by G M Eppers
After returning the rig to the starting point at the top of the parking structure and correctly powering down the engine, the screen went black and my scores came up. It wasn’t perfect, but I passed. I started breathing again.
So the twins had been right. The thing had been programmed to fail until the last day. Possibly to keep us busy and away from the hangars, possibly to frustrate us, or maybe just because Dean Bligh was a sadist.
The simulator sensed that I hadn’t left the seat and asked me if I wanted another go. I kind of did. But it was after midnight and I’d have plenty of time tomorrow to do it again. I pushed NO, unbuckled my seat belt and climbed down.
On my way up to my room, I took a spin through the fifth floor corridor to see if anyone else was still awake, but there were no lights in evidence under their doors.
At breakfast the next day, the room was buzzing with gossip. As I carried my tray to our usual table where three of my four classmates waited for me, I heard bits and pieces.
“I heard they caught two spies last night! T.S. candidates. Go figure.”
“I bet there’s a meth lab in there. That’s how they fund this place. My Dad told me. There’s probably one in all four of those hangars!”
“They’re going to get ‘expelled’,” and here the speaker put down her fork and made air quotes. “Let’s see who disappears, never to be heard from again!”
I’m not sure any of them would notice who disappeared. They probably knew which group were T.S. candidates, but not likely they knew us well enough to figure out who was missing. They all had their own studies to tend to and couldn’t be spending much time watching us.
Norma was noticeably absent, but I told my classmates what I’d discovered. “No wonder!” Evan exclaimed as he shoveled scrambled eggs into his mouth. “Okay, now I’m dying to get down there.”
While I wanted to do more runs before the Saturday road tests, I did have a success under my belt. I let the other three go down and went upstairs to see if I could find Norma. She was in her room, packing her things. “Norma, you okay?” I asked after introducing myself with a light knock on her slightly open door.
“Yeah, fine. I’m just done here, that’s all.” She folded a pair of jeans.
“Has Dean Bligh expelled you?”
Norma shook her head, not a bit shy about making eye contact. “No, but she probably will. Besides, I’m not ready for this. I never thought we’d have to ride animals. I can’t do it. I just can’t. The thing tried to eat canvas.” I told her about the Rig simulator and how it was winnable now. “Figures. See, I hate that crap.” It sounded like sour grapes to me. She wanted to add excuses that weren’t quite as irrational as the fear of animals. “They always have to play mind games. No. I’ve had enough.” She held out her hand. “But thanks for your help.”
I shook her hand. “What are you going to do?”
“For now, go back home. I have family there. And a boyfriend who’s waiting for me to get my act together. I thought this was going to do it, but it’s not.” She snapped her suitcase closed, looking longingly around the austere room, a tiny shoulderbag bumping against her hip. “Maybe I’ll try the airplane thing. No animals involved in that. Maybe I’ll get a normal job, like security guard or something.” She shrugged. “I’ll figure it out.” And after a beat, she added, “Must be nice.”
“What is?”
“Knowing what you want. You know you want CURDS. You know you want Avis. You know what you want and you’re going to make it happen. A lot of people aren’t that lucky. We’re just getting by. Always looking. Indecisive. Unable to commit. Don’t you ever wonder if you’re doing the right thing?”
I looked her in the eye and gave her my honest answer. “No. Not anymore. Any time I’ve thought of changing either of those things, it hasn’t felt right. It’s like deciding whether to eat steak or dirt. There’s no choice there.” I took a beat of my own. “Yeah, I guess it is nice. I hope you find what you need.”
“Thanks.”
We shook hands again, she hefted her suitcase, and I walked her down to Dean Bligh’s office to turn in her badge. Dean Bligh told Norma she could have finished the course, but Norma, unable to commit to a course of study, had committed to not committing. She left on good terms, whistling as she threw her suitcase into the backseat of a waiting taxi, she hugged her small purse into her lap and climbed in after it.
