Joint Task Force #4: Africa (4 page)

“Ha, ha, Chief. That joke is as old as you are.”

“Thanks, Johnson. Just what I like on a flight. Respect from junior petty officers. Remind me to kick your ass when I have a free second or two.”

Johnson turned back to the cubicle. “Can I take this thing off now, Chief?” He drew back and gave Razi a light backhand slap. “And how can a sailor with fifteen years be a junior petty officer—Wait! Don’t tell me. Keep his nose clean and quit fucking up.”

“You should have been a chief by now, Johnson.”

“I know.”

“If you keep your nose clean and quit trying to break the noses of everyone you meet who you don’t like, then you might even make first class petty officer before the Navy chucks you out.”

“One thing I can count on, Chief, and that is your great disposition toward positive counseling. Now, can I?” Johnson asked, holding his hands out by his sides and glancing down at the straps.

“Go ahead.”

Razi looked toward the cockpit, but that wasn’t his territory. In the cockpit the pilot, copilot, and flight engineer wore their parachutes continuously. If the aircraft reached a point where they might have to hit the silk, those three would be too busy trying to keep the aircraft level so the crew could bail out to spend any time putting on their own parachutes.

He turned and started working his way back down the fuselage toward the rear of the aircraft. Razi unzipped his upper-right-arm pocket and pulled out a pack of gum, slipping a piece into his mouth. He watched the motion of the
aircrew slow as everyone watched him move aft. Their lives depended as much on how well those parachutes were packed as with how well they strapped them to their bodies. He pulled his left sleeve back and pressed the timer on his watch. Saw the time and grunted.

“Listen up, my fine fellow sailors!” he shouted as he neared the entrance hatch to the plane. “We don’t have these drills when we take off so you can grab your flight book and notch off a bailout drill. We do it so when—or if—the time comes for you to bail out of an aircraft that has decided to land without the discretion of the pilot, you’ll do it automatically because you’ve done it so many times as a drill.” He tapped his watch. Looking aft he saw Peeters step out of the rear galley to listen. “Nearly three minutes it took to get ready. That’s unsatisfactory. We’re going to do it again during this flight and we’re going to keep doing it until we get it down to a minute and a half. A minute and a half was what we were doing while we were in Rota and a minute and a half is what we’re going to do while we’re deployed to Liberia.”

“Ah, Chief,” MacGammon said, his head bopping and weaving as he pushed the parachute off his back. “We’ve done these drills so much we can do them in our sleep.”

“MacGammon, if you have to bail out, you think this aircraft is going to be flying along nice and level, not on fire, and not trying to fight the force of gravity? You think that? What the hell do you think an engine fire is going to do during those three minutes? I’ll tell you since you asked. It’s going to burn into the fuel tank. Then, it’s gonna cause an explosion that rips the wing off.” He put both hands on his hips—his John Wayne pose. “You can no more put on a parachute with the aircraft spinning around and around than you can shit gold.”

“Chief—”

“Sailor, stow that parachute properly and quit your backtalk.”

MacGammon shook his head.

Chief Razi drew himself up to his full height, turning his head right and left so he could see everyone in the aisle. The officers did their bailout drills with them and while he wasn’t adverse to helping the new officers, once they reach lieutenant commander rank, they were on their own. Lieutenant commanders could be a pain in the ass; just senior enough to not think of themselves as junior officers and junior enough to still need some professional guidance that only squared-away chief petty officers such as himself, Cryptologic Technician “R” branch Wilbur “Badass” Razi, could provide. Of course, even his wife didn’t call him Wilbur. What in the hell were his parents thinking to name a badass like him Wilbur?

“Take ’em off!” he shouted to those still wearing them. “Pack them and put them in their places. We’re going to try it again—”

Groans filled the fuselage.

“—later in the flight.”

The groans subsided.

“Sometimes Badass forgets,” Rockdale whispered to MacGammon.

“Man, don’t let him hear you call him that. Badass will feel he has to make us do two drills instead of just one, and he’ll use you and I as examples to the officers on how good he is in straightening us out.”

“Yeah, you know how he is,” a third aircrewman piped up as he shoved his parachute into the racks above the four lounge seats near the entry hatch to the plane.

