The earth stopped shaking and Jane feebly fumbled to her feet. There was a strange hissing noise coming from her father where he lay unmoving and whisps of smoke curled up from his body which lay facedown in his airforce uniform ripped to shreds. Jane crossed the empty street to where he lay, got on her knees beside his head calling softly out to him as she did, wake up dad. She gently ran her fingers through his matted coarse hair and found it sticky in blood. In that moment she new he was dead.
Above her the sky was ablaze with fighter jets screaming overhead. If only she had kept her cell phone on her dad would not have had to come in to land to check on her. She had been angry at him that morning for not borrowing her his BMW so that she could drive it to school and impress her friends, he came to her as she was the most important person in the world to him and his landing had made him a sitting duck. Having exited the Griffin his body signature had been picked up by the enemy and he was killed by a single beam directly through his skull.
Jane wiped the tears from her eyes kept to her feet and raced to the open cockpit of the Saab JAS 39 Griffin, climbing its portable rope hanging rope ladder rings two at a time. Her father had given her flying lessons and she had more training hours in the flight simulator than a cadet completed in training. She donned her father’s helmet and heard a familiar voice on the radio;
“Bushy Lead this is Magpie do you you read me over”
The shock and adrenaline coursing through her voice she didn’t hear the words out her mouth;
“Magpie this is Baby Bush, Bushy Lead is confirmed KIA over”
The squadron of Griffins originally designed and manufactured by Saab in Sweden had been covertly overhauled by Denel a local South African Defence manufacturer to provide the jet with a more powerful engine, vertical take off capability and enhanced maneuverability. Jane flipped the vertical take off switch, started the powerful jet engine. She fastened her safety harness while taking off from the ground and radioed; “All call signs report, this is Baby Bush joining the fight.
Jane bit on her lip and thought of her Dad, Major Cecil Williams, the first person of colour to become a fighter pilot in the South African Air Force. A loving devoted father who would do just about anything for his little girl. His former white seniors used to call him Bushy, a racist term for a colourd man in South Africa, but Cecil true to his nature embraced the torment and wore it proudly as a battle scar and even selecting this to the embarrassment of his white colleagues in the post apartheid regime to be his call sign.
The call signs and their positions came spitting through the her headgear.
Jane placed them in her minds eye and checked this against her onboard radar identifying the bogies.
lay facedown in his airforce uniform ripped to shreds. Jane crossed the empty street to where he lay, got on her knees beside his head calling softly out to him as she did, wake up dad. She gently ran her fingers through his matted coarse hair and found it sticky in blood. In that moment she new he was dead.
Above her the sky was ablaze with fighter jets screaming overhead. If only she had kept her cell phone on her dad would not have had to come in to land to check on her. She had been angry at him that morning for not borrowing her his BMW so that she could drive it to school and impress her friends, he came to her as she was the most important person in the world to him and his landing had made him a sitting duck. Having exited the Griffin his body signature had been picked up by the enemy and he was killed by a single beam directly through his skull.
Jane wiped the tears from her eyes kept to her feet and raced to the open cockpit of the Saab JAS 39 Griffin, climbing its portable rope hanging rope ladder rings two at a time. Her father had given her flying lessons and she had more training hours in the flight simulator than