Alpha Billionaire Series
Coming Home Chapter 10

HOLDEN

4

years later...

I stood at the back of the hangar, in the office, and watched the group of trainees as they waited for me. I learned shortly after I started my assignment of being a flight trainer that observing how the young officers behaved before I stood in front of them was valuable for replaceing out who were the hotshots, the ones who fought for the alpha position of the cohort.

Those were the pilots who would question my directions and push the limits. They thought they were natural leaders. Sometimes they were, sometimes they were just assholes. I wanted to have an idea of which ones I could expect to have to deal with. I would have to cultivate their ego into precision and action. I needed pilots who could fly into dangerous situations and fly right back out.

A cocky attitude and an inflated ego were not always beneficial in those situations. Cool heads and analytical reasoning were stronger traits when it came to piloting in combat.

My trainees sat in rows of folding chairs behind folding tables set up in front of a Blackhawk and a whiteboard. My classroom was in the wide-open space of an aircraft hangar. We took up only a small portion of an active, functioning aircraft hangar. We were right in the middle of everything. Being able to focus, learn, and function amidst chaos and heat and humidity was all part of the plan.

My students cut up with each other and were relaxed. They had come from all over and hadn't met each other until this morning. But that didn't stop the instant camaraderie, and sometimes, ego-fed antagonism. This lot seemed to lean towards being friendly. It didn't mean that I wouldn't butt heads with a bad attitude, but it was promising. I couldn't decide who were the overachievers, and who already knew it all.

I had reviewed the files of each one of the pilots before they were even allowed into my training class. But words on paper could not take the place of observation. My presence would change their demeanor. A good officer understood the personalities of his men, a good teacher understood his students. I strived to do both.

I took the long way around from the office, giving myself more time to study them. One of their ranks had been keeping an eye out for my arrival, and my presence was announced as soon as I decided it was time to join them.

"Officer on deck."

My students reacted instantly. Chairs scraped as they all stood at attention at my approach. I didn't even have time to salute or introduce myself before hell came raining down on us.

I can't say there was one thing that I learned in my years as an aviation officer and that was singularly more important than anything else. I can say the lessons of 'expect the unexpected,' and 'always be ready to react because you never know when you'll need to jump into action' were the two that managed to cross my mind in those first few seconds of the disaster.

I think I reacted more to the sound than to other stimuli. We had no warning. I had always thought there would be a few seconds where I would be able to assess and make choices. But that wasn't the case.

Everything happened all at once. There was a roar like a train, combined with a thunderous clap and metal screeching. There was yelling and screaming. It seemed like explosions surrounded us. Everyone's training took over and we all jumped in different directions. Everyone ran in a different direction, instinctually running toward the danger, only we were surrounded. I was knocked on my back and thrown across the floor toward the bird. That's what saved me. It's also what broke me. I didn't remember anything after that.

It was the softness of the bed and the smell that I reacted to first. The acrid burning smell had been replaced with the distinct antiseptic scent that was unique to hospitals and medical facilities.

I was awake and I didn't want to be. I groaned and struggled to open my eyes. My vision was blurry. The light seemed excessively bright. My mouth was dry, my tongue swollen and made of terrycloth. Beeps turned to screams as sensor alarms went off. Pain screamed into my head. Returning to sleep seemed like a good idea.

"Oh, good. Welcome back, Lieutenant. Can you tell me your name?" a nurse with a soft voice asked.

"Wells." It really hurt to talk. "Lieutenant Holden Wells."

"That's good enough for now. I don't need your full rank and serial number. Do you know what day it is? Can you tell me what happened?"

"No." I tried to push up into a sitting position, I didn't want to be on my back. I was suddenly aware that I was uncomfortable. My legs felt heavy, and one of my arms felt swollen. I was covered in sticky sensor leads and IVs.

I wasn't sure what had happened. I was about to meet my most recent training cohort, and then there had been explosions and screaming. I had no idea how long ago that had been. It could have been hours; it could have been days. "Do you want to get up?"

"Yeah, please." My voice sounded even worse than it felt, and it felt horrible and scratchy.

With a whir, the back of the bed angled up, and without effort on my part, I was in a more upright position.

"What's the last thing you remember Lieutenant?" The nurse continued to ask questions as she rearranged pillows under my legs and arm. I was covered in thick bandages down one side of my body.

"Is this an interrogation? Do I remember who I am, where I am?"

"That's exactly what this is." The nurse continued to adjust my bedding and the IV.

"What happened to me? Where am I?"

"You'll get the details in a debriefing. But I can tell you that you're in the hospital. You've had two surgeries to repair a spiral fracture in your left leg and multiple breaks in your left arm. You've suffered multiple contusions, a concussion, and two fractured ribs." "That explains why things hurt." And everything hurt.

I felt a gentle hand on my arm. "That's why things hurt. Now that you're conscious, let's see how long we can keep you awake before giving you more morphine. I'll let the doctor know you are awake."

Some point later a doctor came in and prodded me. Different nurses took my stats and gave me meds. I was on some serious pain medication and drifted in and out of consciousness. Awake and drugged out felt like floating in clouds. I was aware of my body, but it didn't hurt. And there was a veil of fog like mist surrounding my brain as if I couldn't see through it. Thoughts were skewed and fuzzy.

I didn't learn the full extent of the situation until after I had a debriefing several days later. A training exercise had gone horribly wrong. A pilot had to ditch his plane during landing. And that's when the aircraft went sideways, literally.

Instead of crashing into the empty tarmac, the aircraft cartwheeled and crashed into the far corner of the hangar where my class was being held. Support beams were sheared in half. The building collapsed right on top of us, and many others. An I-beam severed the tail section of the helicopter I ended under.

In the few days following surgery, I learned the extent of my injuries. Both bones on my forearm had snapped. My left leg suffered a spiral fracture in the tibia, the fibula had snapped, and there was a cluster of hairline fractures in my femur. I was held together with titanium plates, screws, and more pins than I could count. And I was one of the lucky ones.

The pilot that crashed survived, but a lot of the soldiers inside that hangar had not. We lost good men and women that day.

I was still struggling with balancing being conscious with the painkillers when I received the call. It took several hours before I fully grasped the enormity of what that call had meant. Part of me thought it had to be a drug-induced hallucination.

My father couldn't die. That was something I could not fully accept. I hadn't even had a chance to talk to him after my accident to let him know I was all right. I didn't even know if my parents had even known about the accident. And now the accident seemed inconsequential. My father was dead.