Alan let out a long drawn out sigh as he stood up, closing the door on his locker, before relocking it and giving a little tug to make sure the lock was secure. He zipped up his flight suit the rest of the way, then turned towards the bench he had just been sitting on and picked up his helmet. He always hated these kinds of training missions. Today they would be practicing rough terrain emergency landings and going over what to do in the event you are shot down in enemy territory. He idly looked his helmet over before heading for the door to the locker room. He opened the door and started out into the brightly lit hallway. His co-pilot was leaning against the wall opposite the door, their helmet pinned between their arm and hip.
“I was beginning to wonder if I would need to send in a search and rescue team.” She said with a smirk.
“Ha. Ha. You’re just too funny Alex.” His voice dripping sarcasm. She burst out laughing knowing he hated when she would come up with these little jokes of hers. “What am I going to do with you?” He asked her, his mouth forming its own little smirk.
“Well I can think of quite a few things,” She said coyly, flashing him her best bedroom eyes, “But nothing we can do here.” Flashing him a smile, she laughed at him and started walking towards the end of the hall. She always loved getting him riled up, especially since she knew how to get past his defenses.
Alan shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. How he let himself walk into embarrassing moments like that he had yet to figure out. He mentally chalked it up to being just one of the many things he loved about her. They had been flying together for the last couple of years on many different missions, both dangerous and routine. About a year after they had know each other, he finally managed to work up the nerve to ask her out for dinner one night after they had returned from another successful mission. Later on he had found out that she had liked him for several months prior to him asking her out, and was working up the nerve to ask him out.
A voice calling out broke him out of his reverie. “Hey! You coming or are you just planning on staring at your helmet all day?” She called out, looking back around the corner at the end of the hallway.
Looking up at her he realized that he had spaced out while unconsciously staring at the visor of his helmet. “Yeah, be right there.” He called back and started walking down the hall. She was waiting for him at the door as he rounded the corner.
“You were thinking pretty hard back there.” She said as he approached. “Something on your mind?”
“Yeah.” He said in a low tone, almost whispering. She leaned towards him a little bit so she could hear him better. “You.” He said before quickly leaning in the rest of the way and giving her a peck on the cheek before bolting out the door. She laughed and followed him outside. The oppressive heat hit them both once they cleared the doorway, bringing them both quickly back to reality.
“Ugh… It should be illegal for it to be this hot so early in the morning.” He groaned, voicing his exasperation at the heat and grumbled under his breath, “I can’t wait until we can finally leave this damned country.”
“It’s ten o’clock! Morning was a while ago.” She said to him with a chuckle. “But I totally agree, it’s WAY too hot already.” She glanced at the thermometer that was bolted to the outside wall of the building. It read one hundred three degrees. She cringed, and it felt like knowing the actual temperature made it somehow seem even hotter. “Well standing here isn’t making it any cooler.” She said as she started walking towards the group waiting around the nearby aircraft. “Might as well get this over with.”
The next two hours were taken up by classes covering different topics that would help them out if they ever found themselves downed in hostile territory. Everything from finding camouflage, edible plants (not like it would help them much in this environment), and ways to cover your trail and keep from being followed. They also decided the order they would be going in for the next part of the class before breaking for lunch. They were told to meet back in the classroom in an hour, to wait for their turn to go.
The exercise was going to be simple. They were going to take off from the base, fly for about thirty minutes to a designated strip of land that had been cleared by the engineers, and land their aircraft. Then they would take off again from their improvised runway and return to base. While they would probably never have a need for this training, it was designed to give the pilots some hands on experience incase they somehow got hit by small arms fire and were unable to make it back to base.
“Shepherd. Cross. You’re up next.” Called the gruff voice of their commander, letting them know they needed to get their stuff together and be outside in five minutes. Alex put her phone away and looked over at Alan, who was laying on the desk sound asleep.
“C’mon Alan, its our turn.” She said to him, gently nudging his shoulder.
“Mhghm. Fi.. Min…” He mumbled as he turned his head to face the other direction.
“Oh get up already!” She said as she unceremoniously upended the chair he was sitting in, causing him to tumble to the floor. She giggled at his hilarious reaction.
“Woah!” He exclaimed as he tried futilely to get a grip on the desk as he fell. Hearing her giggle at him, he looked up at her with a smirk on his face. “Oh you think that’s funny?” He said as her giggle turning into outright laughter. “Well two can play at this game!” He said as he wrapped his foot around one of her chair legs and giving a sharp tug, sending her to the floor. Now it was his turn to laugh at her comical decent to the floor, trying to catch herself on the table just like he had, with the same amount of success. He stood up and righted his chair and extended his hand towards her.
“Alright, how about we get going?” He said as she took hold of his hand and he pulled her up off the floor. They both picked up their helmets and started walking towards the door. She playfully shoved him against the table as she walked past him.
