Buckle Up For Safety

The golden sun was at it’s mid-day peak, and it’s warm light shined upon the hundreds of green acres that surrounded the boys’ house. Many different shaped fluffy-like clouds filled the sky on this sunny afternoon. They looked like giant pillows, or cotton balls, but in reality were just big puffs of water, and would eventually rain as they grew to a point where they could no longer hold onto the weight of the humidity.

But there would be no raining on this sunny day. The clouds were just at the right stage for viewing and picking out odd shapes. Which, of course, the boy happened to be doing as he lay on the cool, long, green grass and stared straight up into the ocean-blue sky. He was a good 10 miles away from his house, and the only sound that could be heard was the slight breeze as it blew through the grass.

But he was not alone. He had come with a friend; Sara. It was one of his favorite spots to imagine a life chalk full of action that he craved oh so very much, and to let go from the days troubles. It was a favorite thing of his to do, which is why it took a great deal of trust to show her this spot. He was pretty sure he could trust her, after all she was his best friend. They had been in the same classes ever since kindergarten, and he had always liked her. But he never had the courage to tell her, for fear of being rejected.

He glanced over to the left to see her with the same empty look in her eyes that he had whenever he was deep in thought. She was incredibly beautiful; she had dusty blonde hair and dark blue eyes that seemed to never end. She was a little taller then other girls in their grade, and looked maybe a year or two older than someone else her same age. She had an incredible smile, and sometimes he would do stupid things just to make her laugh so he could see it. He would miss her so much...

She caught him staring at her, so she tilted her head playfully and looked straight into his eyes.

“Were you checking me out?”

It was a joke, but the boy had been. He could easily hide his emotions, so the girl never knew what he was thinking. Lucky for him, because he had just been caught red handed.

“No, just thinking....”

“About what?”

He let out a deep sigh. He was going to have to tell her at some point, and it might as well be now. The sun was reflecting off of her golden blond-ish brown hair and it waved a bit in the wind as a breeze passed by. God, he would miss her so much.

“Sara, I’m leaving.”

“What? Oh, well when can you come back outside?”

“Not that kind of leaving....”

She sat up and crossed her legs. It was summer, so she was wearing short shorts which only revealed her beautiful, long tan legs even more.

“You mean like...you’re moving or something?”

“Yeah....”

He couldn’t bear to look into her dark blue eyes. He laid back down on his back and stared up at the clouds. There was one in particular that resembled a fat hippo chasing Chewbacca from Star Wars...probably one of the most unique ones he had seen yet. He would have shared it with Sara but she was deep in thought.

Sara sat and stared at the boy that had been her friend for so long. She couldn’t believe he was leaving.... it didn’t seem real. They had shared so many moments over the past 7 years. He had comforted her whenever she was in need, and they had sat out on his porch late into the night looking at stars and different planets through the boys’ telescope. She wanted to say something...but just couldn’t think of the right words. She laid back down on the grass and looked up at the endless sky filled with hundreds of pearl white clouds.

“Do you see that one that looks like a hippo chasing Chewbacca?” She said.

“Yeah...I was gonna tell you but I thought you’d say I was on drugs...”

They laughed together. It was moments like this that he would miss the most...it was like they thought the exact same way about most things. Sometimes he would forget about how much alike they really were until something like this would happen. He turned his head to lay against the grass and looked into the sea of never ending blue in her eyes....

“I’m gonna miss you.”

“I’ll miss you more...”

Her reply trailed off as if she wasn’t sure what else to say. What else COULD she say?? He was leaving. That was it, end of story. It didn’t matter where he was going, it only mattered that he wouldn’t be here with her...

“I need to go start packing some of my things. But I have a surprise for you, can you meet me here at midnight?”

“Midnight?! We’re 12, not 16. There’s no way my parents would let me come out here in the middle of the night!”

The boy shrugged. “So sneak out.”

Her jaw dropped. He had always been a goody goody, never breaking the rules. She recalled last summer when she had spent hours of coaxing him into stealing Mr. Crouch’s scarecrow and replacing it with a cardboard cut out of Hannah Montana. He had finally agreed. They had been caught afterwards, but Mr. Crouch had actually thanked them and said that the cut-out had scared away more crows than anything he had ever used before.

