“Control, Cutlass, you guys hearing that ELT?”
“Affirm, Cutlass, stand by.”
Victoria sat in the right-side pilot’s seat of her helicopter, rotors spinning over the deck, the horizon moving slowly up and down with the rolls of the ship.
She glanced down at her fuel. They were almost topped off. This was the second bag of her two-flight shift. Patrolling the ocean north of Guam, scanning the area with her radar and ESM, looking for any sign of the monstrous Chinese fleet everyone was talking about.
“Cutlass, Deck.”
She looked at the glass window of the LSO shack, behind which stood her maintenance officer, Spike.
“Go ahead, Deck.”
“Cutlass, Deck, I just got off the phone with OPS. Sounds like this ELT is a real SAR scenario. I called up to the AW shack, and your second aircrewman is throwing his gear on now. He’ll be out shortly.”
Victoria clicked the trigger on her cyclic twice, which transmitted two rapid clicks over the UHF, acknowledging that she understood.
“Control, Cutlass, please put the TAO on secure.”
“Roger, Boss.”
They switched to the secure communications channel, and the ship’s tactical action officer came on the radio.
“Boss, it’s CSO. We have a rough position of where the survivor is located. It’s about two hundred miles northwest of here… stand by…”
Victoria watched as the hangar door opened and her second aircrewman came out wearing a wet suit and carrying his rescue equipment.
“Two hundred miles? Boss, we aren’t supposed to go that far out, right?”
Victoria glanced at her copilot. “Let’s hear the scenario out first.”
Another voice on the radio. Commander Boyle. “Airboss, this is the captain. We just got notified by Seventh Fleet that this is a top-priority rescue mission. Operational necessity has been declared by the admiral. We’ll give you whatever support you need, but you’re the closest air asset.”
“Understood, sir. Please advise on the location.”
“Passing lat-long now.”
Victoria looked at the multipurpose display. An X popped up with the words “AF rescue” next to it.
“What’s the distance?” Victoria said on the helicopter’s internal comms.
Her copilot used the joystick to measure from their current position. They were having a hell of a time getting accurate navigation information without GPS, but since they’d just landed on the ship, it would be as accurate as they could make it.
“One ninety-seven nautical miles, Boss.”
Victoria said over external comms, “Captain, how accurate is that location?”
“It’s a bearing cut from us and the Michael Monsoor. There’s a P-8 that just launched and will help with the search, but…” He paused. “But that location is about twenty miles west of the one forty-fourth.”
Victoria looked back at the digital map on her display, flipping her visor up to see it better. “And they’re letting us go?”
The captain said, “Seventh Fleet says this is highest priority. You have been granted approval to go over the line.”
Victoria wondered who this crash survivor was, and if he was even going to be alive when they found him. “Roger,” was all she said to the captain. “Your controls,” she told her copilot.
“My controls.”
Victoria released her hands from the cyclic and collective and slid out her pen from the metal spiral on her kneeboard. She began scratching out the math. It would take her about eighty minutes to get there at one hundred and fifty-five knots, but that would burn up half her fuel. They would need time on station to locate the survivor, then rescue the survivor, and both of those evolutions would burn fuel. Call it five hundred pounds.
“Boss, we’re all set back here,” her aircrewman called over the internal communications system.
“Copy.” She switched to external. “Request green deck.”
“Cutlass, Deck, you have yellow deck for breakdown, green deck for launch.”
“Roger break, Captain, I’ll be crunching the numbers in flight. Request you proceed towards the survivor at best speed as soon as we’re airborne.”
“Already in the works, Airboss. Good luck.”
The flight deck team had removed the chocks and chains and held them up for Victoria and her copilot to inspect. She gave a thumbs-up and then turned back to her math. She decided to fly at their max range airspeed of one hundred and twenty knots. That would give her a little more fuel. If the ship traveled at twenty-eight knots…
“Ready, Boss?” her copilot said.
“You got it. Clear right. Gauges green.”
“Coming up.”
Victoria shoved her pen back into the metal spiral on her kneeboard and kept both hands hovering an inch away from the controls. Close enough that she could take them if her copilot made a mistake, but far enough away to let him do the flying. The aircraft sprang straight up and drifted aft. The feeling of the ship’s constant rolling in the sea ceased as the helicopter freed itself from the deck.
“Clear right.”
“Clear left, nose coming right.”
The copilot used his foot pedals to yaw the aircraft right forty-five degrees.
“Gauges green and clean, pulling power. One, two, three positive rates of climb. Safe single-engine airspeed, nosing it over. Radalt on, please.”
“Radalt on.”
Victoria tapped the square button that placed the helicopter’s computer-controlled radar altitude hold on. She inserted a fly-to point where the SAR survivor was supposed to be and observed with approval that her copilot had turned to that heading without her having to tell him to do so. Good aircrew chemistry like this saved time. At top levels, pilots, copilots, and aircrewmen practically read each other’s minds, anticipating commands and maneuvers, shaving precious seconds off time-consuming procedures.
“I’ll get the after-takeoff checks. Make your speed one hundred and twenty knots, please. AW2, please conduct the SAR checklist.”
“In progress, Boss.”
Twenty minutes later, the P-8 checked in with them. The P-8 Poseidon was the Navy’s version of a Boeing 737, outfitted for maritime reconnaissance, antiship and antisubmarine warfare.
“Cutlass 471, Mad Fox 436.”
“Mad Fox, Cutlass.”
“Mad Fox is on station over the datum, beginning circle search.”
“Roger, Mad Fox. Cutlass is twenty mikes out.”
“Copy.”
Victoria checked in with the ship again, verifying that the Farragut was indeed headed towards her helicopter at best speed. The entire scenario was one big math problem. Would they be able to find the survivor before Victoria’s helicopter ran out of fuel? And even if they could, would she have time to conduct the rescue and still keep enough fuel to make it back to the ship? She looked down at her math. The final number she kept coming up with had a negative sign in front of it. She erased it and then changed her bingo fuel calculation — the quantity of fuel she would use to trigger the return to her ship. The new number got her back on deck, but it didn’t give her much time to conduct a search.
“Cutlass, Max Fox, we have located the survivor. Stand by for coordinates.”
Victoria felt a jolt of elation. “Send ’em.”
The P-8 sent over the latitude and longitude of the survivor, which Victoria used to update their heading. The aircraft banked slightly to the left as her copilot made the adjustment. She relayed the update to her ship and recalculated the fuel problem.
“We should have about ten minutes to spare. How quick can you guys be, Fetternut?”
“Boss, we’ll be in and out,” the first-class petty officer replied through the internal comms. “You just watch.”
Victoria redid her fuel calculation for the third time in a row. Her voice went up an octave. “Good. Because we are very limited on fuel.”