“Don Omar,” the man said in a thick accent, heavily rolling the R. His well-tanned face sported the handsome damage from years out at sea.
“Hello, Javi,” the prince replied before turning to Deng and adding, “General, meet Javier Ibarra. One of my associates from Spain, and the best smuggler in the business.”
Deng shook the man’s calloused hand, noticing the strong grip. But what impressed him the most were his dark eyes, steady and focused, like those of his best fighter pilots. And that alone instilled confidence that this stranger and his equally stoic crew gathering at the top of the gangway might just be able to pull this off.
“A pleasure, General,” Ibarra said.
“The pleasure is mine,” Deng replied as Al Saud’s guards rolled the case up to them. “The pleasure is all mine.”
Lt. Amanda “Diamond” Diamante made it out of sick bay by midmorning and headed to the squadron room, or “ready room” of the Golden Dragons, located on the 03 Level immediately below the flight deck. She found Lt. Cmdr. Juan Ricardo and Lt. Cmdr. Trey Malloy sitting by the bar stools along the back of the room, where a new De’Longhi espresso machine provided the fuel that kept the pilots going. The machine had been a gift from the squadron commander, who knew the Navy ran on coffee but thought it needn’t be bad coffee.
Five rows of airline-style armchair seats faced the main board at the front of the room. Typically, a few pilots would occupy them working on their laptops or preparing for their flights. But in sharp contrast with the bustling activity prior to last night’s raids, the majority of the Golden Dragons fighter pilots were either sleeping, having some chow, or, like Ricardo and Malloy, enjoying a cup of coffee.
Along the left side of the room hung the squadron’s “Greenie Board” that provided the up-to-date results on the carrier landings for each member of the fighter squadron. Green represented a “4.0 OK Pass,” and the best pilots had a string of greens after their names; the rest had a dispersion of yellows for a “3.0 Fair Pass,” brown for a “2.0 No Grade,” and red for “1.0 Wave Offs.” The board also ranked the pilots by providing an average for their recent landings similar to a college grade point average, or GPA. Ricardo had the highest in the squadron at 4.0. Malloy was second at 3.93. Their CO, Commander Benjamin “Dover” Kowalski, ranked third at 3.87. Amanda had ranked fourth at 3.84 before last night’s flight. Her name was now at the bottom until the incident could be reviewed.
And to make matters worse, she could no longer find her name in the flight schedule hanging between the Greenie Board and a large flat screen slaved to the PLAT system, the Pilot’s Landing Aid Television fed by the five cameras covering the entire flight deck, providing continuous views of landings and launches.
“There she is! Quickdraw Diamante!” Malloy shouted. A native of San Diego, who looked like a surfer rather than a naval aviator, Malloy had once sported his call sign as an actual hairstyle, but it had been left on the floor the day he’d joined the Navy. He was average height but very muscular.
In contrast, Ricardo fit the classic Hispanic stereotype, thin and a bit shorter than Amanda’s five-nine, with very short, dark-brown hair and brown eyes, a smooth honey-colored skin, and a chiseled, angular face. They wore their flight suits sporting shoulder patches depicting a golden dragon holding a mushroom cloud in its claw.
“How’s the ankle?” Ricardo asked.
“Fine,” Amanda said, producing a small plastic bottle of ibuprofen. “Take two before bedtime and call in the morning.”
“Join us for a latte courtesy of your friendly squadron commander?” Malloy offered.
“Speaking of that, have you gotten your ‘bend-over’ time yet?” Ricardo asked. Then increasing the pitch of his voice, he added, “’Cause you got some ’splainin’ to do, Lucy!”
She smiled without humor. “I had to bail, guys. Stick was nonresponsive.”
“I keep telling you, Mullet,” Ricardo said, poking Malloy’s large bicep with an index finger. “That’s why you gotta get off those steroids, dude. FCS failure.”
Malloy was about to reply when an Asian man in his midforties with a full head of short salt-and-pepper hair stormed the ready room dressed in a desert flight suit. The silver oak leaves of a commander were stitched on his shoulders. Two other men, also in flight suits, followed him. They sported the gold oak leaves of lieutenant commanders, like Ricardo and Malloy. One had a narrow, somewhat gaunt face. The other was well tanned and heavyset, and held a clipboard and a pen.
All three pilots jumped to attention.
“Diamond! What the hell?!” shouted Cmdr. Benjamin “Dover” Kowalski, leading the charge in his heavy Brooklyn accent. “That wasn’t some toy aircraft! That was a United States Navy Rhino worth ninety-eight million dollars!” Kowalski had to answer to Captain James Buchelle, the “CAG,” or commander of Carrier Air Wing 2, also called the “Air Boss,” for all twelve F/A-18E Super Hornets assigned to his squadron. Whether the plane had crashed due to an FCS malfunction, as she had reported, or due to pilot error — or even if nailed by a SAM — it was still his responsibility.
“I kept resetting it, Skipper,” Amanda replied. “But the damn FCS warning light kept coming back with that ‘deedle-fucking-deedle’ chime that I can’t get out of my head.” Everyone in the Golden Dragons fighter squadron referred to their CO as either skipper or sir. Everyone outside of the squadron called him Commander Kowalski or by his call sign.
Malloy and Ricardo chuckled but quickly shut it when Kowalski turned his scorching glare on them.
“About that, Miss Diamante…,” said Lieutenant Commander Ed Stone, the fighter squadron’s maintenance officer and also a Super Hornet pilot. In charge of keeping the World Famous Golden Dragons airborne, it would be on Stone and his team if the plane had suffered a critical malfunction. Rubbing his bony chin and briefly regarding Kowalski and then the stocky officer next to him making notes on the clipboard, Stone asked, “How much time elapsed from the first time you observed the FCS caution light to the moment you lost control of your Rhino?”
And that was, of course, the question Amanda had been dreading to answer. “About nine minutes, sir.”
“I see,” Stone said. “And you reported the problem to your flight leader about thirty seconds after your bombing run?”
“That’s correct,” she replied, glancing over at the officer making notes.
“And you concur, Ricky?” the heavyset officer asked, looking up from his clipboard. Lieutenant Commander Vince Nova, the fighter squadron safety officer and also an F/A-18E pilot, would be responsible for performing a thorough investigation of the incident and writing the official report. That report would be sent up the chain of command, starting with Kowalski and then Captain Buchelle, who, along with the skipper of Vinson, Captain Peter Keegan, reported to the embarked flag officer, Rear Admiral Jack Swift, the commander of the Carl Vinson Strike Carrier Group.
“Yes, sir. Thirty seconds sounds right.”
“And you guys were subsonic going in, Mr. Ricardo?” asked Kowalski. It was customary to address junior officers by either rank, call sign, or simply by their last names.
“Correct, Skipper. Went in low and quiet on max endurance,” Ricardo said. “Didn’t feel like catching an Iranian SAM in the ass.”
Kowalski raised his brows at Stone and Nova, who exchanged glances. The latter made more notes, while Stone pulled out his smartphone, tapped on it for several seconds, then showed it to Nova, who frowned, made another entry on the clipboard, and then tilted it toward Kowalski.