Everyone Told Her She Couldn’t Fly F-16s — Then She Shot Down 12 Enemy Jets and Survived 43 Bullet Holes

PART 2 — FULL STORY

The hangar was quiet now. The crowd had dispersed, the applause faded, the adrenaline finally leaching out of my bloodstream. The overhead lights threw harsh white pools across the concrete floor, and in that unforgiving glow I could see every single wound Valkyrie had taken for me.

Master Sergeant Tom Chen hadn’t moved from the wing. His hand still rested against the shredded aluminum like he was holding the hand of a dying friend. I’d been a combat pilot long enough to know that crew chiefs loved their birds in a way pilots couldn’t fully understand. We flew them. They bled for them.

“Forty-three holes,” Chen said without turning around. His voice was quiet, almost reverent, the way you talk in a hospital room. “I’ve counted four times now. Forty-three holes, Captain. You know what the manual says about a bird with more than twenty holes?”

I didn’t answer. I knew what the manual said.

“Says it’s a write-off. Says structural integrity is compromised beyond acceptable limits. Says the aircraft should have come apart at 400 knots.” He finally turned around. His eyes were red-rimmed but dry. Twenty years on the flight line, and this was the first time I’d ever seen Master Sergeant Chen look anything less than unshakeable. “This bird didn’t read the manual.”

I walked closer, my flight boots echoing on the concrete. Up close, the damage was even worse than it looked from the cockpit. The right wing looked like someone had taken a can opener to the leading edge. Wiring hung from the belly like exposed intestines. The rudder was peppered with holes the size of my fist. A dark slick of leaking hydraulic fluid had pooled beneath the left main landing gear.

“Show me the worst one,” I said.

Chen looked at me for a long moment. Something flickered in his expression — hesitation, maybe even fear, which was a look I’d never seen on a man who regularly stood next to 20,000 pounds of jet aircraft with live ordnance hanging off the wings.

“Chief,” I said. “Show me.”

He exhaled slowly and led me around to the left side of the fuselage, just behind the cockpit. The canopy was still open, tilted upward like a giant glass jaw. Chen pointed at a hole in the canopy frame itself — not the glass, but the reinforced metal rail that held the canopy in place. The hole was perfectly round, about thirty millimeters in diameter, the edges bent inward.

“This one,” he said. “This is the forty-third hole.”

I stared at it. The trajectory was clear. The round had come from her right side, slightly above, passed through the canopy frame, and then…

“Look inside the cockpit,” Chen said softly.

I climbed the crew ladder and leaned into the ejection seat. There, in the headrest — my headrest — was an exit hole. The round had passed through the frame, through the headrest, and out the other side of the canopy. I followed the path backward with my eyes. From the angle of the shot, from the height…

“That round missed your skull by three inches,” Chen said from behind me. “Three inches forward and it would have gone through the back of your helmet, through your head, and out the front of your face.”

I didn’t move. I couldn’t move.

“Whoever fired that shot had you dead to rights,” Chen continued. “You were in a turning fight, bleeding energy, probably pulling G’s. He got behind you, lined you up, squeezed the trigger, and by every law of ballistics and probability, you should be dead right now. The round hit the frame instead of you. Three inches.”

I climbed down from the ladder and stood on the hangar floor. My legs were working fine, but I felt like I was standing in quicksand. In 18 minutes of continuous combat, I’d made hundreds of decisions — every one of them necessary, every one of them correct in the moment. But not one of them had accounted for those three inches.

“Does it say what kind of round?” I asked, my voice steadier than I felt.

Chen nodded. “Thirty-millimeter high-explosive incendiary. The same rounds their fighters use. If it had hit you, you wouldn’t have felt a thing. You’d just be gone. Instead, the frame took the impact and the round punched straight through without detonating. One in a million. Maybe one in ten million.”

He was quiet for a moment, then added, “The ordnance team is coming tomorrow to remove it. It’s still lodged in the canopy rail on the other side. Dumb luck that it didn’t go off.”

I leaned against the fuselage and pressed my palm flat against the cold aluminum. The metal was still warm from the friction of reentry, still vibrating faintly with the memory of flight. I’d always believed — truly believed — that if I was good enough, smart enough, fast enough, I could beat the odds. But this wasn’t skill. This wasn’t training. This was the universe flipping a coin and landing on my side.

