I am Jula, thirty-two years old, and for my entire life, my father has told me that the cockpit of a fighter jet is no place for a woman, especially a failure of a daughter like me. But the worst humiliation didn’t come from him. It came from Mark, my half brother, the golden boy he treats like royalty.
Right in the middle of a crowded briefing room, vibrating with the arrogant energy of a hundred of America’s youngest pilots at Nellis Air Force Base, Mark pointed a finger right in my face.
He laughed loud and sharp and shouted,
“Hey, you’re in the wrong room, sweetie. This is for real pilots, men like us.
It’s not a place for you to find a husband.”
The entire auditorium exploded in laughter. Mark winked at me, convinced he had just scored a point.
I felt the blood rush to my face, burning hot.
Not from shame, but from pity for his ignorance. Because Mark had no idea that the woman he’d just humiliated for supposedly looking for a husband was holding the call sign Falcon 1. I was the only person in that room with the authority to order him to live or die in the sky today.
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The air inside the main briefing room at Nellis Air Force Base always smelled the same. It was a stale mixture of recycled air conditioning trying and failing to fight off the Nevada desert heat, combined with the sharp scent of burnt government-issue coffee and the overwhelming musk of testosterone.
It was the first day of Red Flag, the premier air-to-air combat training exercise in the world. The room was packed.
Rows of theater-style seats were filled with the best and brightest—or at least the loudest—young fighter pilots the Air Force had to offer.
They were all wearing their green flight suits, zippers pulled to the perfect height, patches gleaming on their shoulders. They talked with their hands, mimicked dogfights in the air between them, laughed too loud, postured. It was a sea of egos, and I was just a rock they were flowing around.
I stood near the front, off to the side, by the water cooler.
I was wearing a sterile, unadorned flight suit. No name tag, no rank insignia on my shoulders, no unit patches.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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