“Oh, Stetson,” Rockdale grunted, struggling out of the tight straps. “I thought you Texans were mean, tough fighting machines.” The parachute eased off his shoulders. “There.”

“I prefer the Texan image of a love machine,” Tommy “Stetson” Carson replied.

“Yeah, longhorn steers,” MacGammon added.

Rockdale placed the parachute on the deck, the side previously against his back faced up. He laid the top straps across it, lifting the bottom straps over them.

“About the only image of a lover I can see of you is one with a fistful of dollars.” Rockdale lifted the parachute, leaned over the passenger seats along the rear left side of the EP-3E reconnaissance aircraft, and shoved it on top of another parachute someone had stowed.

“Better than what you’ve got in your fist.”

“You three gonna keep grab-assing,” Razi said, “Or, you gonna stow those parachutes and get to your positions?”

“Chief, mine’s already up there,” Rockdale said, smiling.

“Yeah, and with your aircrew skills, you probably got the straps tied together so they don’t fall apart. And, you, Carson. You gonna carry your parachute around with you for the mission or you gonna stow it properly?”

“Chief, I was just waiting for MacGammon to move out of the way.”

“Gee, thanks, Stetson,” MacGammon moaned.

“MacGammon, hurry it up. Why is it whenever there’s a problem, you seem to be nearby or in it?”

MacGammon shrugged. “Lucky?” MacGammon turned and threw his parachute up with the others. Standing on tiptoes for a couple of seconds, the experienced aircrewman shoved the parachute into its rack. When he turned, Chief Razi still stood there. “Hey, Chief, how come I don’t have a nickname like Stetson, here, and Rocky Rockdale?” He clinched his fist. “I want a name that sounds
studly
—”

“How about dickhead?” Razi said. “Now, shut your griping, stow that parachute, Carson, and you three get to your positions. We’re going to cross the border into Guinea
shortly and you can’t tell me you three have pre-missioned your positions. You think the mission commander is gonna delay on-track time so you prima donnas can finish telling each other how much you like each other?” He jerked his thumb toward the row of operating consoles. “Get your ass in gear,” he ordered. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Peeters watching him.
Damn good thing, too,
he thought.

“Here,” Rockdale said, taking the parachute from the shorter Carson. He twisted and shoved the parachute on top of another one above the passenger seats.

“You three are the last in the aircraft. You got FOD walk-down tomorrow. Maybe that’ll help you get your acts together.”

“Yes, Chief,” they all said in unison. Foreign Object Damage—commonly known as FOD—was something everyone did, searching the ground for objects that could be sucked up into the engine intake and cause damage or an explosion.

Razi watched the three hurry to their positions. He pulled the gum out of his mouth, wrapped it in the original paper, and twisted it with his fingers. Razi watched until the aircrewmen slid into their seats . . . waiting— There! They buckled their seatbelts. They’d learn. He turned and walked past the two cryptologic technicians manning the special console near the bulkhead of the small kitchenette at the rear of the aircraft.

“Hey, Badass. How many young sailors you convinced today to get out of the Navy?” Senior Chief Brad Conar asked with a hint of distaste.

“Pits, you shit-bird,” Razi said, reaching up and pulling a paper cup from the overhead storage area. “What’re you doing back here instead of up front? Fight engineers should be in the cockpit, not back here impressing newbies with their importance.”

Razi poured himself a cup of coffee, set it on the table, and slid into the booth alongside the senior chief, using his butt to push the older, lankier man against the bulkhead.

“Got that new trainee on board. Thought I’d takeoff back here with you passengers and see how the less fortunate live. Besides, it gives her a chance to be on her own.”

“Passengers hell. If it wasn’t for us, you wouldn’t have any reason to fly.”

“Yeah, and if we didn’t fly you, you wouldn’t have a way to do your mission.”

“Gripe, gripe gripe,” Razi said good-naturedly, ignoring the obvious dislike of the senior chief. He took a sip of the coffee. “She any good, Senior Chief Brad ‘Pits’ Conar, or is she an arrogant asshole like the rest of you flight engineers?”

