June 13, 2014; Embarked USS George H.W. Bush, Gulf of Oman
A civilian friend once asked me, “What’s the coolest thing you can do in a plane?”
My honest answer—everything.
Every day, every minute, every millisecond in the jet was thrilling. I’d spent most of my twenties training and studying to be in that cockpit. I’d traded birthdays, weddings, and holidays to live like a vagabond and struggle to maintain any semblance of a normal relationship. But it was well worth it.
On my first combat flight into Afghanistan with Waldo, another one of my favorite pilots, I got to witness firsthand the awesome power even the sight and sound the F/A-18 has. We were supporting British commandos at a forward operating base. They were conducting surveillance on the Taliban when our radios crackled with a call about troops in contact, meaning our guys were engaged with the enemy—or more specifically, a group of Navy SEALs, one of which had the call sign Brutal, was in a firefight with the Taliban.
Our SEALs were posted up on a hilltop and the Taliban were in an orchard. “Standby for a nine-line for an immediate show of presence.” All right, it’s game time.
We dropped down within earshot so the Taliban knew fighter jets were overhead. This didn’t deter them; they kept engaging the SEALs. So we escalated our show of presence to a show of force. As soon as the order was passed, our planes dropped thousands of feet in altitude in seconds. Skimming through the mountains at two hundred feet off the farm fields, we raced toward the Taliban’s location, executing a sneak pass at 500-plus knots. We swooped over Taliban terrorists like birds of prey dropping in for the kill. As per our briefed game plan, our jet and our wingman’s jet came in from different angles so the enemy wouldn’t know where we were coming from, so we could minimize our chances of being shot down.
As we screamed overhead, engines raging, we could see the bad guys plaster themselves to the ground covering their heads, some even curling up into the fetal position, thinking that one thing: If an F/A-18 is that close, it comes with thunder and lightning. They expected that, following the tremors and roar of our jet blast, they would feel their bodies being blown apart by our cannon fire or our bombing systems. No doubt there were some soiled pants and many bruised egos when they realized we were just sending a message—a message that was received. You are messing with the best, if you keep this up you will lay burning in this field.
The Taliban immediately ceased fire and the SEAL with the call sign Brutal and the rest of his team were able to get out of Dodge. We wanted to circle back and employ our weapons, but in this case, our ground commander’s intent was met. We neutralized the Taliban without expending any ordnance, just using thirty-four thousand pounds of thrust and eighty decibels of the sound of freedom.
Supporting ground troops and working with other forces in the close air support stack reminded me of the Minotaur.
“Sometimes I think I’d get more news from a messenger pigeon,” I joked to Taylor one afternoon. The Minotaur’s emails had been slower and slower in coming. It bothered me, but the Band-Aid had been on and off so many times that ripping it off this time had lost the sting.
Looking out the canopy of my Super Hornet at the towering, snow-covered peaks of Afghanistan, I knew the sacrifices and difficulties with the squadron were worth it. I watched the attack helicopters in the valleys below me, and wondered if Minotaur was in one of them. Every time I got into the plane, I couldn’t help but listen for his voice over the radio, even though I knew Marine helicopter pilots didn’t talk to many people in-country. They flew too low, and if they did talk, they’d use different radio frequencies than jets. We flew high to stay safe, and they flew low to do the same, constantly hiding behind mountains, hunting the enemy just above the treetops. Just like in our relationship, I strained to hear the transmissions with so much altitude between us.
In Afghanistan, even though things started off slow, our mission ramped up quickly. After our arrival in late March, the first round of elections took place. We supported President Obama’s request to provide security for the Afghani polling stations on April 5, 2014, and then again we were called in to support the second round of elections on June 14.
The first round of elections was rather uneventful, so as the second round approached, I wasn’t nervous about flying in-country. Actually, I was feeling grumpy about flying into Afghanistan that day, because we’d shifted our schedule and I’d had to get up at two a.m. for my flight. I was flying with my skipper, Coma, and after the brief, we went down to breakfast and chose a table in front of one of the big screens. It was a luxury to watch TV over breakfast, because normally in the wardroom, we weren’t allowed to have TVs on at mealtime.
