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Navy fighter pilot earns first confirmed air-to-air kill since the new millennium!
You’d think they had a damn newsletter. But trust the US Navy’s gossip circle to spread the word faster than any federal news network might have.
The thing that nobody ever told Jake about fighting in a war was the guilt that haunts you when the fight ends. When the bloodshed and the explosions and the whirring of an engine all come to an end, leaving little more than quiet in its wake, the way your brain latches onto an idea and doesn’t let go of it.
He didn’t even remember taking the shot, is the funny part. All he could remember was the sound of Blue’s panicked screeches over the radio line as her plane went up in flames. The way it cut silent when the fuel line caught fire and exploded in a massive ball of fire. It was a stealth flight, early morning before the sun could rise, so the orange glow that her fiery blaze cast against Jake’s skin stuck in his mind.
And then he blinked and that damn museum piece that didn’t deserve to be in the goddamn air in the first place was shooting sparks, roaring flames lapping at the sides as it careened toward the mountainside below. And all he could wonder was if the pilot’s pleas for mercy sounded anything like Blue’s before the metal crashed against the terrain.
It was such a simple assignment. A recon flight, that’s all. Their job was to coast over a base while the infrared and night vision scanners cased it for information that a SEAL team would need the next morning for a rescue mission. It was ridiculously simple. No anti-air weapons, only enemy helicopters for potential conflict. There were only even two of them to begin with because the Navy employed a strict buddy policy, no pilot went anywhere alone.
He and Kate had been cracking fucking jokes over the coms before it all went to shit! That’s how easy it was supposed to be. Two TOPGUN graduates on a mission built for pilots who’d just earned their wings.
And hell, maybe that arrogant complacency was their downfall. Jake wondered that, afterward, if it was his own hubris that kept either of them from noticing that they had company before it was too late.
Of course, he knew better. His CO knew better. Javy knew better. His therapist knew better. The MiG-15 skated below their radars. The pilot inside was damn good, too, snuck through the cloud cover to tail them. They never knew it was there until they were taking bullet fire.
Kate was hit first, a skate of shots across her undercarriage as the pilot careened up and over the top of them. They were in F-35s, logically they should have been fine. These were slim, sleek jets built for stealth and made sturdy. Like most American fighters, it should have withstood a few potshots. But the bastard had gotten lucky and somehow managed to land a shot right in the most vulnerable spot, busting open the engine.
Jake took a few shots as Kate’s thrusters started to flame out and she had to focus on rebooting her whole system. His airframe caught the bullets, he barely felt the impact. It all felt so unfair when all he could do was listen as she steadily lost control while he danced around a plane that should have been decommissioned before either of them were born, barely sustaining any damage.
He called for her to eject, told her he had the coordinates, that SAR would find her, and that he would personally raise hell until she was recovered come hell or high water. She refused, determined to regain control of the jet. The last thing he said to her was “Blue, don’t be a dumbass, eject!”
And then she went up in a ball of fire. Her coms cut out halfway through a sentence, “Wait, no, no, no! Goddammit! I’m sor—“ And then she was gone.
The MiG-15 swooped back around, directing itself straight into weapon’s envelope behind Jake. He barely registered it until their CO was ordering Jake back to the carrier ASAP, breaking him from the haze of smoke that had coated his brain. He didn’t even really know how it happened, he just blinked and somehow the MiG was in front of him.
And he felt angry because he’d only ever managed to make and keep two friends in his entire career. Javy had stuck by him since Plebe Summer at the Academy, God only knows why. He’d had something with Bradley until he didn’t. Natasha took Bradley's side like she and Javy were kids in a divorce and suddenly, there went half of his friends. But Kate…Kate had been a newbie in his third squadron and he was there the night she earned her callsign (because she’d had bright blue hair before she enlisted and they buzzed it in BASIC, she’d sported the buzzcut ever since). They flew on each other’s wing just as often as he and Javy did. And she was gone because of some asshole in a soviet era fighter.
He blinked and then it was over. And he was the only active duty pilot in the Navy with an air-to-air kill on a mission that the US would admit involvement to.