“Chief,” I said, “you ever lost a pilot?”

Chen’s jaw tightened. He’d been doing this for twenty years. He’d seen planes come home on a prayer and planes not come home at all. “Eleven,” he said quietly. “I’ve lost eleven pilots over the years. Good ones, every single one. Some of them had holes like this that were two inches the other way. Some of them were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. One got hit by a missile that locked onto his aircraft instead of his wingman’s. Never knew what killed him.”

He looked at Valkyrie’s shattered wing. “This is the part of my job I hate the most, Captain. Every time a bird comes back like this, I have to stand here and count the holes. And every time I do, I’m counting all the ways we almost lost you. One hole per heartbeat. Forty-three heartbeats between you and nothing.”

“Forty-four,” I said.

He looked at me.

“If the canopy crack counts, that’s forty-four.”

Chen almost laughed. It was a short, wounded sound, but it was almost a laugh. “You’re a piece of work, Captain. You know that?”

“Aiming to be a Major eventually, Chief.”

He shook his head, but some of the tension had gone out of his shoulders. “We’re going to fix her up. Three weeks, I said. I meant it. New right wing, new engine, new hydraulic lines, new canopy frame, patch every hole until you can’t tell she was ever in a fight.” He paused. “But I’m keeping the canopy frame. That hole stays exactly where it is.”

“Why?”

“Because the next pilot who sits in this cockpit needs to see it. Needs to know that sometimes you do everything right and still almost die. And sometimes you do everything wrong and save a city. And neither one of those things has anything to do with who you are on paper.” He met my eyes. “That’s a lesson worth keeping.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. So I said what I always said when I didn’t know what to say. “Thank you, Chief.”

“Go get some rest, Captain. The paperwork can wait.”

But rest wasn’t what I found when I finally made it back to my quarters. I lay in the narrow bunk staring at the ceiling, the events of the day playing on a loop behind my eyes. The radar warning receiver screaming. The missiles tracking. The bombers getting closer. The impossible math that somehow added up to me being alive and a city still standing.

And the forty-third hole. Three inches. I had been three inches from my mother getting a folded flag instead of a phone call, from the squadron drinking to my memory instead of my reprimand, from proving every doubter right in the worst possible way.

I thought about Colonel Draven’s face in the briefing room, his public apology, his extended hand. It had felt like victory in the moment, the vindication I’d been chasing for four years. But now, in the dark, I wondered if I’d actually proven anything that mattered — or just gotten very, very lucky.

Morning came hard and early, the way it always does on a military base. The sun was barely up when I walked back to the flight line, drawn by something I couldn’t name. Valkyrie was still sitting in the maintenance bay, panels removed, scaffolding erected around her like a patient in intensive care. Crews were already moving around her with the disciplined urgency of surgeons.

Chen was there, clipboard in hand, coordinating the damage assessment. He looked up when I approached and nodded once. No words needed.

“Figured you’d be here,” he said. “Couldn’t sleep either, I’m guessing.”

“Not a minute.”

“Get used to it. That’s what happens when you cheat death. Your brain spends the next week trying to figure out how to pay the debt.” He handed me a work order sheet. “Here. Sign these. Maintenance authorization for the repairs.”

I signed without reading. I’d trust Chen with my life. I already had, in every way that mattered.

The weeks that followed were strange. The Air Force has a way of dealing with exceptional circumstances — it wraps you in bureaucracy until the higher-ups figure out what to do with you. There were debriefings, after-action reports, psychological evaluations, and a constant stream of officers who wanted to shake my hand and look grave and ask questions I’d already answered a dozen times. The story was spreading, and with it came attention I didn’t want and couldn’t avoid.

What did you feel when you realized you were outnumbered six to one?
How did you maintain composure under fire?
What would you say to young women considering a career in combat aviation?

I gave the answers they expected. I talked about training, about duty, about the warrior ethos. But what I didn’t say — what I couldn’t say — was that the only reason I was alive to answer their questions was three inches of canopy frame and a 30mm round that didn’t detonate. Courage had very little to do with it. Luck had everything to do with it.

Colonel Draven called me into his office three weeks after the mission. His manner was different now — not warm, exactly, but respectful in a way it had never been before. He’d been doing his own paperwork, I knew. His decision to relegate me to CAP had been reviewed, questioned. The word was that he’d taken full responsibility and hadn’t tried to deflect blame. That counted for something with me.

