Call Sign: Love

Chapter 4: Operation Moonlight

You could hear the sounds of jet engines off in the distance and the sounds of fire, which made you start trying to move. The stench of burning jet fuel was enough to make you start worrying about how close you were to it. You could already feel the weight in your limbs. Link a ten-pound weight was tied to each limb. Blinking your eyes open, you were staring straight up at the dark blue sky.

Slowly reaching up, you ripped off the oxygen mask and took in a deep breath of fresh air. The bridge of your nose stung when you took in air. You rolled over slowly onto your side and coughed trying to see if your lungs still worked. Pushing yourself up a bit as you pulled your knees to your chest and started looking around. The visor on your helmet blocked out some of the sunlight before you ripped the damn thing off too. Blinking your eyes to adjust the sudden intake of light.

Everything hurt. The more you moved, the more the pain set in. A rumble above caught your attention as you looked up and see an F-18 heading in for a landing.

From your best guess based on your surroundings, you managed to land just a hundred yards away from the main runways. Glancing over towards the sound of something burning, you find your jet is in a mangled heap on fire far to your left. The stench of fuel still keeps you from just relaxing in the sand. You needed to get away from it. The thing would eventually start being a lot more dangerous.

Reaching over to your discarded helmet, you turned on the helmet tracking system. That way they could at least start finding you, though you were sure everyone saw you crash like a spectacular fool.

Just as you managed to get on your feet and start walking back towards the hangars, a vehicle was heading your way as fast as the four wheels could carry it. Kicking up dust behind it.

Jake's POV
"Tower, we have a pilot down. We need immediate medical assistance. Requesting permission to land." Jake called over the radio, his eyes still on where he could see the black smoke from your crash. He had been slowly circling the area waiting to get a set of coordinates of your landing spot.

"Medics are inbound to the location. Clear to Land. Proceed to the runway." The tower responded. Jake took one last low circle around, hoping to see your body move but you were laying on your back, still. Your parachute is discarded to your side.

Due to the low altitude, your parachute did little to cushion the hard landing on solid California rock. Even from up in the air, Jake could tell you had landed forcefully. Maybe injured, but he was sure you'd make it. That's at least what he kept telling himself. He wanted to get out of the air as soon as he knew someone was on their way to you.

After it took far too long to land and taxi back to the hangar, Jake scrambled out of his jet and started to remove his gear as he was going to see if the medics had brought you back yet. As he ran into the hangar looking around, he was met by Rooster who put his hands on his shoulder and stopped him from going further.

"Ghost is hunting for you. He's pissed. She's fine. Pheonix went with the medics to get her." Rooster tried to fit everything important Jake needed.

Ghost's lumbering form came out of the conference room and locked eyes with Jake. Though Rooster and Jake didn't always see eye to eye, they had come to a mutual agreement to at least be on the same team when it came to the Thunder Team.

"You motherfuck-" His finger was pointed straight at Jake, his face beat red out of anger.

"Easy Ghost..." Duck called out trying to hold him back. Duck stood a whole head shorter than Ghost so the smaller aviator wasn't doing much. Rooster stayed on Jake's side as Coyote and Payback ran over to back up their dog in this fight.

Ghost shrugged off the much smaller Duck and grabbed Jake's flight suit at his chest and pushed him back to the metal wall of the hangar. Jake's jaw clenched, in preparation for something solid hitting it. He kept his eyes locked with Ghost, not ready to back down. He had a feeling this feud would reach a peak eventually.