Kevin Miller - Raven One

The darkened passageways were illuminated by red lights. Exhausted, Wilson made his way forward toward his stateroom, pushing off a bulkhead at one point to steady himself. Many frames forward he saw the shadow of a sailor walking aft toward him, then disappearing as he turned into a starboard passageway. He heard the engine of an FA-18 howling one level above on the flight deck; apparently, night-check maintenance was doing a high-power turn to check some component. Valley Forge never slept completely, but most of the crew was asleep now, and Wilson’s body craved it.

He trundled down the ladder and aft, shielding his eyes from an area of bright fluorescent lights. Entering officer’s country, he navigated the dim maze to his stateroom on autopilot. Opening the door, he switched on his desk light to minimize the disturbance to Weed, asleep in his rack. Or so he thought.

“Hey, you guys done?” Weed mumbled. Facing the bulkhead, he was a motionless lump in the top bunk.

“Nah, still have some element brief stuff… kneeboard cards. How about you?” Wilson replied, unfastening the laces on his boots.

“Pretty much the same.”

Wilson was wiped out, and neither pilot was in the mood to talk. He removed his boots, hung his flight suit on a hook, and crawled into bed, pulling the covers up around him. Rest, finally. What a day! The news about Richard Best . Psycho. Strike planning all day and night. Hitting Iran tomorrow. No, tonight!

Wilson put all of it out of his mind. He had to sleep, knowing it would be the only uninterrupted rest he got in the next 36–48 hours.

“G’night, man,” he mumbled to his roommate.

“G’night.”

Wilson woke and looked at the numerals of the LCD clock: 4:30. Oh-ridiculous thirty . He had been asleep only three hours and had popped awake now because of adrenaline and stress. Calm down, he thought. Go back to sleep.

Over the next hour, Wilson tried to sleep, but he couldn’t shake the image of a Hornet in formation next to him, ghostly green under the illumination of night vision goggles. The cultural lighting of Bandar Abbas slid closer and soon the AAA appeared as a reverse waterfall of small lights rising into the air in a graceful arc. The heavier stuff followed, which to Wilson looked like flashbulbs popping in a cluster. It seemed much closer when viewed through the NVG light intensifiers.

Wilson marveled at the serene background of aerial combat. It was for the most part silent. He recalled how, in 2003, the armada of American and Brit aircraft had approached Baghdad in waves. The floating waves of aluminum pummeled the Iraqi capital with precise violence while the defenders fired barrage AAA into the air in a desperate attempt to hit something, anything… but still unsuccessful after 12 years of trying since the truce in 1991. He remembered the muffled flashes as Tomahawks hit their targets around the brightly lit city from many miles away. He also watched the tentacles of AAA rising into the air like fingers of a rotating hand looking for something to grasp. The sight was fascinating to watch, and both the beauty of the light show and the silence of the scene held him spellbound as he approached the target at transonic speeds. His only interruption might be a terse “ Ramrods check right twenty ” from an element leader on the strike common frequency. Dozens of aircrew experienced this incongruity from inside their warm cocoons, the rumble of the engines behind them and the hum of the cockpit their only company, as they are drawn by their mission plan into this hornet’s nest of defenses. In contrast, it must have been hellish on the ground as numerous AAA pieces fired their ear-splitting staccato bursts into the air, frantic crews reloaded, and soldiers shouted angry orders or cried out in fear. It was not silence that permeated the background of these scenes but the haunting sounds of air raid sirens and the thumps and booms of ordnance hitting its targets.

Would it be like that over Bandar Abbas? Probably so, and worse , Wilson surmised. Would he be able to pick up a SAM amid all the cultural lighting? Would the Iranian gunners be better than their Arab counterparts? Was there a lucky BB up there with his name on it? He thought of Hariri. Would he, or other pilots in MiG-35s, rise up to meet him? As the fear built up inside, Wilson focused on the rise and fall of his chest in an effort to control his breathing. Please God, let us all come back.

He looked at the clock: 5:40. Damn . He needed to sleep but was wide awake. He thought about checking the computer to see if Mary had sent anything during the night but decided against it. He needed to stay here and get rest.

Weed stirred above him, and Wilson heard him mutter under his breath. “Fuck.”

“Can’t sleep either?” Wilson asked.

Weed rolled over and exhaled. “No.”

“Where are you going tonight?”

“Jask — Skipper Sanderson is leading it,” Weed answered, referring to the Spartan CO. “You guys going to Bandar Abbas?”

“Yep.”

Lost in their thoughts and fears, they didn’t speak for a while. They knew they were the finest tactical aviators flying the finest aircraft with the finest weapons in the world — their “blade” honed sharp during months of combat in Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom— but they also knew the Iranians were serious opponents. Wilson recalled the Skipper’s words: While the Iranians were not their equal in the air, they definitely had a way of hurting Americans in the past.

“You afraid?” Weed asked in the darkness.

Wilson contemplated the question as he continued to stare ahead into the shadows of the frame of his roommate’s rack. He admitted to himself he was afraid of dying and of getting himself captured, but he was even more afraid of hitting the wrong target or making a mistake in the planning that could render strike 1A unsuccessful. While confident of his ability and training, he was not infallible. What was he missing? Why the anxiety? Did he and the others have to be perfect ? Was it Hariri?

“Yeah. But I’m ready to go up there and strike those dickheads. If not now, when? If not me, who?”

Silence returned to the stateroom, both men still thinking about what the next 24 hours would bring. Wilson returned the question. “How ‘bout you? Ready to go, big guy?”

“Yeah, I’m ready. Just apprehensive, like the night before the high school district championship game. And I’m not sure how this story ends, either. Do we knock this off after a few nights? Do the Iranians escalate? What happens to traffic in Hormuz, oil prices, all that?”

“So, you’re worried about your portfolio?” joked Wilson.

“You know, we’ve been in combat every cruise since we were nuggets in the 90s. Yet it gets harder, not easier. Like night traps. Guess a little apprehension comes with age.”

“Yeah. Sometimes I think about the World War II guys. They flew out hundreds of miles from their ship using heading, airspeed, and time on a damn plotting board to fight their way through the Zeros and roll in on a carrier in a near vertical dive. Imagine diving into that ring of fire, every gun on the ship pointing at you. Then they had to use dead reckoning to get themselves back to their ship. Or the Vietnam guys— two or three times a day —dodging SAMs and going to the merge with MiGs that could out-turn them. We won’t have to face what they faced.”

Weed grunted. “Um, hmm. Yeah, we are fortunate. You know, I hate it when you’re right and make me feel like shit.”

Wilson chuckled, but knew they needed sleep. “Let’s sleep ‘til 10, get cleaned up, get some food, and press on.”