“Miss Diamante. Do you think you can hang on to this Rhino a bit longer?” Cardona asked, without looking at her as the kid balanced himself at the top of the ladder, juggling a template, a brush, and a small can of paint — hot pink.
Seriously?
“And you!” he screamed at the sailor, who looked as if he’d just graduated from high school. “One drop of paint on my deck and I’ll have you scrub it end to end with a damned toothbrush! You feel me, son?”
“Yes, Master Chief!” he cried out.
“Ran out of black paint, Master Chief?”
The man’s mustache straightened as he grinned.
“Looks like it’s been to hell and back,” she added.
The smile faded, and he finally turned to her.
“Lieutenant,” he said in a low, grumbling voice that sounded like a train leaving the station. “This Rhino here is a fine example of American aeronautical engineering.” Then as his voice incrementally grew louder, he added, “It was servicing your country while you were still in diapers!” Then he grinned again and added in a calm voice, “This particular bird served in Operations Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom, Desert Strike, and Northern Watch, and operations off the Somali coast. It has unleashed violence on Taliban insurgents across Afghanistan, ISIS enclaves in northern Iraq, and even enforced the no-fly zone there.” Cardona pointed at the rows of bomb silhouettes stenciled on the nose. Lowering his voice, he added, “And it even shot down a Syrian Air Force Su-22.”
“I never heard of that last one.”
“Like I said, Miss Diamante. Diapers. Besides, it’s either this Rhino or the highway.”
“Copy that,” she said.
“And not a scratch. Clear?”
She raised her brows and once more contemplated the peeling paint and scarred fuselage and asked, “How would you be able to tell if I scratched it?”
Cardona groaned, but before he could reply, Amanda stretched a finger at the artwork spelling DEDDLE.
“Dammit, boy!” he exploded. “There are three Es in Deedle! What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“Sorry, Master Chief!” the kid wailed before producing a rag from his back pocket to wipe off the curved section of the second D to turn it into a bastardized E.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Cardona hissed at the smear job.
“It’s all right, Master Chief,” Amanda said. “It actually goes with the whole… look.”
Sighing, he said, “It’ll be ready for preflight at oh six hundred.”
As she was about to leave, Amanda noticed a pair of jets in the very rear of the hangar covered with blue tarps, but she could still spot the shape of their twin tails angled outward. However, the overall length was all wrong — almost ten-feet-shorter wrong. And the wingspan was also narrower than a Super Hornet’s by almost eight feet.
And she suddenly remembered her three-month training at Patuxent River in—
“You’re not worthy to even look that way, Deedle!” Cardona snapped when he caught her looking.
“But, Chief,” she said, growing excited. “Those are—”
“Beyond-fucking-limits.”
“But I’m certified in the Lightning, and I thought that—”
The master chief turned back and focused his laser stare on the naval aviator almost a foot shorter than his towering frame. “Lieutenant, do you really, really think I would let you anywhere near a brand-new, one-hundred-twenty-million-dollar F-35C after what you did to my Rhino?”
“But—”
“Miss Diamante, maybe your preschool teacher should have explained to you that the way to get a new toy isn’t by breaking your old one.”
“Okay, okay, I just thought—”
“This Rhino here is your new bird,” Cardona interrupted, his right index finger pointed at the weathered jet as the sailor finished the first DEEDLE with the smudged E and added a hyphen before starting on the second one. “If you have any issues with that, by all means feel free to take it up your chain of command.” Grinning, he added, “And please, do let me know how that works out for you.”
Amanda promptly retreated, letting Cardona redirect his energy back at the young sailor. She could still hear him screaming over the noisy hangar as she ducked through a bulkhead door and headed up to the ready room.
She walked down a series of hallways and climbed ladders between levels, always yielding to senior officers coming in the opposite direction. She also kept to the right or left side of the tape pasted down the middle of passageways or hatchways where sailors cleaned and waxed the floors. Work was always done on one half at a time to keep the walkways open.
Her aching body had a craving for a latte, but when she finally made it to the 03 Level and walked into the ready room, she found Mullet Malloy sitting across from a very somber-looking Ricky Ricardo.
“Hey, Ricky,” she said, “guess what I found down at the hangars when I—”
“Not now, Deedle,” Malloy said, shaking his head. His sandy hair fell over his brow and he unconsciously pushed it back. Ricardo didn’t even look up.
“What’s going on?” she said.
“Our boy just got dumped.” Then lowering his voice, he whispered, “Via Facebook.”
“You know, I can hear you, Mullet,” Ricardo mumbled.
“Jessie broke off the engagement?” Amanda asked, sitting down next to Ricardo.
“Worse, actually,” Malloy decided to answer. “An old academy buddy of ours in Los Angeles posted video of some Charger’s pool party… and there she was, dancing around in a bikini, twerking with some linebacker, who then picked her up over his shoulder and carried her inside a cabana. No imagination required to know what happened next. When Ricky called her on the sat phone, she hung up, unfriended him, and changed her status to single.”
“That’s cold, man,” she said, sitting next to him and placing an arm over his shoulders. “You’re out here fighting for your country, and she’s—”
“Doing the football team?” Malloy offered, rolling his eyes.
“Seriously, man?” Ricardo mumbled, shaking his head.
Amanda burned Malloy with her stare, then said, “Ricky… I’m so sorry.”
Ricardo sat, shaking his head. “I just can’t understand it.”
“Well, screw her,” Malloy said. “We’re here for you, buddy.”
“That’s right. And better you found out now than after you’re married with kids,” Amanda said. “Besides, we’re the only family you need.”
As Ricardo sat there, still shaking his head in denial, their commander, Dover Kowalski, walked in.
“What the hell’s going on? Don’t you three have someplace better to be?” He pointed at the flight schedule board, where Amanda noticed to her delight that it once again included her for a CAP mission with Ricky the following morning. But then she frowned when she saw that her Greenie Board GPA had plummeted after getting a big fat zero for failing to bring back her bird.
Malloy said, “Sorry, Skipper. Ricky here just found out his fiancée has been banging some linebacker from the Chargers.”
“C’mon, man!” Ricardo snapped. “What’s wrong with you?”
Kowalski blinked.
“Just shut it, Mullet!” Amanda snapped.
“Ricky,” Kowalski finally said. “I’m really sorry.”
Ricardo glared at Malloy, then said, “Thank you, sir. I—”
“Don’t thank me, son,” Kowalski said. “You get over this shit right here, right now. In case you haven’t been keeping up with world events, we’re no longer fighting ragheads. We’re headed at flank speed for the Taiwan Strait. In three days, we’ll be within pissing distance from hundreds of MiGs, Sukhois, and cruise missiles, plus their subs, destroyers, and even a damned aircraft carrier. That means we have to pull together as a fighter squadron, with everyone’s head in the game, a hundred percent. You all get me?”