Captain Harding and His Men by Elliott Mackle

Author:Elliott Mackle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: military, war, gay romance, gay fiction, dadt, gays in the military
Publisher: Lethe Press, Inc.

After an early lunch four days later, I returned to headquarters and found the door to the old man’s office shut.

Airman Buster Wilson, his back to me, was filing documents at the far end of the outer office. “Morning, Boss. If it is still morning. Hope you found something edible at the chow hall.”

Airman Dottie Bacon’s face was turned away. “Sir,” she whispered, her voice breaking. Slowly swiveling around to greet me, she wiped her eyes with one hand and then the other. Clearly she’d been crying.

What fresh hell is this?

Fifteen minutes later, the colonel’s door swung open and out sashayed a WAF airman I’d never seen before.

Airman Wilson began counting cracks in the ceiling. Airman Bacon gave the colonel the kind of look a barren old ewe might give a butcher the moment before he applied the knife to her throat. Swanson didn’t return it. He soon left for lunch at the club, directing that only the most important calls be forwarded.

Late that afternoon, Airman Bacon put an incoming call through to the old man in his private office. Clearly unhappy about it, she listened for a moment, set down the receiver, rolled her eyes, muttered, “Madam Ambassador Honeycakes on the line,” and stuck out her tongue.

This needed to be addressed now. “Let’s go for a walk,” I said. “Wilson, take over the front desk and phones, please.”

“Yes, Boss. Glad to do it.”

I had an idea how she must feel. The flight surgeon we’d sent to the DMZ had put his hands on me twice, not sexually but as a threat. Elizabeth Boardman had all but suggested a game of bedroom tennis. Although I’d escaped with honor each time, I’d felt trapped and threatened, my personal space invaded. The surgeon and the ambassador outranked me significantly but at least we belonged to more or less the same class. How much more humiliating must it be for a young, directionless woman to be used by a powerful older man, and then publicly tossed aside when the liaison was discovered? If she complained, he could consign her to Vietnam or North Dakota with a phone call.

“About the colonel’s private life,” I began.

She cut me off. “I’m so embarrassed, Captain. What you saw. I’m not that kind of girl. It was a complete mistake. I just wasn’t thinking. He said we, I—”

“I don’t need to know what he said, Airman.”

She paid no attention. “After you, well, after you came in that time, he said we had to talk. He said we should take it easy for a while. It wasn’t the first time, actually.”

“He’s our boss, Airman. It’s not my place to judge him. The colonel is divorced, with children your age. He’s an ex-jet-jockey, a risk-taker. Danger and new thrills are what they live for. A lot of unmarried fighter pilots use young, pretty young women like toilets.”

She flinched. There was nothing to do but plunge on. “They like to play the field. To some of them, you’re a dime a dozen, a notch in the belt.

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