“Deck, 471 waving off,” Victoria said.
Juan felt ashamed. He had nearly put them in the water.
Victoria climbed and accelerated, turning in a racetrack pattern to reset for another approach. She said, “Juan, shake it off. You alright?”
“Yes, boss. I… I think I just felt a little dizzy.”
She said, “Do you have vertigo?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Alright, you’ve got to say something if you start feeling that way, okay? We do not play ‘I have a secret’ up here. If something is wrong or doesn’t feel right, speak up. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He wanted to crawl into a hole.
Victoria turned the helicopter again and lined it up behind the ship. “On final.”
“Roger.”
Her approach was flawless. She hit every number — altitude, airspeed, distance.
Once over the flight deck, she smoothly hovered the center of the aircraft over the steel square known as “the trap.”
AWR1 called, “Over the trap.”
Then a sudden drop, and the twenty-thousand-pound, thirty-five-million-dollar aircraft sunk onto the flight deck, its robust suspension and thick tires cushioning the impact.
“471, Deck, you’re in the trap. Nice one, ma’am.”
“Chocks and chains,” called Victoria.
Juan wasn’t moving. He was too embarrassed and horrified that he had almost just put the aircraft into the water… or into the stern of the ship… to comprehend that he was supposed to do something.
“Juan, chocks and chains.”
He snapped out of it and grabbed his green flashlight from the calf pocket of his flight suit. He turned the light on and moved it in a side-to-side motion. The plane captain, the enlisted man who stood outside in front of them on the flight deck, made a series of motions with two glowing wands. Then several more enlisted men were running with their heads down under the rotor arc, placing the chocks and chains on the aircraft.
“Air Boss, Deck.”
“Go.”
“Ma’am, the captain’s been asking for you. He requests you to swing by as soon as you’re done.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she double-clicked her radio to acknowledge the request.
She flipped up her goggles. “Keep with me, Juan. Are you alright to do the engine wash?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He knew he had really screwed up. That was a truly awful approach. Thank God she was a good pilot.
“Alright. Let’s shut down and then you’ve got it.”
A few minutes later, Victoria Manning approached the door to the captain’s cabin. She stunk, and was sweaty from the flight. Her hair was a mess. Not that she cared how she looked right now. She would have liked to grab a shower, though. But if she showered first, she wouldn’t have an excuse to leave the captain’s cabin. She hated these nightly sessions.
Each night the captain called his XO, the air boss — Victoria — and the ship’s master chief into his room and had them sit there while he regaled them with stories about his past, and complained about how hard his current assignment was. No ship captain should do either of those things, in her opinion. Leadership was about others, not self.
Victoria’s opinion of the ship’s captain had not improved over the last year that she’d been assigned to his command. Now she stood outside the captain’s cabin door, eyes closed momentarily, summoning the patience to put up with this bullshit for another night. She could hear the voices inside. She opened her eyes and saw that the red light was on. Like a traffic light, the captain had a light installed outside his door that would switch between green and red, to signify when it was acceptable for ship’s personnel to enter. He always kept it red.
The silly part of that was that he couldn’t bring himself to delegate. He demanded that his personnel update him constantly. He had standing orders to be informed of every minute detail of the ship’s activities, wanting to make as many decisions as possible. As a result, his officers grew used to not making decisions themselves, and the captain almost never slept more than an hour at a time and was perpetually in a bad mood.
Dealing with this ship’s captain was part of the job, however. She took a breath and knocked on the door.
“Sir, it’s the air boss.”
“Enter.”
She walked in to see the captain slouched in his chair behind his desk. He wore his khaki uniform. His cheeks drooped, and when he looked at you, his neck hunched down at an angle, so that his eyes were looking up. He rarely left this spot. Victoria had heard some refer to him as the ghost captain. He rarely ventured out to the many parts of the ship, preferring instead to be at the comfort of his desk in the captain’s cabin.
The XO and the master chief sat next to each other on an ugly grey couch. She nodded to them and they nodded back. Polite, respectful smiles. She liked them both.
The XO was reasonable, and sharp. A good listener, he knew what he didn’t know. He was constantly asking Victoria questions about helicopter operations, wanting to make sure that the ship operations ran smoothly while seamlessly integrating the required flight operations.
The captain said, “Well, nice of you to join us, Air Boss. You have fun flying?” He turned to the couch with his forced sidekicks. “XO, I bet you’d like to get off the ship tonight, but we surface warriors actually have to work on deployment, right?”
The XO forced an awkward smile.
The captain said, “Air Boss, it looked like your landing got a little tricky out there tonight.”
She looked up at the small black-and-white TV screen situated in the corner ceiling of the small room. It showed the helicopter, strapped to the flight deck. Her young copilot was shutting down the engines, the routine postflight wash complete.
The captain watched all of their landings. Partly for entertainment, she suspected, and partly out of worry. Flight operations were one of the riskiest evolutions conducted on Navy ships. An aviation mishap could ruin the career of a ship captain. And he wasn’t about to let that happen. The most important thing to him, she knew, was his career.
She gave a courteous smile, careful never to give away her utter distaste for the man, “Well, sir, it was a bit of a rough approach, but it was a dark night. Good training for my 2P.”
“Hmph. I’ve certainly trained my share of junior officers how to drive ships in bad weather. Some people just don’t have the skill like you and I do, huh, Air Boss?” He grinned.
“I guess so, sir.”
The phone rang. “Captain,” he answered. “Well, alright. Thank you, CS1. Yes, send them right up. Coffee too. Yes.” He looked up at the XO. “XO, how are you feeling about our preps for this weekend?”
“I think the ship’s ready, sir. We’ve been drilling hard. Two GQs a day.” The XO had assumed that the captain was talking about the anti-submarine warfare exercise with the Colombians. They were sending one of their diesel subs out here to partake in the training. The group of international ships would play cat and mouse, trying to find the Colombian submarine before it could get close enough to “shoot” them.
The captain rolled his eyes. “Not that. What about the Crossing the Line ceremony? Are we ready for that? This is big, XO. This is big. Think you can handle this?” He smiled and winked at Victoria. He tried to be charming, but it just came off as creepy.
Victoria should have known. The captain wouldn’t have been so excited about ASW training. But the Crossing the Line ceremony… now that was right up his alley.
Crossing the Line was a tradition which dated back at least two hundred years. It celebrated the first crossing of the equator during that crew’s underway period. It was a ceremony that reminded Victoria of a fraternity initiation. Lots of gross and physical trials for the first-timers, known as Pollywogs. And lots of laughs for the already-initiated, known as Shellbacks.