Lions of the Sky

by Paco Chierici

  He mashed his foot on his throttle a few blinks after the blonde. This was going to be tight. He could see the shockwave of the lead semi’s windblast rock the tractor as it swept past. The Vette was already up to speed, over 100 miles per hour, perfectly timed. As the first truck roared past she dipped into the left lane, whizzed past the tractor and darted back to the right. Maximum speed, minimum exposure. Well done again.

  “Oh shit!” he shouted into the wind. He’d put himself into a bit of a hole. He was going way too fast to stop and was a little behind the blonde on the plan. As the first semi roared by, rocking his Cobra with its wind, he shifted into third, chirping the tires. He veered into the left lane well before reaching the tractor. Staring at him straight in the face and getting scary bigger by the nanosecond was the second big rig—80,000 pounds of angry diesel fury bearing down at fifty miles per hour. By his right knee he sensed his speedometer spin past 100 miles per hour while his foot was glued to the floor for more.

  There is a moment in the reckless pursuit of folly where reality peeks up its ugly head like an unwelcome prairie dog. Some not-so-deep part of his brain was pissed at himself. His basic rule for staying alive in the unyielding world of flying supersonic fighters from aircraft carriers was to always leave himself an out. Always, always leave yourself an out. Then, no matter how dumb the shit you were doing, you could level your wings, plug in the afterburners and pull like mad. That maxim had saved his life more than a few times.

  At the moment, however, he was stuck. John Deere to his right, water to his left, one pissed off trucker directly in front blaring his horn, seconds from impact with a combined closure jumping past 160 miles per hour. All they would find would be hair, teeth, and eyeballs, not to mention the metallic cloud formerly known as his dad’s car. Only one thing to do. He kept his boot smashed on the gas as he pushed the clutch and whisked the shifter into fourth. The beautiful 427 motor instantly spooled up for the moment it was unloaded then, when the clutch was released, grabbed the gear and torqued with all its might. The driveshaft translated energy to the rear axles and finally to where the rubber meets the road, and the Cobra’s rear wheels chirped once again under the furious power.

  He passed the tractor like it was standing still, a green flash in his periphery. A moment before the truck’s fender could rip through the Cobra, he sucked his breath in between clenched teeth, flicked the wheel to the right and rocketed into the open lane. “Fuck me!” he screamed into the whipping wind. He was smiling despite himself, right on the tail of the blonde with the chrome mufflers and the laughing eyes.

  He chased her around a couple more bends letting his pulse come out of the red zone. The Currituck Sound opened up to his left, a beautiful, wild world. Overhead, gulls pinwheeled gracefully, searching the shallow waters for morsels. The road, and the choices, only improved from here. If she went east, it was lonely beach stretches all the way down the barrier islands to Cape Hatteras. Rolling dunes and sea spray, cozy diners, lazy cops, and a choice of motels. If she went west, more lonely back roads and small towns like Elizabeth City and Edenton, then vast tracks of farms and pine forests all the way across North Carolina to Asheville then the Great Smoky Mountains. He didn’t have to be anywhere until 0600 Monday morning. He was due for another adventure.

  A stop sign loomed up out of the cornfield and the Z06 slowed to a halt. There wasn’t another vehicle for miles so he rolled to a stop blocking the opposing traffic lane, just to her left. He looked over at the girl and she looked back at him. Her cheeks were flush and her eyes shone with excitement. He didn’t even try to mask the dopey grin on his face.

  “Where’d you learn to drive like that?”

  He watched her tuck a strand of hair behind her left ear. Elegant, strong fingers. Rose-pink nail polish. No makeup, no pretense. She was smiling as well. A beautiful smile full of humor and challenge lighting her face all the way up to her blue eyes, which reminded him of the ocean.

  “I’m not driving fast,” she said. “I’m just flying low.”

  A band tightened across his chest. The smile melted from his face. Oh shit. He felt as though someone had just crapped in his cereal bowl. Shit, shit, shit.

  The blonde obviously noticed the change, like a cloud passing over the sun. “What?” she asked him.

