Mary Jennings Hegar - Fly Like a Girl: One Womans Dramatic Fight in Afghanistan and on the Home Front

I glanced out the window at the dark shadows of sharks just under the surface of the sea. Shaking my head, I willed myself to focus on the task at hand as I continued running through the checklist: checking my equipment, reviewing where the emergency release was on the door, miming unbuckling the seat harness and unplugging my comm cord, checking to make sure that the tiny oxygen bottle on my vest was charged and on. The bottle would provide about thirty seconds of air if we found ourselves plummeting to the bottom of the ocean. I was well aware of what to expect if we should have to ditch, as I had attended the thorough dunker training in Alabama, where you were strapped into a mock helicopter, shaken, plummeted into a pool, and flipped upside down. But out here in the ocean, there were no instructors standing ready to save you if you went under. There were no sharks in dunker training.

My summer had been filled with exciting missions: putting out wildfires in California, marijuana eradication from the vast national forests out west, and deploying to Texas for hurricane support. But my least favorite kind of mission would be the grand finale to that exhausting summer: a long-range overwater rescue mission. A fisherman on a freighter way out in the middle of the Pacific had been injured, so my crew and I had been dispatched to go pick him up and bring him to safety.

Years earlier, during my first assignment in the Air Force, I remember clearly sitting in a movie theater watching The Perfect Storm when the film came out. I had cringed, barely able to watch, as the crew on the rescue helicopter realized they were unable to refuel off of their airborne tanker to make it to dry land. When they ditched into the ocean, I thought to myself, Whew... I really want to be a pilot, but Ill never put myself inthatsituation. Youd have to be crazy to fly a helicopter out into the middle of the ocean!

Yet eight years later, there I was. Flying the same exact helicopter I had seen in the movie, out over the open ocean, unable to refuel, and looking for a shark-free place to ditch. Just my luck.

We launched out of San Diego in the morning, but we packed our night-vision goggles for the trip home. According to our mission-planning session the night before, we knew that wed be hitting the tanker for the fourth time after nightfall. We packed some sandwiches and water for the trip, but I wondered if Id even be able to eat, given the situation. Plus, I knew Id need to nearly dehydrate myself to avoid having to tackle the complicated dance of trying to urinate in the helicopter. The guys just needed to keep an empty bottle handy, but for me there would be a bit more work involved.