area for any radiation leaks. At the same time I had to stay in correct position for my cameraman, in the second seat of the T-38 trainer, to take high speed movies of the engine to detect any dangerous vibration.
Phillips had a position under the opposite wing of the new bomber.
At the close of the briefing General Cross came in with Marstaff and Signet. lie was introduced to the crew of the experimental bomber. He could not have missed me standing back on the side, but I might have been part of the wall for all the notice he gave me.
I was shocked at the sight of him. I knew then what Irene meant about growing old. He had always been a well preserved man, but he had aged a lot in the three years since I last saw him.
When the briefing broke up, I heard the general sad to Marstaff, "Don't bother about me, Ed. I know you have plenty to keep you busy until this test is over. Carry on. Irene can run me over to the club. I missed breakfast. I'll be back to watch the flyover."
"Yes, sir," Marstaff said.
He watched the general walk out to the parking lot and climb into the station wagon with Irene. There was a cynical smile on the colonel's face as he watched his wife drive off with her lover of twenty years.
Donna was in the back seat, but I was an cynical as Marstaff. I knew that they would drop her somewhere along the line and retire to bed in Marstaffs quarters.
"The old man," I thought, "is making a tactical error. When one starts showing his age like that, he should woo younger women only in the flattering light of a half moon."
It amused me to see him drive off with her. I had her word for it that he could no longer satisfy her. That mean I would be welcome when I showed up tonight to give her what she wanted after he had teased her up for me.
Usually I get violent at thought of sharing my sex partners. Rut it pleased me to think of finishing something my father could not.
All my life he had thrown it up to me because I could not do the things he did at my age. Now at last I had found something to better him at. And I damned well intended to let him know I'd done it after it was over.
I had a nip from the bottle of Scotch in Signet's desk drawer and by the time I got my jet into the air I was feeling pretty good. I moved carefully into position under the jet pod of the new bomber.
It was hard to keep my mind on what I was doing. It kept wandering to Phillips who jockied along just off my wing in the other plane and to Irene Marstaff.
The effect of her was almost hypnotic. Much as I tried to keep my mind on flying close formation with the bomber, she kept intruding. Instead of jet pods I saw huge rounded breasts, soft and inviting-a home, sweet, home for a head weary of a celibate life.
Ahead of us cloud banks hung over the mountains. Like a child I dreamily saw shapes in them. Two piling cumulous banks rolled together until they looked like Irene's buttocks did when she stooped to retrieve her scarlet dress that night in the bath house. Another reminded me of the way her belly sloped down to her crotch.
Suddenly my cloud dreams of my sex mistress were rudely shattered by an angry squawk in the headphones of my radio.
It was Captain Branch flying one of the rear chase planes.
"Chase Three!" he snapped across the sky to me. "What in hell are you doing?"
Guiltily I pulled back into place after crabbing in so close to the bomber my wing tip almost jammed through the pilot's canopy.
I could feel my face burning. Signet, Marstaff and General Cross were all watching through field glasses. I knew they had seen my bad flying.
I got back into position but still found it hard to keep my mind on what I was doing. It was boring and I was tired and all I wanted was to get into bed with Irene again.
Suddenly I was jarred by a wild yell in my headphone. I jerked alert. It wasn't me. I jerked my head around. Phillips was edging in toward the bomber as I had.
The yell from Branch failed to bring him out of it. I could see Phillips' head slumped down. He seemed to have passed out.
The worried bomber pilot racked over the big experimental plane to avoid a crash. He cut directly into me. I banked too steeply in a frantic effort to keep the bomber from crashing into me. It was too violent a turn. The trainer shuddered and lost lift.
We plummeted earthward, temporaily out of control. We lost two thousand feet altitude before I could level off.
"Lieutenant," I heard the photographer in the rear seat say plaintively into my earphones, "are you an ex-elevator boy?"
I was too busy scanning the sky to see what happened to answer his sarcasm. However, I made a mental note to chew his butt when we got back on the ground. The way old von Steuben set up this military system in Valley Forge, no enlisted man is entitled to get sarcastic about the flying of a poor old pilot who is doing the best he can.
The bomber was flying level high above me at three o'clock. I couldn't see Phillips, and only one of the other chase planes was visible. From the number painted on the side I knew it was the one carrying the Atomic Energy Commission observer.
The headphones cackled. I heard Branch's frantic voice: He's going to auger in! Quick! Somebody give me some help. I'll take the left wing. Get the right!"
I knew what he meant. If two other planes, one on each side, could get their wing tips directly under the wing tips of Phillips' plane, the air flowing over our wings would act as a cushion to push Phillips back up from his crash course.
I was nearest to his falling plane because of my own sudden drop. I threw the throttle to the firewall and went after him. I was gaining very slowly. The altimeter showed 6,000 feet. Watching the slowly closing distance between us, I estimated that we would be right on the deck by the time we caught up.
It would be close-damned close!
I looked back. Two other chase planes were barrelling down. The nearest was a good 1,500 feet higher than I was. It looked like. Capt. Branch's plane.
Glancing from it to the uprushing desert floor, I had a sick feeling that he wasn't going to catch up in time.
The distance closed with agonizing slowness. As I drew alongside, I looked back again. Branch was not going to make it. That was certain now. The ground was too close.
I was soaked with sweat, and in an agony of fear. I hated Phillips,, that was true. But I was partly responsible for his condition. If he augered in, I was going to have him on my conscience for a long time. With both of us barrelling along side by side on a collision course with the earth, I looked helplessly across at him. He was slumped forward in his straps. His head was almost touching the panel.
I thought: "He might be dead. And I'm taking a hell of a risk for nothing."
Then I saw the frightened face of the photographer in the rear seat. That decided me. I had to do something.
Planes had been saved from crashes before by using the wing tip air cushions to turn their courses back upward until an conconscious pilot recovered. But it had always taken two rescue planes.
I wondered if I could do it alone. Certainly not with my wing tip. That would only turn over the plunging plane and cause it to crash sooner.
I had cut my speed to stay level with the unconscious pilot. Now I again shoved the throttle full. Then gently, fearfully, I worked the controls. The chase plane obediently side-slipped under the other plane. I jockeyed until I was directly under him.
It had taken only a second, but the uprushing desert was so close I could almost count the spines on the ugly Joshua trees that thrust up hungry arms to heaven.
I had hopend that the air flow rushing over my plane would push Phillips' craft up the nose of the falling craft and keep it from crashing until the other planes could come to my aid. Then we could guide him to Edwards Air Force Base two hundred miles away where the giant dry. lake would provide an emergency landing field where we might maneuver him down.
But it didn't work. I could not bring the two planes close enough together without losing my lift and crashing myself.
There were only seconds remaining now. In sheer desperation-without thinking of the sheer fool-hardiness of it-I jerked back the stick. The plan nosed up and hit against the aircraft above it.
There was a bump. My fighter-trainer shuddered. The canopy shattered from the impact. Pieces of plexiglass streamed backward.
The coming together of the planes momentarily cut off the air flow that provided lift for my plane.
I felt that sickening elevator plunge. I was almost on the deck. I gripped the controls in an agony of suspense, praying that I could recover in time.
Slowly I felt the falling sensation slacken. I was only feet off the desert. I was so low all details blended into one fantastic blur.
I was in an agony to know if my desperate trick had helped the unconscious Phillips. But I didn't dare waste even a second looking around.
But as I started gaining altitude, I heard my photographer's voice in the headphones.
"He's going in!" I heard him cry. "At eight o'clock low, lieutenant."
I twisted my head. I saw that I had succeeded in pushing up the falling plane's nose a little. It was not enough to keep it airborne.
As I watched, my guts knoting at the deathly sight, the failing chase plane hit the ground. I could not tell was happened next. Sand and dust boiled up, trailing backward in a great plume as the dying plane ripped through a growth of unwordly looking Joshua trees.
CHAPTER SEVEN
By the time I landed rescue helicopters were at the wreck. I hung around Flight Test Operation until radio word came back. Phillips was dead. The photographer was badly hurt, but still alive. The bump I gave the plane diverted its dive just enough to keep it from going nose in. It hit at an angle and skidded which is all that kept the second man from dying, too.
We had to attend a debriefing where we were interrogated about the trouble. As I was leaving, the base information officer came puffing up. I'd never met him before. Normally such as he is too busy trying to get the commander's name in the paper to bother with a mere lieutenant. He was an overstuffed major by the name of Gerald Wall.
He asked me a torrent of questions. In his cub reporter enthusiasm he did not wait most of the time for an answer before popping the next question. He was in love with the sound of his own voice.
The gist of his chatter was that he was going to make me a hero. The story of how I risked death to save the other plane would be in every newspaper, and on every radio and television newcast in the nation. He was just telling of his glorious plans to get a series of pictures which he swore would make Life Magazine.
Signet interrupted this pipe dream. "That's a lot of crap!" he said harshly.
"It is not!" Wall retorted indignantly. "I know my business. I'll splash this on every headline in the country! This is the sort of thing that does the Air Force real good. We can get double mileage. Once when we break the story-I'm going to hold it until morning because it is too late now to hit the national networks. Then we can get another big splash when we give him a medal."
"There won't be any medals and there won't be any trumped up newspaper lies," Signet said harshly. "I can stomach a lot of things, but not making a false hero out of a-"
Since a senior officer is not permitted to use curse words in describing a junior, he-with proper military courtesy-broke off without giving his complete opinion of me.
"Now see here!" Wall said, puffing up with righteous indignity. "This is the kind of stuff that does the Air Force good! Don't you understand? If we let things ride, we'll take a pasting for losing a plane, killing a pilot, and wrecking a test. But if we threw those snotty newspaper bastards a genuine hero to gnaw on, they'll forget about the things we don't want played up. That's basic public relations."
"Then throw them some other bones," Signet said harshly.
The assembled pilots nodded as he said it. I faced a solid wall of hostility. "But-" Wall said.
