Senior Airman Mitchell "Mac" McClurg
American, Age 25
USAF AFSC 1A7X1 (Aerial Gunner)
Languages Spoken: English (native)
Mitch McClurg joined the Air Force for the express purpose of becoming a pararescue jumper. After two years as a "missile cop," he was accepted for PJ training - and promptly washed out with a broken ankle. When he was recycled through the program, he developed pneumonia after nearly drowning during dive school. On his third try, he began developing a stress fracture in the ankle he
hadn't broken. Three times were enough for Mac, but his sheer doggedness impressed someone enough to grant him a transfer to AFSOC anyway. He finished re-training as a helicopter door gunner and loadmaster just in time to join the 31st RQS for its European deployment.
Mac is deceptively wiry and appears to be about seventeen years old. No one has the heart to tell him that his facial hair, which he grew to make himself appear older, looks like a glued-on fake. He is a fervent audiophile and had the squadron's largest and most esoteric CD collection.
Master Sergeant Adam "Kel" Kellerman
American, Age 51
USAF AFSC 1A1X1 (Flight Engineer)
Languages Spoken: English (native), Vietnamese (pidgin), Spanish (street), Polish (basic)
Adam Kellerman is an Air Force fossil. As a very young airman, he was a flight engineer on HH-3Es over Vietnam. He retired in the early nineties and moved to Florida, where he planned to collect his federal pension and a comfortable second income as the lead aviation mechanic for the Miami-Dade County Police. Unfortunately, he made the mistake of keeping his hand in by remaining an active reservist with the 920th Rescue Wing, which led him to be reactivated and shipped to Europe as a replacement for the 31st RQS.
Kel has turned wrenches on every model of helicopter the Air Force has flown since 1970. There isn't a type of malfunction or battle damage he hasn't seen, and each story is more detailed, profane, and improbable than the last (though he's stopped telling the "gook in the turbine" story since all this political correctness bullshit came down). There also isn't a PJ prank he hasn't seen, which makes him pretty much immune to the usual practical jokes of his sometime-cargo. He's been married and divorced three times and was working on wife number four when he shipped out, but it's no great loss - he probably just would've wound up having to buy a house for another woman he couldn't stand.
Major Dominique "Boots" Connolly
American, Age 32
USAF AFSC 11S3 (Special Operations Aircraft Commander)
Languages Spoken: English (native), French (high school)
Dominique Connolly is an Idaho native and third-generation aviatrix (her father was an A-7 driver in Vietnam and her grandfather commanded a B-17 over Germany). She began preparing her Air Force Academy application packet when she was fifteen. Originally a UH-1N pilot with the 36th Rescue Flight out of Fairchild Air Force Base, she applied for transfer to the special operations aviation community as soon as the Air Force opened up combat flying assignments to women.
Major Connolly is an avid skier, with the medical history to prove it. She also has several pseudonymous voice-acting credits in video games produced by her ex-fiancee's startup company. Her call sign, "Boots," is typical pilot humor: it's short for "bitch boots," a play on "Dominique" sounding something like "dominatrix."