by Brandon Webb
Something pinged.
An unopened email, sitting there.
A reply from squidink28.
He clicked.
Just one line. No sig block, no name, nothing else, just three words.
Give em hell.
He smiled and hit DELETE. Cleared the cache, closed out the browser, and stood, relinquishing his spot to the next sailor in line.
* * *
—
He spent the next few hours walking the upper decks again, focusing on the outermost passageways and mentally cataloging the dozens of locations that opened onto the exterior, where sailors might slip out to sneak in a tan or attempt some hurried surreptitious sex. Depending on the state of security on board. Which Finn suspected was less than gulag-level.
Down on the hangar deck Finn noticed a partially open hatch just ahead that led to the outside. A master-at-arms, his head stuck out the door, was in the process of chasing away some slacker who’d been sitting out there reading. Finn stepped back into the concealment of a narrow alcove and observed.
“I catch you farting around out here again, sailor, and I’m gonna paddle your fanny, just like your momma used to do.” The MA’s voice was high-pitched and gravelly.
The man waited while the kid climbed back inside, then shut the hatch behind him and followed him down the passageway and out of sight.
Finn opened the hatch and stepped out. He was standing on a small platform, stuck onto the ship’s hull like a steel barnacle, that housed a gigantic six-barrel Gatling gun, one of the Lincoln’s two close-in weapons systems, or CIWS, pronounced sea-whiz. Finn figured no one came out there for any official purpose beyond the occasional maintenance.
He looked around and nodded. He liked this spot.
Much better than his broom closet.
Back inside, Finn made his way toward the rear of the ship, past the huge hangar bays and the jet engine mechanics shops, and poked his head out onto the rounded deck off the ship’s stern, called the “fantail.”
He walked the length of the empty fantail a few times, back and forth. This was where they dumped the biodegradable trash and it stank of rotting garbage.
A ship’s fantail was also a favorite spot for suicides—one reason it was normally under tight security patrol.
Out of curiosity, Finn sat down on a capstan the size of a throne and gazed out at the ocean for another fifteen minutes.
Not a soul appeared.
9
Less than a hundred feet away, sequestered in her office deep inside hangar bay 3, Monica sat hunched over her desk, focused on a big three-ring binder, frowning in concentration. Toward the back of her desk sat a silver-plated Rubik’s cube, an award she won in a junior high math competition for conceptual modeling in calculus. In place of the usual six colors, each of the nine subsections making up each of the cube’s six sides was set with a configuration of one to six small onyx dots, like dice, so that when you solved the puzzle, one face was all ones, another all twos, and so on.
As maintenance officer, Monica was responsible for all their shop’s work. In theory, her maintenance chief ran the show and she was there mostly to give him support from up top when he needed it. But Monica took a very hands-on approach to her shop. To a lot of the guys, maintenance officer was considered a gritty job for a woman to manage, a viewpoint that would have royally pissed her off if she let herself think about it. The fact that she was an O-3 in a post normally reserved for an O-4 had made earning the shop’s respect an even higher bar. She’d cleared it.
Monica had already been through her usual morning rounds, climbing over and around and under the birds under review, checking their mechanicals, ticking boxes off her lists. She wasn’t on flight duty till later, which meant she could sneak in a quiet hour or two with the binder.
As she reread the page her left hand reached reflexively for the silver cube and began manipulating it, turning its faces one way and another while she parsed each line of text.
Stockdale ATC: Hotel Sierra two zero four, you are cleared to land.
Pilot: Roger, Control—hang on.
[Brief pause.]
Pilot: Control, we have a problem. We, hang on—
[Brief pause.]
Stockdale ATC: Two zero four, say again please?
That was the moment, right there. Roger, Control—hang on.
Twenty seconds later the entire craft was sinking to the Gulf floor and her four friends were dead or dying.
Monica thought about the possibilities hidden in that pivotal moment. Control, we have a problem. What problem, exactly? Low fuel? Maybe suddenly, dangerously low, maybe a leak sprung somewhere? But Diego or Micaela would’ve seen that immediately and said something. Unless…maybe the fuel gauge was malfunctioning? But no, it was working perfectly on their last maintenance check just hours earlier. She flipped forward a few dozen pages. A perfect report. There was her signature. Right there on the page. Just like the last ten times she looked.
Algebra, Mon. Quantify the knowns, then solve for X.
She turned back the pages, starting again from the beginning, trying to understand where flight two zero four had gone so badly wrong.
Stockdale ATC: Hotel Sierra two zero four, you are cleared to land.
Pilot: Roger, Control—hang on.
[Brief pause.]
Pilot: Control, we have a problem. We, hang on—
[Brief pause.]
Stockdale ATC: Two zero four, say again please?
Co-pilot: [inaudible] altitude!
crew: Hey, what [inaudible]—
Pilot: Brace for ditching—
Co-pilot: Altitude! Alti—
[Silence for 4 seconds.]
Stockdale: Two zero four, come back?
Stockdale: [Inaudible curse.]