"Look, you stupid-" Signet almost shouted. "So he tried to do something. Do you know why? To keep himself from being a murderer! The reason Phillips passed out was because his brother officer jumped him? Jealousy over a damn bitch of a woman!"
"Now look here, colonel!" Wall cried. "You shouldn't say things like that. If it got out, why-!"
"It won't get out. But I'll be double damned if I'm going to let you make a hero out of the-man who is directly responsible for Phillips' death. Is that plain!"
"Signet!" The word crackled like a whip lash.
I jerked around. It was Colonel Marstaff who spoke. He was standing in the doorway with General "Double" Cross beside him.
Signet's face whitened, but he glared back defiantly. Marstaff started to speak, but the general had noted the equally defiant faces of the other pilots.
He touched Marstaff's arm. The colonel clammed up. As if nothing had happened, the general walked to the front of the room. He made a short speech about the importance of their work. It was the same old crap. I did not stay to listen.
Both he and Marstaff saw me slip out, but nothing was said about it.
I drove directly to the BOQ. The world was a bitter place for me right then. I laid down on the bed, but was too restless to stay there. I got up and paced nervously up and down. One thing was certain. I could not stay at Joshua any longer. Everyone on the base was against me. Every where I could possibly go I would have to face accusing stares blaming me for Phillips' death.
In a way I was involved. I admitted that much. But it had been his own fault. Among men, a woman's willing body is fair game. I had done no more than he had done when he came to Joshua for the first time. He had cut out Irene's then current sex partner. Where did he get off blaming me for getting a little myself?
As for the fights-he started both of them. I did all I could to avoid them. If they wanted to blame someone, I thought, they should blame Signet who insisted Phillips fly.
Suddenly I balled my fist and hit the wall with it. "I've got to get out of here. If I look at these four miserable walls any longer, I'll go stir crazy."
Tension had built up inside me until it was ready to explode. I had to do something to relieve it.
Some can do this by flying into rages. Others take dope, and most get roaring drunk. I get no relief from these things. I'm not the raging kind. I'm too smart to take dope. My liquor drinking is strictly social, and when necessary to match some reluctant broad I have to get soaked before I can get her to bed.
The only thing that can destroy my piled-up tension is sex. Burying my face between two big breasts while hot hips grind together is the Jim Cross tranquilizer. When the fires of lusty love scorch the flesh then the troubles and frustrations of the world recede. Worries seem so unimportant then. When I hug naked, hot, passionate flesh against me I can laugh at any difficulty short of the gallows.
But to find that blessed relief now I had to have a woman. It was no longer simple lust. I needed one to burn away my troubles. I was going to explode in violence if I didn't do something quick.
And most important I couldn't wait for a drawn-out sex campaign with a bitch whose conscience wouldn't let her capitulate without a face-saving struggle. I want it-had to have it-right then.
I had never been in such an emotional turmoil before. The knowledge that everyone was blaming me for Phillips' death kept creating new bitterness in my mind.
Only two women on the base could supply me with that quick sex my starved soul demanded. One was Irene Marstaff. The other was Lois Signet. All either one needed was a hint and she'd have her pants off and be on her back in an instant. Then all I had to do was fornicate my troubles away.
I called Irene first, praying I'd find her alone at home.
Donna answered the phone. "No," she said, "Mother's out. I don't know when she'll be back. Where are you? I'll have her call."
"Oh, never mind," I said. "I'll call back later."
I felt uneasy as I dropped the phone in the receiver. There was a peculiar quality in the girl's voice that never failed to disturb me.
"Down, boyr I muttered as I dialed he Signet home. "You've outgrown teenagers."
No one answered at the Signet's. Angrily I jammed the phone down. I'd specially have liked to have made her just to take a sadistic revenge on her jealous husband.
I tried to be clam, but couldn't. All my pent up emotions were going to explode in some violence which would ruin me if I didn't do something.
I called the club, then the base exchange, having both women paged. No results.
"I've got to get some," I muttered.
I knew there was a whorehouse at a crossroads beer joint about 20 miles down the main road to Los Angeles. Usually I don't need places like that, and like to sneer at men who aren't men enough to get all they want without paying for it.
But right then I didn't care how I got it, just so I did and quick!
I looked at my watch. It was 1400 hours in the afternoon. Technically I'd be absent without leave if I took off now. But I didn't give a damn about that. Maybe getting dismissed from the service would be the best way out of my troubles anyway.
I was still in flying clothes. I started to take them off when the phone rang. I picked it up.
"Yeah?" I said.
I could hear heavy breathing at the other end. That was all. And it was cut off with a click.
I put down the receiver with relief. I had picked it up automatically thinking that Irene or Lois had returned my call. Now I realized that it just as easily could have been someone from Flight Test Ops demanding that I go back to work.
I finished stripping off my sweaty flight suit, and went into the shower. To me there is an erotic feeling to needle-sharp water beating down on your naked body. The shower only increased my desire.
I fumbled for the valve, shutting off the water. Then I slid back the glass door of the stall and found the towel. I was geting the water out of my eyes and drying my hair when I heard the hall door open.
"Be out in a minute," I said, irritably. I was in no mood to meet anyone. I wanted to get away from the base as quickly as I could. I wasn't even sure I was coming back ever.
I got the soap and water out of my eyes. I opened them and stared foolishly at Donna Marstaff who stood in the bathroom door gravely looking at me.
"What the hell are you doing here?" I cried, outraged and scared.
In my anger I forgot I was completely naked until she said, "What a whopper!"
I hastily knotted he towel around my waist.
"Get out of here!" I said. "You've got no right to come into a man's room. You'll get me in trouble."
She smiled biterly. I noticed with increasing uneasiness that she no longer had that scrubbed look. She had put on lipstick and her previous ponytail was now drawn up into a very becoming up-swept hairdo. The sloppy sweater was gone, too. She wore a brightly colored blouse that stuck out in front as if something extremely interesting was trying to shove through the cloth. The tight skirt she wore stretched over smoothly rounding hips.
She looked no longer like a sloppy school kid. She had miraculously blossomed into an extremely attractive girl who looked considerably older than the last time I saw her.
"Are you still afraid I'm fail Bait?" she said, eyeing me solemnly.
"Yes," I said. "Your dear mother has already given me holy hell for just mentioning your name."
"Oh? That bitch! Why did you mention my name to her? Did I interest you?"
"I-- "
"I'd be awfully pleased if I did. Interest you, I mean."
"Look, honey, evidently you like me or you wouldn't keep following me around. If you really like me, you wouldn't want to get me in trouble."
"I don't like you." 'Then why-!"
"I love you."
"Then please go away."
"If you didn't think I was Jail Bailt, would you throw me out then?"
"I'll make a date right now with you. The day you become of age, you and I'll throw the wildest bedroom party any girl ever got for a birthday present."
"To late," she said, giving me an extremely cute wrinkle of her nose. "That was two weeks ago."
She sighed when I gave her an incredulous look.
"It's true," she said. "I was one year old when I was born. Does that sound strange. It isn't really. Colonel Marstaff is not my daddy. He'd been overseas for a year when I was born. She put me in a home at first. Then he came home on leave from the war, and that gave her an excuse to claim she was pregnant. He didn't come back home for another two years. She passed me off as a big kid for my age. I guess he swallowed it."
"Donna-!" I said.
"Then when I started getting older, she didn't like it because she hates to seem old herself. She keeps telling everyone I'm young and she makes me wear those damn sloppy joe clothes so I'll look like a kid. I stole these from her wardrobe."
"Donna-!" I tried to cut her off, but all the torrential resentment she felt toward her mother was gushing out. Nothing could stop her.
"I didn't even get to start to school until I was officially eight. That made me really nine since she has conveniently forgotten that year I wasn't officially born. That put me three years behind other kids my real age. I was always small, but my brain wasn't. I hated them all. "Donna, please-!"
"You don't believe me!" she cried. Her pretty face screwed up so I thought she was going to cry.
This mood lasted only seconds. Then she glared angrily at me.
Good! I thought. Maybe if I make her mad enough she'll go away.
But she reached up and grabbed the front of her blouse and jerked it violently. The tiny pearl buttons stripped, opening all the way to the red leather belt that separated blouse and skirt.
She wore nothing under the blouse. Creamy skin-almost translucent in its youth beauty-sprang out at me. The delicately molded breast with their rigid pink nipples were the most beautiful things I have ever seen.
They were not as large as her mother's, and normally I like big-breasted women. But that was before Donna stripped her buttons in my BOQ room that fateful afternoon.
I couldn't tear my eyes off them. She was breathing deeply which made them heave up and out. They didn't bounce like Irene's and other older women I had known. The youthful muscles were still firm. They trembled slightly under the exertion of her deep breathing, delicately-like a fearful yet eager virgin.
They were just large enough for me to cover with my outstretched fingers. Each curvaceous beauty was an exact handful. And a trembling seized me as I fought the almost unbearable urge to claw at those sexual beauties.
"Does that look like a kid?" she cried suddenly. "I'm a woman! I want to be treated like one!"
She came toward me. I stepped back until I touched the tile of the shower wall.
"Donna!" I said, my voice trembling as I fought to contain emotions that were nearly overpowering. "Don't lie to me."
"I swear," she said. "It's true. And I love you."
"You just can't look at someone and love them."
"You took one look at that bitch mother of mine and crawled in bed with her!" Her dark, angry look of jealousy was so cute I wanted to reach out and hug her.
"That was lust. It's not the same as love. Don't ever make that mistake."
"I'm not. This is not the first time I've seen you. I fell in love with you when I was nine years old. You didn't see me, but I saw you. We went to a military academy outside San Antonio, Texas, to see a nephew of Father's. You were a student there, too. Someone pointed you out to mother as Colonel Cross's son. I thought you were the handsomest cadet there.
"Then later I was in the crowd when you got your wings. A long time had passed since I saw you at the academy. But I still thought you were the nicest and the hondsomest there. I was fourteen then. I cried that night because I was so happy you had your silver wings.
