Geri Krotow - Navy Rescue

Not that she’d ever been in the dating scene. Because of Drew. Because they’d been together since flight school in Pensacola, Florida.

From the beginning they knew their marriage faced more challenges than most—long deployments, geographical separation, war. Hurdles that wouldn’t go away until one or both of them resigned from the navy. Drew didn’t have the passion for flying that Gwen did and they’d agreed that she’d stay in while he got out. They both assumed Gwen would eventually resign her commission and fly for a commercial airline.

They’d survived three intense years after Drew got out of the navy and went back to school to earn his doctorate in Physical Therapy. His PT practice had thrived after only a year.

As his career took off, so did hers. Unfortunately, their marriage tanked.

She still mentally kicked herself for not seeing the inevitability of their divorce. That would’ve saved them both so much emotional distress. Very few dual-active-duty couples made it for the long haul. Factor in how young they’d been when they got married, and the odds had never been in their favor.

The long deployments and wartime assignments had been hell for both of them, but her performance earned her top marks and led to this tour. The ultimate goal all career officers chased after—the command tour.

Serving as the Executive Officer of Patrol Squadron Five-Two, the Grey Sharks, she’d had two more months until she’d become the commanding officer. A coveted twelve-month stint that had taken her entire career to reach and taken her marriage with it.

Her squadron’s mission was to conduct reconnaissance and antisubmarine warfare all over the globe. They provided real-time intelligence to operational ground forces and operational commands, no matter which theater they flew in. Often her missions kept civilians safe from unspeakable terrorist events. Sometimes it was simply reconnaissance. Other times, Gwen’s aircraft carried weapons, or helped others aim their weapons on the enemy target.

“See the flashes, XO?” David pointed starboard of the nose, to where sharp points of light lit up the not-distant-enough horizon.

“They’re not happy. Good. That’s our job.” She referred to the insurgents who were shooting off AAA, antiaircraft artillery, in an effort to take her aircraft down.

“We’re too far away for those triple-A rounds, Commander,” one of the radar operators said over the ICS or intercommunications system.

“And we’re going to keep it that way, crew.” Gwen spoke into her microphone as she eyed her fuel levels.

She glanced over at her copilot, his profile relaxed but alert in the starboard seat. Young and supersmart, he reminded her of Drew and of herself. Once again she lamented that they’d been so young when they started out in the navy and in life. Too young to know how to make a marriage work.

She contracted and relaxed her abs and her glutes. It eased the discomfort in her lower back.

At least she and Drew had remained good friends. That was more important than a marriage, in so many ways.

Drew hadn’t been impressed with her selection to command. He was proud of her, unquestionably. He’d supported her through the wartime deployments—by getting her mail, doing basic admin stuff a spouse often did, handling household responsibilities. But they’d been divorced for five years when she left last month. Neither of them had remarried, but she expected he’d be the first one to make that leap.

He’d wanted to start a family. She’d wanted to wait.

Tonight, at the end of a long mission, flying through a hell of a storm, she wondered if she’d been nuts to stay in the navy, to go through so much, for this last operational tour. Had it been worth it, giving up so much to become a commanding officer?

Lately she’d begun to suspect that she’d lost more than her marriage in the process. She didn’t know who she was anymore, except for her military vocation. If she hadn’t screened for command, would she have stayed in to make the twenty-year mark required for retirement?

“Shit! Incoming starboard, three o’clock! Probable missile!” The aft observer’s scream in her headset shattered her thoughts.

“Confirmed surface-to-air. Son of a bitch!” The radar operator validated that the sighting wasn’t another aircraft or fireworks.

Cold dread gripped her.

“I see it. Hell, it’s closing, XO!” Her copilot had his hands on the yoke, his head swiveled around to the right as he sighted the missile off their starboard side.

Preflight intel confirmed the existence of AAA during their mission brief, but never mentioned manpads—portable surface-to-air missiles.

They had an incoming that could blow them all to bits.

She heard screams and shouted curses over the ICS.

Drew.

Shudders buffeted the fuselage of the P-3, and Gwen’s operational instincts pushed anything else out of her mind. The plane rolled alarmingly to port and she threw a quick shout at her copilot. “Help me out here, David!”

“Engine number four, gone. Wing on fire.”

She never lifted her gaze from the control panel, where she confirmed that they’d lost an engine. Annunciator lights in the cockpit also indicated that number three, the other engine on the starboard wing, looked as if it was going to quit at any moment.

“We’ve lost both hydraulic systems,” the FE shouted.

“Roger. Pull the boost out handles!”

The FE leaned down and pulled the three yellow-and-black striped handles by his feet.

This left them with only manual control of the aircraft.

“What’s next, XO?” David yelled into his mic, even though he was right next to her. They’d never hear each other over the roar of the aircraft as it struggled to maintain altitude.

It was a losing battle. The altimeter showed they were dropping at an alarming rate.

One, maybe two minutes was all she had to prepare her crew.

They’d trained with the hope of three minutes.

“We’ll never make it to land, David.” She tore her gaze from the instrument panel and looked at him. His profile was set and determined, but she recognized the same fear she felt.

No one wanted to die. Not like this.

“You with me?”

He turned his stare on her and an understanding passed between them.

Whatever it takes.

Yells and shouts mixed with expletives over the ICS as the crew went through their trained-for responses.

The flight engineer pushed the button that issued the deadly warning—one long ring on the command bell. The sound she never wanted to hear while flying a P-3 reverberated through the entire aircraft.

They were going to ditch.

“Prepare to ditch!” She yelled what might be her last command—she had no choice. They’d lost two engines and were damned lucky they were still airborne.

The controlled panic of the crew aft of the flight station was palpable. Gwen heard swear words, prayers then silence as the country’s best-trained professionals prepared to fight for their lives.

Lives in her hands.

“Everyone got their LPAs on?” She referred to the survival vests that would be their only flotation device, other than the three life rafts, once they were in the harsh seas.

“Condition One set!” Lizzie, the TACCO or tactical communications officer, confirmed that everyone was prepared to ditch.

God help us all.

Ten thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean, approximately five miles off the southwest tip of the Philippines, they were about to ditch. The condition of the sea was abysmal, with waves that were ten feet and higher, And it was quarter past midnight.

Pitch blackness.

Her worst nightmare come true—a nighttime ditch in rough seas, miles from land, oceans from the nearest naval vessel.