Chapter 8

Max was silent as she flipped switches, set dials, turned pages, and did all sorts of things that I'd never witnessed before. Finally she said, "Starting port engine," and I felt as much as heard the turbines beginning to spin. When they'd gotten up to speed – that number I knew by heart, for it was inside my area of expertise – she started the fuel flow, and over her shoulder I could see the MFD indicating that the engine had indeed started. She went through the same procedure for the starboard engine, and when both were running well she called to the crew chief to disconnect the power cart. He did so, and disconnected his headphones from the jack in the plane's fuselage – I knew the procedure – and stood back. He gave Max a salute, she returned it, and she released the brakes and moved the throttle forward.

When the plane began to move it was the most exhilarating thing I'd ever experienced. Sitting in that bubble cockpit, with only Max's head obstructing my view, I could see better than I'd ever been able to from the puny little windows they put in airliners. And it was quickly a view I'd never had, as we taxied to the active runway, paused while Max ran the engines up and waited for clearance, and throttled them back. When the tower cleared her for takeoff she ran the engines up to military power, held the brakes while the engines developed their full thrust, and then released the brakes. It was like getting shot out of a cannon. The F-15 is the first aircraft in history which develops thrust greater than the weight of the aircraft, and those monster engines shoved us along very fast.

Just when I was getting used to speed at which the ground was rushing past, Max said "Rotate" over the intercom, and the nose came up. "Gear up," she said, before I even realized we were off the ground, and I felt the thump as the wheels locked into place and the landing gear doors closed. In a civilian plane it's a heavy slow thing, but in the Eagle it was quick and snappy. With the aircraft cleaned up, she said, "Elevator time," and pulled the nose straight up.

I felt very heavy, as though an enormous hand were pushing me back into my seat. I knew intellectually that the Eagle could accelerate straight up, but now I was feeling it, and it was fantastic. I pushed the intercom button with my foot, and managed to gasp out, "This is great, Max!"

"It is, isn't it?" Her voice didn't show the strain like mine did, but then she'd been breathing under acceleration for years. "I requested clearance for this because I knew you'd love it."

Eventually Max pulled the throttles back and leveled us off. "We're at flight level 150, and climbing slowly while I turn south for White Sands. While we're just poking along I suggest that you locate your barf bag."

I found it easily. "You're not planning anything mean, are you, Max?" I asked her. I was grinning inside my oxygen mask.

"Mean? No. Exciting? You betcha!"

I gave a theatrical groan. "That's what I was afraid of."

"I hope you had steak and eggs for breakfast. I want you to use that bag up."

"Knowing you, Max, I ate lightly this morning." The intercom communicated only between us, no one outside the plane could hear it, and so I was comfortable talking with her as I'd been doing.

She laughed. "You do know me, don't you? I won't give you the worst of it, Derek, I promise you that. I do want you to experience some ACM, but mostly I want you to see what I love about flying."

"I'm not sure I want to be a pilot," I said, "but already I think I know something of why you love it. The view is marvelous!"

"It is, isn't it?"

I nodded, forgetting that she couldn't see me. Below us, on the right, the Rio Grande was a thin green ribbon snaking through brown land. The Sandia Mountains were already behind us, a flattened hump from this height. Mount Taylor bulked on the western horizon, its triple-peaked summit showing more clearly than I'd ever seen it. I looked over Max's shoulder and saw that we were now at flight level 250 – 25,000 feet. She's said we were climbing slowly, but no civilian aircraft could have gained so much altitude so quickly, at least I didn't think so. I twisted around in my seat, and between the twin tails of the Eagle I saw an airliner taking off from the Albuquerque Sunport, which is what the city calls its international airport. It looked impossibly small, there below us, glinting in the early morning sun. I turned back toward the front, and saw Max's helmet turning back and forth. Even on a flight where she knew she wouldn't have to defend herself against mock attack, she kept aware of what was around her. I suppose everyone who's in an occupation where situational awareness is the difference between life and death – fighter pilots, cops, infantrymen – learn to look at everything all the time.

I leaned back in my seat and took a deep breath. I found the intercom switch with my foot again, and said, "Max, you don't know how much I appreciate this." I was repeating myself, but I didn't care.

"Well, if it's anything like that first time I went up in a plane, it's something you'll never forget."