That morning, Al Jazeera was doing a special on the Taliban in Afghanistan. They had reporters embedded within a small gang of the terrorists, and the bad guys were showing the reporters how to shoot RPGs and machine guns at the American base nearby. As the Taliban was terrorizing the base, a helicopter launched from the airfield. Initially, they got a little scared, until they saw it was a transportation helo, so they kept lobbing shots over the wall. Next an attack helicopter took off, and the Taliban got a little scared again, taking cover under a carport while still sneaking shots at the Americans. Finally, a fighter jet dropped down in a show of presence, dipping low enough that the Taliban could see and hear it overhead. At this, the group freaked out, yelling that the fighters had arrived and they must take cover. They frantically disbursed and scrambled toward the building like rats just before the news cut to a commercial.
I looked around at my four squadronmates who were mesmerized by what we’d just seen. We were stunned, staring at the TV, but then we unfroze and finished our breakfast in silence. We had seen what a show of presence from the sky could do and now we were getting the ground perspective.
“Whelp,” Coma, our skipper, said, bringing us back to the moment. “In my eighteen years in the Navy, that was the most fucking surreal thing I’ve ever seen, especially before strapping into my jet to go fight those assholes. Guess it proves the work we’re about to do actually matters. Let’s go get ’em, boys.”
“And girls,” I said with a wink.
Once we arrived on station in Afghanistan, we were on high alert. Just like we did for the first elections two months prior, we circled above the polling stations, watching for any nefarious activity on the ground and providing jet noise to protect the polling stations. As was evident by the morning’s news, the bad guys were still there, lying in wait, biding their time until we let our guard down so they could assault the Afghani people with violence. We were ready for a long, stressful day when I heard a strange call from Pyramid.
“Hellcat 21, Pyramid. I’ve just received a call, you need to RTB USS Ship at this time.”
I did a double take. Can this be right? Pyramid is saying that our section, Hellcat 21, needs to turn around and head back to the Bush.
“Pyramid, Hellcat 21 negative,” I replied. “We have higher-level tasking and must remain on station,” I said, basically telling the Air Force–enlisted air controller, located somewhere on the ground in Afghanistan, that we weren’t going anywhere. We were there on orders from POTUS as watchdogs for the elections. In my mind, that was pretty high-level stuff, and somehow the guy working the radio for Pyramid didn’t understand.
“Hellcat 21, Pyramid. USS Ship Actual says you will RTB this time. Proceed to your tanker at Gallop. Angels 25.”
This time Pyramid’s message was totally different. He said that the actual ship’s captain, one of my many bosses, said we needed to get back to the boat pronto. And when the captain tells you to get your ass back, you move.
“Hellcat 21, copy all,” I radioed back. “Proceeding Gallop at Angels 25.” We headed to meet the tanker at his refueling track, called Gallop, at an altitude of twenty-five thousand feet.
Something isn’t right, I thought, my mind totally blown.
“Skipper, has this happened to you before? I’ve never heard of them recalling anyone back to the boat so suddenly.”
“Nope. Never have I heard of them calling everyone back. Something big is going on. Look at the display—” He hesitated. “All the Navy tracks are headed toward the boulevard.”
After topping off with gas, we all raced toward Mother like a swarm of bees headed back to its hive. What I couldn’t see, looking ahead to the Indian Ocean, was the track of the Bush. In fact, as we arrived at the coast, the carrier still wasn’t showing up on my system, so I dialed in the ship’s navigational transmitter. Mother was at least eighty miles west of where we expected her.
What the hell is going on? I dialed in the RADALT settings for landing. Why are we going west? The plane caught the three-wire, and as we screeched to a halt, it hit me.
“Skipper, I think Bush and her entire strike group are getting sent into Iraq.”