Monica closed her eyes and felt the seawater clutching at her ankles, climbing her legs and torso like poisonous vines—
She reached out, flipped the binder shut. Let her breathing slow back to normal.
The helo had been on approach to the guided missile destroyer DGG Stockdale, planning to refuel before heading back to the Lincoln, when the event occurred. Black Falcon 204 inexplicably stalled out a few hundred yards above the surface, then arced like a lawn dart into the black Gulf waters.
The Stockdale immediately launched a small boat with their standby SAR swimmer on board. They were at the crash scene within seconds, but by that time the Knighthawk had sunk out of sight. No crew were recovered.
Best guess was that all four crew members had been knocked out on impact, but there was always the possibility that one or more came to in time to realize that they were upside down, submerged too deep to use their emergency breathing devices, being dragged down to their deaths in the dark.
What were they each thinking, those last few seconds before impact? And the seconds that came after, as the bird broke into pieces and flooded with brine?
There had, of course, been investigations. Flights ops were suspended for a week. Endless questions, microscopic scrutiny. There was even talk of grounding every Knighthawk in the fleet while they combed for possible design flaws that might have contributed to the event. But the determination was reached within days: no design flaws, maintenance had been impeccable, procedure sound as a dollar. Once they ruled out mechanical failure and fuel issues, that left one thing.
Pilot error, pure and simple.
Most likely scenario: Diego, the pilot, had suffered a vertigo attack and didn’t realize how low he’d flown, and by the time his co-pilot saw what was happening it was too late to pull out.
It should have been me.
Monica pushed back and stretched, arms over her head, then looked up at the framed quotation over her desk, a passage from Harry Reasoner, the ABC News reporter, writte
n during the Vietnam War days:
Helicopters are different from planes. An airplane by its nature wants to fly and, if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or by a deliberately incompetent pilot, it will fly. A helicopter does not want to fly. It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other, and if there is any disturbance in the delicate balance, the helicopter stops flying, immediately and disastrously. There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter.
This is why a helicopter pilot is so different a being from an airplane pilot, and why in general, airplane pilots are open, clear-eyed, buoyant extroverts, and helicopter pilots are brooders, introspective anticipators of trouble. They know if something bad has not happened, it is about to.
That quote used to live in the Black Falcons’ ready room. When they took it down, after the crash, Monica quietly commandeered it, brought it down to the hangar deck, and hung it directly over her desk.
“You can’t punish yourself.” That’s what their flight surgeon told her. “You have to let it go.” But she couldn’t. Monica grew up outside a town called “Muleshoe,” somewhere between Lubbock and Amarillo, a fact her teammates never failed to kid her about. If helo pilots had call signs the way jet pilots did, hers would be “Muleshoe.” As in, stubborn as a mule’s shoe.
She looked at the heavy silver cube in her hand. As a kid she’d learned that you could follow certain sequences, called “algorithms,” to arrive at given conditions. There were a huge number of different possible solutions, but she’d mastered them all. She didn’t even have to think about it: her fingers knew the sequences.
Like she knew the sequences of how to pull out a stalled Knighthawk.
What if she had been piloting that night? What if Papa Doc hadn’t been such a flaming jerk and let poor Diego have the rest he so badly needed? He’d been pushing the kid, pushing him way too hard. He was always pushing everyone too hard.
If it had been Monica in that pilot’s seat, and not Diego, would that have changed anything?
Would it have changed everything?
A service was held on board for all four crew members; families were notified, personal effects packed up and flown off the boat. Life went on. And still Monica couldn’t accept it.
She pulled her chair forward again, reopened the binder, and slowly leafed through the pages, her left hand absently working the silver cube, twisting and turning its many faces, feeling for the click.
10
The ship’s mess facilities were all available 24/7, but the most popular meal by far was the late-night galley raid they called “midrats,” short for “midnight rations.” Which was why, at 2400 hours, Finn was seated at a table to the rear of the officers’ wardroom, drinking spring water from a tall glass, observing a roomful of navy officers hobnobbing.
He heard a lot of boasts being tossed around—how many flight hours logged, how many traps (completed landings) and greens (landings with top marks). A lot of mine-is-bigger-than-yours. The interplay of rank, seniority, and track record reminded him of a bumper-cars course, the buggies all riding on egos inflated till they strained at the seams like tires pumped way over their spec maximums. A few of these people would levitate above the herd to become admirals and commodores, military icons and political heavyweights. But not most. Most would hit retirement young and spend the rest of their lives telling anyone who would still listen that there was nothing, nothing that compared to the rush of being shot off an aircraft carrier flight deck by a nuclear-powered slingshot.
It occurred to Finn that if the USS Abraham Lincoln was powered by the steady depletion of radioactive uranium, its air wing was held aloft by the steady depletion of unfulfilled ambitions.
He surveyed the space. The noisiest sector here seemed to be focused on a petite, black-haired ball of energy whom Finn remembered seeing in the Jittery Abe line, one the others called “Biker.”