“That’s
Pits
with a capital
P,
Badass, and, yes, she knows her stuff and like the rest of us flight engineers, she is modest to a fault, unlike certain chief petty officers who prance and strut to the officers.” Pits put a spread hand against his chest. “I have personally tested her aviation knowledge and without doubt, I know she can run rings around you.” Then in a lower voice added, “And, I have third class petty officers who can run rings around your knowledge of this aircraft.”

“Ain’t no way. No one knows the EP-3 fucking Echo better than me.”

“What’s the mission today, Badass? You guys going to keep us boring holes in the sky for ten hours, or you going to call it quits sooner than yesterday so we can get a good night’s sleep?”

Razi looked at the senior flight engineer, his thick eyebrows bunching as he gave quick consideration on what to tell Conar. Then, he nodded to himself, thinking,
He’s got the security tickets to know, and besides we’re all in this
together. Once you leave mother earth, what happens to one, happens to all. Of course, this is one senior chief I wish it would only happen to.

He lifted his cup and took a long drink. Coffee lost its heat fast at 22,000-feet altitude, and the paper cups didn’t help either. Paper cups, though, didn’t become projectiles when the aircraft had to take evasive action. Getting hit upside the head with a paper cup was preferable to the Navy ceramic. The rear of the aircraft was always cooler—colder was a better word—than the front part where the flight crew controlled the heaters.

“You going to tell me or are you going to play this ‘need to know’ crap? You cryppies are all the same, you know. Walk around like God—”

“I never said I wasn’t going to tell you. You flight engineers are a might touchy when you think someone is gonna dis’ you.” He pulled himself out of the booth, crumbled his cup, and tossed it in the trashcan. “I was just thinking that you being the senior flight engineer on board and all, and knowing how technical-competent you are on mechanical things, how in the hell was I gonna find the simple words necessary so you could understand what we’re doing today.” Razi shook his head. “It ain’t easy explaining this complex stuff to people who barely graduated from high school.”

Conar’s lips tightened, his mustache twitching slightly. “You know something, Badass, someday someone’s going to forget those muscles under that flight suit and whip your ass.”

Razi leaned closer to the senior chief, glancing around to make sure they were the only two in the galley. “Pits, it won’t be you. If you ever hit me and I found out, it might— just might piss me off.”

“Let me out, Razi. I can only tolerate so much of your arrogance.”

Razi slid off the padded seat so Conar could move.

Pits was half-out when the aircraft dropped a few feet and trembled as it hit slight turbulence. “Damn, better get back up there. Now, you going to tell me or not?”

Razi nodded. “When you turn southeast—” He motioned to the right “—onto the track running parallel to the north of the Liberian border, we’re going to try out this new infrared sensing device from Naval Research Laboratory.”

“Oh, yeah,” Pits said with mock laughter. “If we have to drop down to look at everything that emits heat in Africa, we might as well stay at fifty feet.”

“Supposed to be a little more complex than the normal infrared devices. This one detects a heat signature at high altitude. The heat signature profile bounces against a database of heat signatures to determine size and weight of whatever is emitting the heat. If the thing is moving, the computer calculates speed of motion. When all of those factors are combined, the system—called Dragnet—will provide an opinion as to what generated the heat signature.”

Conar listened as he pulled a fresh cup of coffee. “Sounds to me like
Star Trek
stuff, Razi. Even if this Dragnet can do this stuff that you say, out here you’re going to run into more than humans.” He stirred his coffee for a second and then looked up at Razi. “What about monkeys or gorillas? Wouldn’t this system call them human?”

Razi hadn’t given consideration to that. He shrugged. “Don’t know. This is the first time we’ve tried the system.” He turned and pointed at two operators sitting immediately outside the mess area. “See those two petty officers?” he asked, pointing. “They’re from Naval Security Group Activity San Diego. They’ve been training on the system for the past month, so we’ll have to depend on that training to tell us what we’re seeing.”

Conar took a swallow of the black coffee. “Guess that
means we’ll be going down for look-sees every time they spot something, huh?”

Razi nodded. “Guess so.”

Conar shook his head. Running his right hand through his hair, he faced Razi. “Just what I said. We might as well stay at fifty feet altitude. You know, it’s one thing to go low over the water to do an identification pass against a contact, and quite another to go low over a jungle where trees sometimes reach a hundred feet.”