by Andrew Watts
“Uh, yes, sir. Here she is.” The captain looked torn as he handed her the phone.
Her father’s voice was garbled. “Lieutenant Commander Manning, good evening.”
Her face was turning redder by the minute. The captain watched her. “Yes, sir?”
“The captain tells me that you want to do the search and rescue, is that true?”
Her father had used her rank when he’d addressed her. He was speaking to her in his official capacity. She was dizzy. Was he second-guessing her? He was an aviator. Not a pilot, but a Naval flight officer. It didn’t matter. He knew how it worked. He understood how strict the Navy was with its aviation safety protocol.
“Sir, our helicopter had a bad AFCS computer. We just replaced it with a good one. Technically we’re supposed to test it before we fly. But in this situation, I’m willing to accept the risk.”
Silence.
Finally, he said, “So you are saying you do not have a good aircraft?”
Victoria said, “Sir, that’s correct. But in this situation—”
“This is a yes-or-no question. Is your aircraft maintenance up or down?”
She hesitated. “Sir, technically it is down, but I request that you waive—”
“No, Commander. I do not give my consent. You stay where you are.”
A wave of fear washed over her as she realized what that would likely mean for the aircrew. If they were alive, she was their only hope of rescue. If her father didn’t let her take off…
“Admiral, with all due respect, I can handle this. I would be flying the aircraft during a maintenance flight tomorrow anyway. What’s the difference? People’s lives are at stake. Please, sir. Allow me to launch.”
A pause. “Commander, I don’t want to lose these men, but there are limits to how much loss…how much risk is acceptable.” His voice was emotional. A higher pitch than normal. A part of her brain couldn’t believe it. This wasn’t like her father. It was…inappropriate. He needed to weigh the two sides impartially, and he wasn’t doing that. He was making this call because it was her, not because it was the right call.
“Sir, are you ordering me not to go?”
“That’s correct.” She heard a click as the line went dead. Her mouth was agape.
She said, “He said no. We are not allowed to launch.”
The captain looked at her like she had leprosy and he might catch it. He took the phone and hung it up.
They both stood there a moment, swaying with the heavy seas. “That will be all, Commander,” the captain said, disappointment in his tone.
She walked back out of the room and headed for her stateroom, trying to hold herself together. When she reached her room, the chaplain was standing outside.
The lord works in mysterious ways. She could probably use a little chat with him right about now.
The chaplain said, “Air Boss, is it alright if we speak privately for a moment?”
“Sure, come in.” She opened her door and attached the latch that would keep it propped open. “Would you like to take a seat?”
“Let’s both sit down.”
She eyed him. “Well, who is this about?” She sighed. Which one of her men had a problem now?
“Lieutenant Commander Manning, I’m very sorry to tell you that your mother has passed away. She died this morning of heart failure.”
Present Day
USS Farragut
Eastern Pacific Ocean, 200 Nautical Miles West of Columbia
* * *
After lighting a fire under her pilots, Victoria retired to her stateroom. She looked at her watch. It was 2300. Time to start her evening routine.
She took out her notebook from her desk, and flipped to the last written page. Victoria crossed off several items on her to-do list:
* * *
Sixty minutes of cardio exercise.
Listen to one of the TED talk podcasts (while working out).
Complete five personnel evaluations—finish reviewing the E-4s and below.
Improve aircrew training plan.
* * *
After crossing the items she had completed, she looked at the items that remained.
* * *
One hour of professional study.
Empty email inbox.
Meditate twenty minutes.
* * *
Getting those items done would cost her sleep if she wanted to wake up before 0500, which she did every day.
Victoria clenched her teeth and got to work. The more she got that feeling that she didn’t want to do something, the more she pushed herself. There were two things that Victoria hated most in life: laziness and pity. Especially self-pity.
She spent the next hour studying from the helicopter manual. While she knew the three-inch thick book by heart, the knowledge was perishable. She believed that as a leader, she must always hold herself to a higher standard than she did her men. After all, she had to be their example.
When she was done studying, she spent the next hour catching up on email. She responded to several work-related emails, and saved the personal ones for last. David, her brother, had written her. His note was short and to the point. Like the rest of the Manning family, he wasn’t one to get overly emotional.
Victoria was glad to hear from him. It sounded like he was doing much better. But she worried that there were still several unresolved issues from his recent run-ins. She didn’t have all the details, but between phone calls with David and reading the news, she knew that something terrible had happened involving the Chinese. He’d promised her he would fill her in when they could speak in person. But he had asked that she refrain from asking him any more over the phone or unsecured email.
Her reply to him was the typical deployment family message. Generic musings about the daily routine. A few humorous complaints. And the promise that she missed him dearly.
Ever since David had been on the news a few weeks ago, Victoria had become a minor celebrity among the officers and crew on the ship. At first, she had received a lot of questioning looks, back when the news was reporting that David was tied to criminal acts. But after his name was cleared, the questions had become less accusatory. And now, all the news was about the potential war with Iran. People had stopped asking about her brother.
