.” added another unfamiliar sailor.
Sponge tilted his head up and saw an older sailor under the cranial and goggles next to him— maybe an officer, a medical type. He decided not to fight. I’ve had enough fighting for one night. I’ll let someone else take care of me.
“Lie down here, sir. You’ll be OK,” the first sailor said.
Sponge got in the stretcher and the medical department sailors strapped him in. Now on his back, Sponge faced the rain and had to squint his eyes to shield them from the raindrops. He heard the sound of helicopter rotor blades getting louder and louder. Is that guy going to land on top of me? The straps were cinched down to keep him in place, and he couldn’t move his arms. White smoke was still pouring from underneath 406, the Air Boss was yelling orders over the 5MC he didn’t understand, and rain was pelting his face. Sponge couldn’t see well and that scared him. A sailor, or maybe the old medical guy, stood over him and talked into a portable phone. “Pull down my visor!” he yelled, but no one heard him over the din. Then someone bumped the stretcher, which sent a sharp pain into his left thigh.
Sponge snapped. The tension of the past five hours — beginning with the XO’s bullshit brief, followed by launching in awful weather, dodging the embedded thunderstorms during the hop, marshaling in the clag, and finally ending with his night-in-the-barrel foul decks, sour tankers, jinking ships and a pitching deck barricade — turned to rage in an instant. Everyone on this ship really is trying to kill me! he thought.
Lieutenant Junior Grade Robert K. Jasper, United States Navy, drenched and immobile, had had enough. He took a deep breath, tensed his body and exploded with a roar he was certain could be heard by the plane guard destroyer across the waves.
“Get me outta here! Now! RIGHT Fucking NOW!!”
From the desk chair in his stateroom, Wilson watched the E-2 grow larger in the PLAT crosshairs. When it touched down and rolled out on centerline, the nose gear tires, in a blur, rushed up and over the embedded flight deck camera.
With his legs stretched out in front of him and his hands folded on his lap, Wilson sat alone in the stateroom to escape, for a moment, the pressure-filled aftermath of the barricade. Cajun and Olive had diverted with most of the older Hornets to Thumrait to be out of the way while the crash crew removed 406 from the angle and swept the deck for debris. Making the deck ready for recovery took almost an hour, and Wilson was surprised that the ship then recovered the remainder of those airborne, the
