When Plug had been selected by their squadron’s commanding officer to be the maintenance officer on this detachment, the first thing he’d done was go introduce himself to his new chief. Junior officers could go far if they were talented. But they went a lot farther with a good senior enlisted to serve as a partner and guide.
“Sir, how may I be of assistance?”
“Boss wants everyone on the flight deck in ten minutes.”
He grunted. “I was wondering when that was gonna come.”
Plug said, “I’ll go tell the pilots and aircrew. Can you send someone to round up the guys?”
“Sure thing,” he said. “This about why we left Panama so soon?”
“I reckon it is.”
He grunted again. A man of few words.
Plug walked through the ship and into the junior pilots’ stateroom.
All three of them shared a space that was about the size of a large walk-in closet, a triple-bunk on the far side. Juan was reading a novel on the top bunk.
The room was dark, just like every sleeping space on the ship. Ship life was twenty-four hours, and some people had to sleep during the day. It drove Plug crazy that the surface warfare officers were always running their freaking drills and making noise in the middle of the day when people on the night shift were trying to sleep.
The SWOs saw any complaint about lack of sleep as an admission of weakness. Their argument was that SWOs, like surgeons, needed to operate on very little sleep. And that pilots were all pampered prima donnas who slept too much and saw the ship as their personal cruise line.
Pilots considered the ship more of a helicopter barge than a cruise line and argued that while one might be able to drive a ship at twelve knots while fatigued, it was another matter entirely to be tired and try to land a helicopter on the back of a single-spot ship in the middle of the night. Also, pilots required more beauty rest in order to keep their great looks.
Plug actually had a lot of respect for the surface navy. It was, like almost every other military community, a group of hardworking and dedicated men and women. SWOs had long hours, tough living conditions, grueling deployments, and very little recognition compared to other members of the military. They were technical experts and nautical masters. But he would die before admitting as much to any of those bastards.
“Where are the other 2Ps?” he asked Juan.
“Working out.”
“Go get ’em. Boss wants us on the flight deck for a meeting in five.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Shut up, 2P.”
He smiled and slammed the door. While Plug was a HAC, and senior to the 2Ps, the pilot culture had an unwritten rule that none of the officers under the rank of O-4 were ever to be referred to as sir or ma’am. That meant that on this boat, only Lieutenant Commander Victoria Manning would be called ma’am by the pilots. And it was still more common in this environment to address her as “Air Boss,” or “boss” for short. This was because she was the officer in charge of the helicopter aviation detachment on board.
Plug went to his stateroom and swallowed two ibuprofen pills, then walked back to the flight deck. He checked his watch. At least he would be able to sleep off his hangover after this meeting.
The twenty-six men who were part of HSM-46 Detachment Two were gathered around the air boss. It was a little funny having an all-male detachment and a female air boss. Not that anyone lacked respect for her, but a group of twenty-six military men led by one woman sounded like the premise for a sitcom. She was like their mother in some ways. A very smart, driven, whip-bearing, micromanaging mother.
Minutes later, the group was gathered on the flight deck. Boss stood in the middle of the circle, making light-hearted jokes with the men. She took good care of them. They respected her and worked hard to impress her. Plug had never heard her raise her voice. But she didn’t have to. She had the ability to say things in a certain tone, to give you a certain look, which made whatever she said become your life’s goal.
Boss said, “Everyone here?”
Plug, sunglasses still on, nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. I’m not sure how much more time we’ll have. Rumor has it”—she looked around to make sure no one aside from her air detachment was in earshot—“that we may be doing some training this afternoon. As in, general quarters type training.” Groans from the group.
She held up her hands to silence them. “Gents, I need you to suck it up.” She spoke in that serious tone that got things done. The group went quiet. “We got word yesterday that we may be participating in some pretty high-priority assignments over the next few weeks. If I could tell you more about it, I would. But here’s what you need to know. We’re going to be training. Hard. And flying a lot. From here on out, I want to always have an aircraft on the Alert Fifteen. We’re also going to need to have two flyable aircraft, with as little maintenance downtime as possible. No self-inflicted wounds. If we need parts for maintenance, let’s order extra now. Plug, Senior Chief, you have my permission to order stuff that we might not even need, but that might be nice to have. If we need extra space, I can get it. If you run into any pushback, let me know. But we need to have two flyable aircraft, with all our mission systems working. Any questions?”
No hands were raised. Finally, the senior chief said, “Ma’am, what type of training will we be focusing on?”
She smiled. “I’m glad you asked, Senior. We’re going to start practicing torpedo loads once per day. Hellfire loads once per day. It’s also possible that we’ll need to transport Special Warfare operators, so I need us to think about whether we would make any different configuration choices there.”
A lot of raised eyebrows at that. Victoria had given herself an exercise the night before. She brainstormed on all the most important missions that someone like Chase — who worked for the CIA — might be involved in. While her helicopter detachments obvious roles were anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare, her one clue had been that he was a former Navy SEAL. She imagined that his work with the CIA was related. So if he was involved, her theory was that they might need their helicopters to provide transport. It was just a hunch, but it was something to prepare for nonetheless.
The ship’s alarm sounded, and the 1MC let out a whistle. “General quarters, general quarters, all hands man your battle stations. Set condition Zebra throughout the ship. This is a drill.”
Curses amongst the group. They looked to Victoria. Her men were clearly anxious to get to where they needed to be but were torn between that and their respect for her, not wanting to leave until dismissed.
She said, “Alright, folks, we’ll continue this later. Get going.”
The group quickly scattered. The pilots walked back to Officer’s Country. They stopped in the wardroom. Plug said, “Special Warfare pax transfers?”
She looked at him and nodded. “We need to be ready for anything right now.”
As if on cue, the 1MC sounded off with another whistle. This time the announcement was for flight quarters.
The air boss said, “Juan, who have you got on the schedule right now?”
He looked nervously around the group of pilots. “Uh… boss, we didn’t have a schedule. We were supposed to be in port.”
Plug said, “It’s going to take us an hour to get one of the aircraft ready.” His splitting headache was only getting worse.
She looked at her watch. “You’ve got thirty minutes. And when they’re done with the maintenance inspection, tell Chief that he will need to get ready for a torpedo load. I want that done this afternoon.”