Chapter 7 - The Master Chief’s Salute
The morning of the formal Board of Inquiry arrived seven days later with that rare, crystalline perfection that only visits the Virginia Capes in late autumn.
The sky was an unbroken canopy of deep, brilliant azure. The wind had swung around to the southwest, blowing clean and warm across the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, moored at Pier Fourteen of Naval Station Norfolk.
Two thousand sailors and officers in dress blues stood in formation across the two-acre expanse of the flight deck, their ranks aligned with microscopic, laser-measured precision.
The ship’s massive island superstructure towered ten stories above the flight deck, draped in enormous fifty-foot American ensigns and naval commissioning pennants that snapped rhythmically in the ocean breeze.
On the elevated ceremonial dais erected near the port elevator, twenty flag officers sat in high-backed chairs: the Commander of Naval Air Force Atlantic, the Chief of Naval Operations, and sitting in the center, her four silver stars blazing beneath the noon sun, was Admiral Judith Carrow.
Beside the podium stood an empty chair draped in blue velvet.
I stood in the wings near the hangar bay hatch, waiting.
I was not wearing civilian clothes.
Under an extraordinary administrative directive executed by the Secretary of the Navy forty-eight hours earlier, my medical separation had been set aside, replaced by an official transition to the Permanent Disability Retired List with full honors and an honorary advancement to the rank of Commander, United States Navy.
I wore my new Service Dress Blue uniform.
The gold lace of a Commander—two thick gold stripes flanking a thin ribbon—blazed on my cuffs. Above my left breast pocket hung my ribbons, crowned by the Navy and Marine Corps Medal and the Purple Heart.
The fabric of the tailored wool coat was heavy, perfectly fitted across my shoulders, completely concealing the scars on my back. But for the first time in my life, I didn't care if people knew what lay beneath the wool.
The scars were no longer an injury; they were my commission.
"Commander Alden," a deep, gravelly voice spoke from the shadows of the hatchway behind me.
I turned.
Standing at the threshold was a man who looked like an anvil dressed in navy blue.
Master Chief Machinery Repairman David Jackson stood six-foot-two, his chest broad as a sea chest, his service dress uniform adorned with eight gold service stripes on his left sleeve representing thirty-two years of unblemished active duty.
His face was carved from dark mahogany leather, his eyes bright, clear, and wet with an emotion that threatened to crack his military bearing.
He didn't say hello.
He took two stiff, rhythmic steps across the steel deck, stopped forty inches from my boots, snapped his heels together with an explosive clack, and brought his right hand up to his forehead in the sharpest, most ferocious salute I had ever witnessed in twelve years of service.
"Commander Alden," Jackson rumbled, his voice shaking the rivets in the bulkhead. "The engineering division of the United States Atlantic Fleet is present and accounted for, ma'am."
My breath caught in my throat.
My right hand rose instinctively, returning the salute, holding it until his arm dropped.
"Jackson," I whispered, stepping forward, breaking military protocol to reach out and grip both of his massive, calloused forearms. "Look at those master chief stars on your anchor."
"You bought those stars, ma'am," the master chief said, tears finally breaking free from his eyelashes, tracking down the deep lines around his mouth. "Five years ago. When you held that iron wheel with your bare flesh while the rest of us were crawling through the scuttle."
He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small, tarnished brass nut—the threaded locking nut from the emergency manual trip valve of Aux One, recovered from the scrap heap during the ship’s overhaul in dry dock.
He pressed it into my palm, his heavy fingers closing mine around the metal.
"Forty-two of us are standing on that flight deck right now, Commander," Jackson whispered. "Every single man and woman who was sleeping in Berthing Two that night. We came from San Diego, we came from Japan, we came from the Pentagon. We aren't here to watch an admiral speak. We’re here for our Cheng."
The ship's public address system chimed with a piercing three-tone whistle:
BOAT’SWAN’S CALL.
"Attention on deck!" the flight deck announcer’s voice boomed across the two thousand assembled sailors. "Arriving: Commander Maya Alden, United States Navy, Retired!"
The brass band struck the opening chords of Anchors Aweigh.
I stepped out from the shadow of the island onto the blinding, sunlit expanse of the flight deck.
Two thousand sailors snapped their salutes in a single, thunderous, synchronized motion that sounded like an artillery battery firing across the water.
In the front row of the civilian family seating area, sitting alone beneath the watchful gaze of two shore patrol officers, sat Hugh Alden.
He had been permitted to attend under an administrative escort.
He wore no uniform. He wore an old dark suit, sitting with his hands folded in his lap, his head bowed, weeping silently as his elder daughter walked past the ranks of four-star admirals toward the podium.
He saw the sailors saluting.
May you like
He saw Master Chief Jackson marching two paces behind my left shoulder like an iron sentinel.
And for the first time in his seventy years on earth, Captain Hugh Alden understood what real command looked like. It was not the ribbons on a blazer; it was the two thousand men who would have marched into the mouth of hell because they knew their commander would burn before she let them fall.
