Joint Task Force #1: Liberia (33 page)

Sailors, according to their specialty, wore colored jerseys. Purple identified those in charge of fueling the aircraft, while red with black stripes told the Air Boss which ones handled ordnance. Red without the black stripes identified crash/salvage teams. Though all sailors and officers were trained to
fight fires, the red jerseys were true professionals.

Yellow jerseys were in charge of the flight deck, aircraft movement, and handling. They were the aviation equivalent of surface force boatswain mates. Those yellows operated the yellow aviation equipment such as the tractors that had towed the UFAVs into place. They also led the firefighting teams when necessary. Fires at sea were scourges for a sailor. Fighting fires took precedence over fighting flooding. At sea you could always refloat a flooded ship, but you couldn’t rebuild a burned one.

Green denoted the maintenance personnel in charge of those things on deck that controlled takeoffs and landings. On carriers, they made up the catapult and arresting crews.

Speckled among the profusion of reds, greens, and yellows were the blues who were the plane handlers, elevator operators (white cranial), and messengers. They tied down and removed the chains that held an aircraft to the deck, as well as reaching beneath the turning engines to jerk away the chocks from the wheels.

Safety observers wore white jerseys with a green cross highlighted on the back. The same color jersey with a red cross on the back and the cranials identified the “docs” of the deck—hospital corpsmen. Small first-aid kits were strapped to their waists.

Watching aft, Holman saw the wake bending to port. The
Boxer
was in an easy left turn, shifting the relative wind to bring it across her bow for the upcoming launch. Holman squinted as the sun reappeared from behind the forecastle and the morning shadows on the flight deck disappeared. The African heat rolled across them. Below him on the deck, the long-sleeve jerseys would help keep sunburn down, but already, he knew, sweat was crawling down the sailors’ skin, soaking their uniforms. The danger of being blown overboard, cut in half by props, or sucked into an intake was compounded by the danger of dehydration and sunstroke.
Christ! No wonder life at sea is great!
He noticed the safety observers carrying plastic bottles of water with them, stopping along the way to provide drinks to the working parties.
“Umm,”
he wondered,
“who had the foresight to think of that?”

As if reading his mind, the voice of Commander Proudfoot
echoed across the flight deck speakers. “Okay, everyone, listen up. We’re turning into the wind for upcoming launches. I want everyone to be alert to moving aircraft and keep an eye on your shipmate. Watch those propellers! You feel that heat? That’s African heat. It ain’t heat from home! Every one of you make sure you drink plenty of water. It’s only a little after zero-nine-hundred and the temperature is already one hundred. For those of you from Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, welcome home.”

The UFAVs were aligned two by two. They would take off one after the other, down the middle of the deck between loading helicopters and empty Ospreys waiting to launch toward Kingsville. Rotors and propellers turned, hot exhaust fumes mixing with hundred-degree heat, enveloping the flight deck. Inside each idling aircraft, Marines sweated. Suffering through the dehydrating wait. While they sat crammed together, they watched cautiously the mounted ordnance on the wings baking in the heat. This was one of the many critical times aboard a floating airfield. If one of those air-to-surface
what-a-macallits
went off, they would never be able to evacuate the helicopter in time.

“Admiral?”

Holman nodded. “Tell Buford to give the go-ahead to
Mispellion.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”

“What do we do when the French discover there is no American aircraft carrier? What if they pursue our helicopters ashore?”

Holman leaned forward and ground his cigar out against the inside of the shell casing. “I’m hoping what we’ll have is a lot of French bluster and my fine French counterpart, Admiral Colbert, backs off.”

“So do I, Admiral Holman. But what if he doesn’t?”

Holman’s eyebrows furrowed into a deep V. Being a senior officer meant making hard decisions. What would he do? What he did know, and wouldn’t be surprised if Leo Upmann hadn’t figured out already, was that Washington and Stuttgart were hanging him out. Why? He didn’t know. Every message he had sent requesting clear rules of engagement had been ignored. Effectively, what they were doing was leaving it to him to decide. A wrong decision would affect America’s
relationship with an ally Washington needed to finish the final terms of the Middle East treaty between Israel and Palestine. Navy officers, more than any of the other services, were forever faced with balancing military actions with geopolitical realities. The tactile authority to spend millions of dollars while deployed, steaming within sight of another country’s shores, the presence of an anchored man-of-war in a foreign port; all leveraged American foreign diplomacy.

