Joint Task Force #4: Africa Read Online Free PDF

when those strapscompress that big belly. Plus, I can’t guarantee you’ll survive the landing, but it’s not the fall that kills you. It’s that sudden stop when you reach the ground.”
    “Ha, ha, Chief. That joke is as old as you are.”
    “Thanks, Johnson. Just what I like on a flight. Respect from junior petty officers. Remind me to kick your ass when I have a free second or two.”
    Johnson turned back to the cubicle. “Can I take this thing off now, Chief?” He drew back and gave Razi a light backhand slap. “And how can a sailor with fifteen years be a junior petty officer—Wait! Don’t tell me. Keep his nose clean and quit fucking up.”
    “You should have been a chief by now, Johnson.”
    “I know.”
    “If you keep your nose clean and quit trying to break the noses of everyone you meet who you don’t like, then you might even make first class petty officer before the Navy chucks you out.”
    “One thing I can count on, Chief, and that is your great disposition toward positive counseling. Now, can I?” Johnson asked, holding his hands out by his sides and glancing down at the straps.
    “Go ahead.”
    Razi looked toward the cockpit, but that wasn’t his territory. In the cockpit the pilot, copilot, and flight engineer wore their parachutes continuously. If the aircraft reached a point where they might have to hit the silk, those three would be too busy trying to keep the aircraft level so the crew could bail out to spend any time putting on their own parachutes.
    He turned and started working his way back down the fuselage toward the rear of the aircraft. Razi unzipped his upper-right-arm pocket and pulled out a pack of gum, slipping a piece into his mouth. He watched the motion of theaircrew slow as everyone watched him move aft. Their lives depended as much on how well those parachutes were packed as with how well they strapped them to their bodies. He pulled his left sleeve back and pressed the timer on his watch. Saw the time and grunted.
    “Listen up, my fine fellow sailors!” he shouted as he neared the entrance hatch to the plane. “We don’t have these drills when we take off so you can grab your flight book and notch off a bailout drill. We do it so when—or if—the time comes for you to bail out of an aircraft that has decided to land without the discretion of the pilot, you’ll do it automatically because you’ve done it so many times as a drill.” He tapped his watch. Looking aft he saw Peeters step out of the rear galley to listen. “Nearly three minutes it took to get ready. That’s unsatisfactory. We’re going to do it again during this flight and we’re going to keep doing it until we get it down to a minute and a half. A minute and a half was what we were doing while we were in Rota and a minute and a half is what we’re going to do while we’re deployed to Liberia.”
    “Ah, Chief,” MacGammon said, his head bopping and weaving as he pushed the parachute off his back. “We’ve done these drills so much we can do them in our sleep.”
    “MacGammon, if you have to bail out, you think this aircraft is going to be flying along nice and level, not on fire, and not trying to fight the force of gravity? You think that? What the hell do you think an engine fire is going to do during those three minutes? I’ll tell you since you asked. It’s going to burn into the fuel tank. Then, it’s gonna cause an explosion that rips the wing off.” He put both hands on his hips—his John Wayne pose. “You can no more put on a parachute with the aircraft spinning around and around than you can shit gold.”
    “Chief—”
    “Sailor, stow that parachute properly and quit your backtalk.”
    MacGammon shook his head.
    Chief Razi drew himself up to his full height, turning his head right and left so he could see everyone in the aisle. The officers did their bailout drills with them and while he wasn’t adverse to helping the new officers, once they reach lieutenant commander