Christmas at Henderson's Ranch Read online

  Gail wondered if they were making the ride extra rough just for her or were they always like this; she suspected the latter. Still she wanted to shout at them like Bones from Star Trek: I’m a chef, not a soldier, dammit. But being a good girl from South Carolina, she instead kept her mouth shut and stared at her fast-approaching new billet.

  The USS Peleliu was an LHA, a Landing Helicopter Assault ship. She could deliver an entire Marine Expeditionary Unit with her helicopters and amphibious craft. Twenty-five hundred Navy and Marines personnel aboard and it would be her job to feed them. All the nerves she’d been feeling for the last five days about her new posting had finally subsided, buried beneath the tidal wave of wondering if she was going to survive to even reach the Peleliu.

  At first, the ship started out as black blot on the ocean, silhouetted by the setting sun that was turning the sky from a golden orange over to more of a dark rose color.

  Then the ship got bigger.

  And bigger.

  In a dozen years in the Navy she’d been aboard an aircraft carrier only once, and it lay twenty minutes behind her. She’d been there less than a half hour from when the E-2 Hawkeye had trapped on the deck. They’d shipped her to the Peleliu so fast she wanted to check herself and see if she was radioactive.

  It didn’t matter though; she was almost there. From down in the little riverine speed boat, her new ship looked huge. The second largest ships in the whole Navy, after the aircraft carriers, were the helicopter carriers.

  Gail knew that the Peleliu was the last of her class, all of her sister ships already replaced by newer and better vessels, but even six months or a year aboard before her decommissioning would be a fantastic opportunity for a Chief Steward. Maybe that’s why they’d assigned Gail to this ship, someone to fill in before the decommissioning.

  Fine with her.

  She was still unsure how she’d actually landed the assignment. She’d spent a half-dozen years working on the Perry Class frigates as a CS, a culinary specialist. Her first Chief Steward billet had been at SUBASE Bangor in Washington state feeding submariners while ashore until she thought she’d go mad. She missed the ship’s galleys and the life aboard.

  Then she’d applied for a transfer, never in her life expecting to land Chief Steward on an LHA. After the aircraft carriers, they were the premier of Navy messes. Chefs vied for years to get these slots and she’d somehow walked into this one.

  No, girl! You’ve cooked Navy food like a demon for over a decade to earn this posting. Her brain’s strong insistence that she’d earned this did little to convince her.

  And she hadn’t walked into this, she’d flown. It had taken three days: Seattle, New York, London, Madrid, and Dakar, each with at least six hours on the ground, but never enough to get a room and sleep. And then an eyeblink on the aircraft carrier.

  It didn’t matter. It was hers now for whatever reason and she couldn’t wait.

  The LHA really did look like an aircraft carrier. She knew it was shorter and narrower, but from down here on the waves, it loomed and towered. One heck of an impressive place to land, girl. She could feel the “new posting” nerves fighting back against the “near death” nerves of her method of transit over the waves.

  The flattop upper deck didn’t overhang as much as an aircraft carrier, but that was the only obvious difference. Like a carrier, the Flight Deck was ruled over by a multi-story communications tower superstructure and its gaggle of antennas above.

  On the deck she could see at least a half-dozen helicopters and people working on them, probably putting them away for the end of the day. It seemed odd to Gail that they were operating so far from the carrier group. It had taken an hour even at the riverine’s high speed to reach the Peleliu and she appeared to be out here alone; not another ship in sight.

  In the fading sunset, the ship’s lights were showing more and more as long rows of bright pinpricks. The flattop was at least five stories above the water.

  The riverine boat circled past the bow and rocketed toward the stern. Gail had departed the aircraft carrier down a ladder on the outside of the hull amidships. But here they approached the stern.

  That was the big difference with the LHAs; they had a massive Well Deck right inside the rear of the ship. She’d seen pictures, but when her orders came, they’d been for “Immediate departure.” No time to read up on the Peleliu. So, she’d learn on the job.

