Power and Empire

Firsthand experience in cold water cajoled the SDO along in his routine. People who fell off ships rarely wore any sort of protective suit — and without any protection, the window for survival began to close at an extremely rapid rate.

Slaznik would check the weather again before he launched. Marginal weather at the station often sucked severely farther west in the strait. He pushed a speed-dial number on his cell and made his first call the OPS boss at home, holding the phone to his ear with a shoulder while he stepped into his Switlik dry suit.

It was a goofy thing and he didn’t admit it to anyone other than his wife, but he loved that orange suit. Wearing it along with the black SAR Warrior survival vest made him feel like a superhero.

He didn’t mind getting up in the middle of the night. Like his five-year-old son said, that’s when superheroes were needed the most.

• • •

Andy Slaznik had known he would someday become a pilot from the moment he saw his first crop duster growl overhead to drop a marker at the end of a row on four hundred acres of canola at his grandfather’s farm. He was nine years old, and his family had been visiting his mother’s parents in southern Alberta. The Piper Pawnee Brave had seemed low enough to reach up and touch.

Andy begged his granddad to make the hour drive to the Lethbridge city library, where he checked out as many books on aviation as he could fit in his scrawny arms — and then devoured them all in three days. His room back in Boise became a gallery of plastic models, and he bored his friends to tears with an intricate and ever-growing knowledge of each and every aircraft that hung from the spackled ceiling on bits of sewing thread.

An uncanny memory and a natural knack for math worked in concert to give Slaznik an SAT score of 1464. Midway through his junior year, he began the lengthy application process to both the United States Air Force Academy and the United States Military Academy at West Point. His GPA, superior SAT score, and a sub-two-minute 800-meter time on his high school track team got him accepted to weeklong programs at each school during the summer break before he was a senior.

The Air Force liaison from nearby Mountain Home AFB took one look at the boy’s stats and pushed him hard to keep his sights firmly fixed on the Wild Blue U. But a guidance counselor suggested he might consider the Coast Guard Academy. She told him that because of its smaller class size, the USCGA was considered more selective. She then said maybe he should forget it. It might be a great deal of work with such a slim chance of being accepted.

The challenge alone appealed to Andrew’s competitive nature. He liked to prove he could excel at the hard stuff. He knew that the Navy and the Coast Guard both had aircraft — and some hotshot pilots — but they also had boats, a lot of boats. Andrew didn’t want to do boats. He wanted to fly. And besides, the Air Force liaison kept reminding him that if he ever wanted to be an astronaut, he needed to go with the Zoomies.

In the end, it was the guidance counselor’s thrown gauntlet that found Andrew Slaznik sitting with a class of thirty-four other AIM summer-program cadet wannabes in New London, Connecticut, listening to various old-timers answer questions about their respective jobs. The discussion was informative enough, but there was far too much talk about boats. Andrew found his mind wandering, thinking about how cool it would be to tell his friends he was an astronaut.

And then a tall, gangly, redheaded MH-65 Dolphin helicopter pilot took the microphone. He’d been last on the program — and, looking back, Andrew understood why. None of the other pros wanted to follow this guy. The pilot regaled the eager young students with stories of killer winds and night flights over mountainous seas. To hear this guy tell it, he got into hairy situations every other day.

It was Andrew who asked the final question of the night, and even as he spoke, he felt his mind drift again, pondering what the guys at Colorado Springs had to offer him. Surely the Air Force had hundreds of pilots with swagger and stories like this guy.

Andrew stood to ask the question. “Sir,” he said. “How many people would you say you’ve saved over the course of your career?”

The redheaded chopper pilot was a lieutenant commander. Probably in his early thirties, still a few years away from making O-5, where he’d be forced into grad school and flying a desk more than his bird. He listened to the question, then leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds, moving his fingers over his thumb as if counting. After a moment, he looked up at Andrew and clarified.

“Do you mean pulled some retired granddad with a bad case of food poisoning off a cruise ship or literally plucked somebody from the jaws of a watery death?”

The cadet wannabes all chuckled.

“Let’s go with plucked from the jaws of death,” Andrew said, thinking maybe he’d hit a nerve.