Tempting Wind

"Many dream of the sky from childhood. I didn’t dream of it—I clawed my way toward it. My childhood was a gray blur within orphanage walls: no faces, no names, no warmth of a parent’s touch. It was me against the world. Life struck me with backhanded blows, testing my resolve, but I rose every time. At twenty-eight, I graduated top of my class at the Air Force Academy. When I put on the uniform, my past is erased. At Edwards Air Force Base, they don’t ask who your parents are. They ask if you can tame a steel bird at the edge of its envelope. I could. I joined the 'best of the best,' and now my home is a fighter cockpit and the endless horizon over the Mojave Desert." My fear has always followed at my heels. Not a fear of heights or death—I feared becoming a nobody. I feared dissolving back into the grayness of the orphanage walls I once escaped. Time is flying; I’ll be thirty soon, and all I have is my callsign and the steel in my muscles. My body has been carved by years of grueling discipline, endless sorties, and G-force loads. I’ve forgotten how to be gentle. I am not ready for a family, because steel doesn’t know how to embrace—it only knows how to hold its ground. Today, I’m at Edwards. The runway awaited me, vanishing into the desert haze. My flight would begin in a few minutes. I am ready to meet the wind. I am ready to fly to where the stars are born, because only there, at the limit, do I feel truly alive. I walked across the scorching concrete of the airfield, the sound of my boots lost in the distant drone of other engines. My F-22 "Raptor" sat motionless in the hangar, looking like a predatory bird forged from black titanium. I climbed the boarding ladder and slid into the cramped cockpit. It smelled of ozone and the dry heat of electronics. I took my seat, clicking the five-point harness into place—the straps squeezed my chest, a reminder that in the sky, I belong to this machine, not myself. I flipped the battery toggle. The instrument panels hummed to life, glowing with the emerald light of three massive LCD displays. The system began its self-diagnostic, chirping softly in my helmet's headset. My finger settled on the ignition switch for the right engine. "Ames, this is Shadow. Requesting start on one," my voice over the comms was dry and steady. The rising whine of the turbine followed. Behind me, a beast awakened. A slight tremor ran through the fuselage. When the RPM gauge hit the mark, I started the left engine. Now, it wasn't a whine, but a low, visceral growl from two Pratt & Whitney F119 engines. I moved the stick. The massive tail fins behind me swayed obediently, slicing the air. The canopy—heavy glass with a golden tint—slid down smoothly, sealing out the sounds of the outside world. I was in a vacuum now. Just my breathing in the mask and the steady thrum of forty thousand horsepower at my back. I pushed the throttle forward, and the multi-ton machine crawled slowly out of the hangar's shadow into the blinding Mojave sun. "Shadow, you are cleared for takeoff. Wind is enticing, a ten-knot headwind." "Copy," I replied, feeling the steel within me resonate with the steel of the jet. "Climbing out." I spent nearly seventy minutes in the sky. That’s over an hour, and in that time, I grew as exhausted as if I’d shoveled five tons of coal. My body and mind were spent; I wanted to get back to base. I needed a breather until tomorrow. The roar of the engines began to fade, shifting from a furious scream to a thin, barely audible whistle. I could feel every muscle in my body. Nine Gs don't pass without a trace: capillaries in the eyes pop, and the spine feels as though it’s been pressed into the seat. My fingers, still resting on the throttles, trembled slightly—pure adrenaline slowly curdling into fatigue. I taxied the jet to the hangar and set the brakes. "Edwards Tower, Shadow. Mission complete. Engines shutting down, bird is on the ramp," my voice sounded husky. The oxygen mask had left deep indentations on my face. "Copy, Shadow," the dispatcher replied, a rare note of warmth in his voice. "Welcome back to the hollow earth, Elroy. Techs say you wrung everything out of that bird today. Get some rest. Debrief tomorrow at 08:00." "Copy. Out." I threw back the canopy. The dry, searing air of the Mojave hit my face. It smelled of heated concrete, burnt rubber, and freedom. I climbed out of the tight cockpit with difficulty, feeling the G-suit finally stop constricting my body. As I descended the ladder and my boots touched the ground, the world swayed for a moment—that’s what happens when you’ve been a god in the sky for too long and suddenly become a common man again. But I preferred being a god to being a mortal. Perhaps up there, I felt like someone else, whereas down here, I felt... not quite alive. Hardly had my boots hit the concrete when a familiar voice shattered the hangar’s silence. "You were damn magnificent! That vertical stunt... I thought my own spine was going to end up in my shorts just watching you from the tower!" It was Ron. Моy wingman, my brother in the sky, and perhaps the only person I allowed to get closer than a gunshot’s distance. We were bound only by the ties of altitude, but in this sterile military life, that was enough to make us kin. "Drop it, Ron," I said, pulling off my helmet and feeling damp hair cling to my forehead. "It was a standard stability test. Nothing special." "Don't act like a