It took a week for Stormbreak's aircraft to all return to Addison Field. The lucky ones got loaded, crew and all, onto Strat 1 or Strat 2, the company's massive C-5 variants. They were delivered in one jump -- just a few hours -- from the airport in Puerto Rico to the bare landscape of home base. The cripples, like Mac's chopper, waited until the Strat deliveries zeroed out, then were loaded themselves and carried home for depot-level maintenance. The hardcases, those too many for Strat transport but that still passed checks for long-range flight, made their own jumps home. To Haiti, the Bahamas, Cuba, Florida, Louisiana, and two jumps inside Texas. They took seven days to make the trip, five for the Ospreys. Those crews were exhausted once they touched home dirt.

So it was nearly a week b...

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