Avalanche

| the phases |

My leather jacket smells like him.

It smells like mint, and pinewood, with a pinch of jet fuel.

That's all I can think about because the man himself, is sitting right next to me. I totally forgot that I sat next to Hangman in our classroom.

Did he do it on purpose? I feel like he did, it's Hangman after all. And after we almost kissed yesterday... I don't know how much more of this I could take. Whatever this was.

There's only one thing I could do, and that would be avoiding him.

It was going to be awkward between us, I just knew it.

Maverick cleared his throat to grab our attention.

"Time is your greatest enemy." Maverick began, as monitor behind him, started to show some of the parts of our mission. "Phase One of the mission will be a low-level attack with two teams. You'll be flying along the narrow canyon walls to the target. The radar surface-to-air missives defend the skies above, not the canyon below."

"That's because the enemy knows that no one is insane enough to fly below." Rooster speaks up.

Hangman chuckled next to me, and he nudged me in the arm. "Insane enough? It's a one way ticket to death." He joked.

I don't say a word, I just slowly nod back to him.

And Maverick explained, "That's exactly what I'm going to train you do to."

He points to the board, which shows us the course for Phase One, and a timer appears.

"The time is two and a half minutes, because fifth generation fighters are waiting at an airbase nearby the region. A head-to-head with these planes in your F-18s, you're dead. That's why you need to get in, hit your target, and be gone before these planes have a chance of catching you. This makes time your greatest adversary."

❅

I followed as backup behind Coyote, and then Phoenix and Bob.

No, I was the after thought.

After yesterday's performance, I couldn't blame Maverick though. I would have to claw my way up and prove that I was the best pilot to send in this mission.

We're going too slow, we'll never make it though the canyon in time.

I sighed, leaning back in my cockpit, because I had a gut feeling that this was not going to end well.

If I was in front, I had complete confidence I could make it through the course under the time restraint.

"Time to target is a minute and thirty, we are two seconds behind. Increase speed to 490 knots." Bob states to us.

Phoenix says, "Coyote, come on, we gotta pick it up."

"Copy, increasing speed now." He says, but he doesn't do it.

Crap.

What was with these pilots and the lack of accurate communication?

Me and Phoenix already started to go faster, so instead of crashing into the back of him, we fly up, now in range for the surface-to-air missiles.

And we're dead.

❅

Luckily, almost everybody failed this round of our training. Almost. After every team had been defeated by Maverick's impossible task, we returned back to the classroom, obviously having more to learn from Maverick.