By the end of the day, the remaining four of us had had multiple successful runs on the Rig simulator and we felt ready for the road tests. After a good night’s sleep, the road tests started at eight the next morning. With Dean Bligh and Eliot both proctoring, we were able to do two students at a time, qualifying easily on the smaller vehicles, driving out of the campus and touring the outskirts of Flagstaff. Even on the Rig, there were no mountain roads in the tests, though there were some carefully selected hills. Testing is always tense, but I did fine.
We had a day off in between and the four of us all went into Flagstaff for the day, taking turns driving the jeep and playfully insulting each other’s driving skills.
Avis called early that night, wanting to know how I’d done on the road tests. After I filled her in, I asked her what they’d been doing. I missed being part of the action and I was starting to wonder if I could make it five more weeks. It seemed like forever since I’d seen them. “We had another counterfeiter,” she said. “McGrone almost hit the roof. Says we’re wasting our time. I think he’s going to tell Miss Chiff not to send us on those calls anymore.”
“He’s going to TELL Miss Chiff?” I asked incredulously. “I’d like to be a fly on the wall for that one.”
“I think Miss Chiff is sending us on those deliberately. There’s got to be a connection and keeping the same team on it is the best way to figure it out.”
“She’s right about that. Tell me about the latest.”
This time they’d been sent to Midland, Texas, where a Kroger grocery store had received a very odd shipment of bananas. As the manager, Sam Wise, told them, being Texas, they only sold large bananas, yet mixed in their shipment were what looked like bunches of miniature bananas. A quick inspection had detected that they weren’t bananas at all, but expertly sculpted out of cheese. Mr. Wise, well aware of the upcoming cheese ban and already in the process of stripping the product from his shelves, and wary of the possibility of Uber, immediately phoned the Chembassy in Houston to report his find. The Chembassy had notified Miss Chiff. With the trail of the Uber smugglers cooling down in Louisiana, she diverted Team A to investigate. According to Sir Haughty, the baby bananas, each about three inches long, were formed from Lancashire Cheddar cheese, a creamy variety of yellow cheese made from separate batches of curds. Nitro tested every single baby banana and found no Uber. Major McGrone, his disdain quite evident, refused the suggestion of taking at least one banana into custody as evidence and ordered Mr. Wise to dispose of the baby bananas with the rest of his cheese products. Roxy and Sylvia both tried to object, and Badger recorded all the data to his phone, but McGrone was adamant. They returned to Louisiana trying to pick up the trail of the smugglers, and currently sat in a hotel in the French Quarter, where the city was already gearing up for Mardi Gras. McGrone didn’t like that, either.
The second week of instruction with Dean Bligh and Eliot went by quickly. The animals were wonderful. It turned out that the first hangar was housing horses, donkeys and mules, the second, as we already knew, were camels, llamas, yaks, water buffalo and elk. The third had elephants, oxen and zebra, and the fourth, climate controlled to just below freezing, housed a team of Alaskan Malamutes and a dog sled. They had a heated shelter and were well-treated, having that hangar to themselves to allow plenty of room to run the sled. A covering of artificial snow allowed us to also learn how to walk in snowshoes. I had a great time. Marge was a natural on the dogsled. Evan had the most trouble with the animals, getting nipped early on by one of the mules.
As Dean Bligh and Eliot explained, despite the
advances in simulator technology, they could not replace actual experience with the animals in the same way that they could replace mechanical forms of transportation. Also, while the simulators could be available 24/7, we were not permitted to access the animals without an instructor with us. Even though they both made themselves available as much as possible, it still left us with more free time than we’d had for phase one and I finally got around to using the workout room. It felt good to stress my muscles again. My nightly pushups and calisthenics simply weren’t enough.
