Lions of the Sky

by Paco Chierici

  “I was supposed to be rotating back to the Fleet, but the Skipper needed me to take care of one more class,” he said, throwing her a bone. He wasn’t in the mood to get into specifics about his new class. Especially the fact that when he or any of the other instructors entered the room lately, knowing glances would zip between the girls. They would recede into themselves like tortoises, speaking only when addressed, never volunteering information or raising their hands. Something he couldn’t quite place was off the rails.

  “Maybe we should talk about Robin,” she said with genuine motherly concern.

  “Maybe, but not now.”

  “You can’t just ignore the death of one of your best friends forever.”

  He took another sip of the Scotch, which turned into a very long sip, then lifted the empty glass feigning surprise. Spotting the waitress across the room, he pantomimed a refill.

  “Sam, please,” his mother said gently.

  He smoothed the tablecloth and rearranged the silverware, tasting the peaty fire in his mouth. “Mother, I promise that you will be the first to hear all my thoughts on the matter, when the day comes. Tonight we are celebrating the birth of my father, your husband.” The Scotch arrived just in time. He lifted his glass again, forcing another toast. “A good man who left us too soon.”

  His mother fiddled with her menu, regarding him as a reluctant witness over her glasses. “When you’re ready. I’ll be here.” Then she looked up, waving for the waitress. “Now let’s order. I’m hungry.”

  He spent the rest of the meal catching her up on his friends, especially JT, who had appreciated her doting since their college days. His buddies were not only his family; she’d adopted them as hers, too.

  He drove home on autopilot, his mind flitting between his father and Robin. Both had died far too young and left his life too soon. He pulled into the garage grateful for the mother he had—tough as hell, funny and smart. What would her life have been like if his father hadn’t departed so abruptly and early?

  Chapter 6

  19 November

  Virginia Beach, Virginia

  “You guys ready?” Slammer’s voice crackled over the headset.

  Silvers adjusted the microphone closer to her mouth. “Ready in the front. Matt?”

  “Yup. Good to go. Hit it!” The WSO Matt Rogers had quickly emerged as the class clown, and now even his voice cracked her up. She hoped he was as good with the scope as he was funny.

  After a month of computerized lessons, she was finally in a Rhino cockpit—even if it was just the cockpit of a simulator—feeling the unfamiliar knobs and switches on the stick and throttles under her fingers. Her eyes raced between gauges and screens, laboring to comprehend, to absorb every last bit of the data at her disposal. To ratchet up the excitement even further—and the anxiety—not only was this exercise giving the current Gladiator students their first taste of being in a Rhino, it was their first air-to-air intercept training mission, and it was being graded.

  Silvers took a breath and tailored the three multi-function displays to the appropriate setting. The moving-map showed the boundaries of the coastline near which she was operating. The ship—her virtual home base for the exercise—was somewhere behind her. She and Rogers were the CAP, the Combat Air Patrol. In the bizarre lexicon of fighter aviation, CAP was a noun and verb. The planes of the CAP orbited, or “CAPed”, about a point on the map which was also referred to as The CAP.

  “Okay; you got it. Fight’s on.” Slammer’s cool voice yanked her back to the task. The simulator came alive in her hands with the rumble of engine noise piped in from hidden speakers.

  Flight school had been a process of adapting to speed. She knew she was great at that. Aerobatics or formation in a propeller plane were followed a few months later by the same maneuvers in a jet. Same concepts, faster speeds, no sweat. But they never had radars before. Or missiles. Or bandits trying to shoot them down. She was in uncharted waters for the first time in two years and she was so amped her hands shook slightly, as if she’d had too much coffee on an empty stomach.

  Three little symbols materialized at the top of the radar display marching closer. They were in a triangle formation with the middle one at the tip, closest to her. She keyed the intercom. “Matt, we’ve got something on the nose.”

  Matt’s voice immediately filled her ears dripping honey and confidence as he responded over the radio. “Alpha Whiskey, Roman One-One has single heavy group, three-six-zero, sixty-five. Medium, hot, fast.”