  “You’re not a pilot are you? A fighter pilot?” His telltale flight suit was hidden from her view, tied around his waist.

  She smiled again, though seeming less sure of herself. “Just about. Why, that scare you?”

  He rubbed both his hands over his face, scrubbing the stubble on his jaw hard with the heels of his palms. “I’ll catch you later,” he finally said. He popped the clutch, darted into the intersection, spun the wheel of the Cobra, and mashed the gas pedal. The rear wheels smoked and screamed as the car pivoted on the spot, turning back in the direction it had come, back toward Virginia Beach and another routine night with his boys. Back to the reality of his birthday and all that he had lost.

  Chapter 3

  18 October

  Virginia Beach, Virginia

  Slammer sliced through the crisp early morning air in a jet with his name stenciled on the side: LT Sam “Slammer” Richardson. For his last flight as a Navy fighter pilot instructor he’d finagled a spot on a dawn flight for his favorite dogfight hop, a 2 versus 1, where he was the lone bad guy. Now he was heading back for administrative chores on Earth. He felt his heartbeat slowing to normal as he peered from the cockpit at the Atlantic, watching as the color of the sea gradually melted from a deep turquoise blue a hundred miles off the coast of Virginia to a slate gray as he cruised closer to shore. The surface of the ocean was still and heavy, like slowly undulating molten lead. He had a little gas to play with so he gently tilted the stick on the F/A-18E Super Hornet—the Rhino, as the aircrew called it.

  Some Rhinos had two seats but this variant had only one, and for once he was glad to be in the cockpit alone with his thoughts. He was going to miss his buddies. They had worked together for the past couple years as instructors at the Naval Air Station Oceana, and prior to that in their previous Fleet squadron for an action-packed three years. He felt a twinge of regret leaving them behind but he could feel the undeniable thirst building for the action of the Fleet. It was definitely time to rotate back into life at sea. To flying real missions, not training ones.

  The plane banked responsively, turning toward the northern corner of the Carolinas, Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hill. As the pale strip of sandy shoreline marched closer, a line of snowy white puffies dotted the horizon looking like a hanging playground of cotton candy suspended a couple of thousand feet above the sailboats and rolling waves. Almost of its own volition, the Rhino climbed and banked, surfing the cloud tops, gently tearing off a piece of fluff with a wingtip as it rolled inverted, descending a few hundred feet in the blink of an eye, and rolled upright again. At times like these, when his hands transmitted his thoughts directly to the control surfaces without effort, Slammer felt like he was just along for the ride. The plane was an extension of his body; no conscious input was needed to roll inverted once more and fall, fall weightlessly until he recovered just above the waves. 100 feet above the water, 450 knots, there was no stress. No sweat beading on his brow, no abnormally high pulse, just a wide smile hidden behind his oxygen mask. While the world raced by just below, miles clicking away at an absurd pace, propelled by the explosive violence of combustion, he was at peace at the tip of the spear.

  As the Rhino approached the shore and the confines of the Air Traffic Control system, the spell was broken and, like a horse headed for the barn, the Rhino climbed and pointed north over the Albermarle Sound toward the Naval Air Station Oceana. He approached the airfield, contacted the tower, and was cleared for the overhead pattern; no other traffic in the area. This was the perfect way to end his tenure with the training squadron, he thought, grinning. He maneuvered toward the runway at fifteen hundred feet, watching through the Virginia Pines the jam of cars car
rying morning commuters, wondering if they were watching him. When he was three miles from the runway’s end he nudged the nose over slightly and cracked the afterburners, just a bit, igniting twin plumes of focused flame. The Rhino surged forward like a rocket, accelerating to 600 knots in a few beats of the heart as he leveled off just above the green blur of tree tops.

  In a flash he was over the runway. “Roman Two-One, numbers,” he informed the tower.

  “The pattern is yours, Roman.”

