SAR
by John Van Kirk
Back aboard the USS Thomas Jefferson after seven and a half hours in the air, having refueled from a hover over the back of a frigate and seen nothing but water for most of the flight, Lieutenant Junior Grade Henry Bowman learned the names of the pilot and radar officer who had gone down. Lieutenant George “Spanky” Cruikshank and Lieutenant Commander Bill “Catfish” Bafford. Bowman knew both of them by sight from the wardroom. They’d stood in line together for late night sliders, though he couldn’t say he ever had a conversation with either of them. Bowman and his crew had searched until being called off, following an intricate pattern of expanding squares out from the point where one of the Air Wing’s F-14s had disappeared from the radar. Pfft. One minute it was there, burning along at a couple hundred knots, 3000 feet over the open sea, the next minute it was gone without a trace. At least without a trace on the radar scope. And, if they had searched in the right place, without a trace on the sea either. After the routine debriefing in the squadron ready room, The Air Wing Safety Office called Bowman and his crew in one by one to debrief them further on what they’d seen. The mishap investigation had already begun.
—What was your altitude when you first saw this thing?
—My crewman first saw it from 500 feet, asked me to go lower for another look. I didn’t even catch a glimpse of it until we were below 300.
—What did he say it looked like from 500 feet?
—He didn’t say. Said he had something. I think he said it might be a raft, but I’m not sure. You should ask him.
—We will. When you first saw it, what did you think it was?
—Wreckage, maybe. Something flat, piece of rudder or tail.
*
They’d already been searching for three hours. In the middle of the Red Sea. Out of sight of land. Sky milky gray, undefined. Sun a blur, marginally brighter than the hazy overcast. Sea also gray, barely darker than the sky, long shallow swells. Crew bleary-eyed and tired. Bowman glanced down at the search pattern on his kneeboard, then checked the time on the eight-day clock on his instrument panel. Twenty-two seconds until his next turn.
The crew chief’s voice crackled over the radio.
—I’ve got something. About two o’clock, 300 yards, three o’clock, we’re past it. Four o’clock. Can you come back around? Go down a little lower?
—Coming right, keep talking. What’s it look like?
—I don’t know. But there’s something in the water. It doesn’t look like a raft. But it’s bigger than a man.
—Color?
—Brown, maybe.
—You still got it, Chief?
—Yes, sir.
—I’m descending to 300 feet. Where is it now?
—Five o’clock, coming around to four, three. About 200 yards. Passed it again. Still not sure what it is, sir. Looks flat, like a door. We need a closer look.
—Okay, coming around again. I’ll bring us into the wind. Keep talking to me.
Bowman circled to the right again, coming into the wind, and brought the helicopter into a hover 40 feet above the waves. Light chop, swells about 3 to 5 feet. The water silver and gray as a dolphin’s flanks.
—Still see it, Chief?
—Yes, sir. Two o’clock, 100 yards, the chief said. It’s not a raft. I’m not sure what it is.
—I think I see it. Could it be wreckage?
—Can’t tell from here.
—Okay, guide me in.
—Roger, sir. Easy forward, easy right.
—I’ve got it now. A piece of wood?
—Stop forward. Easy right. It’s a door, sir.
—What?
—It’s a door. Steady. A regular door, like from a house. Or maybe from a boat.
—Damn, Bowman said, getting a better look as it passed under the rotor wash. A fucking door.
Two panels, like for a closet, still some white or pale green paint on it in places, but mostly bare wood, floating right on the surface, rising and falling gently with the swells, now being battered by the artificial wind blown down by the rotor.
—All right, take down the coordinates, time 1602. Let’s get back to our search pattern.
—Yes, sir, the chief said.
—Bummer, Bowman said. He pushed the nose forward and started his climb out.
*
—You’re sure now it wasn’t aircraft wreckage, the officer in charge of the investigation asked.
—I told you it was a door. I don’t remember noticing if there was any hardware attached, hinges, knob. I doubt it. I think I would have noticed. Ask the chief.
—Do you think the crew of the plane that went down could have seen it from 3,000 feet?
