"The what?"
"Lieutenant Stecker is not only a professional officer and gentleman, but a West Pointer. They believe, as a matter of faith, that enlisted men have no brains and have to be cared for like children."
"Oh, fuck you, Pick!" Stecker flared. "I was raised as the dependent of an enlisted man."
"George is not going to get into any trouble," Pick said.
"Says you," Stecker said. "Sergeant, where did you meet this... child in an officer's uniform?"
"Lieutenant," Hart said. When he had his attention, he handed him his credentials. "Even if anybody asks, there's no problem about the civilian clothing. This says I can wear it." Stecker looked carefully at the credentials.
"Are you on duty now?" he asked.
"More or less."
"What does that mean?"
"It means he works for my father, and he came out here to reassure me."
"Reassure you about what?"
"Dad's in the Army Hospital in Washington, with malaria, exhaustion, and Christ only knows what else."
"Why didn't you let me know?" :,I didn't want to worry you." `How is he?"
"He'll be all right," Hart answered.
"And that's what caused this insanity? Relief that your father's going to be all right?"
"What insanity?" Pickering asked innocently. "I was under the impression that any red-blooded Marine Aviator would jump at the chance to fly under that bridge. What are you, Stecker, some kind of a pansy?" Stecker looked at him. Finally he shook his head.
"Hand me the bottle," he said. "I think I will get stinko."
"Not until you tell me why you're out here a day early," Pickering said. "Is there some angry Pennsylvania Dutch farmer looking for you with a knocked-up daughter in tow?"
"Give me the goddamned bottle," Stecker said.
Pickering gave it to him.
"My mother was driving me nuts," he said, finally, after he'd taken a pull from the neck. "It wasn't her fault, of course.
... Fuck it. It doesn't matter."
"What?" Pickering asked softly.
"She's already lost one son in this fucking war. My father's on goddamned Guadalcanal, and now I'm going there. I couldn't stand the way she looked at me. So I came out early.
"I suppose that makes me the candidate for prick of the year."
"I'm sorry," Pickering said.
"I'll tell you what," Stecker said. "I did not come out here to-"
"To what?"
"You really flew under the bridge?"
"I really flew under the bridge."
"You had enough time in that airplane to feel that confident?"
"Yeah, sure I did. How long were we up there. would you say, George, before we went under the bridge?"
"About twenty-five minutes."
"How much total time is what I'm asking."
"Twenty-five minutes. I just told you." Hart could tell from the look on Pickering's face that he was telling the truth.
"Lieutenant," he said, "can I have that bottle, please?"
"If he gives you the bottle, George, the next thing you know you'll want to go out chasing fast women."
"I know you disapprove, that you will be faithful until death to Saint Martha, the virtuous widow, but what's wrong with that for Hart and me?" Stecker said.
"Now that I think about it," Pickering said, "nothing. Not for any of us."
"Really?" Stecker asked. "What about the sainted widow?"
"Live today, for tomorrow we die, right?"
"Oh, Jesus!" Stecker said.
"Or go to jail," Hart said. "Whichever comes first."
"You guys want me to call some women or not?" Stecker handed him the telephone.
"Do you want fast women, or fast fast women?" Pickering asked.
"Just as long as they don't talk too much before they take off their clothes," Stecker said.
"I know just the girls," Pickering said, and told the operator to give him an outside line.
[Five]
HEADQUARTERS