PART 2 — The Sky Learned My Father’s Name
The first missile warning screamed like a dying animal.
A red pulse flashed across my cockpit glass, painting my gloves, my knees, and the old photograph of my father in the color of blood. The six fighters were spreading now, not charging in a straight line like amateurs. Two climbed high. Two swept wide. Two stayed low, arrowing toward me through the valley like wolves that had already tasted meat.
They were good.
That made it worse for them.
“Reaper, this is Overlord,” the commander barked. “You are ordered to disengage. Repeat, disengage immediately.”
Below me, Ranger 7 was still trapped between the rocks. I could see their smoke marker bleeding green into the dusty wind. I could see one of the wounded men being dragged behind a broken wall by his vest. I could see another soldier on one knee, firing in short, desperate bursts at enemy fighters climbing over the ridge.
Six Americans.
Six jets.
One Apache.
And a father’s ghost riding in the cockpit with me.
“Overlord,” I said, banking hard left, “if I leave, Ranger 7 dies.”
“If you stay,” he snapped, “you die with them.”
I smiled without meaning to.
“Then I’ll try not to embarrass you.”
The enemy pilot laughed again. “American helicopter, last chance. Turn away and we may let you burn on the ground instead of in the air.”
His confidence filled the radio like smoke.
I did not answer him.
I dropped.
The Apache fell toward the valley floor so fast that the straps bit into my shoulders. The mountains rose on both sides, jagged and sun-blasted, funneling the fighters into narrower attack angles. Their speed was their strength in open sky.
Down here, it became a leash.
My father had called it
the canyon knife
.
“Fast planes hate walls,” he used to say, tapping his pencil against his notebook. “Make the earth fight with you.”
The first fighter came screaming over the ridge at my three o’clock, nose pointed down, hungry for the kill. I saw the flash beneath its wing. Missile away.
“Missile launch!” Overlord shouted, as if I had somehow missed the bright white death streaking toward me.
I dumped flares and slammed the Apache sideways behind a rock spine. The missile chased heat, not patience. It curved after the flares and exploded against the ridge with a roar that punched dust across my canopy.
For half a second, everything disappeared.
Dust.
Fire.
Stone.
Noise.
Then I came out of the smoke beneath the fighter’s path, lower than he expected, closer than he wanted, my nose already rising.
He had overshot.
Of course he had.
Arrogant pilots always did when the prey stopped behaving like prey.
“Stinger one,” I whispered.
The missile left my rail with a savage hiss.
The fighter pilot saw it too late.
He tried to climb.
The Stinger climbed with him.
The explosion cracked open the morning sky.
A ball of flame tore across the ridge, and pieces of metal spun into the valley like burning coins. Ranger 7’s radio erupted.
“Holy—Reaper splashed one! She splashed one!”
No one at Overlord spoke.
For one beautiful second, even the enemy was silent.
Then the flight leader’s voice returned, lower now. Angrier.
“You got lucky.”
I looked at the burning wreckage falling behind me.
“No,” I said softly. “He got predictable.”
The next two came together.
Smart.
They approached from opposite angles, forcing me to choose. One fighter climbed above the western ridge, the other skimmed low along the eastern wall, both trying to box me into the center of the valley.
My hands moved before thought could slow them down.
Left pedal.
Hard collective.
Nose down.
The Apache shuddered and slid between two stone towers, so close my rotor wash kicked dust from both walls. Warning tones screamed. My teeth rattled. Something loose in the cockpit snapped against the panel.
The low fighter followed.
The high one hesitated.
That hesitation saved me and doomed his wingman.
I cut throttle for one sickening heartbeat, letting the Apache drop behind a sandstone outcrop. The fighter came over the top too fast, searching ahead, expecting me to be running.
Instead, I rose beneath him like a shadow with teeth.
My cannon roared.
The thirty-millimeter rounds did not need poetry. They tore across his underside, sparks vomiting from metal, smoke spilling from his left engine. He tried to pull away, but the valley narrowed ahead of him.