Heavenly- Bradley Bradshaw

3 - i hate myself for loving you

Song- I hate myself for loving you / Joan Jett

"Time is your greatest enemy." Mavericks voice filled the small room. Yesterday we sat right next to the runway. An American flag hung down from the ceiling until it lightly scraped the bottom of the dirty floor.

Today, a modern touchscreen was placed behind Maverick. The chairs were a dark blue leather with the Navy symbol embroidered at the top. Large windows covered two of the walls, and the meeting table was behind us, waiting to be used.

"Phase one of the mission will be a low-level ingress attacking in two plane teams and one single plane out front." Maverick turned back towards the touchscreen.

"You'll fly along this narrow canyon to your target. Radar Guided surface-to-air missiles defend the area, These SAMs.

They're lethal." Hangman wasn't kicking the back of my chair anymore and Rooster looked rather concerned. "But they were designed to protect the skies above, Not the canyon below." Maverick studied the image of the landscape.

"That's because the enemy knows no one is insane enough to try and fly below them." Rooster called out from next to me, Maverick turning to face us almost instantly.

"That's exactly what I'm going to train you to do." He quickly turned back around. "On this day, Your altitude will be 100 feet maximum."

Everyone looked around, their eyes flicking between one another. "Is he insane?" I questioned, looking at Rooster with wide eyes. "Criminally Insane, Yeah." Rooster exchanged my glance, slowly turning to look back at Maverick.

"You exceed this altitude, radar will spot you and you're dead." a small 3D plane labeled F-18 went out of the altitude limit, a few rockets flew at the model, stopping just seconds before hitting it.

Before I agreed to come back to Top Gun, I had heard many rumors about how dangerous this mission was, sure all missions were dangerous. They all had their own risks. But this mission was different. And now I could finally see why that was.

"Your airspeed will be 660 knots." The glances continued. Coyote and Fanboy looked at eachother with terror in their eyes. "minimum. Time to target: two and a half minutes. That's because 5th generation fighters wait at an air base nearby." The room fell silent as a photo of an Su-57 came up onto the screen.

"Only one of you knows how to pilot one of these. That doesn't matter though because in a head-to-head with one of these while in an F-18, you're dead."

Maverick looked at me, the memories of having to fly a Su-57 flooding my mind.
"That's why you need to get in, hit your target and be gone before these planes even have a chance of catching you."

Maverick skimmed his eyes over us once more before turning back around to the touch screen. He swiped across the screen and a tightly winded route came up.

"You'll fly this route in your nav system that stimulates the canyon. Time is your greatest adversary. The faster you navigate this canyon, the harder it will be to stay under the radar of these SAMs. The tighter the turns, the more intensely the force of gravity on your body multiplies."

Everyone knew what would happen when your lungs were compressed to the max and all the blood came rushing to your brain. Reaction time and judgment are the most important things when piloting aircrafts. All of these would be severely impaired.

"So today we're gonna take it easy on you." Maverick smiled, "Max ceiling; 300 feet. Time to target: 3 minutes. Good Luck." He walked off, The admiral at the back following behind him.

"If that's meant to be easy then I don't know what world he's been living in."  Bob groaned as he got up and began walking not far behind Maverick and the Admiral.