(June 2, 2011)
(This episode takes place two days after part 11)

When I woke up Saturday morning, Scar was already awake and not in the lit with me. This immediately sent my brain racing, because this was very unusual. She laying on the window ledge, looking out at the gray mist. I raised myself up on one elbow and looked at her through fuzzy eyes.
"Scar?" I a dit softly.
She looked over at me, her eyes alert.
"Oh, hey," she whispered back.
"What's wrong, babe?" I asked.
"Today's your graduation from Aggressors, right?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"I have a bad feeling about today," she a dit softly.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"I don't know," she said. "I get these premonitions sometimes, but they've never come true."
I nodded once. "Babe, come back to bed. It's 6 a.m."
She laughed gently and hopped off the ledge.
I put my head back on the oreiller and closed my eyes. She jumped up on the lit and I felt her burrow under the blankets and curl up against my side. With my free hand I rubbed that spot under her ears that she loved so much. I could actually feel her body relax and she sighed with pleasure.

When we woke up for the seconde time, it was 10 in the morning and it was 2 hours to the graduation. I got up, showered, and dressed while Scar slept in. I didn't have a single problem with that, as we had had a wonderful late night the night before, full of romance and passion.
I wore my dress uniform, which was blue and white, with the hat and all that stuff.
I got her up for a quick breakfast of bacon, muffins, and coffee. She particularly seemed to enjoy the coffee, drinking two cups of it. I had whitened it with a French-vanilla flavored creamer, so maybe that was why she had loved it so much. The bacon was nice and crispy, and the muffins moist and packed with blueberries. Scar took exception to the berries, so I made her some pain grillé instead of the muffins.
We got in the car and headed for Colville Municipal Airport, where there was a private jet waiting for us to shuttle us to Seattle for the graduation and the airshow that the graduates performed after the ceremony.

In the car, the mood was silent, but cheerful. I was finally getting out of the Aggressors training!
Out of nowhere, I yelled with excitement. Scar jumped and glared at me dolefully, which brought a laugh out of me.
We got to the airport and there it was. A Learjet 45 was sitting there on the tarmac waiting for us. A few of the other graduates lived out near us, but they were already on board.

Once we were in the air, Scar curled up in the siège with me and we cuddled on the trip. It was a short flight, only an hour, but on the ground it would have taken plus than three to get there.

After the graduation ceremony itself, which was pretty cool, all of us new graduates were shuttled to McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma, where our aircraft had been left the jour before.
The F-22A Raptors of the graduating Aggressors pilots sat in a line, menacing and evil-looking.

"Aggressors flight, McChord ATC, cleared takeoff piste one six for demonstration flight," the air traffic controller a dit over the squadron frequency. As flight lead and the best pilot of the bunch, I was in charge of the montrer and the pilots in it.
"McChord ATC, Aggressors flight ready for engine start," I responded.
All at once, six F119 turbines started their ignition process, splitting the air with an ear-shattering whine.

* * *

Scar, Humphrey, Uriah, Kate, and Jon were all in the crowd standing on the tablier of McChord AFB. They knew which aircraft was Colby's, Unit 417, and they couldn't possibly be plus proud of him.
"Hey, Scar," Uriah called.
"What, Uriah?" replied Scar.
"You giving him something tonight?" he asked suggestively.
"Shut it, Uriah," snapped Jon, who was watching Colby's plane with his hand shading his eyes from the scorching sun.
Uriah closed his mouth and watched.
The loups sat together on the capuche, hotte of Jon's Ford Bronco so they could see.
"Scar, you're so lucky!" a dit Humphrey, Uriah's mate.
Scar grinned.