"So when I heard you were coming I changed my plans. I intended to run away as soon as I was 18. I'd tried it before and they brought me back. But I waited because I wanted to see if the love in my heart was just a dream or if it was something real.
"Oh, my darling, it is the realest thing in the world!"
I couldn't hold back any longer. I opened my arms. She gave a glad, choked cry and came into them I knew if she had lied to me I was headed for a rapist's cell. But I didn't care for anything but the lovely vision in front of me.
Her beautfiul breasts pressed hard against my chest as she raised her hot lips to mine. She lacked the erotic technique of her mother, but somehow her awkward eagerness was even more pulse-hammering than Irene's.
She broke off, gasping for breath. She pressed her hands against my chest and tried to push me back. She giggled. I hate giggling girls, but found hers fetching.
"The hair on your chest," she whispered. "It tickles my nipples!"
"You mean, like this?" I said, pulling her back against me and twisting to rub the stiff hair against her breasts.
She gasped and wriggled in my arms. She raised her hungry mouth to mine. Her arms went around my neck, and her fingers climbed up to twist playfully in my hair.
I drew her tighter against me. In doing so I shoved my back against the shower faucet. A shockingly cold spray shot down on top of us.
I gasped and shivered, and tried to draw away from the cold water. Donna clung to me, laughing.
"I don't care!" she cried. "Let it rain! Let it snow! I just want you to love me!"
"You idiot!" I said, sweeping her up in my arms and carrying her from the shower.
I left the water running. There was no one in this wing of the BOQ at this time of day, but just in case someone wandered in, the noise would disguise the sounds of what was coming.
I had taken most of the spray on my back, but some had splashed on her skirt. I laid her gently on the bed and loosened her belt with difficulty. She had her arms so tightly around my neck it was one hell of a job trying to undress her.
She violently resisted my attempts to disengage her arms even for a second.
I got the belt off and the blouse pushed back off her shoulders. There was a button on the skirt that gave me some trouble. I finally worked it loose, and pulled the short zipper.
When I pushed the skirt down from around her swelling hips, I was surprised at the dainty lace panties she wore. Somehow I had pictured her naked underneath the skirt as her mother had been.
That pleased me, too. It made her seem less whorish. I gently pushed them down. She whimpered and rubbed against me. I raised my head from the valley between her breasts. I kissed each one and then her neck and chin as I slowly worked my lips to crush hers again.
As we broke our mouths apart, she dropped her eyes shyly. My arms tightened around her. I wondered uneasily then if she was virgin.
She must have read my mind. She whimpered and said in a low voice: "I'm not virgin."
"It doesn't matter," I said soothing her with hands as well as voice.
I lied. I'd never given a damn one way or the other about my previous women. But Donna had suddenly become something super-special. I didn't think less of her, but I wished that she had been.
"But I wish I were!" she cried out suddenly. "It was one of the school kids. I-I wanted to see what it was like. I-I-he wasn't very good. Oh, I wish now I hadn't done it. I wish you could be the very first!
And die second, and the third, and on and on to the very last!"
I laid her gently back on the bed. Her breasts did not fall but remained as pertly uplifted as before. Her head fell back over the edge. I stooped to kiss the sweet curve of her neck.
"Don't you love me?" she whispered.
"For the first time in my life," I replied, my throat so constricted I could scarcely talk, "I'm in love. I thought I was before, but I know now I never knew before what real love is. I love you. I love you!"
"You lie!" she said, and sighed. Then she grinned gaily, "But I love it! Lie some more!"
I bit her on the neck. She laughed and her fingers, twisting in my hair, forced my mouth back down against hers.
What followed was a different type of love from anything I had ever experienced. The violent lust with its mad, panting wrestling was missing. In its place was a deep passionate beauty as two perfectly mated souls fuse into blissful adventure together.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Afterwards we lay together, loving arms holding naked flesh against naked flesh. Donna nodded drowsily, arousing now and then to inquire if I really loved her.
When I assured her fervently that it was so, she always said, "I'm sure you're lying."
Then she nodded and almost went to sleep again. This last a couples of minutes. Then she came awake with a start that caused the breast I held to tremble delightfully under my spread hand.
"Do you think I'm a bitch?" she asked in worried whisper.
"Of course," I replied, squeezing her tighter. 'The prettiest, the most delightful, the lovingest, and sweetest little bitch in the whole world."
"I don't know if that's a compliment or not," she said, twisting her shoulders to rub her breast against my cupped hand. The hard nipple described a tiny circle in the palm.
She moved her body against mine in a delicious movement where every part of her from lips to feet caressed by own body with loving tenderness.
We had scarcely finished our first union-probably less than ten minutes had elapsed. But I felt again a passionate rising of new desire.
She noticed it, and blushed. I thought that the most curious and delightful think I ever saw. One second she was giving me all that a woman can give a man. Then minutes later she was rubbing her totally naked body against mine. Then in a flash she was shy and blushing.
I laughed and kissed her feverishly as my hands slipped from breasts to thighs in long sweeping caresses.
"Not again? So soon?" she whispered.
She tried to sound reproving, but she could not hide the pleasure that crept into her voice.
"Well," I said. "You became 18-when was it?-five days ago? That means I have five days to make up."
"Oh, well, in that case, by all means catch up!"
"At the going rate of six times a day, I'm thirty behind."
"Too much! It'll wear out."
"I have made a study of such things, and I absolutely give you my scientific opinion that you can't wear them out. I offer your mother as living proof!"
She frowned. "Don't spoil everything by reminding me of her!"
"I'm sorry, " I said quickly. "But is it all right if I try to catch up if I promise not to wear it out?"
"You can try whatever you want, whenever you want for the rest of our lives!"
"Now stop talking like that!" I said in mock anger.
"Girls are supposed to act hard to get. It makes a man more eager."
"I know I should say, 'No! No! No!' when you touch me. Each time I make up my mind to do it. Then you smile at me and I just can't tell that big a lie. I want you! I want you to want me! Every minute of the hour, the day, the week, the month, the year, and the century. Then after we're old and dead, if it is possible for ghosts to remember love, I want you to want me as much as I'll want you even then."
"Donna! Donna, little darling, little sweetheart-"
I had more to say, but it was strangled by the burning kiss she gave me.
"Oh, I love you, love you, love you!" she cried as our lips drew reluctantly apart. "It's just like I dreamed it would be. Oh, my darling, my darling! Loving you is the most wonderful thing in the world!"
Wriggling like a freshly landed fish, she got on top of me. I locked my arms around her and tried to roll us over.
I didn't realize we were so near the edge of the bed. We went off. I sprawled flat on the rug with Donna on top of me. My breath went out with a big swoosh from the weight of her. She laughed happily, thinking all this great fun.
She pressed her lips against mine, and grabbed my ears to pull my head back and forth to rub my mouth against hers.
I tried to roll her over on the rug. But a car wheeled into the parking lot outside my window. Donna pushed herself up on her hands.
"That car!" she said, her pretty face turning frightened. "It sounds like ours!"
I tried to pull her back on top of me. She slapped my hands.
"Hell, all cars sound alike."
"That's not so," she snapped. "I'm scared."
"Well, take a look through the Venetian blinds. But hurry! I've got a lot of lost time to make up!"
She jumped up and ran to the window. She bent over to peek through a slit in the closed blind. Her little bare behind jutted enicingly at me. I couldn't stand to lie there and just look at it. I got up, moving toward her.
But before I could, she whirled around. She was badly frightened and almost ready to cry.
"It is she!" Donna cried. "She's coming in!"
"Damm!! I said, furious at the old woman for interrupting us.
Donna snatched her blouse and slipped into it. She seemed surprised to find the buttons ripped away.
"Can I get out the window?" she whispered.
"Yes," I said. "The screen slips aside."
Outside Irene knocked on the door. Donna, frantically trying to step into her skirt, tripped and would have fallen if I had not caught her.
Irene rapped more impatiently. "Jim!" she called. "Open up!"
"Wait a minute," I said loudly. "I'm in the shower."
The water I left on the hide our noises was still running in the bathroom.
"Hurry up! I can't stand here all day. I-uh-have a message from your father."
That last, I knew, was a lie told to save her face if anyone heard her beating on a First John's door in the BOQ.
Donna had her skirt on now. I pulled the zipper up for her. She slipped into her shoes. I raised the Venetian blind and pushed back the screen. "Hurry!" Irene said.
Donna got her legs over the window ledge, exposing a big expanse of beautiful thigh. One of my son-of-a-bitching brother officers, getting out of a car in the lot, looked at us and grinned obscenely. I could have killed the bastard.
Donna twisted around to kiss me hurriedly, and then was gone. She ran through the parking lot like a little deer.
I closed the screen, and stepped hurriedly into the shower. I needed to get wet before I let Irene in. Outside she beat angrily on die door.
"Nobody could be that damned dirty!" she said caustically.
I didn't dry off, but wrapped the towel around my middle. I started for the door. I got half way across the room when I caught a gilmpse of my face in the dresser mirror.
Donna's lipstick was smeared all around my mouth.
"Wait a minute longer!" I gasped, retreating hastily to the bathroom to wipe it off.
When I finally got back to the door, Irene was furious.
She came in and pushed the door shut behind her. For a moment she glared at me, but her face softened as her hot eyes roamed over my nearly naked body.
She came close to me. She was breathing hard. A heady perfume tickled my nose. Her arms went around my neck. She raised her ripe lips invitingly.
I was slow to respond. Reluctantly I encircled her waist with my arms, and dropped my head so that our lips touched. There was fire in hers, but it struck no answering response in mine.
She put her spread hands, against my chest and pushed me back where she could look up at my face. She gave me a quizzical, searching stare. There was a hard, ugly tint to her eyes. Irene Marstaff was not used to men failing to respond lustfully to her kisses. She did not like it.
Then she brightened. She was too saturated with conceit to admit the trouble might be herself. She said, "You're worried! That's what's the matter. Don't. Blaming you for Phillips' death is just talk. There'll be no investigation. I'll see to that. I'll take care of you. Just kiss me! Hold me tight. Everything will be all right."