I continued talking with Avis every night. Occasionally one of the other team members would join the twins for the call, mostly to make sure I knew how miserable Major McGrone was making things for everyone. He had indeed talked to Miss Chiff about the counterfeiter missions and requested, respectfully, that his valuable services be reserved for dealing with the far more dangerous Uber. It seemed that Miss Chiff had taken his request to heart, because all that week they alternated between routine Uber calls, busting a few dedicated creameries that supplied the local dealers in Chihuahua, Mexico, and Nova Friburgo, Brazil as accomplices, and tracking the smugglers, who appeared to be skirting the southern coastline, sometimes going west and sometimes east.
It was nearly 50 degrees in the Flagstaff area the day we took our final on Phase Two, going one by one into each hangar with one of the proctors for an elongated oral and practical quiz. All four of us passed and the following day we packed our things and met Dean Bligh and Eliot in the lobby of the main building, expecting to be handed certificates of completion.
Instead, the Dean gave each of us an envelope containing a personalized letter. She shook our hands, collected our keycards, and we watched as she threw them into a shredder. “Congratulations, all of you. You’ll receive your certificates after Phase Three.”
“Phase Three?” Evan asked. “What the bloody --?”
Bligh smiled, having fooled us yet again. “Don’t worry. Think about it. What mode of land transportation have we not covered?”
Evan, Marge and I all looked at her blankly. It was Rachel who came up with it. “Trains.”
“That’s right. In your envelopes you will find admissions to the Training Train, which pulls into Flagstaff station in three hours. It will take you to Miami, Florida and you will all learn to operate train controls along the way. If you successfully complete the program, you will receive your certificates on land transport, gaining entry to Section Two, water transport which takes place on the recently decommissioned Dwight D. Eisenhower, anchored near Miami Harbor, ready to set sail one week from today. I’m sure you will all perform well. I’ll be forwarding your files to the Captain in the meantime.”
She congratulated each of us individually one more time and sent us on our way. There were no instructions on how to get to the train station, not so much as a platform number, yet another test within a test.
The train training was very well organized and not as difficult as some of the other land transport, in my opinion. All four of us passed with little trouble and the engineer produced four certificates, printed on thick cardstock and laminated, as we disembarked near PortMiami, to luxurious 75 degree sun. A Coast Guard cutter was waiting to take us out to the Eisenhower. I got my first whiff of salty sea air and took a deep breath. This is going to be fun, I thought. Evan agreed with me. He was practically born on the water and already knew a lot about surfing and sailing. “Dude!” he told me while we sat on the seats of the cutter in our life jackets. He mimed screwing off his head and setting it aside. “I can do this on autopilot.” He settled back and I was wishing he hadn’t said that.
Doing something for pleasure is vastly different from doing it under stressful conditions. His years of enjoying the California coastline might give him an edge, but it certainly wasn’t going to guarantee, if you’ll pardon the expression, smooth sailing.
I was right.
Chapter Two
If you’ve never been on an aircraft carrier it’s hard to properly describe its immensity. I can tell you it’s over a thousand feet long and almost two hundred and fifty feet high, about sixty feet of that above the waterline, but that doesn’t do it justice. The gigantic steel structure doesn’t look like it should even float. Our Coast Guard cutter pulled alongside the Dwight D. Eisenhower with salty water almost as warm as the air lapping and splashing all around us. The pilot told us to climb up the steel ladder welded to the side. I looked up and it was like being told to climb up the outside of a New York City high rise. Evan jumped on the ladder first and started hauling himself up. I let the girls go up next and then followed. As we got higher, it got windier. And when we arrived on the huge, almost totally flat deck I felt like I was standing in a wind tunnel set at high. We clutched our scant bags of personal supplies tightly so they wouldn’t get blown away. My pant legs and jacket sleeves flapped and snapped. I felt like an ant on the huge ship.
