Have You Got the Right Stuff?

Flight and Fight

The Garnetts change into their flight suits, don their helmets, and walk out to their planes. Katrina can't stop smiling, but Terry looks anxious. "The first principle is to have fun," she teases him. "The second is to kill the opponent."

They kiss and then join the instructors in their respective planes. Katrina and D.C. take off first. Phoenix and Terry follow. The instructors bring the Marchettis to 5,000 feet - high enough to see Disney World's Epcot Center in the cloudless distance.

After D.C. and Phoenix reach the rendezvous point, Terry and Katrina each take a minute to get a feel for the controls. Katrina's voice bursts out over the radio: "Hey, Terry! Watch this!" Then she executes an amazingly clean snap roll, twisting the plane over on its side. Her Marchetti flashes in the sun, a fast-moving speck against the landscape below.

Ten minutes later, hands on the controls, Terry swings over and sets his sight on Katrina. Her plane twists and turns, dancing across the horizon. He can't quite get a bead on her.

There's more trouble ahead: As Terry follows Katrina's nimble turns, he feels the snug pull of G-forces and gets a rumble in his gut. Quickly, he levels his plane.

Katrina leaps on the opportunity, climbing to make a swift attack from above. She rolls and places her husband's plane dead-center in her sight. "Gun, guns, guns!" she calls, signaling that if she had real artillery, its bullets would be slamming into the metal skin of Terry's plane. She calls in over the radio, "Terry! How're you feeling?"

One beat. Two beats. From Terry's plane, Phoenix responds: "I don't think he wants to talk right now." Pale and grim, Terry is losing his battle with his own constitution. He struggles to hang on, sucking cool water from a plastic bottle. Through force of will, he turns and trains his sight on Katrina for a few moments. He gets in a shot, but then, as he tries to follow his wife's plane, his stomach rebels. He grabs the water bottle again, looks at it, and throws it down before making a mad grab for an airsickness bag. There goes breakfast.

Meanwhile, Katrina shifts her plane's joystick and stands the aircraft on its wingtip. She twists her fighter until her husband's plane is smack in the center of her sight. "Guns, guns, guns!" she chirps into the radio. She gets in a couple of good kills while Terry fights to regain control. But after a few minutes, Phoenix takes the controls and mercifully brings Terry back to Earth.

Instant Replay

The Garnetts are back on the ground, and Terry's body recovers quickly. But his chagrin doesn't disappear so readily. "I thought I could gut it out," he says - without a hint of irony.

Everyone gathers in the briefing room, where D.C. and Phoenix run video of the dogfight and conjure up code names for Katrina and Terry. "Katrina has a great fighting spirit," says D.C. He dubs her "Fangs."

Terry knows that he won't get off so easily. Phoenix calls him "Casper" - because, for most of the flight, Terry was as white as a ghost. But Terry is a good sport. "I wish I'd done better," he says. "But it was cool to watch Katrina do so well. If she wanted to, she could probably become an astronaut."

It's not in Katrina's nature to worry over whether she might get sick. "It's wasted energy to obsess over something that you can't control," she says.

Terry agrees with her - and vows to do better if they ever compete again. "Only next time," he says with a laugh, "I'll stay away from those buckwheat pancakes."