The Elephant Game

by Andrew Watts

  The admiral sat back in his chair. “And they’re still deploying others towards the WestPac?”

  “Yes, sir. They’re going to join up with the two other strike groups that are already on station.”

  Admiral Manning put his thumb and forefinger to his lip, looking off into space. “They must really be worried.”

  The radio squelched and the lieutenant from the comms department immediately turned up the volume. They could hear the voice of one of the Pacific Fleet duty officers initiating communication. The conversation lasted a little over ten minutes. Admiral Manning did most of the listening, while his four-star boss gave him his orders.

  When it was over, Admiral Manning dismissed the lieutenants so that he could converse with his chief of staff. He also called in the CAG, the Ford CO, and the commodore, who each entered a few minutes later.

  “Gentlemen, have a seat. We need to talk.”

  Plug took his tray though the salad bar line. He had already placed a plate of meat lasagna on the tray, with two garlic breadsticks and a glass of bug juice. The salad was good quality. Ripe cherry tomatoes and crisp baby carrots. Fresh vegetables almost every day on the carrier. He couldn’t complain about that. It sure as hell beat the week-old brownish lettuce that seemed to always be served on board the smaller ships. Plus, he didn’t have to worry about the food rolling off the table since the carrier barely rolled.

  “Plug, you got a seat yet?”

  He looked over to see Kevin Suggs sitting alone at one of the four-seater tables, next to a TV playing an Armed Forces Network replay of the Super Bowl. Because who didn’t love watching the Cowboys lose again? America’s team, his ass.

  Plug slid his tray onto the table. “How is life as the loop?” Loop was the nickname given to flag officer aides. Admirals and generals were authorized to have an officer designated as their personal assistant. It was an extremely competitive assignment, as it combined great networking opportunities with the experience of witnessing how leaders operated at the highest levels of the military. The term loop referred to the gold embroidered braid that wrapped around the right shoulder of flag aides in certain uniform types.

  “It’s alright. Getting busy, though.”

  Another lieutenant sat down with them, this one wearing the blue working uniform with an information warfare pin on his chest. “You believe that shit?” he said to Suggs.

  Suggs introduced Plug and the lieutenant, who worked in the carrier’s communications department.

  The lieutenant asked, “So, Plug, you room with Suggs now?”

  “Yup.”

  He asked Plug, “How’d you get stuck with him?”

  “Well, I needed a room, and the Desron stateroom was filled. So I guess they figured since we were both aviators without a squadron, why not stick us together? Even though he is an inferior pilot, having no idea how to hover and all.”

  “Last I checked, they didn’t make Top Gun about helicopters, did they?”

  “One word, my friend. Airwolf.”

  Suggs laughed. “Touché.”

  Plug waved off the mock-insults. “So what’s wrong? Where were you guys coming from just now?”

  Suggs’s face grew serious. “We were in with the admiral while he was getting orders from PACFLEET. Some crazy stuff is going down, man. It appears that the Chinese have dispatched a strike group headed a lot farther east than normal. Lot of speculation on where they might be headed.”

  “What are you talking about? How many ships?”

  “About six of them, including a carrier.”

  Plug shook his head. “No, hold up. I was just getting briefed on this before watch. You got it wrong. There are six Chinese merchant ships crossing the South Pacific. That’s what the SAG is going to intercept. Farragut is only a few days from where they think they’ll start catching them on FLIR with helicopter flights.”

  Suggs waved his finger. “No, my friend. Two separate groups of Chinese vessels now, both headed east. You have the correct information on the merchants. But there’s another.” His head cocked at an angle to emphasize his point. “And these ones are warships.”

  Plug frowned. “How the hell did they get six warships headed this way without us knowing about it?”

  “We did notice it. That’s why we’re discussing it now.”

  “What do we think they are up to?”

  Suggs frowned. “Two schools of thought. One, they might be headed towards Panama to resupply or reinforce their wounded ships there.”

  “And the second theory?”

  “Some of the experts think that they might be heading in range of Pearl Harbor.”

  “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.

  The strike group’s flight schedule was like a giant puzzle. Everything had to fit perfectly together. The cycles of carrier-launched jet flights were almost always the limiting factor—the F-18s and F-35s were each a flying fuel emergency from the moment they took off. They had about ninety minutes to either land or refuel—after that, someone was in trouble. The multiengine cargo plane, the C-2 greyhound, flew on and off once or twice per day, and the first line of jets often launched after that. The radar control aircraft, the E-2C Hawkeye, was up before and after the jets. And a search-and-rescue helicopter was always airborne, staying close to the carrier, ready to retrieve anyone from the water in the unlikely event of a crash.

