"Major Larson dropped off the Military Symposium agenda," she said
without looking up, "and your physical's set for o-eight-hundred
tomorrow."

"I wasn't aware my annual was due."

"It's not."

"Then why . . . "

"Because!" exasperation propelled the word. "You haven't been
yourself lately. Everyone's noticed."

Harbinger shrugged then walked the three steps to his door. Safe
inside he removed his blouse, seated himself gingerly at his desk, and
began to scan his proposal to establish a group of historians in Saigon to
record what he called "contemporary history." As he moved to the second page, Rachel approached with his morning coffee and an envelope already slit.

"I thought you might like to see this. It's from Major Cannard."

"That's kind of you, Rachel. I've had Alex on my mind since
Captain Sawyer . . . " He quickly raised the cup, took a tentative sip, then
slammed it back on its saucer. "What is this mess?"

"Herbal tea. You're drinking too much caffeine."

"Damn it, Rachel, I'll decide . . . " But she was already gone.

Pushing himself away from the desk and into the light flooding
through the tall windows, he began to read:

Bien Hoa Air Base, RVN
15 April 1968
Dear Colonel Harbinger,

Finally took my AC-47 to war last night. Our gunship is a vintage
"Gooney Bird" loaded with illumination flares and three of the meanest
machine guns you ever saw. Job's to keep the bad guys from rocketing the cities or overrunning our outposts at night. The grunts sometimes call us "Guardian Angel" instead of our "Spooky" call sign.

In theory the job's simple. Race to the scene, whip the old gal
into a tight left-hand circle, toss out a flare, and blast away. In practice,
it's downright intimidating to a virgin co-pilot. Last night, perched on
my seat cushion and straining to see out the pilot's side window, I felt like a trained monkey. Jim Hubbard---"Mother Hubbard" to the troops---had his hands full pinpointing the target, coordinating with our cabin crew, and teaching me what I needed to know. On hot targets, we share airspace with forward air controllers, fighter-bombers, helicopter gunships, and enemy bullets.

With the Paris peace negotiations starting, I'm lucky to see combat.
I feared I'd be left like Bill Faulkner to brood over missing my chance
for glory. Plenty of opportunities, I'm told, to snag a Distinguished Flying
Cross and a bunch of Vietnamese decorations.

Time to pack it in. Give my best to Iris, Rachel, and the gang.
I'd appreciate your not mentioning any of this to Merrilane. Last week
Pleiku lost an AC-47 to an enemy gunner and another to a mortar shell on landing. So I'm feeding her a sanitized story about flying routine patrols protecting Saigon from rockets. Like LBJ says, no use worrying the home folks.

Cheers,
Alex

"Fighters twelve o'clock high!" someone had shouted as he settled
into to the co-pilot's seat. Sucking pure oxygen, he wiggles into his
parachute, gropes for the lap belt, and clamps it together. High decibel
jamming reverberates in his headset. He senses rather than sees the
spread of shark-nosed Messerschmitts. Herrick defends from the nose---long bursts, cordite stench, continual vibration. Clattering shell cases pool beneath the thrashing upper turret. Temples throb, heartbeats synchronize with stammering guns, genitals shrivel, anus tightens.

Twenty-millimeter slugs perforate the cockpit disintegrating the
windscreen into shards of jagged Plexiglas. Fred McCrimmon jerks
upright---once, twice---then crumples onto the control wheel his flayed
torso scarcely deflecting the autopilot. Straining propellers flail into
clear air dragging the tattered wings and riddled fuselage which bucks and rolls but holds to the bomb run heading. Grey speckled fighters again
sift through the formation, rolling inverted for home.

Beads of sweat, tinted by McCrimmon's spattered blood, seep around
the edges of his goggles, fogging the lens, stinging his eyes. Flak
pockmarks the sky---close---bursting level directly in front, now
streaming past his side window like dark cumulus on an instrument approach.  Shrapnel crashes against and through thin aluminum. "Bombay doors coming open."  He feels the buffet, senses the drag. More flak. Concussion assaults his ears, making the aircraft a giant bass drum jostled mercilessly by a marching drummer. Oil pressure drops on the right-hand inboard. Quick look: cowl shot away, glistening oil, pouring black smoke. Hit the red button, cut the fuel, switch off the ignition. Power up the other three, dial in rudder trim, keep her straight, hold the airspeed. "Loose Woman" overrunning close alongside, nothing amiss, four props churning, even as her left wing folds over and back just before the explosion. "Bombs away!"  Twelve 500-pounders spill from their racks, arming mechanisms spinning merrily.

