Flash Point

11

Woods sat in the front row of folded chairs in the forecastle. It was jammed with aviators in their khaki uniforms and flight jackets, sitting and standing around the enormous anchor chains that disappeared through the deck beneath them. The entire Air Wing was there to honor Tony Vialli and to extend their sympathy to his family, or what passed for his family in the Navy, his squadron. As his roommate, section leader, and best friend, Woods was the one expected to play the unofficial role of grieving next of kin.

But Woods didn’t want sympathy. He didn’t want to hear a bunch of awkward phrases and silly comments like so many other memorial services. He tried to concentrate on the final words of Father Maloney, who was completing some sort of Catholic service. Vialli was, after all, Catholic, or at least close enough for a government chaplain to say whatever was usually said at these services. Woods was certain Vialli had never attended a Catholic service on the ship, and he was quite sure Lieutenant Commander Maloney couldn’t have picked Vialli out of a lineup.

Woods barely noticed the playing of the Navy hymn, the plea for God to guard and guide the men who fly… in peril in the sky. He barely noticed the final prayer, the last words of farewell and the clatter of chairs being pushed back slightly on the hard, gray steel as the Air Wing officers got to their feet. They stood in groups, talking low and moving around aimlessly, but no one left. The rite of passage wasn’t quite complete until there was some conveyance of sorrow. No one seemed to know exactly what was expected, or what was enough, but at some point enough of whatever it was was exchanged and people began getting ready to leave.

Woods had been to lots of memorial services for pilots who had hit the ramp, or flown into the water, or simply disappeared into the night. He’d made the same comments as those now standing around him. But this was all wrong; everyone was behaving as if Vialli was just another accident victim, as if fate had reached down and touched him, his time being up. We never know when any of us is going to go…

“No!” Woods yelled, stepping back from some of the pilots milling around him. “Don’t you get it?” he said to the entire group, gaining attention. “We all stand around here like we’re used to this. Like Tony’s death was an accident. It’s not the same!” he said loudly.

Some of the aviators looked at each other wondering if Woods had finally cracked. Too much pressure, maybe even responsibility. Rumor had it he knew where Vialli was going and could have stopped him, but didn’t.

The ship moved up and down perceptibly under their feet as the awkwardness of the moment froze it in time. No one could leave. It would have been a slap in the face to Woods.

“This wasn’t an accident!” Woods’s gray eyes flashed. “He didn’t have a bird strike, or run out of gas — he was murdered!” He drew out the word as if speaking to someone who was not quite with it.

The VF-103 Operations Officer said in a quiet voice, “We know that, Trey. We know that.” He looked around to see if he was speaking for the group. “But there isn’t much we can do about it. We all feel really bad about Boomer. He was a great guy. A talented guy. But we can’t exactly go after whoever did this on our own.”

Woods took a deep breath. “I know,” he said with exhaustion. “But we’ve got to do something.”

“We’d love to,” the officer responded. Others murmured their agreement. “And when you figure out what that is, you let us know. We’re behind Boomer, and we’re behind you.”

Woods turned away from the crowd. The Ops O nodded to the others and the crowd began to file out the two doors around the enormous anchor chains. Woods walked toward the bow. He could see the milky gray water out of the small porthole. Waves strove to become whitecaps but fell just short. Slowly Woods realized a voice had been calling his name for some time, but he didn’t want to hear more tripe about how sorry someone was…

“Lieutenant Woods?”

Woods glanced over his shoulder and saw Father Maloney. Great, he thought. Just what I need. He said nothing.

“Lieutenant Woods, may I have a word with you?” Maloney asked.

Woods stood silently, then grudgingly he said, “Sure. What about?”

“About Tony.”

Woods thought perhaps there were some arrangements that had to be made. He had been appointed as the officer in charge of putting together Vialli’s personal effects and tying up whatever needed to be done. “What is it?”

“Would you mind coming to my office, just to talk for a while?”

“What for?”

The priest smiled, then replied, “I just thought you might want to talk about how you’re feeling.”

Woods tried not to show his disgust. If there was one thing he hated, it was people who spent all their time talking about how they were “feeling.” “Why would I want to do that?”

Maloney was taken aback by Woods’s reply. “I just thought you might like to.”

“You some kind of psychologist or something?”

