Unknown Rider

“Three oh seven checked in bravo.”

Bravo?

Adam spun in his seat and looked over at Gunny, who was hanging his head in despair. The Maintenance Officer was already on the staff noncommissioned officer for open maintenance actions that weren’t even downing discrepancies. They were “up gripes,” which meant the jets could still fly and were Partially Mission Capable, or PMC. But a jet coming back “bravo” meant that it was Non-Mission Capable, or NMC, and would require maintenance before it flew again.

Down, but not gone. Like she had told him it would be.

“Roger,” he replied. “What for?”

“He didn’t elaborate.”

Adam couldn’t help but wonder if whatever he was down for was somehow related to what Chen had told him would happen. It was obvious things hadn’t gone the way she had expected. He pushed back from the computer and stood. He didn’t have a good excuse, but he needed to get word to her that the F-35C was coming back.

Gunny spit the plug of tobacco into a Gatorade bottle wrapped in athletic tape. “Where you goin’, Garett?”

“Gotta use the head, Gunny.”

The maintenance control chief nodded his bald head and went back to pecking on the computer. Adam hesitated for a second before turning for the door, figuring he had time to send his message before the JSF made it back. He had just stepped out into the hall when he heard Gunny’s voice boom after him.

“And change that fucking uniform! You’ve got paint all over it.”

* * *

A few minutes later, Adam rotated the long-armed handle on the watertight door and pushed it open, exposing only pitch black. He stepped out onto the catwalk, then closed and dogged the door behind him, standing with his back to the steel hull as he let his eyes adjust to the darkness and listened to the water rushing by sixty feet below him. The edge of the flight deck was just above his head, and a short climb up the ladder to his right would take him to what he really wished he was doing instead of being stuck indoors as a glorified paper pusher.

While most of his fellow Marines with an aviation Military Occupational Specialty, or MOS, had gone to Pensacola for advanced training, Uncle Sam had sent him to Newport, Rhode Island. For a foster kid from California who went to boot camp in sunny San Diego, that one winter in the Northeast was enough to convince him he belonged on the West Coast. The jury was still out whether he belonged in the Marine Corps.

Adam rarely spent time on the flight deck, and never during flight operations, but he was convinced that was where he wanted to be. Every time he sat down at his computer and waited for the system to log him in, he daydreamed about the warm sun washing over him as he ducked under exhausts and dodged spinning propellers. Compared to the purgatory of maintenance control, the flight deck was a wondrous splendor and the proverbial greener pasture.

But even though that was what he wanted, it still terrified him. He would have preferred waiting until daylight when he could see more than six inches in front of his face and spot the dangers lurking around him, but he couldn’t wait that long to send his message. So, he ignored his pounding heart and pushed through the fear to make his way along the bulkhead to the railing aft of the Sea Sparrow launcher.

He was at the stern of the ship, just to the port side of the landing area, and knew he wasn’t supposed to be there. But he didn’t have a choice.

How did I end up in this mess?

But he knew how, and it wasn’t overly complicated. A beautiful woman had been the downfall of many men through history, but he had never thought he would fall victim to something as banal as sex. Until, of course, Chen approached him at the Shore Club in Pacific Beach. Within five minutes, he knew he would do anything she wanted.

And he hated himself for it.

Committing treason had seemed so simple in the abstract. But now, as he skirted along the haze-gray painted steel to the platform just above the R2-D2-looking Phalanx Close-in Weapon System, he couldn’t help but question every choice he had ever made. Part of him was relieved that whatever fate had been planned for the F-35C failed to materialize and that the Navy pilot would return safely to the carrier.

“I’m so stupid.” His words sounded hollow against the wind whipping through the missile launcher behind him. It was an empty chastisement but made him feel marginally better.

Adam gripped the railing and stared into the distance, barely able to make out the carrier’s wake in the starlight. He caught sight of a pair of slow-blinking wingtip strobe lights flying closer to the ship and recognized them as belonging to the once doomed fighter. There was no question the chicken had come home to roost.