Flying with Plug was quite different.
“Hey, fucker.” Plug had just connected his headset. “You ready to play some movie quote trivia tonight?”
“Sure, I guess…” Juan smiled. “You mind if I pee first?”
Plug carefully got into the cockpit’s right seat. “Sure, let me strap in.” He fastened his harness and adjusted his seat from the Airboss’s settings. “Man, Boss is tiny. How do they allow her to fly? She couldn’t have passed the flight school medical exam. Probably wore lifts that day. Okay, I got controls. Go pee.”
Juan unstrapped and walked out of the rotor arc and into the hangar. He removed his sweaty helmet and walked through the ship, weighed down by his heavy gear. He passed through the wardroom. There were a few people in there who had brought up plates from midrats.
“Hey, sir, did you get dinner?” the first-class petty officer in the wardroom’s kitchen yelled to him.
“Not yet.”
“You want me to put something in a box for you?”
“Sure, thanks. Appreciate that.”
When Juan returned from the head, the petty officer had two white boxed dinners waiting for him. “There’s metal forks and knives in there, so make sure you don’t toss ’em.”
“Hey, thanks, CS2.”
“Anything for the guy who sank the submarine.”
Juan glanced up at him, nodding, not knowing what to say to that. He left through the wardroom door and marched back along the ship’s main passageway to the hangar, carefully holding the boxed dinners. After putting his helmet back on and walking out onto the dark flight deck, he entered the rotor arc and handed the food to the aircrewman in the back of the helicopter, who gave him a thumbs-up.
Juan opened up the left cockpit door, plugged the communication cord into his helmet, and strapped back into the bird.
“CS2 give you this, sir?” said AWR1 Fetternut.
“Yeah, why?” Juan said as he snapped down his night vision goggles and adjusted his gear.
“I was down in the mess with him earlier. You got a fan club now, you know.”
Plug said, “Alright, let’s talk after we get airborne. I don’t want to piss off the Shoes for being on deck too long. Checklists.” Shoes was the semi-insulting term that pilots sometimes used when referring to members of the surface Navy. It had to do with the fact that traditionally, pilots wore brown shoes, and other naval officers wore black. Black Shoes, or Shoes for short.
The crew ran through their checks and contacted the ship to get takeoff clearance. Moments later, they were lifting off deck, sliding aft, and watching the ship slowly steam away from them.
“Nose coming left.”
“Roger,” said Juan. His visual scan was on the instruments now. Everything else around him was black. Even the green image through the night vision goggles was just a useless blur, with nothing to focus on.
“Pulling power. One… two… three positive rates of climb.”
Juan could feel the nose dip slightly and carefully watched the radar altimeter, the barometric altimeter, and the vertical speed indicator as all three instruments showed that the aircraft was indeed climbing upward. When they were flying at night over water like this, almost everything they did was on instruments. There were simply too few visual stimuli.
“Radar altimeter on,” Juan said, flicking the toggle switch.
“Roger,” said Plug. “Leveling off at a thousand.”
“Roger,” said Juan.
“So, did Boss quiz you on your limits and emergency procedures?”
“Oh yeah,” said Juan.
“She was merciless as always, sir,” said AWR1 Fetternut.
Plug said, “Coming right to zero-four-five.”
“Roger, zero-four-five.”
“Okay, well, if Boss already took care of your training, let’s just shoot the shit.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Juan knew that while Plug was trying to justify not asking Juan any questions, the truth was that Plug would much rather just chill out and have fun while they burned holes in the sky for a few hours. Every pilot was different. The way they flew usually fit their personality. Plug was carefree when he could be, and extremely detail-oriented and skillful when he had to be. Like the Airboss, he was a very talented pilot. Sometimes Juan wondered if he would ever get to their level. To some, it came naturally. Others had to work at it. Juan thought of himself as part of the latter group.
Plug said, “Okay, the game is ‘would you rather.’ Would you rather be twenty minutes early for every meeting for the rest of your life, or ten minutes late?”
Fetternut said, “Sir, you’re already ten minutes late to everything.”
“Okay, Fetternut, you’ve forfeited your turn. Spike?”
“No question. I’d rather be early. You can’t be in the military without being early to everything. What’s the saying? Fifteen minutes early, you’re on time, on time, you’re late, and late, you’re better off not even showing up.”
Plug said, “Okay, that one was easy. Would you rather be alone for the rest of your life or always surrounded by annoying people?”
Fetternut said, “How annoying?”
“Think of the most annoying girl you’ve ever dated.”
“Okay. Hmm. I can handle it. I’d rather be around annoying people. Cuz if you were alone, you could never have sex. So really, that’s a double whammy…”
“Spike?”
“Alone.”
“Hey, sir, I have a radar contact at one-fife-fife for sixty. It’s the only thing around.”
Juan tapped a few keystrokes on his panel. “I just put in a fly-to, just follow the needle.”
“Got it, coming right.” The aircraft turned and leveled off on the new course. “Okay, would you rather have a horrible job for ten years and then be able to retire, or have your dream job but have to work forever?”
“Isn’t that basically what the military proposition is?”
“Come on, don’t say that. You don’t love this?”
“Flying, yes. But being stuck on a boat with you guys…”
Laughter.
Juan said, “So, Fetternut, what were you saying about those guys in the mess deck?”
“Oh yeah. Sir, you got a fan club on the ship. They all know your name now. They’re talking about you as the guy who killed the submarine. You’re famous. You’re like the guy who shot bin Laden.”
Juan could see Plug glancing over at him, his eyes lit up by the green glow of the NVGs. Plug didn’t say anything, but his expression was one of concern.
Juan hadn’t felt good about what had happened. Watching movies and reading books about war was one thing, but actually pressing the button was another matter. Dropping a torpedo and seeing the white water of the exploding submarine rocketing up into the air. Knowing all those souls were gone. He had lost a lot of sleep since that day. He would do it again if he had to. But he hoped that he never would.
Plug turned back, looking out the windscreen, scanning back and forth through his goggles. “Fetternut, how far away is that radar contact?”
“We still got a little way to go, sir. It’s over forty miles away.”
“Okay. Let me think of another question…”
Juan said, “I got a joke. How about that instead?”
“Spike? A joke? Lord have mercy, are you feeling alright?”
Ignoring him, Juan began. “Okay, so there are a bunch of ISIS fighters in Iraq, and they’re hiding in some mud hut. The leader says, ‘Okay, guys, the Americans are closing in on us, and there are reports that the CIA might have even infiltrated our ranks. So, I tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to double up the watch sections.’”
Plug said, “Sounds like this guy’s a SWO…”
“‘Two guys to a duty section instead of one. First up, Omar and Muhammad. Second watch, Rahim and Akmed. Third watch, Hamid and Bobby.’”