  A massive stern ramp was being lowered down even as they circled the boat. It was as if the entire cliff-like stern of the boat was opening like a giant mailbox, the door hinging down to make a steel beach in the water.

  Also like a mailbox, it revealed a massive cavern inside. Fifteen meters wide, nearly as tall, and a football field deep; it penetrated into the ship at sea level. Landing craft could be driven right inside the ship’s belly, loaded with vehicles from the internal garages or Marines from the barracks, and then floated back out.

  The last of the fast equatorial sunset was fading from the sky as the riverine whipped around the stern at full-speed in a turn she was half sure would toss her overboard into the darkness, and roared up to the steel beach.

  Inside the cavern of the Well Deck, dim red lights suggested shapes and activities she couldn’t quite make out.

  # # #

  The sunset was still flooding the Well Deck through the gap above the Peleliu’s unopened stern ramp as U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Sly Stowell did his best to look calm. After nineteen years in, it was his job to radiate steadiness to his customers, the troops he was transporting. That wasn’t a problem.

  He was also supposed to actually be calm during mission preparations, but it never seemed to work that way. A thousand hours of drill still never prepared him for the adrenaline rush of a live op and tonight he’d been given the “go for operation.” This section of the attack—presently loading up on his LCAC hovercraft deep inside the belly of the USS Peleliu—was all his.

  “Get a Navy move-on, boys,” he shouted to the Ranger platoon loading up, “’nuff of this lazy-ass Army lollygag.”

  A couple of the newbies flinched, but all the old hands just grinned at him and kept pluggin’ along. They all wore camo gear and armored vests. Their packs were only large for this mission, not massive. It was supposed to be an in and out, but it was always better to be prepared.

  Two of the old hands wore Santa hats, had their Kevlar brain buckets with the clipped on night-vision gear dangling off their rifles. It was December first and he liked the spirit of it, celebrating the season, though he managed not to smile at them. It was the sworn duty of every soldier to look down on every other, especially for the Navy to look down on everyone else. It was only what the ground pounders and sky jockeys deserved, after all.

  The Peleliu was a Navy ship, even if she’d switched over from carrying Marines to now having a load of Army aboard. The transition had worried him at first. Two decades of Marines and their ways had been uprooted six months ago and now a mere platoon of U.S. Army 75th Rangers had taken their place. The swagger was much the same though.

  But Peleliu had also taken on a company from the Army’s Special Operations Aviation Regiment—their secret helicopter corps. They didn’t swagger, they flew. And, as much as Sly might feel disloyal to his branch of the Service, they tended to bring much more interesting operations than the Marines.

  He could hear the low roar as the engines on the Ranger vehicles selected for this mission were started up in the Peleliu’s garage decks. The three vehicles rolled down the ramp toward Sly’s hovercraft moments later.

  Normally it would have taken an hour of shuffling vehicles to extricate the ones they wanted from their tight parking spaces. But fifty Rangers needed far fewer vehicles than seventeen hundred Marines. The whole ship now had an excess of space. Having a tenth of the military personnel aboard had meant that two-thirds of the Navy personnel had also moved on to ot
her billets.

  Sly had been thrilled when his application to stay had been granted. It might not be the best career move, but the Peleliu was his and he wanted to ride her until the day she died.

  It had also turned out to be a far more interesting choice, though he hadn’t known it at the time. Marines were all about invade that country, or provide disaster relief for that flood or earthquake. The 160th SOAR and the U.S. Rangers were about fast and quiet ops that only rarely were released to the news.

  He watched as his crew began guiding the M-ATVs onto his hovercraft. They looked like Humvees on steroids. They were taller, had v-shaped hulls for resistance against road mines, and looked far meaner.

  He’d been assigned to the LCAC hovercraft since his first day aboard. First as mechanic, then loadmaster, navigator, and finally pilot. And he’d never gotten over how much she looked like a hundred-ton shoebox without the lid.

  He kept an eye on Nika and Jerome as they guided the first M-ATV down the internal ramp of the Peleliu and up the front-gate ramp of the LCAC. He trusted them completely, but he was the craftmaster and it was ultimately his job to make sure it was right.

