Afterwards she smoked a cigarette. “You’ve never told me how long you’re here for.”
“I don’t know. It could all end tomorrow.”
She passed him the cigarette. He drew in a breath. The tobacco was stale.
“I know. I meant how long’s your tour?”
“I’m here as long as I’m needed.”
“But don’t you get homesick?”
“This is my home.”
The next day he claimed his twentieth victory. As the MiGs returned Skomorokhov’s hand strangled the control stick. He’d gone from being ace of the 221st to picking up Yefgenii Yeremin’s scraps. He let the boy’s MiG float into his crosshairs. He crooked his finger round the trigger. MiG 529’s exhaust hung behind the cross. “Dugh- dugh-dugh-dugh-DUGH!” Skomorokhov shouted as he released the trigger. His mouth was laughing but his eyes weren’t.
By the time the jets were being towed to the hangars, snow was falling in flurries, yet the whole base must’ve been on the dispersal to greet him. They carried him on their shoulders. At twenty years of age Yefgenii Yeremin was a quadruple ace. He was the pride of the 221st and the spirit of a nation.
AS THE NEW YEAR OPENED, the war — the half war, the shitty war — languished in stalemate. The status quo on the Korean Peninsula had been reestablished at the cost of more than four million lives and the public in America, Great Britain, Australia and Canada were turning against their countries’ involvement, but the competition to become Ace of Aces continued to beguile them. It was front-page news. Major James Jabara had returned to the war and begun adding to his victories. Captain Manuel “Pete” Fernandez and Captain Joseph McConnell were closing in on the score of fourteen kills claimed before his death by George Davis. These men were household names like Marciano, Fangio, and Hogan were household names.
Soon winter receded. The pine and larch shed their frosting. White peeled off the runway. As a clear night opened, the Milky Way arched like a backbone. The stars wheeled round night after night and he watched them not knowing what they were other than points of light. Yefgenii was looking up to be told his place. He looked inward and wondered the same.
The Starshina saw him enter one of the hangars. He appeared to be carrying a tin of paint. The Starshina said nothing. No one questioned him anymore.
It was still dark as tow trucks rolled out the MiGs. Soon gray light seeped down onto the plain, finding MiG 529 parked in the first slot of the dispersal, and astern of the wing root the PLAAF markings had been overpainted with the single large red star of the VVS. A hammer and sickle adorned the tail fin.
The pilots strutted out from the Ops hut. One by one they stopped in their tracks but Yefgenii kept on walking.
Kiriya and Pilipenko came out. Five pilots peered at Kiriya for an order. He gazed at the red star of his country, the hammer and sickle. He smiled. He said, “Go. Follow Yo-Yo.”
Pilipenko whispered, “Boss, what if he gets shot down?”
Kiriya shook his head and waved the pilots out. “Go. Fly!”
Yefgenii led them over the river and into battle. A pair of Panthers from the U.S. Navy’s VF-51 were cruising east to their carrier in the Sea of Japan. He hit the first with a burst from his 23-mm guns and must have found a fuel tank because the Panther bloated into an orange globe that for its short life became a second sun in the wide Korean sky. The second Panther he struck with his 37-mm cannon. It swung out to sea, but power bled out of its damaged engine and it stalled and toppled. The canopy burst open and the seat rocketed out; a parachute bloomed and the pilot dangled over the gray waters.
Next Yefgenii tipped his wings over and pulled north. The compass bobbed round and the DI tracked a half circle. As Yefgenii rolled out onto his heading he glanced over his shoulder out to sea and glimpsed a dark blue Sikorksy skimming the waves toward the ejected Panther pilot.
He slid the throttle forward and rolled his MiG’s wings over and pulled a max-rate turn back out to sea. He let down to two hundred metres. The pilot bobbed on his life raft, waving his arms above his head to signal the chopper.
Yefgenii opened fire then pulled up hard as blood flashed behind the glass panels of the Sikorsky’s cockpit and the tail rotor whirled out across the sea. The helicopter corkscrewed straight down into the water. The winchman bailed out but the pilot never appeared and when Yefgenii looked back for the last time the winchman was clambering aboard the life raft while the helicopter’s broken pieces bobbed on the waves.
At Antung the first zveno touched back down and the second began to roll off the dispersal. A report had been passed down from the tower and Kiriya and Pilipenko strolled out to offer their congratulations. Today Yefgenii Yeremin had surpassed Pepelyaev. He’d scored more jet kills than any pilot who’d ever flown.
The Starshina had one of his men ready to stencil three more stars alongside Yefgenii’s cockpit. “Polkovnik, what should I do about 529’s markings?”
“Do?”
“Yes, sir, should I make them regulation?”
The whine of the jets was creeping up the taxiway. Pilipenko had to raise his voice. “Yes, boss, do it for Yeremin’s sake — there may be reprisals.”
Kiriya shook his head. “Pip, a hero can always fall into disfavor. He can be killed. He can be forgotten.” The jets were swallowing his words now. Pilipenko could only read his lips. “But a legend never dies.”
Out at sea a second Sikorksy picked up the men from the life raft and transported them to the carrier USS Essex. The Panther pilot and the winchman both reported that the MiG had borne the Soviet star on its fuselage and the hammer and sickle on its tail. VF-51 officers came in and out of the wardroom. One of them — an ensign who was the same age as Yefgenii Yeremin — ladled out a helping of soup from the pot on the stove. The men were talking about the Russian. The ensign, whose name was Neil Armstrong, didn’t say anything. He’d flown fifty combat missions, but he still preferred to listen.
“Shooting up the rescue ship — that Honcho was one son of a bitch.”
“Shit. Ivan’s here. Ivan the Honcho.”
“Ivan the Terrible.”
DAY AFTER DAY Ivan the Terrible entered the arena. The red star drifted over flooded paddies. The battles that followed were chaos. MiGs and Sabres looped and scissored. From a flicker of tracers and a flash of metal, a globe of fire ballooned, then out of that fire burst the MiG with the red star on its body, the hammer and sickle on its tail and scorch marks on its wings that spun streamers of evanescent gray smoke. Below him a Sabre toppled back to Earth. Some days their trails floated in the sky for hours after the battle, some ending in the knot of an impossible maneuver, but his always pointed home.
Every pilot wanted to fly with him and even the lowliest ryadavoi would ask if he was going up that day. Some would even run up into the tower for an update on his mission and then convey each installment to the men on the flight line as if they were reading episodes from a comic book. “Kapetan Yeremin is engaging the Americans!” They’d applaud. “Kapetan Yeremin is returning with a kill!” They’d cheer. They’d take turns waiting on the dispersal to paint the newest star on his cockpit.
The widow gazed into the east, counting the planes as they reappeared. When one or more were missing she’d turn from the sky and devote herself to her work. She wouldn’t look up again until they were rolling up the taxiway and she could read their markings. 529 with the big red star on its fuselage would always be there, would always be leading the others back in. When he cut his engine, she’d swing the chocks under the wheels and push the ladder up to the cockpit. She’d ask, “Any luck, Kapetan?” and he’d answered as if to any man, and this was how it would be apart from their times alone in her bunk or, if the night were mild, out in the wild grass on the edge of the woods.