He turned to Juan. “Okay. Now this is important. I need you to tell them something in Panamanian — or Mexican. Your choice. Tell the drivers that the money I have given them is for a race.” He said the word “race” loudly and slowly, while looking at the drivers. “They are to race each other back to the boat, and to show these men a good time.”
Plug swayed while he spoke. Then he looked at his shipmates, already packed into the two cabs like sardines. He held up his finger high in the air. “It is a race to the death!” The sailors cheered. Plug then looked at Juan, trying to focus on his face. “If they need more money, I can go back to the poker table. Tell them. Tell them in Spanish this time.”
Juan patted Plug on the shoulder. “Sure thing.”
He stood in front of the cabs. Both cab drivers leaned out their windows, smiling. They looked thrilled to get the extra cash.
Juan said loudly in Spanish, “My friend said to tell you to drive really fast until you get around the corner, and then to slow down and drive safe. Have a good night.”
The drivers gave a thumbs-up. One of them revved his engine, and the other followed. More cheers from the passengers.
Plug turned to Juan. “Did you tell them?”
“Oh yes.” He smiled as the first car sped off for the first fifty feet and then began driving normally. The second car followed suit. Boisterous cheers from both cars.
Plug slapped his knee. “Awesome.”
Juan smiled. “Come on, we’ve got to get back to the hotel.”
Plug nodded and held up a finger to wait. Then he turned and vomited on the sidewalk.
Juan sighed. He turned out to the street. “Taxi!”
Plug screamed at the top of his lungs, “Whooo! Glad I got that out of my system.” He looked at Juan suspiciously. “Did you put something in my food?”
Juan held up his hands and shook his head.
“Alright, well, it’s time for us to go start drinking.”
A taxi pulled up.
Juan said, “Plug, I really think we should go back to the hotel.”
A group of the ship’s officers stuck their heads out of a cab driving by. They screamed the name of another well-known bar. “Meet us there!”
Plug gave a thumbs-up. His eyes were out of focus. He dove into the waiting taxi and yelled. “Follow that car!”
Juan sighed and got in the passenger seat. He checked his watch. This would be the last time he would make the mistake of babysitting Plug.
Plug awoke to the sound of knocking. Each knock struck his head like a hammer. His surroundings came into focus and he realized that he was in a hotel room.
He looked to his left and saw two women in his bed. One wore a bright red thong. The other was buck naked. Both were stunning Latin women. Dark hair, tan. Lots of makeup.
They were a beautiful sight, but he didn’t care. He only wanted his head to stop hurting. He wondered if he would make it to the toilet before he threw up. Thankfully, he did, barely. He turned the faucet on, washing the sour taste out of his mouth, wondering what god he had upset to deserve this horrible feeling.
Images of the night before flashed through his head. Through the pain of his massive hangover, he knew that they had started off in a hotel room. Those pansy-ass married 2Ps didn’t even want to go out. They just wanted to talk on their phones and make kissy noises with their wives. So he ended up going out with their most junior pilot, Juan. He was kind of a nerd, and a truly awful pilot, but a nice enough dude.
Plug remembered that they had gone to a casino. He was pretty sure that he lost money there, but he remembered they had a good time… then he didn’t remember much after that. He thought they might have gone to a nightclub. Some of the ship guys were there.
Plug looked over at the bed. The two sleeping beauties were still there. He honestly had no idea how the three of them had ended up here. Or for that matter, where they were.
Knocks at the door again, and he remembered what woke him up. The room was spinning. God, he was still drunk. He threw his clothes on, hobbling over to the door. He cracked it open.
The three 2Ps smiled back at him.
Caveman, with the biggest shit-eating grin ever, said, “Have a nice night, HAC?”
Juan said, “Thank God. I was gonna be pissed if you were dead in a ditch somewhere.”
“Dudes. Why are you knocking? What time is it?” he asked.
Plug opened the door a little more, and the 2Ps looked beyond him. They saw two pairs of bare legs lying on the bed and their smiles got wider.
Juan said, “You’re not going to like this, but we have to go. We already packed up your stuff.”
Plug was confused. Maybe it was the alcohol. “Did you say we have to go? We have this hotel for one more night, I thought. What are you talking about?”
“Shore patrol’s been coming around. Everyone’s getting recalled to the ship. Again. We have to go now. Ship’s leaving today. Come on.”
He looked back at the women on the bed. One of them sat up, a coy smile on her face. She partially covered her chest with one arm.
Plug looked back at the 2Ps. “Have I ever told you how much I really hate you guys?”
A few hours later, Plug sat on the flight deck, leaning up against the hangar door, as the ship began to pick up speed. The breeze felt good. The rolling did not.
His head pounded. He wore sunglasses and a fitted dark blue squadron cap to hide how hungover he still was. His flight suit was zipped down a bit too low. A rim of sweat formed on his brow. He had a large plastic water bottle that he sipped from every few minutes. He needed some Advil.
“You alright, Plug?”
Air Boss walked over, a sympathetic look on her face. Of course she knew. She never missed anything.
He tried to sit up a little straighter in front of his boss. “They got me good on this one. Telling us that we’re going to have several days in port like that and then rounding us all up while we’ve been…”
“Drinking?”
“Relaxing.”
She smiled and pulled up a fold-up chair. “I’d like to tell you that you can hit the rack and recuperate, but there’s a reason we left port this morning, instead of three days from now.”
He sipped more water from the water bottle and then got off his ass and stood up. The combination of the ship’s increasing rolls and his blood alcohol mix not quite being back to normal made him almost fall down. He grabbed hold of the flight deck railing.
Plug said, “What’s the story?”
She told him what little she knew.
“So… multimission operations. What does that mean? Like — be ready for anything?”
Victoria nodded. “That’s the way I understand it. Can you gather up everyone and have them here for a quick meeting?”
Plug knew that by everyone, she meant the members of the aviation detachment. His eighteen enlisted maintenance men, the two enlisted rescue swimmers, and the three junior pilots.
“I can have them here in ten minutes, boss.” A part of his brain was fighting through the fog, telling him that her mannerisms signaled something big was going on.
“Thanks.” She smiled, crossed her legs and opened her notebook.
Plug walked carefully down the shadowy port hangar, squeezing through the narrow space between the helicopter and the hull, stepping over the chains that tied the helicopter down.
Plug found the man he was looking for. “Senior Chief?”
The senior chief was typing on one of the computers they used to keep track of all the maintenance done on the helicopters. The senior enlisted man in the aviation detachment, he was approaching his twentieth year in the Navy, and compared to most of the crew, he’d seen it all. This was his twelfth deployment. He’d spent a total of eight years of his life at sea. Two of his children were born while he was away.