“Not at all. I just thought…”

“It’s kind of obvious how I feel, isn’t it? Some other time, maybe,” he said, walking away. In fact, he thought, it was time for him to do something about how he was feeling.

Woods went briskly up the ladders to the O3 level and straight into the blue tile. He stopped at the Admiral’s wardroom and knocked loudly. He waited five seconds and knocked again. He heard a voice inside, then the door opened quickly. “Yes, sir?” a sailor asked.

“Is the Admiral here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’d like to see him.”

“Is he expecting you, sir?”

“No.”

“Your name, sir?”

“Lieutenant Woods. Sean Woods, VF-103,” he replied.

“Please wait while I inquire, sir,” he said. The door closed quietly in front of him.

Woods stood in the passageway for a short time, but long enough to feel foolish as several sailors passed by. He knew what they thought. He was in trouble.

“The Admiral would like to know if this is an emergency, sir.”

“Yes, it is.”

“The Admiral would like to know if you have exercised your chain of command, sir.”

“No, I haven’t. And I don’t plan on it.”

“One moment, sir.”

The door closed again, and Woods waited outside for another minute. The door opened and the sailor motioned to him. “You may come in, sir. The Admiral will see you.”

“Admiral — “ Woods began before he had even reached the Admiral’s table, the same one he had sat at so recently.

“Hold it right there, Lieutenant,” the Admiral said.

Woods looked around and realized he had barged in on a meeting of the Admiral’s staff. The Chief of Staff was there, the Operations Officer, the Intelligence Officer, and others he didn’t recognize. Nice move, he told himself. But hedidn’t care.

“What’s the emergency?” Admiral Sweat asked Woods.

“It’s about Vialli, sir.”

“We’ve had this discussion. Does your CO know you’re here?”

“No, sir. It’s not the same conversation we had before, sir.”

“You have thirty seconds.”

“I think we should do something about Vialli, sir.”

“Like what? His death didn’t even involve us, Lieutenant. If you recall, he had to lie to his Commanding Officer — a lie which you joined — just to be where he was to get himself killed.”

“We should retaliate, sir,” Woods said, as if he hadn’t heard a thing the Admiral had said.

The Admiral looked surprised. “How? And against whom?”

“Against the people who sent the communiqué, sir.” Woods answered, words gushing out as if he were now free finally to speak his mind. “I think they said it was faxed from Beirut. Pritch even printed out the translation. Didn’t you see it? I’ll bet our intelligence knows who this Sheikh is, and exactly where he came from.” He glanced at the Intelligence Officer on the staff, a small bookish man of about forty who made no sign of agreement or disagreement. “Once we find where they’re hiding, we attack them.”

The Admiral stared at him. “They thought they were killing Israeli citizens,” he said.

“Not too many people would mistake Vialli for an Israeli for long.”

“We don’t take action on our own, Lieutenant. It’s not for us to decide. You know that. It’s up to the politicians.”

“Admiral, couldn’t we at least ask for authorization?” Woods begged.

“No.”

“Couldn’t we tell them we’re here, that we’re available, that we could do it if they wanted us to? Sir?”

“They know we’re here, Lieutenant. The President will take whatever action he deems appropriate. Your time is up.” With that, the Admiral redirected his attention to the document in front of him.

“Couldn’t we at least tell them it’s feasible, and we could do it if they want? Maybe put the idea into their heads?”

“I think not,” the Admiral said as he leaned back and removed his reading glasses. “Look, I know how you feel. I’ve lost a lot of my friends in this business. I know how it pulls at you. I know how you wish you could have done something different, so it never would have happened. Especially in your situation. You could have prevented the whole thing by the exercise of a little leadership,” he said, looking hard at Woods. “You were his superior officer. You could have ordered him not to go. But now you’re going to have to learn to deal with it.” He picked his glasses up again. “Dismissed.”

Woods swiveled and began walking toward the door. Then he stopped and turned back to Admiral Sweat. “How many of the friends you lost were murdered, Admiral?”

Admiral Sweat remained silent, and Woods left quickly.

He opened the door to Ready Room Eight and saw a brief in progress. They hadn’t missed a beat, fitting the memorial service in during the time the ship was leaving port — still in sight of port — and not yet in position to fly. Wouldn’t want to interrupt the flight schedule with something as mundane as a memorial service for one of the Air Wing’s pilots.