They made their way outside to see the ground crews performing their final checks on the F-15 Eagle that they would be using for the test. Alan felt a giddy feeling well up inside of him as he looked at the aircraft. He had always loved the idea of flying. Even as a little kid he had always been into airplanes. When he was old enough, he had immediately signed up at the local Air Force recruiter, with his parent’s consent of course. He never knew that five years later it would land him in the middle of Kuwait. One of the hottest, most barren places he’d never want to see again. The only thing that made the whole ordeal even remotely tolerable was getting to share the time with the love of his life.
Thirty minutes later they were strapped in and sitting at the end of the runway waiting on clearance from the tower before beginning their speedy takeoff. “Flight 114 you are go for takeoff.” The voice came through the headset that was built into their helmets.
“Roger that tower.” Alan responded, before going through the motions that were almost second nature to him now.
Feeling the engines rumble as the aircraft started moving forward. Once he reached the proper airspeed he pulled back on the stick and felt the tale tell signs of defying gravity. He also felt the adrenaline rushing through his system, another one of the things he loved about flying.
“You alright back there?” He asked Alex through the headset.
“You better believe it! That never gets old!” She exclaimed happily.
They both had been turned into adrenaline junkies and they indulged whenever they could. Many times they had gone to different theme parks for the sole purpose of riding all of the most extreme roller coasters they could find. The steeper and taller the better had become their unspoken motto. But nothing compared to the rush they got during takeoff.
“They really need to find a way to make an amusement park ride feel like that.” She said back, laughing at the thought.
“Ha Ha! That would be awesome!” He laughed back, hitting the switch to bring up the landing gear, feeling the thump as they fully retracted.
The short flight was almost over and he started lining up with the improvised runway and began their descent. It was weird not seeing all the usual markings of a regular runway. The only markings they had were the four humvee’s that were parked at either side of the start and end of the cleared area. He hit the switch to lower the landing gear and waited for the thump of them locking into place. Once the light came on signaling that the landing gear was locked he brought them in for a very bumpy landing.
After getting their aircraft turned around, and being told that they had passed the landing, they were once again airborne and on their way back to base. About twenty minutes into the return flight, Alex spoke up suddenly.
“Hey, you see that? Out at two o’clock up above us.” She said, a hint of nervousness in her voice.
Alan looked around for what she was looking at. He finally spotted it. It looked like a tiny thunderstorm cloud. It was weird because there were usually no clouds this time of year, nothing that could make a thunderstorm anyway.
“What the…” was Alan’s response. “I’m going to take us a little closer and take a look.” He told Alex, veering them in the direction of the tiny storm. As they approached it became clear that the whole cloud was probably no bigger than a small table.
“Well that has got to be the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.” He stated flatly.
“Gotta agree with you there.” Alex replied. “We should probably radio this back to base.”
Watching the cloud travel the horizon as Alan turned back in the direction of the base. Suddenly there was a noise that sounded like a huge thunderclap, and the small storm cloud suddenly expanded into a huge storm cloud. It engulfed their airplane and kept expanding rapidly. Before either of them could say anything a lightning bolt struck the fuselage. Warning buzzers went off as several systems were shorted out by the massive voltage that had been forced through them.
Two of those systems, unfortunately, were the I.F.F. transponder that identified them as a friendly to their own anti-air systems on the ground; the other was their radio transmitter. Suddenly a new alarm started blaring, louder than the rest: one of the SAM sites on the ground had locked onto them and fired.
“Oh Shit, Oh Shit, OH SHIT!” Alan panicked as he saw the screen light up with 4 icons of the incoming missiles. “Hang on!” He yelled over the headset before pulling the plane into a high angle ascent. Looking back at the screen he watched as the missiles drew closer. He slammed the chaff button, launching the flares designed to throw the missiles off course. He banked left and headed in the opposite direction of the base. Boom. Boom. Boom. Three of the missiles had detonated on the flares but the fourth changed course and proceeded to close the distance to them. He hit the chaff button again and a warning alarm went off, signaling that the launch mechanism was inoperative. “OH GREAT! Just what I needed!” He yelled exasperatedly.
“What’s wrong?” Alex yelled back.
“The firing mechanism on the second set of chaffs isn’t working.”
“Try it again!”
“I have tried it again!” He yelled, pounding on the button several times, as if to emphasize his point. The close proximity alarm chose this exact moment to go off, signally the missile was less than one hundred meters from them. “Alright, that’s it!” He growled, grabbing the throttle and increasing their speed, trying to buy them some extra time. He watched as their airspeed approached seven hundred MPH. “Hang on!” He told Alex. He fired the afterburners and they went supersonic.
The missile was still closing in, at a much slower rate now, but they were also heading back into the storm. He hit the chaff button again, a slim hope that it would somehow work if he hit it hard enough. On his third hit the warning alarm shut off as the firing mechanism kicked in and deployed the flares. They were blinded a sudden flash, and a dull explosion sent vibrations through the airplane.