Washington and Stuttgart knew of his quandary. They were slow-rolling their reply. He didn’t spend eight years of his career in the Pentagon without discovering there were many ways to play politics, and using time was a primary one. If you delayed long enough, the problem went away, or someone else had the good fortune of being blamed for the decision.

“Then we fight them,” Holman said softly.

Upmann straightened up, a deep sigh escaping. Holman thought he saw his tall Chief of Staff come to attention.

Upmann nodded curtly. “Then, Admiral, may I have one of those cigars, sir?” Leo said after a slight pause.

Below them, the Air Boss’s voice reverberated.
“ Lieutenant, what the hell are you doing on my deck? If you don’t have anything to do, get hell off it.”

SHE GRABBED THE RAG FROM THE POCKET OF HER FLIGHT
suit and wiped her hands. “Wow! It’s hot,” Pauline Kitchner said. She stuck her lower lip out and blew upward. “Damn.” Pauline reached up and brushed her wet hair off her forehead.

“Gripe, gripe, gripe,” Shoemaker replied standing near the step leading into his UFAV cockpit a few feet away.

“I prefer
bitch, bitch, bitch
.”

“Lieutenant, why haven’t we ever met Admiral Holman?” Ensign Jurgen Ichmens asked, looking up from a squatting position near the cables running from the rear of his UFAV cockpit. “I would have thought he would have wanted to see this project. Isn’t he a pilot also?”

Shoemaker shrugged. “I am sure the admiral has more important things to do than run down here and hold our hands.”

“He could have invited us for lunch—or tea even,” Valverde offered, trying to imitate a British accent.

“You have the worst British accent—”

“It’s that Southern drawl,” Kitchner said, tossing a screwdriver into the toolbox at her feet. She wiped her hand across her forehead. “Damn, I can’t take this,” she said, reaching up and pulling the flight suit zipper down to her waist. “I’m at least going to be comfortable until they tell us to suit up, take off, and be fighters.” She struggled out of the sleeves, wrapped them around her waist, and tied them loosely, leaving her in a sweaty T-shirt easily revealing the low-cut white bra beneath.

Shoemaker and Valverde already had their flight suits at half-mast. Ensign Ichmens stood, wiped the back of his right hand across his forehead, and did the same with his flight suit.

“Told you before we started this,” Valverde said.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ve told me many things, Alan.” She looked over at Nash Shoemaker. “Okay, fearless leader, why don’t we go over once again what we’re supposed to do.”

The screeching of the elevator on the other side of the hangar bay drew their attention. They watched for a few seconds as the Unmanned Fighter Aerial Vehicles and the working parties moving them ascended.

“Looks as if they are getting serious about this.”

As if hearing Shoemaker’s comments, the hatch leading from the front of the ship opened. Captain Buford Green and Captain Mary Davidson stepped into the cavernous hangar bay. Davidson carried a brown briefcase grasped tightly in her left hand. Shoemaker glanced behind the other UFAV pilots, noticing row upon row of helicopters, mostly CH-53 Super Stallions and four Cobras. These four attack helicopters separated the twenty-foot UFAV cockpits from the troop-transport helicopters.

“Attention on deck!” shouted Ichmens, drawing a stern look from Nash Shoemaker.

“Remind me to kill him later,” Pauline whispered as she snapped to attention with the others. While at sea, you seldom shouted attention unless in the wardroom or at some official function, and then only for the commanding officer or a flag officer. These two were neither.

Shoemaker thought he detected a slight smile on the Operations Officer’s face. He stopped himself from nodding in agreement.

“Stand at ease,” Buford Green said, a broad smile breaking out.

Lieutenant Nash Shoemaker stepped forward as the other three pilots stood still. Green stuck his hand out and shook Shoemaker’s.

“Well, Lieutenant, looks as if we’re going to launch you and your wingmen in the next thirty minutes. Y’all know Captain Davidson, our intel officer.” Green glanced over at the bulkhead and pointed. “Come on, let’s take some of those folding chairs and go over your mission. Then, I’ll let Captain Davidson brief you on what Intel has.”

Through the open hatch, a broad-shouldered senior chief petty officer ducked as he came into the hangar bay.

“Senior Chief! Over here,” Mary Davidson called. Turning to the others, she continued. “This is Senior Chief Oxford, my imagery specialist. As you mentioned earlier, Lieutenant, about needing ground support, Senior Chief Oxford has experience interpreting UAV imagery. He’ll man the mother system while you’re airborne along with a couple of his sailors. They’ll be connected to both my shop on the third deck and with Combat Information Center on deck two. This way, we’ll be able to see what you are seeing and keep Admiral Holman updated. At the same time, it’ll ensure that Captain Green and his warrior buddies are aware of the situation.”