“Alright, tough guy. If you’re willing to tell ME to break the rules, it’s probably worth it. I’ll be here.”

He grinned and ran off towards his house. He had a lot of work to do before nightfall....

“JET! Wake the FUCK up, we’re leaving in 10!!”

Christ. It was his roommate, Freddy. Ever since switching to the Houston special ops team, he had spent weeks at a time down at the base. Thus, being paired up with the teams loudest but most entertaining member: Freddy. The boy coughed as Freddy’s cigarette breath filled his lungs.

He squinted his eyes as Freddy turned the LED Mag-light flashlight on and off 3 inches from his face. He grabbed the flashlight out of his hands and threw it out of the room. Freddy laughed and smiled at Jet as he sat up and let his legs dangle from the top bunk.

“What were you dreaming about lover boy?? I heard some interesting moans...It’s a shame we have to leave, you were putting on quite a show.”

Jet chucked his pillow at Freddy and tried to forget about the flashback he had just had about Sara and the day before he left. He missed her so much, but he couldn’t let any emotions get in the way with his job.

“I packed your stuff buddy. We’re all ready to leave except for you. The big cheese said we should dress casual, so throw on some shit and lets get the fuck out!”

“Thanks Freddy.”

Jet grabbed the leather jacket he had stolen several weeks before, a pair of jeans, and his lucky red t-shirt. He quickly put on his clothes as Freddy turned up some music from his i-pod speakers. Jet groaned as he realized that it was the dropkick murphies. It wasn’t that they were a bad band, just that Freddy played their music non-stop 24/7. It was either the dropkick murphies or the beatles. Jet preferred the beatles.

Freddy was a good sized man. He was extremely built, and stood at a height of 6"2 and weighed in at around 230 pounds. It was almost all muscle, the man was incredibly strong. After his dad, who had also been a special ops recruit, died on a mission in Europe, he had been sent to a similar program that Jet had been at when he was young.. Freddy had learned fast, and worked his way to the top. He had been on several different Special ops teams, but he had been a member of Houston’s for over 5 years now. He was in his early twenties, and loved to be the center of attention. He had quickly bonded with Jet during their first mission when he realized that Jet had incredible skill, and was still extremely young although they were not allowed to know his age.

Jet placed the silver oakley’s with fire red reflective lenses onto his face. They were the same ones that had belonged to the man in the hospital, and he had been putting them to good used. He laughed to himself when he thought of what the man would wonder when he woke up next to the toilet in the hospital bathroom.

Freddy turned off the music and packed the I-pod speakers along with I-pod into his bag. He turned on the T.V. to catch the news before they left for their next mission. A breaking news banner scrolled across the bottom of the screen as the Anchorman described the crisis.

“It appears that two F-14 Tomcats have been stolen from an air force base in Washington D.C. When questioned, base officals replied that the situation is under control and for no one to worry. The jets will be back under the control of navy pilots in a matter of hours.”

“SHIT!!”

Freddy turned off the T.V. and threw the remote at the wall, where it promptly shattered into thousands of plastic pieces.

“Fuck. The news leaked out....I don’t know how, but it leaked out.”

Freddy paced back and forth and took in deep breaths to calm himself down. Jet sighed and wondered how someone had found out about it. It was their current mission, they were leaving to Washington to provide extra assistance. They had been called out because the two jets that had been stolen were headed towards Texas, so they would hopefully run into them on the way there and either take them down or coax them into giving the jets back. They wouldn’t be bringing along any of the special ops team members, had it not been for the fact that Washington had requested backup for the next week as well in case any other threat occurred.

Each person on the team knew how to pilot almost any type of aircraft, and had intense ground training. This way they could protect and use the aircraft against any terrorist threat that presented itself. None of the team members were looking forward to it, it was a job for security guards, not highly trained recruits.

There came two knocks at the door, which was the signal that it was go time. Freddy and Jet entered the pristine white hallways of the base and joined the other 8 members of Houston’s special ops team. There were murmurs of the news being leaked, and complaints that there wasn’t really much they could do for this mission. All ten members exited the white hallway to the outside runway of Houston’s base.

