“Why?”
“Why do we send strike groups into the South China Sea? Power projection, my friend. This new Chinese president doesn’t like the fact that we bombed North Korea, only fifty miles from his border.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“Apparently, we’re going to situate ourselves a few hundred miles west of Hawaii. We’ll be making sure that these Chinese warships are in our crosshairs the entire time they’re over there.”
Plug shook his head. “Why do I get the feeling that things are escalating?”
“Because they are, my friend. They are.”
Plug was living a constant reminder of why he didn’t want a job out of the cockpit. He had been aboard the carrier for less than a week and felt like he was drinking through a surface warfare firehose. The days began at 0530. He woke up, walked down the dark passageway of the carrier in his tattered bathrobe, shaved in the men’s room sink, and stood in line for one of the showers. After five minutes, he got in and took a Navy shower. A few seconds of water — playing Russian roulette with the temperature and pressure coming out of the spout — a few seconds of soap and shampoo, and then a few more seconds of water to wash it all off. The assembly line was done with him in less than a minute, and the next man was up. He squished in his sandals back down the passageway, retrieved his hotel-style key card from his shaving kit, inserted it in the door, and went back into his room.
His shit-hot roommate, Suggs, had been up for an hour already. His sweaty workout clothes were drying on a hanger in the corner of the room, swaying gently with the roll of the carrier. Suggs was slapping a thin layer of aftershave on his face. “Morning.”
Plug grunted in reply. “You going to eat?”
Suggs gave him a sheepish look. “Yeah, but I gotta eat in the strike group wardroom.”
Plug frowned. “And my kind isn’t wanted there, is that it?”
“Sorry, man. If it makes you feel any better, my ancestors were slaves, so… you can look at this as reparations. I’ll sneak you out some of the gourmet pastries.”
“Are you serious?”
“About the slave thing?”
“No. Do they really have gourmet pastries?”
“No, but sometimes they have pretty good coffee cake in the morning. With those little sugary crumbles on it. Haven’t seen that anywhere else on the boat. I’ll snag you some.”
“Awesome. Thanks.”
“Later, bud.”
The door opened and shut as Suggs left. Plug checked his watch again—0555. He threw on his flight suit, wrapped the laces of his Belleville boots twice around and double-knotted them, and grabbed his notebook and empty coffee thermos. He took a deep breath and walked out the door.
Marching down the p-way, eyes still adjusting to being awake after only four and a half hours of sleep, he headed towards the galley. He would have to hurry through breakfast. He had a lot of work to do. Another day of making PowerPoint briefs and white papers for his new boss, writing flight schedules, and standing hours of watch in some tiny computer-filled room the SWOs called Zulu.
Plug was pretty sure that there was a conspiracy aboard the carrier. Each meeting he had was located on opposite sides of the monstrous ship. It was a workout just marching along the miles of passageways all day and night. Of course, he had no idea whether it was day or night, because he never saw outside the skin of the ship anymore.
He stood in the buffet line in the aft wardroom. There were several wardrooms aboard the carrier. He had to admit that the food was better here. It was higher quality, more plentiful, and almost always available. Meals were always buffet-style — none of that antiquated “request permission to join the mess” BS with the ship captain at every meal. Plug still asked to join the table, and he would tack on a “sir” if there was an O-5 sitting there. But the carrier had so many aviator-types aboard, their “chill” factor permeated the culture. Meals were just more laid-back here.
It was ironic that on Plug’s first tour in such an aviation-centric place, he — an aviator — was assigned to the only surface warfare — centric command. Plug was now the air operations officer for the commodore. The commodore had a staff of about twenty officers — almost all of them experienced surface warfare officers and senior enlisted who had served aboard ships. In addition to being in charge of the destroyers in company of the carrier, the commodore was also the sea combat commander. That meant that he was in charge of all the surface warfare missions and antisubmarine warfare missions that the carrier strike group would execute.
Plug piled two hard-boiled eggs, some sausage, and slices of fresh melon onto his plate. He then put a bagel into the assembly-line toaster, which spat out the blackened slices a few seconds later.
“Hey, Lieutenant McGuire.” One of the Desron guys he was working with. An SWO. This one was the future operations officer.
“Just call me Plug, man.” He placed his tray down at the table.
“Plug, got it. How’s the new job treating you?”
Plug just gave him a look as he smeared cream cheese onto his bagel.
“That good, huh?”
“I have no idea what I’m doing. We go from meeting to meeting all day long, planning flight schedules and helicopter logistics flights for tomorrow, for the next week, and for the next month. Then around noon, everything changes, and I throw out my plans and start all over again. The commodore is pissed at me every time I talk to him. I think he thinks I’m an idiot.”
“To be honest, we all kind of think that…”
Plug smiled. “I’m sorry, man. I’m awful with names. What’d you say yours was again?”
“John Herndon. I’m the Desron future operations officer. Don’t worry. You’ll get the hang of it. Hey, I think we’re on watch together tonight. You’re standing Zulu TAO-UI, right?”
“I don’t even know what you just said.”
“You’re the tactical action officer under instruction in the Zulu cell tonight.”
“Oh, yeah. Six o’clock, right?”
“Is that pilot for eighteen hundred?”
“Exactly.”
“You got your slides for the commodore’s brief this morning?”
“Yeah. But he’ll probably shit all over it.”
“I wouldn’t sweat it. He’s like that with everyone at first. Once he gets to know you, he’ll warm up. The key is making him look good in front of the admiral. You do that, you’ll be fine.”
An hour later, the Desron staff sat around their small conference table, briefing the commodore. A flat-screen on the opposite side of the room displayed the brief that had been updated with everyone’s slides only minutes before. Because the information in the brief — ship locations, status, and schedules — changed so frequently, this was the only way they could ensure that it would be accurate.
When it came time for Plug to go, he stood up, looking at the single slide that had taken him an hour to make. The slide had rows of ships and aircraft and depicted the surveillance coverage around the strike group and when the aircraft Plug had scheduled were set to take off and land.
“Commodore, good morning, sir. This shows the surveillance coverage we have for the next twenty-four hours before we pull into Hawaii.”
“What is that?”
Plug followed his finger to the screen. “What, sir?”
“It looks like we have a thirty-minute break there around twenty hundred. That’s unsat. Fix it.”
Plug sighed, trying to maintain his bearing. Was a half hour really that important? Fixing it wasn’t as easy as changing the slide. He was learning the painful truth about his new job. In order to make changes to the carrier strike group’s flight schedule, Plug had to beg, borrow, and steal from people he was not in charge of. He would have to go around to the various groups that scheduled and planned the flights taking off on the carrier and surrounding ships. Then he would see if they were able to change their own flight schedules. The aviators in the air wing’s operations department, the helicopter schedulers in the carrier’s squadrons, and the individual operations officers on each ship would all be affected.