“General, this is not better.”
“I can’t hear you, Jenkins. You’re wearing a helicopter.”
“I’m setting down, sir.”
PERSONAL HELI-DEVICE LANDING NOISE
“Very smooth, Jenkins. Like a teenager’s ass full of 50-year-old scotch.”
“That is very smooth, sir.”
“Maybe the whole works are greased up.”
“That would make the ass slick, sir. Slick is not smooth.”
“True, true. Good point, Jenkins. There are rare occasions when you’re not a complete fub,”
“What’s a fub, sir?”
“Context clues are available to you, damned boy! Does it sound complimentary?”
“No, sir.”
“No you enjoy being called a fub, fub?”
“No, sir.”
“Stings at your pride like a greased up teenager laughing at your manly root, eh?”
“I don’t know if that’s how I would describe my emotions, sir.”
“Fub.”
“Sir, can we get back on topic and discuss–”
“The Mark III!”
“–Mark III. The machine has several large and, in my opinion, fatal flaws in both concept and design. However, as I know that you like good news first, I will start with a positive. The fact that the rotor is now above my head rather than directly below my feet is a marked improvement.”
“Well, we did lose all those test pilots with the Mark II.”
“And the Mark I.”
“Yes. Jenkins, those men died for their country. I told the widows that when I delivered the bags full of their husbands to them.”
“You used bags, sir?”
“They fell into a helicopter rotor. You can’t put that in a coffin, Jenkins. It just sloshes around. Freezer bags were the right way to go. I made sure to get the good ones with the thick plastic, of course. Out of respect.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You were telling me about the Whirleybird Mark III and how it was going to win the war for us.”
“I wasn’t, sir. I mentioned in passing the one slightly improved feature of this monstrosity and was about to continue on to the faults.”
“No faults in this gal. She’s a beauty.”
“No, sir. She looks like a shopping cart attached to a robot built solely to rape. A rapebot, if you will.”
“I won’t.”
“I retract the neologism, sir.”
“So noted. Find one thing wrong with the Mark III. One, I dare you.”
“It has twelve minutes worth of fuel.”
“So does an automobile, at times.”
“It’s incredibly unstable.”
“Well, you know what that means.”
“No, sir.”
“Dynamite in bed.”
“Permission to ask a question, sir.”
“Denied.”
“Permission to make an accusatory statement that would naturally lead to a response.”
“Go ahead.”
“I thought we were in the Army.”
“Of course we’re in the Army. If we were in the Marines, we’d be eating each other. If we were in the Navy, we’d be wet. If we were in the Army Air Corps, it would be the 1940’s.”
“Yes, sir. And the Army is, you know, an army.”
“Get to the point, fub.”
“Shouldn’t it have some weapons on it, sir? You said it yourself: we’re trying to win a war. You really need a gun or two to win a war, sir.”
“You’ll bring your own. What about the shotgun I gave you for Christmas?”
“It’s for shooting skeet, sir.”
“Skeet, Communists, what’s the difference?”
…
“Are we still fighting Commies, Jenkins?”
GENERAL AND JENKINS LOOKING AROUND NOISE
“I think we’re fighting Muslims now, sir.”
“Like I said: Muslims, Communists, skeet, what’s the difference?”
“I can’t begin to answer that, sir.”
“This is what war teaches us, Jenkins. Muslims, Commies, Nazis, Americans: if you shoot them hard enough, they fall down and die. This is why war makes brothers of all who feed fuel into her insatiable maw. I salute our enemy, Jenkins. I saluted the Viet Cong when we fought them, and now I salute…the…Taliban?”
“Maybe. Definitely maybe. Could be Al-Shabaab.”
“ISIS.”
“Sure.”
“Don’t sleep on ISIS, Jenkins.”
“No, sir. We could even be fighting Al Qaeda.”
“Old school.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, until we find out for certain, let’s just say the Muslims.”
“But not, you know, Muslims.”
“No, not all of them. Just these ones right here.”
“I think we need a more stringent criteria than that, sir.”
“Jenkins, I want to shoot people and then figure out what happened afterwards. I intend to use to Mark III to further this aim. Are you with me or not?”
“No, sir.”
“I’m glad you said yes.”
“I knew you would be. Back to the guns.”
“Never the same after Steven Adler left.”
“The weapons, sir. That I want to install on the Mark III.”
“Ah. I suppose there could be a gun.”
“Yes, sir. A honking big sumbitch, or a little sissy popgun like a sissy would put on it?”
“WHO CALLED ME A SISSY?”
“No one, sir.”
“I’m a general!”
“The very model, sir.”
“Weld the most massive cannon you can find onto the bastard.”
“Yes, sir. Oh.”
“Oh?”
“Well, sir, that would require attaching the cannon to some sort of chassis.”
“Fine, fine.”
“Which would mean you needed to beef up the power.”
“Make it so.”
“But at a certain level, those twin rotors don’t work so well. You’ll want a tail rotor.”
“Hell, give it two.”
“We’ll stick to the one for now, sir. Oh, but since we’ve got the chassis and all the power, we might as well stick a couple missiles on it.”
“Obviously.”
“Uh-huh. Missiles are real loud and dangerous. To protect the pilot, maybe we should put him in some sort of enclosure.”
“Good idea. Make it see-through.”
“Yes, sir. Sir, we’ve just built an attack helicopter.”
“We have? We’ll be rich!”
“No, sir. What I’m saying is that the vehicle you want already exists. On this base. We could go get one.”
“We can’t just ‘go get one.’ You don’t check them out. It’s not a library. Jenkins, if you’re sniffing drugs, then do it on your time or share your drugs.”
“Yes, sir. I just think you’re trying to reinvent the wheel.”
“I wanted to make something new because when you make something new, you get to name it. I wanted to make something new and beautiful, and then I was going to get to name it, and I was going to name it after you, Jenkins. I was going to tell you at Christmas. It was to be your gift this year. All I wanted to repay your loyalty and friendship. Perhaps I am a fool.”
…
…
…
“You getting kickbacks from the defense contractors?”
“Big time.”
“So Project: Whirleybird will continue for…?”
“We’ve got the funding for at least two more posts.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did we neglect to discuss the fact that you’re Asian now?”
“We did, sir.”
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