When Samuel Johnson compared sailing in a ship to "being in jail, with the chance of being drowned," at least he had the consolation of travelling to his ship in a safe carriage, Ryan thought.  Now he was going to sea, and before he got to his ship Ryan stood the chance of being smashed to red pulp in a plane crash.  Jack sat hunched in a bucket seat on the port side of a Grumman Greyhound, known to the fleet without affection as a COD (for carrier onboard delivery), a flying delivery truck.  The seats, facing aft, were too close together, and his knees jutted up against his chin.  The cabin was far more amenable to cargo than to people.  There were three tons of engine and electronics parts stowed in crates aft—there, no doubt, so that the impact of a plane crash on the valuable equipment would be softened by the four bodies in the passenger section.  The cabin was not heated.  There were no windows.  A thin aluminum skin separated him from a two-hundred-knot wind that shrieked in time with the twin turbine engines.  Worst of all, they were flying through a storm at five thousand feet, and the COD was jerking up and down in hundred-foot gulps like a berserk roller coaster.  The only good thing was the lack of lighting, Ryan thought—at least nobody can see how green my face is.  Right behind him were two pilots, talking away loudly so they could be heard over the engine noise.  The bastards were enjoying themselves!

The noise lessened somewhat, or so it seemed.  It was hard to tell.  He'd been issued foam-rubber ear protectors along with a yellow, inflatable life preserver and a lecture on what to do in the event of a crash.  The lecture had been perfunctory enough that it took no great intellect to estimate their chances of survival if they did crash on a night like this.  Ryan hated flying.  He had once been a marine second lieutenant, and his active career had ended after only three months when his platoon's helicopter had crashed on Crete during a NATO exercise.  He had injured his back, nearly been crippled for life, and ever since regarded flying as something to be avoided.  The COD, he thought, was bouncing more down than up.  It probably meant they were close to the Kennedy.  The alternative did not bear thinking about.  They were only ninety minutes out of Oceana Naval Air Station at Virginia Beach.  It felt like a month, and Ryan swore to himself that he'd never be afraid on a civilian airliner again.