When he got home, he was commended for his bravery and his skill. He was congratulated and given an honor medal to pin on his uniform and a three-star admiral shook his hand after they all watched Kate’s coffin be lowered into the ground as if Jake’s palms weren’t stained with blood. Because that is all Jake could think about.
He was sent back up a week later and then had a panic attack in the air that earned him three months of leave because his COs didn’t know what to do with him. He was assigned a therapist who told him that what he was feeling was all normal and there was nothing to be done about it. That he wasn’t the first and he wouldn’t be the last soldier to spill blood and cry for it.
Jake felt like he was going crazy every time he woke up panting for air in the middle of the night, bile in his throat and sweat on his skin. Because wasn’t this the whole reason he joined? Wasn’t this what everyone expected of them? He was a career man in the military, this was par for the course. What else was the point of having fighter pilots if not to fight? But the nightmares weren’t in the pamphlets they handed out at air shows in Austin. Nobody in the recruitment office ever told him that glory only came stained in red.
He did his best to hide it. The bags under his eyes were easy to ignore when he leveled the cockiest grin he could find across his face. Nobody noticed the shake in his hands when he gripped the congratulatory handshake firmly. Nobody had to know he stared at the ceiling and wondered if that pilot had a family who mourned them and the body that there wasn’t anything left of to recover. If they had parents who loved them like Kate's did, if they sobbed at their graveside like Kate’s did. Or maybe kids, kids like Bradley who would have to grow up without a parent because Jake killed them.
Every time the tears welled in his eyes, he started to hear his father’s voice in the back of his head. He had thought he’d finally left him behind but then, there was John Seresin’s voice echoing in the back of his head telling him to man up every time he swung his legs over the side of the mattress and buried his head in his hands. He’d been openly bisexual for years, had battled that crisis long ago with Javy’s ever-steady assistance, and yet still, the echo of ‘fucking fairy’ in his father’s rough whiskey-bitten voice was enough to send a shiver down his spine every time he started crying late at night when all the swirling thoughts just became too much. He heard his cruel, low chuckle when he read the report of the conflict listing the plane he’d shot down as a MiG-15 Fagot. The tear he’d shed had soaked into the paper of the document in his hands easily.
He was living in agony. It was killing him. And he never said a word.
Soon though, came the fourth of July. Javy had just returned from a deployment and with a few days of leave, they agreed to make the trek to New Orleans like they did for every holiday when they both had the leave. Javy’s mother was a blessing for Jake, the woman had taken him under her wing when he was at his most fragile and learning how to be a person and what the world outside of an abusive home looked like, so he was glad to see Cami.
He knew she’d see right through him, though, and that worried him. Because Javy was perceptive and he likely knew more than he was letting on but his mother would see it in the tension in his shoulders and the circles under his eyes. And she’d know. Somehow, she’d know. And he wouldn’t be able to keep it secret anymore.
Sure enough, the Machado home welcomed him as it always had and Camila Machado saw through him like glass. “Cariño, what’s wrong?” She asked, pecking his forehead, her dark eyes staring at him with perceptive concern.
“Nothing, Cami,” he smiled and she frowned because it wasn’t genuine, “I’m alright.” She stared at him skeptically but the thing about Camila is that she also wouldn’t push him. He’d been very breakable when she first took him in so she never wanted to risk pressing past his boundaries for fear of pushing him too far. So she just nodded and went right on to talking about the barbecue being hosted up the street for the fourth.
Jake managed to skirt beneath their collective radars for two days. He slept in fits, managing to avoid the explosive nightmares and panic attacks that left him shaking. He kept a smile on his face even if it never reached his eyes. And so long as he didn’t want to talk, Javy nor Camila would push him.
The problem came about on the third day, the Fourth of July. America’s birthday.
Jake told the Machados that he didn’t feel up to the neighborhood barbecue and after some discourse, Camila said she would go for an hour or so and then head back home while Javy would run out and get some dinner for the pair of them to stay in for the night. It had just started to get dark out when the first fireworks started.
Jake was alone, in the living room and curled into the corner of the soft orange sofa that was the crown jewel of Camila Machado’s living room. He pulled a blanket into his lap, resting his chin on his hand. The exhaustion from sleeping in bits and pieces was beginning to creep up on him.