  The “shoebox” presently had her two narrow ends folded down. The tall sides were made up of the four Vericor engines, fans, blowers, defensive armor, and the control and gunnery positions. The front end was folded down revealing the three-lane wide parking area of the LCAC’s deck. Between the two massive rear fans to the stern—which still reminded him of the fanboats from his family’s one trip down to the Florida Everglades where they had not seen an alligator—a one-lane wide rear ramp was folded down toward the stern.

  The LCAC was the size of a basketball court, though her sides towered twice as high as the basket. She filled the wood-planked Well Deck from side to side and could carry an Abrams M1A1 Main Battle Tank from here right up onto the beach. Those days were gone, though. Now it was the noise of Army Rangers and their M-ATVs filling the cavernous space in which even a sneeze echoed painfully.

  Still, the old girl could handle them and it had instilled a new life in the ship. She’d been Sly’s home for the entire two decades of his Naval career and he didn’t look forward to giving her up. He sometimes felt as if they both were hanging on out of sheer stubbornness. Hell of a thought for a guy still in his thirties. Hanging on by his fingernails? Sad.

  He’d considered getting a life. Mustering out, having a pension in place and starting a new career. But he loved this one.

  And he’d been aboard the eight-hundred foot ship long enough that she was now called a two-hundred and fifty meter ship instead. This was his home.

  Eighteen year-old Seaman Stowell had nearly shit his uniform the day he’d reported aboard. She’d been patrolling off Mogadishu, Somalia then. In the two decades since, they’d circled the globe in both directions, though since the arrival of SOAR most of their operations had been around Africa. In nineteen years he’d traded East Africa for West Africa…and a lifetime between.

  As he did before every mission, he willed this mission to please go better than the disastrous Operation Gothic Serpent—the failure immortalized by the movie Black Hawk Down that had unfolded ashore within days of his arrival aboard.

  Sly didn’t feel all that different, except he no longer wanted to shit his pants before battle. He still had to consciously calm down though.

  Instead of a humdrum routine settling in after the Marines Expeditionary Unit’s departure, the Rangers and SOAR had amped it back up.

  SOAR was a kick-ass team, even by Navy standards. That they also had the number one Delta Force operator on the planet permanently embedded with them only meant that Sly’s life was never dull.

  That was one of the reasons that Sly was looking forward to this operation. When Colonel Michael Gibson was involved, you knew it was going to be a hell-raiser.

  They had the first M-ATV in place and locked down. The second one rolled up the ramp. Lieutenant Barstowe, the Rangers’ commander, came up beside him with his Santa hat still in place.

  “Chief.”

  “Lieutenant.”

  “That’s one battle-rigged and two ambulance M-ATVs. Why don’t I like that ratio?”

  “Because you’re a smart man, Chief Stowell.” The lieutenant moved up the ramp to talk with the driver of the third vehicle still waiting its turn.

  They were definitely going into it heavy. That’s what finally calmed Sly’s nerves. It was the preparation he hated, once on the move he no longer had spare time to worry that he’d forgotten something.

  At least he wasn’t the only one sweating it. Today was pretty typical December off the West African coast, ninety degrees and ninety percent humidity. Even the seawater from the Gulf of Guinea was limp with tepid heat as it sloshed against the outside of the hull with a flat slap and echo inside that resounded inside the Well Deck.

  The last of the vehicles rolled up onto the LCAC hovercraft. For the Landing Craft, Air Cushion hovercraft—technically pronounced L.C.A.C. but more commonly El-Cack! like you were about to throw up—forty tons of vehicles and fifty Rangers was about a half load. But still he was going to keep an eagle eye on them. These young bucks might think they were the bad-asses, but until they’d faced down a Naval Chief Petty Officer—well, that was never going to happen as long as he was in the Navy.

