wartime deployments—by getting her mail, doing basic admin stuff a spouse often did, handling household responsibilities. But they’d been divorced for five years when she left last month. Neither of them had remarried, but she expected he’d be the first one to make that leap.
He’d wanted to start a family. She’d wanted to wait.
Tonight, at the end of a long mission, flying through a hell of a storm, she wondered if she’d been nuts to stay in the navy, to go through so much, for this last operational tour. Had it been worth it, giving up so much to become a commanding officer?
Lately she’d begun to suspect that she’d lost more than her marriage in the process. She didn’t know who she was anymore, except for her military vocation. If she hadn’t screened for command, would she have stayed in to make the twenty-year mark required for retirement?
“Shit! Incoming starboard, three o’clock! Probable missile!” The aft observer’s scream in her headset shattered her thoughts.
“Confirmed surface-to-air. Son of a bitch!” The radar operator validated that the sighting wasn’t another aircraft or fireworks.
Cold dread gripped her.
“I see it. Hell, it’s closing, XO!” Her copilot had his hands on the yoke, his head swiveled around to the right as he sighted the missile off their starboard side.
Preflight intel confirmed the existence of AAA during their mission brief, but never mentioned manpads—portable surface-to-air missiles.
They had an incoming that could blow them all to bits.
She heard screams and shouted curses over the ICS.
Drew.
Shudders buffeted the fuselage of the P-3, and Gwen’s operational instincts pushed anything else out of her mind. The plane rolled alarmingly to port and she threw a quick shout at her copilot. “Help me out here, David!”
“Engine number four, gone. Wing on fire.”
She never lifted her gaze from the control panel, where she confirmed that they’d lost an engine. Annunciator lights in the cockpit also indicated that number three, the other engine on the starboard wing, looked as if it was going to quit at any moment.
“We’ve lost both hydraulic systems,” the FE shouted.
“Roger. Pull the boost out handles!”
The FE leaned down and pulled the three yellow-and-black striped handles by his feet.
This left them with only manual control of the aircraft.
“What’s next, XO?” David yelled into his mic, even though he was right next to her. They’d never hear each other over the roar of the aircraft as it struggled to maintain altitude.
It was a losing battle. The altimeter showed they were dropping at an alarming rate.
One, maybe two minutes was all she had to prepare her crew.
They’d trained with the hope of three minutes.
“We’ll never make it to land, David.” She tore her gaze from the instrument panel and looked at him. His profile was set and determined, but she recognized the same fear she felt.
No one wanted to die. Not like this.
“You with me?”
He turned his stare on her and an understanding passed between them.
Whatever it takes.
Yells and shouts mixed with expletives over the ICS as the crew went through their trained-for responses.
The flight engineer pushed the button that issued the deadly warning—one long ring on the command bell. The sound she never wanted to hear while flying a P-3 reverberated through the entire aircraft.
They were going to ditch.
“Prepare to ditch!” She yelled what might be her last command—she had no choice. They’d lost two engines and were damned lucky they were still airborne.
The controlled panic of the crew aft of the flight station was palpable. Gwen heard swear words, prayers then silence as the country’s best-trained professionals prepared to fight for their lives.
Lives in her hands.
“Everyone got their LPAs on?” She referred to the survival vests that would be their only flotation device, other than the three life rafts, once they were in the harsh seas.
“Condition One set!” Lizzie, the TACCO or tactical communications officer, confirmed that everyone was prepared to ditch.
God help us all.
Ten thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean, approximately five miles off the southwest tip of the Philippines, they were about to ditch. The condition of the sea was abysmal, with waves that were ten feet and higher, And it was quarter past midnight.
Pitch blackness.
Her worst nightmare come true—a nighttime ditch in rough seas, miles from land, oceans from the nearest naval vessel.
Robert “Mac” MacCallister, the flight engineer, worked in sync with the copilot to complete the ditching checklist. It was standard procedure they’d all practiced and prayed they’d never need to use.
I’m ditching in the ocean.
She’d practiced it in the flight simulator countless times, mentally rehearsed the most undesirable event for any naval aviator.
“I’m here if you need relief, XO.” The voice of the third pilot rose above the rush of air that swept through the cabin. He clutched the back of the copilot’s seat as he shouted in her ear.
Gwen couldn’t spare him a look.
“Go back to your station and strap your ass in, Aidan!” If any of them were going to survive they had to be properly secured. She had to bring the bird onto the water safely and in one piece so they could get out before it sank.
“But ma’am, if you—”
“Take the freaking order!” Before she even finished her statement, Gwen had to grab the yoke back after it was wrenched out of her hands.
“Help me out here, David!” she shouted to her copilot.
“I’m pulling as hard as I can!”
Gwen didn’t have to see David’s face to know the young officer spoke through clenched teeth.
“Come on, gal, give us one more break!” Gwen yelled at the old bird, then groaned as she stretched her shoulder and back muscles to their limit in her effort to pull back. Losing hydraulics after two engines had been blown apart by the surface-to-air missile wasn’t just bad luck.
It was fatal.
She had to beat it.
That
