He passed the Air Transfer Office that coordinated transportation on and off the carrier, then turned left in the main passageway, heading for Flight Equipment, where he could remove his helmet and secure it inside the case designed to protect the state-of-the-art workspace. The custom-fitted helmet, made of Kevlar-reinforced carbon fiber, had a visor that acted as both night vision goggles and a display for the Distributed Aperture System, giving him access to real-time imagery from six infrared cameras located around his aircraft. It cost $400,000, and Colt would be damned if he let something happen to it.
He took two steps before running into Smitty.
“What the fuck happened, bro?”
He had thought of nothing else since he almost blacked out and crashed into the Mobile Bay. But the bitch of it was, he couldn’t explain it. For a person who was supposed to be an expert in the F-35C, that troubled him the most. “I don’t know…”
“You can tell me later,” Smitty said with a dismissive wave. “You need to give me your helmet and go straight to CVIC.”
Colt shook his head in disbelief. “What? Why?”
“CAG and the skipper are waiting to talk to you.”
Oh, shit.
He doffed the helmet and handed it to his wingman, who stowed it inside the case, then he turned around and reluctantly headed forward to the Carrier’s Intelligence Center. If he hadn’t been distracted thinking about the ass-chewing he was about to receive, he might have seen the Marine in time to avoid the collision. But, as it was, both men weren’t paying attention, and Colt ran right into the enlisted man and almost knocked the poor kid backward onto his butt. A handheld video game device clattered to the tile and skittered across the floor.
“Dammit!” the Marine exclaimed.
Colt froze in stunned disbelief and watched him scramble for the video game before getting to his feet and dusting himself off. He wore green coveralls with a VMFA-314 patch on his right chest opposite a black leather name tag adorned with a gold embossed Eagle, Globe, and Anchor.
“I’m sorry, Lance Corporal…” Colt read the name tag on his left breast. “…Garett. Are you okay?”
Garett nodded, clutching the handheld device protectively against his chest, and stepped back against the bulkhead to give the pilot room. “It was my fault, sir.”
“You sure?”
He nodded again, and Colt looked him over once more, then brushed past and continued across the blue tile bound for whatever fate awaited him in CVIC.
He didn’t have to wait long. After entering the code that unlocked the door with an audible click, he saw CAG had cleared the space of everybody except his deputy and the Black Knights’ commanding officer. Even the air wing’s intelligence officers were notably absent, and they practically lived there.
He glanced at the Marine skipper, who shook his head ever so slightly, warning him to keep his mouth shut, then back to CAG, Captain Patrick “Footloose” Meyers, a double anchor who had commanded a Super Hornet squadron in Colt’s first air wing. Though a natural rivalry existed between pilots and weapon systems officers, CAG had never given him a reason to think he was anything other than a fair and reasonable leader. A few shots of whiskey at the Silver State Club in Fallon after a particularly brutal debrief had solidified Colt’s opinion that CAG flew hard and fought hard, but he drank and played harder.
“What the fuck don’t you understand about a direct order, Lieutenant?”
Guess he’s not playing, Colt thought.
“Sir, there’s something wrong with—”
“I asked you a question!”
His eyes snapped back in front of him, and he came to attention like he was a Plebe on I-Day, forgetting his rehearsed platitudes under CAG’s withering stare. “Sir, I…”
Footloose jumped to his feet and crossed the tile floor to stand nose-to-nose in front of him. He felt CAG’s anger radiating like heat in the still room and suddenly wished he were back in the darkened cockpit of his possessed Joint Strike Fighter, struggling for control while chasing bogies in the pitch black over the Pacific Ocean.
CAG clenched his jaw as he seethed, inches from Colt’s face. At last, he spoke through gritted teeth in an ominous tone. “I just got off the phone with a pissed-off Mobile Bay skipper, and she’s out for blood. You have one chance to explain yourself, and if I don’t like what you have to say, I’m taking you to mast under Article 90 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Do you know what that is?”
Colt thought he might, but he kept his mouth shut. “No, sir.”
“DCAG?”
CAG’s deputy stepped forward and spoke in a calm and emotionless voice. “Disobeying a superior commissioned officer.”
“And am I a ‘superior commissioned officer’?”
“You are,” DCAG replied.
“What are the penalties if found guilty?”
“Up to ten years’ confinement and dishonorable discharge,” his deputy replied.
Colt swallowed.
“Further, based on your reckless flying, I am going to recommend that your skipper convene a fee-nab when you get back to Fallon to determine your suitability to continue flying as a Naval Aviator.”
Worse than the potential for prison time and a boot from the Navy, a FNAEB, or Field Naval Aviator Evaluation Board, was a death knell. One of the potential outcomes from the board was being stripped of his wings and losing his entire identity as a pilot. Everything he had worked so hard to achieve could be taken from him with a simple up-down vote from three senior aviators.
“Lieutenant Bancroft, do you understand the gravity of the situation?”
Colt studied CAG for a sign he was anything but one hundred percent serious. Seeing only fierce determination in the face before him, he nodded. “Yes, sir. I do.”
“Very well,” CAG replied. “Then, what do you have to say for yourself?”
Colt took a deep breath to calm his fraying nerves. He still didn’t know how to describe what had happened to him over the Mobile Bay, but he needed to convey the severity of the situation. “Sir, I almost died tonight.”
CAG’s face softened slightly as he heard the tremor in Colt’s voice. “What do you mean, son?”
Colt shook his head. “I don’t know how to explain it, but there’s something wrong with the jet’s software.” He paused, again remembering the impotence he felt when his connection to the jet was severed. “Just as I arrived on station, my PCD flickered, and I lost control of the jet.”
CAG rolled his eyes. “You lost control? Like, you departed?”
Again, he shook his head. “No, sir, I’m saying the jet wouldn’t respond to my commands. It rolled in on the ship on its own, and I couldn’t pull out of the dive. I couldn’t stop the roll. I couldn’t stop the dive. Nothing I did worked.”
“So, how’d you recover?”
Colt glanced over at the Black Knights’ skipper and saw a worried crease on his brow. He was certain the lieutenant colonel was questioning the safety of his fleet, but he wasn’t willing to stand up to Footloose and recommend grounding the Joint Strike Fighter. He looked back into CAG’s face and saw the concern that had been etched there slowly fading away. He was losing his sympathetic ear.