Kevin Miller - Raven One

“Sounds like a plan,” Weed replied, and they both rolled over and closed their eyes in an effort to will themselves to sleep.

After several minutes four bells sounded over the 1MC: “Reveille, reveille, all hands heave to and trice up. The smoking lamp is lighted in all designated spaces. Now reveille .” Wilson pulled the covers up to shield his eyes from the white light that, when switched on in the passageway, leaked under the door. Aboard Valley Forge a new day was beginning. He thought about the time: 0600. Sixteen hours to go.

While her department heads conversed in their racks, Olive, 40 frames aft, had no one to talk to.

Unable to sleep, she had pulled herself into a fetal position and wrapped her arms around her long legs. She figured other Air Wing Four aviators were struggling for sleep, but the reality of this night had hit her in the deep recesses of her mind.

Tonight, as a senior JO, she would be flying on Cajun’s wing in the first strike going against an alerted and capable enemy. Combat. This was not an Iraqi close-air-support bomb toss. Tonight they would face SAMs and AAA, and maybe even Iranian fighters. Downtown Bandar Abbas with multicolored and interlocking threat rings. She knew their defenses would be effective. Determined. And only hours away.

Like everyone else, she had long ago come to grips with the knowledge that death could come any day with no warning. A routine cat shot suddenly transformed into a crash. A shipboard fire. An unexpected and lethal jet of scalding water in the shower. Electrocution. The list was almost endless both aboard ship and in the air, and the fact that it hardly ever occurred was little solace. Sometimes it did occur, and putting oneself over Bandar Abbas tonight raised the odds significantly.

As a warrior she would go. There was no doubt of that.

Her worst nightmare was capture, which would soon be followed by rape. Repeated and vicious. And, if there were a captured American male in the next cell to hear her screams, the enemy would continue the brutality to get him to talk. She would be alone, and she would be singled out night after night. While she had long realized and accepted that fearful reality, it was now a much greater possibility… a possibility she may have to experience within the next 24 hours.

Compared to rape, death — fast and painless in an exploding Hornet— would be welcome. But what if she were conscious in a spinning, burning jet? Would she pull the handle, be it consciously or reflexively, at the chance to live? Even if that meant consigning herself to the living hell that would await her in captivity? She shuddered when she realized that, yes, she would.

Olive knew all about loneliness, but she had never felt more alone than she did at that moment. Twenty-eight years old. Had any man, even her father, ever loved her? Olive’s only sexual experience had come two weeks before she entered the academy, and the boy’s drunken premature finish had left her ashamed and confused. That was it? Where were the supposed fireworks? There were certainly no bells or singing birds. She didn’t even remember his name anymore, and she knew he had forgotten hers within days.

The only real remnant of the experience was anger… which revealed itself in her cold and always professional demeanor. Both her anger and her loneliness had become a burden. When was the last time she had laughed as a carefree girl?

During the past 10 years, as she had entered adulthood and become a capable woman, Olive had been surrounded by men in this testosterone-drenched, male-dominated culture. Many were still boys , for sure, but they were technically men. Legal, adult men who could pursue Olive if they wanted — but chose not to. Who was she kidding? Even the “boyfriends” of her youth had taken her on a few unexciting dates before they moved on. Her athletic body and mysterious way had gained their initial interest, but they dropped her with no explanation.

In the darkness, she felt her face, felt the skin around her jawline. The only fat on her body was right there . With her fingers, she measured the close distance between her dark eyes, touched the high forehead, glided over the acne scars, felt the coarse hair. She had followed this routine every time she had moments like this — ever since she was in seventh grade. That was when the image of Camille’s disappointed and disapproving expression was seared into her memory. Her mother had touched Olive’s face in the same way, and then with hands on hips, said to her the words that had set the course of her life: “How did I end up with a plain Jane like you?”

Not now! Olive thought as she rolled over and hugged her pillow. She fought mentally to keep her finely constructed emotional barriers from sagging under the stress of impending combat. Her thoughts, though, soon turned dark again.

As a student of history, she knew that on the eve of combat men of every culture traditionally found women— any women they could find — and deposited their seed in an instinctive human desire to spread their genes and leave as many offspring as they could before they died. Doughboys on their way to the trenches of France. Bomber crews out in London before a mission. Japanese soldiers with “comfort women” sex slaves before their banzai charges. The examples were many over the millennia. Men could find a woman for release, could spread their genes, and it was all accepted.

But a female warrior on the frontline was relatively new to human history. And, as a woman, Olive had to be selective. Sure, she could remove her clothes and get any number of sailors within a thousand feet to screw her in a fan room or dark alcove, right now or practically anytime she wanted. The problem was she had to carry his genes with hers, and she had to deliver and care for a child — forever. Her instinctive need for love included a need for a strong father to support a baby, and that could not be met unless a man was committed to her and loved her. For Kristin Teel, that was not going to happen tonight. No one had ever offered.

Resentment began to build when she realized that Psycho, sleeping so peacefully above her, did have all this. The thick, silky hair, the high cheekbones, the blue eyes, the creamy skin, the fun personality — and a killer body. And inside that killer body was a growing baby, Smoke’s baby, spreading his genes, a fact that would keep Psycho from the heavy overland stuff tonight. While Olive was risking everything over the Bandar Abbas meat grinder, “poor Psycho” would be flying quick-reaction surface combat air patrol high over the North Arabian Sea with a near-zero threat. She would then go back home for maternity leave with her Air Medal while baby-daddy Smoke passed out cigars. Later they would get to move into the house with the picket fence.

Olive suddenly hated Psycho, her admiral father, Smoke, and the whole Navy. Psycho was just like the rest of the party girls in high school and at Bancroft Hall in Annapolis. They were loyal to Olive — until their guys came by and picked them up. She thought of the dozen bridesmaid dresses she had worn to their weddings.

Bitches.

Stop this! Olive hissed into her pillow. When Psycho stirred above her, she froze. After a moment, though, Psycho settled back down into silence, sleeping as peacefully and as carefree as a Hornet pilot could be on the eve of combat — and loved by a man.

Olive rarely allowed herself to wallow in this much self-pity. She resolved that the timing of this episode would not deter her from walking to the jet tonight. She would launch, fly into the maw of Bandar Abbas, and deliver her JDAM with cold precision. Lieutenant Teel didn’t need either a baby or a man. Or want one. Maybe she never would.