Page 59 of Confessions of an Apache Pilot

“Next flight out of Bagram is tomorrow morning, but by then it’ll be too late. If we could get her there now, she could be on her way home tonight. Even that might be too late. But waiting ‘til tomorrow is a guarantee that she won’t be there for her mother. It’ll cost her too much time to wait for the weather to clear.”

My heart dropped. We were running out of options. The only thing that could be worse than being away from family is that they wouldn’t be there when you returned. Sarah was barely twenty-two-years-old. She’s too young to have to go through this, and to wait it out here. It was unbearable.

“What else can we do?” I asked Nick, unwilling to give up until all possibilities had been explored.

Ross answered, “There’s nothing you can do. You need at least one thousand foot ceilings for the Colonel to approve you to launch, and right now you’d be lucky if they were two hundred feet. There is no way that the Colonel will approve this flight.” His face was grim as he made this declaration. It was hard to tell how this news was affecting him. Despite his regular arguments with the attack guys, he was still a rather stoic man.

Nick frowned again and walked out. He hesitated at the door and made a ‘follow me’ motion with his head. I hurried after him.

“Come on Nick, you’ve been through this before. There’s got to be something we can do.” What exactly was I hoping for? I didn’t really expect him to be able to change the weather.

Nick stopped and stood silent for a minute. He pursed his lip and balled his fists at the same time. He had an idea. And clearly, he didn’t like it. “The weather map is wrong, The Bamiyan pass always has higher ceilings. I can get there under the clouds. I can follow the river through the Bamiyan pass and stay under the clouds, that’s no issue. I’ve flown that river a hundred times. I know every twist and turn. It’s getting approval to launch to begin with.”

“Not to mention that we would never be approved to fly that low under any conditions. We’d be an easy target,” I said in a thoughtful tone.

“Not really. We’d be so low and fast that by the time they saw us we’d be out of range of any small arms fire.”

“Then it’s back to the original problem. How do we get approval to launch?” I couldn’t bring myself to get my hopes up. Not yet.

“We only need Ross to think the weather has cleared, then we’ll be good to go.” With that he seemed to have made up his mind and nodded. “Come with me, I have an idea on how we can get through this.”

I followed him down to the Apache office. Despite my growing relationship with Mark, Nick still wasn’t held in high regard with the Apache crew. When we walked in the room the tension was instant.

“You lost?” That came from Brady, he was sitting back with his legs up on a desk. It was more a challenge than a question. Possibly a threat.

Nick ignored him and stopped in front of Mark. “One of our crew needs to get to Bagram today. The Bamiyan pass is blocked by low clouds and I can’t get clearance to launch.”

“Yeah?” Mark's face was an unreadable mask. I could hear the unspoken words ‘sucks for you, what do you expect me to do about it?’ His eyes flicked over and watched me as Nick spoke next. I licked my lips nervously as his eyes roved over me.

“It’s Sarah. She got a Red Cross message about her mother. If she doesn’t get out today… There’ll be no rush. No point in hurrying to get her out tomorrow.”

It was barely noticeable, but at the mention of Sarah being in trouble, just for the briefest second, Mark’s eyes went soft. I knew how much he tried to protect her. Mark raised his eyebrows, still silent. ‘You got something in mind?’ Again, the unspoken words were loud and clear, but now he was focused on Nick. A trickle of hope started to thread through me.

Nick continued, “I need you to go out and call the clouds at one-thousand-feet so that I can get clearance to launch. We can handle the rest from there.”

Mark stood up and motioned to his team. Brady, Laura, and Artie all hopped up and started to grab their things. Santos was gone already, out with Sarah helping her pack and consoling her any way he could. Laura gave me a small, sad smile as she passed by.

There was no hesitation, no second guessing. Mark held the door open for them. When they were clear he turned back to Nick. “Are you sure? About the rest?” He shot both of us with a calculating look.

“I’ve flown that pass hundreds of times. I know the valley by heart. Besides, the Captain here will have the GPS to back us up. Just… be you. Get me clearance to launch.” Mark nodded and left without another word. It was saying a lot that he was taking Nick at his word that he could handle this. Especially after the way Ross and Nick had messed up before. It gave me hope that they might make amends, finally. Even more, it gave me hope that we were going to be able to get Sarah home.

CHAPTER 34

Jen

Icouldn’t believe how fast they moved. I thought for sure that it would take some convincing. The fact that he didn’t even argue with Nick shocked me. In fact, that was the longest conversation that they’d ever had. He agreed to help. Just like that. No more questions, no arguing, no insults. Sarah was in need of help, and so they helped.

I wasn’t sure why it was still so shocking to me. That was Mark. I was beginning to understand that. Personal grudges did not get in the way of helping others.

We made our way back to the Ops Center. Nick pulled the weather map up again, and put it on a screen next to the Blue Force Tracking map, the map used to track all friendly forces. Ross must have figured we were just trying to find a way through. We didn’t tell him about our conversation with Mark. This was his silent way of showing us that there was no possible way to make it through this weather.

It wasn’t much later before Mark and his team were in the air and headed south. We watched their Blue Force Tracking Icons on the map. When they turned towards the Bamiyan pass, Ross looked over to the radios and yelled to Vasquez, “Tell them the pass is closed and that they need to turn around.”

Nick narrowed his eyes and looked at me. He gave a subtle smile before turning back to watch Ross. Despite the grudge, he had every bit of confidence in Mark.

“Archer zero-nine, Phoenix Ops Center.”

“Phoenix Ops Center, go ahead.”

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