Everything happens at once, but the mind spaces it out. After many trips down the concrete, the things that happened bang-bang-bang on the first takeoff now come at slow count, and there's time to watch it happen, to understand and not surrender to the sheer screaming pace.

You strangle the stick with your right hand, middle finger holding down the nose wheel steering button, and your left hand guards both throttles while you make the first partial instrument scan -- Exhaust Gas Temperature green, RPM a hundred percent and steady -- and a few little kicks on the left rudder pedal stop the nose from drifting and turn it back toward the centerline until the airspeed comes off the peg at eighty knots and it's time to release the button. Another quick scan, airspeed a hundred, one-twenty, ease back on the stick; another scan, the two-thousand-foot marker flashes by on the right, RPM good; the nose starts up, a little more, a little more. There! Hold! The wheels lift off, and the wings wobble ever so slightly, and thunk! The gear handle comes up solidly in your left hand, the flaps start up while you click the trim button with your right gloved thumb atop the stick. Check the landing gear, three blinkers left-nose-right change to safe-safe-safe, and the vent blows air-conditioned steam until you turn down the control. Pull the throttles out of burner, then nestle them right back behind the detent, ninety-eight percent RPM to give your wingman a couple to catch up on. The nose is high in the blue, white fluffball clouds race by, airspeed's on the mark, call the turn out of traffic.

"Demon Flight, right turnout," Patrick Truhaft called, and looked back for his wingman. In the seat behind him, Steve Mylder gazed down and marveled at the wild beauty of the countryside surrounding Danang.