Having missed the direct experience, Professor Frank Harbinger
muses, William Faulkner chose afterwards to live vicariously in the past,
able in his innocence to romanticize it, to write novels that probed the
primordial consciousness, to become an alcoholic just from thinking about man's condition. Yet even if unperceived by his own cognizance, he was nevertheless comforted by the absolute certainty that, no matter how perverted and malicious his characters, he himself had never held another soul in bondage, had---perhaps because of pure chance or divine
intervention---never stripped away the life of another human being.

So Alex Cannard has seen his first combat, has been fascinated by
it because he has not really seen it at all . . . has just orbited like a
trained monkey watching Homo sapiens' passion for destruction. And,
isolated by his innocence---his naivete---now thinks a proof of manhood is somehow involved.

Harbinger had thought often about manhood as he read military
history from the point of view of his own experience. As he delved into
accounts of battles---Balaclava, Stalingrad, Dien Bien Phu---he perceived
a pattern of incompetence, flawed communication, and stubborn deference to tradition such that even the lowest private soldier could foretell needless casualties and ultimate defeat. Whereas Alexander had lamented the dearth of worlds to conquer, Harbinger had wept while walking the battlefield contemplating the 60,000 first-day casualties on the Somme. Truly manhood is involved: the uncommon manhood to stand against those justifying ill-conceived action.

What was his name? The ex-bomber pilot who had proclaimed himself
first citizen of the world after the Second War? Davis? Garry Davis?
Poor, disturbed, naive Davis always pictured being led manacled away from some United Nations meeting or other because he demanded concrete action.  Who would be the second citizen of the world?

Not Frank Harbinger. He could hear whistling death closing in behind, sitting in his blind spot, pumping explosive tracers into his chest.  Too bad it had to happen now. But he had no complaint. Why Fred
McCrimmon and not Frank Harbinger? Why Loose Woman and not the leader's Return to Duty? He had been spared then. For what? To pour more death from the skies? To come back to Iris, whose letters had revealed a passion surpassing his own? To raise a son who roams the corporate world never calling or writing? To guide a new generation of officers toward an understanding of past blunders and missed opportunities? To allow them to articulate fresh strategies in an age when economic inter-dependency, instant communication, and creative statesmanship might combine to end past cycles of distrust and war? Not Frank Harbinger.

And probably not his protégé who was already filling the squares
in an all-consuming game of careerism. Would Alex Cannard, remote from the carnage in his circling gunship, ever come to know the realities of war without quarter? To lead a sustained raid against a significant
target---boring through bursting flak, flashing fighters, and exploding
bombers? To cradle the bloody head of a comrade whose body had been
broken by an implacable foe? To close with the enemy, clamping fingers of vengeance upon his windpipe? Would his spirit survive seeing the waste, the capriciousness of fate, the futility of protracted war, and whatever the year of separation would bring to his wife and children? Could his faith and optimism emerge from the debris intact, or would he, like Hawthorne's Goodman Brown, spend his remaining years as a darkly meditative, distrustful, desperate man?

Is there a chance he might prevail? Might emerge as a hero for
the modern world: Alexander the Good?

Harbinger studied the letter for a long time before folding it
back into its envelope and marking a bold "EYES ONLY" in red felt-tip pen above the address. He placed it in his out-basket, signed the memo without reading the second page, then rose and walked to the doorway.

"Please pack my briefcase for me, Rachel. I'm going to spend today
at home with Iris."

Chapter Two

Hearing the postman's Jeep cresting the hill, Merrilane Cannard flipped her muddy trowel into the dirt, stripped off her soggy gloves, and
abandoned the flat of marigolds she had intended to cluster beside the
front walk. She had dressed for spring---Levi's, print blouse, sneakers---hoping her optimism would rush the season. But the morning's sunlight had surrendered its warmth to the frigid gusts that burst from the encroaching forest, chilling her arms where Alex's down vest left her unprotected.  Gardening had never delighted her or provided a release of tension as it did for her neighbor, Iris Harbinger, whose very name appeared to summon balmy zephyrs and clusters of fragrant blossoms.