To Hell and Back
Copyright© 2025 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 6: The Fall
Camp Pendleton, California - Fourteen Months Later
The year stateside had been good for Kirstie. She’d reconnected with her family during two weeks of leave in Iowa, spent time with Martinez at Miramar, taken college classes using her tuition assistance, and worked to train the next generation of door gunners. She’d been promoted to Corporal, earned her Enlisted Aviation Warfare Specialist badge, and had been selected for Sergeant ahead of her peers.
But the nightmares persisted. The hypervigilance never quite went away. And part of her—the part that had found purpose in the skies over Helmand Province—was ready to go back.
The Purple Foxes got their deployment orders in March: seven months, same location, Camp Bastion. Different mission focus this time—more direct action support, working with Special Operations units, higher-risk insertions and extractions.
Kirstie’s crew had changed slightly. Captain Mendez had rotated to a staff position. Their new aircraft commander was Captain Hayes, a prior-enlisted pilot with two previous deployments and a reputation for aggressive flying. Lieutenant Morrison remained as copilot. Sergeant Vance was still her crew chief, now a Staff Sergeant, and Kirstie had been bumped to primary right door gunner.
“You ready for this?” Vance asked during their pre-deployment workup.
“I was born ready,” Kirstie replied, and meant it.
Camp Bastion - Month Three of Second Deployment
The second deployment was different from the first. The enemy had adapted, grown more sophisticated in their tactics. IEDs were more complex, ambushes better planned, the fighting more intense. The Taliban knew they were fighting a war of attrition, trying to inflict casualties until American political will broke.
But the door gunners had adapted too. Kirstie was no longer the new combat aviator learning on the fly. She was experienced, confident, lethal. She could read terrain like a book, spot threats before they materialized, put rounds on target in conditions that would have seemed impossible two years ago.
“Roberts is one of the best door gunners I’ve ever flown with,” Captain Hayes told Master Sergeant Kowalski during a performance review. “Ice cold under fire, excellent situational awareness, protects the aircraft like it’s her own child. I’d fly with her anywhere.”
Kirstie’s reputation had spread beyond her own squadron. Other aircrews requested her for high-risk missions. Special Operations teams asked for her bird specifically. She’d become the door gunner everyone wanted watching their six.
But with that reputation came increased danger. The most important missions were always the most risky.
June 23rd - The Day Everything Changed
The morning started routine. Kirstie woke at 0530, went through her pre-dawn workout (a habit she’d maintained to keep combat-ready), showered, grabbed breakfast at the chow hall. MRE pancakes and coffee that tasted like diesel fuel. Same as every other morning.
She checked the flight schedule. Purple Fox 05 was on QRF standby from 0800-1400, then they had a scheduled resupply mission to FOB Edinburgh at 1530. Nothing unusual. Standard operations.
The morning briefing covered the same information they heard every day: enemy activity levels, weather conditions (hot and dusty, always hot and dusty), ongoing operations in the area. The intelligence officer mentioned increased Taliban activity near FOB Now Zad but nothing that changed their threat assessment.
Kirstie performed her pre-flight inspection on their Black Hawk—tail number 413, an aircraft she’d flown dozens of times. Good bird, reliable, well-maintained. She noticed a small hydraulic leak near the number two engine but within acceptable limits. Maintenance had documented it and determined it was safe to fly. She signed off on the inspection.
At 0800, they assumed QRF duty, sitting in the ready room with their gear staged, prepared to launch on fifteen minutes’ notice. They played cards, read books, dozed in chairs. Hurry up and wait, the eternal military tradition.
The QRF alarm went off at 1127.
“ALL QRF CREWS, LAUNCH LAUNCH LAUNCH! Troops in contact, FOB Now Zad, multiple casualties, request immediate medevac!”
They ran. Thirty seconds from alarm to aircraft, sixty seconds from alarm to engine start, ninety seconds from alarm to wheels up. They launched with a medevac crew in the back—two Navy corpsmen and their equipment.
“Purple Fox 05, November Zulu, we have eight wounded, two urgent surgical, six priority. LZ is under sporadic fire but currently suppressed. How copy?”
“Good copy, November Zulu. ETA twelve minutes.”
Kirstie checked her weapon for the hundredth time, scanned her sector, felt the familiar pre-mission adrenaline spike. This was what they did. This was why they were here.
The flight to Now Zad took them over terrain Kirstie knew well—the same routes they’d flown dozens of times. Mountains to the west, dried riverbeds cutting through the desert, compounds clustered near water sources. She watched for threats, obstacles, anything unusual.
Nothing. Clear skies, no visible enemy activity.
They approached Now Zad from the south, descending toward the FOB’s landing zone. Kirstie could see Marines on the ground waving them in, litters staged and ready for loading.
“LZ looks clear,” Vance called from the left door.
“Right door confirms,” Kirstie added.
They were at 500 feet, slowing for landing, the most vulnerable phase of flight. Kirstie’s eyes never stopped scanning. Her finger indexed along the M240’s receiver, ready but not on the trigger. Rules of engagement, safety protocols, all of it ingrained through training and experience.
Then everything went wrong at once.
The aircraft shuddered—a violent jolt that Kirstie felt through her entire body. The number two engine coughed, stuttered, the warning lights in the cockpit flashing red.
“ENGINE FAILURE! Number two is out!”
Captain Hayes’s voice was controlled but urgent. One engine out wasn’t necessarily catastrophic—Black Hawks could fly on one engine under the right conditions. But they were heavy with fuel, hot desert air was thin, they were at low altitude with no room to maneuver.
“Going for emergency landing, LZ—”
The second shudder was worse. Metal screaming, something breaking that shouldn’t break. The tail rotor—Kirstie could hear it, the sound wrong, the vibration all wrong.
“TAIL ROTOR FAILURE! We’re losing directional control!”
The aircraft began to spin. Slowly at first, then faster. The desert and sky tumbling together, Kirstie’s stomach lurching, her hands gripping the M240 and her gunner’s belt as her entire world became chaos.
“MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY! Purple Fox 05, we are going down, going down, grid Quebec Romeo—”
Captain Hayes was fighting the controls, trying to do the impossible—land a helicopter that had lost tail rotor authority and was spinning like a top. Lieutenant Morrison was on the radios, broadcasting their position, their status, preparing for impact.
Vance was secured to the aircraft, trying to brace himself. The corpsmen in the back were grabbing anything bolted down. And Kirstie was still in the door—the open door—as the aircraft spun and fell.
Training took over. She needed to get inside, away from the door, assume crash position. But the centrifugal force was too strong, pressing her outward, toward the opening. Her gunner’s belt was all that kept her connected to the aircraft as the ground rushed up to meet them.
“BRACE FOR IMPACT!”
Time slowed. Kirstie saw it all with perfect clarity—the desert spinning, the FOB, the Marines on the ground looking up in horror, the mountains in the distance. She thought about her family, about Iowa, about all the missions she’d flown and survived.
She thought: This is how I die.
The aircraft hit the ground.
The impact was beyond anything Kirstie had imagined. The Black Hawk struck nose-first, then rolled left, the rotors disintegrating, the fuselage crumpling, metal and flesh and equipment tumbling together in a chaos of destruction.
Kirstie felt herself thrown—the gunner’s belt snapping under forces it was never designed to withstand. Her body ragdolled through the air, inside the aircraft or outside she couldn’t tell, everything was motion and noise and pain and—
She hit something. Hard. Her left leg took the impact first, then her shoulder, then her head. Even through her helmet, the world exploded into white light and agony.
Then darkness.
Unknown Time Later
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