Woods had never gotten used to the Navy’s cold approach to death. The first time he had seen someone killed aboard the carrier during a catapult accident, the ship hadn’t even slowed down. The launch went right on and the spare was launched to replace the downed airplane. The memorial service had been a few days later, when it could be held without interfering with the flight schedule. He had been told that if they did it any differently death would loom too large and affect the pilots’ willingness to put themselves at risk. He wasn’t convinced.

He closed the door quietly so he wouldn’t disturb the brief, removed his coffee cup from its hook, filled it, and took his seat at the desk on the other side of the ready room. He began working on the next day’s flight schedule. They were going to operate in the Aegean Sea south of Athens, to a small island, Avgo Nisi. An island reserved for military use, to be shot and bombed. It was inhabited only by very scared mountain goats and sheep.

Bark saw Woods come in. He got up quickly and strode to the back of the room. Bark had the look on his face that Woods had learned to dread.

“Hey, Skipper,” Woods said, trying to be nonchalant.

Bark pulled a chair up until it was touching Woods’s. He moved his face close to Woods’s and spoke in a low intense voice. “Don’t ‘Hey Skipper’ me,” he said, his eyes boring holes in Woods. “I just got a call from Admiral Sweat’s Chief of Staff. Later this afternoon, after I fly, I get to go tell the Admiral how it is one of my loudmouth Lieutenants showed up at his wardroom unannounced, to tell the Admiral that we should launch an attack on somebody, and if not that, to at least notify the Secretary of Defense and Congress, if not the President, that the nuclear aircraft carrier Washington is in fact in the eastern Mediterranean and ready to attack whoever they want us to.” His brown eyes bored into Woods. “That about sum it up?”

Woods tossed his black government-issue ballpoint pen down. He answered in a voice equally intense. “I was pissed, Skipper. Everybody is taking this too lightly…”

“Wrong!” Bark exploded, drawing looks from everyone in the ready room. He lowered his voice again. “You have no idea what anyone is doing! You’ve got a chip on your shoulder. We’re all pissed. We all would love nothing better than to hit back. But you know how these things go. The people who commit these acts are usually killed. Then it becomes real sticky. If the politicos want to go after the bad guys, they have two choices. To use the military—”

“We never go after the bad guys, Skipper! We just tool around the Med boring holes in the sky and worrying about our next port call! We never hit terrorists. Even when we know who they are, and where they are! We might send a Tomahawk somewhere, but the most powerful country in the world just whines about it!”

“You can’t just go after a terr—”

“Why not?” Woods argued, energized by the chance to talk about it. “Why can’t we go after them? It’s not like we don’t know who they are. They sent a communiqué to the press, saying how happy they are that they got to kill an American in their attack! It was a big bonus for them. We should take them at their word and make them pay for it.”

“We can’t just take revenge against them.”

“I’m not talking about taking revenge, Skipper. We have the biggest military in the world and we let these two-bit terrorists murder us or hold us hostage, and we sit around and wring our hands wondering what to do. Well, I know what to do. We know who they are and where they live. We ought to go knock the shit out of them. And we have the ability to do it right here on this ship.”

“It doesn’t work that way. I’m sure if the government wants to go after the terrorists, they’ll send the CIA after them. There are a lot of things that happen that you and I never hear about. We need to leave it to—”

“The CIA? The CIA? You’ve got to be kidding me, Skipper,” Woods said, barely holding back a smirk. “Those guys? Send some guy in with a handgun to get some terrorist mastermind? He wouldn’t have a chance. We’ve got to hit them, and hit them hard. So they know it’ll cost them if they attack Americans.”

“They weren’t attacking Americans, Trey,” Bark replied. “They had no way of knowing there was an American on that bus. They thought—”

“Come on, Skipper! They had to know he was an American! How do we know they weren’t there because of him?”

Bark stood up quickly. “That’s it, Trey. I’ve had enough. I came here to talk to you about going to the Admiral without my knowledge. That reflects poorly on the squadron.” His voice was loud enough for everyone in the ready room to hear now. “I was prepared to write that off as a lapse in judgment. But I think your head is full of bad judgment right now.” He pointed to Woods’s chest. “You’re grounded. From right now until when I say, you’re off the flight schedule. You’re the SDO for life until I say so. You got that?”

Woods stood up, looking at his Commanding Officer in stunned disbelief. He didn’t know what to say.

