That was one of the names, Andrew thought when he heard Jacobs’s name. He held the ball cap in his hand, looking down at it. “Thought we had to wear our hats at all times.”
“Naw,” Taleb said, turning his nose up and shaking his head. “Not on the flight deck. Too many opportunities for something built by the lowest bidder sucking it into its intake, blowing up, and killing people. When that happens, the Skipper tends to get pissed off. Hence,” the sailor continued, holding up a finger, “no hats on flight decks is the golden rule. Now for you, most likely you’re going to be with Master Chief Jacobs and his band of renegades. I work for another section of Sea Base.”
At the rear of the C-130, a mixed line of personnel wearing flight suits, colored flight deck shirts, and dungarees stood in a line. Hand-over-hand, luggage emerged from the C-130, passing unceremoniously from one person to the next, until at the end, the luggage was tossed onto the deck for the passengers to sort out.
Andrew and the sailor stopped near the crowd.
The sailor stuck his hand out. “Name’s Jaime Taleb. I spend most of my days around Combat Information Center.” Taleb pointed toward the tower complex located several hundred feet off the port side of the runway. “That’s where the true heart and soul of Sea Base is. Tours are free.”
Taleb shook his head. “Damn, they’re going to break something doing it that way.” He looked at Andrew. “Best thing you can do, my friend, is to grab yours as soon as you see it; otherwise, if you have pictures of loved ones in your bag, you’re going to be looking at them through cracked glass.” Andrew walked to the line, reached out, and pulled his seabag away from the sailor about to pass it along.
“Hey!”
Andrew turned, ignoring the sailor, who was quickly bumped by the next piece of luggage, drawing his attention away and back to the unloading.
“Wow! That’s what I call God looking out for you.” Andrew’s eyes narrowed. It seemed for a moment as if Taleb’s eyes were boring into him. “God always watches over those who know His ways.”
“Yeah, my old man used to say the same thing about Allah.” Andrew’s eyes widened. Blasphemy. Equating Allah with God! Who was this heathen? Maybe this was God’s test for him?
“Sorry,” Taleb said. “Didn’t mean to offend you.”
Andrew shook his head. “No offense taken. It’s just where I come from, religion is taken very seriously.”
“Then, you’d love my father’s country of Iran.”
“Hey! You two!”
Both Andrew and Taleb turned. A senior chief marched toward them. “You two got your gear?”
They both nodded.
“Then clear the hell away from the aircraft. I don’t have time for onlookers and grab-assers.” He jerked his thumb toward the port side of Sea Base. “So, go find yourself some other place to trade your sea tales.”
“I don’t have…”
Taleb put his hand on Andrew’s arm. “Where you want us to go, Senior Chief?” Taleb interrupted.
The senior chief spread his hands wide. “What the hell am I wearing? Does this look like an apron? Am I your fucking mother? No, I ain’t, and I don’t care where you go as long as you get away from my aircraft so me and the crew can offload this flying bucket of bolts and get off this piece-of-shit Sea Base before it falls into the fucking ocean.”
Taleb leaned over to Andrew, looking up at him. “I think he wants us to move along so they can finish unloading and fly off the ship.”
“What the hell did you think I was saying?” the senior chief shouted. “That’s exactly what the fuck I said.”
“Sorry, Senior Chief. Your description was so apropos, I wanted to translate it for my friend here.”
“Get the hell out of my sight,” the senior chief said through clenched teeth. He turned and walked away mumbling something about the Navy not being the Navy he’d joined.
Taleb grabbed the top half of the seabag, while Andrew held the thick cloth strap at the center. “Follow me!” And the two stumbled-ran across the deck, leaving behind a tense senior chief shouting something about deck apes.
“Deck apes?” Andrew asked.
“Yeah, that’s what they call us boatswain mates: deck apes.”
The soft breeze of the warm Pacific caressed Andrew’s cheek, blowing his hair as the two men, laughing, moved across the deck. After several minutes, they stopped, dropping the seabag onto the deck near a line of fighter aircraft. He’d never seen something so huge and fearsome. Smooth lines that arched into sharp edges broke the symmetry of the fuselage.
Taleb let go with one hand and waved at someone standing near an opening off to the port side of Sea Base. Andrew turned and looked back at the aircraft.
“They’re Air Force fighters — stealth fighters; called F-22A Raptors,” Taleb offered. “We have eight of them on board, though the one with the hydraulic lift alongside seems to be broke all the time. It’s one broke-dick motherfucker.”
Andrew bristled. “You curse a lot, Taleb. Cursing shows a lack of education.” He looked at the boatswain mate helping him. Something about the man’s eyes bothered him. His father told him you could tell the depth of a man’s soul by the brightness in his eyes. This man had no brightness. There was an evil behind those eyes.
“Sorry,” Taleb said, his eyes lowering. “Didn’t mean to upset you on your first day.” He laughed. “It usually takes me two days to piss people off.” He reached down and grabbed the seabag by the handle. “Come on and let’s get you checked in with First Division and then I’ll head back to my own work.”
Andrew watched Taleb saunter off with the seabag swinging slightly from his left hand. Within that seabag the evil man carried were Andrew’s Bibles. Inside one of those Bibles rested the pistol for his act of vengeance. He raised his head and took in a broad view of the man-made island floating in God’s waters. It was both magnificent in its construction as a testament to what man can do when God wills it, and it was a blasphemy to God’s plan for Armageddon by being the man-made instrument that might delay or stop armies from colliding.
“You coming?” Taleb shouted from about fifty feet away. “How you know I’m not some flimflam artist about to steal your seabag?”
Andrew lifted his hand and hurried to catch up with Satan’s spawn. He wondered briefly before slowing to a walk alongside Taleb if this demon was able to sense the gun.
The noise of the hydraulics kicked in, suddenly filling the Unmanned Underwater Vehicle compartment with sharp noise.
“You could give a sailor some warning!” Bernardo shouted from in front of the bank of servers that separated the line of UUV storage cells from the larger part of the compartment. He quickly placed his hands over his ears.
“Shut your griping!” came a voice from the other side of the compartment. “You got ears, pull them down!” Taylor shouted in reply. Ears was the military term for a set of muffling devices that resembled earmuffs. They were issued to sailors working around loud noises and on flight decks for the purpose of protecting a sailor’s hearing. Few career sailors finished twenty years with their hearing intact. Ships and aircraft were noisy war machines. A constant ringing in the ears was something most career sailors learned to live with.
“Listen, Po-Boy; if I want shit out of you, I’ll squeeze your head.”
From behind the array of equipment separating the storage area from the UUV firing cradle, Taylor replied, “If you hit me and I find out…”
“This isn’t what I signed up to do,” Bernardo said, looking at Keyland, who was bent over the computer console that controlled the overhead tracks and the UUV firing cradle. “This is something along Taylor’s line of skills.”