The hotel’s bellhop took Lieutenant Pelletier’s sea-bag from the truck and nearly collapsed under its weight. He shuffled off, groaning, maneuvering the unwieldy canvas sausage to a luggage cart. Out of breath, he directed Pelletier to the front desk. She entered the air-conditioned lobby and tucked her short blond hair behind a smallish ear. Her long bare legs carried her quickly past the gawking concierge who slammed his open jaw shut. Pelletier placed her plain handbag on the cold marble check-in counter, and pulled a reservation confirmation from the bag’s side pocket. When her green eyes locked on the manager, he flushed for the first time in years. She’s too pretty to be a sailor, he thought.
Pelletier had grown up surrounded by Colorado’s saw-toothed and snow-peaked mountains. At a young age, she had traded a love of horses for that of airplanes. While others her age swooned for Tom Cruise, she instead was seduced by the movie’s other star: the big swing-wing F-14 Tomcat fleet defense fighter. Cindy would sit on her pink bike at the end of her driveway and pretend the asphalt was the steel deck of an aircraft carrier. Cindy’s best friend would stand beside her and salute. This signaled Cindy to start pedaling. She would pump the pedals as hard as her skinny legs could manage, and got the bike up to speed. Trailing sparkly streamers from the handlebars, Cindy’s bike would hit a makeshift plywood ramp and go airborne. These were her first imaginary carrier take-offs. She cherished those few weightless moments before the bicycle hit the ground again. Often sent tumbling through the brambles, she always had a righteous laugh, and did it all again and again.
Years later, she had found her teenage sweetheart, and fell harder than those bicycle wipeouts. He had proposed on the dance floor at their senior prom. She turned him down and left him in the flicker of the disco ball, with the thump of music and a broken heart filling his chest. Although she was handed true love, Cindy wanted more from life: Cindy wanted wings. With a bit of help from her father, she put herself through college and earned a degree in aeronautics. With diploma in hand, Cindy went right to the navy recruiter. He immediately showed her where to sign.
United States Naval Officer Candidate Cynthia Pelletier had then gone on to Officer Candidate School at Naval Station Newport, Rhode Island. There she had endured the Marine Corps’ ‘House of Pain,’ and earned a healthy fear of drill instructors, and a place at Primary Flight Training. Now a distinguished naval aviator, Lieutenant Pelletier accepted her hotel card key. She headed upstairs for room service and a few hours of sleep.
Early the next morning, Lieutenant Pelletier trailed another bellhop. He lugged her sea-bag, as she strolled through the hotel’s lobby doors and out into the cool pre-dawn dark. Pelletier breathed in the moist salty air and looked at the seagulls that were already awake and complaining as they wheeled above. Attracted more by Cindy’s splendor than by the bellhop’s wave, a taxi screeched to a stop beside her, and the driver emerged to open the car’s door. He was unkempt and reeked of old cologne. Pelletier stated her destination: “North Island Naval Air Station,” and took a deep breath before shuffling into the car. She quickly lowered the windows to aerate the interior, and, in the side mirror, watched the driver cram her sea-bag into the taxi’s trunk.
They passed the venerable aircraft carrier Midway on Harbor Drive, and then the Marina and Gaslamp districts of Old San Diego. The taxi turned onto Highway 75 and crossed the elegant blue ribbon of viaduct that linked Coronado Island to the city. The sun began to rise, tinting the morning sky deep purple. In the distance, Pelletier spotted the white-barreled towers and red witch hat-shaped roofs of the beachside Hotel Del Coronado. The taxi passed Coronado Island’s Tidelands Park and turned onto 4th Street. Pelletier thought about her ship: USS Ronald Reagan. This would be the first time she was to serve aboard the nuclear supercarrier, and she would be doing it in the navy’s newest airplane. With fifth generation aircraft trickling into the fleet, Pelletier was one of the first to learn and fly the new jets. One of the stealthy machines awaited her on North Island’s flight line. She would fly it out to meet the carrier.
Nudged by tugs, Ronald Reagan had already put to sea beneath the twinkling stars, and departed San Diego Harbor early that morning. With her decks bare and cavernous hangar empty, ‘The Gipper,’ as Ronald Reagan was affectionately called, would meet her air wing and escorts south of San Clemente Island. Once formed-up in southern California waters, the Ronald Reagan carrier strike group was to head west toward the continental shelf.
Pelletier’s taxi arrived at the outer gate of North Island Naval Air Station. Her identification checked by the sailor on duty, she handed in her sea-bag. The cabbie, who clutched his lower back as he mumbled, fell back into his car. Pelletier strolled a promenade where a gauntlet of palm trees rustled, and headed for one of the naval station’s old buildings. She returned salutes from those she passed and smiled all the while.
Squeezing into her flight suit, Pelletier checked her flight plan and strode out to North Island’s ramp and the warplane that awaited her. She went about her pre-flight routine and watched two fat carrier cargo aircraft take off from the base’s main runway. Propeller-driven and heavy with spare parts, mail, supplies, and Pelletier’s sea-bag, the cargo planes required the most time to catch up with Ronald Reagan, and were, therefore, first to depart. As she watched them struggle into the air, Pelletier began her own airplane’s start up sequence.
The American nuclear supercarrier George Washington was engaged in an exercise with the Royal Australian Navy south of Palau. She was the closest to Taiwan, so her strike group got orders to steam northwest at full speed, and entered an area of the Philippine Sea called the ‘Dragon’s Triangle.’ George Washington was super in all respects. She towered some 20 stories over the water and reached four more beneath it. The 1,096-foot hull — as long as the Chrysler Building was tall — got pushed at over 30 knots by twin nuclear reactors that powered four giant bronze propellers. With a four-and-a-half acre flight deck and an air wing larger than most national air forces, George Washington was twice the weight of Titanic, and some 97,000 tons of American diplomacy.
Plying the waves off George Washington’s port bow was the guided-missile cruiser Lake Champlain, a sleek vessel and, at about half the size of the carrier, the largest of George Washington’s escorts. Although five-inch deck guns were her only apparent armament, Lake Champlain hid anti-air, anti-ship, and land-attack missiles below her spray-soaked decks. At the ship’s prow, snapping in the headwind proudly flew a red-striped flag with a yellow snake that menacingly declared ‘Don’t Tread on Me.’ A single black anchor hung beneath it, and, below the waterline, a bulbous sonar stem protruded. With helicopters and torpedoes, Lake Champlain was an enemy submariner’s worst nightmare. On the cruiser’s superstructure, below the bridge’s band of windows, hexagonal radar arrays scanned the sky for threats. Arrayed around the ship were dishes, domes, and antenna masts that talked to satellites. They also linked Lake Champlain to the group’s other ships, and to command at Pearl Harbor. With sensors and weapons controlled by a sophisticated computerized combat system, Lake Champlain projected a protective bubble high into space and deep below the sea. All by her lonesome, Lake Champlain constituted an armada.