There was one email she didn’t respond to. Her father’s. Admiral Arthur Manning was now heading up the USS Ford Carrier Strike Group. It was an unusual assignment for someone who had been transferred out of another carrier command only a few months prior. But the Ford was the newest carrier in the fleet, and not yet ready for deployment. It was, she assumed, a retirement posting.
Victoria’s father had written her once a month for the past year. His emails always had the same formula. First, a vague message about what he was doing professionally. He would then recount a memory from their childhood. Sometimes it would be about Victoria’s mother, which often pained her to read. She didn’t like thinking about her mother. Lastly, he would write that he hoped to hear from her soon.
She hadn’t replied to any of the messages since her mother had died. But her mother’s death wasn’t the reason.
Victoria couldn’t speak to her father because she associated him with the worst moment of her life. The night that he’d refused to allow her to launch and rescue her downed squadron mates, a year ago. She partially blamed him, and partially herself, for their deaths.
She knew that everyone said it was just an accident. A one-in-a-million electrical failure. But when you fly a million hours, and many of those hours are at night and over water, that one time is deadly.
People also had tried to tell Victoria that her helicopter wouldn’t have made a difference. That it was unlikely that anyone had survived the crash. But no bodies were ever found. So no one could know for certain that she wouldn’t have made a difference.
She kept thinking about how she might have saved them, had her father not intervened. Yes, it would have been dangerous and against the rules to take her helicopte
r out that night, with its AFCS problems. But it would have been worth the risk.
The admiral had put his foot down, however. Victoria couldn’t help but think that he might have chosen differently if it had been an unrelated male officer, instead of her.
When her peers looked at her in the squadron spaces, she wondered if they questioned her bravery. Or if they whispered that daddy’s little girl was the reason that those three men never came home to their families.
It was a horrible thought. Partly because it made her feel guilty, and partly because she knew that her squadron mates were above that line of thinking.
She read her father’s email three times, and her cursor hovered over the reply icon. She shook her head and hit DELETE.
Crossing off another item on her list, she looked at the last one. Meditate. She checked that the door was locked and put her headphones in. She played music from her favorite composer, Max Richter. The sounds of violins, cellos, and modern synthesizers filled her ears. She sat on her thin mattress, feet up, hands on her knees. As she closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing, she tried to force all the anger, stress, and frustration out of her mind. It was not easy.
A few days later, Victoria was pleased to see that Juan’s skills as an airborne tactician were much better than his ability to fly and land the aircraft.
Juan said, “Come right to zero-nine-zero.”
“Roger, zero-nine-zero.”
Juan typed a few keystrokes and manipulated the small stick on his multipurpose display. “Okay, I have waypoints for you to fly to for our first sonobuoy drop. Just follow the needle.”
She looked over at his screen. “Nice job.”
Juan called to the ship, “Farragut Control, Cutlass 471, we’re ready to start the exercise. Any word from the Colombian submarine yet?”
“Negative, sir,” the ship’s enlisted air controller replied over the UHF radios. “But the captain says to proceed with the exercise.”
“Roger.”
Juan asked Victoria, “Is it normal for a submarine not to communicate when they said they were going to?”
“Not really. But I haven’t worked with the Colombians much. I’m sure that someone just mixed something up. They gave us the coordinates and the start time, so we should be good to go.”
“Okay. Well, please continue to fly to your waypoints that I put in. We’ll lay down the first sonobuoy pattern with DIFARs.”
“Sounds good.”
When they reached the first waypoint, a thunk sounded throughout the aircraft as the first buoy flew out the port side. A small parachute slowed its descent into the water. Several more buoys were shot out shortly after.
“AWR1, let me know when you’ve got them tuned up.”
A few moments later, he replied, “Sir, buoy number one’s tuned up. Working on the others.”
Once the sonobuoys were working, Juan hoped to be able to triangulate the position of the Colombian submarine and develop a track. The more information he got from the sonobuoy, the more he could refine the track’s course and speed. Then they would simulate a torpedo drop. The goal was to attack the Colombian submarine before it could get too close to their own ship, the USS Farragut.
AWR1 said, “Sir, we’ve got a submarine. Sounds kind of funny, but here—you should be able to start seeing something on your screen.”
“Yup. Okay, I’ve got it.” Juan began manipulating his keyboard. A few minutes later, he said, “There. Okay, we’ve got the submarine twelve miles south of our ship, headed towards her at five knots.”
“Not too shabby,” Victoria said. “Send the information back to the ship.”
Juan relayed the message to the Farragut’s controller.
“You ready to start pinging?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Victoria lined up the helicopter for the maneuver that would allow her to lower the dipping sonar into the water. They were in an out-of-ground-effect hover, the most intensive activity for a helicopter pilot. The heavy aircraft required just about maximum engine power to maintain altitude as the AN/AQS-22 Airborne Low Frequency Sonar lowered into the ocean.