Suddenly I hated her. I felt like smashing my fist into her damned face. What did she take me for? A gigolo? A kept man? A pet? Even a damn pimp has more self respect than what she seemed to take me for. A pimp does something for his girls.
"I can take care of myself. I don't need a woman to do it for me!" I said, shoving her away from me.
Anger flared in her eyes. Her scarlet lips opened to blast me, but she thought better of it.
"You're upset," she said gently.
She had an impatient look in her eyes that told me she was not concerned with my being upset, but with her being put off.
She shoved her body against me again, and wriggled to rub her breasts against me.
She ran her hands over my arms, gently caressing the muscles.
"You're so strong," she whispered. "Put your strong arms around me, honey. Put them around me and squeeze and squeeze until love comes out every pore!"
"Irene-!"
"Please? Don't try to talk. Just love me. Love is more important than anything else in the world. Love me! Love me and you'll forget how those sorry barstards tried to hurt you!"
"Irene-!" I began and then stopped. How does a man tell a woman he's sick of her?"
"Don't talk!" she whispered.
Her eager, sensual touch trailed down my chest to my waist. At first I was too embroiled in my disturbed thoughts to realize what she was doing. Then the knotted towel gave way under the twist of her fingers. It fell to the floor, leaving me naked before her.
She stepped back, breathing so hard I thought her rip breasts would burst through her dress. She jerked a zipper under her left armpit, and shrugged off the dress. She raised her hands high as she came toward me. It was the same way she approached me the other night. Then I thought it exuberance. Now I realized her big breasts sagged slightly, and by raising her arms like that she pulled them virginally pert again.
She was still a beautiful woman for all of that. She was lustfully desirable. I could feel my passion building up. But curiously it was for Donna rather than the naked bitch coming at me with her arms flung open.
I thought: But for your damn interference I'd be in Donna's arms right now.
For the first time in my life a desirable woman repelled me. Part of it was resentment-resentment because she had spoiled my idyllic love session with Donna, and resentment because of her possessive attitude toward me.
But another part of my reluctance to take her was realization at last the differences in our ages. There seemed something unclean-almost incestuous-in taking to bed the mother of the girl I loved.
If what Donna told me was true, Irene Marstaff was much older than she pretended to be. Looking at her sharply, I could see signs of it that were not visible in the soft lighting of the club. In the harsh daylight, I could see tiny lines around the eyes. The breasts were full and ripe, but they lacked the uptilt that only youth can provide.
And most important of all-union with Irene was pure, simple lust. Nothing more, nothing less. But with Donna lust was lacking. It was love-the glorious union of two people who were meant to be one and were only following the natural course of life as life should be lived.
She had her arms around me, grinding her thighs sensually against me as she tried to build up my passion to match hers. But all she did was inflame my desire for her daughter.
She realized she wasn't getting through and it made her almost frantic. She pushed me back. I fell on the bed. There was a crash as a slat gave way.
I thought: Damn! Are broken beds a staple technique with her?
She fell on top of me, crushing her big breasts against my body. Her hips rotated like a hula dancer's. She twisted her hands in my hair. It wasn't tender and beautiful the way Donna did it. Irene was brutally lustful as she dragged back my head to smear her scarlet lips against mine.
After a long embrace, she hunched her body up so that my head was between her breasts. She pressed her body down hard until I was stiffled by the hot soft flesh. I had to throw my arms around her and roll us both over to keep from suffocating.
I pushed myself up on my extended arms and looked down at her under me. Her head was thrown back and her eyes glazed with the consuming fire of animal desire.
Her breath came and went in deep stabbing explosions. Her trembling hands caressed and squeezed forbidden flesh.
I didn't want her. I wanted to get out of there and run after Donna. The perfection of the mating with the girl was so perfect I did not want to waste a drop of love on anyone else for the rest of my life.
But despite this laudable desire, I could not help warming to the violently erotic play of Irene.
"You damned bitch!" I cried. "I don't want to do this! You're forcing me into it!"
She laughed and savagely bit my neck." You're being raped!" she whispered. "Raped!"
She twisted her heard in an agony of anticipation. Hating myself and hating her worse, I was unable to resist the banquet of lustful flesh she spread before me.
I dropped flat upon her, and buried my lips in the soft piling flesh. I worked my mouth and tongue over the curves and captured a rigid nipple. Imprisoning it with my lips, I touched it with my trembling tongue.
She squealed and threw her head back. I switched to the other breast.
Her body stiffened. I thought she was going into a premature orgasm. But she jerked her head around. Her face was a mask of fury. Her hand left my flesh and reached back over the edge of the bed.
It came up with a filmy pair of panties. They had been lying on the floor unnoticed beside the bed. I had thrown them there when I gently pulled their lacey beauty from around Donna's beautiful young hips.
In her fear to get away before her mother caught her with me she failed to notice them there behind the bed.
I held my breath, hoping she would not recognize them.
Irene twisted around and shoved the panties hard into my face. I smelled perfume and delicate powder.
I knocked her hand away. "Stop that," I said angrily.
"So that's why you were so damned cold to me!" she said, her voice savagely intense. "You had some bitch in here with you. I thought something was wrong. The reason you took so long to let me in was to give her time to get away."
There was no use trying to deny it. I could hardly claim I wore the damned things myself. They were too small.
I tried to ignore it. "That's over and done with. Think about right now."
She was looking closely at the intimate garment. Her face hardened. Then she sucked in her breath with shocked surprise. I pulled back off her, waiting in dread for the coming explosion.
"They're Donna's! You no-good rotten bastard! You're raped my daughter!"
She threw herself at me, her sharp fingernails clawing madly at my face. I caught her wrists and forced her to the floor. She twisted violently, panting, kicking, jerking.
I lost my grip and fell across her. She tried to jam her knee into my crotch.
"I'll kill you!" she cried. "I'll kill you."
Then in her rage she unconsciously gave herself away. It wasn't Donna's virginity she was thinking about, but the bitter fact that she had been by-passed by a younger woman.
"What could she give you that I couldn't give better? What, I ask you, what?"
I hated her and wanted to hurt you. So I let her have it in the cruelest way I could-a way I knew would torture more than a physical beating.
"Youth!" I said fiercely. "That's what she has that you can't give!"
Her face turned dead white. It scared me. I was sorry then that I said what I did. But it was too late. One thing an aging woman can never forgive is a taunting reminder of the lost youth she is trying so desperately to hang on to.
She said in a low intense tone that crackled with hate: "You rotten son of a bitch! I'll ruin you if it is the last thing I do! I'll have you jailed, you raping bastard! There's a law that takes care of degenerates."
"Come off it, Irene! I know what her true age is. I know what you've done, and of all your crimes it is the worst. You've robbed the poor kid of three years of her life. In your mad desire to appear younger, you've forced her-!"
"Damn you! Damn you!" she screamed. She tried to claw my face again. I grabbed her. "Shut up, you stupid bitch! Keep your voice down or you'll have half the base in here seeing what the matter is."
"I don't care! I want them to know you for the degenerate you are! I want to see them drag you off to jail for the rest of your life!"
She was hysterical with jealous rage. I grabbed her, slapping one hand over her mouth. She tried to bite me. I slapped her hard.
She gasped, and sank to her knees on the floor. She put her hands over her face and wept like a broken hearted child.
I stood looking down at her. I thought of Philip L. Phillips who went to his death as a direct result of her whorishness. I thought of my father and how she spoiled his honor. I thought of Donna and the cruel way Irene tried to prevent her growing up. And then I found it impossible to feel sorry for her.
I looked at my watch. It was almost time for the men quartered in the BOQ to start coming in from the line. I had to get her out of there fast.
I slipped into a pair of pants and shirt. Picked up Irene's dress and threw it on top of her bowed back.
She got to her feet, holding the dress in front of her. Since modesty was hardly one of her virtues, I supposed she was trying to punish me by a denial of her nakedness.
Her face was composed, but bitter hurt and hatred churned like hellfire in her eyes.
She spoke in a low level voice that was more chilling than her previous screaming had been.
"If it is humanly possible for me to do so, I intend to destroy you! I'll ruin you as an officer in the United States Air Force for you aren't fit to be one. I'd like to ruin you as a man, but I can't because you aren't a man. No man would use a woman as you did me and then insult her with cruel taunts and lies! You are a filthy, slimy worm who's crawled out of a cesspool."
I listened to her in astonishment. She had worked herself to the point where she actually believed herself a wronged woman.
I opened my mouth to protest, but thought better of it.
"Okay, I'm a first-class bastard," I said.
"Stop complimenting yourself," she flared, her voice muffled as she slipped the dress over her head. "To call you a bastard is to raise your rank fifty degrees."
The phone rang behind me. I turned to pick it up, hoping it would be Donna telling me where to meet her.
Instead it was the operations clerk letting me know there was the usual board of officers investigation into the crash of Lt. Phillips and that I was ordered to be present the next morning at 0800 hours.
"I'll be-" I started to say, but I caught a glimpse of Irene in the mirror.
In my stupidity I had turned my back to her. As I picked up the phone she pulled her zipper and started to leave. But suppressed rage exploded in violence.
The glimpse I got showed her snatching a flower vase from the dresser. I ducked, but too late. The heavy pottery caught me on the shoulder. A numbing shock ran down my arm, and I was knocked back against the wall.
The receiver fell to the floor, and I slid down beside it.
"Hello! Hello!" I could hear the faint voice coming from the phone. "Are you okay, lieutenant? Lieutenant?"
I picked it up with my left hand. "Okay," I said. "I'll be there."
"That noise, lieutenant. Did something happen?"
"Nothing ever happens at Joshua, Sarge." I said and hung up.
In the open door Irene gave me a last glare of searing hate.
"That's just the first installment. It will take a long time to pay the whole debt. And after it's paid, then I'll collect the interest on the debt!"
She slammed the door so hard I thought the hinges would go. The latch failed to catch and it swung open again.
