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One Man's Super Bowl
We've kept in touch. He occasionally does flyovers at sports events I'm covering. Our kids are the same age. He's funny. But this e-mail was a little different. It came on Oct. 8, from the Afghan front. Two Bags, It was like the Super Bowl of the World, truly amazing. I don't think I will ever forget this experience. And to be the Commanding Officer and overall lead -- what an honor! As we were flying at 32,000 feet, 200 miles south of Kabul, we saw the first TLAMs [Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles] hit. ... Just to add to the excitement, 100 miles from the target, we were informed that our backside tanking [midair refueling aircraft] wasn't there. I determined to continue. If [I'd] decided to abort, we wouldn't have had enough fuel to make it back anyway. Plus, it gave them an extra 20 minutes to find us another hose. How is everyone in the States? It's my hope and belief this will help give us our confidence back. It's a hell of a lot different when someone is shooting at you, though. When we got back my RIO [navigator] looked like you did after your flight. Your buddy, Chip O.K. You know you're in a new kind of war when the first pilot over Kabul e-mails you the next morning. It's not exactly spam. It's chilling and emotional and uplifting. I wrote him back. He answered -- and keeps answering. Each day I get an e-mail from King, aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson in the Arabian Sea. He commands Fighter Squadron 213, the Blacklions. I ask him questions, and if the information isn't classified, he answers. During raids over Kabul, "the whole sky looks like the Fourth of July," he wrote. "[The missiles] look like corkscrewing bottle rockets. ... If I'd been sitting on a lump of coal, I could've made a diamond." The sorties are "grueling" -- three hours just to get to the target -- so the whole wing has to refuel three or four times en route. "Imagine a gas station in the sky, with 10 cars turning in ... at once," he wrote. "You can't get out of the way if anybody screws up. If you run out of gas, you crash. And they won't be coming to pick you up in an ambulance." From planes with I LOVE NY written on the tail, he and his squadron drop bombs night after night. I asked him if he ever thinks about the fact that he may be killing people. "No," he wrote. "When you deliver weapons, it's just a target. It's not about taking human life. It's about breaking their will to wage war." Then there are the nighttime landings onto a ship that looks like a Kleenex bobbing in the black sea. "Man, my heart is beating like crazy," wrote Chip, a former linebacker at Randolph-Macon College outside Richmond. "It's kind of like heaving a game-winning Hail Mary at the end. I know that's when I'm like those athletes, I'm in the zone." I asked him if he's scared. "Nervous, maybe. Proud. Not scared. I haven't had time to think about myself. I've got five other Tomcats and 20 other support planes out there to worry about." It's been more than three months since he's seen his wife and three daughters. "Every time I talk to my wife, she breaks out crying," he wrote. "It's been hard on the kids. I worry about our youngest. This is the first deployment that she is really old enough to understand. Unfortunately, she understands too much." Last Friday night his middle daughter was crowned a homecoming princess at her high school. "Her swim coach is driving her around in my '65 'Vette," he wrote forlornly. "God, how I wish I could be there!" His e-mails have changed me a little. Now, when I find myself sweating stupid stuff, like a hotel room on too high a floor or whether I'll be able to take the guy in seat 14C, I think about Chip dodging Taliban missiles with his gas needle on E. I thank God there are men with that much guts and skill wearing the uniform. I also worry that one morning the e-mails will stop. "How's Michael Jordan look?" he asked in his latest one. "That guy's my hero." Yeah, well, over here, some of us are finding new ones. Issue date: October 22, 2001 Don't miss The Life of Reilly (Total/SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, $22.95) -- a best-of compilation of Rick Reilly's columns and features, with a foreword written by Charles Barkley, available now at bookstores everywhere.
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