Avalanche

| the miracles |

His head had always belonged in the clouds, my father had said. I disagree, Maverick's head never left the clouds, even when he was on solid ground.

Maverick turns our back towards us, looking up into the monitor.

"This is where you'll be most vulnerable." He looks back at me. "This is Coffin Corner."

I break our eye contact first, looking up in the screen.

"Assured, you avoid crashing into this mountain, you'll climb up into the enemy's radar while losing your air speed. Working seconds, you'll be fired upon by enemy SAMs. You' be all faced things like this before, but this is going to take you and your aircraft to your breaking point."

"Sir, is this even achievable?" Payback asks from the back.

Maverick looks at each and every one of us. "The answer to that question, will come down to the pilot in the box."

Might as well ask for a cure for my fathers cancer, because our mission seemed as impossible as that.

❅

Splitting into groups of 2 F-18s per simulation run, we practice Phase Two of the mission.

The climb into the inverted descent was the easiest part, I'd have to say.

But calibrating the missile laser and delivering the missile was a whole other story.

It took me two runs to even hit the ventilation shaft, and I was the first to hit it out of everybody.

Avalanche 1, Hangman 0.

Just because I liked him and we were kinda together now, didn't mean I would stop competing with him.

Back to the trial runs, our ascent above Coffin's Corner deemed much harder, the G's was just too much to handle, and every time I would try to get over the imaginary mountain range, I'd always clip it and fail the simulation.

On my fourth time going inverted down the mountain, I was confident I could finish the course flawlessly.

I was behind Phoenix and Bob, and they hit the ventilation shaft, now it was my job to hit my missile down it so the uranium plant could finally be destroyed.

At least, that was the plan.

I was right about to pull my trigger, when an alert went off on my plane.

I missed.

"Avalanche, what was that?" Phoenix asked exasperated.

We had been so close to passing.

I ignored her, as I turned my plans back over, and tried to even it out. I failed the simulation as I flew into the mountain wall, even though it wasn't really there.

There was something wrong with my engine.

"Avalanche, what's going on?" Maverick asked me. I could hear the panic in his voice, and he started to come closer to me in his plane.

"I don't know, my F-18 is malfunctioning." I said, trying to keep calm. "My engine—"

BOOM.