I was close to getting out. My numbers were coming up, and I was officially a short-timer, counting the days like a prisoner scratching the walls. No more deployments, no more floating out in the middle of nowhere eating gray meat and pretending I gave a shit about global security. Just waiting for the final stamp on my discharge papers.
San Diego, North Island. A nice place to kill time if you had to. Ocean air, palm trees, jets screaming overhead. Even on land, there were still bullshit duties. Watching. Patrolling. Pretending to care.
That night, my job was to stand watch in the hangar bay—roaming from the steel doors all the way out to the flight line, touching each aircraft like I was baptizing them, making sure nobody was doing anything stupid. No gun. No baton. Just a safety vest and a name tag with my last name scratched out and “Orsillo” handwritten over it in defiance.
I had come back to the Navy a different man. Harder. Sharper. I had done my time in the shipyards, learned leadership, became the guy people went to when shit needed fixing. Even as an E-1, I carried myself like I outranked half the idiots above me. They kept telling me to go for my E-2, my E-3, but I had no interest in sticking around. The money would’ve been nice, sure. But I was done. This was temporary. A bad dream I was about to wake up from.
I didn’t know it would be my last watch.
The Watch Commander came down around midnight. He was one of those stiff, clean-cut Navy guys who looked like he hadn’t smiled in decades. Khakis. Crisp uniform. Hands folded behind his back like some wise old sage.
“Airman,” he said, “walk with me.”
I followed him outside, past the hangar, past the dark edges of the runway. The ocean was close enough that you could hear the waves beyond the airfield. A beautiful night.
“What’s your plan?” he asked, his voice low, calm.
I shrugged. “Getting out.”
“The Navy can do a lot for you,” he said. “I know you’ve got a bad rap. I looked at your file.”
I tensed. Here we go.
“But I also see potential,” he continued. “I can help you get reinstated. Fast-track you to a warrant officer. Give you a career worth something.”
I didn’t even know what a warrant officer really did. Probably sat at a desk, smoked a government-issued cigarette, and collected a pension. Not the worst life. But I stayed quiet.
Then he did something that stuck with me.
He reached out, grabbed the back of my neck—not hard, but firm, like a father steering a kid in the right direction.
“You’ve got father issues,” he said. “Family issues. I know that. And I know this could be a way to make them proud. To stand for something.”
We stopped near the last aircraft on the line. S-3s were landing, helicopters hovered in the distance, the air thick with jet fuel and salt.
For the first time, I felt something.
Something dangerous.
The idea that maybe I should reenlist.
That maybe I belonged here.
He looked me in the eye. “I hope you make the right decision, Airman.”
Then he shook my hand and disappeared into the night.
Thirty minutes later, my shift ended.
And for a brief, stupid moment, I actually considered staying.
Less than 30 days later, I was walking off base with an honorable discharge in my pocket.
I had done a WestPac. I was a Persian Gulf War vet. I’d loaded armaments for war. I’d been on a nuclear load team.
I went in as an E-1.
I came out as an E-1.
And I didn’t look back.
I fell back into civilian life fast. Work. Drinking. More work. More drinking. Took on leadership roles, climbed the ladder. More responsibilities meant more stress, which meant more drinking. Jim Beam. Bacardi and Coke. Every night, a slow unraveling.
Then one evening, Channel 7 News flashed across the screen.
Naval Commander, VS-37, arrested after shocking discovery at his home.
They cut to footage of a backyard.
A garden.
Cops standing around a hole in the dirt.
Then the words: Remains found of missing wife, presumed dead for three years.
I leaned forward, my drink sweating in my hand.
Then they showed his picture.
And there he was.
The same man who had walked with me that night, hand on my neck, telling me he’d take me under his wing.
Apparently, he had a Filipino wife.
Had murdered her.
Had buried her in his backyard garden like a goddamn tulip.
For three years, no one questioned where she was. No one asked.
Until her family back in the Philippines started pushing for a search warrant.
The cops showed up with cadaver dogs.
And there she was.
Right under their noses, in the garden he watered every morning.
His face was all over the news, his clean-cut Navy portrait now a mugshot.
For a long time, I just sat there.
Thinking.
About that night.
About how close I had come to saying yes.
And about how, for the second time in my life, I had unknowingly shaken hands with a murderer.
Some guys retire from the Navy with medals.
I left with a near-miss from a goddamn serial killer.