Despite the ship being an aircraft carrier, there were no aircraft in sight. Three unused runways set at different angles stretched the length of more than a football field, broken only by a jaggedly shaped control tower not quite centered on the starboard side. All along the edge of the deck on both sides, several boats of various sizes were rigged with ropes and pulleys, including a kayak, a rowboat, and several motorboats increasing in size all the way to a trawler. I couldn’t even see or identify all of them. A small group of people, three men and three women, stood ten feet in front of us, all in naval uniforms. All appeared to be in their fifties or sixties. We looked at each other uncertainly. Finally, I stepped forward. In the middle of the group was the captain of what we soon learned to call the Ike for the sake of simplicity. Around him were other naval officers of junior ranks.
As soon as I was close enough, with my classmates coming up next to me, the Captain asked, “You the CURDS class here for Section Two?” He spoke very loudly to be heard over the wind.
“Yes, sir.” I felt obligated to salute, and also spoke as loudly as I could.
“Belay that. You’re not military, and this is a decommissioned craft. I’m Werner Dergunderhoeven, captain of the Ike. Welcome aboard.” He held out his hand for me and shook with each of us in turn. Dergunderhoeven was a shade taller than me with skin toughened to leather by the sea air. His eyes were steel blue, and his hair was steel gray cut to a mere shadow over the surface of his scalp except for puffy sideburns. The sleeves of his uniform were adorned with four gold stripes and a star each, and on his collar was an eagle with its wings spread open. He didn’t smile, but nor did he frown as was Major McGrone’s default expression. He had a thick neck and had the top button of his collar undone.
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
“Aye aye,” snapped Evan with a huge smile, while Rachel and Marge returned his handshakes quietly.
“First order of business is to get settled in your quarters.” He had a clipboard with several pages on it, which he paged through. “Someone is missing. I was told there would be five of you.”
“Norma opted out,” I told him.
“I see,” he said as a pen appeared in his hand and he marked something down on one of the pages. “Commander Murphy, you’re dismissed.”
Murphy, one of the women in the group, and Dergunderhoeven exchanged salutes and she walked away toward the control tower, the wind silencing the sound of her low, chunky heels on the deck.
“Commanders,” Captain Dergunderhoeven said, addressing the two men and two women who remained, “Pertrillo, you’re with Evan Indiana. Wentworth, you’re with Margery Ko. Vasquez, you’re with Rachel Millworth, and Vickers, you’re with Billings Montana.” As he said each set of names, each person raised a hand to be recognized and everyone was paired off in short order. “See them to their quarters and give them the fifty cent tour. I’ll be on the bridge, preparing to sail to open ocean.” The commanders saluted, accepting his orders. He returned the salute and walked off.
We were paired off women with women and men with men. Shortly, I
would find out why. My commander was a genial, dark-skinned man who told me to call him Bobby. The name tag on his uniform said Vickers. “Don’t let all that military folderol bother you,” he said. “We’re all retired, the ship is decommissioned, and as the Captain said, you are not here as members of the military. For us it’s just habit. If we didn’t salute he couldn’t even charge us with insubordination anymore.” As he talked, he walked across the runway toward an elevator set forward of the control tower. I didn’t see where the others had gone, but I didn’t want to fall behind trying to find them. “I’m a member of Guest Personnel Services, or GPS and I will be your instructor for Transportation Specialist Section Two. This is a one-on-one course and I will expect your full attention at all times. We will eat together, work together and bunk together for the next two weeks. This is a very large ship, but you’ll be given a map-“ he interrupted himself to ask, “You have a cell phone?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Bobby. Just Bobby.” Talk about mixed signals. My buddy Bobby wanted my full attention at all times. “Good. I can put a map of the ship on it. Resist the urge to go exploring, please. Some areas are off limits to non-military personnel, and others you will simply have no use for. This isn’t a pleasure cruise.” We got in the elevator, the alcove alone reducing the noise from the wind by more than half. The door closed, cutting off what noise remained, and we descended. We went through cramped metal hallways lined with pipes and through arched doorways. “You will see officers of all kinds. Don’t disturb them. Every branch of the military has a training unit on board except for the Air Force.”