  “Alpha Whiskey correlates. Target that group.” It was Slammer’s voice coming though the headset—Slammer, who loved the idea of an initiation by Chewie—but she was able to squeeze his voice into just another data point; there was no space for emotion in her processing. She felt the otherworldly calm that came over her in these moments settle like a blanket, almost palpably, across her body and any lingering fear and anxiety dissipated. All her faculties ratcheted to a higher setting. She heard everything, saw everything, assimilated everything.

  “Silvers, turn three-zero-zero. We got ’em right where we want ’em.” She could hear a similar calm in Matt’s voice. He was in the zone as well, which was good. She would need him at his best to deal with the wrinkle the training scenario was sure to throw at them.

  “Copy.” She maneuvered the control stick so the new heading was 300. The bandit symbols were now offset slightly to the right of her radar screen. The velocity vectors that indicated their speed and direction protruded from each synthesized bandit like the prongs of Neptune’s trident, pointing ominously at the lone airplane symbol in the bottom center. Matt and her.

  These in-between moments were interminable, the five, ten, fifteen seconds of flying while waiting for the radar picture to settle, waiting for the right distance to shoot. No one spoke. The fake roar of jet noise droning on and on was the only sound.

  Then there it was. The wrinkle. “Matt, new group.” Two more bandit blips materialized just to the left of their flight path. The length of the vector arrows indicated they were even faster than the original group. “Two more. Making a beeline for the carrier.”

  Rogers was right there with her. “Alpha Whiskey, Roman One-One, new group, two-nine-zero, forty-five, flanking. High, fast.”

  “Alpha Whiskey correlates your call,” acknowledged Slammer. “Red and free.”

  Rogers keyed his intercom immediately. “Christ! Hard left, two-seven-zero. Select AMRAAM missiles. You keep an eye on the north group. I’ll target this group.”

  “You got it.” The displays and headings spun as she slammed the plane to its new heading. She reached up with her left hand and flicked the Master Arm switch to the Arm position. “We’re hot.” Her right index finger flexed and relaxed against the red trigger on the stick, finding the proper spot to rest, poised.

  “Okay, come further left two-four-zero. Almost in range. Damn, these guys are smokin’ fast.”

  As she banked to the new heading she noticed the first group turning away from them, just about to exit the screen. Decoys. They were in the clear. “North group turning cold.”

  “Great. I’m on the second group. Get ready to fire.”

  Her finger tightened on the trigger, feeling the first bite of tension from the spring. She stared at the radar, willing the bandits just a little bit closer. Her eyes flashed back and forth between the still dark ‘IN-RANGE’ light and the radar blips skirting perpendicular to her course, tantalizingly close. Any second now.

  But the targets began to sag away. They were turning tail to run.

  “Don’t let ’em get away Silvers!” Rogers implored. She slammed the throttles into full afterburner. The closure increased once again. They were gaining at 150 knots…250. They would be in range in a second or two.

  Just then her radar warning receiver went berserk as an urgent voice crackled in her earpiece, “Roman One-One, Alpha Whiskey; we show the North group has fired on you.”

  She struggled to rectify the cognitive disson
ance. She was about to fire. To destroy the bandits. Maybe he meant something else? The high piercing alarm of the radar warning felt like a spike stabbing into her brain. Her hands mirrored the jumbled picture bouncing madly between her ears. She jerked the stick left, then right, unsure what to do but knowing she must do something. Immediately. She scanned the radar screen and sure enough the original North group had turned back. Neptune’s trident was cutting them off.

  Roger’s dismayed voice pierced the din. “Shit! They’re on our ass! Abort! Abort!”

  She slammed the stick hard left, away from the threat. The pitch of the radar warning increased to a shrill panicked siren indicating the final stages of missile lock. Her fingers scrabbled on the throttle switches, frantically searching for the button to pump out defensive countermeasures. Suddenly the controls and displays froze as a klaxon horn blared. It was over. They’d been hit.