barmaid, Shadow!" he slapped my shoulder so hard I nearly lost my footing after the G-loads. "Listen, let's grab a beer tonight, yeah? I’ll introduce you to some of my girl's friends. Stop rotting in that den of yours." I rubbed the bridge of my nose tiredly. "Ron, you and I will never get married or find our 'better halves' as long as we just drink beer and watch football on weekends." "You'll see, I’m gonna get married, brother!" he flashed a white-toothed grin, adjusting his cap. "Soon. Very soon." "We’ll see about that," I huffed, heading toward the locker room. "So far, all you do is cuddle with one girl or her friend... what was her name?" "Jacqueline," he prompted dreamily. "Right, Jacqueline. You were 'cuddling' with her so hard the other day that the hickeys on your neck are still glowing like runway lights." "Oh, stop grumbling!" Ron gave me a playful nudge with his elbow. "Anyway, I’m waiting for you at eight at Timmy's. Don't you dare flake." "We’ll see," I tossed over my shoulder. "What’s that supposed to mean?" he called after me. "I said: we’ll see. Bug off, Ron." I drove down Highway 14, Ron's words still spinning in my head. "I'm gonna get married, brother..." Cocky i***t. We were born for speeds that rupture lungs—what the hell do we need a family for? I knew for a fact that starting a family was not for me. It was alien—unattainable. I was never meant to be with anyone; I had been alone my whole life, and I would stay that way forever. The sun hadn’t set yet; it hung over the horizon like a massive crimson disk, flooding the desert with heavy gold. I pressed the clutch and braked smoothly. My Mustang came to a halt a few yards from the shoulder. When I turned the key, the engine died, leaving me in a deafening silence broken only by the rhythmic clicking of cooling metal. I saw that someone needed help, and I couldn't just drive past and leave them in distress. My appearance might be grim and cold, but that didn't mean I was a total iceberg, lifeless and hollow. I still had a drop of human compassion left in me. I was in no hurry to get out. Through the windshield, I watched her. A girl was pacing nervously around a stalled Jeep. I tried to estimate her age—a pilot’s habit of digitizing everything. She was about twenty-seven. Or was I so bad at math that I’d forgotten what women outside the airbase looked like? She clearly wasn't a child, but «old age» was as far away as the moon. She possessed that strange harmony of early adulthood—the exact threshold where girlish lightness meets feminine strength. She was younger than me, for sure. It was evident in her long, slightly messy braids draped over her shoulder and her dusty sneakers, which looked so defenseless against the backdrop of this endless, merciless highway. She looked like someone who shouldn’t have been here, alone against the desert. I pushed the heavy car door open and stepped out. The hot air immediately clung to my face, a reminder that I was no longer in an air-conditioned cockpit. «Trouble?» I asked quietly, walking closer. She flinched and spun around. There was no fear in her eyes, only extreme exhaustion and irritation. Her skin glistened in the sun—dark skin, the color of cocoa. It was an exquisite shade. «If you don't count being stranded in the middle of nowhere with a child and a piece of useless scrap metal, then everything is just wonderful,» she replied with a bitter smile. I looked at her sneakers, then her braids, then shifted my gaze to a small face in the Jeep’s window. «Let’s see what can be done,» I said, taking off my sunglasses. «I’m Elroy. And it looks like I’m your only chance of not spending the night here to the accompaniment of coyotes.» And in that moment, in the middle of the parched desert, I really saw her. The broken Jeep and the silhouette of a woman who looked like the very answer to my argument with Ron—an answer I hadn't intended to seek. I rolled up my t-shirt sleeves and plunged my hands into the scorching guts of the Jeep. The metal burned my fingers, but after my training in the Cadet Corps, I was used to ignoring such trifles. While I examined the oil-slicked engine, I caught the sound of her sneaker tapping nervously on the asphalt as she glanced down the empty road. She fluttered her long lashes, and every movement betrayed her desire to be far away from here. «Mom, I’m tired of sitting… when are we going?» a soft, whiny child’s voice drifted from the back seat. «And I’m hungry.» I felt my heart skip a beat. That voice… it was too pure for me. Something familiar yet distant. Like a ghost from the past. For a few seconds, I closed my eyes and was back in the orphanage—tears tracking down my cheeks, calling for my mother. But she wasn't there. I had waited like a puppy at the door, calling and waiting until I completely blacked out from exhaustion. I opened my eyes and… «Honey, wait just a little longer,» the girl replied, her voice instantly softening. She leaned toward the window, then looked at me again. «We’re already getting help. This mister… what was it?» «Elroy Walker, at your service,» I replied without looking back. Gathering my thoughts, I quickly identified the cause of the breakdown. I fished a snapped alternator belt out from under the hood. Not good. I couldn't fix this on-site. I straightened up, wiping my stained palms on an old rag. The sun set behind my back, the light hitting me so that the chain around my neck glinted.