  As the near end of the runway disappeared below the pointy nose of his jet, he snapped to the left, one wing pointed straight at the earth, the other up to the heavens. Then he pulled back on the stick, quick yet smooth, grunting as speed and back-stick squatted the jet into a tight, seven-and-a-half G arc. A moment later, the aerial u-turn complete, he rolled level racing at 300 knots in the opposite direction. He was a mile abeam the runway, smokin’ fast 800 feet above the grass. Just where he wanted to be. Now his pulse was up. He was alert, working hard but still having fun. At the moment the end of the runway flashed below his wing, he turned left again, pulling hard on the stick. As the speed dropped quickly he threw down the landing gear and moved the flap switch to FULL. With 90 degrees to go to line up with the runway, he was all set—decelerating nicely, gear down, flaps down.

  “Roman Two-One, three down and locked,” he transmitted.

  “Cleared to land.”

  Rolling into the groove, two hundred feet off the ground on runway centerline, he scanned with a practiced eye and picked up the ball—the meatball—centered between the two rows of green reference lights, just where it should be. The meatball was the device adjacent the runway that beamed glide-slope information into the sky so the pilots could land precisely. Keeping the ball centered as the plane slowed to approach speed, he worked the throttles like a concert violinist, gently adding and withdrawing diesel to the turbines, feeling the plane as it slowed slightly or rose on a summer thermal, fighting the forces of entropy conspiring to push the ball from the middle where it was aligned with the green lights.

  From the ground, if one stood just next to the meatball lens as it projected its glide-slope of orange light into the air, the Rhino would appear steady as a rock, locked in the same piece of sky and magically enlarging as it got closer. In the cockpit, the pilot would be working hard, hands and feet making hundreds of minute corrections, eyes scanning nonstop.

  The groove lasts but fifteen to eighteen ticks of a clock’s second hand, about the time it takes to tie a shoe, but careers are made and lives are changed in that span. A few heartbeats later the wheels smashed onto the runway as Slammer and the Rhino left their natural environment. While the plane slowed, the computer-enhanced control surfaces twitched back and forth, like the wings of a primordial creature reluctantly realizing it was now firmly on the ground.

  “Nice break,” came from the tower, and Slammer’s grin widened as he taxied off the runway, popping one of the fittings holding his oxygen mask so it now dangled jauntily from one side.

  Fifteen minutes later he was inside the gear room. He mopped his brow with the bandana clipped to his harness, wrinkling his nose at the locker-room stench. Row upon row of hooks and lockers stored the squadron’s flight gear, enough for well over a hundred instructors and students. It had been a hard flight. There were sweat rings under his pits and his lower back. His hair was as drenched as if he’d run ten miles. He was physically exerted, but he felt good. Great, in fact. He was tired but buzzing, and he wouldn’t come down for a while.

  He slipped out of the dripping harness and hung it from the hook to dry. Next came his ankle restraints, which clinked like a gunfighter’s spurs when he walked. He unzipped one leg of his G-suit and then the other, releasing the skin-tight chaps, hanging them as well. With one last look at his watch—nearly 8 am—he briskly strode to his next commitment.

  He was eager to be done with the paperwork shuffle so he could join his new Fleet squadron. He’d been here for two years and it had been perfect. A time to decompress, to wash the intense adrenaline from his system built up during three years of sea duty. Time to fly these amazing planes without anyone shooting at you—at least not shooting real stuff. The last two years had done their job and now he was champing at the bit to get back in the game.

  At 0745 Keely Silvers rolled her canary yellow Corvette Z06 convertible to a stop in the parking lot opposite the same hangar where Slammer had parked his plane minutes before. She fiddled her windblown blond hair into a ponytail and turned to her roommate and passenger, Cary “Moto” Venden. “You ready?”

  He nodded as he bent to recover the contents of his bag, which had scattered during her enthusiastic driving.

  Keely stared through the windshield at the hulking structure in front of her. She found it odd that the sleek powerful Rhino lived in that relic of a building, like a new Ferrari tucked into an old tool shed. By all rights its home should have been a Frank Gehry metal and glass modern marvel, but instead the hangar looked as if it had been built at the start of the Cold War. Maybe even the Civil War.

