Page 8 of Confessions of an Apache Pilot

Laura took a seat next to me. The new captain sat down next to her co-pilot. Ned, or Nate. Something with an N. I usually just called him dickhead; he hadn’t earned the right for me to remember his name.

“Sheppard.”

“Yo.” I sat up and looked at the Battle Captain as he called my name.

“You’re up,” Ross told me. Captain Ross Sullivan was a Black Hawk pilot. He had been kicked out of Air Assault and assigned to command the MEDEVAC. He quickly screwed that up and found himself permanently assigned to Battle Captain, something that was supposed to be a temporary duty shared by officers. Apparently, the Air Assault Black Hawks had the same opinion of him that I had. Meaning, they didn’t have much use for him, either. I’d have rather seen him thrown all the way back to Bagram with the rest of his crew, but I don’t get to make those decisions.

I looked up at the screen. It had a picture of a map and our route was drawn through the center of it. I pointed at it. “That’s the way we’re going to fly in, and once the Chinooks drop off the Beards we’ll fly out the other way. Any questions?”

“Beards?”

Deep blue eyes, filled with curiosity, filled my vision and I had to work to keep my tone even. Fuck, she didn’t even know what she was doing to me, sitting there looking neat as a pin. Her uniform would look much better on the floor of my barracks.

“Beards is our nickname for the Green Berets we work with. They all have beards.” I shrugged when a smile tugged at her full lips. I never said we were creative with our names.

Her voice was silky and smooth and though I didn’t mind answering her question, I should have known better than to ask if anyone had any. Always a stupid thing to ask in a room filled with non-attack guys. My fault. It opened the room up to the others and they had too many fucking opinions.

“You can’t fly through that pass.” This came from Dan Williams, the Air Mission Commander for the Chinooks. “We’re flying through that pass.”

“Nope,” Brady responded, giving Dan a wide grin, “It’s ours. We’re flying out first, so we choose the pass. And that one is ours.” He smacked his hand down on the table for dramatic effect.

I smirked when I saw the new girl jump at the loud sound. She’d get used to things being loud and fast with us around. Louder still when Brady was around. Much louder.

“But we don’t want to fly through the same spot, if we come in after you, it gives away that route. We need you to fly further east.”

“Then pick a different pass,” I said. They scowled at that. I didn’t care, I really didn’t. I knew that Brady and Artie didn’t either. Fly to the east, fly to the west, it was all the same to us. We just couldn’t help ourselves. They took this so seriously that it was impossible not to fuck with them. Mission planning was their whole world, and it was just so easy to derail them. We were helicopters for fuck sake, we had the whole sky to ourselves.

Our mission planning came down to three simple things: Radio frequency, call sign, and grid coordinates. We needed to know how to get a hold of you, what to call you, and where to fly to. That was it. But these guys made it so much more complicated. To the point where this was now an actual conversation.

I was a Chief Warrant Officer 4. I had almost twenty years in the Army and to most in the service they’d swear Warrant Officers didn’t exist. If you didn’t work in aviation, CWOs were sort of like unicorns. They were never spotted and therefore their existence was often questioned. We were much more common in aviation, and the higher up the number after our letters the more experience we had.

I had a lot of it and I was sitting here arguing with another CW4 over who gets to fly through which mountain pass. It blew my mind that we had to do this before each mission, and the briefing was just starting. We were guaranteed to be stuck here for a few hours going over pointless, never-ending arguments back and forth. Irritation settled low in my gut. If I had to sit here and have stupid conversations that were a waste of my time, I was going to make sure the others in the room suffered as much as I did.

Artie jumped in on the game Brady had started. “If you guys aren’t tough enough to follow in our footsteps then you go to the east.”

We were nearing the point where Laura was going to have to stop us. Not that she wanted to, but since she was our Captain, being the adult in the room was her responsibility—for the moment.

I decided to get things moving along and save her the hassle. “Tell you what, we’ll compromise. I’ll fly in to the east, then I’ll take the pass after you leave the area.”

Ross snapped back at me, “It’s the same problem. If you fly over their route after them, you might get shot at.”

Sheep. All of them. There wasn’t one warrior amongst them. It was slightly amusing, but also filled me with disgust. “And?” They all stared at me like I had a dick growing out of my forehead. “We’re Apaches. If someone shoots at us, we shoot back. Where’s the problem?”

They all sat back silently—minds blown. Our aircraft carried both high-caliber guns and missiles. We were made to be shot at. We reveled in it, waited for it. Getting into an altercation was addictive and we all looked forward to that next hit. It was well known that only certain types of people became Apache pilots. You had to be the type that ran toward danger, not away from it. The others were so used to flying in helicopters that didn’t have any way of defending themselves, they seemed to forget our entire function was to return fire on the enemy.

“You shouldn’t be complacent just because you want to kill something.” Ross was trying to take the high ground. He wouldn’t be this argumentative next time someone was shooting at him.

“If someone wants to commit suicide by Apache, I’m happy to assist. Remember, they are people, not things,” I admonished him. Just like that I had taken the high ground from him. I snuck a glance over at the new girl and Dickhead. I really needed to learn her name. Then again, I really didn’t need to be lusting after her, so keeping some distance might be better. They didn’t look amused. I expected that from him. Judging by the scowl on her face, she seemed to share his lack of humor. I bit back a sigh. Despite not needing the distraction of her, I really couldn’t have her hating me either. I wasn’t looking forward to a repeat of what had happened last month between our crews. It was better if we could all get along as much as possible.

Ross scowled at me, then he clicked the mouse and moved to the next slide. I’d won that round and he was letting it drop.

“What the actual fuck am I looking at?” I asked. The slide was nothing but abbreviations. Laura laid her head down and rested it on her hands on top of the table. She knew I wasn’t going to make this easy for her. I’d have to make it up to her later. The slide read:

2xCH TOT 20000202 W/EA 15xODA IOT INFIL IVO NAI2

ETA 2000 ETE 1+05

2xAWT TOT 1950000202 OH HLZ-A H-10

---