Victoria’s job was to make sure Juan got enough hands-on experience so that he could learn and get better, yet be ready to jump in the split second he made too big a mistake. Basically, she needed to do the same thing she did every other time she flew with these nuggets. Get the mission done without killing anyone.
The way young Juan here was squeezing the black out of the stick, he would be exhausted after a few more minutes.
“Need a break?” she asked.
No response.
“Juan.”
“Yes…” He was grimacing. “Yes… boss?”
“Here, let me have the controls for a minute.”
“Roger, you have the controls.”
“I have the controls.”
“You have the controls.”
Two things happened. First, the helicopter, which had been lurching all over the place and scaring the shit out of the men below, instantly stabilized into a near-motionless hover. Second, Juan’s body sagged into a gelatinous sack of sweat and limp muscle, held to his seat by five tightly connected straps.
“Alright, ma’am, you’re hooked up,” said her aircrewman in the back of the aircraft.
“Roger, coming up and aft.”
She pulled up with her left hand — just a touch. At the same instant, she put in a tiny bit of forward pedal with her left foot and pulled aft on the cyclic with her right hand. Three distinct movements that got the helicopter to move the way she wanted. But they weren’t a conscious set of actions. With her years of flying experience, the control inputs just came naturally. Victoria just knew what she wanted the aircraft to do, and her body moved in such a way that the helicopter’s nose came up and began moving backwards and gaining altitude.
The aircraft floated up and drifted aft until they were about one hundred feet high, and perched directly in back of the Farragut. Two heavy pallets filled with supplies swung from a net below the helicopter. She kept pulling up with her left hand, getting more and more power from the engines as they came out of ground effect. The rotor wash blew a sphere of white sea spray around them as they hovered over the water.
Victoria next moved the cyclic forward an inch to arrest their backward drift. They were now essentially flying in formation with the destroyer, which was itself driving in formation with the large supply ship at her ten o’clock.
Victoria pushed forward with her left foot, and the nose of the aircraft yawed to the left. She moved the cyclic forward and left and pulled a bit more power. Now the helicopter began drifting left, maintaining altitude, and sliding from its perch behind the destroyer on over to a similar spot behind the supply ship.
She maneuvered the aircraft closer and lower to the deck of the supply ship and came to a hover ten feet above the deck.
The aircrewman said, “Okay, you’re in position. Come down. Load’s on deck.”
“Releasing the load.” She pressed the button on her cyclic that opened the cargo hook, allowing the pallets to remain on deck.
“Load’s free.”
Victoria said, “Well, there goes our snail mail. Any bets on how long it takes to reach our families?”
The aircrewman said, “Come up two… one… stead. Okay, they’re hooking up the next pallets now.”
“Roger.”
“Alright, you’re hooked up. Ready to come up and aft.”
She performed the same maneuver as before, effortlessly bringing the helicopter up and then sliding it over back to her ship. This time she transferred four pallets, bundled up in dark green netting, over to the Farragut.
They had several hours of this work to do, and it was one of the more fun exercises in helicopter naval aviation.
“Cutlass 471, Farragut Control.”
“Go ahead, Control,” Victoria responded. She checked the paper attached to her kneeboard, where she logged the current time and fuel. This allowed her to calculate the aircraft’s fuel burn and calculate how much remaining flight time they had. They were burning eight hundred and fifty pounds of fuel per hour — about normal.
“Ma’am, OPS just came over and gave me a strange request.”
She sighed. Whenever the ship communication began with a warning, it always ended badly for the aircrew. “Let’s hear it.”
“Boss, I overheard them talking, and it sounds like they want you to fly to South America.”
“What?”
“Hold on, ma’am.”
She looked back down at her fuel gauge and did the quick math. “We’ll need to land. When do they need us there? And what are we picking up?”
“OPS says he’ll brief you when you land. We’re clearing our flight deck of all supplies right now.”
“I assume the captain has given his approval?”
“Air Boss, this is OPS.”
Victoria paused. It was very odd for him to get on the radios to talk to them while they were flying. “Go ahead.”
His voice sounded tense. “Boss, we just got an emergency message telling us to open up the sealed mission brief in the captain’s safe. We’re to execute these orders as soon as possible.”
“Roger. Can you give me any more details?”
“The captain asked that you please head in for a landing so we can discuss.”
“Copy that. We’re inbound as soon as the deck is cleared.”
Twenty minutes later, Victoria walked in to the port-side hangar, where the operations officer was waiting for her.
She held her helmet under one arm. Her hair and face were wet with sweat. “What’s it say?”
OPS said, “Come with me. Captain’s on the bridge. He wants you to see him first. XO had me tell the pilots. Plug and Caveman read the orders and are in the wardroom getting ready.”
She was happy to hear that. No wasted time. But ready for what?
She walked up onto the bridge. The captain was on the port bridge wing, watching the replenishment at sea. The supply ship was still only a few dozen yards away, still hooked up and pumping fuel into the destroyer. Waves crashed into the hull between the two ships, splashing up white water every few seconds.
“Sir, OPS said that we have the go order?”
He turned to face her. “Yes. It sounds like they need you to go be a bus driver for some special operations troops. It didn’t say what for. Just gave a time and a place to be. But they want us to send both helicopters. That going to be a problem?”
“Both helicopters?” She thought about that. Dual-helicopter operations from a single-spot ship, like a destroyer, were tricky. Only one aircraft could fit on the flight deck at a time. This meant that when both aircraft returned to the ship, only one of them would be able to land. That helicopter would then need to shut down, fold the blades and tail, and then be traversed into the hangar. That process could take thirty minutes to an hour — during which time the other aircraft would be burning precious fuel, without the ability to land.
She told the captain, “Sir, we can do it. We’ll just have to make sure that one of the other ships in company is designated as our alternate landing spot — I recommend the supply ship since she’s right here and has a big flight deck.”
The captain said, “Fine. OPS, make it happen.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any questions?”
“Sir, I still haven’t read the mission orders.”
“Your other pilot has them.”
OPS said, “Plug. In the wardroom. I’ll show you, boss.”
Victoria said, “Alright, thanks, sir.”
The captain nodded, looking annoyed.
She and OPS left. OPS said, “It’s been one of those days with him.”
“Great.” She’d never met such an emotionally unstable man as the captain. It was unbelievable to her that he had risen this high in the officer corps. “Any idea why?”