Chapter Seven
The seas are whipping up pretty good by now, getting into Rota tomorrow is going to be a bitch if this keeps up, the waves crack against the hull and the wind whips cold spray into the hangar bay, cold January ocean on your face but it feels good and there is a pretty good crowd standing around the elevator doors watching the waves run by, and the ship rolling and heeling and humming deep on the port rolls like breathing and cutting into the ocean moving pretty good for a 30-year-old ship at 18 knots[81], you could water ski behind her tonight.
Even though the hangar bay is about 15 feet above the water, the seas are rising and coming up to the deck level, and you all ooh and aah as they rise and fall, with the ship leaping through some of them and diving through others, and coming over hard and the helos straining against their tie-down chains, and someone says the Skipper is making sure we hit Rota tomorrow and someone says for what, more beer on the pier and then you look out over the waves and see one build on another and rise up above the deck level and you back off.
And tell this guy you know from engineering to get back some, as the wave comes up and then the top half of it washes into the hangar bay and floods out over the tie downs and up to your ankles, but some booter[82] who was leaning out over the stanchions gets knocked down and then the return wave, the water flowing out of the hangar bay, catches him in his back and just like that he slips under the lifeline grabbing and missing the stanchion and goes over the side and down, down, down into the black cold water. Like an otter.
And everybody loses their shit and they call man overboard and the ship slows down like it hit a big wall of jello because it takes the boat more than a mile to come to a full stop from 18 knots, and people are running all over to be mustered even though we all know who it was who went over the side, and that booter is in the water, but no one can see him since he’s already about 500 yards back and that water is cold as shit about 40 degrees.
And on the flight deck you can hear the chains dragging as they get the ready helo ready for lift off and the SAR crew is being briefed in, and all the while time keeps on tickin’ and the deck department (you helping) are getting a ship’s boat out on the davits and ready for lowering, but by the time the helo is crewed and spooled up, and by the time the boat is ready to lower, it’s been at least five minutes and maybe more like ten, and then the word is passed that the commodore has decided to not put a boat in the water in these seas, and to not launch a helo at night, and to not risk ten men for one man who is probably already dead[83].
And the booter’s friend is standing by the elevator doors and he’s saying holy shit and holy fuck and his first class is standing by him and saying that it makes sense because the motherfucker’s already dead and there’s no good reason to put other guys in danger, but the booter’s shaking and he’s crying and still saying holy shit and holy fuck, and the first class pulls him away from the elevator door and down the ladder to the mess decks, and you think about that girl you knew from high school who put her Mustang II into a tree over by the Thirsk farm flying off that long smooth curve and smashing into that big tree right on the top of the curve, and she died just one month before graduation and how this makes just about as much sense.
And that sucks but you help get the boat back in the davits and secure it while the helo is chocked and chained, and you all are thinking of that poor bastard back there in the water with the ice in his veins and the lungs frozen and full, and his body floating half in and half out of the water in the swirling wake of the ships, and by the time you hit berthing Roadhouse is almost over but you still go back to your rack and with a hundred other guys wait until everyone is asleep before you whack off[84].
You Are Free Page 7