I could see her passing a group of pilots who tried to preserve the fiction that it was perfectly normal to see their commander's lusty wife charging wrathfully from the private quarters of a junior officer.
I kicked the door shut and lay hack on the bed. I was hurting, physically and mentally, and spiritually. It was uncomfortable. I got up to fix the sagging matress, and saw Donna's panties lying in a wadded knot where her mother had flung them. I picked them up gently and smoothed out their wrinkles. They were open net weave, so sheer I could see the wrinkles of my hand through the cloth. Pale water blue, they had a deeper blue ribbon that was woven through tiny slits around the legs just above a rimming of snow white lace. The ribbons terminated in tiny, perky bows on the side of the thighs.
I gently stroked the silky cloth and wanted its owner so badly I ached all over.
I looked at my watch. Irene had been gone more than five minutes. She could not have reached home yet. I grabbed the phone and cursed as my impatient dialing produced a wrong number.
I dialed again, but could get no answer. Apparently Donna had not gone home. I tried to think where she could be. I called the Teen Club-an officially sponsored hangout for dependent children-but she wasn't there. I had her paged in the Base Exchange with the same results. Then I called the base theater. The matinee was over and the night show had not started.
Frustrated I hung up. I scarcely stretched out on the bed when the phone rang shrilly. I leaped for it, once again fervently hoping it would be Donna.
Instead I heard a cold official-sounding voice. 'This is Lt Col. McNabb," the caller said. "I am the base Judge Advocate. You have been informed of the hearing into the circumstances surrounding the death of Lt. Phillips?"
"It has been postponed another day. The Chaplain objected. The time conflicted with his memorial service for Phillips," the lawyer said. "Do you wish counsel when you appear?"
"You mean do I want a lawyer? What the hell for?" I said angrily. Then remembering that I was talking to a senior officer. I hastily added, Sir."
"Well." he said lamely, "the general heard that stupid remark some pilot made to you at debriefing."
I felt a sinking feeling. "I remember," I said bitterly. "The son of a bitch accused me of being responsible for Phillips' death."
"That is correct. And the general ordered it investigated thoroughly by the flying safety board which will look into the crash. Since this is an official inquiry and may develop information upon which a possible indictment of you can be secured.
I took a deep breath. I thought: To hell with a lawyer. They'd assign some jerk lieutenant who didn't know any more law than I did.
But just to be nasty in a manner they could do nothing about, I said: "I believe I am permitted the choice of my lawyer."
"That is correct," he said pompously. "You may choose whomever you please. Any commissioned officer or civilian counsel, if you prefer. Speaking candidly, lieutenant, it has been my experience that military courts and boards do not look favorably upon civilian counsel. This prejudice often reflects on the accused. But that is your decision to make."
"I don't want a civilian lawyer," I said. "Since the regulations say I can call on an)' commissioned officer to represent me and he must serve or reply in writing with a sufficient excuse-why I would like to have General Cross!"
"Gen-! What! That is impossible!"
"I'll make my request in writing."
"The general is the one who ordered the investigation. He is in the nature of the accuser. He can't be the defender, too!"
"Okay, by me," I said. "I'll preface my testimony in court with the statement that I was denied the counsel of my choice. Then I'll go before the board without one."
"Then when things go against you, you'll cry to the Court of Appeals that you didn't get a fair trial because you had no lawyer!" he said sharply. "Did you study law, lieutenant?"
"I was raised on military bases, colonel. After a life time of seeing what passes for justice on them, one picks up a lot."
"This shyster-type of trick won't get you anywhere! You'll be-"
He broke off suddenly. I grinned without mirth. "You were going to say the board would hang me anyway, weren't you, Colonel? Does that mean I'm considered guilty before I even go before it?"
"You man, you are being impertinent. I'll have to remind you that I am a senior officer!"
"Sorry," I said. "I'll rephrase the answer, as you lawyers put it. Does that mean you think I'm guilty before I even go before the board, sit!"
CHAPTER NINE
As soon as it got dark I drove past the Marstaff house in the field grade officer's Capehart housing. There was some kind of social gathering on the patio. I drove past twice, hoping to get a glimpse of Donna. There was a light in one of the bedrooms. I suspected this was her room for she would hardly be with the older people on the patio.
I wheeled on down to the Snack Bar which had a pay telephone, and rang the Marstaff number. No one answered. I knew they were there and let it ring.
Finally a tear-blurred voice said, "Yeah?"
"Donna!" I said.
"Jim! Oh, Jim! It's been terrible! She was like a wild woman. She slapped me and when I fell she kicked me. She cursed and raved and shouted about what she was going to do to you and me. It was awful, darling! She didn't stop until the guests started arriving."
"Baby doll! I'm coming over after you. Can you sneak out?"
"I think so. Don't stop at our place. Pull in the next driveway. They're on leave. I'll meet you there."
"I'm coming right now."
"You won't fail me?" she said pleading. "Oh, Jim, I feel so terrible! I need your arms around me. If you don't hold me tight and tell me you love me, I know I'll kill myself. I can't stand this terrible feeling of not being wanted. They hate me-both of them. The colonel hates me because he knows I'm not his daughter really and she hates me because I'm getting so big I make her look old. She's hated me a long time for that, but now she hates me more than ever because of you and me."
"I'll be there!" I promised, hanging up.
I ran to the parking lot and threw gravel half across the street as I floored the gas. I shot down the hill and onto the main base road. I braked down to the regulation speed as I turned into the senior officer's housing area. I did not want to attract any attention as I swung past the Marstaff place.
There were some luau torches burning in the patio, and the eternal desert wind brought snatches of laughter as I went past. I cut my lights so no one would notice them swinging into the closed house.
I pulled into the driveway, leaving the engine idling as I put on the brakes. Donna stepped from under a trellis of climbing roses.
"Oh, my darling!" I said breathlessly. All my love for her exploded in consuming fire as the moonlight outlined her superb figure. The kid clothes were gone. She wore a highly becoming tight blouse and skirt.
As she ran forward I opened the door and she slid onto my lap with a smothered "Ouch!" as her bumped the steering wheel.
Then her lovely face was smeared against mine. Our lips locked. Her little tongue impatiently tried to force its delightful way into my mouth. A shuddering thrill shocked through me as our tongues touched.
She broke away, gasping. I could feel her breasts tremble as I squeezed gently. Then clawing her tightly against me, I pulled her skirt up and tried to slip my hand under the lact trimmed elastic bottom of her panties.
She pinched my fingers. "Stop that!" she said. "There's time for that later. We must get out of here before she sees us."
"Once more!" I whispered, working my eager finger farther under the lace to stroke soft yielding flesh.
Our lips came together tenderly, and then pressed wet and hard as passion mounted into a flaming tornado that swept us up in a dizzy ecstasy.
Reluctantly I felt her tongue withdrawing from my mouth I set my lips hard, trying to imprison it.
"Ouch!" she said accusingly. "You bit me!"
"Who taught you to kiss like that?" I asked jealously.
She smiled wryly. "Oh, girls are born knowing things like that."
"Stop bragging. You weren't born at all. The devil put you on earth to frustrate me. Now stop trying to pull away!"
"Please, Jim. Oh, my dearest, sweetest one, I want you as badly as you want me. But I'm scared. She was like a monster tonight. I think she would have killed me if guests hadn't arrived. Oh, it was awful! Please! Let's get away from here quickly!"
"Okay," I said crossly. "But we're stopping at the first dark place I find."
"I know. You still have some catching up to do."
"Wrong again! I'm still trying to collect today's quota. After that I'll begin collecting what I've missed." . .
"Oooooh!" she said. "You are a little sex pig!"
"Wrong still another time, honey," I said, dragging her hot squirming body against mine for one last lingering kiss. "I'm a great big sex hog!"
To pull her against me I had to take my hand away from its sensitive play below.
"Damn it," I said irritably, "why did nature make a woman with so many erotic places to pat and then give a man only two hands to do it with. To love you properly I need as many arms as that Indian god."
"You do very well indeed with just two," she said. "Please, Jim-!"
I released her, and started to back the car from the driveway. Donna gasped. "Wait!" she cried.
I jammed on the brake and looked at her. "What's the matter?" I said.
"I forgot!" She pushed open the car door and leaped out. "Back in a minute, honey! I forgot my suitcase."
"Suitcase?" I said, startled. "But, Donna, this is just-"
But I was talking to the air. She was gone in the darkness. Then she was back in a couple of minutes, lugging an overnight bag.
She shoved it between us and climbed in.
"What's that for?" I asked as we got rolling again.
"I've got to have a change of clothes until we get settled. I'm never coming back to that awful house.
They can burn the rest of my stuff. I hate that tacky kid stuff she made me wear."
The angry passion in her voice mercurially changed. She laughed. "I put it over on her with this dress. I cut it down with the sissors to fit and then sewed it back with a needle and thread. It took ages, but it looks good, don't you think?"
"It looks like you were melted down and poured in."
She giggled. "I feel like I'm going to melt."
She swung the bag over between her and the door. She slid over against me. I put an arm around her. She dropped her head on my shoulder.
"Now you see why I need another hand or two," I said.
"I have two," she said.
One of them went around my neck. The other crept across my thigh. She suddenly gave a quick squeeze with this one, and drew her hand back as if what she touched was red hot. Which, incidentally, pretty well described it.
"I'm sorry," she said in a low voice. "I shouldn't have done that. You'll think me a bad girl."
"Of course I do," I said happily. "You are bad, wicked, sinful, and thoroughly adorable. And wicked as it may be, you have my permission to do that anytime you wish."
"Oh, I'll never do it again. I just-well, I always wondered how it would feel so-please, forgive me."
I withdrew my own arm from around her waist. I took her hand and returned it. She tried to draw back until I forced her fingers down where they closed around flesh.
Donna gasped. Thrilling, surging fire swept through my veins. It exploded in maddening desire.
The effect of her touch was even more electrifying to the girl than it was to me.
She pressed so tightly against me I had difficulty steering and had to hit the brakes to keep from going into a ditch. She panted and groaned. Her hot, wet lips bit feverishly at my neck and then pressed against my ear to deliver her passionate plea.