  Outside, Slammer sat at the instructor’s console thoroughly unimpressed. He pushed a button, silencing the noise. Behind him, a few yards away in the huge windowless room, barren but for the cooling hoses, electrical cables, and the simulator, Silvers raised the canopy. He watched her climb out with the look of the living dead, staring just a few feet in front of her, walking toward him with zombie steps.

  Rogers came around the corner; the WSOs cockpit was, for some strange reason, in an adjacent room. “Well, that sucked.” He wore a sheepish grin like he’d just dinged his mom’s new car.

  Slammer pinched the bridge of his nose, turning his back on the two while they made their way to the console.

  “Sorry, Matt,” Silvers whispered.

  “Hey, no worries. We both screwed up. We’ll get ’em next time.”

  Once they reached him he stood, turning to face them. “Okay guys, let’s debrief in the other room.” He led the way as they filed out. In the hallway they ran into JT with the next victims for the simulator, Dusty and Berry, both sporting their new nametags.

  “Done already?” JT asked Slammer.

  “Got what we came for. Fine Navy training. Nice nametag Dingle,” he gave Dingle a friendly pat on the back as he led the way to the debriefing room. From the corner of his eye he noticed Silvers trade somber nods with Dusty as they passed.

  They followed him into the room and he closed the door behind Rogers. “Have a seat,” he commanded. The spartan space held only a small table with four chairs, a video playback machine, and a whiteboard. It could easily pass for an interrogation room—fluorescent lights above, linoleum tile underfoot, and painted cinderblock walls holding it all together.

  He drew the scenario on the whiteboard, graphically recreating the entire flight from an overhead, God’s-eye perspective. The lone fighter, depicted as always in blue, meandered north then west and finally hard south, finishing with an ominous red cloud scribbled around it. The flight paths of the two groups of bandits were depicted in traditional bad-guy red. With every stroke of Slammer’s red marker, the big picture, which had been so murky on their radar screen, became painfully clearer. The room was quiet but for their breathing and the occasional squeak of a marker. Silvers and Rogers sat glumly, stewing through the terrible time between knowing they did poorly and waiting to be told so.

  Finally he was ready. He turned, leaving one finger on the board. “You guys were suckered, right here. What happened?” His finger jabbed accusingly at the spot where they turned west. It was circled with big, sloppy red spirals for emphasis, a giant question mark adjacent to it.

  The two students glanced at each other, then Rogers spoke up. “We thought…”

  But Silvers cut him off. “It was my fault sir. Matt gave me the North group to keep track of while he worked the West group. I fixated on the decoys in the end game. I never noticed they came back.”

  He was grudgingly impressed. She was falling on her sword in an effort to keep the heat off Rogers. Nonetheless. “I saw that. Your scan broke down. The West group, the one you were chasing, was the decoy group. Can you explain how you lost all situational awareness?”

  “I wanted to shoot the missiles,” she said almost like a question, her voice trailing off at the end.

  Prior to coming to the Gladiators, a pilot’s only job was to learn to fly. Now it was Slammer’s job to take pilots and WSOs and hone them into sharp instruments of destruction. The act of flying a fighter at supersonic speeds in formation at night was soon to be a baseline skill, like walking and chewing gum. During the remaining eight months the students would layer fighting skills on top. Before they finished the syllabus they would need to ingest and apply information about multiple enemy aircraft, radars, and weapons as well as dozens of enemy surface-to-air radars and missiles. Then they’d have to go a step further and recognize, immediately, which of the Rhino’s myriad offensive and defensive capabilities and tactics to deploy against which threat. The fire hose had been cracked open and they were gathered around sipping gently. He was a few days from opening the nozzle full blast.

  Tonight he opened the hose just a little bit wider. “This isn’t a video game Silvers. You cost Mrs.Rogers her son’s life, you lost the Navy an F-18 Rhino, and there’s a good chance the ship’s defenses were overwhelmed and damage done to a national asset because of your actions.” He paused, letting the words sink in for maximum effect. He watched Silvers absorb them, leaning slowly back in her chair, unconsciously getting as far from him as possible. She flinched with each word as if she were being physically beaten.