And then, out of nowhere, a loud pop sounded from outside. He flinched, startled by it. And then he remembered the holiday and took a breath, calming himself.
Another one went off and he bit down on his lip hard enough that he was worried about splitting it. He took a breath, holding tight to the soft fabric of the blanket. He tried to remember what Camila told him the last time he’d asked about it, remembering the way she explained how she’d knit the blanket herself.
He still flinched every time one went off but he kept trying to breathe steadily, rationalizing that they were only fireworks, just decorative mortars that exploded for the show of it and nothing more. Not missiles, not military grade explosives, barely enough gunpowder in them to shoot sparks, let alone spark a genuine fire. Harmless. Contained.
The next one that went off sounded much closer, close enough to hear the fizzling of the sparks, and that’s when his breathing shifted. He clenched his eyes in fear, shaking his head. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven,” he whispered to himself, counting pieces of furniture in the Machado family living room. His panicked, rapid intake of oxygen slowed slightly.
Then a large set went off all back to back, four or five loud explosive pops, and with a sharp gasp, that’s all it took to find himself back behind the stick of an F-35 Lightning II, watching one of his best friends go up in a ball of flames. His hands clenched onto the fabric of the blanket, trying to find the control set for the jet and only finding malleable cotton yarn.
“No, no, no,” he whimpered, green eyes completely unseeing as he surveyed his surroundings. Gone were the soft lighting and warm furnishings of Camila’s living room in her little townhome in the French Quarter. In its place was the inside of a stealth fighter, the instrument panels flickering and flashing like the flashes seeping in through the blinds where the fireworks were going off in the distance. Below him was the concrete base where Taliban forces held four known POWs that their SEAL team was meant to go in and retrieve, nestled in a shallow valley betwixt three mountains somewhere in Afghanistan.
And directly to his left was a jet just like his, with the name ‘Kate “Blue” Jameson’ stamped on the side in white paint, engulfed in fire. Kate was yelling, “I’m losing control, restarting engines! I’m on fire! Engine restart failed, trying again.”
“Kate!” He screamed, even though he knew better than to use real names over the radio, “Kate, no, no, no, eject! What the fuck are you doing? Eject!”
“Engine stalled, fire’s getting worse, I’m gonna try one more time,” she called across coms. He could see the panic in her eyes as she whipped her head around, searching for the answer like she’d find a NATOPs manual to explain what to do in her cockpit, “Restarting engines,” her voice cracked, shaking. Jake could see her hands trembling.
“Blue, pull the goddamn ejection handles!” He yelled, flinching with every pop as his jet sustained bullet fire, “Kate, it’s FUBAR, let it go!”
“Engines restarting,” her tone shifted, something like hope entering, “Successful restart, engines online—“ her whole plane juddered and she yelped with the force of it.
“Blue, don’t be a dumbass,” he pleaded, outright sobbing down the line.
“Wait, no, no, no,” she sounded even more frantic than before, outright crying as she twisted and turned in her seat. The engine restart stoked the flames, and the fire bloomed, roaring around the side of her airframe, “Goddammit!”
“Eject!” He barked and then sobbed into his hands.
“I’m sor—“ her voice was solemn, almost accepting as she leaned back into her seat and then he watched as the whole jet exploded, another loud bang echoing through the air. He could feel the heat of it from his own cockpit, the jet fuel turning her plane into a pipe bomb.
He sobbed, “Kate, no,” his hands still searching for some semblance of control. He looked down, seeing his skin cast in an orange glow. From the fire. He started hyperventilating, wondering why it was her who took the shot, why they hadn’t aimed for his jet first, why none of the hits he took were fatal. Why he got out unscathed and she didn’t.
The tears blurred his vision and then he turned, and the image shifted to watching his missile strike the side of the MiG-15. Another boom sounded and he flinched, fisting his hands into his hair. “I’m so sorry,” he sobbed between rough, panicked breathing. Dark spots were starting to take over the edges of his vision, his chest physically hurting from the strain.
He heard a man’s voice screaming, begging for mercy, apologizing and asking God to forgive him. Then, as the flames enveloped the frame of the entire plane, the words turned to unintelligible screeches of pain that didn’t end until the ball of fire crashed against the ground and exploded across the landscape, setting trees on fire and sending black smoke into the air.
