He wasn’t sure whether it was the unending vibrations that churned in his stomach and turned his face green or the frighteningly low altitudes pilots chose to fly. Maybe it was the blades whirling over his head like the sword of Damocles. He and Mike weren’t in a helicopter, technically. The V-22 Osprey flew with its engines horizontally to the ocean in the plane configuration; those same engines could rotate upright and turn the aircraft into a helicopter. The tilt-rotor and turboprop engines could get them most anywhere in the world quickly and land on a dime, but watching the damn thing transform in flight made Ritter long for his days in a Humvee. There were no surprises or engineering miracles to operate a Humvee. He and Mike had languished in the “plane” for the past fourteen hours as the Osprey flew over the Red Sea to the Reagan. Ritter shivered as the smell of jet fuel washed through the plane. He made the mistake of glancing up and saw the hose and catch basket from the KC-130 refueling plane lift from view through the cockpit glass.