The last jet pilot to land that night, Biker had evidently made quite the entrance at recovery. “You see how she dropped that bird?” said one of her squadron mates. “No approach, just splotted it down on the deck. Blam! Like a mutt taking a dump on the street.”
“Thank you, Gopher, that’s very poetic,” said the tiny pilot, as she stabbed a huge forkful of whatever it was she’d mounded up on her plate.
“Jesus, Biker, how the hell do you pack all that in?” said another brother pilot.
“High metabolism,” she said between chomps. “I could eat you under the table.”
“You know what, I think I’d like that.”
“Fuck you, Ratso.”
“My stateroom, oh two hundred.”
“In your dreams, Ratso, not in mine.”
Kidding around with the guys. A navy fighter-pilot squadron was like a college fraternity, except with no alcohol and twice the testosterone. This one, though, she was holding her own. No, more than holding. She owned the place.
Finn also noted the helo pilot, the angry handsome olive-skinned one, sitting off by himself and drinking a can of Monster. Projecting that distinctive aura of self-righteous self-sufficiency that suggested Movie Star was used to sitting alone, that possibly it had hurt his feelings at some distant point in time, the way others avoided his company, but that he’d long ago taught himself to believe it was his decision in the first place.
Despite Movie Star’s careful efforts to hide it, Finn noticed him sneaking lingering looks every so often in the tiny black-haired jet pilot’s direction.
So, Movie Star had a crush.
Far off in a corner Finn spotted the ATO officer, Schofield, sitting quietly with another pilot. The two were obviously in a relationship and thought they were doing a good job of hiding it, but Finn could read it from clear across the wardroom.
If there was one thing that telegraphed the existence of a covert couple on a navy vessel, it was the irritation factor. Not affection: everyone knew how to hide that. No, there was a kind of friction, as unconscious as static electricity, that was specific to romantically involved couples, specifically couples that had been together for some length of time.
These two were having a spat.
He watched the conversation go off the rails, the other guy getting upset, Schofield staying calm. Finally the other guy got up and left. After a few moments Schofield stood, too, and began making his way back toward the buffet-style row of steam tables. As he passed Finn’s table he stopped. “Chief Finn.”
Finn hoisted his glass.
“I meant to ask you about that package,” said the officer. “Roughly what size are we looking for?”
“Small,” said Finn. “A satphone.”
Schofield nodded. “If you need an inside line meanwhile, anything beyond the ship’s phone or common-use PCs, just holler. I’m sure we can set you up in CVIC with secure comms.” CVIC: the ship’s intelligence center.
Finn thanked him, said that probably wouldn’t be necessary.
Schofield took two steps away, then stopped again and looked back at Finn. “You said you served on another carrier? An oil burner?”
Finn nodded. “Kitty Hawk. Oh-three to oh-four.”
Schofield’s face broke out in a grin. “The Battle Cat. If you don’t mind my asking, who was your CO?”
“Tomaszeski.”
Schofield closed his eyes, drew in a long breath, and let it out, dropping his normal tenor to a deep baritone: “Good morning, shipmates!”
Finn set his glass down and regarded the other man. “You knew him?”
“My first tour, a year after you. And every single day of that tour opened with the bosun’s whistle and reveille call, followed by Captain Tomaszeski’s daily address, which always started the same way—”
Finn joined in, the two men now speaking in unison:
“Good morning, shipmates—it’s another magnificent
day at sea!”
Schofield gave a nostalgic smile. “And lo and behold, it was. It always was.”
The two were silent for a moment. Then Schofield nodded at Finn’s glass. “Refill?”
Finn didn’t need more water, but he nodded and said, “Thanks.”
While Schofield took the empty glass over to the beverage counter, Finn thought about Captain Tom.
Schofield had nailed it. And lo and behold, it was. Not that every day was specifically magnificent. The skipper would vary his adjectives. Sometimes the day was “stupendous,” “excellent,” or “phenomenal.” An aspirational “perfect.” A purely aesthetic “beautiful.” But it was always some version of “amazing.” Because Captain Tom wasn’t just blowing smoke up their asses. To him that particular day at sea was magnificent. And no matter what bullshit was happening that morning, no matter what plugged toilets or crappy food or aggravating bunkmates threatened to plague your day, when you heard Captain Tom pronounce the day “magnificent,” you couldn’t help but feel the same way.
Not that he stopped there. The skipper would then walk them through the current plan for the day, where they were headed and why, and then address whatever complaints had been brought to his attention by his network of chiefs—not that they would always be fixed immediately, but they would at least be addressed, and that was enough to make the intolerable bearable. Then he would single out one division for that day’s praise, and close with a few words of inspiration that in anyone else’s mouth might have sounded corny but from Captain Tom were as real as blood and bones.
Schofield returned with two fresh glasses and took a seat across from Finn, then raised his glass as Finn had done earlier. “To Captain Tom. As the saying goes, I would follow that guy through the gates of Hell and back.”