“Captain Chambers,” he said, gesturing to the chair across from his desk. “I’ve reviewed the final damage assessment. Forty-three holes, one engine destroyed, hydraulic failure, flight control degradation. The investigation concluded that any reasonable pilot would have ejected at least four separate times during that engagement. You didn’t.”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

I considered the question carefully. I could give him the patriotic answer — duty, honor, the defense of innocent lives. I could give him the defiant answer — I was proving a point. But neither felt quite true.

“Sir, I don’t think I made a conscious choice not to eject. The ejection seat was armed. The handle was right there. But every time I thought about pulling it, there was still something left to do. Another bomber to stop. Another fighter to engage. By the time I ran out of things to do, I was almost home.” I paused. “I couldn’t let Valkyrie go. Master Sergeant Chen put hundreds of hours into that aircraft. It didn’t feel right to walk away from her.”

Draven studied me for a long moment. Then he did something I’d never seen him do before. He smiled. It was a small, tired smile, but it was genuine.

“That’s the most honest answer I’ve ever heard from a pilot,” he said. “Most people give me some variation of ‘I was too stupid to know I should be scared.’ But you just told me you stayed because your crew chief would be disappointed. That’s not stupidity, Captain. That’s something else entirely.”

“Loyalty, sir?”

“No. Love.” He said it plainly, without embarrassment. “You love that aircraft because someone you respected poured their soul into it. And that connection made you fly better than any training manual ever could. I spent twenty-six years trying to teach pilots to fight harder, longer, smarter. I never once thought to teach them to love what they’re flying. Maybe that was my mistake.”

He leaned back in his chair, and I saw something I’d never seen in him before — vulnerability.

“I was wrong about you, Chambers. Not just wrong. Stupid. I’ve been a fighter pilot for nearly three decades. I’ve flown with the best. And I sat in this chair and told you that you didn’t belong because I couldn’t see past my own assumptions.” He shook his head slowly. “I almost got thousands of people killed because of that. Do you understand what that feels like?”

I did understand. I’d felt the weight of a city on my shoulders with nothing between me and failure but my own decisions. But this was different. This was a man confronting his own prejudice, his own complicity in a system that had held back who knows how many qualified pilots because they didn’t fit the mold.

“Sir,” I said, “I’m not here to make you feel better about what happened. I’m here to fly. That’s all I ever wanted.”

“I know,” he said. “And that’s exactly why I’m recommending you for the Distinguished Service Cross.”

My breath caught. The DSC was the second-highest award for valor the Air Force could give. I’d never even let myself imagine receiving it. Medals were for heroes, and I didn’t feel like a hero. I felt like a pilot who’d done her job and gotten unreasonably lucky.

“Sir, I—”

“You’re going to say you don’t deserve it,” Draven interrupted. “You’re going to say you were just doing your duty. But the citation has already been approved. What you did in that cockpit saved thousands of civilian lives. You engaged twelve enemy aircraft alone and neutralized every threat. You brought your aircraft home against every odd known to aviation science. Whether you feel like a hero or not, you acted like one. Let the rest of us decide what to call it.”

Six months later, I stood in the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes in my dress blues, the Distinguished Service Cross pinned to my chest, cameras flashing, senior officers nodding with practiced approval. The citation was read aloud — the same words Draven had drafted, polished by public affairs officers into something that sounded grander than it felt. “For extraordinary heroism and gallantry in action against an armed enemy.” The words echoed off the marble walls and settled into my memory like stones dropped in still water.

My mother was in the audience. She’d flown in from Ohio, wearing her best church dress, handkerchief already damp in her hand. She’d spent two decades worrying every time I climbed into a cockpit, and now she was watching her daughter receive a medal that most pilots only ever read about in history books. I looked at her and thought about the 43rd hole. She didn’t know about that. She never would. Some things a daughter keeps to herself.

The reception afterward was a blur of handshakes and congratulations. Senators wanted photos. Junior officers wanted career advice. A teenage girl in an ROTC uniform waited two hours to tell me I was the reason she’d applied for flight school. I held her hand and told her the truth: “The only thing standing between you and that cockpit is the work you’re willing to put in. No one else’s opinion matters. Remember that.”

Then Colonel Draven found me by the refreshment table, nursing a cup of cold coffee. He was in his dress uniform, the fruit salad of ribbons on his chest telling the story of a long and decorated career.