“Easy!” Bark yelled to the front of the ready room. “You’re relieved as SDO. Woods will take your place. Write yourself into the flight schedule.”

Easy looked at Bark with big eyes. Lieutenant Junior Grade Craig Easley was a junior RIO in the squadron. It was his first cruise. He had never seen a Commanding Officer on the warpath before. “Yes, sir,” he said quietly.

Bark turned from Woods and strode quickly to the front of the ready room. He picked up the papers on his seat and moved toward the door.

Woods yelled from the back of the room, “You can’t do this!”

Bark stopped where he was and turned, saying softly but clearly, “You may think you’re immune from Captain’s mast or court-martial. You’re not. You’re already over the line. Don’t push it,” he said as he walked out.

Woods moved slowly to the SDO’s desk and sat in the chair recently vacated by Easy. He slid down until his head rested against the back of the chair, staring at the cables coursing through the overhead.

The phone on the desk rang. Woods let it ring. After six rings he reluctantly leaned forward and picked it up. “Ready Room Eight, Lieutenant Woods speaking, sir.”

“This is Captain Clark. Chief of Staff. Is your Commanding Officer there, Lieutenant,” he asked, saying “lieutenant” as if it made him sick.

“No, sir,” Woods replied with no attempt at being helpful.

“Would you please find him, Lieutenant, and inform him that his appearance before the Admiral has been moved up. He will now be here at 1300. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir. Crystal clear, sir — 1300, sir. I’ll tell him, sir,” Woods said sarcastically, gripping the phone hard. The phone line went dead. Woods slammed down the phone, picked up a ballpoint lying on the desk, and made a note of the call on a pad of white paper.

“I am impressed,” said Lieutenant Big McMack, who had been sitting in the chair closest to the SDO with his feet up on the safe. He hadn’t moved since Woods got there. Woods hadn’t even noticed him. “I can’t remember when I’ve seen a junior officer anger so many senior officers. Nice work, Trey.”

Woods looked at Big with contempt. “Up yours, Big. I’m not ready for any of your sarcastic shit right now.”

“Now going after friends and peers, soon to be ridiculing strangers, women, and children.”

“Did I ask for your commentary?” Woods said.

“No.”

“Then keep it to yourself.”

“Can’t. It’s like poetry. It just flows. The real tragedy for the rest of the world is that I don’t have sycophants following me around writing down every word to pass my wisdom and humor to succeeding generations.”

Woods gave half a smile and a begrudging snort. Then he looked at Big. “What the hell is a sycophant?”

“Sorry. No clues. You only learn new words by looking them up. If I told you, you wouldn’t remember and then the next time I used the word brilliantly, you wouldn’t understand it then either, again missing the moment.”

“You an English major or something?”

“We’ve been together so long, and still you don’t know me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Sorry. Another allusion. No I wasn’t an English major, Trey. I am one of those rare species — a drama major, now flying for the greater good in the world’s best fighters.”

“Drama?” Woods said incredulously. “Drama?”

“That’s right. Thespian. Actor extraordinaire. Writer of dramatic works, performer of the Bard, wizard of special effects on the stage.”

“How did you end up here?”

“I went to college on an NROTC scholarship. That which all you Canoe U grads wish you had done in retrospect.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because we went to accredited colleges that had numerous women and real football and basketball. And we only had to play Navy one day a week, and we could major in things like drama.”

“I thought you had to be a hard science major.”

“Nope. Most do, but there’s room for guys like me, with talent in so many areas. As long as we take physics, math, and the other extraneous crap that allows the Navy brass to think we’re truly just misguided science majors, we can still get a full scholarship and graduate with the rest of you pinheads, only senior to you in lineal numbers, because they throw us all into a pool, distinguished only by grade average. And our grades are always better than you chumps at the boat school.”

“We’ll see who makes Admiral,” Woods said defensively.

“You can have it. I’m going to make my fortune as a screenwriter after this gig.”

“Right,” Woods said, rolling his eyes. His mind was still dwelling on his sentence of death, his grounding. “Did you hear what the Skipper said to me?” he asked.

Big sat up in his chair. “I think everybody on the ship heard the last part, but I heard the whole thing, being nosy and all.”

Woods looked at Big’s face, trying to read him. “Was I out of line?” he asked, finally.

“Way.”

“Why?”

“You said things you shouldn’t have said. You challenged him, the ship, the entire political system. You could have said all that to me, but not to him, not here, not like that.”

