THAT NIGHT brought the first monsoon rain. Streams of mud dribbled between the buildings. Rainwater swelled the trench under the latrines, making them overflow. Turds floated across the mud field till they bumped to a stop or slipped into gutters.
In the barracks they fired the oil stoves that had lain idle all summer. Now they burned with a sooty smell that reminded Yefgenii of Stalingrad’s ruins and of its industry.
It poured for a week. With every dawn he woke longing for the clouds to lift so he could fly. Instead a pale gray unmoving mass squatted on the hills and at times even appeared to clog the treetops. Rain pounded the barracks and hangars. Mud, rain, sewage and oil mixed in puddles sliced by spectral lines. These puddles spread out of every depression of the runway, taxiways and dispersal.
He passed his time in the crew hut studying maps and manuals and in the hangars, with his flight reference cards on his lap, memorizing his flight checks. Already he missed the rush of engines. Of the aircraft all that remained was the smell on his clothes of oil and kerosene and hot metal. The smell would be there again at dawn and his body would ache for it like a lost lover.
At night he went to his barrack bed with the feeling that the clouds were suffocating him as much as they were the land. They were denying him his identity. He was a falcon and in the actions of a fighter pilot he expressed his true nature. He wasn’t one to dwell on his past because he considered doing so a sign of weakness, but, as he lay in the dark surrounded by the snores and fidgets of the other men, thoughts of his past scratched at him like mice under the floorboards. Before, he’d been worthless; he’d possessed no skills of value to the surrounding society. He’d existed as the statue conceived in stone but inchoate till the first cuts of the sculptor’s chisel. What he was now had always lain within; flying had only chipped away the pieces.
The next day the ground crews dug trenches to direct the water off the airfield. Without a word to the pilots who were sitting around the stove repeating old stories, Yefgenii donned his flying jacket and trudged out through the mud to join them. The ground crews paused for a moment to appreciate the spectacle of an officer shovelling mud in the rain, but then they returned to work.
Gnido went to the clothes store to claim a foul-weather jacket and then he went out too.
In the crew hut the men were watching and laughing. Kiriya watched Yefgenii bending his back into each swing of the shovel and little Gnido giving his best to keep up.
Skomorokhov turned to the room. “Let’s arrange a transfer — they obviously want to be sappers.”
Some of the men laughed but Kiriya’s eyes narrowed. “Get out there. Get dressed and get out there.”
The men fell into silent resentment but no one argued. Even Kiriya went. When they saw him, the ground crews stood to attention, holding their shovels like rifles. He grinned at how comical they looked but thanked them for their work and invited them to continue.
Skomorokhov approached Yefgenii. The shoulders of his flying jacket were already darkened by rain and mud caked his ankles. “Why the fuck are you doing this?”
Yefgenii said, “The sooner the airfield’s drained, Major, the sooner we can fly again.”
Skomorokhov snorted and shuffled along the line of men to start digging.
Kiriya took up work alongside Yefgenii. “We’ve got to get flying again.”
“Yes, sir.”
Kiriya breathed a long sigh. A film of rainwater dribbled down his face. His wet hair looked thin. Yefgenii could see patches of scalp through it. All at once Kiriya looked old. His next words failed in the splatter of the downpour. “One day this war’ll be over.” He was racing to clear the water, to open the airfield; he was racing against the inevitability of armistice, and against age itself.
A cumulonimbus loomed. The men watched the great black anvil of cloud slide into the overhead. Wires of lightning cut the sky. Thunder clapped. At once Pilipenko waved the men indoors. They staked their shovels in the ground and began scrambling toward the huts.
Yefgenii stood alone among the rows of shovels pointed into the heavens like lines of crosses over makeshift graves.
Lightning flashed. For a fleeting moment it cracked the sky like eggshell and, as Yefgenii gazed into the cracks, it seemed to him that in that instant he was receiving a glimpse of a great light beyond.
THE RAIN STOPPED after four more days. At last the MiGs soared again out of the damp Antung plain. Below them streams had broken their banks. Fields were flooded. Bogs had swelled into small lakes with ducks skimming their tops.
Yefgenii’s mask molded to his face. His harness felt snug. The aircraft fitted him and he fitted it. The picture outside the cockpit represented a universe in its most comfortable and understandable aspect: a patchwork land below, a sky above, and in between a sport of death and survival for men to play.
The rains had given him a glimpse of life without flying, of his life as it would be without his becoming any more than he already was. In an ordinary life, opportunities never come, or they come and aren’t taken, or they’re taken and squandered. Whatever the reason, the obituary is blank.
Out of the clouds he reappeared into the tall sky. His true self was reborn in this place where his uncommon abilities had both a purpose and a value and he could express that self in the splitting of air and the tearing of metal.
Flying on Kiriya’s wing, he spotted the enemy when they were still only black points inching along the horizon. Kiriya gave him the lead till the other pilots could see them too. By then the six of them — Yefgenii and Kiriya, Kubarev, Gnido, Skomorokhov and Glinka — were swooping into combat. As hoped for they were Americans. They were close and Yefgenii was expected to relinquish the lead but he held on to it. Kiriya transmitted, “Red Six, drop back—” but his voice was lost as the aircraft joined in chaos.
Soon a Sabre’s tail rose into Yefgenii’s crosshairs. He opened fire. He felt the jolts of the guns and then he was passing through clouds of black smoke. When he emerged the Sabre had toppled nose down and was plunging to earth. Seconds later the canopy blasted free and the pilot rocketed clear on his ejector seat.
Yefgenii pulled left with Kiriya now above him and Glinka tracking round on his right wingtip. The g-meter’s white needle flicked to the right. He looked all around with his head as heavy as a medicine ball. A Sabre crossed left to right from his ten o’clock position into his two and Yefgenii rolled hard right, holding the nose level with the stick and controlling yaw with right rudder. The stick juddered on the buffet. His shells ripped open the Sabre’s wing. The tailplane was bobbing in his crosshairs. Debris broke free and fell behind in a stream of confetti. The American knew his aircraft carried a mortal wound and he was in the long desperate struggle to make it home or else abandon ship. Yefgenii closed for the kill, but silver wings glinted as they swooped in behind him, so with a shriek of anguish he had to let him go. Yet again he twisted his head round. A black rim spread into his visual field. It crept in like liquid. He strained to push the virtual iris back open. He was searching for his shield but Glinka was gone.
Glinka had broken from his wing to pursue the damaged American. The Sabre was making a sluggish turn to get away but Glinka was on him with cannon fire and the American plummeted.
Bursts of R/T were colliding.
“Got him! Got him! Got him!”
“Fuck, fuck, Yeremin, four o’clock, fuck!” It was Gnido, doing Glinka’s job for him.