“Can I steal you for a moment?” he asked. “There’s something I need to discuss.”

He led me to a quiet alcove off the main hall. The noise of the reception faded to a distant hum. Through the window, I could see the Washington Monument against a pale winter sky.

“They’re offering you a promotion to Lieutenant Colonel,” Draven said without preamble. “And a Pentagon assignment. Operations planning, high-level strategy. It’s a desk job, but it’s a good desk job. Sets you up for command track. Five years from now, you could be looking at full bird Colonel. Maybe even a star someday.”

I processed this. A Pentagon assignment was career gold. It meant visibility, networking, a chance to shape policy rather than just execute it. It meant I’d never have to climb into a cockpit and wonder if I’d climb out again. It meant I could go home every night, have a normal life, stop proving myself every single day.

“And if I turn it down?” I asked.

Draven smiled, just slightly. “Then I’ve got a fighter squadron that needs a new flight commander. Eighty-sixth Fighter Squadron, based out of Nellis. They need someone who can fly, who can fight, and who can teach other people to do both. The hours are brutal, the pay is the same, you’ll deploy to combat zones six months out of every year, and the promotion timeline is slower than the Pentagon track. Probably take you five more years just to make Lieutenant Colonel.” He paused. “It’s a harder life, Captain. I won’t sugarcoat that.”

I looked at the medal on my chest. Then I looked at Draven.

“When do I start?”

He laughed — an actual laugh, genuine and warm. “I was hoping you’d say that. Report to Nellis in six weeks. You’ll be the first female flight commander in the squadron’s history. I hope you’re ready for that particular kind of pressure.”

“I’ve been ready my whole career, sir.”

“That’s what I’m counting on.”

The transition to Major Elise Chambers, Flight Commander, 86th Fighter Squadron, was everything Draven had promised and more. Nellis Air Force Base baked under the Nevada sun, the heat shimmering off the runway in waves that distorted the horizon. The base was a proving ground, home to the Air Force’s most advanced training programs and most demanding instructors. Every pilot who walked through those doors was expected to be among the best, and the standards only went up from there.

My squadron was a mix of veterans and newcomers, some eager, some skeptical, all watching to see what the woman with the DSC would do next. Among them was Lieutenant Sarah Delgado, a 25-year-old pilot with enormous talent and the haunted look of someone who’d already been told too many times that she didn’t belong. The first time she walked into my briefing room, I saw myself six years earlier — the careful posture, the controlled expression, the way her eyes scanned every face trying to measure the size of the fight ahead.

“You requested assignment to my unit specifically,” I said to her after the first week. “Why?”

Delgado didn’t blink. “Because you’re the only flight commander in the Air Force who knows what it’s like to be told you can’t. And I figured if anyone was going to give me a fair shot, it would be you.”

She wasn’t wrong. Over the months that followed, I pushed Delgado harder than I pushed any of the other pilots. Not because I wanted to prove a point, but because I knew what was waiting for her out there — the doubters, the gatekeepers, the people who would seize on any mistake as proof that she didn’t belong. She had to be better than everyone else. Not fair, but true. And she was.

The male pilots in my squadron came around too, some faster than others. Captain Derek Chan, a California surfer with a physics degree and a preternatural calm under pressure, became one of my strongest advocates. Captain Marcus Webb, older and more traditional, took longer — but after his first combat rotation with me as his flight lead, he stopped referring to me as “ma’am” in that tone that meant he really wanted to say something else.

“Never seen anyone fly like that,” he admitted one night over beers at the O-Club. “You make it look like the airplane’s just an extension of your body. No wasted motion. No hesitation.”

“That’s what 800 hours and a lot of people telling you you’re not good enough will do,” I said.

He nodded slowly. “I get it now. I don’t think I got it before, but I get it now.”

In the spring of my second year as flight commander, we deployed to a forward operating base in the Middle East. The situation was tense — a regional conflict brewing, hostile air forces probing our airspace, the constant low hum of potential combat vibrating under every routine mission. I’d been here before, in every way that mattered. The aircraft were newer, the technology more advanced, but the fundamental challenge hadn’t changed: fly, fight, survive, protect.