“Don’t you agree?” asked Woods. “Don’t you think we should do something about Vialli and not just sit around?”

“Absolutely. I’d like nothing better. But there are the right ways to approach things and the wrong ways. Going to see the Admiral was stupid. Did you really figure that because some Lieutenant comes barging in the Admiral’s going to say, ‘Okay, you got me. Let’s launch an attack?’ he asked, raising his hands in exasperation. “Without authorization?”

“I thought I’d get him to think about it. Maybe pass something up the chain of command.”

Big waved his hand in dismissal. He put his large feet on the deck. “You’re amazing. You’re one of the coolest customers I’ve ever seen in the air. You never get rattled. The tougher the situation, the calmer you get, like you feed on the pressure. But down here, on terra firma, or aqua firma if I may mix my metaphors, you go loony. You attack the Admiral in front of his whole staff, put him on the spot without going to the Skipper, making him look like puppy ca-ca in front of the world, then when the Skipper reads you out about it, you challenge him!”

“I’m just thinking of Boomer,” Woods said.

“Boomer’s dead, Trey. You’ve got to start dealing with reality again soon or you’ll end up like him. You’re going to lose your concentration in the middle of a strafing run or something and prang yourself.”

Woods sighed. “I just can’t let him down. I’m going to get that Sheikh guy. One way or another…”

“You’re not letting him down. He couldn’t ask for any more.”

“I don’t know, Big.” The speaker box behind him that was tied to the radio frequency used by pilots when landing aboard the carrier crackled to life as the Landing Signal Officer transmitted to the F-14 on final. “Power!” he said with authority. “Power!”

Woods and Big both quickly looked at the small black and white television in the corner behind Woods. It was the PLAT, the Pilot Landing Assistance Television. The camera was in the middle of the flight deck and directly below it. The lens pointed out through a very small, almost imperceptible window in the middle of the flight deck and looked up at the approaching planes. The crosshairs represented the glide slope. It was the view from the camera with the crosshairs that Woods and Big saw when they looked at the F-14 in its final approach to the flight deck. It was well below the center of the crosshairs. “Power!” the LSO yelled, his voice augmented by the sound of the approaching jet in his microphone. “Wave off! Wave off!” the LSO screamed as the F-14 went to full power trying to stop its rate of descent, finally leveling off at the same attitude, the same angle of attack, and flying twenty feet over the arresting gear.

“Geez, nice pass. Who the hell was that?” Big said.

“XO,” Woods said, shaking his head.

“204, say your state,” the Air Boss transmitted.

“3.9,” replied Lieutenant Junior Grade Bill Parks, the XO’s RIO, whom everyone called Brillo because of his wavy, kinky hair.

“Great,” Big said. “What’s Bingo today?” The fuel level at which the ship sent you to the nearest airfield instead of coming aboard the carrier.

“3.5,” Woods replied.

“Where’s the Bingo field?”

“Crete.”

“One more pass, then it’s tank or consequences,” Big said.

“They’re tanking him now,” Woods said, listening to the radio chatter.

“How’d the XO get so low on gas on his first pass?” Big asked.

“I don’t know. That’s a question he was undoubtedly hoping to avoid. Probably trying to show some junior officer the intricacies of air combat. Something he doesn’t know much about.”

“Not everyone can be a Topgun instructor like you, big shot.”

“Spare me,” Woods said. His face clouded again. “I still think I’m letting Vialli down if I just let this go. If I let American politics take its course and do nothing, like we always do…”

“I don’t know that it’s fair to say we do nothing. I mean when President Carter faced the hostage crisis in Iran he waited with great intensity nigh on four hundred days. He wrung his hands effectively, and overall did an admirable job of worrying and sweating. How can you say we did nothing? And then at the end, he launched that fiasco in the desert and tried to control it from the White House. Why, never a prettier bit of ‘doing something’ have I ever seen. And Clinton, Carter’s modern protégé in the looking tough and doing nothing department, specialized in mechanical strikes by Tomahawks and invisible stealth jet bombers. Wouldn’t want to actually risk a human being. Of course what would you expect from someone who fought like hell to stay out of the evil military. Now as to George Bush—”

“We should do something like Entebbe, like the Israelis did.”

Big shook his head and scratched his scalp. “I hate to break it to you, Trey, but there aren’t any hostages here. They did all the killing they wanted to. And as to retaliation, you can rest assured the Israelis will do plenty of that. Probably already have.”

