Eye of the Storm

-> race against time

Maverick strutted his way to the front of the classroom, and cleared his throat. We all hushed among ourselves, and payed attention to our instructor.

"Time is your greatest enemy." Maverick said, as he pointed to the monitor behind him, and started to explain the specifics of our mission.

"Phase 1 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."

This is it. My dad had officially gone crazy. I looked around, and based on the looks of everybody's face, I wasn't the only one who thought that way.

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

"That's exactly what I'm going to train you do to." Maverick said, and nobody bothered to argue with him.

How could we?

Maverick explained today's objective. "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.

We're going too slow, we'll never make it though the canyon in time. We're going to be dead before we ever reach the target.

"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, we gotta pick it up."

"Copy, increasing speed now." He says, but does it too slow.

Me and Phoenix have 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.

We're dead.

★★★

As usual, almost everybody failed this round of our training. After every pilot had been defeated by Maverick's impossible task, we trudged back to the classroom, obviously having more to learn.

Maverick started asking people why they messed up, how their mistakes caused them to fail the simulation.

"Why are they dead?" Maverick asked Phoenix, pointing to the screen which had our test run in it.

We both watched as our planes went from the green to the red zone, flying above 300 feet.

"The SAMs took our planes out." She responds back to her superior.

He doesn't look satisfied with her answer, so I add, "We broke the 300 foot ceiling, sir."

Maverick shook his head. "No, why are they dead?" He asked the classroom.

Coyote took a breath, and then spoke his mind. "I slowed down, and didn't give them a warning. It's my fault."

Maverick presses on, "Was there a reason why you didn't communicate with your team?"