MASH 14 MASH goes to Moscow (23 page)

“You have my word,” Trapper John said. “If you come here in Air Force One, accompanied by the world’s ugliest movie star, I will go to Paris, or anywhere else in the wide world you’d like me to go, and guarantee that Boris will go with me.”

“We’ll be there in an hour or so,” the senator said. “Presuming, of course, that the pilot can find it. Apparently, Spruce Harbor International Airport isn’t listed on our aerial navigation charts.”

“Look under the Napolitano Crop Dusting Service and Garage,” Trapper John said. “Nice to chat with you, Senator.”

“My pleasure, sir. I realize it’s asking a good deal of someone like you to render a service to You-know-who. But think how I feel!”

“Sayonara,
Senator,” Trapper John said.

“Auf
Wiedersehen
,
Doctor,” the senator said. The line went dead and Trapper John hung up.

“What was that all about?” Hawkeye said, passing Trapper John the bottle.

“For a while, I wasn’t sure,” Trapper John said. “Then I remembered that you said that when Boris called he said he was with Sexy Doc Yancey
…”

“You refer to
Theosophilis
Mullins Yancey, M.D., Ph.D., D.D., and D.V.M., chief of staff of the Yancey Clinic of Manhattan, Kansas?”

“How many Sexy Doc
Yanceys
do you think there are?”

“I think there’s another Doctor Yancey, a completely respectable one, in Alabama,” Hawkeye said.

“One who doesn’t spend all of his time dabbling in odd variations of what is coyly known as the most personal of interpersonal relationships?”

“I understand the one in Alabama does other things as well,” Hawkeye said.

“I was, of course, referring to
our
Sexy Doc Yancey,” Trapper said. “The one with the flair for elaborate practical jokes.”

“That was a practical joke?”

“Let me put it to you this way,” Trapper John said. “What would you think if someone called out of the blue, announced he was Senator George H. Kamikaze, and that he was en route here, with
Shur
-lee
Strydent
in tow…”

“That sounds like our Sexy Doc Yancey?” Hawkeye said. “Sick imagination.”

“It gets better, or worse,” Trapper John said. “The guy who said he was Senator Kamikaze also said he was traveling on Air Force One
…”

“No kidding?”

“And traveling at the special request of You-know-who.”

“The one who eats boiled peanuts and smiles a lot?
That
You-know-who?”

“That You-know-who,” Trapper said. “And that the purpose of this insane aerial odyssey was to get you … or me, I don’t think he knew who he was talking to … to talk Boris into going to Moscow.”

“I’d love to know what the punch line of the practical joke was supposed to be,” Hawkeye said. “The preparations for it are fantastic! What did you tell him?”

“I told him that, sure, if he came here on Air Force One with
Shur
-lee
Strydent
in tow, we would be happy to go to Paris with him and talk Boris into going to Moscow.”

“I suppose that we’re just supposed to sit here and wait, now,” Hawkeye said, “for Air Force One
…”

The telephone rang again.

“Is that you again, Senator?” Hawkeye said, by way of greeting.

“This is Wrong-Way, Hawkeye,” Mr. Wrong-Way Napolitano, proprietor of Spruce Harbor International Airport (formerly, Napolitano Crop Dusting Service and Garage) said.

“What’s on your mind, Wrong-Way?”

“I just got an in-flight advisory from Chevaux Petroleum One-One-Seven—that’s that stretched, or Jumbo, 747, you know?”

“What about it?”

“He says he’s forty minutes out, Hawkeye. And he says he’s supposed to pick you and Trapper John and some other people up, and would I ask you to be there when he gets there. He said he was en route from South Africa to Alaska, and having to make a detour to carry you guys to Paris is going to make him run a little late.”

“Tell him we’ll be there,” Hawkeye said.

“Roger,
Wilco
,” Wrong-Way said, and hung up.

Hawkeye did likewise. He returned what was left (not much) of the bottle to its resting place behind the books, and then he and Trapper John rejoined Mesdames Pierce, McIntyre, and Roberts, and Brother Born-Again Bob in the dining room.

“It was Wrong-Way,” Hawkeye said. “The plane Horsey sent for us is about forty minutes out. We’ll have to hurry and pack.”

“It took that long to get that simple a message?” Mary Pierce asked, suspiciously.

“My sniffer,” Brother Born-Again Bob announced, portentously, “is twitching. It detects booze!”

“It detects
alcohol,”
Trapper John said. “Dr. Pierce and myself always wash our hands in alcohol before going abroad don’t we, Doctor?”

“Without fail!” Hawkeye agreed.

“You haven’t answered my question,” Mary Pierce said. “It took you
that
long to get a
simple
message like that?”

“Actually, no,” Hawkeye said. “There were two messages.”

“What was the other one?”

“What would you say, Mary,” Hawkeye asked, “if I told you that the other caller was Senator George H. Kamikaze?”

“Benjamin!” she said, a large threat in her tone of voice.

“And that he called to tell us that he was coming here, on Air Force One
…”

“Benjamin!” This second warning recitation of his given name was sufficient to get Hawkeye to stop in midsentence.