  He didn’t ease up. He leaned over, placing his hands on the table to get in their faces. “It doesn’t always end with a victory. A kill shot. It’s a fluid situation up there. People just as smart as you are trying to kill you. They have good airplanes, and capable missiles and smart pilots too. Sometimes you have to recognize an unwinnable situation and bug out. Reset. Come back to fight another day.”

  He grabbed a chair, pulling his papers in front of him. “Well, it sucks to start your first mission with below average grades, but at least there’s plenty of room for improvement.”

  Silvers and Rogers sat in stony silence as he completed the grading process. “Alright. Let’s call it a night,” he said as he checked his watch and rose from the desk. These simulators made for long, sometimes painful days, and it was already 11pm. They were amazing, cost effective training tools, but they couldn’t come close to simulating real flight. There was no joy in simulation. Nor was there any fear of actual death. It was his job to inject the fear. And to cull the unworthy.

  Silvers was awash in a haze of frustration and anger. She knew she’d screwed up. Again. She exited the briefing room after Slammer and Rogers, lagging as she stuffed her study materials into a folder. It wasn’t even a little bit Rogers’ fault. Clear as day, she was supposed to monitor the damn North group. She fell behind, replaying the final moments over and over, glancing into the simulator room as she passed; Dusty and Dingle were somewhere deep into the exercise. JT looked up as she filled the doorframe, giving her a dismissive nod as he hung up the phone then turned back to the console, clicking a few buttons. Wallowing in her miserable thoughts, she hung behind for a moment, beaming supportive thoughts into Dusty’s cockpit.

  As she turned to catch up with Rogers the red lights began flashing and the horn on the simulator sounded. So they’d gotten Dusty, too. She hustled around the corner battling a new conflict. She didn’t want to, she knew it was wrong, but she felt better knowing she wasn’t the only one who’d fucked up the simulation. Maybe all the students fell for this trap the first day. As she walked out into the cool clear night, her spirits rose.

  Back in the simulator room, Dusty snapped the cockpit open and joined Dingle, her WSO, with a dejected look. She led them toward JT as he sat waiting at the console, a ball of apprehension growing in her stomach.

  JT stood as they approached. “Dingle, scheduling just called. You have a flight physical at zero-seven-hundred. Go grab some rack time and I’ll catch you back at the squadron after to debrief.”

 
; “Yessir.” He nodded but didn’t turn to leave.

  JT turned to look at Dusty. “Your choice. We can bang yours out right now or you can wait to show up with him tomorrow.”

  She looked at Dingle and shrugged. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll finish now.” She couldn’t stomach waiting if she didn’t have to. Better just to get it over fast, like tearing off a Band-Aid, than to wallow in it all night.

  “S’all right. I don’t much like cryin’ in front of girls anyway,” Dingle said. They exchanged small smiles and Dingle left, his bootsteps echoing away in the corridor.

  JT motioned to the chair next to him. “Let’s just talk right here.” His notes were scattered in a small pool of light on the narrow workspace at the simulator console. The background hum of the computers and hydraulics filled the room as he finished inking his depiction. Dusty sat nervously, picking her nails, trying to peek over his shoulder without getting too close, or seeming too anxious.

  Finally he was ready. “Well?” he asked quietly.

  She eyed him dispassionately. So this is how it was; he was going to make her hang herself? Screw that. “Well, obviously it ended badly. But that’s the whole point. Isn’t it? First simulator. First graded event. Give the students a reality check so they don’t get overconfident.”

  His eyes narrowed and she wondered if she had gone too far.

  “Why don’t you let me figure out the big picture. You concentrate on your performance during this particular flight. Sound good?” JT answered dryly.

  “Yes sir.” Dusty nodded once and decided to try a different tack. “Well, we were doing really well. Clicking. Then my WSO dropped the decoy group from his scan…”

  “Dingle,” JT interrupted her. “If you’re going to throw him under the bus, you should at least use his name.”

  She nodded, stung. “Yes, Dingle dropped the decoy group. He was running the radar while I…”