  Large sheets of corrugated gray steel stretched sixty feet high topped by exposed girder support beams, like massive metal rafters someone had forgotten to cover. From the back side, the parking lot side, she spied a few windows to the second deck offices. Not many; it was not a working environment built for comfort or soft lighting. It was, she supposed, what it appeared to be—a hard place to train hard people.

  In the front, on the flight line side, were the hangar doors. Massive floor-to-ceiling panels that slid open on metal wheels and sunken rails, catching more panels, one after another until you could drive an aircraft carrier through the opening. Inside were parked a few of the squadron’s sick Rhinos looking like disemboweled patients on life support, their skin panels peeled away, unnaturally exposing their innards while they awaited major transplants like an engine change or a new hydraulic pump.

  The rest of the birds were on the flight line directly in front of the hangar, parked neatly in six rows of ten. Maintenance troopers scurried over them, fueling, checking various pressures, swapping boxes on squirrely electrical components; doing everything necessary to ready the fleet for the next wave of student sorties.

  A dusty black Ford F-150 eased into the spot next to Keely. Her other roommate, Barry “Pig” Valve, leaned out the window of his battered truck sucking the last bit of life from a cigarette before he flicked the butt on the crushed gravel lot.

  “What took you so long, Silvers?” he asked. Pig had left the apartment five minutes before she had.

  “Suck it, pokey,” she fired back.

  “I mean, you only beat me by a minute. Did you get lost, or was Moto screaming like a girl the whole way?”

  “Had to get a donut for me and a manicure for Moto,” she answered, flashing a glance at her passenger.

  “I hate you both. More than I thought.”

  Silvers laughed. “Let’s hit it, boys,” she said, and the three slammed their doors and made their way across the lot.

  Minutes later they were entering the Coliseum, the auditorium nicknamed to play on their new squadron’s name—the Gladiators of VFA-106. Silvers plunked down between her two roommates as she checked out the other students. The first-day jitters were palpable, though everyone was trying to play it cool. They were missing one—by her count, there should have been ten. Could they have lost one already? Might be a new record.

  The nine present sat in natural cliques, classmates now but not yet stirred into a class. The pack of five in the middle, closest to the podium, were the back seaters, the Weapons System Operators, or WSOs. Since no one ever took the time to say the whole thing, they were just called wizzos. This was a new breed of aviator for her, since she had spent the last two years with Pig, Moto, and other pilot hopefuls doing pilot training stuff. She wasn’t completely sure what the WSOs did, she just knew it took place in the aft cockpit, and there was no stick. Crazy.

  The WSOs were dist
inguishable by their nervous, slightly awed-but-trying-not-to-show-it sideways glances at the pilots. Their chest insignias sealed the deal, two crossed anchors behind the shield on their gold wings. Pilots had just one anchor, a subtle yet important distinguishing characteristic. In the world of naval air, aviators surreptitiously scanned nametags at first meeting, like dogs sniffing each other at the park.

  There was just one other pilot she didn’t know and he was at the far side of the room seated alone. So they were missing the last pilot from the other training base, the rumored second girl. Two girls in one class hadn’t happened in a long time. It was rare enough to have one. Not the friendliest person apparently, from what Pig had heard.

  She looked over at Moto, poking at the redness on his forehead. “Jesus Moto, you burned in the fifteen minutes it took to get here.” He was Scottish and pale as paste, with rusty hair buzzed short. About her height, five-nine, he was stout as a fireplug and missing a neck.

  “Should have worn a hat,” he grumbled. “And zipped my damn bag. You’re a menace.” Moto, short for Master of the Obvious, was the den mother of the three roommates.

  Turning to her left she sniffed at the disheveled Pig. “Don’t you think a shower might do for the first day?” she whispered. Though this was their first stint as roommates, she had also known Pig for the last two years of training. He was a strange bird, as messy as Moto was fastidious, and proud of it. He was taller than his roommates, with the beginnings of a beer belly and not much chest to work with. He regarded her with deceptively sleepy eyes under dark brown hair, cropped close on the sides and brushed over on top.