She walked back out of the room and headed for her stateroom, trying to hold herself together. When she reached her room, the chaplain was standing outside.
The lord works in mysterious ways. She could probably use a little chat with him right about now.
The chaplain said, “Air Boss, is it alright if we speak privately for a moment?”
“Sure, come in.” She opened her door and attached the latch that would keep it propped open. “Would you like to take a seat?”
“Let’s both sit down.”
She eyed him. “Well, who is this about?” She sighed. Which one of her men had a problem now?
“Lieutenant Commander Manning, I’m very sorry to tell you that your mother has passed away. She died this morning of heart failure.”
After lighting a fire under her pilots, Victoria retired to her stateroom. She looked at her watch. It was 2300. Time to start her evening routine.
She took out her notebook from her desk, and flipped to the last written page. Victoria crossed off several items on her to-do list:
Sixty minutes of cardio exercise.
Listen to one of the TED talk podcasts (while working out).
Complete five personnel evaluations — finish reviewing the E-4s and below.
Improve aircrew training plan.
After crossing the items she had completed, she looked at the items that remained.
One hour of professional study.
Empty email inbox.
Meditate twenty minutes.
Getting those items done would cost her sleep if she wanted to wake up before 0500, which she did every day.
Victoria clenched her teeth and got to work. The more she got that feeling that she didn’t want to do something, the more she pushed herself. There were two things that Victoria hated most in life: laziness and pity. Especially self-pity.
She spent the next hour studying from the helicopter manual. While she knew the three-inch thick book by heart, the knowledge was perishable. She believed that as a leader, she must always hold herself to a higher standard than she did her men. After all, she had to be their example.
When she was done studying, she spent the next hour catching up on email. She responded to several work-related emails, and saved the personal ones for last. David, her brother, had written her. His note was short and to the point. Like the rest of the Manning family, he wasn’t one to get overly emotional.
Victoria was glad to hear from him. It sounded like he was doing much better. But she worried that there were still several unresolved issues from his recent run-ins. She didn’t have all the details, but between phone calls with David and reading the news, she knew that something terrible had happened involving the Chinese. He’d promised her he would fill her in when they could speak in person. But he had asked that she refrain from asking him any more over the phone or unsecured email.
Her reply to him was the typical deployment family message. Generic musings about the daily routine. A few humorous complaints. And the promise that she missed him dearly.
Ever since David had been on the news a few weeks ago, Victoria had become a minor celebrity among the officers and crew on the ship. At first, she had received a lot of questioning looks, back when the news was reporting that David was tied to criminal acts. But after his name was cleared, the questions had become less accusatory. And now, all the news was about the potential war with Iran. People had stopped asking about her brother.
There was one email she didn’t respond to. Her father’s. Admiral Arthur Manning was now heading up the USS Ford Carrier Strike Group. It was an unusual assignment for someone who had been transferred out of another carrier command only a few months prior. But the Ford was the newest carrier in the fleet, and not yet ready for deployment. It was, she assumed, a retirement posting.
Victoria’s father had written her once a month for the past year. His emails always had the same formula. First, a vague message about what he was doing professionally. He would then recount a memory from their childhood. Sometimes it would be about Victoria’s mother, which often pained her to read. She didn’t like thinking about her mother. Lastly, he would write that he hoped to hear from her soon.
She hadn’t replied to any of the messages since her mother had died. But her mother’s death wasn’t the reason.
Victoria couldn’t speak to her father because she associated him with the worst moment of her life. The night that he’d refused to allow her to launch and rescue her downed squadron mates, a year ago. She partially blamed him, and partially herself, for their deaths.
She knew that everyone said it was just an accident. A one-in-a-million electrical failure. But when you fly a million hours, and many of those hours are at night and over water, that one time is deadly.
People also had tried to tell Victoria that her helicopter wouldn’t have made a difference. That it was unlikely that anyone had survived the crash. But no bodies were ever found. So no one could know for certain that she wouldn’t have made a difference.
She kept thinking about how she might have saved them, had her father not intervened. Yes, it would have been dangerous and against the rules to take her helicopter out that night, with its AFCS problems. But it would have been worth the risk.
The admiral had put his foot down, however. Victoria couldn’t help but think that he might have chosen differently if it had been an unrelated male officer, instead of her.
When her peers looked at her in the squadron spaces, she wondered if they questioned her bravery. Or if they whispered that daddy’s little girl was the reason that those three men never came home to their families.
It was a horrible thought. Partly because it made her feel guilty, and partly because she knew that her squadron mates were above that line of thinking.
She read her father’s email three times, and her cursor hovered over the reply icon. She shook her head and hit DELETE.
Crossing off another item on her list, she looked at the last one. Meditate. She checked that the door was locked and put her headphones in. She played music from her favorite composer, Max Richter. The sounds of violins, cellos, and modern synthesizers filled her ears. She sat on her thin mattress, feet up, hands on her knees. As she closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing, she tried to force all the anger, stress, and frustration out of her mind. It was not easy.
A few days later, Victoria was pleased to see that Juan’s skills as an airborne tactician were much better than his ability to fly and land the aircraft.
Juan said, “Come right to zero-nine-zero.”
“Roger, zero-nine-zero.”
Juan typed a few keystrokes and manipulated the small stick on his multipurpose display. “Okay, I have waypoints for you to fly to for our first sonobuoy drop. Just follow the needle.”
She looked over at his screen. “Nice job.”
Juan called to the ship, “Farragut Control, Cutlass 471, we’re ready to start the exercise. Any word from the Colombian submarine yet?”
“Negative, sir,” the ship’s enlisted air controller replied over the UHF radios. “But the captain says to proceed with the exercise.”
“Roger.”
Juan asked Victoria, “Is it normal for a submarine not to communicate when they said they were going to?”
“Not really. But I haven’t worked with the Colombians much. I’m sure that someone just mixed something up. They gave us the coordinates and the start time, so we should be good to go.”