Our mission was combat air patrol over a no-fly zone — the very same assignment Draven had once used to sideline me. But now I was leading four aircraft, and the patrol wasn’t punishment. It was a shield. Below us, cities full of people went about their lives, never knowing how often the thin blue line above them was all that stood between peace and catastrophe.

The morning it happened started like any other. Pre-flight checks at 0500. The smell of jet fuel and desert dust. The ritual of strapping into the cockpit, running through the checklist, feeling the aircraft come alive around me. This F-16 was newer than Valkyrie, but I’d still named her Valkyrie. Chen had understood when I told him. “Some names are earned,” he’d said. “She’ll live up to it.”

My wingman was Lieutenant Delgado. My element lead was Captain Chan, with Webb on his wing. Four aircraft, four pilots, one mission: patrol, observe, report. The rules of engagement were clear. Defensive posture only. Do not initiate combat. But the enemy doesn’t always read your rules of engagement.

The first sign of trouble came on the radar — fast-moving blips crossing the border, heading toward a civilian population center. My tactical display lit up with vectors and threat assessments. Six hostile fighters. And behind them, something larger. Bombers, maybe. The same scenario. The same math.

My heart rate didn’t spike. My hands didn’t shake. I’d been here before, and I’d learned something important: fear doesn’t go away, but it gets easier to carry.

“Saber Lead to all Saber elements,” I transmitted. “We have hostile aircraft crossing the border. Saber 3 and 4, maintain station. Saber 2, you’re with me. We’re going to take a closer look.”

Delgado’s voice came back steady. “Saber 2 copies. Right behind you.”

We pushed our throttles forward and accelerated toward the intercept. The two of us, two against six, just like old times. But I wasn’t alone this time. Delgado was on my wing, her formation tight, her flying precise. I could see her in my peripheral vision, a shadow against the deep blue sky.

What happened next played out in the compressed, hyper-real way that combat always does. The enemy fighters saw us coming and split into pairs, classic offensive tactics. Two stayed high as cover. Four came down to meet us. The geometry was difficult but not impossible, and I’d seen far worse.

“Saber 2, stay loose,” I said. “Don’t fixate on any one target. We’re not here to fight unless they engage first. Let them make the first move.”

But the first move came faster than I expected. One of the enemy fighters locked us up with his radar — the electronic equivalent of putting a gun to someone’s head. My radar warning receiver chirped a warning. Then a second lock. Then a third.

“Saber Lead, they’re painting us,” Delgado said, her voice tighter now. “Multiple locks.”

“I see them.” I scanned the tactical picture, calculating ranges, closure rates, missile envelopes. We were at a disadvantage in numbers and position, but we had altitude and speed. “Saber 2, prepare to break on my signal. Do not fire unless fired upon.”

“Copy.”

For ten long seconds, nothing happened. The enemy fighters continued their advance. We continued ours. Two formations closing at a combined speed of over a thousand miles an hour, each waiting for the other to blink.

Then one of them fired.

“Missile launch!” Delgado called. “Fox 3 inbound!”

“Break right, now!”

We split in opposite directions, deploying chaff and flares. The missile tracked me for a moment, then bit on the countermeasures and detonated harmless in the thin air. But the engagement had begun, and there was no putting it back in the box.

“Saber Lead, I’ve got a shot,” Delgado said. “Request weapons free.”

The decision compressed itself into a single heartbeat. If I held fire, we risked being overwhelmed. If I authorized engagement, I was starting a fight that could escalate into something larger. There was no good answer, no clean solution, no textbook that told you what to do when the textbook didn’t apply.

“Saber 2, weapons free,” I said. “Take the shot.”

Delgado’s AMRAAM dropped off her wing and ignited, accelerating toward the enemy fighter. I locked up another target and fired my own missile. Two seconds later, the sky bloomed with fire.

What followed was twenty minutes of controlled chaos. Delgado flew like someone who’d been doing this her whole life — precise, aggressive, decisive. She scored two kills, her first ever in combat, and the radio discipline she maintained throughout was the mark of a professional who’d been trained by someone who’d once faced impossible odds herself. Chan and Webb joined the fight from their patrol station, and together the four of us turned back the incursion. Three enemy fighters destroyed. Two damaged and forced to withdraw. No civilian casualties.

When we landed back at base, the sun was setting over the desert in shades of orange and purple that reminded me of that first morning over the fleet all those years ago. Delgado climbed down from her cockpit and stood on the tarmac, helmet in hand, face pale with the aftermath of adrenaline. She looked at me, and for a moment she couldn’t speak.

