Victoria smiled. The XO was a devout Evangelical Christian, and a historian. It was probably hard for him not to say too much.
“Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea.
Amen.
Goodnight, Farragut.”
Plug spoke while furiously pressing the buttons and moving the directional pad of his controller. “It’s a long story.”
“Come on,” Juan pleaded. He was the odd man out, the only one without a video game controller.
The pilots were playing a World War II multiplayer shooter game. One of the 2Ps (the term commonly used for 2nd pilot or copilot) had brought his PlayStation on the ship. On nights when they weren’t scheduled to fly, the junior pilots took over the unused wardroom and played for a few hours, using the big screen on the far wall.
The wardroom was the eating and gathering place for the officers on the ship. A few of the surface line officers played cards on one of the tables. A few others were about to go on the midwatch — the zero dark thirty duty section that controlled the ship while everyone else slept. They chowed down on midrats. Midnight rations. The fourth meal of the day, where sailors standing the midnight watch grabbed leftover grub to get them through until sunrise.
“It’s pretty tragic,” Ash “Caveman” Hughes said. He was one of the two other 2Ps.
“Come on. How’d you get it?” Juan pressed. He was just glad that he didn’t have to keep talking about his awful flight. He needed a funny story to cheer him up.
Plug never took his eyes away from the screen, but he told the story like a man who had told it many times before, and usually at a bar.
“So there we were. A few dozen miles off the coast of Colombia…”
“You did your first cruise here too?” Juan was surprised. It was pretty rare for ships to come down to do Eastern Pacific deployments nowadays, with the cutbacks and all. Pretty much everyone either went to the Middle East, to the Eastern Med, or to the Western Pacific.
“Let me tell the story, alright?” Plug paused for effect. “So there I was, starting up the engine for maintenance rotor turn, when out of nowhere comes this freaking little seagull—”
“I heard it was an osprey,” Caveman said.
Plug glared at him. “Don’t interrupt, 2P. Like I was saying, the seagull came out of nowhere, flew through the rotor disk, and miraculously didn’t get chopped in half…”
“That’s such bullshit.”
“No way.”
“’Tis true, my friends. We have video—”
“Do you?”
“Well, actually, now that you mention it, in the video it is hard to see. Some say that the avian in question may have just been blown by the rotor wash and then slammed into said hangar. But one should never ruin a good story with the truth, so… the osprey… it gets injured—”
Juan said, “You said it was a seagull.”
“Whose story is this? The bird… it gets injured. And I, having studied zoology and biology at one of the great academic institutions in the world—”
“I thought you said you were a general sciences major. Isn’t that for guys who flunk out of—”
“Hold your tongue. I studied a lot of female biology.”
The group in the wardroom, all paying attention to the story now, laughed.
“And I watched the TV series Planet Earth about fifty times. Plus, graduates of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute like myself are held to a higher standard than you mere mortals. A general science major there is like a PhD at most schools. The point is, I was the only person qualified to nurse this animal back to life.”
Juan looked at the other 2Ps. They were smiling, but also not taking their eyes off the video game screen as they tried to kill each other.
Plug said, “So for the next two weeks, we kept the albatross in a cage in the hangar—”
“Did the captain know?”
“Yes, the fucking captain knew. How the hell could the captain of a goddammed ship at sea not know there was a fucking pelican on board in a cage? Come on, junior. Listen up. So the albatross was nursed back to health by none other than yours truly. I fed him little bits of fish from the galley. I filled his little water bowl with… well, with water.” He turned his head from side to side, emphasizing the greatness of his achievements.
“Until one day, when that cute little bastard was ready… when he looked healthy and could flap his wings in a strong and vibrant fashion… we released him — triumphantly — into the wild.”
Caveman took his eyes off the screen and raised his eyebrows. He coughed to signal that there was more to the story.
Plug said, “And to our delight, the great winged beast flew up into the sky and lived happily ever after…” He finally took his eyes off the screen and looked at Juan.
“So how’d you get your call sign, then? I thought this was the story about how you got your call sign.”
“Ah, well — perhaps I left out one minor detail. You see, the ship drivers—”
One of the surface line officers listening smiled and said, “Now don’t go blaming it on the SWOs, Plug.”
Plug sighed. “But it was their fault. You see, Juan — may I call you Juan? Of course I may, I’m a HAC, and therefore I can call you whatever the hell I want. You see, Juan, one thing you’ll learn about these goddamned SWOs is that, for all their prowess in nautical navigation, they don’t always think about the bigger picture. Like, for instance… if you take an injured bird onto your ship, and you’re near land, then travel west one thousand miles into the freaking Pacific for two weeks straight, and then release the bird, you’re pretty freaking far away from land at that point. You’re a pilot, Juan. How far can you fly before you need food or water? Or a freaking break from flying.”
Juan smiled. “How far were you from the coast?”
“When we picked up the seagull, we were about fifteen miles from the coast.”
“And when you released him?”
“I want to say it was about two hundred and forty nautical miles out to sea. So there was no freaking way that bird was making it to land. The SWOs had condemned him to a short life of starvation and panic.”
Caveman said, “Dude, take responsibility. Seriously. We haven’t even gotten to the good part.”
Juan said, “What’s the good part?”
Plug said, “Well, this seagull must have had its own navigational instincts. Because we let it go, and I shit you not, the thing just circled around the boat for a couple of days. Like a poor old puppy, coming back to its master. He kept coming down to the flight deck, and people would give it crackers or a piece of their dinner. Come to think of it, everyone probably fattened him up so much I wonder if he wasn’t over his gross weight limits. Didn’t anyone do a weight and balance on that thing before he flew?”
Caveman said, “And then…” He motioned for Plug to get to the point.
“I’m getting there. Easy, son. And then… I was starting up the engine on our helo one Sunday morning. And there he is… the albatross… flying around. I swear he was looking at me. He was gliding there, into the wind, just off the starboard side of the ship. I can still see him. That magnificent orange beak. Those puffy white and grey feathers. He was such a noble creature. Full of pride and wonder. But he kept getting closer. I thought it was awesome that he was showing so much affection for me. Gratitude, even? Not like you shit 2Ps who don’t know what the word means.”