"No, I won't. And I won't forget who gave me this opportunity either. Thanks, Max – thank you very much."

We were at 35,000 feet when we crossed into the airspace of the White Sands range. I know how high we were, because I glanced at the instruments when Max said, "We're here. Ready for some acrobatics?"

I made sure my belts were tight before I answered. "As ready as I'll ever be."

"Got the barf bag in hand?"

"No, but I can reach it in half a second and release my oxygen mask in another half second."

She chuckled over the intercom. "In that case—" And she snap rolled the aircraft onto its left wing. She held it there for a second, then snap rolled to an inverted position, so that if I looked "up" I'd see the ground. Another snap roll and we were pointing the right wing at the ground, another and we were upright again. But that didn't last – she yanked the plane into a climb straight up, twirling as it went. We zoomed up, she stopped the spin so suddenly that my head jerked, and then she yanked us violently back and over into a dive straight down. I reached for the arms of the chair, but of course I was in an ejection seat and there were no arms. Instead I seized the grab handles on the weapons systems console in front me, the console that I'd paid no attention to since I wasn't going to be looking for targets or watching out for enemy tracking radars.

"Wheeeeeeeeeee!" came over the intercom in Max's voice, and I realized that to her this was just fun. I would have sworn we'd hit the ground in about two seconds, but she said "200," and yanked the bird up into a loop. She must have meant the flight level, and if that was the case, then we'd still had plenty of room above the ground. The loop brought us around until we were flying straight and level, and then she selected afterburner. The seat kicked me in the back, and she yanked the Eagle into a right turn, standing on the wing again. She'd explained how to breath under heavy acceleration, and I did what she'd told me, grunting out my breaths. Each breath required a conscious effort to combat the pressure. I couldn't see anything that indicated the g-load, but I suspected it was in the neighborhood of five gravities. I felt like I weighed a ton. If I'd needed the barf bag I didn't think I could have reached it. I lifted a hand experimentally, or tried to, but it stayed down, fastened to my thigh by the acceleration.

We made a full circle, and then, still in burner, she yanked the plane off its right wing and onto the left, and now we were turning in that direction. The ground spun beneath us, and the clouds that were piled up to the south skidded by at warp speed. When we'd completed that circle she jerked us upright, my head flailing again, and dropped the throttles back to military power. "How'd you like that, Derek?" she shouted. Her voice sounded like a kid who's just gotten in one day everything he's ever dreamed of getting for Christmas.

"That was ... fantastic!" I couldn't think of a superlative that fully expressed it. "Do you do this every day?"

"Most days I do things that are really exciting."

"That wasn't exciting enough for you?" I asked.

She laughed. "Derek, when you're hassling with somebody, those are just the opening moves. This plane would be all over the sky if I were trying to get on someone's six."

"It's hard to believe that something this size can do what it did, much less more than that." The F-15 is a big aircraft, as big as some World War II bombers. It's got big broad wings, and a long aft "deck" over the engines, and those two twin tails that stick up like the sails on a clipper ship.

"Oh, it'll do more than that, even this ol' Mud Hen." Max's accent was especially strong with the force of her joy. "You see those clouds?" she asked me. They were now directly ahead of us, and just a little higher, for we'd lost altitude in our maneuvering. They were the same clouds I'd seen whip by in our turns.

"Yeah."

"Good. I enjoy ACM, and I've enjoyed showing you some of what I do up here, but now I'm going to show you the real joy of flying."

She punched in afterburner again, and pointed us toward the sky – not straight up this time, but at a pretty steep angle of attack. I couldn't see the rate of climb indicator, but it had to be turning fast. Shortly she was at the flight level she wanted, and she leveled us off and pulled the throttles down again. "We'll have to tank on the way back – but I told you about that, didn't I?"

"Yeah. I'm looking forward to that."

"I'm not," she said. "I'd rather fly how I want, instead of having to hold position underneath a flying gas station."

"Yeah, but I've never been there."

"That's right – you're doing all this for the first time."

"Yep."

She pointed out the front of the cockpit. "The clouds, Derek."

I peered around her, and saw that we were almost there. We were in a sort of valley between clouds. They towered up on both sides, and as we flew between them it was as though marble had turned fluid, and was puffing up and out all around us. Above us the sky was a deep marvelous blue, while on both sides of the plane the clouds were absolutely white in the sun.