Chapter 6: Moments before a disaster

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"The uranium enrichment plant that is your target will be operational earlier than expected." Warlock explained. "Raw uranium will be delivered to the plant in ten days' time. As a result, your mission had been moved up one week, in order to avoid contaminating the target valley with radiation." Snow-white slumped into her chair in defeat, there was no way she could complete the mission with such little training, nobody could.

"Sir, no one here has successfully flown a low-lever course." She said reluctantly.

"Nevertheless, you've been ordered to move on." She simply lowered her head in response.

"Captain." He turned to maverick and they soon swapped places, now Maverick was at the centre of the class.

"We have one week left to focus on phase two. It's the most difficult stage of the mission." He was now pacing around the room. "It's a pop-up strike with a steep dive, requiring nothing less than two consecutive miracles." He said putting two fingers in the air. "Two pairs of F-18s will fly in a welded wing formation. Teamwork. Precise coordination of these aircraft is essential to both the mission's success and your survival." Then the trajectory showed up on the screen. "As you know, the plant rests between two mountains. On final approach, you'll invert directly into a steep dive. This allows you to maintain the lowest possible altitude and the only possible attack angle. Your target is an impact point less than three meters widetwo-seato seat aircraft will paint the target with a laser bull's eye. The first pair will breach the reactor by dropping a laser-guided bomb on an exposed ventilation hatch. This will create an opening for the second pair. That's miracle number one." He finished the sentence pointing one finger up and looking at us. The cadets all looked more scared than ever.

"The second team will deliver the kill shot and destroy the target." The screen showed the bunker underground and the missile flying into it, destroyng it . "That's miracle number two." And the two fingers in the air again. "If either team misses the target...the mission is a failure. Egress is a steep high-G climb out to avoid hitting this mountain-"

"A steep climb at that speed, you're pulling at least eight G's." Hangman interrupted.

"Nine, minimum." Maverick corrected him

"The stress limit on the F-18's airframe is 7.5" Rooster interjected.

"That's the accepted limit" Snow intervened. Maverick nodded at her with a small, proud smile and then continued.

"To survive this mission, you'll pull beyond that, even if it means breaking your airframe. You'll be pulling so hard, you'll weigh close to 2,000 pounds. Your skull crushing your spine, your lungs imploding like an elephant's sitting on your chest." Snow-white couldn't help but cringe and squirm at the thought of that. "Fighting with everything you have just to keep from blacking out. And this is where you'll be at your most vulnerable. This is Coffin Corner. Assuming you avoid crashing into this mountain, you'll climb straight up into enemy radar while losing all of your airspeed." And there is the very, very accurate representation of what's gonna happen to them. "Within seconds, you'll be fired upon by enemy SAMs. You've all faced sustained G's before, but this...this is gonna take you and your aircraft to the breaking point."

"Sir, is this even achievable?" Phoenix asked what everyone was secretly wondering.

"The answer to that question will come down to the pilot in the box." He answered

╚»★«╝

Training had started. Snow was flying with Phoenix and Bob.

"Talk to me, Bob!"

"We are 12 seconds late on target. We gotta move! We gotta move!"

"Copy that Bob! Try to stay with me." She said back and started to speed up.

ℳ𝒾𝓇𝒶𝒸𝓁𝑒 𝒩𝓊𝓂𝒷𝑒𝓇 𝒯𝒽𝓇𝑒𝑒 | Top Gun MaverickWhere stories live. Discover now