The same plane that the boy had used before for the drop mission was the same one they would be using for this extremely boring mission. It was the HC-130, back and ready for action. It would be accompanied by two F-22 Raptors that were armed with several air-to-air laser guided missiles. Even if the missile barely nicked its target, the enemy would be toast. The protection from the Raptors was just in case one of the terrorist lunatics that was piloting the tomcats actually knew how to seek and destroy.

The team members loaded up inside the HC-130 and were not given parachutes, mainly for the purpose that they were just being shipped to D.C. But in case there was an emergency, there were several parachutes in the cockpit. The number “several” wasn’t very comforting to Jet, or the rest of the team for that matter, so they had demanded more. Unfortunately, this meant less room for sitting.

The allison engines of the HC-130 roared to life and the plane began to take off. All of the team members were casually dressed, and some tried to sleep while others listened to music. Jet talked with Freddy, but it was hard to hear over the engine noise.

“So I want to know...out of all the code names to choose, why pick Freddy?”

“Haha...I’m a whiz with knives and swords. I used to do all sorts of fencing and shit before I got into...well, this. And you know, Freddy from that one movie has like the...”

“Right, I get it. Good choice.”

“So why Jet Black?”

“Well.....a nurse gave me the idea.”

“What??”

“It’s part of a song.”

“Oh, nice. Well I think I’m gonna try and get some shut eye, I think you should to. It’s gonna be a long ass flight...”

“Yeah, no kidding. I’ll wake you up when we get to D.C.”

Jet looked around at the rest of his teammates. Most of them were asleep, but several looked deep in thought. He didn’t know all of their code names yet, but none of them seemed very talkative. Which was fine, on his last team no one had ever talked to him outside of the missions. Some were even married and had children.

He stared out the window at the blue skies, and could see the two Raptors, one close behind either wing of the HC-130. He doubted that they would even need to provide any help it all. It was just one long boring flight to D.C. The boy quickly tired of looking out the window, and tried to listen in to some of the other conversations between team members.

“Yeah, I heard Dallas gets to provide backup in D.C. too, except they’re assigned to protect the president.”

“No shit! Where’d you hear that?”

“I’ve got a cousin who’s part of the secret service. He’s pissed because he said Dallas is gonna mess everything up.”

“Why’d all of us get stuck with this dumbass mission of protecting a base then?? This is so fucking stupid...”

“I know, man. But protecting the prez would be just as boring. Just bite your tongue and we’ll be back in Houston in no time.”

Jet thought about the information he had just heard. It was logical that the President had requested backup with all of the recent terrorist threats, but why from two teams that were so far away? And he still didn’t quite understand how someone could steal two F-14 tomcats right out from a base. It seemed impossible...maybe they had bombs strapped to themselves or something.

The boys thoughts trailed off as he stared out the window once again. He thought he saw something in the distance, but wasn’t positive....then a team member piped up

“Hey look, there’s Dallas right over there. Those cocky bastards.”

Except it wasn’t Dallas’ team transport plane. It was something much faster, and sleeker. The boy considered it to be the two tomcats for a second, but then decided it couldn’t be. The two jets coming towards them were definitely not the same design as the F-14 tomcat, they were black and like nothing he had ever seen before.

Murmurs throughout the HC-130's cabin started to grow louder and louder, and people were standing up and crowding around to catch a glimpse of the oddly shaped black jets that were coming towards them at high speeds. Something seemed to fall off of one of the jets, and then there was a noise that was almost indescribable.

It was like nails on a chalkboard mixed with ths sound of T.V. static.. Then there was a big FOOOM and the Raptor on the left side of the HC-130 was instantly blown apart. All ten members of the team simultaneously got in line to the cockpit and started to grab the parachutes. They remained calm, but some could not tear their eyes from the explosion that was now behind them. Flaming wreckage from the multi-million dollar jet fell to the ground below. The pilot told everyone to remain seated, and to strap themselves in, but before he could finish his sentence the strange noise started happening again. This time the Raptor on the right erupted into a flaming mass of metal, and there was a secondary explosion as one of the bombs the plane was carrying detonated due to the massive amount of heat. Jet could have sworn he had heard a scream somewhere among the wreckage that was now dropping towards the ground, but quickly decided it must have been something else.

