Kevin Miller - Raven One

To the east, the moon peeked above the jagged cloud-lined horizon. On its slow journey across the black sky, its glow created a welcome line that helped the pilots distinguish up from down at a glance. Though the pilots could see the moon from four miles up, far below on the surface it was still well below the horizon, and, to the left, the dark Omani coastal plain was almost indistinguishable from the sea. This region was one of the most desolate and inhospitable places on earth. Its desolation, however, possessed a beauty of its own, and Wilson had observed it many times during his deployments here. The ugliness, in contrast, was pronounced: the cruel heat of midday; the wind-blasted and sun-scorched wasteland; and a strange, unfriendly people whose ways were so foreign and views so absolute — yet accommodating, if it suited them.

Wilson had been forged a warrior here, and the region held a special place in his heart. At the same time, he hated it, hated coming back… but could he walk away after this cruise? Wilson looked over at Olive and Dutch, dutifully following their flight leader. At the moment, they were mere position lights in the darkness.

The radio crackled, and Wilson returned to the task at hand: Get everyone home.

Then it hit him, pent up and long suppressed emotion welling up from inside, the tectonic plates of service before self and the desire to live a normal life with Mary and the kids that ground away at each other for months and years suddenly shifting at this time and place, alone in the cockpit of a low-fuel-state warplane high over a dark and hostile sea on the other side of the world, surrounded by strange combinations of numbers and letters on his night-dimmed cockpit displays, hearing and comprehending short and clipped radio transmissions that are all but indecipherable to only a few thousand people on earth.

A question, a cry rose up from a place he did not know he possessed. What am I doing here?

As he looked up at the Milky Way, as if asking someone, anyone, for an answer, he let the question hang and then repeated it in his mind. What made him come here , again and again, fighting the Iraqi’s, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and now the Iranians? Going back home to recharge, retrain, and reload? And repeating the cycle for another deployment? And another? And if successful in his career path, he’d have many more deployments, all of them here in this literal hellhole of a region. And was that it? Promotion? Advancement? The all-consuming obsession with command? Was he thinking only of himself on the way up, willing to miss vast swaths of his children’s lives in the process and even to risk making Mary a widow at worst? He thought of what she was doing now — at home watching the kids during the midafternoon doldrums. Soon the phone would ring and someone would tell her to turn on the news, and she would start wondering and worrying and praying. Then, she would receive another call with the shocking news that Steve Lassiter is missing, and she would rush over to Billie’s house with the other girls to support her. They would each begin living their own personal hells while they watched one of their own experience it for real. His career choice was going to do that to her in mere hours.

“Damn you!” he shouted at himself in guilt and frustration.

“ Raven four-zero-three, Strike?”

Wilson snapped out of it and keyed the mike to answer the ship over 100 miles away. “Go ahead.”

“Check in with flight number and state.”

He took a deep breath and responded. “ Ravens checking in with three, low state four point one, requesting Texaco .”

“ Raven four-zero-three roger, vectors for Redeye seven-zero-two is one-five-zero at sixty, angels fourteen, switch up departure on button two.”

“Strike, four-oh-three copies. Ravens go, button two,” Wilson said as he punched in the tanker frequency and prepared for another night tanker rendezvous in a thirsty jet over a dark ocean.

Almost an hour later he climbed down from 403 on the foul line, emotionally and physically spent. Airman Rodriguez met him at the bottom of the ladder with a salute, but Ted Randall and the troubleshooters were there with some news. “You took some dings on your right wing, two in the aileron and one in the trailing edge flap. One of the aileron hits went clean through, a hole about the size of a quarter. Did it give you problems?”

“No, no problems,” Wilson said, walking past the group to see for himself, while Ted and two of the troubleshooters following. He looked up at the folded right wing and saw the top of the aileron with its composite fibers exposed. Then he inspected the trailing edge flap with his flashlight, running his fingers over a one-inch exposed shard of metal embedded in the skin.

They hit me, he thought. If he had been a little closer, or if the frag had hit him in a vital area, he, too, would be in the dark waters of Hormuz — or worse.

“Can you patch them?” he shouted over the whine of nearby jets. Before Ted could answer, a Prowler trapped and rolled out some 60 feet away, and they waited for the deafening roar to subside to continue the conversation.

“Yeah, won’t make the last go, but tomorrow for sure. What happened to the drops?”

“Had to punch ‘em off, needed the airspeed,” Wilson answered, still fascinated by the damage, albeit light, to his aircraft.

They hit me.

“Is the Skipper okay? Is he going to be late?” Ted shouted. The troubleshooters leaned in to hear the answer.

Wilson sensed they already knew what it would be. He looked at Ted with a pained expression. “I don’t know. Doesn’t look good, Ted. What have you heard here?”

Ted shook his head and said, “Nothing. Just that he didn’t check in.”

The troubleshooters drifted away in grim silence, but Wilson stopped one of them and shouted close to his ear. “Petty Officer Mansfield. I want that frag, please.”

“You got it, sir,” the metalsmith replied with a solemn nod. “I’ll deliver it myself.”

“Thanks.”

Wilson turned to complete his post flight and saw that Airman Rodriguez stood in his path. She looked up at him in confusion and disbelief. “Mister Wilson, is Commander Lassiter coming back tonight?” She had to shout in her accented English to be heard over the din.

“Don’t know, Rodriguez. We’re looking for him.” Wilson didn’t know what else to say.

The girl refused to believe it.

“Sir, you said everyone would be okay.” She looked at him as if he had deceived her.

Wilson sat bone tired in his ready room chair, head back, legs stretched out in front. He tried — and failed — to nap while waiting for Saint to show up from his early morning strike. Shortly after his own return, Wilson had answered endless questions from the CVIC spies about the enemy defenses, the hits, Cajun’s last known position, the JDAM indications, and routine coordination procedures. He was then led to flag plot to relay the story, again from the top, while Admiral Smith, with his staff looking over his shoulders, studied target photos and charts of Bandar Abbas. He learned from the admiral that CAG and the Sweeps could not raise Cajun on his survival radio. Neither could they remain in the area where he went in due to the heavy concentration of AAA and a tactical SAM launched at them. Their assessment was that 400 went in several hundred yards off a jetty near the harbor entrance with no indication that Cajun made it out; but there was no proof he was dead, either, so the search and rescue effort was ongoing. Nobody wanted to turn it off and declare him missing — or killed — too soon.