Chapter 4: The Door

Camp Pendleton sprawled across 125,000 acres of Southern California coastline, and Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 364—the Purple Foxes—occupied a corner of the base where the constant rhythm of rotor blades was the soundtrack to life.

Lance Corporal Kirstie Roberts reported to the maintenance hangar on a Monday morning in July, her seabag over her shoulder and her heart hammering with anticipation. This was it. This was where she’d prove herself worthy of sitting in that door.

The maintenance chief, Master Sergeant Kowalski, was a barrel-chested man with thirty years in the Corps and grease permanently embedded under his fingernails. He looked up from a clipboard as Kirstie approached.

“Roberts?”

“Yes, Master Sergeant.”

“Heard about you. Top of your class at Pensacola, Chen says you’ve got good hands.” He handed her the clipboard. “That means exactly nothing here until you prove it. You’re assigned to Maintenance Team Three, crew chief is Staff Sergeant Williams. He’ll get you checked out on our birds, qualified on our procedures. You keep your head down, work hard, and maybe—maybe—in a year or so we’ll talk about aircrew school. Clear?”

“Crystal clear, Master Sergeant.”

“Outstanding. Williams is in Bay 2, working on 413. Go introduce yourself.”

Kirstie found Staff Sergeant Williams elbow-deep in the engine compartment of a Black Hawk, cursing creatively at a stubborn fuel line.

“Staff Sergeant? Lance Corporal Roberts, reporting for duty.”

Williams extracted himself from the engine compartment, wiping his hands on a rag. He was lean and wiry, late twenties, with sharp eyes that assessed her in about two seconds.

“Fresh out of Pensacola?”

“Yes, Staff Sergeant.”

“Know anything useful?”

“I can turn a wrench, read tech manuals, and I graduated with honors.”

“So you’re smart. Good. Smart keeps people alive.” He tossed her the rag. “But smart without experience gets people killed just as fast. So here’s how this works: you watch, you learn, you ask questions when you don’t understand something, and you never—ever—assume you know better than the people who’ve been doing this job while you were still in high school. Got it?”

“Got it, Staff Sergeant.”

“Good. Now get up here and help me with this fuel line before I lose my mind.”

Month One: Proving Ground

Kirstie worked. She worked twelve-hour days, sometimes sixteen when birds were down and missions were scheduled. She worked weekends. She volunteered for the shit details—washing aircraft, inventorying parts, cleaning the hangar. She studied tech manuals until her eyes crossed and asked questions until Williams told her to shut up and figure it out herself.

She learned that theoretical knowledge from school was only the beginning. Real aircraft had quirks—this bird always ran hot on the number two engine, that one had a hydraulic system that leaked no matter how many times you replaced the seals, another one had avionics that glitched in humid weather.

She learned the personalities of her maintenance team—Williams was a perfectionist who accepted nothing less than flawless work, Corporal Jenkins was a wizard with electrical systems, Lance Corporal Martinez (no relation to her friend) could diagnose engine problems by sound alone.

And she learned about the aircrew.

They were a breed apart—the pilots, copilots, crew chiefs, and door gunners who strapped into those birds and took them into harm’s way. They walked differently, talked differently, carried themselves with a confidence born of knowing they could do something most people couldn’t even imagine.

Kirstie wanted that confidence. She wanted to earn it.

“You’re staring again,” Williams said one day, catching her watching a crew prep for a training flight.

“Sorry, Staff Sergeant.”

“Don’t be sorry. Be patient.” He followed her gaze to the door gunner checking his M240 machine gun. “That’s Sergeant Reeves. Best door gunner in the squadron. Eight years in the Corps, three deployments, more flight hours than most pilots. You want that job?”

“Yes, Staff Sergeant.”

“Why?”

Kirstie was tired of that question, but she answered honestly. “Because it matters. Because someone has to protect the aircraft and the people in it. Because I want to serve at the highest level I’m capable of.”

Williams studied her. “You know what the failure rate is for aircrew school?”

“Forty percent.”

“Higher for door gunners specifically. Fifty-five percent. You know why?”

“No, Staff Sergeant.”

“Because hanging out of a helicopter with a machine gun while people shoot at you requires a special kind of crazy. It requires nerves of steel, situational awareness, split-second decision making, and the ability to function when every instinct is screaming at you to get the hell inside the aircraft.” He paused. “It also requires the mechanics to trust you. Because if you fuck up as a door gunner, you can damage the aircraft. Put a round through the tail rotor, hit a hydraulic line, compromise a flight control surface. Best door gunners understand the aircraft as well as the mechanics do. They know what they can and can’t do with that weapon.”