Bowman hadn’t thought of that. Had they seen it? Gone down for a closer look and ended up flying into the water?
—I don’t think so, sir. My guy barely saw it from 500 feet at 60 knots. And he was looking. The Tomcat was at 3000 feet and doing what, 300 knots? I doubt they would have seen it.
*
Later, lying in his rack, Bowman thought about that door in the sea. Once the chief told him it looked like a door, he had to see it for himself. They could have done a fly-by. It hadn’t really been necessary to pull into a hover and go right over to it. But he couldn’t resist. Could anybody? The chief never hesitated. Easy right, sir, he had said, as if they were going in to drop a swimmer, or lower the hoist to the deck of a frigate or a destroyer. A door….
A forbidden door. Who can resist a forbidden door. A door into the sea.
And if you could go through that door, somehow, open it like a trap door in a stage floor and pass through the surface of the ocean, where would it take you? Davy Jones’ locker? A storybook undersea world where slow patrolling sharks passed silently among the skeletons of dead sailors manning the decks of wrecked ships? Would Spanky and Catfish be there, newly arrived, still in their flight gear as if they had just landed and were squeezing in line for sliders, drowned fishermen on either side? This was the Red Sea, famous for shipwrecks since ancient times, watery grave to thousands of mariners going back to the Phoenicians. And what about Pharaoh’s army, swallowed up by these same waters after Moses led the Israelites across to begin their 40 years of desert wanderings?
Crossing into an underwater dream, Bowman found himself in this liquid world, swaying gently with the currents, magically able to breathe, moving in shafts of aqueous light among shades who drifted up to him as the shades in Hades drifted up to Odysseus to give him news of the dead and get news of the living. He felt himself drawn in, crossing shallow reefs into darker blue water, ultramarine, where the murmur of indistinct voices drew him on, urged him to go deeper, into the great rift, over 7,000 feet deep, where the tectonic plates of Africa and Arabia were slowly backing away from one another.
Suddenly whatever mechanism or magic had allowed him to breathe failed, as if by giving a scientific name to where he was he’d broken the spell. He was starving for air, swimming madly, but which way was the surface? Blue-black darkness in all directions. It must be night now. The shafts of light were gone. He couldn’t tell up from down. His lungs ached, craving oxygen. He would drown if he didn’t get to the surface. His chest convulsed, his mouth filled with salty water which he fought to keep out of his lungs, choking, flailing his arms and legs in pure panic.
He woke with a gasp, breath heaving, disoriented, ears aroar, to find himself in his rack, the curtain drawn, the ship rising and settling, his body pouring sweat and becoming lighter and heavier against the thin mattress, the incessant roar still surging in his ears. He tried to get control of his breath.
The number two cat above his head fired. The roar moved off, died away into the general heavy equipment assembly line noise of the aircraft carrier. He was beginning to breathe normally now. Out of the general confusion of noise he distinguished the metal on metal slide of the hydraulic shuttle being drawn back and clanking into place, the loud thunk of the Jet Blast Deflector lowering back into the deck. An F-14 had just been launched and another jet was maneuvering into position. He heard the JBD grind back into the up position behind it. Heard the engines shift into afterburner. Another F-14. They’d lost one plane with its crew just hours ago, but flight ops didn’t stop.
Bowman looked at his wristwatch, its hands glowing in the curtained-off darkness. The Petty Officer of the Watch would be in any minute to wake him for his next flight. He lay on his back as the Tomcat roared off the deck only a few feet above his head. He focused on the gentle movement of the ship. This was home. This was his life. He had come back through the magic door into his real world, an aircraft carrier at sea.
John Van Kirk is the author of the novel “Song for Chance” (Red Hen Press). His short fiction has earned the O. Henry Prize and The Iowa Review Fiction Prize and has been published in a variety of magazines and literary journals. A Navy helicopter pilot in the 1980s, he now lives and writes in Kentucky.
Death and injury don’t only come in combat. This story focuses on the kind of loss that can happen on a perfectly ordinary day, in training, in “peacetime” operations and exercises, in the daily routines of military service.