The pilot issued an SOS call as he quickly went into a barrel roll and then proceeded to nose dive towards the ground. The HC-130 was not designed for this, so the passengers had to grip onto their seats that were bolted against either wall. The boy could see one of the jets approaching from the left, closing in for the kill. He could hear the T.V. static and the high pitched screeching sound one more time, and the pilot desperately tried to shake the two oddly built jets as he screamed into the radio for confirmation on an emergency landing.

The strange noise grew louder and louder, until it stopped and everything was quiet, even though the pilot was still screaming into the radio the boy could hear nothing. Then, there was a small explosion and the bay doors of the HC-130 flew off.

There was a member of the team who was not secured, and was instantly sucked out into the clear blue sky. Luckily, he had managed to take one of the parachutes from the cockpit and quickly pulled the cord to open the parachute.

This was a bad idea for the man, for the parachute was like a big arrow to the two pilots of the strange aircrafts saying “SHOOT HERE.” The noise was much more high pitched this time, and didn’t last long at all. The man instantly exploded, blood and body parts flying in all directions. Limbs tumbled down through the sky in a bloody mess, and his parachute floated away in the wind.

Jet turned to look at Freddy, who’s mouth was wide open as he stared at the bloody remains of his teammate spiral down to the ground.

“Jesus Christ! What the hell is that thing?? What is it shooting??”

Jet could barely hear him now that the bay doors of the HC-130 had completely flown off and the engine noise was louder than ever. There was no sign of the two oddly shaped jets, but the boy wasn’t sure they were gone for good.

The HC-130 was badly damaged. Not only had the back doors flown off, but as they had fallen they had clipped part of an engine on the left side. Not to mention the debris from the two Raptors that had smashed against the side of the hull. The pilot had finally confirmed an emergency landing at the New Orleans Air Force base and was now making it’s final descent. All team members were completely calm and ready for action, most had their weapons out and grasped tightly in their hands. Lucky for them, all cargo was secured to the floor before takeoff. They hadn’t lost any equipment at all.

The strange two jets had not returned, and Jet sighed in relief as they approached the New Orleans base. Sparks flew out from under the HC-130 as the landing gear unfolded, and for a moment Jet worried that everything was just going to fall apart. The plane approached the runway, and the pilot announced that one of the wheels was out, so it would be a rough landing. The jolt was powerful, and Jet’s head smashed into the wall behind him, instantly knocking him unconscious.

***

The boy smiled as Sara approached the several blankets he had laid out on the long grass. In the middle of the blanket lied an album with a bow on it. The girl smiled as she sat down and removed the bow to examine the album.

It was extremely impressive, it was filled with hundreds of pictures dating back to when they first met and were just 5. The girl smiled as she thumbed through the pictures and saw them as they were little, all the way up until just a couple weeks ago when they had a huge water balloon fight with all of the kids that attended the county school. She gave the boy a big hug and began to cry.

“Sara, please don’t...”

“Please don’t go...please stay...”

She sniffed and the boy grabbed part of the blanket to wipe her tears. Above them a shooting star streaked by.

“Look! A shooting star, did you see that??” she said as she began to regain control of herself. The boy smiled and said

“This is present number two. There’s a meteor shower tonight, and I wanted us to be able to see one last one before we left...”

Sure enough, right as the boy finished talking 3 or 4 stars streaked through the extremely clear black night. Sara gasped as more and more began to fill the night sky, and they both stared in wonder as hundreds of them began to fill up the once black night. They gave off just barely enough light for him to see her beautiful face for the last time before he had to leave. Her dark blue eyes sparkled in the night and were filled with amazement as she stared at the incredible sky now completely full of the falling stars.

He took her hand in his and looked into her eyes, and wanted to say something like don’t ever forget me, or please remember me, but instead she kissed him very softly on the cheek. He could see her spectacular eyes from the grayish glow of the shooting stars, and he kissed her and didn’t want to let go. He could feel a tear run down his cheek as he promised himself that one day he would come back for her....