The six officers pulled open some chairs normally used by the crew for movie night, and sat down in a semicircle in front of the four cockpits. Senior Chief Oxford remained standing behind Captain Davidson. Fifteen minutes later, the update to their mission completed, they shook hands, and the pilots moved to their cockpits.

Green and Davidson stood watching as the four stepped into the mock-ups and strapped on their headsets.

“Hey, Nash!” Pauline shouted across the hangar. “What’s going to be our call sign today? How about something heroic instead of Prototype formation?”

Without waiting for an answer, she slipped her headset on and, in one smooth movement, slid down into the seat.

Shoemaker turned toward Valverde, but the low hydraulic noise of the top closing around his wingman hid Alan’s face. From the other side of Valverde, he heard the clicks of Ensign
Ichmens’s cockpit closing. Shoemaker looked back at Kitchner. Pauline smiled and waved as she lowered her head to match the closing rate of the cockpit.

Nash tugged the headset down, slapped the red close button, and slid into his own seat. He wondered for the umpteenth time as he clipped himself in why they had harnesses like those on ejection seats. It wasn’t as if they were ever going to crash, burn, and die.

He flipped the radio switch. The chatter between Lieutenants Pauline Kitchner and Alan Valverde greeted his entry.

“Black formation, this is Black leader,” Nash said.

“Oh, great! We gotta be a color formation?”

“You said—”

“I changed my mind. Let me or Alan pick it.”

Across the intercom, came the voice of the Air Traffic Controller located in Combat Information Center. “Lieutenant Shoemaker, this is Petty Officer Watts. Are you going to be Proto formation for this event?”

“No, we’ll be—”

“Deathhead formation,” Kitchner interrupted, her voice trying to sound low and menacing.

“Sir?” Petty Officer Watts asked.

Shoemaker read the confusion in the sailor’s voice. She was probably thinking they had bit the big one.

“Deathhead formation,” Nash confirmed.

“Sir, Captain Upmann wanted us to ensure your call signs would be something an F-14 Tomcat would use.”

“I understand, Petty Officer Watts, but it’s not as if any of our conversation is going to be transmitted anywhere. We’ll stick with Deathhead.
It pleases the number two pilot.
”

“One,” Kitchner corrected.

“Wait, I’m one,” Valverde argued.

“Why don’t you two take a lesson from our ensign and keep quiet,” Shoemaker said.

“That’s what ensigns are supposed to do,” Kitchner replied tartly.

“Deathhead Leader, CIC; prepare to launch. Flight deck clear. Waiting for your clearance,” Petty Officer Watts announced.

“Roger, CIC,” Shoemaker replied. “Deathhead Two, Three, and Four. Request confirm systems check.”

The three wingmen answered “check” one after the other.

Ten minutes later, the four UFAVs were airborne at fifty feet heading southwest toward the USNS
Mispellion.

“THEY’RE AIRBORNE, ADMIRAL,” UPMANN SAID, STRAIGHTENING
up from over the air traffic console where he had been watching Petty Officer Watts.

“TAO, Air Warning,” the petty officer manning the air-search radar said in a loud voice to the commander who was the Tactical Action Officer.

“Sir,” the air-search petty officer continued. “I have multiple bogies inbound from the northwest.”

“They’re French, Commander,” said the electronic-warfare technician manning the AN/SLQ-32(V)6 console. “Their noses are pointed our way.”

“Have they checked in?” Holman asked.

Stephanie Wlazinierz, deputy operations officer for Amphibious Group Two and TAO, shook her head. “Not yet, sir. I was going to—”

“Give them a call and ask them what their intentions are.”

The commander shut her mouth and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Holman listened to two conversations ongoing in CIC. One was the TAO leading the CIC team in trying to establish contact with the inbound French fighters, and the other was the ongoing dialogue between Shoemaker and his UFAV pilots.
What was his world coming to? French flexing their aviation muscles and American pil—operators sitting on their asses in a hangar bay flying fighters.
Nothing ever stayed the same. No matter how much you wanted to go back to a place you really enjoyed, it was never there. Maybe it was getting time for him to find that mythical piece of God’s Green Acre. It had to be located somewhere between West Virginia and Georgia. Let the Navy move toward its future without him stomping his feet and shaking his head like some old bull watching a younger bull work his way through the herd.