In the Balance (+audio)

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“The Hawk.”
“The Hawk? Like the missile? That’s seriously obscure as a favorite weapon, man. They’ve been out of service for like thirty years.”
Sergeant Chuck Chuckar Carr nodded. “Granddad serviced those during the Cuban Missile Crisis—an electronics tech just like me. His uncles were a WWII Seabee and an Air Corps plane spotter in Guam and the Philippines. Before that…” he realized he was doing it again and stopped. Being fifth generation in the Service meant something. “But, the Hawk is still in use in the Russia-Ukraine War because great design never truly dies. And they have the best name ever.”
“Hawk?” Max didn’t know his history as well as he thought he did. “Hold this,” he handed over the scopemeter so he’d have two hands for the test probes.
Sitting in the copilot’s seat, Chuck held the meter positioned for them both to see the readout as Max probed the control computer they’d excised from the Black Hawk helicopter’s console.
“Hawk stands for: Homing All the Way Killer. Cool name, right?”
“Yeah, real cool. Are you from the sixties or something, Chuckar?”
“It’s from the Vietnam-era. Cool would definitely fit a surface-to-air missile that runs Mach 2-plus while toting along a fifty-kilo warhead. It can punch twenty kilometers high and fifty downrange. What’s not to like?”
“Crap! There it is.”
Chuck doublechecked where Max had the probes placed and inspected the meter. “Yep. Dead as a doornail. We’re going to need a new control head for the terrain-following radar. Be nice if the HUMS had just told us where the problem was a couple hours ago.”
The MH-60M Black Hawk helicopter’s Health and Usage Monitor System was great at keeping records, but when some third-party subsystem flaked, the HUMS sometimes, well, just kept humming along as if nothing had happened.
“Look,” Max tapped one of the helo’s screens. “Now that I’ve disconnected the damn thing it’s reporting the failure. Best weapon, huh? Me, I’ll take—” his voice faded out as he looked up over Chuck’s shoulder.
Chuck turned. Colonel Emily Beale stood close beside his open door, her smile wintry at best. The new commander of the entire 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment had this weird ability to be everywhere at once. The least little thing went sideways and, somehow, she’d be in the thick of it, watching over everyone’s shoulder. They were in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the headquarters and home of two of the battalions, but he’d heard that she popped up in Georgia at the 3rd Battalion and Seattle at the 4th and 5th as if she’d never left those.

Initial Publication: October 1, 2024
Print pages: 62
Audio length (h:mm): 0:38
Narrator: Read by Author