Finn silently assessed the four other people in the bird, starting with the pilot. He could sense him regarding his passenger there in the back with disdain. An angry man. Finn never trusted angry men. This one was cursed with a chiseled face, classic Greek nose, olive complexion. A movie-star face. Nobody should be born that handsome. Good looks like that made it tougher to keep yourself in perspective.
Finn understood the type: his talents, his limitations. The pilot would never advance much further than where he was right now. He might be career navy but his trajectory was a dead-end street. Not that his ego was too big. It was too small. Too fragile.
Finn dropped the pilot from the sonar of his mind and moved on to the co-pilot.
Something about Finn had startled her when he first climbed on. She’d tried to hide it, but she wasn’t skilled at concealment. She was on the stick now and focused on her task. She said something to Movie Star and Finn caught the echoes of a Texas accent, light on the twang. West Texas, his guess. Strong, possibly headstrong. Someone on a mission. No dead-end street here.
Tall, good features. Must have taken a ton of shit on her way to flying a navy bird. The naval aviation officer track was brutal. Just gaining admittance was an intense selection process, let alone getting all the way through it. Not easy to make it this far. Even harder to do so and not turn mean. Finn read the co-pilot as tough on the surface but still green. He sensed a sadness just underneath, too, like she was grieving someone or something recent.
The crew chief in the seat next to him interrupted his thoughts. “Welcome aboard, Chief.” Finn looked at him but said nothing.
The junior guy, the crew’s avionics operator and designated SAR swimmer, grinned at him. Black dude, introduced to Finn as “Stickman.” Still had that new-guy sparkle. This was a kid who had not yet seen death up close.
Finn nodded.
They all had their jobs to do. He saw no reason to interfere or interrupt.
He didn’t speak a word the rest of the flight.
The helo threaded its way through the invisible corridors, slipping in on the carrier’s port side as fighter jets exploded off the deck’s bow and came screaming in aft to catch the big arrestor wires. Finn watched through the Knighthawk’s side window, absorbed in the skill of it all.
According to Kennedy, a carrier flight deck was one gigantic bolt-action sniper rifle, three and a half football fields long, only instead of firing steel-tipped 10-gram rounds it shot 25-ton fighter jets, firing and reloading at the rate of one every twenty-five seconds. Finn thought about the jet pilots strapped into their multimillion-dollar machines, being shot off the deck into the dark like bullets.
The idea of being encased in a supersonic steel tube like that made his balls clench.
The tall co-pilot put their bird down on the deck like a mother’s kiss on a baby’s cranium. She was good. He noticed her glancing in the pilot’s direction, trying not to look like she was doing it. Checking for signs of his approval. Professionally, though, not emotionally. Finn suspected she didn’t give a shit about his approval emotionally. Good thing, because she was never going to get it, not from him. No one was.
The young SAR swimmer slid open the cabin door. Finn followed him out and down onto the flight deck’s hot surface. The crew chief, Harris, walked him over to the edge, where they clambered down a short metal ladder onto the catwalk. Harris stepped through a hatch into the ship’s interior.
Finn hesitated.
So here he was. Boarding an aircraft carrier, being carted back to the States.
Leaving his team behind.
Harris turned and saw him looking back to the south, toward Bahrain. “Chief Finn?” When the SEAL didn’t respond he said, “Everything okay, Chief?”
Finn looked over at the other man. Nodded and followed him in.
Nothing was okay.