"Stop! Stop, Jim. I can't stand it any longer. Please stop and love me. Love me! Love me or I'm going to explode. My darling! Oh my precious darling, I can't stand it. I can't stand it!"
I brought the car to a stop. I had to. The way she was clawing at me it was dangerous to drive. We had passed the housing area and was driving through the desert.
"Honey!" I said as best I could through her smothering kisses. "Cars are passing!"
"I don't care!" she whispered in my ear. Then after taking time out to nibble at it, she added: "It will only be sinful for a few hours. Then we'll be married."
"Be what?" I almost shouted.
"Aren't we going to Las Vegas to get married? That's what I meant when I asked you to come get me.
"But, honey, that's impossible!"
"What's impossible about it? You don't love me!"
"But I do, baby! I love you more than life itself."
"Then what are we arguing about, she said huskily. "Take my clothes off! And hold me tight and squeeze me like you did this afternoon. And then-and then-"
Her voice trailed off shyly.
"But you don't understand, sweet," I said. "Signet will hang me if I run off without permission."
"If you really loved me you wouldn't care what he thought!"
"For hell's sake, woman, you've been around the service all you life. You should know what AWOL means."
"All I know is that I can't stay there any longer. Not with her. And it's all you fault! You must have told her I was doing-things with you. She came home screaming like a madwoman. She slapped me. When I fell down she kicked me. Look here!"
She pulled up her blouse and even in the moonlight I could see the darkening bruise at the bottom of her ribs.
"She called me a bitch and a whore and all sorts of terrible things. She acted at first like she was mad because I lost my virginity which I didn't have anyway. Then she kept getting madder and madder and stopped pretending.
"She accused me of stealing you away from her. She said you were just like the only man she ever loved, and she'd kill me before she'd see me steal you. She-Oh, it was awful!"
I put my arm around her, catching her hand as it tried to pull down the blouse to hide the strip of naked flesh. Then I let my fingers play across the satiny skin.
"Donna, honey," I whispered, a catch in my voice as I choked down the killing rage I felt toward Irene. "Don't think about it anymore. Think about us."
"Then you will marry me!"
"Yes, and I'll be the proudest and happiest bridegroom this sinful old world has ever seen!"
"Then let's go! We can be in Las Vegas by morning. They don't require all the wait and red tape there that they do in California."
"Now wait a minute. We can't rush it like that. Tomorrow's Thursday. Saturday I'll be off and we can go then."
"Call up your boss and get off!"
"Signet hates me. He'd never let me go."
"Then what am I going to do? I can't go back there."
"It's just for two more days. Then we'll-"
"I see. You never loved me at all. You must pretended to get in my pants. Well, you got what you wanted so there's no use you hanging around me anymore! Goodbye!"
She grabbed the little suitcase and slipped from the car.
"Donna!" I cried. "Stop, you little idiot!"
"What do you care what happens to me? You got what you wanted. Now go lie to some other girl who loves you and get some more. You've got all you'll ever get from me, you-you-"
She stuttered along unable to think of anything bad enough to fit me.
"Donna! Damn it, get back in here!"
She answered me by starting to run down the road away from the base. I jerked the hand brake to keep the care from rolling and left the lights on. I jumped out and ran after her. She was handicapped by the suitcase. I caught her easily.
She swung around, hitting me wih the bag. I grabbed it out of her hand and flung it aside. I pulled her against me, thrilling at the pressure of her firm, uptilted breasts against my chest. She hammered at me with her little fists.
She tried to jerk away. My fingers hooked unintentionally in her blouse and it ripped down the front. The light of my car revealed the white-skinned beauty.
I laughed and pulled her struggling body closer to me.
I had just forced her head back and was seeking her angry, but still adorable, lips when new lights flashed on us.
I looked up angrily, and then gulped. Above the new headlights was a blinking red beacon.
The patrol car stopped and an Air Policeman stepped out.
"Is something wrong, sir?" he said politely.
"Not a thing," I retorted quickly, hoping to hell Donna would keep her mouth shut. "Just a quarrel between my wife and I."
"Oh?" he said. "Could I see your ID card please?"
I hesitated. I could tell he was going to pull me in. AP's are taught to be very police as they stick the knife in an officer and walk around him.
There was an off-chance he would not know me. I had only been on base a few days. Most important, I had not yet registered my car with the Provost Marshal. The bumper would not carry the telltale sticker that would identify me as military personnel."
"I'm a civilian," I said. "I don't have an ID card."
"Are you an Air Force civilian, sir?" he asked.
But he wasn't trapping me on that one. Under Federal Law, passed right after the Civil War, military policemen cannot arrest a civilian. However, on these remote bases they get away with it by pulling that gag known as "citizen's arrest." Any citizen can arrest someone he catches in the act of commiting a crime. After this "citizen's arrest" the military police turns the victim over to the Federal Commissioner who hears the case against the civilian employee.
"No," I said quickly, "my wife and I were just visiting on friend, Colonel Marstaff."
Gambling that she would support me, I turned to Donna. "Isn't that right, dear?"
She ignored me, but glared at the AP. "Go away!" she said belligeraantly. "This is none of your business."
"Please, dear!" I said, horrified. The sensible thing to do was not irritate the AP. If he made an investigation, I was sunk. "The young man is just doing his duty."
"One moment please," he said, stepping back to the patrol car.
We could hear him calling on the radio for instructions. He said that he had a civilian man and woman who were fighting on the access road. I could not hear what the desk sergeant replied, but the A.P. said: "He says it's his wife. She didn't deny it." Then after a silence he said: "No, she isn't making any complaint."
He put the lide round microphone withs its coil cord back in the car.
"That's all, sir," he said. "Sorry I bothered you, but we have to investigate all stopped cars."
"Quite all right," I said hastily.
I grabbed Donna's arm. "Come on, dear," I said. "The twins will be missing us."
I got her in the car and got out of there fast. As I wheeled off the access road onto the state highway, Donna said coldly:
"Where are we going?"
"Where do you want to go?"
"Not to a motel! Not to a dark road! I'm not going to be made a fool of anymore!"
"Donna-!"
'Keep your damn pawing hands to yourself!"
"Just for once-"
"You can let me out at the bus station in town, thank you."
"Donna, we'll go to Las Vegas. But I can't do it tonight. I'll be AWOL. I love you. I want you. I'll marry you. But I can't see much point in spending my honeymoon in the guardhouse."
"We can be back by noon. The memorial services for Phillips will be in the morning. There'll be no flying until after twelve. So there! You're just making excuses."
"Okay! Okay! Keep your drawers on. We'll go to Las Vegas!"
'Keep your drawers on'! Ha! That's funny coming from you. I don't want to go to Las Vegas if you think you have to. When I get married I want it to be because my husband wants me too!"
"Donna!" I said. "You've seen a mother who dearly loved her baby spank it for being silly until its little ass was redder than fire? Well, that's exactly what's going to happen to you!"
I jammed on the brakes so hard we both almost went through the windshield. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her violently.
When I turned her loose she threw her arms around my neck. Her teeth still chattered and she stuttered.
"O-h! O-oh! O-o-oh! Y-you do love m-me! Oh, Jim! Jimmy! Darling! Darling! Let's don't wait until we're married. If you really love me, let's do it now! Oh, my dearest one, squeeze me here!"
She took both my hands and pressed them against her breasts.
She raised my hand to stroke her cheek. I was surprised to find it wet with joyous tears.
"Damn it, baby!" I said. "Go easy. I haven't got enough hands to do all you want! Besides, you don't have to guide me. I've had a little experience with what's under that dress of yours. I know my way around!"
"Then stop teasing me!"
"Look, we're on a main highway. Do you want the police picking us up again? We stop for thirty minutes at the first motel we come to."
"Let's make it an hour!"
"An hour and a half, maybe. And do this thing right for once."
"Two hours."
"Now wait a minute! We have to get to Las Vegas and back by noon. Don't you want to get married any more?"
"I want loving and I want it right now more than anything, but I guess I'd better hook you while I can."
Relucantly I parted from her after one last lingering kiss and a delightful exploratory pass along the curves and hollows of that most beautiful of bodies.
The gas gauge was sitting on empty and I was getting a little worried. When we hit the first little hamlet I stopped at a filling station. A pimply faced youth came out. He looked at the car and at me and then at Donna, sitting primly with her hand holding her torn blouse in place.
A sort of strange expression flitted across the attendant's face. He seemed about to say something, but changed his mind and asked if I wanted regular or ethyl.
"Regular," I said and added, "Check the oil." He removed the cap and inserted the hose, locking it on automatic. Then as he reached for a sponge to get the winshield, he suddenly changed his mind. He came over to my side of the car.
"Are you Lientuenant Cross?" he asked in a low voice.
"Yeah," I said. "Why?"
"Can I talk to you out here a minute," he said uneasily.
I felt an uneasy feeling. I started to tell him to stop acting like a conspirator in a Grade C movie. I was there to get gas and not to hold conversation.
But a feeling almost of panic gripped me. How in hell did he know my name? I had driven to Joshua from Los Angeles and had never been over this road before. I wondered how he knew my name and what difference it made if he did.
Donna's hand stole into mine. She gave it a squeeze.
"I'll just be a minute, honey," I said, and slipped out of the car.
"Yeah," I said, walking around to the back of the car. "What is it?"
"Lieutenant," he said uneasily, "I'm out at the air base, too. I work here from six to midnight to pick up some extra change to pay for my car."
"Great!" I said. "What has that got to do with me?"
"There's not too much work at this time of night and I got me a short wave receiver in the office. I like to listen to police calls."
He stopped there. I prodded him impatiently. "You heard my name on a police call?"
He nodded. "It's none of my business and I should keep my nose out of it, but well, I got into some-trouble before I left home with a 14-year-old girl and I can sympathize with you."
I had a sudden cold chill. I started to sweat. I knew what he was going to say next, and I could the steel doors of San Quentin clanging behind me. Donna had played me for a fool!