  Around the carrier, floating single-spot runways—some referred to them as ships—perpetually changed their distances from each other and the carrier. That, in turn, changed the time it took to fly from one ship to the next, the fuel required, and the weight that could be transported. And because the ship’s own schedules always changed—one destroyer might get sent fifty miles farther out to do a mission that was incompatible with conducting flight operations, for instance—the schedule never seemed to work.

  The fixed-wing guys thought the helicopters messed everything up for them. The surface warfare officers thought the helicopters always messed everything up for them. The two communities didn’t speak the same language or have a healthy appreciation for the other’s challenges. But Plug was expected to be the liaison between the two worlds, and make it all work.

  “Yes, sir,” he replied. No problem.

  Half a day and a dozen meetings later, Plug sat at one of the computer terminals in the back of the Zulu module, his eyes wanting to shut. There were six computers in the space that the staff members shared to get their work done when they weren’t actually on watch. Because the staff had well over six people, someone was usually standing over Plug’s shoulder, waiting for a computer to free up.

  Plug had finally gotten one of the carrier-based helicopter squadrons to agree to extend one of their flights an extra thirty minutes and refuel after that particular cycle of fighter jets landed, not before. He had tomorrow’s schedule written up and emailed out to the surrounding destroyers, giving their operations officers a chance to weigh in—which they always did.

  “You look tired, man.” It was John Herndon, standing over him. “Come on, let’s go get a latte before we go on watch.”

  Plug shot him a look. “A coffee?”

  “A latte.”

  “Are you messing with me?”

  “Tell me you know what I’m talking about.”

  Plug shook his head, his eyes barely open. He checked his thermos. Empty. “I need a coffee refill anyway. I’ll never be able to stay awake until midnight.”

  “You really don’t know what I mean. Okay, come on. Follow me.”

  Plug got up and followed him through out of Zulu, through the carrier’s combat direction center, down several ladders, and onto the main deck. Here the passageway was extremely wide and was the busiest foot traffic corridor on board. Hundreds of officers and enlisted were headed to and from various places on the ship. A bright red, white and blue barbershop pole spun next to one door, with a line of men waiting outside. And then, finally…
>
  “No kidding.”

  A big green-and-white Starbucks sign.

  “It’s one of the most popular destinations on the ship. Don’t ever come after zero nine thirty. Line gets too long.”

  They stood in line for about ten minutes but eventually were rewarded with hot, halfway decent cups of caramel macchiato.

  Plug sipped his. “It’s not bad.”

  “Nope. And all you had to do is walk half a mile up six flights of stairs, and spend five bucks.”

  Plug took another sip. “Alright, man, six hours of watch. Let’s do this.”

  They walked up to the carrier’s intelligence center and got a brief from the intel officer on duty. “The SAG is now about three hundred miles east of Guam, still searching for the Chinese merchant ships.”

  Lieutenant Herndon said, “Anything?”

  “Negative. Not on those guys. But there’s plenty of other stuff going on. Come here, I’ll read off the brief I’m prepping for my boss.” He scrolled through his computer screen, which showed a bunch of maps with various ships, submarines, and aircraft status reports on them. “We now have intel that a possible Chinese submarine is in the Eastern Pacific. And the aircraft carrier Shangdong has left port with a few escort destroyers. That’s the only activity going on in the Western Pacific that isn’t North Korea–related.”

  Plug said, “What’s going on there?”

  “Typical North Korea stuff. They’re saying they’ll turn all Americans to fire and ash, yada yada yada. But the reason that we’re concerned is because we’re seeing their military more active than normal. So, we’re keeping an eye on that.”

  They left the intelligence center and walked next door into the strike group’s command and control center. The battle watch captain was a balding submariner lieutenant commander, and he didn’t look like he was happy to be alive, let alone brief two junior officers.

  The battle watch captain said, “Alright, listen up, because I’ll only go through this once. We now have seven new ships in company for a grand total of ten surrounding the Ford. You knuckleheads down in Zulu need to get your act together and put them in screen and tell them to keep up. Right now, they’re all just jumbled up, and some are falling behind as we make our way to Hawaii.”