“It doesn’t count. It’s not from us. The world will still think they can kill Americans and it won’t matter. We won’t do anything about it.”

“I think you need to think about something else for a while. If you ever hope to fly again and get unchained from this desk, you’d better start acting normal.”

“You still like living in your stateroom?” Woods asked.

“What kind of a question is that? Am I being evicted? Is the landlord from the second deck going to come and lock me out for failing to pay my mess bill on time?”

“No, I was just wondering—”

“Victory 204, Tomcat ball, 4.8,” Brillo transmitted.

“XO’s on the ball again,” Big said, looking over Woods’s shoulder.

Woods turned around to watch the television image. The XO was in the middle of the screen and holding the crosshairs steady as he descended toward the deck. Woods and Big could see the horizontal tails moving quickly to correct for minor changes in pitch and roll. The black smoke was barely perceptible on either side of the dangling tailhook as the XO changed power to maintain his perfect rate of descent and accommodate for minor changes in wind direction and strength. He crossed the ramp and held his exact attitude and power setting until the Tomcat slammed into the deck at a five hundred feet per minute rate of descent and the tailhook grabbed the number-two wire. The nose of the plane pressed into the deck and the XO went to full power as he felt his wheels touch the flight deck. The Tomcat rolled down the deck and strained against the arresting wire until it was clear that the wire had won the tug-of-war. The XO reduced power and the hook came loose from the wire. He taxied away from the landing area to the bow of the carrier as he swept the fighter’s wings behind him.

“Decent pass,” Big said.

“Good enough,” Woods replied. “I was thinking maybe you’d like to take Tony’s spot in my stateroom.”

Big considered the offer. “I don’t know, Trey. This is so sudden,” he said, smiling.

“Well, think about it.”

“Isn’t there someone more senior who would want it? I’m only a frocked Lieutenant. I won’t start getting paid for it for a few months.”

“Vialli was a JG.”

“I never did understand how he scammed a spot in a two-man stateroom when he was a nugget and a mere JG.”

“Sedge was supposed to take it, but he decided he wanted to sleep in the four-man. He hated being right under the catapult at the water break. Every time the cat went off after he went to bed, which was just about every night, he used to sit up like he’d been shot when the catapult hit the water break,” said Woods, laughing as he recalled Sedge’s reaction. “You get zero warning. We’re at the end of cat three, and you can’t hear it coming. All you hear is this ‘BAAAM,’ when the piston hits the water break. I don’t even hear it anymore, but Sedge couldn’t get used to it. So when Vialli came, he took Sedge’s place.”

“I could probably handle that,” Big said. “I’m under cat two right now…”

“Plus there’s Bernie the Breather.”

“Who’s that?” Big asked, his face full of concern. Hedidn’t like there being problems with anyone, especially someone who called himself a “breather.”

Woods laughed to himself. He lowered his voice. “There’s this pipe that hangs down into our stateroom out of the overhead,” he said, holding his fingers together to indicate a pipe of three inches in diameter. “It stops about three feet from the deck. Just hanging there. It’s between our bunk beds — our racks — and the bulkhead.” Woods got a twinkle in his eye. “And sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes, it makes this breathing noise. There’s a valve somewhere inside it, not at the end — the end is open and pointing down at the deck — but somewhere in the lower three feet, there is a flapper valve. And the pipe breathes in, a kind of ‘guuushhhh,’ as it breathes in, then a ‘cuh cuh cuh,’ as the flapper flaps down,” he said, using his hand as a valve flapping against an invisible opening in a pipe. “Guush, cuh cuh cuh. It’s stealing air out of our stateroom,” he said, raising his eyebrows twice and smiling mischievously. “Or, maybe, it’s putting air into our stateroom. Either way, we can’t figure out why, or where the pipe is going.”

Big looked at him skeptically. “You’re pulling my leg,” he said.

“Nope. I’m not. You’ll have to see it. I just wanted you to know about it so you didn’t move in and then whine about it. Sedge about went nuts between the water break and Bernie.”

“Sounds weird.”

“It’s a great stateroom. It’s not like those other boring staterooms that only have regular deafening noises; we have the regular deafening noises, but we have the unique noises too.”

“Okay. I’m in,” Big said, shrugging. “How could I not be?”