Page 132 - Never Fly Solo

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Abort! Abort!

The Courage to Quit

I’m exhausted but can’t sleep. It’s a chilly sixty-five degrees
in the hotel room, but I’m sweating profusely. My mind won’t
stop racing.
In just a few hours I’ll be strapping into an F-16 for an
eight-hour nonstop flight home from Morón Air Base in Spain
to Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina. This is not a com-
bat mission. There will be no missiles and no night refueling
in thunderstorms—just a mellow cross-country flight to the
good old United States.
There’s only one problem. It’s called the Atlantic Ocean.
Thirty-five hundred miles of nothing but me, my F-16, and
freezing-cold water. What did I get myself into?
Like a fool, I volunteered to be one of the six fighter pilots
in my squadron to ferry an F-16 back to our home base at
Shaw. We had just completed a two-month deployment to
Saudi Arabia, flying combat missions in southern Iraq to
enforce the no-fly zone. When the commander asked for vol-
unteers to fly back, I raised my hand.

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