* * *

Once the twelve engines were all idling flawlessly, I called up to the tower and asked for permission to taxi. We got it, and the first two Raptors, which were mine and my wingman Boomer's,, taxied out to the piste in perfect synchronization.
Once we were out of the way, the suivant pair came out.
At the end of the runway, I held the entire flight in place for a last check on our control surfaces and engines, then gave all of them the green light for takeoff.
The Raptors, held in place par their brakes, roared up to full military power, which is the highest engine setting that does not use the afterburner.
The first pair, me on the left and Boomer the right, hit the 'burner and released the brakes. Our jets screamed forward, attaining 100 knots in less than 8 seconds. At 180 knots, we lifted off and retracted our gear, but the bellies of our warplanes stayed less than 30 feet off the tarmac.
At the end of the piste surface, Boomer pulled sharply up and broke right and I did the same left. As I banked around, I watched the seconde pair, Razorback and Thunder, start their takeoff roll. We had timed this so that when their gear was leaving the ground, Boomer and I would be passing over the end of the piste and gaining on them fast.

The entire takeoff sequence went off without a hitch, and all 6 of us were arrayed in a triangle formation similar to the one that the Blue anges used, except backwards. Two of the Raptors, units 724 and 525, were the solos of the flight, and after a pass over the crowd in formation, they divisé, split off. The formation flight, Units 417, 663, 152, and 963, maintained a diamond formation and started going through with our sequence of maneuvers designed to showcase our talents and the capabilities of the F-22 Raptor.

* * *

All of Colby's Friends watched with awe as the F-22 Demonstration of the Aggressors graduates. When the two solo pilots did a couteau edge pass where they passed within 5 feet of each other's wingtips, everyone screamed.

* * *

"Solos, rejoindre up with the formation and we're gonna improvise something," I called out over the team freq.
Boomer called over to me on the interplane frequency.
"Reacher, what are toi planning?" he said.
"Nothing too crazy. We've all done this before."
"What is it?"
"A formation loop."
"Acknowledged."
The two solo fighters joined up with the four plane diamond and we initiated the loop, with the planes supposed to come out of the loop level directly above the crowd.
It worked.
At that point, the 6 aircraft broke formation, splitting off for the maneuver known as the Aggressors Air Combat Maneuver.
(Author's note: This maneuver is one of the most difficult for a formation to master. In the maneuver, one aircraft sprints to 20 thousand feet, in this case me, and circles there. Two aircraft, the solos of the rest of the flight, spread out 5 miles from the centerpoint of the maneuver and climb to twelve thousand.
The other three aircraft stay as close to the middle of the trick, plug in the afterburner, and climb vertically. Once the trio reach 18 thousand, the other three aircraft rejoindre up with them, arrayed in a staggered hexagonal shape with the underside of the plane on the outside. Once everyone's in place, they sprint climb to 25 thousand, and pull minimum radius turns to point down at the ground. During this part of the maneuver, the aircraft traverser, croix paths and the wingtip to canopy/wingtip separation is less than a foot.
The 6 aircraft scream towards the ground, airshow smoke trailing. At 4 thousand feet, each aircraft pulls level, then goes into an Immelmann, which is the plane's nose climbing skyward until the plane is level and inverted. The 6 aircraft traverser, croix paths again, creating a étoile, star in the air.
After the paths cross, the aircraft roll right and start tracing a series of concentric circles in the air. After the rings are created, the planes divisé, split out of the cercle and are free to begin another maneuver.)
The Aggressors Air Combat Maneuver began without a hitch, but during my climb to twenty thousand feet, I received a low oil pressure warning in my right engine. This was a common warning in an F-22, very rarely did anything actually happen when this warning was shown.
At twenty thousand, I shut down the engine and went through the rapid restart procedure.
The engine restarted normally, but the oil pressure light remained lit. A new pair of warnings came up too, "FIRE" and "FUEL LEAK". I had a feu in my right engine.
"Unit 417 to ATC, I've got a feu in my right engine. Breaking off the formation," I a dit over the team freq.
Boomer heard the call and acknowledged it. With me unable to complete the sequence, it was up to him to lead the formation.
"Hey, Reacher, you've got some thick black smoke coming out of your engine," a dit 525, Lt. Dean Child, callsign Halo.
"Acknowledged, Halo, I'm RTB," I responded to him.
The aircraft suddenly became extremely difficult to control for some odd reason. I found it very tough to keep the F-22 level and straight. I felt the airframe shudder, as though I had flown through a burst of turbulence.
Then out of nowhere, the aircraft detonated as the feu and the fuel combined in the right engine's compressor.