“Alright, let’s start pinging AWR1.”
Victoria heard the off-key tone in her headset.
Juan began typing again. “Hmm. That’s weird.”
Victoria looked over at Juan’s screen. “What is it?”
AWR1 said, “Ah, I think the Colombians are going crazy on us.”
“Yeah…I’m getting multiple returns,” Juan said. “Do they have a decoy? Or is this just bad data?”
“I think that’s a system error, maybe.”
“How could it be a system error? This dipper is supposed to be brand-new.”
“I don’t know, sir, I just work here.”
Victoria said, “Guys, slow down. What are you seeing?”
Juan said, “The Colombian submarine is heading away from us at like…hold on…at like forty knots. That can’t be right.”
“Yeah, that’s garbage.”
“You said you’re getting multiple returns?” Victoria looked out of the aircraft to the right, scanning the surface of the water for any sign of a periscope.
“No, I think that was just the old track,” AWR1 said. “One looked like it was on the same course and speed, but I think…well, hold on.”
Victoria sighed. As well as Juan was doing, she was ten times faster. It was frustrating to sit there in a hover and have a less experienced tactician feed her slow bits of information. Teaching a subordinate something new took a lot of patience. But it pays off, she reminded herself.
“Actually, I’m not getting that second track anymore,” Juan said. “Alright, let’s set up for our attack run.”
Victoria frowned. This didn’t sound promising. They reeled up the dipping sonar and began forward flight. She looked at her copilot. “Give me somewhere to go.”
“Roger, boss. Hold on. Almost got it. There.”
Her needle spun around and she began heading towards the next checkpoint Juan had placed in the system.
“Alright, let’s do the attack checklist.” Juan began spouting off items, with the two other crewmembers responding every few seconds.
“Cutlass, this is Farragut Control. The captain wants you to return to the ship.”
Victoria shook her head. “We’re on our attack run, Control.”
“Negative, ma’am. The captain wants you guys to return now.”
Victoria frowned. This was ridiculous. It had taken them days to get ready for this rare and valuable training. “Farragut Control, please put the TAO on.”
“Roger, ma’am.”
The tactical action officer was the senior officer on duty in the ship’s combat information center.
“Boss, it’s OPS.”
The operations officer was standing TAO right now. Good, he was smart. He would help sort this out.
“OPS, hey—can you tell me what’s going on? We’re about to go on our attack run of the Colombians, and we’re being recalled to the ship. But we’re scheduled to fly for the next two hours. The next crew is supposed to fly after us.”
“Boss, the captain is cancelling the flight schedule.” His voice sounded defeated.
“Why?”
“We just got sunk, boss. The Colombian submarine radioed us a minute ago. We’re dead.”
Two hours later, Victoria and her crew stood in the ship’s combat information center with a dozen of the ships personnel. The anti-submarine warfare officer, a lieutenant junior grade, was briefing the ship’s captain on the results of the exercise.
The captain pounded his fist down on the chart table. “ASWO, you are telling me that a Colombian diesel submarine sunk our boat? Are you kidding me?”
“Yes…yes, sir,” the young officer stammered.
Victoria couldn’t believe this. It was training. Crucial training, rare training with an actual submarine. If she were the captain, she would have just asked the Colombian submarine to reset so that
they could try again. But for some reason, the captain wasn’t looking at this exercise as a training opportunity, but instead as some black mark that everyone needed to be shamed for.
The captain looked around the room. His eyes got to Victoria. “Air Boss, why did this happen? Didn’t you guys find the submarine?”
“Sir, we had good contact, but then it appeared as if there were two separate tracks. They were diverging. So we went for the one that we felt was most likely the Colombians.”
“And?” said the captain in an accusatory tone.
“And…it appears that we had the wrong contact, sir.” She spoke without emotion. Better to get it over with and give the man what he wanted.
“Exactly. You were too late. Your aircrew, and everyone on this ship, failed me.” He looked at his ASW officer. “ASWO, I take this as a personal insult. Let this be a lesson to you. Do not fail me again.”
It was not often that Victoria witnessed a commanding officer treat his men like this. He was speaking to them as if they were children. The XO stayed silent behind the captain. His was a hard job. He was a good man, and his instinct was surely to say something constructive. But anything he said right now would be seen as going against the captain—as a sign of disrespect. Something that would hurt his ability to influence the captain behind closed doors.
When she saw that no one else was going to speak, she decided to see if she could salvage anything. “Captain. Sir, we had originally been scheduled to fly two bags of ASW today. With your permission, sir, I’d like to launch my second flight so that we can get some more training.”
“Your second flight, Air Boss?”
She held her breath, trying not to show any of her exasperation.
“It’s not your flight, Air Boss. It’s mine. I’m the captain. I own these aircraft. Or did you forget?”
“Sir, I meant no disrespect.”