Trapper John picked up the narrative: “With
Shur
-lee
Strydent
in tow.”

“
Shur
-lee
Strydent
?” Lucinda McIntyre asked. “The actress with the wonderfully tragic face?”

“That’s one way to put it, I suppose,” Trapper John said. “Anyway, how many
Shur
-lee
Strydents
do you think there are?”

“And that You-know-who, also known as Teeth in the White House,” Hawkeye went on, “had sent him, so that Trapper John and I could talk Boris into going to Moscow?”

“
Humpf
,” Mary Pierce snorted.

“Cross my heart and hope to die!” Hawkeye said, piously. “That’s exactly what happened.”

“That’s that Doctor Yancey,” Mary Pierce said. “I always said he was sick, sick, sick!”

“Until you read his book,*” Hawkeye said, “you liked him.”

(* Dr. Pierce was here referring to either
Sexual Intercourse As Exercise
(848 pp., illustrated with photos, charts, and graphs, index, glossary, $10.95) or
Strength and Joy Through Constant Coitus
(904 pp., illustrated, $9.95) both by T. Mullins Yancey, M.D., Ph.D., D.D. and D.V.M., the Joyful Practice Publishing Company, Manhattan, Kansas.)

Mary suddenly stood up, blushing furiously. “We’ve got to get you packed and to the airport!”

Meanwhile, at the airport, Bobby-Sue/
Brunhilde
Roberts was again wondering if Dear Daddy’s sacramental grape juice had undergone a change, miraculous or otherwise, into something more potent. For there, was nothing at Spruce Harbor International Airport in the way of aircraft except one battered crop duster, which hardly looked
flightworthy
, much less capable of carrying anyone across the wide Atlantic.

But then, far out at sea, she heard the unmistakable whine of massive jet aircraft engines. She scanned the area carefully and finally she saw it, an almost invisible dot, far, far away. But as she watched, it grew in size, and grew and grew and grew. It was the largest airplane she had ever seen and the only jet transport she had ever seen with the likeness of a shark’s jaws painted over the nose.

There was no way, she thought, that an aircraft that large could possibly land on Spruce Harbor International Airport’s main (and only) runway, a dirt strip no more than fifty yards wide.

But she erred. The speed of the stretched Jumbo 747 (a 50-foot extension had been inserted into the fuselage so that a medium-sized oil well-drilling tower could be loaded aboard without bothering to take it apart) decreased. Enormous speed brakes were extended into the slipstream. The landing carriage, all sixteen wheels, each as tall as a man, dropped into position. The final approach was made at about sixty feet above the surface of the Atlantic. As the aircraft flashed across the rock-bound coast of Maine, the flight engineer shoved the four throttles as far forward as they would go, and the mighty engines revved to full power. Simultaneously, the co-pilot pulled on the thrust-reversers, which caused all the power which had been pulling the airplane through the air to work the other way. The pilot, at the same instant, aimed for the ground. With a piercing scream of tortured rubber, Chevaux Petroleum One-One-Seven returned to earth.

“Spruce Harbor, Chevaux One-One-Seven on the deck at one-five past the hour,” the pilot said. “How they hanging, Wrong-Way?”

“Chevaux One-One-Seven, this is Spruce Harbor International Ground Control,” the tower replied. “Taxi to the end of the active runway and await further orders. They’re hanging all right, Charley, how’s by you?”

“Chevaux One-One-Seven at the end of the active … Jesus, Wrong-Way, what is that?”

“What’s what, Charley?”

“Look out your window, stupid! Raquel Welch, eat your heart out!”

“I am looking out the window, I don’t see anything … oh, mama
mia
!”

The aircraft commander of Chevaux Petroleum One-One-Seven and the general manager, air and ground controller, and proprietor of the Airport Inn, Spruce Harbor International Airport, had both seen Bobby-Sue/
Brunhilde
Roberts leaning on her little Volkswagen.

Wrong-Way grabbed his microphone. “Attention all aircraft in the vicinity of Spruce Harbor International. Attention all aircraft in the vicinity! Spruce Harbor is closed to all traffic effective immediately until further notice!” He threw the
mircrophone
in the general direction of the radio and quickly slid down the rope ladder which gave access to the control tower. He set out at a dead run toward Miss Roberts.

Meanwhile, in the cockpit of Chevaux One-One-Seven, there was a minor personnel accident. The pilot and the co-pilot each left their seats at precisely the same moment in order to exit the aircraft. In their movement, they bumped heads, which sent both of them, both severely dazed, back into their seats, which gave the flight engineer opportunity to push the “Emergency Exit” button. The button activated a little door on the bottom of the fuselage, which opened and then caused a nylon rope ladder to unroll to the ground. The flight engineer slid down the ladder and hit the ground, running in the direction of Miss Roberts, arriving there a second or two before Wrong-Way.

“Hi, there!” Wrong-Way said. “Welcome to Spruce Harbor International Airport! Is there any way, any little way at all, little lady, that Wrong-Way Napolitano may be of service?”