  Nika and Jerome guided the last of the vehicles into position at the center of gravity. Nika had been on his boat for two tours now and she’d better re-up next month because he had no idea who he’d ever find to replace her. She worked quickly on chaining down the third vehicle and then gave him a thumbs up. Jerome had six months as his mechanic, but had the routine down and echoed Nika’s signal. His engineer and his navigator reported ready.

  The crew had already preflighted the craft, but he liked to do a final walk-around himself. There was only a foot between either side of the LCAC and the Well Deck walls.

  The wooden decking along the bottom of the Well Deck was just clear of the wash of the ocean waves, so he didn’t need waders to do the inspection. For conventional landing craft that needed water to move around in, they could ballast down the stern, which lowered the ship to flood the Well Deck a meter deep or more. However, his hovercraft didn’t need such concessions. It was better this way. They could lift off dry without shedding a world of salt spray in all directions.

  “Nika,” he called as he headed down to start his inspection, “get that stern gate open.” During the loading, the last of the sunset had disappeared, near darkness filled in the gap above the big door.

  The Well Deck’s lights flickered as they were switched over from white to red for nighttime operations. They hadn’t flickered when he first came aboard, but she was feeling her age. He patted the inside of the Peleliu’s hull in sympathy as he reached the wooden planking that supported his LCAC. The huge rear gate let out a groan and began tipping out and down toward the sea.

  His hovercraft was ninety feet long and fifty wide and there actually wasn’t much to see during his inspection, which was a good thing. The deflated skirts that would trap the air from the four gas turbine engines, delivering over twenty-thousand horsepower of lift and driving force, now hung in limp folds of thick black rubber. Patches covering tears and bullet holes from prior missions dotted the rippling surface. Above the rubber skirt, the aluminum sides were battered from the hard use—partly bad-guy assholes with rifles and partly harsh weather operations.

  Sly saw the former as badges of courage for the old craft…and did his best not to recall how the latter was earned when nasty cross seas had slammed his craft into the sides of the Well Deck entrance. He was a damn good pilot, but there were limits to what a man could do when the ship went one way, the seas another, and his hovercraft a third.

  He was halfway around his craft when he first heard it, the high whine of an incoming boat. It hadn’t been there a moment before. The Well Deck act
ed like a giant acoustical horn, gathering all sounds from dead astern and amplifying and focusing them like a gunshot at anyone inside the cavernous Well Deck at the time. Often you’d hear a boat before you saw it, especially at night.

  He stood at the foot of the rear ramp of the hovercraft and turned, but there were no lights to see.

  Then there were, incredibly close aboard. A small unit riverine craft by the arrangement of the blinding white lights that had him raising an arm to save his eyes.

  The riverine was carving a high speed turn as if they intended to run right up the stern gate and into the Well Deck.

  They cut their speed at the last moment with a hard reverse of the engines, but he knew it was too late for him.

  The bow wave rushed up the Well Deck planking ahead of the riverine, driven bigger and faster by the abrupt nose-down of the decelerating craft. The wave came high enough to soak him to mid-calf and made him sit down abruptly. The wave washed part way up the rear ramp of his hovercraft before receding—totally soaking his butt.

  He wondered who he could blame for this one.

  In a moment, he was going to stand up and the fifty Rangers standing on the LCAC’s loading deck were going to be laughing their asses off at the Navy’s expense.

  That just wasn’t right.

  Sly glared over at the small riverine craft, squinting against the bright array of lights so that he could see who to blame. The bow section folded forward and allowed a tall woman wearing a duffle over one shoulder and carrying a small black case to dismount. Then the craft began backing away from the Well Deck even as the bow section was pulled back up. He didn’t get a good look at any of them. The dogs!

  The woman walked up close to Sly and stopped to look down at him.

  That initial impression of tall was combined with Navy fit, and a uniform that showed it off in the best way. Her short tousle of dark red hair hung perfectly as if she’d just brushed it rather than gone for a ride on a craft that could hit thirty-five knots. She wore an emblem of a large crescent-shaped “C” over four horizontal stripes. The “C” marked her as a Steward, the four stripes as the new Chief Steward they’d been told to expect.