“You did good,” I said. “Better than good. You did what needed doing.”

“I was scared,” she said. “The whole time. I was so scared I could barely breathe.”

“That’s normal. That’s how you know you’re paying attention.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “The fear doesn’t go away, Lieutenant. But it does become something you can use. Fear sharpens your focus. Fear tells you what matters. The only pilots who never feel fear are the ones who don’t come home.”

She nodded, processing. “My dad told me women couldn’t handle combat. Said we didn’t have the nerves for it.”

“What do you think now?”

She looked at her F-16, at the scorch marks on the fuselage where her missile had launched, at the empty hardpoint where it had hung. “I think he was wrong. I think a lot of people were wrong.” She turned back to me. “I think you proved that, and now I’ve proved it, and every woman who comes after us is going to have an easier time because of it.”

That night, sitting alone in my quarters, I thought about the arc of my career — from a 5’6″ pilot nobody wanted in their squadron to a flight commander who’d just led her team through a real-world engagement. I thought about Draven’s apology, Chen’s forty-third hole, the medal I kept in a box in my footlocker because I still wasn’t quite comfortable wearing it.

And I thought about the women who’d come before me. The ones who’d fought just to be allowed in the cockpit at all. The ones who’d been told “no” a thousand times and kept asking. The ones who’d retired without ever seeing combat because the rules didn’t allow it, and the ones who’d died proving that the rules were wrong.

I hadn’t done this alone. I’d stood on their shoulders, whether I knew their names or not. And now Delgado would stand on mine, and the pilots she trained would stand on hers. That was how it worked. Not a single dramatic victory, but a relay race that stretched across generations, each woman handing off something a little better to the next.

Three months later, I was back at Nellis, standing in front of a class of new pilots — men and women both, all of them looking at me with the expectant, slightly nervous expressions of people about to begin something that would change their lives.

“I’m Major Elise Chambers,” I said. “Some of you know the story. Some of you don’t. Either way, it doesn’t matter. What matters is what happens from this moment forward. I’m going to train you to fly, to fight, and to survive. But I’m also going to teach you something that took me years to learn.”

I looked at the faces in front of me. Young faces. Hopeful faces. The face I’d once worn myself.

“Out there, in the real world, people are going to have opinions about you. Some of those opinions will be based on who you actually are. Most of them will be based on something you can’t control — your gender, your background, your accent, your height, your name. And here’s the thing: those opinions only matter if you let them matter. The sky doesn’t care what you look like. Gravity doesn’t check your demographics. A missile doesn’t ask if you belong before it locks onto your aircraft. The only thing that matters is whether you can fly, whether you can fight, and whether you’ll have your wingman’s back when everything goes wrong.”

I paused and looked directly at a young woman in the second row — dark hair pulled back in a tight regulation bun, knuckles white where she gripped her notepad.

“You will be underestimated,” I said to her. “You will be told you don’t belong. You will be judged before you ever get a chance to prove yourself. When that happens, I want you to remember this: courage doesn’t care about your demographics. Skill doesn’t check your resume. And up here, at 30,000 feet, the only question that matters is whether you can answer the call when it comes.”

She nodded, eyes steady.

“Good,” I said. “Then let’s get to work.”

After the briefing, I walked out to the flight line and stood for a moment watching the F-16s in their rows, gleaming in the Nevada sun. Somewhere out there was the aircraft I’d fly tomorrow morning, fresh from maintenance, painted with my name and call sign. Somewhere out there was Delgado, pre-flighting her own bird, ready to prove herself again. Somewhere out there was Chen, probably yelling at some poor airman for not polishing a panel to his exacting standards.

I’d started this journey alone, convinced I had to carry every weight by myself. But somewhere along the way, I’d built something bigger than my own career. I’d built a team. I’d built a legacy. I’d built a reason for the next pilot to believe that her efforts mattered.

And if forty-three bullet holes and three inches of canopy frame were the price I paid for that, then it was a price I’d pay again. Every time.

The sun climbed higher over the desert, the heat beginning its daily assault on the tarmac. I turned my back on the flight line and walked toward the briefing room. There was work to do. There were pilots to train. There was a sky that didn’t care about anything except what you could do in it.

And I could fly. That was all that had ever mattered. That was all that ever would.

THE END