“I’m sorry,” he sobbed, his throat rough, “I’m so sorry!”
Curled into a ball in the corner of the couch, tears streaming freely down his face, his eyes clenched shut and his hands fisted in his hair so tight that his knuckles were turning white, whimpering into his knees was where Javy found him when he walked back in through the door.
“Woah, woah, woah, hey, buddy,” Javy dropped the food on the coffee table and hurried to crouch in front of Jake’s shaking form. Jake didn’t react, still shaking all over and pulling at his hair so hard that Javy wouldn’t be shocked if he ripped some out.
“Okay,” Javy took a breath. He knew Jake was having a hard time since he and Kate left and only he came back but he’d never seen him get this bad.
Another firework went off and Jake whimpered, “I’m sorry, it should’ve been me, I’m sorry,” into his knees, flinching. And Javy figured out the problem.
“Oh shit,” he cursed, “Okay, one thing at a time, Javy.”
“Jake,” Javy said firmly. Jake flinched a little but not as violently as the firework had induced.
“Jake, it’s me, it’s Javy,” Jake’s breathing calmed ever so slightly so Javy pressed on, “You’re not there, you’re not in Afghanistan, you’re in New Orleans, in mine and Mama’s house, it’s just us, and those sounds are just fireworks, you are safe and nothing bad is happening.”
Jake peeked over his knees, his eyes still a little unfocused. Javy placed a hand on his knee. Jake skated a hand up, sliding their hands together and Javy gave him a firm grip, hoping it would ground him.
“Jake, it’s just me, it’s Javy Machado, I’m your best friend, we’ve known each other since we attended USNA together in Annapolis, Maryland,” Jake’s grip tightened so Javy squeezed his hand and kept talking, “It is July 4th, 2018, so it’s been fourteen years since then, ten since we graduated, and we’re in Louisiana, visiting my mama for the week, you know my mama, you call her Cami.”
“Javy?” Jake whined. Javy squeezed his hand.
“Yeah, bud, it’s me,” Javy nodded.
“What are you doing here? Wasn’t s’posed to be you, was just s’posed to be me and Blue,” he whispered and then he whimpered again, “She’s gone now.”
“We’re not on that mission, Jake,” Javy coaxed, “We’re in my childhood living room, you’re sitting on the couch we helped Mama with last year.” Another firework popped outside and Jake flinched.
“C’mere,” Javy stood up, holding his arms out in the hopes that it would persuade Jake to take his hands. Thankfully, he was right, and Jake managed to unfurl himself, taking Javy’s hands. Javy tugged him up onto shaky legs and then wrapped an arm around his shoulder, taking some of his weight.
“Let’s go upstairs, huh? Close the curtains, put some music or a movie on or something, just calm down for a little while,” he led Jake to the stairs, “C’mon, I’ve got you, brother, I’ve got you now.”
After a short struggle, they managed their way up the stairs. Javy led Jake to the guest bedroom, only one window with blackout curtains. He sat Jake down on the bed, slipping the curtains closed.
“You with me, buddy?” He asked, crouching back down in front of where Jake was still sat trembling. Jake chewed on his lip and then nodded, bouncing his legs.
“Okay, just one sec, Jake,” he stood back up and pulled his phone from his pocket, finding some sort of music to soothe his friend. Landing on a playlist of Dolly Parton ballads, he set his phone aside at top volume. The lull of the music overwhelmed the distant popping noises until they no longer sounded like explosions. They could be excused as Camila downstairs cooking with hot oil, distant as the music made them.
Javy came back to the bed and sat down beside Jake, pulling him into his side. He ran a soothing hand through Jake’s hair as Jake all but melted into him, curving his head into Javy’s neck. His breathing was still a little ragged and he was still trembling all over, but he seemed much more cognizant than before. Javy wrapped his arms around him, hoping that Jake would find the pressure grounding. Jake wasn’t normally a very touchy-feely person but when he hugged, he hugged with his whole body. Javy had always sort of theorized that he was a bit touch-starved and that’s why, regardless, he knew he would appreciate the contact.
