Adrift
Copyright© 2025 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 3
First Officer Tom Grant glanced up as Captain Roger Parker slid into the left-hand seat in the airliner’s cockpit. “Sorry I’m late,” the captain said apologetically to his copilot as he sat down.
“No sweat, Rog,” his copilot replied.
“Oh, you’re wrong there,” the pilot said with a laugh. He reached for the checklist, starting to leaf through it, to see what was left. “More than a dozen and a half years since 9/11 ... I never thought about it once.”
“Thought about what?”
“You remember the movie Paint Your Wagon?” Roger said, getting to work, preparing the 747 to fly.
Tom nodded, and his boss went on, “The line about the second and third best things in the world -- a glass of whiskey and a fine cigar. Momma got exercised, said the next thing her fair-headed boy was going to do was start consorting with loose women.” Captain Parker smiled at the thought. “The boy pops up: ‘That’s the best thing!’”
Even the normally taciturn Flight Engineer, Juan Dominguez de Castillo, laughed at that.
“Well, you know me; I love a good stogie,” their captain said, shaking his head in amazement. “It never occurred to me I have a cigar cutter on my key ring. I never thought about it once -- not in all those years.” He waved back in the direction of the terminal.
“Some bright boy finally noticed it. I mean, what do you do with your keys? You toss them in a dish, pass them to the guard, and take them on the other side. Finally, someone noticed the cigar cutter. Next thing I know, I have a dozen cops pointing their weapons at me.
“I ended up strip-searched. They went through my bags, every single piece of dirty underwear. They called System Operations, verified me six different ways from Sunday.”
“Boy, don’t you just feel more secure than ever?” Tom Grant said, his voice bitter.
“Ah, no,” Roger replied with a dramatic pause between the two words.
The three of them laughed together in the communion of those who work as opposed to those who sit in offices and dream up stupid ideas.
“But, all’s well that ends well. We should be able to get the bird up, even if a little late,” the pilot told the other two. He reached into his shirt pocket, took out two tablets, chewed, and swallowed them.
He saw Tom looking at him and grinned. “Marilyn took me to a new Mexican restaurant this afternoon. They brought out the really hot sauce, special for me.” He thumped his chest. “Oh, wow! Was it ever good! This good ol’ Texas boy was in heaven, let me tell you! No wimpy salsa that! Then about an hour ago, like mega heartburn.” He laughed. “Of course, right about then my pants were around my knees, and six guys had their pieces aimed at me. Not a good time to say, ‘Can I take a Pepcid right now’?”
The pilot looked over the flight manifest. “Well, nearly a full bird! It looks like travel and tourism are recovering. Samoa is nice this time of the year.”
The flight engineer chuckled. “Samoa has the same weather eleven months of the year. Warm, with humid afternoons and frequent showers. Two weeks in the winter and summer, the showers go on vacation themselves.”
“Awright, listen up, Marines!” Master Gunny Toby Howard’s voice boomed through the bus. A dozen Marines, ten men and two women, lifted their eyes to watch him. “Most of you, except for two, have deployed to the field with me before. Piece of cake.
“You will exit the bus and then load your duffel bags and backpacks aboard the cargo trolley. When you’re finished with that, assemble in squad order. Sergeant Ridgeway assures me, yes indeed, he personally saw our cargo containers loaded on the bird.”
The master gunny nodded at a tall, skinny, black man with short, nappy hair, wearing a florid shirt and Bermuda shorts. “Like SFC Ridgeway, you all know what’s supposed to happen. Don’t make me unhappy with you.”
“Yeah, this isn’t the regular SOP. The problems in Samoa blew up quickly. Worse, the powers-that-be have tried to cover up the seriousness of the trouble. That’s not going to work much longer, but that’s not our problem. Our job is to let the powers-that-be know what’s going on, real time.
“So, when I dismiss the formation, you will proceed to the boarding area. You don’t know another soul on the flight. You are in civilian clothes, but for sure you really aren’t candy asses from civvy street! You are US Marines, the best g’damned fighting force on the planet!
“You will behave yourselves on the flight! You are Marines! You will keep your lips and pants zipped! You will not promise the little guys or gals serving beverages how good a Marine can be in bed if you’re given a chance. You will be polite, Marines! You will not chase the flight attendants down the aisle, hoping to score one for the Gipper!
“Oh, yeah, leave the other passengers alone, too.
“You will not sit together; you will not congregate and bullshit each other about anything, not even what wonderful lovers Marines are or how cool your last firefight was. You don’t know each other. That’s it, period.
“This is an official troop movement, just like if we were in a C-130. Don’t forget!
“Oh, yeah, one more thing. I asked the LT if you could have a beer on the flight. He said of course not. Failing more specific direction, I took that to mean one isn’t going to cut it. So, no more than four beers, lady and gents! No more than four! If you get drunk and cause a fuss...”
The master gunny’s eyes grew hard. “I will kick your shitty ass out of the Corps after having broken each and every one of the nearly three hundred bones in your body first.”
The master gunner stared at his crew of “intelligence experts,” all of whom stared back at him. “Any questions?”
“No, sir,” one voice sounded.
The master gunner knew the ritual and in fact, he wasn’t that unfond of it.
“Sergeant Pierson, I’ve told you about a million times, you don’t say ‘sir’ to a gunny.”
A lean, young staff sergeant looked at his gunny with a serious expression on his face. “My pappy, sir, told me it never hurts to be polite to someone richer or more important than me. And for damned sure, be polite to someone who can order you to charge the hill. Ya’ll is about the only important person I know, sir. ‘Ceptin’ the LT.”
“Give your pappy a rest, Sergeant. Any real questions?”
There were headshakes, and then someone popped up, “Gunny, do the girls in the South Pacific really go around topless? All the time?”
“This is the 21st Century, Cooper. They go around with pierced navels, VD, and AIDS, just like the ladies down the road from the Camp Pendleton gate.” There were chuckles.
“Follow the blue suit, he’ll take us close to the gate area. Once we’re out of the secured area, split up. Singletons only. You all have tickets and boarding passes. There will be no gate check of your carry-on items, and if something should go wrong about that, the only thing you’d better have in your hands is a book or magazine. By the book!”
The gunny watched them get off the bus and take their duffel bags and backpacks from the bus and pile them on a baggage cart, before starting to walk towards the terminal building, led by one of the city cops. A captain. The door into the terminal also had a police white shirt there, and over the next few minutes, the gunny’s people filtered into the throngs on the concourse. After a few more minutes, he joined them.
Bess Griffen looked at her new husband and smiled.
“You sure you want to do this?” Wes Griffen asked his wife of thirty-six hours.
Everyone called him Griff. She’d wanted to call him something different, something special.
“Griff,” he had told her, “I can’t hardly imagine anything else.”
“We can’t afford to just up and cancel; they won’t refund the plane tickets; that’s eighty-five percent of the tour package. We only get one shot at a honeymoon, sweetie,” she told him.
Griff nodded. Since the trouble two weeks before in the Pacific, they’d both seriously thought about canceling their honeymoon. But this was their one and only shot at it. It would be a couple of years before they could afford it again.
From the podium at the boarding gate, the attendant made the first call to board passengers for the flight.
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