He was leading a zveno south when they encountered a flight of F-84 Thunderjets from the 136th Fighter-Bomber Wing. He got one. Skomorokhov got one. A U.S. Navy exchange pilot, Lieutenant Walter Schirra, got one of theirs.
The survivors dispersed. Yefgenii watched a pair of Thunderjets turn south for the P’yŏngyang-Wŏnsan line. He glanced at his gauges. “I’m still good for fuel. Sko?”
“Me too.”
“Come on, let’s get ’em.”
Yefgenii and Skomorokhov went to full throttle and began the chase. With every passing minute their fuel burned, but with every passing minute they closed on the Thunderjets.
Cloud cover obscured the Nan River but Skomorokhov could see bits of P’yŏngyang looking like a gob of bubblegum stamped on the land. Yefgenii was just ahead of him. He’d already opened fire. There was no chance of hitting the Americans but it might provoke them into doing something suicidal like turning back for a fight.
Skomorokhov let Yefgenii’s MiG float through his crosshairs. They were far from home, surging into battle, with no witnesses. A dead man might become a legend but he wouldn’t be around to claim the spoils of victory, the status, the adulation. He throttled back.
“Sko, what’s happening? Keep up, will you?”
Skomorokhov didn’t want to desert a comrade, but if Yeremin was reckless enough to chase two jets toward their own base then that was his own lookout. “Sorry, I’m already at min fuel.” He had plenty left, of course.
“I thought you had enough.”
“Must be something wrong, got to turn back.”
Skomorokhov watched Yefgenii press on after the Americans. There was still a fair distance to close and two of them to tangle with. He swung north knowing Ivan the Terrible wouldn’t give up the chase.
The other MiGs were orbiting just south of Sinanju, waiting for them. “Where’s Yeremin, Major?”
“I told him to turn round. He wouldn’t listen. We can’t wait here. We’re too low on fuel.”
“We can’t leave him.”
“Sorry, no option. Recover to base.”
Word came down from the tower that only four ships were coming back. They touched down and taxied up to the dispersal. As the minutes expired, more and more people gathered on the airfield. Some of the youngsters — no more than boys — were weeping. The pilot of the downed MiG had been a new leitenant. No one even mentioned his name.
Kiriya passed binoculars to Skomorokhov to search the column of sky above the river, but his hands were trembling so much that he couldn’t focus. He’d abandoned Yeremin to his fate. It was at worst a sin of omission. If the boy believed himself indestructible, then he got what he deserved. “He’s out of fuel by now, boss, he’s not made it.”
Shelves of stratus streaked the eastern dome of sky. A blue haze coloured in the gaps. The wind sock was fluttering but pointing toward them, to the west. “There’s still a chance,” Kiriya said.
He took back the binoculars. He was hoping Yefgenii had broken free of the Thunderjets. He could’ve outclimbed them and at 10,000 or 15,000 metres been flying in the best configuration to conserve fuel. He’d be running on vapors for a time and then his jet would stutter and flame out. About now he’d be entering a glide. There was still a chance he could stretch it all the way home. With the airplane held in the precise gliding attitude, with every control force trimmed out to perfection, with airspeed gauged against altitude, with the wind in the right direction… with all these things, there was still a chance. He was the spirit of the 221st.
The Starshina was marshaling fire trucks onto the airfield. They were lining up at the end of each taxiway with their lights flashing, waiting.
Every man and woman of the Antung VVS Station seemed to be out on the airfield now. No one said a word. Even the pilots of the next wave who were supposed to be taxiing out had climbed down from their cockpits and were peering into the east. The widow ensured the chocks were fixed against the mainwheels and the pitot-head covers were in place. Hers was the one head not turned up to the sky.
The Starshina ran to Kiriya bearing a short-wave radio. A message was being relayed from the tower. “There’s no reply to his call sign. There’s been no reply for twenty minutes.”
With a tilt of his head Pilipenko ordered the Starshina to give them some privacy. “Boss, I’m as sorry as anyone, but there’s a whole base away from their stations and six ships waiting for the order to roll out.”
Skomorokhov was pacing up and down, unable to settle. He said nothing.
Kiriya gazed into the east. Some of the men had stopped looking into the skies. Their heads were down. Some looked ready to fall to their knees.
Then the Starshina pointed. A drop of mercury was condensing out of the haze.
Kiriya trained the binoculars on the sighting. The MiG was floating down from 5,000 metres. It left no trail — he was long out of fuel, in the long glide back to earth.
“Yo-Yo.”
The pilots and ground crews gasped, then a cheer went up. Skomorokhov’s hands managed a clapping action. The weeping boys wiped their faces, laughing in embarrassment. The widow looked up from her work. She could see him now. He was over the paddies and, even if he didn’t make it back to the runway, he could eject over friendly territory.
Pilipenko took a turn with the binoculars. “He’s going to make it.”
Skomorokhov mumbled, “Worse. The fucker’s going to hit the runway.” Maybe what he hated most about Yefgenii Yeremin was that he was tall enough to see his bald patch even from the front.
The MiG floated down the glide slope toward the airfield. For a minute or two it looked as if he might sink into the undershoot but he held his nerve and his wheels struck the dirt at the very beginning of the strip. The plane rolled about a quarter of the way along before coming to a halt.
Fire trucks sped toward the plane. Kiriya signaled to a tow truck and leapt aboard. People were hanging off the sides and waving their arms as if the war had been won.
The widow squatted in the back of a jeep. As it hurtled over the dirt, a rush of air scrambled her hair into her eyes. She blinked and brushed it aside.
That night in her bunk as she smoked a cigarette she said, “Did you ever think you wouldn’t get back?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you chase the Americans?”
“‘Why?’”
“If you knew you might not get back?”
“If I didn’t chase them, who would I be?”
Ivan the Terrible had claimed both Thunderjets he’d pursued south to the P’yŏngyang-Wŏnsan line and five more Sabres in the month that followed. He was by for the Ace of Aces. Cheering ground crews carried him on their shoulders from his cockpit; that night Kiriya toasted him in the bar and then in private he said, “Your honour is the honour of the 221st. I’m going to recommend you for a second Gold Star or a second Order of Lenin. Name it.”
“If I can name it, then I name it for Gnido. He earned it. Make it his.”
Kiriya gazed back at him. He would have to inform the authorities that new information had come to light. Gnido was already forgotten by just about every man in the Polk, a rookie who’d come and gone and made no mark. It was a considerble inconvenience for a matter he regarded as so unimportant. But he nodded. Who could refuse Ivan the Terrible?
Skomorokhov died the following week. He got a kill — his sixteenth — and was just turning to see what was behind when a shell ripped through his canopy and opened a 10-centimetre gash in his neck. In reflex his hand went up to the wound but he was unconscious before he’d even looked at the blood on his glove and dead before his plane hit the ground.