Jake nestled his ear right against Javy’s pulse point and Javy rocked a little to the rhythm of the music, hoping Jake would find the motion soothing. He followed Javy’s lead a minute or so later, rocking in time with him, so it must be doing something.
“Kate’s gone,” he finally whispered hoarsely into Javy’s throat.
Javy swallowed thickly, closing his eyes against the wave of grief that washed over him. “Yeah, bud,” he ran his hands in comforting circles over Jake’s back, “She’s gone.”
“It should’ve been me,” his voice cracked.
Javy outright flinched at the words. “No, Jake,” he shook his head, “Neither of you should’ve died that day but there wasn’t a choice involved, you guys got unlucky and Kate got the short end of the deal.”
“She wouldn’t eject,” Jake whispered, “I begged and fucking pleaded and she just…wouldn’t do it, she had to recover the jet, refused to give up on it even when it was going up in fucking flames, she just…sat there until it was too late.”
“That’s who Kate was,” Javy sighed, “She was too stubborn for her own good, we all knew that.”
“I just—“ Jake’s voice cracked again, “Why didn’t she eject, Javy? I can’t make sense of it, the handles were right fucking there, she had so much time to pull them, and she just didn’t.”
Javy sighed again, “Jake, Kate hated ejections, you know it and I know it,” he shook his head and huffed something that could almost pass for a laugh, “She was fucking terrified of heights, so she hated ejections, she stalled until she couldn’t anymore, that’s what happened,” he took a breath and then exhaled roughly, “It was a moment of poor judgment on her part and it kills me to know that she’s gone, but there was nothing you could have done for her, Jake.”
“I know,” came Jake’s low, rough reply, “Doesn’t make it any easier to take, she didn’t deserve that.”
“Nobody deserves that, Jake,” Javy emphasized.
“It should’ve been me,” Jake insisted, “If that pilot had been just a little to the left, they’d have caught me instead of her, and she’d be here where she deserves to be.”
Javy made a pained noise in the back of his throat, “Jake, you can’t do that.”
“Do what?’ Jake asked.
“Sustain yourself on ‘what if’s, you’ll drive yourself nuts,” Javy shook his head.
“I’m already a murderer, who needs sanity?” Jake cracked, clearly an attempt at humor, dry and dark as it was. Javy wasn’t laughing, though.
“…is that what you really think?” Javy questioned, his tone grave.
“I killed somebody, Javy,” Jake said in a monotone voice, “I shot somebody down that day.”
“Yeah, Jake, that’s part of being a combat soldier,” Javy sighed roughly, “It sucks, but it’s the truth of our job, and the reason everybody acts like it’s a goddamn badge of honor isn’t that anyone is proud for it, but because it means you’re alive.”
Javy jostled him a little when Jake didn’t respond, “You are alive today because you took that shot, it was your only choice, that pilot would have killed you just like they killed Kate that day if you hadn’t taken it.”
“I wish they had,” Jake responded in a croak.
Javy inhaled sharply and let it out slowly, “You don’t mean that.”
“I do,” Jake nodded against his collarbone.
“No, Jake, you can’t mean that because if you and Kate both went down that day, I wouldn’t be able to handle it,” Javy responded angrily, “You are a pain in the ass at the best of times but I love you for it, Jake, and if I had to bury my little brother, I wouldn’t survive it, okay? So you can’t mean that.”
The silence hung in the air for a long moment and then Jake took a deep breath. “I know, I’m sorry,” he responded softly, “I just can’t seem to wash the blood off my hands, nobody else can see it but it haunts me day and night, it doesn’t go away, it’s driving me crazy.”
“You’ve gotta talk to someone about this, Jake,” Javy stated, leaving no room for argument, “I will always listen to you when you need a shoulder to cry on, but you need to talk to your therapist about this because I can’t watch you spiral, I won’t.”
Again, no response came for a while. The only sound in the room was Dolly’s voice crooning on about her lost lover and the very distant ‘pop’ of mortars being sent off into the air.
Finally, Jake broke the silence, “Okay.”
“Okay?” Javy questioned.
Jake nodded against his chest, “Okay.”
Javy tightened his hold on the younger man, pecking his forehead lightly, “Thank you.” Jake nodded again.
“In the meantime, I’ve got you,” he assured, “And I’m not going anywhere.”