"What did it say?" I asked wearily.
"An all stations report went out that a girl named Danna Marstaff-from the name I'd guess she was Colonel Marstaff's daughter-was missing. It said she was fifteen-years old and was suspected of running away after a quarrel with her mother.
"Then it was followed a few minutes later by a report from the Air Police that a girl answering her description was seen fighting on the base access road by an Air Police patrol. The air policeman took the number of the man's car. It checked out as belonging to a Lieutenant James B. Cross. That's you."
"That's me."
"Well, don't tell anybody I tipped you off," he said with a worried look. "It's against the law around here to listen in on police broadcasts."
"I'll keep quiet," I said. "Thanks, buddy."
"It's okay," he said. "I know how it is. I got hooked by this little tramp. She was knocking off with everybody who asked her. She told me she was 18. Hell, she was 14. I damned near went to jail."
I dug out a ten dollar bill. The gas came to seven dollars, but I said. "Keep it."
I turned around and almost collided with Donna.-In the light of the station I could see that her face was pale as death.
"Jim!" she said.
"Shut up and get in!" I said harshly. "I got to think what to do. I'm in a jam!"
CHAPTER TEN
I pulled out onto the highway. I was feeling numb.
"Jim!" Donna said, putting her hand over mine where I grasp the wheel.
"Why did you lie to me?" I said.
"I didn't lie! Every word I told you was the truth! I am 18! I told you she kept cutting years off to make herself seem younger! I told you she claimed I was 15. I told you-!"
"Donna! If-you really love me, tell me the exact truth. I could go to jail over this."
"So help me, Jim. That is the truth."
"Can you prove you are really 18?"
"I'll tell them!"
I laughed somewhat bitterly. "I think it will take a little more than that. Don't you have a birth certificate? Where were you born?"
"I don't have a birth certificate. She always said I was born in Dallas, Texas, but that's a lie for I heard her tell a visitor once that she had never been in Dallas."
"That's great!" I said. "But you had to be born somewhere and the attending doctor would have to file a certificate. If I just knew where to look for it!"
"What are we going to do?"
"If we can keep from geting picked up by the police, we're going on to Las Vegas and get married. I may be able to beat the statutory rape rap that way. I don't know. If you are underage or if I can't prove how old you really are, the marriage can probably be annulled. But we'll give it a throw."
"No matter what happens I love you," she said tearfully.
"That will console me while I look at those cold gray walls."
"The AFs don't patrol this far."
"Crimes like the one I'm charged with are turned over to civil jurisdiction in peace time. That report the station atendant heard is what's call an all point's bulletin. Every cop in Southern California will be looking for me."
"What are we going to do?"
"We're cutting off the main road to Vegas. I'm going over the mountain back to toward L. A., and then then swing in on another route. I'll try to fool everyone."
But I was only fooling myself. I swung off the highway at the next crossroads. The highway sign indicated it was a cut-off to Los Angeles.
I had not gone two miles when I heard a shrill siren behind me. I looked back and saw the flashing red light. I knew we were too far from the base for it to be an Air Police car. It had to be either a California Highway Patrol or a Sheriffs car.
I floor-boarded the T-Bird, confident that I could pull away from the police vehicle. I looked back and felt good. The pursuing car's lights were growing smaller.
"He'll radio ahead of us," Donna said, snuggling fearfully against me.
"Stop worrying," I said. "When I was a little boy my favorite occupation was trying to get little girls to show me what they have under their dresses. My second was seeing Western movie. Both experiences are coming in handy now. While the wicked sheriff is trying to cut us off at the pass, we'll Gene Autry the hell out of him by backtracking!"
"Oh!" she said. "And what does the experience of looking up little girl's dresses have to do with fooling the sheriff?"
"That is something I can't tell you. I'll have to demonstrate. And just as soon as I shake this bastard and find a lonely, dark spot, you'll know all about it,"
"Oh," she said.
And then added, "Iooooh!" as I reached for her with one hand.
It was an almost fatal mistake. I took a curve that broke too sharply. I could not swing the wheel around fast enough with one hand. I jerked the other back but got it tangled in Donna's blouse.
I jerked harder. The cloth ripped. She cried out as the strings pulled cruelly into her breasts. But there wasn't time to think about that. We were in mortal danger of going over.
I wrestled with the wheel. The car skidded sickenly in the gravel as we went off the pavement and onto the shoulder. I cut frantically into the skid, and then quickly back just in time to keep from going over the 50 foot cliff.
I rolled along on the shoulder for a short distance and then cut back on the pavement.
I was shaking by the time I got settled down again. Prudence demanded slower speed on an unfamiliar mountain road, but the police driver knew the route and I didn't. I couldn't afford to slow down. All I could do was keep her floor-boarded and pray for the best.
We topped the first pass and moonlight flooded the next valley. I saw a side road-a dirt set of ruts probably running off to some old mine.
I looked back. The pursuing police car was not in sight. I braked and turned into it. The road plunged downward at a breathtaking angly, and then cut sharply in behind a thick stand of pines.
Here I cut the lights and braked to a stop. I didn't want to go all the way to the bottom if I could avoid it. The road was in terrible shape and I did not want to get into something I could not get out of.
I turned the wheel into the cliff and set the handbrake. Then I reached for Donna.
She came to me, trembling passionately. She rubbed her cheek against mine as I brushed back the ruins of her blouse to expose the moonlight beauty beneath.
"Oh, I love you. I love You!" she whispered, her voice breaking with the agony of desire. "Ever since I was a little girl I prayed the man I'd fall in love with would be handsome and brave. I knew you can't help yourself and must fall in love with whomever it is that God intended. But I prayed, let him be handsome and let him be brave!"
"Be quiet," I said. "Don't talk. Just-"
"But I wnat to tell you. It's a confession. I'm ashamed and I want you to forgive."
"For what," I said disinterestedly. My mind was occupied with the curving sweep of her breasts. My hands cupped them gently at first and then squeezed so violently she yelped.
"Oh!" she said. "Ooooh! Oh. I love you! But I was sad. You kept talking about being afraid to go with me. And I thought yen weren't brave. I loved you still, but I was sad. But the way you ran off from that police car and the way you never turned a hair when we almost went over the cliff and I was scared to death, and the way you tricked them-Oh, you are brave, as brave as you are handsome."
"You as a crazy little romantic," I said, but I was pleased.
Hell, I wouldn't have been human if I had not been.
"Yes, I guess I am romantic," she said dreamily as she wriggled to rub the nipples of her firm breasts in the palms of my hands. "I remember so well a poem I read in school. It was by Dryden. I was so beautiful. Do you know "Alexander's Feast?"
"No," I said. "The only poetry I care about is the poetry of a little naked body named Donna pressed holy against mine."
"But this poem told me the kind of man I must fall in love with. It went:
'Happy, happy, happy pair!
None but the brave, None but the brave, None but the brave deserves the fair!'
"I prayed that my love would be brave and I fair and that he would deserve me. And so it came to pass. You are brave and I think that I am fair."
"The fairest of the fair," I insisted. "The loveliest of the lovely."
And after her moist little mouth bit my neck, I added, "And the hottest of the hot!"
"Love me, my darling!" she whispered. "Love me!"
I worked the zipper free on her skirt and pushed it down.
"Move back! Move back, damn you!" I said almost in a frenzy, "I want to look at you. I want to see all of you-every glorious, loveable inch!"
Reluctantly, yet flushing with pleasure at my suggestion, she lay back, a beautiful moonlit vision of passionate desire. Panting, groaning with frustration as I had difficulty removing my clothes fast enough to meet the flooding passions within me, I drank in the beauty of her nakedness. Unconsciously her hands came up and squeezed her breasts.
She dropped her eyes shyly, and the long lashes trembled against the moonlight-silvered cheek.
Then when we were both Adam and Eve naked she came to me. The explosion of it was so powerful it seemed to burst us both asunder, draining every sympton of feeling away expect a glorious feeling of sheer contentment.
I held her tightly against me. Her body was heaving with broken sobs, but the beautiful smile on her face showed that her crying came from supreme happiness.
Just before starting the engine, I kissed her tenderly. Tremulous touch of her lips and the wetness of her tears on my cheek are sweet memories I will carry to my grave.
"Please, doll baby," I said huskily. "It's only for a title while and then we will be together for this forever and ever."
"Remember," she whispered, a mischievous grin twisting her moist red lips. "You promised six times a day."
"And an extra one on Sunday's if you're a good little girl during the week."
"I'll try. Oh, my lover, my lover, I'll try to so very hard."
I put the car in gear. "Some day," I said, "I'm coming back to this very spot and put up a monument-'the most satisfyingly beautiful moment of my life!"
I found a place to turn around and we started difficult climb. Finally we pulled back on the highway. As I turned back the way we came, our headlights picked out a Sheriff's car pulled across the pavement in a roadblock!
I wheeled the T-Bird around in a fast U-turn. The headlights showed me one of the car's deputies standing in the middle of the road, a 45 caliber service revolver in his hand. He had apparently left his buddy in the squad car and walked down the road so they could box me in.
I swerved around him. I wasn't stopping for nothing now. His gun exploded as we shot past.
The car felt like it was hit by a cannon ball. The wheel was jerked out of my hand. The policeman's bullet had punctured a front tire.
The car shot toward the inside of the road. I wrestled frantically with the wheel in a violent effort to prevent the crash.
I was but partly successful. We hit the cliff where the road had been laborously chewed out of the mountain side. The front fender and wheel crumpled under the impact. Still spinning back wheels pushed us forward. My side of the car caved in. I was thrown heavily against Donna. The car stopped, rocking and shuddering as loosened rock clanged down on the metal top.
"Donna!" I cried. "Are you okay?"
"Yes!" she said. "Oh, Jim, this is a terrible way to end after we were so happy!"
I patted her leg. "It's okay, baby. No matter what happens now, that moment with you back there was pay enough for it."
"Oh, my darling, my darling!" she cried, throwing her arms around me.
""If you don't mind," the officer said dryly. "Come out."
We did. Except for a few bruises, we seemed all right.
The squad car pulled up beside us. An officer stuck his head out the window. "This the one?" he asked.
"The license checks," his companion replied, and then to me: "Are you Lieutenant James Cross?" There seemed no point in denying it. "Yes," I said.
"Is this Miss Donna Marstaff?"
"Look!" Donna said belligerantly. She seemed determined to pick a quarrel with every policeman she met. "He didn't do anything!"
"I'm sure he didn't," the Sheriff's deputy said soothingly.
I could hear the other officer calling on the two-way radio. He reported our capture and asked for instructions. I could hear the radio speaker squawking a reply:
"Take them back to the nearest town. We'll notify the air base and they can send the girl's parents out. But don't release her to them until after we can get a medical examination of her. A conviction in this kind of case rests on whether we can prove she had intercourse with him. I want a doctor's immediate examination. That is all."
Donna gasped. "I won't let them look at me!" she cried.
The officer smiled. "Get in the car please."
We walked over. The driver got out and opened the door for us. It wasn't politeness. He had to lock it after us from the outside. The other door was also locked, and heavy steel mesh wire separated us from the front seat. It was an effective mobile jail.
The other officer came back after searching my car. He carried Donna's torn blouse which she had replaced with a fresh one from her suitcase.
He took an envelope from the glove compartment and put the ripped garment in it. "Make it for evidence," he told the driver. "You go on with them. I'll stay here with the wreck until the wrecker comes."
We didn't stop at the first two places. They were only wide spots in the road, but went on until we found a place big enough to have a jail.
On the way I asked the deputy how they knew I turned off.
"We weren't too far behind you. From the crest of the pass we could see down the valley and up the next hill. Since we saw no car lights climbing the hill, we figured you had tried to duck out. I got out and inspected the road. There were your car tracks. Not exactly Sherlock Holmes stuff, but just as effective."
A car from the base arriveI at the jail before we did. In the waiting room were Colon and Trone Marstaff, Lt. Colonel Castleman, the Provost Marshal, and General Cross.
Irene tried to play the part of the distressed mother, but Donna said, "I hate you! Don't touch me!"
She whirled on the arresting officer, and blurted out her story. Her face flaming with rage, Irene positively denied it.
"I think the matter can easily be settled by inspecing the girl's birth certificate," the officer said.
"She doesn't have one," Irene retorted. "And besides, what does it matter? I'm her mother. I guess I know how old she is. Besides there are the school records at the base high school. They should be sufficient to prove she is only 15."
"I-" the officer began.
"Perhaps that is the solution to this whole mess," Colonel Castleman said. "Since we can't legally prove the girl's age and since I am sure Colonel and Mrs. Marstaff do not want their daughter to go through the humiliation of a public trial, why not release Lt. Cross for lack of evidence. We'll forget the whole matter."
"Statutory rape is a serious matter in this state," the officer said. "Even movie stars don't get away with it."
"And I'll not agree to it either!" Irene cried, her eyes shooting enraged venom at me. "I want this bastard jailed!"
"Irene!" General Cross said, his face white.
"He is a bastard!" she cried. "You told me yourself he wasn't your son, and that was why you hated him!"
"I-" The general's face sagged. He suddenly looked years older. But he squared his shoulders although he did not look up. "I once believed that. I accused my wife of it and it led to the breakup of our marriage. But I know now it was a lie. He looks too much like me. And-"
He paused and grinned bitterly. "He even acts as foolish as I did when I was his age."
He looked up at last. His anguished eyes sought mine. "I'm sorry, son."
"I don't care!" Irene shouted. "I want him jailed!"
It was her jealous rage at me that caused her to lose all sense of reason. She hated me and hated Donna. This was her way at striking back at our love.
"Where was she born?" I asked.
"None of you damn business!" Irene blared back. "I don't even remember myself."
"That's not going to do you one bit of good," I shouted back at her. "It's recorded somewhere and I intend to call every vital statistics place in the United States until I find the right one."
"You snoty, child-raping bastard!" she rasped.
"And when I find the truth I'm slapping you with enough charges to put your ass in jail for the next 20 years! False arrest, defamation of character, slander, and God knows what else, is just the start!"
"What kind of man are you? she blazed, turning first to the general and then Marstaff. "Officers and gentlemen! No gentleman would stand by and let a cheap bastard talk to a lady like that!"
"Irene, for heaven's sake, be quiet!" the general said.
"So you're taking his part-against me! After all we've been to each other!"
Her blazing eyes swept all of us and it was scorching.
"To hell with all of you!" she cried.
In spite of her age-she must have been about 40 actually-she was remarkably well preserved and could have easily pass for the 34 she claimed. In her tight slinky dress with its revealing cut, she was beautiful. And in her rage she was never more love-ly. I found myself, despite my feeling toward her, gazing at Irene with a rising lust.
Donna must have seen it in my face. She touched my arm. I looked down at her. She scowled at me. I smiled back at her. The one sight of my darling swept away every fornicating thought I had about her mother.
Irene saw the look of devotion that passed between us. She almost strangled and ran for the door. Colonel Marstaff started after her. His stricken face showed that he loved her yet in spite of her life long infidelity.
I ran to the door. I saw Irene jump into the staff car that brought them from the base. Marstaff leaped to stop her. She threw the car in gear. It shot backward, throwing him to the ground.
In her fury and rush, she did not look to see if the way was clear. I saw the huge commercial trailer truck looming up. I shouted a frantic warning.
It was too late. The car and the truck came together with a screeching grind and clamor of twisting metal and shattered glass.
The ruined sedan was hurled completely across the street to rest against a telephone pole. The trailer jackknifed and came around on top of it. There was a horrible grinding sound as the top of the car collapsed on the screaming woman trapped inside.
It was two hours and dawn before the wreckage was cleared away and Irene's body, accompanied by her weeping husband, was taken away.
The general and Colonel Castleman stayed with me. The police refused to dismiss the charges.
"This is a matter for the district atorney," the Sheriff's deputy, named Collins, told me. "We just make arrests. We don't try cases."
"But the woman's dead," Castleman protested. He was all worked up. It wasn't regard for me. I could rot for all he cared. It was something about protect the name of the Service. And since the general had done an about face in regard to me, he thought it produent to go along with the general.
"That makes no difference," Collins said. "I talked to the D.A.'s office by phone. They routed the school principal out of bed. He confirmed the girl's age. It was 15 on the school records. That is sufficient for us to hold the lieutenant."
They did release me to the Provost Marshal's custody. As soon as another car came from the base, we all drove back. The next four hours was a hectic time as the general, Donna and I burned up the long distance telephone wires.
Finally we found that a Donna Marstaff was recorded as having been born in Iola, Texas, 18 years ago. She was listed as the natural born daughter of Capt. Edgar Marstaff and Irene Marstaff.
"Well, that's it," the general said heavily when I told him. "As for the investigation into the crash. You will not be held responsible in any way. I have ordered Signet to prepare a report which I will approve. We'll dispense with the investigation. I'll have a copy of the girl's birth certificate sent to the police here just to make things official. You are free now, lieutenant, but under the circumstances I don't think it desirable that you remain on this base. You will be transferred.
"Thank you, sir," I said formally as befits a lieutenant speaking to a general.
"Now if we can forget the matter of military rank just for a moment," he said wearily.
He looked old and tired, and I could see the suffering in his face. He had genuinely loved Irene and I felt pity for him. I no longer hated him.
"I've tried to be an honest and honorable officer," he said slowly. "Mostly I have. But those lapses which blot my career all come because I loved that woman so very much. Much as I tried to resist, she had the power to force me to do what I knew was wrong. I'm not blaming her. It was a defect of my own character I suppose. I don't think you can understand exactly what I mean."
"No, sir," I said, "you are wrong. I do understand. It was the same as with Phillips."
He nodded slowly.
"And it was beginning to be the same with me," I went on. "I guess you know that-well-she and I-"
He nodded again. A rather bitter smile twisted his straight military lips.
"I know," he said. "Love with Irene was purely physical. She could think of it in no other terms. I am getting old. I can no longer be the passionate lover that I once was. She saw in you a youthful version of me. I suppose it is flattering for you have-since passing out of adolescence-grown to look remarkably like I did when I was in my twenties."
"After that first night with her I kept thinking about her all the time. I'd seen what she had done to Phillips. I was afraid of her, but I couldn't get her out of my mind. She was like dope. I was damned near hooked."
"Fortunately," he said, "you were stronger than the rest of us. You were able to kick the Irene habit."
"No. I don't think I was strong. It was Donna. She was t':e one who saved me. She did by showing me the difference between lust and love. With Irene it was nothing but lust. She fired me up until union with her was vital for relief. That's all it was, relief from pent-up passion and lust. But with Donna-"
I turned and smiled down at her upturned face. "-With Donna," I went on, my voice growing tender, "sex becomes more than just relief, it is lovely-something beautiful-and a hell of a lot of fun."
Her face turned pink. She dropped her eyes. The general looked at her sadly. "The tragedy of my life is that there was no Donna for me."
He turned to leave the room. I stopped him.
"If you don't mind," I said, "I'd like to shake your hand before you leave."
He looked surprised, and then pleased. Our hands clasped. I said, "Goodbye, father."
"Goodbye, son," he replied quietly.
"As soon as there is a little Cross, he'll be named for you."
"Make a solder of him," he old man said. "And if he takes after his own father, he'll be a damn good one."
He closed the door, leaving Donna and me alone.
I drew her to me. "We'll go to Las Vegas tomorrow and make it official."
"Between now and then there is a matter of keeping up," she said with a shy grin. "You can't afford to get any farther behind."
"Shall we start now?" I said, rubbing her uptilted breasts through the thin blouse she wore.
"By all means, lieutenant, and be sure you proceed in a military manner."
"Okay, you count cadence for me!" I said. "Hup, two, three, four!"
"Please don't stop at four!" she whispered as I gently pulled her blouse away.
